I base all of my gambling decisions on video game simulations. I run a mock Kentucky Derby in Sega’s Derby Owners Club every year, which has only lost me around $14,000. Thankfully, I could make most of that back if I would just start listening to Electronic Arts’ predictions for the Super Bowl.

Electronic Arts predicted that the Baltimore Ravens would beat the San Francisco 49ers by three points in last night’s Super Bowl, according to a simulation it ran of the game in Madden NFL 13. The final score to Super Bowl XLVII was 34-31 — with Baltimore on top.

To make this prediction each year, the publisher runs a Madden match where the computer A.I. controls both teams. The developers ensure that the rosters are up to date and that they account for the most recent performances of each team. The result is that this is the eighth time in 10 years that this video game correctly predicted the winner of the Super Bowl.

This year, Madden went beyond just predicting the winner and the score differential.

EA’s football game also correctly guessed that Baltimore wide receiver Anquan Boldin and San Francisco running back Frank Gore would score touchdowns, and the sim almost nailed 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s complete stat line.

It predicted Kaepernick would have 18 completions on 29 attempted passes with a touchdown and an interception. He actually had 16 completions on 28 attempts with a touchdown and an interception.

Amazingly, Madden prophesied that Baltimore safety Ed Reed would have the only interception — and that happened.

If it weren’t for the commercials, the power outages, and the Beyonces, I would just watch the Madden version of the Super Bowl every year.

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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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Once again, it’s time for our panel of video-game characters to get some skin in the game!

Super Bowl Sunday! That glorious national holiday where America shuts down to watch the best commercials of the year and some sports that happens between them! And this year, we get the Cain and Abel goodness of brothers John and Jim Harbaugh coaching the rival teams. Thanksgiving is going to suck at their house.

But enough trivialities! What say you, panel of experts? In the epic clash between the San Francisco 49ers versus the Baltimore Ravens, who shall reign supreme?

Launch the gallery to see the future!

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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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Games journalism is not a popularity contest. It’s about writing the best, most informative content you can. But it’s always fun to see which stories proved the most appealing to our readers. That’s why we created this list of GamesBeat’s 10 most popular stories from 2012.

1. Ocean Marketing: How to self-destruct your company with just a few measly emails. We detailed one of the greatest PR blunders in gaming history. It just doesn’t pay to pick a fight with Penny Arcade. Also, this story was technically published at the very end of 2011, but since it received most of its hits in 2012, we’ll count it. This is the only article that also appeared on 2011′s list.

2. Educational outreach program Pixel Academy looking for a place to call home. Offering workshops on topics like video game design, 3D printing, film making, and app development to children ages 8 to 18, this worthy program turned to crowdfunding to help keep itself afloat. A good cause and a great story.

3. Google Zerg rush attacks your search results with this fun Starcraft-inspired easter egg. The search engine giant paid tribute to the famous real-time strategy game by swarming the computer screen with the famous Google O. It was a pretty simple gag, but the immense popularity of StarCraft helped make this one of our biggest stories ever.

4. Breaking Borderlands 2: Easy money, XP, Eridium, boss fights, and tokens. We tell our readers how to bend the world of Pandora to their wills in this popular guide. People must have found this story useful considering how many of them kept checking it out.

5. Can’t find Franchise/Dynasty mode in Madden NFL 13? Let us explain. I guess a lot of people were having this problem if this was one of our most read stories of the year.

6. Bethesda reveals Skyrim dragon mounts, house-building, Kinect shouts, and more! Developer Bethesda originally showed these ideas during a gaming conference as potential additions to its incredibly popular role-playing game — most of which became a reality in Skyrim’s downloadable content.

7. FYI: PlayStation Network down today at noon PT for planned maintenance. A lot of people were wondering why they couldn’t get online with their PlayStation 3s and PlayStation Vitas.

8. Minecraft (Xbox 360 Edition): Tips, tricks, and achievement guide. Another one of our great game guides. It helps when the title you’re writing about is as complex as Minecraft.

9. The world’s most wanted alleged pirate was also the No. 1 multiplayer player for Modern Warfare 3. You have to admire a guy who can top both an FBI most wanted list and a Call of Duty leaderboard.

10. Survive the real zombie apocalypse in an abandoned UK shopping mall. Zombies are huge in all forms of media right now, including gaming. But what can compete with the chance to fight off “real” zombies with Airsoft guns?

