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Another Tuesday, another day full of new game releases. While they aren’t exactly highly anticipated releases, fans of Dead Island will appreciate more zombie slaying action with Dead Island: Riptide. PC owners can enjoy a 20% off coupon, making the digital version of the game only $32.

If you’re a Trekkie, you’re either happy about today’s release of Star Trek or you’re nervous like us, given all the bad memories of subpar Trek games we’ve had to deal with through the years. Previews of Star Trek were so-so, but thus far initial user reviews on Metacritic look to be surprisingly decent – a surprise for the gamers reviewing them too!

Note: We update our GamesBeat weekly deal post every Tuesday with the latest deals. For last week’s deals, check below the “Last Thursday” headline.

Tuesday New Deals

Today’s release: Dead Island Riptide (PC Download) — $32 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Reviews are all in, and if you enjoy Dead Island, you’ll be getting more here. New island, more zombies.
 

Today’s release: Star Trek (PC Download) — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Somehow initial user reviews are excellent. Subtle marketing or is this the real deal?
 

Tomb Raider (Xbox 360, PS3) — $39.99 at Groupon. Great price drop considering console titles are rarely on sale so soon after release.
 

GamersGate Spring Sale (PC Download) — New deals everyday, with lots of excellent titles on sale. Our pick: The Cave for $5.10 and Alpha Protocol for $3.74.
 

Last Thursday

Dishonored‘s latest DLC The Knife of Dunwall just came out this past Tuesday and thus far has been well received by reviewers. The DLC puts you into the boots of Daud, who is attempting a bit of a redemption after feeling guilt over killing the Empress.

To quickly sum things up, if you enjoyed Dishonored and felt Dunwall City Trials could’ve been better, then this is the DLC you want. Adding icing on the cake, the Steam-activated The Knife of Dunwall can be had for only $8 after a 20% off coupon.

If you don’t already have Dishonored in your collection, the base game is down to $24.99 thanks to an instant discount at GMG. Elsewhere you’ll pay full price for the DLC and at least $5 more for the base game.

Say what you want about GameStop, but their download service can have competitive pricing. This week they launched a Spring PC download sale, which for the most part has respectable discounts. The most standout deals are the best ever pricing on Skyrim DLC. Released last month, the Dragonborn DLC is down to a new low of $10. The popular Dawnguard DLC is also at a $10 new low. As with the base Skyrim game, all the DLC activates on Steam.

Beyond the big Dovahkiin deals, fans of the Assassin’s Creed series should check out the franchise sale this weekend at GamersGate. The best deal is Assassin’s Creed 3 for $24.98 – a new low by $5 and $25 off the usual $50 price tag. The more recent Assassin’s Creed games and DLC are getting 50% discounts while the older ones are as high as 83% off. The offer runs through Sunday, April 21st.

If you think today’s post is all PC gaming, owners of PS Vita should check out Amazon’s $30 deal on Persona 4 Golden, an enhanced port of Persona 4 for the PS Vita. Suffice it to say, the port adds more features and content to probably one of the best JRPGs on the PS2 (mmm… nostalgia).

Hot deals

Last Tuesday’s release: Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall (PC DLC) — $8 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List is $10. Green Man Gaming also has a great price on the Dishonored base game for only $24.99 (normally $59.99).
 

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim DLC Packs — 50% off at GameStop. All the DLC titles are at half price, with most usually around $15 since their respective release dates. Last month’s release of Dragonborn can be had for only $10.

Assassin’s Creed Weekend Sale: Games and DLC — 50 to 83% off at GamersGate. Top choices include AC3 for $25 and the Season Pass for only $15.

Upcoming Releases

Oct. 25: Batman: Arkham Origins (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg. The October 25th release date is quite a ways off, but this is the first significant discount we’ve seen thus far. Another offer worth noting is the Xbox 360 version for $59.99 with a bonus $10 credit at Amazon.
 

PC download deals

SimCity with $10 Credit or $7 Cash Back — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Elsewhere $60. Everyone loves to hate the online only aspect, but truth is they’re still selling SimCity like hotcakes. In addition to the $20 instant discount at GMG, there’s a credit/cash back incentive, making it a $30-$33 value post bonus.
 

Tomb Raider — $26.79 at GameFly after coupon. Update: was $33.49, today-only coupon makes it stupid low price for a month old, well reviewed Triple-A title.
 

The Sims 3 University Life — $16 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Next best is $40 at Amazon. It’s the lowest price yet on the 9th – yes, 9th! – Sims 3 expansion pack.
 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — $5.99 at GameStop. Ties the previous low. Savings brought to you by the state of Rhode Island.
 

360, PS3, and PC Vita deals

Buy 2 Pre-Owned Video Games, Get a 3rd FREE at Best Buy. Over 7,000 games to choose from, with savings shown in your cart after all items have been added. Deal expires Saturday.
 

Persona Golden (PS Vita) — $29.96 at Amazon. Elsewhere the game is still selling for at least $39. Excellent title to pick up if you never played the PS2 version.
 

Halo 4 (Xbox 360) — $23.99 at NewEgg. Next best is $37 at Amazon. This is the cheapest we’ve seen by $6. If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Halo 4 since its release date, this is a solid price.
 

Hardware

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 59371960 Gaming Laptop — $799 at Lenovo after coupon. $120 less than this configuration sold for a week earlier. Specs: Ivy Bridge Core i7-3630QM, 1080p Full HD display, and the new Kepler-based GeForce GT 750M 2GB.
 

HP ENVY Phoenix h9-1420t Gaming Desktop — $862.49 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. Specs: Ivy Bridge Quad Core i7-3770, Liquid Cooled, Radeon HD 7670, 10GB RAM, and Blu-ray drive. GPU is a bit weak but you can obviously upgrade.
 

Sennheiser X320 Xbox 360 Gaming Headset — $69.99 at Rakuten. Next best is $100. This is the lowest price we’ve seen on the headset by $13.
 

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Warning: spoilers for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations follow.

When we last saw Desmond, our modern-day hero and narrative lynchpin through the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise, he was dead. Or close enough.

That leaves a pretty big hole in Creed’s mythos going into Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (due November 1 on PlayStation 4 and PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC). The series pulled off its epic trips into history via Desmond, who strapped into the genetic-memory-decoding Animus and relived his ancestors’ adventures in professional murder. No Desmond, no access to the litany of hooded killers stretching from the Crusades to the 21st century.

Luckily, the team at Ubisoft Montreal found a replacement to fill the gap: You.

“We wanted to remove this barrier that you’re playing a guy who’s playing in a machine playing a guy,” says game director Ashraf Ismail. “So instead, it’s really you as the hero in the present day using the Animus to go into someone’s life.”

No one at Ubisoft would confirm it, but if “removing the barriers” is indeed the goal, it’s possible Black Flag’s modern-day segments could be Creed’s first foray into a first-person perspective, perhaps even with a silent protagonist. Either way, it still leaves the tricky bit about slipping into Desmond’s family line to ferret out secrets lost to history. Ismail has an intriguing answers for that, too.

For starters, Abstergo — the modern-day front company for the Templars, ancient enemies of the assassins — has expanded. “Abstergo Entertainment is a subdivision of Abstergo Industries created to do research on historical events and characters for entertainment value,” says Ismail. Naturally, their true motives run deeper and darker. “You’re hired by Abstergo Entertainment to do research on this great pirate known as Edward Kenway. As far as you know, you’re just doing research on some dude in the past using this awesome machine called the Animus.”

But Edward Kenway isn’t some dude. He’s an assassin — Assassin’s Creed IV’s cover boy, in fact. Something happened in his life that’s very important to the power-hungry Templars. You’re going to help them learn the details, and their new Animus doesn’t depend on your being a direct descendent.

“Now it’s not just Desmond who can go back into his own lineage,” says Ismail. “The Animus technology’s progressed so others can do this, and that’s part of the story.”

We’ve already seen “Animus farms” where Abstergo trains their agents (it’s even the metastory behind Creed’s multiplayer mode), but Abstergo Entertainment’s huge, mall-like environment and open-to-the-public Zen rock gardens comes off as far more sinister for what it’s hiding. And it remains to be seen how extensive their little research project is, what it’s truly for, or how you’ll stop it.

Because this time, without Desmond to fall back on, it’ll all be on you.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you thought Assassin’s Creed III peaked during its naval side missions — mainly because it did — have I got some good news for you.

“About 60 percent of the main path is on land,” says Ashraf Ismail, game director on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. “40 percent is naval.” While he hesitates to call the previous game a usability test for Black Flag’s pirate adventures, he does admit that Assassin’s Creed III helped push the technology where his game needed it to go. Then his team took it further. Because while new assassin Edward Kenway frequently haunts the Caribbean in his brigantine, the Jackdaw, Ismail stresses that the action at sea and the assassinations on land aren’t two separate-yet-equal components of Assassn’s Creed IV (releasing November 1 on PC, Wii U, Xbox 360, and PlayStations 3 and 4). Together, he says, they make up one seamless, fluid game.

“I’m chasing after a target,” says Ismail. “All of a sudden, that target gets on a ship and starts going. OK, I can jump on my ship and go after him. And I can kill him by destroying his ship or by boarding him and taking him out specifically. Whether your target’s on a ship or on land, that’s a detail.”

Here’s another: Unlike Assassin’s Creed III, you’ll board shore-to-ship and even ship-to-ship at will without load screens or cutscenes.

“Plundering a ship is one of the most common ideas of what a pirate did,” says Ismail. “We decided it has to be completely in the flow.” When someone spots a sail on the horizon, Edward can quickly scan it and tag it with the new spyglass tool, which works on land-based targets as well. Once you know what that distant ship is and what it’s carrying, you can get to work. “You approach him, you attack him, and — once he’s weakened to a certain point — you order your crew to throw the grappling hooks. As soon as the hooks are in and you let go of the wheel, you’re completely free to do anything you want.”

