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The “Spore” computer game is off to a good start with 1 million games sold at a retail, Electronic Arts said today. The computer game, one of the most ambitious ever made, took famed developer Will Wright (See our interview with him.) seven years to make. It launched on Sept. 7.

In the game, you can create your own creatures and shepherd them through life from single-cell animals all the way up to a galaxy-dominating species. EA said today that more than 25 million creatures have been created and uploaded to the Sporepedia. Players can download those creatures into their own single-player games and have their creatures compete against the downloaded creatures.

It’s no surprise the game is a hit, since it was the most hyped video game in history. But it’s interesting that sales are strong despite a continued campaign by some players to protest what they consider to be EA’s Draconian use of digital rights management, or DRM, in the game. The DRM stops players from putting the game on as many computers as they want.

The anti-DRM crowd has been vocal, organizing an effort to give the game poor reviews on Amazon. There is even a lawsuit saying that the DRM software alters the user’s hard disk drive without disclosing that it does so. EA has been forced to back down on its DRM stance, apologizing to users and changing the DRM so that users can put the game on five machines instead of three. It is interesting that Spore has had slightly better than normal reviews from critics and strong sales in spite of the DRM controversy. Spore is available on the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS. The sales include revenue from all three platforms.

Meanwhile, LucasArts said that it has sold 1.5 million copies of its “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 since its release on Sept. 16. That’s the fastest sales rate ever for a Star Wars game and it beats the sales rate of Spore. That game has cool new features such as real-world physics, where you can smash things and the break the way they do in the real world, and smarter enemies who protect themselves as they are attacked. In the game, the player is Darth Vader’s apprentice.

SAN DIEGO, CA— The Comic-Con show is on the rise, with so many game companies showing up there to unveil new games that it is probably a contender to replace E3.

Over 150,000 fans flocked to downtown San Diego for Comic-Con less than a week after the E3 Media & Business Summit, which is undergoing a big makeover as we write. While E3 focused on a core group of journalists, Comic-Con International is an event squarely targeted at consumers. And not just any consumers, but those are the most likely to pre-order both mainstream and genre games, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs; order their “Dark Knight” tickets for the first midnight screening; and collect comic books, action figures and any type of merchandise associated with their favorite movies, TV shows, and games.

As Hollywood has learned over recent years, if you can win over the Comic-Con crowd, as Paramount Pictures did last year with the film “Iron Man,” you can just about guarantee a hit when the movie debuts. This year’s focus was on Warner Bros.’ upcoming comic-based movie, “Watchmen,” which also has a episodic (where gamers download and play one episode at a time, much like they watch one TV episode at a time) downloadable game in development with director Zack Snyder (“300”) on board. Come next March, this movie should replicate “Iron Man’s” success (the comic might be too cult for “Dark Knight” box office). It also could help episodic gaming take off on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The PC space has had success with this emerging form of interactive entertainment, but a popular Hollywood/comic license like “Watchmen” could get consumers used to buying and consuming games as they buy and consume TV shows.

Although E3 and Comic-Con were back-to-back this year, Comic-Con now receives the type of mainstream media coverage that the old E3 of two years ago once received. Game publishers who take part in the show will get all of the regular game coverage, as well as a lot of mass market coverage that the new E3 format no longer attracts. But perhaps most important, Comic-Con does what E for All hasn’t been able to achieve—it attracts 150,000 consumers with disposable incomes and many with blogs and puts the latest games in their hands. It’s this active group that can make or break a film, so they certainly have some say over games, as well. Hollywood has learned this, and it seems game publishers are learning, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

As promised, I’ve followed up on my most anticipated games of E3 with an actual list of the top ten games of the show. I spent four days checking out games and interviewing executives at the Los Angeles media and game business summit. Clearly, I didn’t see everything. I didn’t even get to some of the games on the previous list. These games reflect my own tastes. I didn’t hold myself to any rules, like limiting the list to games that are coming out this year or ones that were actually playable. It’s just a list of what I can’t wait to play myself.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Epic Games, Nov. 2008. If video games got Oscars, this one would win for best art direction. While the first game was dark and gloomy in its depiction of a world of destroyed beauty, this sequel has brilliant colors and sharper lines. The original Gears title sold 4.7 million units worldwide, even though I thought it had a steep learning curve. But the more I played it, the more fun it was. Flamethrowers, big bosses, and swarms of enemies make this one more exciting and challenging. There is nothing as visceral as using a chainsaw bayonet to slice your enemy in half. And of all of the games that I played or viewed at E3, I stuck with this one the longest.

Wii Music (Nintendo Wii) Nintendo, fall 2008. Shigeru Miyamoto sure took his time with this game, which he first showed off to an audience in 2006. I was able to sit down with this game, which allows you hold the Wii controller and its companion Nunchuk to play the “air guitar.” I strummed a violin by going through the motions. I pounded on steel drums. This game has almost no learning curve, making it accessible to young kids and adults who have no rhythm and no idea how to play an instrument. In that way, it could promote freestyle play and be far more appealing for younger gamers than either the “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero” series of music games.