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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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I’m in a bad mood. Christmas was tough on me this year. I didn’t get my shopping done until the last minute, my doctor says I need to cut out egg nog, and the only holiday movie on TV right now is A Christmas Story. I hate A Christmas Story.

Thankfully, my colleagues at GamesBeat know just how to get me in the holiday spirit: Make me write a list about the year’s worst gaming trends. In a year that had some great trends, like bows and arrows in every game, we also had some ideas that are really starting to stink up our favorite hobby. So, happy holidays; it’s time to get negative.

Ancient aliens in every sci-fi game

Halo 4, Mass Effect 3, and Assassin’s Creed III were arguably the biggest releases of 2012. They’re massive games with budgets that rival most blockbuster movies, so it’s strange that they all ended up using a very similar plot device: the ancient alien.

Sure, the title’s share the science-fiction genre, but it had seemed that each one was telling a very distinct story. That’s why it is so weird that each game ended up have some sort ancient race that is pushing forward the plot.

Mass Effect 3 has the Repears, an ancient race of machines who wish to destroy all the civilizations of the universe. Halo 4 has the Precursor, a civilization of ancient aliens that even predate the Forerunner race of ancient aliens. Assassin’s Creed has the First Civilization, which aren’t Aliens (I don’t think) but have god-like powers and lived on Earth long before recorded history.

In a vacuum, any one of these games using this narrative gambit would be interesting, but when they’re all happening simultaneously, they tend to cancel each other out.

Insulting downloadable content

As gamers, we have accepted that a game is more than what is on the disc. The economics of development often require studios to sell extra story, multiplayer maps, and more as DLC to pad their bottom line. That’s OK.

But it’s not OK to hold back crucial story content or a game’s “true” ending in an attempt to shake down dedicated fans.

In Mass Effect 3, the best character and crucial elements to the lore of that universe were held back for the day-one add-on From Ashes which cost around $5. It introduced the only surviving member of an ancient alien (!) race whose actions have influences the Mass Effect trilogy’s plot since the beginning.

Publisher Capcom has a history of making poor decisions with its downloadable content packs. In its insane anime-inspired title Asura’s Wrath, it held back the ending of the game’s plot in a piece of $7 DLC. This is after the company included paid DLC characters on the disc for Street Fighter X Tekken, which had customers asking what exactly is the “downloadable” aspect of the content.

B-team studios adapting A-list franchises on PlayStation Vita

This is a trend that spilled over from the launch of Sony’s newest gaming handheld, but it dampened (or destroyed) at least two big releases in 2012.

The promise of the PlayStation Vita, according to Sony’s own marketing, is that it is basically a home console on the go. It’s powerful and has dual analog sticks, so why are games like Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified so disappointing?

Because publishers bring in small outside developers that have no experience with the property they’re adapting.

NStigate Games (formerly Nihilistic Software) got the nod to adapt Call of Duty to the Vita. This is after that studio produced a very mediocre adaptation of the first-person shooter series Resistance for Vita around the system’s launch. Nstigate had nothing to do with producing a Call of Duty game prior to Declassified and it shows in the subpar final product.

The same thing happened with the Vita version of Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft Sofia, a studio that had little to do with Assassin’s Creed, was in charge of bringing a console-quality version to the Vita.

What’s truly sad is that Ubisoft Sofia just came off the decent 3DS launch game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. It was a strategy game that wasn’t trying to reproduce any other Ghost Recon game, which allowed the developer to create something new.

By setting the Vita up as some sort of PlayStation 3 on-the-go — and then constantly failing to meet that promise — Sony appears lost and confused about how to position the handheld. If they want publishers to release big-name games, they need to get developers who are up to the task.

Slot games on Facebook

I’m probably just old and set in my ways, but few things in gaming skeeve me out like the casino games on Facebook.

Specifically, the slot-machine titles that have become very popular in the last few months. As a medium, gaming has so much potential. Developers can present intricate systems to players that emulate or encapsulate our relationship to math, physics, and nature. At this point, the people who make games are also very good at rewarding players for actions and creating gameplay loops that trigger a nice release of dopamine in our brains.

Developers use these manipulative techniques in a variety of interesting ways, but these slot machine games take all of that knowledge and use it for evil.