You can take out Edward’s pistol and use the new free-aim system to snipe at the enemy crew or blaze away with your deck-mounted swivel gun. Grab a rope and swing over, Errol Flynn-style, with a signature Creed finishing pounce. Or jump into the drink, swim around to the other side of their ship, and sneak up from behind while your crew leads the frontal assault.

“And all this while,” adds Ismail, “you have to worry about military ships that are on the hunt for pirates.”

A huge variety of hunters and prizes roam the ocean in much the same way soldiers and guards patrol the cities, requiring different tools and tactics to take them out. Meanwhile, colossal man-of-war frigates purposely lock off tempting islands and the treasures they hold — until you build your ship up enough to take them on.

“The Jackdaw is the second main character of the game,” says Ismail. “This is your Starship Enterprise. You need to fix it when it breaks. You get to customize it, and you really get to upgrade it.” He’s not kidding. A design schematic Ismail showed me indicated that the Jackdaw starts with only six guns. Fully rigged, she can carry 56.

Your crew also needs proper management to keep them ship-shape. Ismail shies away from comparing them to the brotherhood of assassins that players recruited in past Creeds — and dodged questions about recruiting missions for your able seamen — but he also emphasizes their worth. “There are named characters that have side missions that have an important role in the game,” he says. But even redshirts need attention, too. “There is a lot of gameplay involved with them. They play a big role in the boarding. Some aspect of them can die. You have to worry about that.”

You might also worry that you’ll get bored out on the open water with nothing to do. Not so, says Ismail. Black Flag randomly generates events around players, baiting them to veer off course.

“We want people to get distracted,” he says. “We want players to head for their next mission marker, but then the game puts in distractions and motivations that you’re not forced to play but really enticed to play.” Ismail doesn’t implicitly spell these distractions out, but prize ships are an easy guess as is what’s sure to be a controversial addition: whaling, or “harpooning” as Black Flag calls it, judging by multiple slides and screenshots on display.

Edward can also drop anchor, ride a weight down to the bottom, and go searching for treasure on sunken wrecks … where hungry sharks roam. I saw a fast clip where one of the brutes chops down on an unfortunate sailor and drags him off. The shark who tries to make a meal of Edward gets a cutlass stabbed through its gut instead, so you won’t be helpless when Jaws comes nosing around. Back topside, you’ll also have to contend with harsher weather, including lightning storms and fog that can play havoc with your navigation and your crew.

And all that might sound like it diverts dramatically from the core Assassin’s Creed game. Ismail disagrees, calling it the perfect blend of pirate and assassin.

“We’ve created the first naval open-world game,” he says, “but it’s not a land game and a sea game. It’s one game. It’s the Caribbean. We’re working our butts off to ensure that players intuitively feel that it’s one solid, cohesive experience.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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A Jolly Rodger flies from the main mast of the brigantine Jackdaw; its familiar skull-and-bones superimposed over an even greater symbol, the arched battle standard of the Order of Assassins. The man standing at the helm is the pirate captain Edward Kenway … ingenious, brash, feared, and newly recruited into the centuries-old secret war between Templars and Assassins.

Yo ho ho. It’s a pirate’s life for Creed.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (releasing November 1 on PC, Xbox 360, Wii U, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4) serves as both a sequel and prequel to developer/publisher Ubisoft’s historical action-stealth epics. While modern-day segments continue forward after the death of Desmond, the descendant of Creed’s main heroes, the latter-day action skips back from 1776′s American Revolution to the so-called “golden age of piracy” in 1715. Fans of the series will immediately recognize a connection to past characters.

Edward “is the beginning of the Kenway family saga,” according to game director Ashraf Ismail, and the father and grandfather, respectively, of Assassin’s Creed III’s two playable killers, Haytham and Connor Kenway. “That family got introduced to the Assassins-Templar conflict through Edward.”

This isn’t the elder Kenway’s first roll through the Creed universe, either. He already has a small role in one of the franchise’s novels, Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken.

Edward “comes from poor stock,” says Ismail, and a harsh upbringing made him selfish, impulsive, and rebellious. “The idea of fighting for gold and glory lured him into becoming a pirate. But the assassin’s creed isn’t a selfish ideology, and this is something that becomes a struggle for him.”

The company he keeps probably won’t help. Sticking to Creed’s principals of historical tourism, Edward hangs out with the larger-than-life figures who terrorized the Caribbean. Famous pirates like Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Charles Vane, and Anne Bonney all play prominent roles. “They tried to create their own democratic society,” says Ismail, referring to in-game locations like the pirate stronghold at Nassau. “But they were also pirates, so it failed in a really spectacular way.” The explosive escape from Nassau when the British finally crush the pirate colony there will be one of Black Flag’s major set pieces.

And while Ismail never spells anything out, it’s not hard to guess that at some point Edward will come into conflict with his compatriots, leading to some good, old-fashioned ninja-versus-pirate action. Historically, King George I offered a royal pardon to any pirate who swore to retire from the trade — psychopathic Charles Vane did so repeatedly before they finally hung him — and Ben Hornigold, also a confirmed character, gave up piracy to hunt pirates in the Bahamas.

Those won’t be Edward’s only enemies. As a pirate himself, he’ll spend a lot time looting English ships and fighting off hungry sharks as he dives to recover sunken treasure. In addition to the series’ signature hidden blade, Edward favors two cutlasses — we saw footage of him pouncing a British sailor with them — and a brace of pistols. Ismail says that Edward’s two guns — upgradeable to four — played into both a new free-aim mode as well as a melee combo “auto-lock” option that, while not specifically described, did seem like it takes a page from the “mark and execute” feature in Ubisoft’s recent Splinter Cell games. Either way, between Edward’s arsenal and a revised (and clarified) hierarchy of enemies, Ubisoft has mercifully given the combat system another facelift. “You will have to relearn how to use it,” says Ismail.

Ubisoft also unveiled Black Flag’s world map, and Ismail insists that it’s one huge, seamless, cohesive world centered on Cuba, encompassing most of the Caribbean and Bahamas and dotted with hideaways like Crooked Island and Cayo Largo. Naval missions do get a significant upgrade, but Ismail promised 50 unique land-based locations, and the color palettes and tone for each area looks wildly different. Capital city Havana takes on warm, Spanish hues. Kingston, Jamaica, sports frayed, wood-slat buildings and a dangerous, frontier-town feel. Nassau presents the tropical island essential to any pirate story.

“It’s a very different world we’re creating,” says Ismail. “Assassin’s Creed is normally about a couple of major cities, and you’re spending your time in those cities. We still have that, but we’ve pushed it to have these very foreign locations.”

Players will visit fishing villages, naval forts, Mayan ruins, coconut islands, dense jungles (marking a return of Assassin’s Creed III’s tree-hopping traversals), beautifully cavernous pirate coves where smugglers hide their goods (but not well enough), and plantations “where you see the effect of slavery,” says Ismail. “Slavery was an important part of the pirate era, and we touch on it.”

And like Creed’s cities, Ismail promises that it’s all accessible without breaks in the immersion. “When you’re on your ship, you see a beach,” he says. “You can just jump out of your ship and swim to that beach. You see that pier over there? You can dock your ship and jump out.” At that point, you’re on the island, and you can roam it at will with no load screens.

Ismail also plans to take Creed back to its open-ended assassination roots. “The idea is that you have this target in a place with a really cool level design, and you’re told, ‘Do it as you wish,’” he says. “We want to bring this back.”

As for whether Creed might also bring Edward’s son Haytham or grandson Conner back — or even if Edward’s story will extend past this one game — Ismail can’t say. He does insist that Ubisoft has a plan … and a big poster hangs in the brand team’s office showing how everything fits together. That team “focuses on where Assassin’s Creed as a franchise is heading,” says Ismail, “and there is a place where it’s heading.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Making a modern triple-A video game is a massive undertaking — just ask Ubisoft.

It took six Ubisoft teams to make Assassin’s Creed III. The company spreads out development for its big games because it’s not viable to produce something so massive at one studio. That’s because, according to Ubisoft Reflections managing director Pauline Jacquey, it takes hundreds of people to make a triple-A title.

“‘There are games that Ubisoft specializes in, like open-world action games, with a lot of production value, and you need a team of 400 to 600 people,” Jacquey told Games Industry International in an interview. “That’s a lot, and the next-gen is increasing this.”

Jacquey goes on to say that not all games require such massive teams. Some games only require 100 people, but a next-gen console like the PlayStation 4, with all of its extra capabilities, adds to the amount of work.

“For the new PS4 console, you need teams of up to 600 guys so you can’t do it at just one site,” said Jacquey to Games Industry International. “So there’s organization within Ubisoft to make sure that collaboration happens and works.”

Ubisoft has teams all over the globe. For the aforementioned Assassin’s Creed III, Ubisoft Montreal led development, Ubisoft Kiev/Ubisoft Romania ported the game to Windows, Ubisoft Annecy designed the multiplayer, Ubisoft Singapore led development on the naval combat, and Ubisoft Quebec handled the Wii U port.

It’s a lot of effort and overhead, which increases the financial risk.

“Ubisoft is very generous with resources, making sure product quality is top notch,” said Jacquey to GI. “But then the outcome, the production revenue, should be much higher as well so it balances. It’s just the risk is higher, so if we miss it once or twice the impact is big.”

Big hits drive revenue in the games industry, but this certainly seems like a precarious position for Ubisoft to put itself in. If one of these juggernaut games flops, the publisher could take a huge loss. At the same time, gamers crave these immersive experiences, so the money is apparently there for any company that can capitalize on this craving.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Ubisoft just released brand-new key art for the next installment of Assassin’s Creed, and Kotaku’s anonymous tipster was right on the money.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag clearly takes place in the age of pirates with a new assassin at the helm. In fact, Ubisoft showed us several videos and gave us an in-depth, hour-long briefing and interview on the game last week, but all those details are under embargo until Monday, March 4, at 9:00 a.m. PST.