Left 4 Dead (PC, Xbox 360) Electronic Arts/Valve, November, 2008. This game is set in a world where a pandemic turns everyone into a zombie. As a survivor, you are trapped in a city and must escape with a group of survivors. I played just a single round of co-op online play of this game with three other players. It was awesome. You have to work closely with the other players to take out the zombies. If you don’t synchronize your efforts, you’re bound to run out of ammo at the same time. The zombies are fast and so you can’t all pump lead into the same lead attacker or you’ll fall victim to the next ones. It makes for frenetic game play and a lot of repeatable fun as you await “Resident Evil 5,” the big Capcom zombie-killing game which was postponed until the spring of 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time in a few years, I’m not one of the E3 judges who evaluate the best games of the video game industry for GameCriticsAwards.com. Not to worry. I’ve filled up my schedule and I won’t have to try to see every single big game. But I’m a game fan at heart and I’ll be going to the show not just to write about business, but to evaluate the best games from my own point of view. Here are my picks for the “most anticipated” games of the show. This post is much more in tune with my old job of being a game reviewer. But you can expect me to voice my opinion on the best of what I see. It’s a good exercise to give readers a flavor for where the innovation is strongest in the $50 billion video game industry, which is finally drawing its share of high-caliber financial investors.

Fallout 3 (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3) Bethesda Softworks, Oct. 2008. Although I hesitate from putting anything with a “3″ after its name on a list of innovative titles, this game has consistently won buzz and it takes pains to create a graphically beautiful rendering of a world after a nuclear war in the year 2077. The Capital Wasteland is chock full of radioactive creatures and mechanical beasts. It’s also got a wry sense of humor, which tells you that mixing serious subjects with humor — such as playing happy music in the midst of a destroyed world — is one way to broaden the audience for a first-person (action role-playing game) shooter. That’s a lesson of last year’s BioShock.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Epic Games, Nov. 2008. OK, OK. More of the same. Yes, it’s in a post-apocalyptic world again. But these one has been ravaged not by nukes but by an underground race of demon thugs who are among the hardest things to kill with a game controller. This is the kind of game with gripping sound and graphics that makes you want to buy a 1080p high-definition TV. The story picks up six months after the last epic battle to save humanity and takes the previous third-person shooter title a step further in tactical combat. You can, for instance, duel another player with a chainsaw bayonet and wound your enemies in the legs before you decapitate them. The previous game helped get the Xbox 360 established in the market and sold 4.7 million units worldwide. That’s $282 million sales at retail.

Wii Music (Nintendo Wii) Nintendo, no date. Now we’re finally getting into the cute little Nintendo characters that everybody loves. The industry’s leading innovator has taken its own sweet time with this title. Consider it Nintendo’s answer to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It’s overdue for release and predictions suggest that it’s highly likely that Nintendo will finally show off this title. Music has become extremely popular in games and it represents the most-proven way to broaden the video game audience to females, young kids, and older gamers. This title will be innovative because it can make use of the Wii’s motion detection to allow you to play conductor for a virtual orchestra by moving your arms around. Nintendo demoed this game at E3 in 2006. It’s time to let it out of the bag.

Spore (PC, Mac), Electronic Arts/Maxis, Sept. 7, 2008. They’ve been talking about it since 2005, but EA’s Maxis division is at the finish line for Will Wright’s latest brainstorm. Nobody questions that this is an original title. You can create your own cell-like creatures, races of creatures, and galactic civilizations in the ultimate god-like simulation from the creator of SimCity and the Sims. The later has sold more than 100 million units since it debuted in 2000. If EA executes on Wright’s vision, the sky is the limit for the sales of this title. There are, however, plenty of people who are worried that this game is the most over-hyped in video game industry history.

Resistance 2 (PS 3) Sony/Insomniac Games, holiday 2008. I was thinking of putting Killzone 2 on the list and I have no doubt Sony will give a pulse-pounding demo again and we won’t see that game appear anytime soon. The next-best thing on the PS 3 is Resistance 2, the latest game from Ted Price’s Insomniac Games, one of Sony’s few golden geese in game production. The first title enabled the PS 3 to get off the ground in 2006 and it has a good grudge match going with the Gears of War 2. I trust that Insomniac is going to to up the ante to make sure that this title doesn’t get lost in the console war.

LittleBigPlanet (PS 3) Sony/Media Molecule, Oct. 2008. The biggest compliment for this game is that it’s something you would expect from Nintendo. It has cute rag-doll characters and is a side-to-side movement game, like the old 2-D platform games of years past. But it has photorealistic 3-D graphics and the ability to mix and match character appearances and their accoutrements so that they’re uniquely your own creations. Then you use those characters as a team to try and get past a series of puzzle-obstacles in their paths.

Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360, PS 3) Capcom, 2009. This title is going to be bloody and controversial, even more so than your typical zombie-shooting game. Gamers and the makers of this franchise have long known there is a joy to blowing the heads off of zombies. It’s likely to be a slow-moving game compared to other fast shooters, but that gives you time to think of how you’re going to take out the nearest zombies with limited ammo. You’ll be thinking, “My kingdom for one more shotgun shell.” The stories in this series are good, even if they’re some kind of weird derivative of “Night of the Living Dead.” If RE5 is anything like Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo GameCube, it will be a hit.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS 3), Square Enix, no date. I can’t say that I’ve ever finished one of these games but they’re always beautiful to look at. The series always has a new story that keeps the gamers coming back and the game play, which is in the turn-based role-playing game style that many don’t like, keeps on getting better. For sure, you spend a lot of time watching cinematics in this kind of game rather than mashing buttons, but this is where games are pushing the envelope on movie-like effects.

Fable 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Lionhead Studios, Oct. 2008. Peter Molyneux, the head of Lionhead, always gives eloquent demos when he shows off his titles. He creates a kind of reality distortion field, and sometimes there is a comedown when the games don’t come out as good as he says they will be. But Molyneux is on the right track for making great works of art that emotionally move you. Fable 2 sets up moral dilemmas and dramas. You can use your pet dog as a scout, but you’ll regret if you let Rover die as he helps get you out of a scrape. That’s an emotional attachment that Molyneux is counting on.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS 2, PSP, DS), LucasArts, Sept. 16, 2008. This game was probably too long in the making and might be the reason for a big change in management at George Lucas’s video game studio. But it has lifelike environments with physically accurate features, like leaves that move in the wind or cliffs that create rock sides when they’re hit with explosives. It also has realistically animated human characters who react intelligently to what happens to them. That foundation is the perfect underpinning for a game that allows you to use “the Force” the way always wanted to. You can pick up anything in the game and, with Jedi powers, throw it at anything else. Also, the story is probably one of the most intriguing that I’ve ever seen in the Star Wars universe. It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully it will live up to the build up.

Other titles worth noting:

Halo Wars (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Ensemble Studios/Bungie, Oct. 2008. Like playing Halo, only with little tiny miniatures in real time.

Tomb Raider Underworld (Wii, PS 2, PS 3, Xbox 360, PC, DS) Eidos/Crystal Dynamics, holiday 2008. The latest in the Lara Croft series.

Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii), MTV Games/Harmonix, Sept. 2008. Bang a drum. Get it on.

Call of Duty: World at War (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3) Activision/Treyarch, fall 2008. The same engine as Call of Duty 4, but back in World War II in places such as the Pacific theater. That means jungle warfare.

Here are some other lists to compare mine to:

Big Download’s top PC games list

Next Generation’s top 30 anticipated titles

GameSpot’s list

IGN’s top PC games list

GamePro’s list

[Editor's note: This post introduces a new VentureBeat contributing writer, John Gaudiosi, who has over a decade covering the video game industry for a wide variety of outlets. Gaudiosi is in Los Angeles this week for previews of games being announced at the E3 show in L.A. in July.]

LOS ANGELES—LucasArts Entertainment showcased playable versions of its two big titles for 2008, “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” and Day 1 Studio’s “Fracture,” at a game critics press event in Santa Monica. But it also tipped its hand on the future.

While the company only showed those two titles to game journalists today, it confirmed that two additional Star Wars titles will ship this November based on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” the new Warner Bros. computer-generated (CG) animated movie and TNT/Cartoon Network TV series.

While this will come as no surprise to anyone who purchased LucasArts’ “LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures” game, which features an advertisement for these games on the back manual cover, the names and details are new.

“Star Wars The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance” on Nintendo DS is the first game developed at the LucasFilm Animation Studio in Singapore, which is where the new Clone Wars TV series is being animated. Krome Studios is behind “Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels” for the Wii, which will deliver lightsaber battles via the Wii’s remote control. Although Star Wars The Force Unleashed is being released on Wii, Lightsaber Duels marks the first original Star Wars game for Nintendo’s best-selling console. Both of these new Clone Wars games will be playable at E3 and the Comic-Con convention in July, along with The Force Unleashed and Fracture.

The company also addressed its recent layoffs and restructuring, which saw roughly 80 percent of its internal game development staff let go, including Peter Hirschmann, VP of product development. Margaret Grohne, director of public relations for LucasArts, said internal development of projects is continuing.

A second source close to LucasArts but outside the company confirmed that the layoffs (which are rumored to be between 75 and 100 employees) have not impacted any game development. A third source inside the company confirmed that the original Indiana Jones game, which was first shown at E3 2006, is still moving forward with some of the development team from The Force Unleashed.

In addition, according to alleged leaks from recently laid off employees, LucasArts is currently developing a number of obvious sequels in its Star Wars game franchises. These titles include “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3,” which is allegedly in co-development at BioWare, and “Star Wars Battlefront 3,” which is rumored to be in development at Free Radical. There’s also supposedly another LEGO Indiana Jones game in the works at TT Games, which makes sense given the back-to-back LEGO Star Wars releases and strong sales and critical acclaim those games earned.

While Grohne wouldn’t comment on any unannounced titles, she did say that E3 won’t be used this year to announce any new games from LucasArts because there’s too much noise surrounding the show.