Now, I don’t really think the slots on Facebook are evil, and I don’t want to take anything away from people who enjoy spending their time pulling a lever with nothing tangible to show for it — but I won’t shed any tears when these games fall out of popularity.

The main problem is that the slots are completely devoid of any actual game. All the player does is pull a lever and then play an occasional minigame that amounts to nothing more than picking a number between 1 and 10. Yet, these games are bursting with experience points and satisfying sound effects and bonuses and meta games and social links and every other trick to keep players pulling the lever.

And the setup is so devious. The most offensive slot games have more than one machine. They have a series of themed slots that always start with a machine that seems to spit out tons of coins on every pull. Then each successive table is less likely to pay out than the previous one, but they reward (and require) more money. The idea — at least as it appears to me as a cynic — is to get a certain percentage of players hooked on winning from the generous early games only to take everything back with the greedy later machines. Then, when the player is broke, get them to pay a few bucks for more coins so they can keep playing.

If that’s what people want to do with their time, so be it. But it’s still an ugly use of gaming’s strengths.

Mobs of angry and embarrassing gamers

As gamers, we’re a highly connected group. We play games and then look for places to go and talk about them on the Internet. Our passion for the medium is so great, we’re also easily riled up when we feel like something is threatening the games we love … or if we don’t get our way.

In 2012, mobs of irate gamers took the rage to a new and unnecessary level.

Nothing embodies this phenomenon like the reaction to feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian introduced a Kickstarter project called Tropes vs. Women that will examine the many stereotypical ways that games depict females. A vocal group of gamers felt threatened by this, and while some may have voiced their disagreement with Sarkeesian in a respectful manner, the loud apparent majority drowned out all reasonable discourse with a disgusting wall of sexism.

Groups of male gamers banded together online to systematically harass Sarkeesian. Someone posted a web-based game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. Essentially, they proved her right and embarrassed the rest of us who are willing to talk about these topics.

Fear of change seems to provoke these mobs more than anything. When Madden 13 launched earlier this year, a new mode replaced the Franchise mode that’s been a part of the series for years. This created a hornet’s nest in our article that explained the change. Gamers filled the comment section of that story with impotent rage. It isn’t even a big change, but that didn’t stop the mob from demanding publisher Electronic Arts fire the game’s designer.

I’m sure that angry fan backlash like this is common across a variety of mediums, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s poor behavior for anyone for any reason. The worst part is that genuine criticism is lost in the caps-locking, screaming mob.

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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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The NPD numbers are in, and despite the beginning of blockbuster season, it was another down month for the video game industry.

The NPD Group, a financial analysis firm, tracks retail sales for the gaming industry each month, which makes it easier to keep tabs on the financial health of the people making games and gaming hardware. September’s diagnosis? This generation is breaking down with old age.

Hardware, software, and accessory sales were all down in year-over-year comparisons, but before we break down the numbers, let’s take a look at the top 10 best-selling games for September 2012:

1. Madden NFL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS Vita)
2. Borderlands 2: 2K Games (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. FIFA Soccer 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, PSP)
4. New Super Mario Bros. 2: 295,000 — Nintendo (3DS)
5. Guild Wars 2: NCsoft (PC)
6. NHL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
7. World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Activision Blizzard (PC)
8. NCAA Football 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
9. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes: Warner Bros. Interactive (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, 3DS, PS Vita, PC)
10. Battlefield 3: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Borderlands 2 nearly topped the list despite only having 11 days in retail compared to Madden’s full month. According to the NPD, Borderlands 2′s first-month sales outsold the original Borderlands, which launched in October 2009, by 234 percent.

Electronic Arts has four of its major licensed sports games all at or near the top of this list. EA published half of the 10 best-selling games in September. For years, we’ve grown accustomed to finding the most recent Call of Duty hanging around among the new releases, but EA’s Battlefield 3 seems to have stepped into that position.

“Madden NFL 13 launched on Tuesday, Aug. 28, and sold 11 percent more units in its debut month than the previous Madden last year,” Callahan said. “Not only was this an improvement over last year, but the launch of Madden NFL’13 represented the best month one performance at retail for a Madden title ever.”

One last note about this list, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria couldn’t crack the top five, but the NPD Group does only track physical copies sold, and Blizzard sold the majority of this expansion through its digital channel.