So at present, we can’t even tell you that handsome fellow’s name, although franchise superfans might make an educated guess. Notice those four pistols he’s packing? We’re going to explain how they fit into the combat system. That assassin-themed Jolly Rodger off in the background? We know how very different the ship flying it is from Assassin’s Creed III’s sloop-of-war, the Aquila. Desmond? Yep, we’ve got info on what’s going on there, too.

Click to GamesBeat on Monday morning at 9:00 PST for all the answers.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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As regular as my grandpa after binge-drinking prune juice, Ubisoft plans to debut a new Assassin’s Creed in its next fiscal year, which runs from April through March 2014.

The next Assassin’s Creed features a new hero and setting/time period, according to Ubisoft chief executive officer Yves Guillemot in a conference call to investors.

“We are delighted and proud to announce today that in [fiscal 2014], we will introduce an all-new Assassin’s Creed hero,” said Guillemot. “With an all new team and time period. We expect it to be another major leap forward for the franchise. [This] is the benefit of multiple teams working on multiple chapters of the project, each [gets] several years to make their versions of an Assassin’s Creed game.”

This marks the fifth Assassin’s Creed for home consoles in five years. In 2012, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed III for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC, which followed the adventures of half-Native American Connor Kenway during the Revolutionary War. The publisher shipped 12 million units of that game, so it’s a bit shocking that it’s already planning on changing up the star and the North American setting. Especially considering the company set three back-to-back games in Renaissance Italy.

Guillemot said the publisher would announce specifics in the near future.

If the next Assassin’s Creed hits this fall, it could coincide with the release of the expected next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Ubisoft tends to throw a lot of support behind launch consoles, including releasing Assassin’s Creed III on the Wii U.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Core gamers came out in a big way for publisher Ubisoft in the third quarter of the company’s fiscal year 2013.

The Assassin’s Creed publisher generated $1.08 billion in sales during Q3, which is up 23 percent from fiscal 2012′s $875 million. Ubisoft cited “outstanding performance” from core gamers as the primary driver of these massive numbers.

Assassin’s Creed III, the latest game in the historically set open-world series, shipped 12 million copies. That represents a 70 percent increase over Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

The publisher also noted that its open-world first-person shooter Far Cry 3 exceeded expectations with 4.5 million copies shipped.

Ubisoft is experiencing “sharp growth” in digital sales. Revenue from that sector is up 143 percent to $73 million. Digital distribution of the aforementioned Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3 led to the biggest increase, but downloadable games like Trials Evolution on Xbox Live Arcade and Rayman Jungle Run on iOS and Android contributed significantly on this front.

Casual gamers continue to pick up Just Dance 4, but not in the same volume as with previous games in the series. The publisher shipped 8 million units of its latest motion-controlled dancing title, which is down from Just Dance 3.

Ubisoft raised its outlook for fiscal 2013 from $1.62 billion to a range of $1.67–$1.70 billion.

In this quarter, the company will release Trials Evolution on PC, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes on iOS, and Anno Online in open beta on PC.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The overall income of $14.80 billion showed a decline of 9 percent from 2011’s $16.34 billion. Physical sales (new and used) suffered most, dropping 21 percent, from $11.25 billion in 2011, to $8.88 billion in 2012.

By contrast, sales of digital game content, including full games, add-on content, mobile games, and subscriptions, rose to a total of $5.92 billion in 2012, up 16 percent from $5.09 billion in 2011.

“When including all other forms of content spending outside of new physical games, the 2012 U.S. games market was more than twice as large as the total spending on new physical games alone,” said Liam Callahan, an industry analyst at The NPD Group, via press release.

“There were divergent trends when looking at content spending in 2012 as a whole, with a decrease of 21 percent in spending on physical content while digital content spending grew 16 percent; both formats combined for a total decline of 9 percent for the year,” said Callahan.

There were certainly no shortage of triple-A titles released last year, including sequels to the popular Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and Halo franchises. But even these behemoths were unable to reverse the year-on-year sales decline.

With Nintendo releasing its latest home console, the Wii U, in late 2012, and both Sony and Microsoft rumored to unveil new systems this year, it will be interesting to see whether this has a positive impact on physical sales during 2013. For now, it looks like digital sales will continue to grow in importance to the multi-billion dollar industry.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Dead Space 3 starts with a break up. You might think that’s weird for a game that involves meticulously cutting off the limbs of alien zombies who want to kill you. But the Dead Space series has seen more unusual changes over the last few years.

Available today for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, Visceral Game’s third entry of its sci-fi themed survival-horror franchise takes hero Isaac Clarke through a galaxy-hopping adventure as he tries to stop undead creatures known as Necromorphs once and for all. Fighting alongside him in the optional cooperative mode is John Carver, a soldier who has his own reasons for hunting down the origin of the Markers, spiraling structures that create the monsters out of corpses.

Much like with Capcom’s Resident Evil games, many fans mourn the transition of Dead Space from a slow-paced and eerie tale to a heavy emphasis on action and leaning on large, scripted sequences to tell its story. So I’ll make this simple: If you didn’t enjoy this change in Dead Space 2 at all, you won’t find a lot to like in Dead Space 3. But if you’re willing to dig in, you’ll find an entertaining shooter that will scare the pants off you.

What you’ll like

Addicting loot hunt

The limb-chopping combat receives a facelift with the new workbenches, which you can use to craft your own weapons. You start by picking a compact frame (one-handed) or a heavy frame (two-handed) and choosing an upper tool and a lower tool. These tools dictate what kind of firepower you’re using. If you attach the military engine, you can create standard weapons like machine guns, revolvers, and a sniper rifle. One of my favorite combinations early on was a rivet-shooting chain gun that I placed on top of a shotgun.

Different barrel tips, a variety of attachments, and modifiers known as circuits can alter the way your gun behaves — a generic plasma cutter can become a lethal killing machine by adding a few damage circuits to its frame. Or you can add an ammo-box attachment that’ll automatically reload your gun once you reach the bottom of the clip. You have a lot of flexibility in tweaking these weapons anyway you want.

The best way to find components is through exploration. Hidden containers and secret rooms contain the rarer stuff, but Necromorphs often drop resources (which acts as a type of in-game currency) that you can use to build other tools and items. Gathering these resources and looking for the nearest workbench to put them together is like a minigame of its own, as it encourages you to keep an eye out for more loot.

Dead Space 3 has a lengthy campaign — it took me close to 24 hours on my first solo playthrough — and I’m sure that at least a few of those hours came from tinkering around with the workbench. You can always recover any parts you’ve added to a gun, so it’s easy to test out your crazy weapon ideas.

If you’re impatient, you can buy more resources, space suits, and weapons through the optional microtransactions menu with real-world money. But I don’t know why  anyone would even consider that. By the end, I had a huge pile of resources, and I never had to worry about running out.

An evolving threat

The Marker-corrupted creatures, many of whom we’ve seen before in Isaac’s previous quests, pack a few new skills that make sure you never really feel comfortable around them — no matter how much ammo you may have. They still love to pop out of air vents when you least expect it, with their scythe-like arms rapidly moving to greet you. But it’s their appearance on the planet of Tau Volantis, and the way they adapt to attacking you outdoors, that reminds you how deadly they can really be.

Only a small ripple of snow — as if they were swimming — will signal their presence before they suddenly emerge to attack you from the planet’s icy depths. The visibility outside isn’t always clear, especially with strong torrents of snow and sleet raining down. It’s typical to find yourself alone one second and then surrounded by Necromorphs the next. It’s unsettling.

Playing in the dark with headphones on accentuates this threat: The most dangerous Necromorphs are those you can hear but can’t see. Their guttural, animal-like roars and shrill high-pitched screams serve as a prelude to their inevitable anxiety-inducing appearance. The addition of new monsters toward the end — like the Twitcher, an extremely fast Necromorph that you have to slow down with your Stasis ability first — keeps the combat from being anything but routine.

Resolution

As we’ve learned with Mass Effect 3 and Assassin’s Creed III, it’s tricky to come up with an ending to an ambitious trilogy that’ll please everyone. The Dead Space plot isn’t convoluted, but it’s large enough to get lost in the details. To Visceral Games’ credit, it has managed to tie up many loose ends in Dead Space 3, whether through cutscenes or text and audio logs scattered throughout the levels.

I have a few issues (some being too spoilery to discuss here) with the direction it took the story in — such as the dumb romance subplot — but it was a satisfying ending. The developers do leave some room for future games or other forms of media to explore, but that’s also handled in a way that feels natural and convincing.

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Games don’t have to be based on movies or sports teams to feature real humans. As 3D rendering technology advances, more and more developers turn to flesh-and-bone actors, and models to give life to their protagonists and antagonists.

In the case of Far Cry 3′s Vaas Montenegro (top image), Ubisoft hired Canadian actor Michael Mando to portray, voice, and provide motion capture for the sadistic madman as well as star in promotional material. Vaas’s appearance (combined with Mando’s performance) give the title an extra layer of realism.

I made a list of 20 celebrity sightings in modern video games with side-to-side images of their in-game models next to their real faces. Hover the cursor over the image below to launch the gallery.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Fans of Assassin’s Creed have been playing a lot of “What if?” over the weekend due to some incredible art pieces circulating on Reddit. The series of images show the franchise’s signature assassins in various settings across the ages.

With each new iteration, Ubisoft has teased where the main protaganist’s ancestors would be slicing and dicing from the shadows next. Feudal Japan has long been both a fan and developer favorite — despite what Asssassin’s Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson callously said (and then took back, kinda).

