14 DAY TRIAL // Hello and welcome to another edition of A Gamer's Week, your own roundup of the most important news in gaming from the last week. We've seen some very interesting turns of events these past 7 days, which have been filled with teasers and announcements from various big corporations, all ending with the monthly NPD hardware and software charts detailing how consoles and video games sold in April. Without further ado, here's this edition of A Gamer's Week.
Monday saw some much-needed news for Duke Nukem fans around the world, as we were able to post artwork, screenshots and a video from Duke Nukem Forever, a project that has been placed on permanent hiatus because its developer, 3D Realms, has closed down. This day also saw big news for the thousands of Pokemon fans around the world, as the Game Boy Advance titles Silver and Gold will be getting a remake, which is due to arrive this fall from Nintendo.
Sticking with Nintendo, Tuesday saw the chart made by the Reputation Institute of the most respected companies worldwide. The Japanese company, which holds the rights to popular IPs such as Mario, Zelda or Metroid, has beaten all of its competitors, including Sony, Microsoft or Apple, in terms of reputation and popularity. This day also saw Chris Morgan, the screenwriter of the Gears of War movie, express his opinion on who should play the lead role of Marcus Fenix, as he thought that former wrestler-turned-actor The Rock should play the burly space marine.
Wednesday was very important for Call of Duty fans, since details about Modern Warfare 2 were leaked by Game Informer subscribers, namely the fact that it wouldn't feature a single-player cooperative play but that it would, once again, place you against Russian terrorists, a few years after the events in the first game. This day also saw the announcement of an announcement, as Harmonix revealed that a partial tracklist for the upcoming Beatles: Rock Band title would be unveiled at E3. Until then though, we still have to wait.
Sticking with companies that make gamers wait, Blizzard revealed on Thursday that the online project that it currently has underway would be based on a completely new IP, thus blowing the dreams of fans of a World of StarCraft or any such thing. Square Enix then took the stage to reveal that, due to the size differences between Blu-ray and normal DVD discs, it would certainly have to cut a few things from the Xbox 360 version of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII game. As of yet, the Japanese voices might be the first ones to go.
The last day of the working week saw some light shed on the NFS World Online title, which, according to producer of the NFS Shift game, will appear at the end of the year for North American gamers while Europeans will get their free-to-play racing title next year. More important, this was also the day when the NPD group revealed the figures it had gathered in the month of April in both hardware and console sales. While in terms of video games Nintendo reigns supreme, holding the first four places in its iron casual grip, in terms of hardware the DS has seen a record month, selling over 1 million units and leaving the Wii behind. Also noteworthy is the performance of the old PlayStation 2, which managed to outsell the PS3, thanks to the recent price cut.
This week also saw me review X-Men Origins: Wolverine – Uncaged Edition, and after you check that out, you can also take a look at our weekend reading about movies and games. Until next week though, check out the games section here at Softpedia for the most recent news, demos and other interesting things.