The industry as a whole is down 24 percent from 2011, $1.11 billion in sales down to $848.3 million. New console sales took a 39 percent hit from $346.7 million down to $210.9 million. Hardware has reached a saturation point in which this current generation simply can’t do much more damage. Software and accessories were down 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

“Hardware sales are up on an average sales-per-week basis compared to August for the NDS, 3DS, PS3, Vita and 360, which points to momentum heading into the holiday season,” Callahan said. “In mid-September, Nintendo revealed launch details regarding the Wii U. The new console will launch on Nov. 18 and has the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware.”

Nintendo, is phasing out the Wii console phasing out in favor of its upcoming Wii U in November, pointed toward an 89 percent increase in 3DS software sales compared to September 2011.

“Nintendo 3DS XL continues to galvanize our Nintendo 3DS business,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Hardware sales are up, software sales are increasing exponentially, and the attach rate is growing stronger every month. With a great slate of upcoming games, including Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which arrives exactly one month from today, we like our position heading into the crucial holiday selling season.”

Nintendo also announced that Super Mario 64 DS became the third DS game to sell more than 5 million units in the U.S. It joins New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS which sold 10.6 million and 8.5 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, Microsoft released a statement saying the Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in September, making it the best-selling “current-generation console” for 19 consecutive months. Consumer spending on Microsoft’s device remained high as well. The publisher bragged that total retail spending on its Xbox 360 platform surpassed $380 million, which is more than the PlayStation 3 and Wii combined.

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, Zynga lost more executives but announced new games from its partners, Nintendo announced the North American price and release date for the Wii U, and Apple unveiled the iPhone 5.

You’ll also find reviews for Tekken Tag 2, Tokyo Jungle, Avengers Initiative, Joe Danger 2, Fractured Soul, and LittleBigPlanet Vita.

News:

• Obama runs presidential campaign ads in EA’s online games
• The DeanBeat: A stellar week for gamers
• Activision is finally swinging for the fences in mobile games (interview)
• Shocker! A video game trailer’s popularity foretells sales
• Startup Seeds makes a game out of microlending
• Take it to Vegas: 80M Madden 13 online games match NFL’s Week 1 results (infographic)
  
• Zynga confirms it hired real-money gambling chief
  
• Magic fingers: SoftKinetic is at the core of Intel’s ‘perceptual computing’ technology (video demo)
  
• Nvidia launches two new Kepler-based graphics chips
• 4 things gamers will appreciate in the new Wreck-It Ralph trailer
• Satirical new puzzle game brings out the fun in arguing about politics (exclusive)
• Report confirms that social casino games have hit the jackpot with $1.6B in revenue
• Clay Jam is a Michael Bay-infused explosion of color and crafts (with exclusive screens)
• Two game developers arrested in Greece under suspicion of espionage
• Half-Life remake among first batch of games cleared in Steam’s Greenlight approval program
• With Kinect-like gestures, SoftKinetic leads the way to Intel’s perceptual computing
• Coming to consoles: Dig deep and build high in the exploration game Terraria
• Everything you need to know about Planetary Annihilation, before it completes funding (Exclusive)
• Intel reinvents the PC for the age of ‘perceptual computing’
• Harvard’s ‘wise men’ tell Silicon Valley: Our country is losing its competitiveness
• Agawi to use Microsoft’s Windows Azure to bring cloud-gaming services to Windows 8
• Executive turnover continues: Zynga loses its chief marketing officer Jeff Karp
• Zynga cloud guru Allan Leinwand departs for ServiceNow
• Blast your way through Unova with the new Mythical Pokémon Genesect
• Valve launches beta for Steam’s Big Picture Mode: Now you never have to leave the couch
• Zynga launches first batch of partner games, adds nine more third-party studios

Wii U:

• Nintendo’s touchscreen TV service for the Wii U plays catch-up (hands-on video)
• Catch Mario, Bayonetta, and Sonic in these Wii U game videos
• Here are the Wii U games you’ll be playing at launch (or close to it)
• Nintendo targets the living room with Nintendo TVii
• Nintendo’s Wii U console lands in stores Nov. 18 in two flavors, base price of $300
• Nintendo announces Wii U price and launch details in Japan

Mobile news:

• BitGym brings motion gaming to mobile devices
• The iPod’s A5X vs. the iPhone 5′s A6: Does it matter for games?
• Natural Motion shows off cute Clumsy Ninja app on the iPhone 5
• iPhone 5 allows ‘ghost racing’ against another player’s best time in Real Racing 3
• In a twist, Zynga to import two mobile games from its Japan division
• From bikes to games to video games to…tablets? Toys ‘R’ Us bets on Tabeo

Interviews:

• Clumsy Ninja’s 10-year journey to make it to Apple’s iPhone 5 launch stage (video interview)
• Firefall dev discusses major gameplay changes and its Kickstarter-inspired monetization strategy (interview)

Previews:

• Guns of Icarus Online developers want to make ‘the most co-op game’ imaginable (hands-on preview)
• Contagion aims to save the zombie game genre from itself (hands-on preview)

Reviews:

• Tokyo Jungle is a comically rewarding journey through the vicious circle of life (review)
• Even with robots, dinosaurs, and tons of action, Joe Danger 2 repeats the same stunts (review)
• Touch controls make LittleBigPlanet Vita the series’s definitive entry (review)
• Fractured Soul is a clever, challenging platformer that requires all your brainpower (review)
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 delivers entertaining yet uninspired beat downs (review)
• Avengers Initiative delivers thrilling bite-sized superhero combat but not much else (review)

Pieces of flare:

• GamesBeat’s massive 92-character Street Fighter tournament: The deadly preliminaries!
• Katamari’s Prince rises as a webcomic star
• Cool gaming demos at Intel’s developer event (gallery)

With the NFL season now in full swing, it’s time to talk numbers. While this means obsessing over fantasy football stats for many fans, for developer EA Sports it’s all about how many games people are playing in Madden NFL 13.

EA Sports released an animated infographic (embedded below) that contains a trove of mind-boggling numbers. Since its launch on August 28, Madden players have put thousands of hours into its online head-to-head mode, playing 81,516,738 games against one another. The honor for the most-used team goes to the San Francisco 49ers at 396,254 (who were in fine form in last Sunday’s 30-22 win over the Green Bay Packers), followed by the Philadelphia Eagles at 351,551. Other stats show the most popular online matchups, which accurately reflect the real-world results from the first week of the NFL:

• 11,151 games of the Dallas Cowboys vs. New York Giants, with the Cowboys winning 57 percent of the time. (Last week, the Cowboys beat the Giants 24-17.)
• 3,994 games of the Washington Redskins vs. New Orleans Saints, with Redskins winning 53 percent of the time. (Last Sunday, the Redskins won 40-32 over the Saints.)
• 3,142 games of the Cincinnati Bengals vs. Baltimore Ravens, with Ravens winning 51 percent of the time. (On Monday, the Ravens clobbered the Bengals in a 44-13 win)

And for tonight’s game between the Chicago Bears and the Packers, EA Sports predicts that cheeseheads will soon be celebrating a decisive victory, based on its 54 percent winning rate in 8,637 matches between the two teams.

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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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This morning, Nintendo finally announced the price and launch date for its upcoming Wii U video game console as well as its new TVii feature that lets you use it as a Netflix/Hulu/Tivo/whatever box. Of course, you can also play video games on the Wii U, and we have the complete list of the system’s launch window games, as well as screenshots of many of them.

The Wii U console is in stores Nov. 18, with the basic version costing $300 and the deluxe $350; for specifics on each package, see our story from this morning.

Now, the system’s “launch window” extends from when the Wii U comes out all the way until March of next year. That means a few of these might not actually be available in 2012, but Nintendo still includes them in the “launch window.” It makes sense if you try not to think about it too much.

Either way, check out the list and gallery below to see all of the games you’ll be playing on your hot new Wii U … at some point within the next six or seven months.

• Funky Barn
• NBA 2K13
• 007 Legends
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Transformers Prime
• Wipeout 3
• Skylanders Giants
• Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2013
• Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
• Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game
• Ben 10: Omniverse
• Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
• Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
• Mass Effect 3
• Madden NFL 13
• FIFA Soccer 13
• Trine 2: Director’s Cut
• Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Zumba Fitness Core
• Jett Tailfin
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition
• Tank! Tank! Tank!
• Nintendo Land
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
• Sing Party
• Lego City: Undercover
• Wii Fit U
• Game & Wario
• Pikmin 3
• The Wonderful 101
• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Nano Assault Neo
• Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper
• Darksiders II
• Wheel of Fortune
• Jeopardy!
• Toki Tori 2
• Assassin’s Creed III
• Just Dance 4
• Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth
• Rabbids Land
• ESPN Sports Connection
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013
• ZombiU
• Rayman Legends
• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• Game Party Champions
• Batman: Arkham City — Armored Edition

The gallery is below, but if you prefer your pictures to move and have sound, take a look at these Wii U launch trailers.