Hopefully, the potential seen in these images and the many faults of Assassin’s Creed III prove Hutchinson doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Bring on the Egyptian steampunk robot samurai assassins!

Top image: The Incident of Xuanwu Gate (by Yuan)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Porting games to the Wii U that released months ago on other systems doesn’t make a lot of sense. If publishers are insistent, however, then they have to include one certain feature that’ll justify any game’s existence on the latest Nintendo console: offscreen play.

Today, Electronic Arts released a press release in Japan declaring that developer Criterion’s Need For Speed: Most Wanted racing game will include the best feature for anyone whose significant other hogs the television to watch hours of Sweet Genius. Offscreen play, for the unaware, enables the Wii U to display its video either on the television, on the GamePad’s screen, or both.

Once you try it, it’s difficult to live without it. Gamers can dive into major games like Batman: Arkham City, Trine 2, and Assassin’s Creed III without ever having to turn on the television.

I don’t want to admit that I don’t control the remote in my house, but let’s put it this way: I’ve watched every episode of Jersey Shore.

I need more games with offscreen play. I won’t even consider a Wii U port if it doesn’t support this feature, and I bet I’m not alone.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted will hit Japanese retailers on March 14. EA has not set a North American release date.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game programmers have been hiding secret messages, inside jokes, and general wackiness in their titles for decades. Finding these “Easter eggs” keeps gamers busy, and it shows that you can’t take yourself too seriously even when facing certain death in the midst of a zombie outbreak, alien invasion, or demonic possession.

Check out the gallery below to see 15 of the coolest, funniest, and kookiest Easter eggs of games released in 2012.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat celebrates the biggest games and news of 2012 with several retrospective features. Even though the year is almost over, that doesn’t mean we’re completely out of news yet, however. You’ll also find stories on Nintendo patenting a specific use for the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality, Microsoft releasing an iPhone and iPad game with Xbox Live Achievements, and where to buy the documentary Minecraft: The Story of Mojang without digital rights management.

Best of 2012:

The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2013
Here’s the scorecard on our 2012 predictions for the game industry
The biggest gaming trends of 2012
The news that shook the game world in 2012
Kickstarter game projects raised $79M in 2012
GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead
The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)
The worst gaming trends of 2012
The best MMOs of 2012
12 of the best games for your new mobile device
The best video game trailers of 2012
The biggest gaming disappointments of 2012
The best video game soundtracks of 2012
The biggest gaming surprises of 2012
Top 15 mobile games of 2012
2012′s most innovative game ideas
Top gaming technologies of 2012
5 of the best original games of 2012
The best indie games of 2012
The video game industry’s 2012 holiday cards

News:
Blizzard: ‘We are going back to the drawing board’ for team deathmatch in Diablo III
International Game Developers Association appoints new executive director
This week in The Nintendo Download: Wii U discounts, Lost Levels, and Mega Man
Nintendo uploads tip videos for New Super Mario Bros. U to YouTube
Nintendo secures the patent for a specific use of the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality
How to gain early access to the Dead Space 3 demo
Microsoft launches first game for iPhone, iPad with Xbox Achievements
Where to buy Minecraft: The Story of Mojang documentary without DRM

Previews:
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is an ambitious shooter that’s faithful to the show (preview)

Pieces of flair:
How Canada has become America’s mobile app guinea pig
A tale of two zombie games: The Walking Dead vs. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
5 worse BioShock Infinite covers
How major MMOs are celebrating Christmas in-game (gallery)
The many major missteps of Far Cry 3
Outlandish factoids from Street Fighter’s expanded universe (gallery)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Remember all the way back in January, when we looked at all the games that were coming out in 2012 and thought, “Holy crap! This is going to be the Best Year Ever (for gaming)™!” Well, this is December, and some of us are looking back to those wide-eyed, optimistic past versions of ourselves and wondering why they ever looked forward to some of the stuff we got in 2012. Sure, some of those anticipated titles lived up to our expectations, but in a lot of cases, that optimism was just the first step on a journey of regret and nonstop head shaking.

Here are some of our picks for the most disappointing games and events of 2012.

Assassin’s Creed III

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Occasionally, a little time and distance softens the heart, and you remember things more fondly than what you actually felt at the time. I, on the other hand, despise Assassin’s Creed III more now than when I gave it a midrange score back in October. Oh, my man-love for its naval missions continues unabated, but I indulge in those behind the back of the main game and its sloppy mechanics, frustrating chases, and worthless side missions. I’m gratified that it doesn’t whitewash our nation’s origins as some altruistic crusade for peace and freedom (often spoken of in earshot of working slaves), but Creed “concludes” its overarching, modern-day plot with a firm middle finger to its most loyal fans. At least it finally settled one lingering question: Desmond is indeed as pointless and useless a diversion as we always suspected.

The delays

Contributing editor Stephanie Carmichael

Most of the games I was looking forward to all year are now coming out in 2013. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (or whatever we’re calling it now) are the handful I’ve been most itching to play. Other titles like South Park: The Stick of Truth, Devil May Cry, and Aliens: Colonial Marines have experienced delays as well. I guess I can’t complain too much. More time in development means a better chance of getting these games right, but it also means I’ll be burning a big hole in my wallet come spring.

Capcom continues to lock content in game discs

Contributor Samir Torres

F*** you, Capcom!

Twisted Metal’s online multiplayer

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

As a huge fan of the Twisted Metal games since the original PlayStation days, I was ecstatic when I finally got my hands on the PS3 reboot earlier this year. The folks at developer Eat Sleep Play did a fantastic job of bringing its unique brand of vehicular combat to a new generation of consoles with its campaign mode, and playing these levels with a friend in local multiplayer was fun, too. But going online was a different story: Starting from launch day and lasting for weeks, a host of problems made it almost impossible (for me at least) to stay connected to a match. The developers deployed various updates to fix these problems, but I had already moved on.

Disney Epic Mickey 2

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

After hearing, yet again, legendary designer Warren Spector’s “big picture” idea of games needing to be open-ended, with multiple paths, as well as not judging players for their “playstyle,” I really think this game was a huge disappointment. It changed very little from the first installment and was just another mess of control, camera, and barely comprehensible storyline. As with most things disappointing in life, the real problem was going into it with such a high set of expectations.

Endless Space

Copy editor Jason Wilson

We saw a couple of space-themed 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy titles this year (Genesis Wars, Legacy of Pegasus, the final “all clear” for Sword of the Stars II). But the one that many space strategy fans were looking forward to was Endless Space, a game that turned out to be style over substance. Endless Space sports a good-looking user interface and some kick-ass ship designs, but it commits one of the biggest errors that any single-player strategy game can make: The A.I. isn’t good at its game. Your foes don’t do a good job of using its systems — like combat — against you, ultimately providing a limited challenged against a skilled player. And for the demanding fans of strategy games, this is a tactic that just doesn’t work.

Mass Effect 3′s ending

Intern Jason Lomberg

From an artistic standpoint, my biggest disappointment was that developer BioWare pulled a George Lucas and “fixed” the ending. That’s not how it should work — you don’t “fix” art.

A piece of art represents the succinct vision of its creator. It’s also a product of its time and, therefore, a cultural artifact. The best films – like Star Wars – engender a certain timeless quality, but even so, it’s not hard to discern that Lucas’s masterpiece reflects the norms and attitudes of the ’70s. By mucking with his own creations to “update” the special effects or modify story elements, Lucas is destroying a piece of history. This is why fans reacted so negatively to Star Wars: Special Edition (and the innumerable “updates” before and since), and it’s why BioWare should not have changed the Mass Effect 3 ending. For gaming to take its rightful place among other artistic media, it shouldn’t be so malleable and subject to “revision.” Numerous gamers took issue with the game’s ending – and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree – but we should criticize ME3 as a piece of art, not a software program that its makers can patch. We should analyze the creator’s vision and not treat it like a technical glitch.

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

Intern Mike Minotti

I was excited to have a real Assassin’s Creed experience on a portable system, and I was hoping that such a game could be a great showcase for the PlayStation Vita. Sadly, Liberation was a boring, uninspired slog through the bog hampered by technical problems and an empty open world.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Intern Evan Killham

Developer Level-5′s series of puzzle-driven adventure games sold me both a Nintendo DS and a 3DS. I love everything about them: the full-on animated cutscenes, the stories, and even the bizarre idea of a universe in which brain-teasers work as a sort of social currency. But I’m not sure what happened with the franchise’s fifth installment. The plot and style are as good as ever, but the riddles in this one are inexplicably obtuse at times (I’m convinced that one challenge’s “clever” solution is not a valid answer to the setup) and blatantly not puzzles at others. A maze, for example, is not a puzzle by my definition, and this Professor Layton contains several of them.

Miracle Mask is the first Layton game that has felt like a chore.

XCOM’s lack of longevity

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

A game about saving the world from an alien invasion is probably beyond cliché at this point. You’d think that such a premise would doom the entire experience to a single playthrough, never to be touched again. But this wasn’t the case with the original X-Com strategy games, where I felt like anything could happen at any time. My first encounter could be the extraterrestrial menace terrorizing an urban populace or a dogfight with high-flying UFO that segues into a ground assault or even a struggle for survival within the supposedly safe confines of my only operational headquarters! Add in a healthy dose of pseudo-randomization, and X-Com felt fresh over and over no matter how many campaigns I played.

But Developer Firaxis’ recent reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, unfortunately starts to feel all too similar all too quickly. Even during your first game, you’ll see the same premade maps again and again. Some missions feel scripted (even featuring monster closets!) and like long, narrow hallways (I don’t ever want to play the final stage again because it’s such a boring slog). I’m convinced that Firaxis doesn’t really want me to play another campaign, which is crystal clear because the game forces me to listen to the same unskippable explanatory voiceovers with every new start.

After well over 100 hours, I’m just about done with XCOM. And it shouldn’t have been this way.

Zynga’s belly-flop

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Zynga was supposed to be the next big thing in gaming, but then it flopped … hard. Its stock became the joke of the industry (currently: $2.39, down from $9.50 at the initial public offering and a peak of $14.69 back in March, and rather than make a bunch of new Silicon Valley millionaires, it had to lay people off. Not many people are rooting for the company that regularly spams Facebook walls. But when the guys leading the charge for social gaming fails that badly, it’s a very bad sign for the health of the business as a whole.

Nearly everything Resident Evil

Intern Jasmine Rea

This year, I found myself sympathizing with legions of Sonic the Hedgehog fans because at our core, we are far too loyal for our own good. Like them, I go into every Resident Evil game with the same naive hope that the series isn’t spiraling the drain. Operation Raccoon City and Resident Evil 6 were nearly enough to make me give up on playing any console-based entries in the series. Poor execution, tedious gameplay, and wretched quick-time events have finally broken me. I’ll go into 2013 with a dull ache for another Resident Evil: Revelations, but I doubt I’ll get that.

Will I buy the inevitable Resident Evil 7? Of course I will, and that’s why gin exists.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Despite being one of 2012′s biggest blockbuster games, Assassin’s Creed III somehow managed to release riddled with bugs, more so than any other Assassin’s Creed title to date. From game-breaking glitches to minor graphical annoyances, developer Ubisoft Montreal had issues with that last bit of polish before pushing the game out the door. Now, Ubisoft is looking to correct many of those issues with a massive patch set to release before Christmas.

The numerous fixes cover both single-player and multiplayer, and you can read the complete patch notes below (via Ubisoft).

Global Fixes

• Couriers will now appear more often in Boston and New York.
• Fixed a bug where consumables would not be restored properly after playing a naval mission.
• Fixed a bug where multiple copies of heralds or paper boys could be spawned at the same spot.
• Fixed a bug where printer shops icons could appear on the map even if the player is not notorious.
• Fixed a bug where the second equipped pistol could disappear after a loading.
• Fixed a bug where the player could fall through the map if he went through a city gate on horseback while in conflict.
• Fixed a crash when the player uses the rope dart on a horse from above.
• Fixed horse glitch.
• Fixed inventory messages that kept being displayed after every reload if the player had completed some missions.
• Fixed various crashes.
• Forced subtitles to be displayed for off-camera voices like some tutorials and end of sequence transitions.
• Made sure to stop tavern music when exiting taverns.

SEQUENCE 1
A Deadly Performance: Fixed a music glitch by making a cinematic not skippable.

SEQUENCE 4
Feathers and Trees: Fixed another case where optional objective “Do not touch the ground or water” could fail for no good reason.

SEQUENCE 6
On Johnson’s Trail: Fixed a bug where sometimes Adams and Revere could be missing, preventing the player from starting the mission.

SEQUENCE 7
Lexington and Concord: Fixed a bug where the player could stay stuck on the road while on horseback at a specific spot on the mission’s path.

EPILOGUE
Fixed Animus Synching gameplay that could get stuck.

Side Quests

• Boston Brawlers: Clearer message after beating all ex-champions, stating that you need to go back to Boston.
• Boston Underground: Fixed a bug where exploded barrels could come back if you re-entered through the South Commons entrance.
• Boston Underground: Fixed a bug where Haytham could never use the North Port entrance.
• Liberation Missions: Added unfogging of the map when the player gets near a liberation event, to make sure the icon will be revealed in case the player doesn’t complete it and wants to come back later.
• New York Liberation Missions: Fixed a few cases where the player could get to the event’s icon but nothing would happen.
• New York Underground: Fixed a bug where the player would be teleported at the center of New York if he declined to enter the underground through the South Market entrance.

Homestead

• Added map icons on Homestead buildings as you unlock new settlers.
• Made sure Achilles cannot be stoking the fireplace after the homestead story arc is completed.
• The Proper Tools: Added map icons on all shops in New York when that mission asks the player to go buy the hammer parts for the blacksmith.
• Side-quest Encyclopedia of the Common Man: fixed a bug where the quest would still not be completed if the problem was already encountered prior to the last patch. Buggy savegames are now fixed on load.

Naval Locations

• Oak Island: Fixed a bug where the mission could not continue if the player reloads after completing some parts of the puzzle.

Frontier

• Added auto-whistle for a horse when entering Frontier from Boston, New York, or Homestead.
• Fixed NPC committing suicide when the player approaches.

Menus

• Fixed a bug where it was impossible to hide the onscreen money counter and “hold to skip” message. Money is now linked to the “minimap” HUD visibility option, and the skip cinematic message to the “controls” option.
• Fixed a bug where the “Fast Travel Points Unlocked” stat could not reach 100 percent.
• Fixed a possible crash after all pivots have been synched.
• Fixed bad date formatting in Notification Center.
• Fixed various typos and bad translations,
• Made sure Boston Brawlers and Hunting Society icons are displayed over the fog once the player gets approached to join the club.
• Map icon filters: Added a bunch of side-quest start icons on the missions layer, added viewpoints to the collectibles layer, and made sure all fast travel destinations are visible on all layers.
• Opening the weapon, naval weapon, and assassin recruits menus is now faster.

Multiplayer

Modes

• Team modes balance is no longer affected when extra players join in progress.

Abilities

• Players are no longer stuck after they got hit by knives while climbing cranes.
• The Unstoppable Perk now correctly opens recently closed Chase Breakers in the Animus Core map.
• Closure now seals and opens Chase Breakers for the player who used the ability as intended.

Scoring

• Abstergo points now update correctly after you finished a game in the progression menu.

Locking

• Locked targets don’t become unavailable under certain conditions anymore.
• Players will now see the notorious lock indicator when their pursuers kill NPCs, regardless of their approach meter.
• In a chase, target players will now be able to lock their pursuer by default prior to any other character.

Misc

• It is now possible for players to reopen Chase Breakers right after their team mates went through them in the Animus Core map.
• The time during which you’re vulnerable after a stun from ground to a haystack doesn’t vary from one mode to another anymore.
• Players can no longer get killed by another player from any distance after performing a haystack kill.
• Players no longer get stuck in the position the character adopts on narrow ledges when they kill with the Fast Gun.
• Players will no longer see their pursuers as notorious when their pursuers are killed with the silent bonus or better.
• Characters appearance and Gamertags can no longer be accidentally reverted on Wolfpack podium staging.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Assassin’s Creed III, the ambitious stealth-killing game set in the American Revolution, sold more than 7 million copies in its first month, according to publisher Ubisoft. That adds up to about $420 million in retail sales. This makes it the fastest-selling game in Ubisoft’s history.

The French game publisher said that in solo missions alone, gamers have accumulated more than 82 centuries of gaming time and committed more than three billion assassinations in the game. In multiplayer, more than 250 million assassinations have been performed in more than five billion multiplayer sessions. That suggests strong engagement despite stiff competition from multiplayer heavyweights such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Halo 4.

Assassin’s Creed III is selling well even though it had some well-publicized glitches, such as camera controls that result in blocked vision. More than twice as many gamers have joined the multiplayer mode compared to last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

“The reception for Assassin’s Creed III has been exceptional, and this success has positioned the game among the bestsellers of the 2012 holiday season” said Tony Key, the senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft. “We knew we had something special on our hands when Assassin’s Creed III was launched, and we’re really excited and proud to see how much fans are enjoying the latest installment in the franchise.”

Ubisoft has also announced the Assassin’s Creed III Season Pass (2,400 Microsoft points on Xbox Live, or $30 on PlayStation Network), which features “The Tyranny of King Washington,” an all-new single-player campaign told through three episodic content packs in which players experience an alternate history of the events following the American Revolution. More downloadable content will feature new maps and characters in multiplayer mode.

In addition to this all-new single player experience, Assassin’s Creed III downloadable content will feature new maps and characters for an even more expansive multiplayer experience.

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Epic Games president Michael Capps retired, Call of Duty: Black Ops II earned $1 billion in 15 days, Irrational Games pushed BioShock Infinite’s release date again, and Zynga filed to make real-money gambling games in Nevada.

You’ll also find reviews for Far Cry 3,  The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dragonborn, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Writer Rumble as well as previews for Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.

News:

• The DeanBeat: Expert advice on staying alive in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer
• Army of TWO: The Devil’s Cartel makes the Mexican drug wars seem glitchy
• What do game investors think about Kickstarter?
• Irrational Games pushes back BioShock Infinite release date
• PMC and Machinima will tout this year’s DICE Summit video game awards show
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II beats Halo 4 in NPD’s dismal November game sales list
• These missing Tomb Raider games could be entombed for good
• Dishonored’s first downloadable add-on pack is all about challenging your skills
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Lego Lord of the Rings, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and New Super Mario Bros. 2
• Peanut Labs extends its self-serve platform for creating market surveys (exclusive)
• God of War: Ascension multiplayer finds a sweet spot between shooters and fighters
• With ex-Zynga developer carrying the flag, Kixeye invades Canada
• Zynga files for right to make real-money gambling games in Nevada
• Assassin’s Creed III’s first add-on pack is erasing player progress
• The Four Bikers of the Apocalypse usher in the second add-on pack for Trials Evolution
• Pikmin 3 slips out of Wii U ‘launch window,’ will debut in spring
• Fire Emblem Awakening out on 3DS in North America in early February
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II hits $1B in sales in 15 days
• Bunchball shows off the ‘rock stars’ of gamification
• ‘Toxic’ League of Legends player responds to his 1-year ban
• Zynga’s new theme park game CoasterVille goes live today
• Facebook announces top games of 2012: SongPop music trivia game comes out on top
• Social media surfaces layoffs at game companies NCSoft and Petroglyph
• A Wii U update is available now — it should improve system stability
• The Ins & Outs of PlayStation All Stars’ newest fighters: Kat and Emmett
• Epic Games president Michael Capps retires
• DICE slips in a Mirror’s Edge reference (tease?) into the latest Battlefield 3 expansion
• The Slingshot Content Pack for XCOM: Enemy Unknown available today
• First Assassin’s Creed III add-on pack available now for Season Pass holders
• Replay Games fetches a new game and a chief creative officer (exclusive)
• Guitar Hero co-creator’s Green Throttle Games raises $6M to reinvent TV games
• Adobe launches new cloud-based game development tools
• Dragonborn expansion definitely coming to PlayStation 3
• Try out wizard battles in Ni no Kuni’s magical world tomorrow (updated)
• Android game console maker Ouya shipping its developer prototypes this month