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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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I spent my first two days with Madden NFL 13 looking for the classic Franchise mode. That’s the feature from the series’ previous games that enables players to control every aspect of their favorite football team for multiple seasons. All I wanted was to take my beloved Detroit Lions to the next 20 Super Bowls. Instead, I curled into the fetal position as the new menus made me feel lost and stupid.

Let’s go over the modes from Madden NFL 12:

• Franchise – In this mode, players control one or more teams over several seasons. Franchise puts players in control of drafting players, managing free agency, and controlling the games.
• Online Franchise – The same as Franchise, but played in a live, online world with other real players instead of computer-controlled opponents.
• Superstar – Fans can take control of a single player (either a real star or a created character) and guide him through his career.

Those modes have been a part of Madden for a long time. That’s why it is so confusing when Madden NFL 13, which hit every major console today, opens up to an unfamiliar screen with options like Play Now, Play Online, and Play Career.

I determined that the Play Career option was the likeliest home for the Franchise mode. This confronted me with two options: Start a coach career, or start a player career. This is where my assumptions really ruined my whole day.

The player career mode (like the Superstar option from the previous game) allows users to take the field as a single character over the course of his life. I assumed that the coach mode would be the same but played in the style of that NFL Head Coach game from a few years back…which is kinda like a football-statistics-themed version of Microsoft’s Excel.

I shouldn’t have assumed that I understood what the coach mode is before trying it myself. After sulking through a few exhibition games from the Play Now option, I did my research and discovered that starting a coach career wouldn’t mean inviting gigantic packages of statistical spreadsheets into my life.

In Madden 13, a coach career is the new Franchise mode.

“The primary motivation [when we were designing Connected Careers] was to create a new, innovative career mode that allowed you to play as any coach or player in the same universe,” Madden NFL 13 senior producer Josh Looman told GamesBeat in an e-mail interview. “We couldn’t do that with the old features, so we built a brand new engine and plan to keep Connected Careers as our career mode foundation for a long time to come.”

Here’s what is and isn’t included in Madden NFL 13′s Connected Careers:

• Connected Careers puts players in control of any real NFL player or coach.
• Users can create their own player or coach.
• Players can create a league with up to 32 members.
• In each league, the game imposes a limit of one team per gamertag.
• It features salary caps and real contracts.
• It simulates the full off-season, the draft, and free agency.
• The fantasy draft (which is a fan-favorite mode from previous games) is not a part of Connected Careers.
• This mode will allow fans to control their team or player for up to 30 years.
• Players are not editable in Connected Careers.
• Madden 13 no longer allows NCAA players to import their draft classes from that game.

Eventually, I figured that all out, but it was a shaky start. A handful of reviewers have mentioned that the menu presentation is disorienting at first, so I don’t think we can just blame my ADHD.

I asked Looman, who is the mastermind responsible for the Connected Careers mode, if the team has any concerns about player confusion.

“Change is tough, but once the players get into the mode and realize that is has more depth and replayability than Franchise mode, Online Franchise mode, and Superstar mode combined, we’re pretty sure players will understand why we made the decision,” Looman said.

He’s confident now, but the fans will be the ones to have the final say.

Since I had Looman’s insight at my disposal, I did ask him what he would suggest for a, let’s say, less-experienced Madden player.

“I’ve seen people have the most fun controlling a young star like Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III,” Looman said. “Play through a season with one of those guys and that will give you a great initial experience.”

Remember, pick RG3 and everything will be OK…except for the horrifying polygonal renditions of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms. I’m still in the fetal position thanks to those digital nightmare mannequins.

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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 demo for Madden NFL 13 is available for download now on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

This little sampling of Madden lets players relive last year’s NFC Championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants. You can also play a less historic match-up between the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Redskins.

This year’s version of publisher Electronic Arts’ football franchise brings several significant changes, most notably the Infinity Engine, a new technology that brings more realistic physics to Madden. This means that, while colliding players in past years simply triggered canned (and often wonky) animations, this game’s digital athletes will mesh their bodies together much more realistically.

The Xbox 360 version also has support for the motion/voice-sensing Kinect camera. No, you won’t wave your arm around like an idiot to pass the ball, but you can call an audible before snapping the ball.

In a press release sent to GamesBeat, EA claims, “Madden NFL 13 is the most complete overhaul the series has seen in a generation.” While the franchise has always brought in a ton of cash, fans and critics have attacked it for not significantly updating the gameplay from year to year. We’ll see if Madden NFL 13 quiets that point of contention.

Madden NFL 13 comes out for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and PlayStation Vita on August 28.

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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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Jimmy Fallon, the host of NBC’s Late Night, likes video games! Or, at the very least, he’s the first host of a nightly talk show who’s smart enough to know that there’s a whole audience of insomnia-riddled gamers who would love to see live demos of future releases at 1 a.m.

That’s exactly what the ex-Saturday Night Live cast member did all of last week as his show featured Halo 4, The Last of Us, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Madden NFL 13, and the Wii U. If you actually go to bed at a reasonable hour and missed all of these segments, you can find links to watch all of them below. We wish we could embed them straight into this story, but the code doesn’t seem to like our site. Links it is! Links for everyone!

Wii U demo

Call of Duty: Black Ops II demo

Halo 4 demo

Last of Us demo

Madden NFL 13 demo

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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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Gamers are passionate people, and none more so than the members of one of the Internet’s most popular video game message boards, NeoGAF. The forums are often vilified, sometimes celebrated, but one cannot argue their dedication to the medium. Each year during the game industry’s largest trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), NeoGAF members congregate to comment in real-time on the press conferences hosted by first-party publishers Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

And they posted…a lot. During the four hours taken by the three conferences, NeoGAF members submitted 16,214 posts — the equivalent of two full novels. You’ll find no better source of information detailing how hardcore gamers felt. Now that E3 is over, one can take the time to mine this valuable data. After analyzing every single response to the three stage shows, we have a powerful set of conclusions.

What did they think of the Big Three’s announcements this year? Here, you can see the number of positive and negative responses to the Microsoft press conference as the news poured out:

Source: Andrew Hiscock

Click for a full-size version. For a more detailed explanation of how we analyzed this data, please see the explanation at the end of this article.

What NeoGAF liked about the Microsoft press conference

The press conference started strong with Halo 4. After this, the response was largely negative, with positive reactions occurring when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil appeared. (For more stories on any of these games or products, click on the tags below.)

NeoGAF also liked South Park: The Stick of Truth. The high point of the conference followed its trailer when South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone appeared on stage. This was largely due to Parker’s joke about modern consumer electronics, reflecting the frustrations of the NeoGAF community, which we’ll explore below.

What NeoGAF didn’t like

They disliked just about everything else. It is no surprise that a community of hardcore gamers didn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t a game, including Nike+, Xbox Music, and Internet Explorer. Interestingly enough, while responses remained largely negative, an upswing occurred when Microsoft introduced SmartGlass. Another drop to low scores followed.

Many games also received negative reactions, particularly titles for casual audiences or those that would use the Kinect sensor. These included FIFA 13, Madden 13, Wreckateer, and Dance Central 3.

Two games for the hardcore audience also received largely negative reactions: Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In the case of the former, members cited a departure from stealth gameplay and the Middle Eastern environment as reasons for displeasure. In the case of the latter, many cited that it wasn’t enough of a departure from previous games in the Call of Duty franchise and that its developer had already announced and presented the game to journalists at an earlier event.

NeoGAF also strongly disliked long demos. This pattern presented itself in the reactions that became steadily more negative the longer a game stayed on stage. You can easily see this in the cases of Splinter Cell: Black List, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil 6.

What wasn’t recorded

Unfortunately, due to NeoGAF’s popularity during press conferences, its servers went down for an extended period. During this time, data was unavailable for Fable: The Journey, Gears of War: Judgment, Forza Horizon, and for a significant part of non-game services.

Two other down periods occurred; although, they were much shorter, which resulted in some posts. These happened during the South Park: The Stick of Truth trailer and Usher’s live performance.

For more on how NeoGAF reacted to the E3 press conferences, check out the Sony and Nintendo studies.