Mobile news:

• After closing OpenFeint, Gree cuts jobs in U.S. offices
• Ngmoco goes next-gen with high-end graphics in The Drowning tablet game
• Brazil’s biggest mobile content publisher unveils its first game for the U.S.
• Social casino app goes to the city with New York-New York slot machine
• Tylted welcomes several top social-game developers to its mobile platform
• PlayPhone adds 20 games to its mobile social gaming network
• German ‘startup factory’ HitFox expands globally with four new game distribution businesses
• Cut the Rope developer’s next game is Pudding Monsters
• Enterprise gamification goes big as Badgeville teams up with Capgemini
• Fingerprint Digital to launch 7 new mobile education apps for kids
• Rovio adds the ice world of Hoth to Angry Birds Star Wars
• Kabam acquires Balanced Worlds game studio in China
• Swarm hopes to swoop in and help out developers fed up with Gree (exclusive)
• The Walking Dead: Assault brings top-down black-and-white shooting action to iOS

Reviews:

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Dragonborn is a pint-sized Morrowind (review)
• Threeview: Call of Duty: Black Ops II reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• Far Cry 3 is a superior rumble in the jungle (review)
• Writer Rumble is a vicious but therapeutic exercise for former English majors (review)

Interviews:

• Ben Cousins wants to prove mobile first-person shooters aren’t a pipe dream (interview)
• With a new leader, Ngmoco shoots for mobile gaming empire (interview)
• ‘Reverse Tetris’ puzzler Dream of Pixels may be critically acclaimed, but how is it selling? (interview)

Previews:

• Fast monsters in the tall grass will scare you to death in Crysis 3 (preview)
• Flutter is a kinder, gentler Pokémon with real-world butterflies (preview)
• Pull off some ridiculous time traveling heists in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (hands-on preview)
• Tomb Raider is at its best when it’s not emulating Uncharted (hands-on preview)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Call of Duty: Black Ops II beat out Halo 4 for the top spot for U.S. retail game unit sales during the critical month of November, according to market researcher NPD.

But both blockbuster games were not able to lift overall game sales high enough to beat sales for November 2011. Sales for total video game hardware, software, and accessories sold at retail were $2.55 billion in November, down 11 percent from $2.87 billion a year ago.

The list does not include some of the fastest-growing parts of the game business, which includes used-game sales, mobile games, social games, and online titles such as free-to-play games. But the U.S. retail sales list is still useful in pointing out trends in gamer tastes, and it also keeps score on which companies are performing the best.

Game hardware sales were $838.9 million, down 13 percent from $962.2 million a year ago. Game software sales were $1.43 billion, down 11 percent from $1.60 billion a year ago. Game accessory sales were $280.9 million, down 8 percent from $305.3 million a year ago. If you count PC games, total software sales were $1.46 billion, down 11 percent from $1.65 billion a year ago.

It’s no surprise that Black Ops II beat out Halo 4, as Black Ops II is on more platforms.

The top 10 games of the month were:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II (360, PS3, Wii U, PC)** 1 Activision Blizzard
• Halo 4 (360)** 2 Microsoft
• Assassin’s Creed III (360, PS3, Wii U, PC)** 3 Ubisoft
• Just Dance 4 (Wii, 360, Wii U, PS3) 4 Ubisoft
• Madden NFL 13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSV, Wii U) 5 Electronic Arts
• Skylander Giants (Wii, 360, PS3, 3DS, Wii U)** 6 Activision Blizzard
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 (PS3, 360, PSV, PC) 7 Electronic Arts
• NBA 2K13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, Wii U, PC)** 8 Take 2 Interactive
• WWE 13 (360, PS3, Wii) 9 THQ
• FIFA Soccer 13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSV, 3DS, Wii U, PSP) 10 Electronic Arts

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc., but not those bundled with hardware)

Here’s the analysis from Liam Callahan, analyst at NPD:

Overall

“These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games.  When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in November such as used and rentals at $207 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and the consumer spend on social network games at $410 million, we would estimate the total consumer spend in November to be over $3.1 billion.  Our final assessment of the consumer spend in these areas outside of new physical retail sales will be reported in February in our Q4 Games Market Dynamics:  U.S. report.”

“It’s important to compare this month’s results to November 2005, which was the last time the industry began to transition between console generations with the launch of a new platform. Comparing this month’s results to November 2005, retail video games sales are nearly twice as big as they were then (+97%). This really demonstrates the long-term health of retail sales even as many platforms are quite late in their lifecycles.”

“Despite an overall retail video game decline of 11 percent, November had the smallest year-over-year decrease we have seen for dollar and unit sales so far this year.  This is a sign of momentum going into the December holiday period.”

Software

“At 14 percent, video game software unit declines are tied with August 2012 for the smallest year-over-year declines so far this year.”

“Overall entertainment software units decreased by 15 percent, however, when comparing the performance of the top 5 titles from this year to last, we see a rise in unit sales of 5 percent (games outside of the top 5 sold less, leading to overall declines).”

“While there was a 21 percent decline in the number of titles that launched this November versus November 2011, these new titles are holding their own and generating the same number of dollars per title on average.  Unfortunately, declines this month stemmed from softer sales from catalog titles, which launched outside of this month, with dollar sales down 11 percent, collectively.”

“Half of the software dollars sold in November 2012 were for the Xbox 360, which gained 8 share points in overall software sales from last November.”

Hardware

“November 2012 was the lowest hardware decline for dollar sales we have seen in year-over-year trends so far this year.”

“The much anticipated launch of the new Wii U console brought in more dollars than the Wii launch in November 2006, up 21 percent from that launch month.  With an average price 35 percent higher for the Wii U at launch compared to the Wii, this is an example of how consumers are willing to come out and spend when they see the value of the product.”

“Comparing Wii sales from November 2011 to Wii sales combined with Wii U sales in November 2012, dollar sales increased by 76 percent.”

“Xbox 360 led overall hardware platform sales for the sixteenth consecutive month.”

“Through bundling compelling third party content with the PS Vita hardware, November 2012 was the second highest month of sales on a unit basis for the PS Vita since launch.”

“The Nintendo DS was the only platform to increase in hardware unit sales versus November 2011.”

Accessories

“Skylanders accessories continue to perform well, building off the original game with the Skylanders Giants.  Skylanders unit sales of both original and the new Giants were up over 250 percent compared to last November.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Angry and exasperated gamers have filled a thread on Ubisoft’s official forums for Assassin’s Creed III with complaints that the first downloadable content has erased their game progess.

Assassin’s Creed III: The Hidden Secrets is available for download now for players who have purchased the Season Pass, but everyone should probably hold off unless you want to risk this game-breaking bug.

According to some of the posters, after installing The Hidden Secrets, the game reset their money and main mission progress back to zero. Oddly, the side missions are unaffected, as were many other features.

This bug isn’t affecting most players, and those that are having issues seem to only be on the Xbox 360. We have contacted Ubisoft to determine who is at risk and what it is doing to address this problem.

In the meantime, the DLC will likely remain on the Xbox Live Marketplace for others to download until the publisher can dispatch a new update.

Source: Xbox 360 Achievements

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’re so infatuated with the adventures of Connor Kenway that you’ve already purchased the Season Pass for Assassin’s Creed III, The Hidden Secrets downloadable content is available for you now.

The Hidden Secrets — which is on my list for the year’s best example of redundancy and repetition in a title — features three missions, two single-player costumes, and two multiplayer characters.

The missions — The Lost Mayan Ruins, The Ghost of War, and A Dangerous Season — were previously exclusives f0r fans who pre-ordered through GameStop. The multiplayer characters were exclusive to a separate promotion with Nos Energy Drink.

The new costumes include a Captain of the Aquila uniform and a Colonial Assassin outfit.

The Season Pass is $29.99 on PlayStation Network and Steam or 2,400 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live.

On Dec. 11, Ubisoft will begin selling The Hidden Secrets as a standalone download. Previously, the publisher stated that the Season Pass represents a 25 percent savings on the four content packs that it guarantees fans. I’m a humble game journalist, but if my arithmetic is correct, that means The Hidden Secrets will go for $10 or 800 Microsoft Points when sold separately, though Ubisoft hasn’t yet announced the final price.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ is in talks with a mystery sponsor about “financial alternatives” after its chief financial officer resigned, Treyarch removes the Nuketown map from public matches in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Fable creator Peter Molyneux turns to Kickstarter to fund a new “god game” project for his studio 22Cans.

You’ll also find reviews for Hitman: Absolution, Persona 4: Golden, Epic Mickey 2, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed,  and the Wii U.