How the scoring works

NeoGAF hosts a single message board thread for each press conference, where dozens of members comment throughout each show. I graded each comment as positive or negative, giving them scores of 1 or -1 respectively. Then I totaled the sum of these reactions for each discrete minute and plotted in the above chart. A high score means that the NeoGAF community liked what they saw; a score close to zero represents mixed reactions; and a low score means that they were not enjoying the show at that moment.

Some notes on how I scored each response:

• I made no distinction between really positive or somewhat positive comments — likewise for negative comments. Each was given either a score of 1 or -1.
• While I made every effort to understand the various memes and inside jokes that make up a large part of the responses, if I could not understand a response, I would not score it.
• In the event that a comment employed obvious sarcasm, I scored it to reflect the original intent of the commentator. If the sarcasm was not clear, I relied on the literal meaning of the comment. Fortunately, the very expressive NeoGAF community rarely employed subtle sarcasm.
• When comments included positive and negative observations, I accounted for the more immediate reaction to preserve a more real-time response. An example: “I liked the game that was shown at the beginning of the show, but this game now is bad” would have a negative score.
• Many comments weren’t scored as they offered no opinion. These included clarifications, questions, discussions between members unrelated to the press conference, and inquiries into whether one game or another would be shown at a later time.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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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 digital athletes in Madden NFL 13 are getting a little more physical with each other. Now, thanks to the Infinity Engine technology, the way tackles and collisions look and play out will look significantly more realistic. Developer EA Tiburon is putting a lot of effort into making this entry a significant update to the famous football series. It starts with making the game more of a contact sport…and in more ways than one.

Madden is EA’s cash cow, generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in steady income for the giant video game publisher. As part of EA Sports, it is one of the blockbuster games that the company can count on every year — as long as it doesn’t screw up the game when it implements major changes to the game play.

Now, when the linemen collide or when linebackers tackle somebody, their arms and legs will actually touch and move with the other bodies. In Madden NFL 12, it was apparently common to see some players’ arms magically penetrate through the torsos of others. Sure, this might seem like a silly point to focus on, but consider how seeing that simple disregard for the physics of the human body can ruin the immersion for the fan.

To counter this effect, the Infinity Engine also changes the way the athletes impact each other. Now, thanks to the system’s physics technology, each body involved in a tackle matters. The running back might be headed one way as he’s tackled at the line of scrimmage, but when another player rams himself into the play, everybody is bound to move in a slightly new direction. Now, you can think of it as digital objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an equal or greater force.

As a result, the game can produce a countless number of animations for each different play, since it depends on who is where, what direction they’re headed in, how fast, etc. EA Tiburon is setting up Madden NFL 13 to not just be more realistic because the physics engine helps the athletes to move and interact the way we expect them to in real life. But the game should also be more visually stimulating since the variety of factors influencing the outcome animation of a play can keep the action looking fresh.

Madden NFL 13 also doesn’t stop with improving the way in-game athletes impact each other. This installment will also make it easy for fans to stay in contact with the game and their friends. Users can accept player trade deals on their mobile phones and iPads. The CBS Sports scenes in between games feature a fake Twitter feed that provides practical information from journalists on when players get injured and traded or when friends break records. And expect plenty of ways for sports fans to publicize their pigskin accomplishments on their real-life Twitter and Facebook accounts.

EA is claiming that these new features, along with the overhauled visual and audio elements, make this version of Madden NFL the biggest year-over-year improvement to date. In other words, this is supposed to be a lot more than “Roster Update 2013.” Football aficionados can hit the field on August 28, 2012 when Madden NFL 13 comes out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and PlayStation Vita.

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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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During Microsoft’s 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference, Andrew Wilson from EA Sports announced all-new Kinect voice functionality for FIFA 13 and Madden NFL 13.

Players will now be able to make strategic calls on the fly by shouting out commands. The brief FIFA gameplay clip showcased real-time formation changes and substitutions. Even the title’s popular Be A Pro mode will feature voice integration with A.I. teammates. In an unexpected twist, the game will introduce a referee-feedback component that will recognize gamer complaints after an extra-egregious call.

NFL legend and sports-talk football enthusiast Joe Montana then came on stage to demonstrate Madden’s Kinect integration. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback directed presnap calls and audibles with his voice while even running a hurry-up offense, sealing the demo by marching his team to a touchdown.

FIFA 13 is hitting shelves in the fall while Madden NFL 13 arrives on August 28.

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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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