Pieces of Flair

• The GamesBeat ‘Naughty and Nice’ alternative holiday gift guide for your geek
• A soldier’s perspective on Call of Duty (interview)
• Christmas for ‘u’ and ‘i’: Kids want iPads, iPods, iPhones … and a Wii U
• Black Friday 2012 video game deals — updated regularly
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale unlock guide
• Wii games that never happened
• Snatched: 20 classic video game kidnappings (gallery)
• If Final Fantasy VII’s Aerith had a dating site profile

News

• The DeanBeat: How Gamesys is pioneering real-money gambling on Facebook in the U.K.
• Educational outreach program Pixel Academy looking for a place to call home
• Black Ops II gets an update on 360
• The future of mainstream machinima films: A panel discussion inside Second Life
• How yearning for arcade games like Ghost ‘N Golbins birthed Maldita Castilla
• Microsoft may be working on a ‘Xbox TV’ set-top box
• Molyneux and Curiosity developer return to the ‘god game’ with a new Kickstarter project
• 2K president: I have no doubt ‘that the Wii U will be successful’
• The Revert returns to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD in December
• Hulu Plus comes to the Wii U’s second screen
• THQ talking with mystery sponsor about ‘potential financing alternatives’ as CFO resigns
• GamesGrabr is a Pinterest-like social network for gamers
• Bayonetta locked down as GameStop preorder exclusive for Anarchy Reigns
• GamrRank engages gamers with fun challenges and deep social-networking hooks
• 5 things game developers need to know about mobile advertising in China
• PlayStation Mobile is now open to all developers; Sony wants to work with indies on Vita and more
• Graphics comparison: Grand Theft Auto V’s trailer re-created in GTA IV’s engine (video)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II ‘Nuketown 2025′ preorder map removed from public matches [update]
• Video game e-commerce: It’s about serving the fans
• A fiery debate on the regulation of social casino games
• Sony announces new Uncharted game for Vita — and it probably isn’t what you wanted
• Google Hangouts provider Vidyo powers video chat for Wii U (and sees a $1B opportunity in Nintendo)

Reviews

• Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two promises too much and ultimately disappoints (review)
• Threeview: Assassin’s Creed III reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale successfully brings the fight to Smash Bros. (review)
• Persona 4: Golden is secretly multiplayer, and you’ll love it (review)
• Hitman: Absolution aims high but misses the mark (review)
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed challenges Mario Kart for the gold (review)
• Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is the mouse’s greatest gaming adventure in years (review)

Wii U

• Gadget lovers and gamers: Here’s a look inside the Nintendo Wii U
• 7 Wii U games too insane to exist (we hope)
• The Wii U gets a YouTube app to bolster Nintendo’s living room ambitions
• Bricked Wii U owners will have to send their consoles to Nintendo for repair
• Your Wii U won’t connect to the Internet? Here’s the fix
• Nintendo Wii U reviews: It’s an intriguing Wii successor that will get better
• The Wii U launch title review roundup
• Wii U debug menu reveals something called ‘Yoshi’s Land Wii U’
• Why you should wait on a Wii U (review)

Previews

• Ace of Spades is much more than just ‘Minecraft with guns’ (hands-on preview)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Long lines at the mall, cold weather, Christmas music sapping your will to live, and the unbridled terror of visiting family … the holiday season can be extremely stressful.

But I also have plenty to be thankful for that doesn’t include the words “happy New Year” or “welcome to the official start of summer.”

In honor of this most American of holidays – in which we cherish what we have by camping out for doorbuster sales – I’d like to share what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving.

A bonanza of new games

Once I’m done cramming my mouth with turkey, stuffing, pumpkin bread, pie, and several other plates that will increase my pants size, I’m in no mood for small talk or listening to Uncle Joe’s ramblings about globalization while I slip into a food coma.

Not pictured: Tony Romo and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders

This is the perfect time to escape the assembled masses and play some honest-to-goodness video games. Luckily, this season has been good to us: Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Hitman: Absolution, Assassin’s Creed III, ZombieU, Resident Evil 6, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion … not to mention my huge backlog of shame.

The industry has provided even the most persnickety among us an alibi to excuse ourselves from our dinner tables.

Wreck-it Ralph

It’s not based on a real video game, but that doesn’t matter. Hollywood has fumbled every game-based film attempted since the infamous Super Mario Bros. (and the dancing goombas that, to this day, give me nightmares), and some creative folks are finally getting the message.

It turns out that the best way to do a video game movie is to pay tribute to the burgeoning medium instead of fighting a losing battle trying to adapt something with a paper-thin story. Think: The Wizard and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Wreck-it Ralph is born from a love of all things video games yet still recognizes the limitations of the source material. It’s at once funny, engaging, and extremely nostalgic. Everyone should see it and thank Disney for bestowing this gift upon our industry.

The Consumer Electronics Show

Held each year at the beginning of January, CES is the premier stage for the latest emerging technologies, consumer gadgets, and gee-wiz entertainment devices. While Apple never shows up and Microsoft bowed out last year, nearly every leading electronics manufacturer makes an appearance, and you can usually see the bread crumbs of cool gaming technologies (the 3DS’s autostereoscopy or glasses-free 3D, for instance) at CES before anywhere else.

And the show is in Las Vegas, where Insert Coin(s) (a gaming-themed bar/nightclub) just opened last year. Most people go to Vegas to play video games, right?

The Wii U

Hear me out. Nintendo’s latest console has been highly divisive even amongst the GamesBeat staff. Some fans – enamored with the big N’s first-party properties and the opportunity for an HD Nintendo console – sucked it up immediately. Others decry its relative dearth of original ideas, new games (that aren’t rereleases), and odd controller design.

Either way, the Wii U is an extremely important piece of hardware for the industry. It’ll either crash and burn or perform averagely (which, for Nintendo, will feel like crashing and burning), and the ensuing shakeup will cause the Japanese gaming giant to rethink its strategic vision. And let’s face it: After the cultural zeitgeist that was the Wii, anything short of earth-shattering will reverberate far and wide.

Or the system will find its footing, reconnect with hardcore gamers, and recapture a bit of the ‘80s and ‘90s Nintendo charm we all fell in love with. It’s win-win for all.

Family, friends, good cheer … peace on earth and goodwill toward men

Just kidding. That stuff sucks.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The American Revolution held special significance this fall. As we prepared to vote, a number of U.S. citizens took a moment to reflect on how, more than 200 years ago, a people hungry for freedom cast off the Old World and in turn created one of the grandest civic and social experiments that the world has ever seen: the United States of America.

Ubisoft used the Revolution to bring the story of Desmond Miles to a close in Assassin’s Creed III. GamesBeat’s Rus McLaughlin has had his say about the game, but we decided this blockbuster need our “Threeview” review treatment, in which a critic, an analyst, and an academic examine a game to see where it stands on the business side of the industry and how game theory influenced its development. We’ve turned to noted analyst Jesse Divnich of EEDAR and Soraya Murray of the University of California at Santa Cruz for these additional perspectives.

Assassin’s Creed III: The critic’s review

• By Rus McLaughlin, GamesBeat staff writer
  

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel like jumping through trees and stabbing random Englishmen. Hey, it’s not like you’d have a better idea.

Fortunately, Assassin’s Creed III (releasing today on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Nov. 18 on Wii U, and Nov. 20 on PC) steps up as my morally flexible enabler. This time, the action moves up from Renaissance Italy to Revolutionary America as the Order of the Assassins and the Knights Templar bring their centuries-old conflict to the New World at the onset of the War for Independence. Their clashes in the 1700s revolve around the same “First Civilization” vault that 21st century assassin Desmond Miles hopes can somehow head off the impending apocalypse … scheduled for Dec. 21, 2012.

The key to activating those ancient technologies lies in the past. With the doomsday clock ticking down, Desmond once again enters the Animus to relive his ancestors’ adventures in professional murder and uncover the secrets they buried.

And so developer Ubisoft Montreal finally closes the book on the historical epic they started five years ago. The ride hasn’t always been smooth. As a franchise, Assassin’s Creed pulled off several incredible highs and sunk to a few disappointing lows (tower-defense minigames, anyone?). Perhaps then it’s fitting that Assassin’s Creed III, as the culminating chapter, does both.

Read the full GamesBeat review

Final critic’s score: 79/100

Assassin’s Creed III: The analyst’s review

• By Jesse Divnich, VP of insights and analysis, EEDAR
• Twitter: @JesseDivnich

Over the last three years, Assassin’s Creed’s success has mostly been stagnant, selling between 6 million to 8 million units every year, with no growth in its fan base. While most publishers wouldn’t complain about having such consistent and profitable success, Ubisoft challenged itself with a formidable task: Grow an existing franchise with multiple yearly iterations late in a console-generation cycle. To date, none of successful franchises have accomplished such, but that might change with Assassin’s Creed III.

The gameplay, multiplayer, and storyline are what you are expecting from an Assassin’s Creed game, and at face value, it would seem the series is in for yet another stagnant year. However, the key difference with Assassin’s Creed III is its pop-culture relevancy—the 2012 United States presidential election.

Assassin’s Creed III’s storyline is entirely structured around the bloodshed, politics, and heroism that created this country, and it is no coincidence that Assassin’s Creed III’s release date coincides with the election. It truly was a brilliant strategy, one that will no doubt capture the attention of millions of more gamers who would have otherwise written Assassin’s Creed III off as yet another iteration in the stagnant series.

While some concerns were raised that a United States setting may alienate European gamers (over 50 percent of Assassin’s Creed’s fan base is in Europe), many have forgotten the critical role that Europe played in the foundation of our country, and that was not lost on the developers as European’s involvement in the Revolutionary War is present and prevalent.

What is even most spectacular is that Ubisoft didn’t need to completely overhaul its game design nor wait for a new console cycle, which is often what has to be present in order for a brand to grow (think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare). It’s truly a brilliant move on Ubioft’s end; one that executives and producers across the industry should make note of.

Final analyst’s score: 90/100

Assassin’s Creed III: The academic’s review

• By Soraya Murray, Ph.D, assistant professor, University of California at Santa Cruz
• Twitter: @sorayamurray

The first descriptors that leap to mind when playing Assassin’s Creed III are adjectives like “stunning,” “cinematic,” “sweeping,” and maybe even “grand.” And those are fair characterizations — certainly no exaggeration — as Ubisoft has spared neither expense nor creative energy on its large-scale period piece, albeit one that is punctuated by spectacular moments of science fiction. Though it occupies a different genre (historical action-adventure), you’ll bona fide moments of the sublime in Assassin’s Creed III that recall the fantasy game Shadow of the Colossus for its similar qualities of massive scale, vast unexplored space, artistic richness, emotional expressiveness—and, of course, the ability to whistle for your trusty steed.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Normal people associate the holidays with tacky decorations, dinners with annoying family, and an endless barrage of irritating toy commercials. Gamers, however, know that those last few months of the year really bring in a bounty of major game releases. That’s why this week’s edition of our Bring Your Own Topic podcast focuses on the holiday season of gaming, including a new system that you may have heard of.

This episode, GamesBeat editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu sits down with our own Sebastian Haley, Rus McLaughlin, and 1up’s Jose Otero to talk about the biggest releases of the holiday season, including the Wii U, Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Halo 4. Also, despite our best intentions, we do delve into a few minor spoilers. That was the warning. We just spoiler-warned you. No complaining now!

This episode’s topics:

• Our favorite holiday games so far
• Why or why not we’re getting a Wii U
• What makes a triple-A game
• Disappointing game endings

Listen:

Download (right-click and “Save As”): [.mp3]

Subscribe: [iTunes] [RSS]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo wants the Wii U launch on Nov. 18 to be the video game event of the holiday season. Scott Moffitt, the company’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, is the man in charge of making that happen.

The Japanese giant has a lot at stake when it comes to the Wii U, which some have criticized as a not-quite-next-generation console that is about as powerful as Sony’s six-year-old PlayStation 3. Nintendo began advertising the system in earnest last week to convince gamers otherwise. We spoke with Moffitt about Nintendo’s approach, the ad campaign, and its timing.

Here’s a transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about what’s in motion right now. What’s happening as you lead up to the launch?

Scott Moffitt: We’re in the final countdown stage. We’re watching the imports every day, when the boats come in, to make sure we’re getting the product we’re anticipating. We started our marketing in earnest a few days ago. We’ve been building interactive kiosks in stores. We’ve got about 5,000 of those, so people can experience the system for themselves. That’s important for a complex product like this. We went live with advertising last week in social media and really in earnest over the weekend with some cinema. There’s a lot going on.

GamesBeat: The ad campaign seemed like it came late. What’s the thinking behind the timing of the ads?

Moffitt: The timing is almost to the day the same as we used for Wii. We weren’t trying to copy that plan exactly, but it just happened that way. We put a media plan together. We wanted to build awareness quickly, so it’s multi-touchpoint. There will be messages coming at people from every direction. We thought that Wreck-It Ralph was a good place to have some cinema. That’s where our advertising premiered over the weekend.

It’s not like a hardcore game where you need to release your advertising five weeks ahead of a game launch. For us, it’s fine to be closer to the launch. I think that makes more sense. The other factor, candidly, is that with an election campaign this year. There was less media available prior to when we bought, and it was much more expensive.

GamesBeat: Being virtually sold out added complexity to everything, right? If you convince more people to buy something this week, they’re not going to get it. They can’t even order it, right?

Moffitt: Right. Frustration can build up. That wasn’t really part of the plan either, though. We buy through an up-front process like a lot of big advertisers, so we committed to these media buys long before we knew that we were going to have a sold-out situation to pre-sales. We hoped we would be sold out, that pre-sales would be brisk. But we didn’t have the luxury of waiting to see that to know what our major plans would be.

GamesBeat: Have you guys made any projections on sales? I remember some analysts saying 4.5 million sales would be likely for the holidays.

Moffitt: What we’ve said is we’re capable of shipping 5.5 million units between Nov. 18 and March 31, the end of our fiscal year. That’s a global number. We’ve not broken it out by time period, so how much of that is week one, how much is holiday, we can’t say. Similarly, we’ve not disclosed how much of that will be in each region. The U.S. will clearly have the longest selling period, because we’re the first market to launch.

GamesBeat: If I tried to place an order, supposing some retailer had pre-sales still open, how long would it take at this point before I might get one? Is it well into the new year?

Moffitt: No, not at all. We’ve been through these processes before. We want product to be available on day one in stores throughout the country. If you line up or get there early, you should be able to get product on day one. GameStop has not sold all of their day one allocation. They’ve sold what they were making available for pre-sales. Those are two different numbers. Now, a lot of what we gave them, they’ve sold to pre-sales, but, like every retailer will, they’ve held some back so they have product on day one for consumers that come in the door.

We have said that we’ll have more Wii U units on store shelves in week one than we did for Wii in 2006. We’ll also have replenishment much more frequently during the holiday than we did for Wii. Having said that, though, we’re guessing there could be shortages. It won’t be there every day. Shipments coming in each week could sell very quickly.

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Not all game publishers have welcomed the Nintendo Wii U with open arms. But French game publisher Ubisoft has gone bananas over it, making more games for the new console than anyone else. That’s what Ubisoft usually does when someone introduces a promising new game platform. Ubisoft’s core strategy is to develop original intellectual property to launch at the debut of a new video game platform. It then follows up those hits with sequels that reap bigger and bigger revenues.

Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft, says his company is taking the same approach with the Wii U because it bring “second screen” gaming to life. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview with Key, who never met a new console he didn’t like.

GamesBeat: Here we are again. Another console launch.

Tony Key: I have this conversation every time a new platform ships, but our goal is to be the number one third-party publisher on Wii U. We have six titles launching on day one, another one two weeks after, and then another one in calendar Q1. So we have eight titles in what Nintendo’s calling their launch window.

GamesBeat: Can you run through the games as well?

Key: We have exclusive titles for the Wii U shipping on day one: ZombiU, Rabbids Land, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013, and our newly-announced partnership with ESPN called ESPN Sports Connection. Then, in Q1, our other exclusive is Rayman Legends. We also have, on day one, Assassin’s Creed III and Just Dance 4. On December 4, we have Marvel’s Avengers: Battle for Earth. Those three games are also on other platforms. You can see by the amount of exclusive titles that we’re very excited about the machine. When we were part of the Wii launch back in 2006, we only had two exclusive titles, which were Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids. Those turned out to be the number two and number three best-selling Wii games of that launch, behind Zelda. We’re expecting to be heavily represented at the top of the Wii U software sales chart.

GamesBeat: What’s attractive about it, given that there’s been a lot of discussion about the potential of the machine among gamers? Some say it’s a great machine, some say it’s a bad machine. What would you point about it that tells us it’s going to do well?

Key: When the Wii came, it ushered in an era of motion gaming. It really opened things up for the industry. It was a very innovative machine, and it was hard for people to understand what value it brought until they got their hands on it. The same thing is happening with the Wii U. This type of innovation and Nintendo’s vision are going to be difficult to explain through videos and trailers, as you saw with that TV ad from the U.K. today, talking about the Wii U and the benefits of the tablet controller.

We think that this machine is ushering in a year of second-screen gaming. How the market will react to that and what kind of innovation that will bring obviously remains to be seen. Our position is, we believe in it. We’ve got all these titles we’ve been working on. We’ve had a lot of experience working on and playing games with the second-screen experience. We think it’s an innovation that’s going to have a big impact on the industry.

GamesBeat: If you look at a title like ZombiU, how do you take advantage of that second screen?

Key: I was about to say it gives you another set of issues. You’re one of the last people on earth, so you have issues, right? I meant to say it gives you another interface to utilize, to make the gameplay experience different. In ZombiU, the controller is your backpack. You’re carrying things around with this controller, but you don’t pause the game to get something out of your backpack, a new gun or a new tool. When you’re rummaging around in that thing, up on the television there could be somebody sneaking up behind you. It adds a new level of intensity to the product that wasn’t possible before.

There’s other features with ZombiU, without getting too tactical, that utilize the second screen. Finding a zoom lens and things like that. There are lots of clever ways to use it, but the thing we want to focus on is that it changes game design. It adds all kinds of possibilities. ZombiU utilizes a few of those. A game like Rayman utilizes a few of those as well. There’s a multiplayer mode, an asymmetrical multiplayer game occurring with that second screen. These are things that are hard to represent in video. We’re looking forward to that moment where a critical mass of consumers gets their hands on the hardware. That’s when people see how cool it is. I don’t see how people can be too critical of something that they haven’t had a chance to use yet.

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The French company said that revenues were 279.2 million euros ($357.8 million), up from 248.5 million ($318.5 million) a year ago. The loss was 32.3 million euros ($41.4 million), compared with a loss of 37.1 million euros ($47.5 million) a year ago.

Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot attributed the increase in sales to the shipment of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, which came out in May, as well as initial sales of Just Dance 4. Online revenues were up 59 percent to 28 million euros. Ubisoft also said that it had also spent heavily on large marketing campaigns that are currently happening around the launch of Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3.

Guillemot predicted a record second half of the year based on Assassin’s Creed III, Far Cry 3, and upcoming Wii U games. The target for the year is now expected to be sales of 1.2 billion euros to 1.26 billion, compared with a previous range of 1.16 billion euros to 1.2 billion euros.

In a conference call, Guillemot said that the big new original game, Watch Dogs, will becoming out next year. He also said that Assassin’s Creed III has sold more than 3.5 million copies in its first week, up 100 percent over last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations game.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In our review, we called Halo 4 “endlessly beautiful.” Now, just as it did for Assassin’s Creed III, graphic novel and genre publisher Titan Books has collected a 192-page catalog of alien vistas, gorgeous holograms, and assorted mutant scum.

Awakening: The Art of Halo 4 hits today, but we have a few exclusive, never-seen-before images to share from the making of developer 343 Industries’ top-line shooter. Enjoy!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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