Newsweek's Anne Underwood files this report on Wii Fit:

As a health writer, I know the awesome benefits of exercise--improving cardiac and lung function, encouraging weight loss, boosting strength and endurance, improving mood and possibly even making you smarter. In theory, that's all terrific. It's the bit about getting to the gym more than twice a week that's the problem. Now Nintendo's new Wii Fit is bringing the gym--or a stripped-down version of it--to me and my Mii (the Wii's onscreen representation of me). At $90--plus $250 for the basic console--Wii Fit is not cheap, but it still costs less than an actual gym membership. And since it's in the middle of my living room, it's harder to ignore. That can only be good news.

Wii Fit follows on the success of the original Wii console, which has been a coveted item since its November 2006 release. Reaching well beyond the teenage-male fan base of the standard videogame, the basic Wii has attracted kids, soccer moms and seniors. Certain rehab centers are using it to help patients recover from strokes, injuries and, in some cases, war wounds. Physical therapists have even come up with a name for this new form of rehab--"Wiihab."

Where the original Wii featured golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling, Wii Fit offers fitness training of four types--aerobics, strength training, yoga and balance games. Most of the exercises are fun, and all of them increase your heart rate or muscle tone while helping develop "core" muscle groups that aid balance and posture.

The key to all of this is the Wii Fit balance board that you stand on. It looks like a glorified kitchen cutting board but contains weight-sensitive areas for both feet. The concept came from a Nintendo developer who saw sumo wrestlers on TV weighing themselves with two scales. (Japanese scales go up to only about 300 pounds, so two scales are often necessary.) While trying out the two-scale idea, "developers noticed that keeping the balance between your left and right legs is actually very challenging and fun," says Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America. Developers recruited Kaoru Matsui, a Japanese trainer, who was already using balance concepts, to advise them on specific exercises.

Don't even think about trying to fool the board. It uses four sensors to measure your body weight 60 times a second. It gauges not only the total pressure on each foot but also how your weight is distributed. It notes your tiniest wobbles and translates this into eerie insight into your posture and balance. On the ski jump, you have to position yourself just right, in alignment with a dot on the screen, as your Mii barrels down the slope. Then, as you reach the bottom of the ski jump, you straighten your knees, rise onto your toes and hold the pose to lift off and sail through the air. If you're successful, you'll enjoy waving to the applause of a virtual crowd. (If you're not, expect to tumble head over heels in an avalanche of snow and skis that's not pretty. Fall off the tightrope in the exercise of the same name, and it doesn't show us what happens.) At the end of each of the 40-plus exercises, you receive not only a numeric score but also a one-to-four star rating, from "unbalanced" at one end of the spectrum to "yoga master," "bodybuilder" or "calorie incinerator" at the other.

At their best, gadgets like Wii Fit can help people get in shape by combining exercise with the addictiveness of videogames. A half hour on the elliptical can be boring. Not so a videogame that's always offering you new rewards, like vocal encouragement ("great job") and extra points in the Wii Bank that unlock new exercises. Studies have shown that earlier games like Dance Dance Revolution helped people lose weight by making them want to come back for more. Can the Wii Fit hold one's interest for the months needed to lose weight and get in shape? Perhaps. But it certainly tries to ensnare your competitive spirit, allowing you to monitor your progress and play against family members. And there is the ever-present challenge of meeting your weight-loss goals, which the scale-based system excels in tracking.

Read the rest of the story here:

 John Cusack in the 1989 film "Say Anything," courtesy EW.com

Diane: I just can't have any social life right now.
Lloyd: Don't worry about it. We're just having coffee. We'll be anti-social.
Diane: Be friends?
Lloyd: Yeah. With potential.
--Diane Court (Ione Skye) and Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in "Say Anything"

We've always been told that persistence is an essential element of success. So as Friday's deadline for shareholders in Take-Two to accept Electronic Arts' tender offer came and went, we wondered whether EA would give up or stand firm. Today, we got our answer, in the form of a press release: stand firm. The official explanation is that by extending the offer for another month, EA "will allow the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] review process to continue," according to Owen Mahoney, EA's senior vice president for corporate development. We also learned from the press release that EA has only secured 6.2 million shares of Take-Two stock via tender, out of 73.1 million shares outstanding. Clearly this will not do. But how to put this in perspective for you, Dear Reader?

As our love of film here at Level Up is well documented, allow us to describe this in movie terms: like John Cusack in the 1989 classic "Say Anything," EA will stand beneath Take-Two's window, blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," for as long as it takes for Strauss Zelnick and company submit to its, uh, tender embrace. We don't have a dog in this fight, but if EA and Take-Two could join forces like Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour and together make sweet, sweet games, wouldn't that be a beautiful thing?

To read EA's press release in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: we prefer "throne" or "dais," but "one of the most important chairs" will do
   
2. EGO...trip: our distinction between "reviewer" and "critic makes its way Down Under
3. EGO...trip: killing us with kindness, Pachter credits Level Up with his rise to power
4. MID...ichlorian counts at the ESA plunge precipitously as Lucasarts withdraws
5. HMM...Is there any room for this avid gamer in your QA department?
6. HAS...Metacritic met its match in this critic's critique?
7. RND...Procrastination is an essential part of the creative process, say we, lazily

1. EGO...trip: Come for the Level Up mention, stay for the dissection of the NPDs
2. HMM...Chris Kohler offers psych eval of Xbox's Don Mattrick--is he licensed to do so?
3. TEN...Point Plan, or is it time for Huey P. Newton to star in his own sandbox game? 
4. RND...This proposed "early VOD" window could give 360 an edge over PS3

 

On Monday, GameStop exclusively revealed to Level Up that during the first week that Grand Theft Auto IV was available in its U.S. stores, 64 percent of all copies sold were for Xbox 360 and 36 percent for Playstation 3. We sought reaction from both Microsoft and Sony to GameStop's results and our impromptu analysis, a portion of which we shared with you on Monday. Today, we're publishing our conversations with the two console manufacturers in their entirety. We spoke by phone with Peter Dille, senior vice president for marketing at Playstation. Here's what he had to say:

GameStop has exclusively provided me with the percentage split on their first week sales figures for GTA IV. According to them, 64 percent of the copies they sold were for Xbox 360, and 36 percent were for PS3. So given that Grand Theft Auto has primarily been associated with PlayStation platform since GTA III in 2001, are you surprised that the PS3 wasn't able to corral a higher share?

I'll take a couple steps back. First of all, we're not in a position to share retailer specific information. I'm not sure if you got that from Microsoft or Rockstar or GameStop themselves.

No, I got it from GameStop.

Okay. It's our experience that GameStop probably does a little bit better with the early adopter crowd. There's a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it's not surprising that there's going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we're really excited about the ratio. If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn't be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage. We think it's not as high as what GameStop's telling you, if you look at [the full picture on] the national level. They're outselling us, but not by that same margin, and it's because of their installed base lead. With an installed base lead that's close to 3-1, if you're bragging about a 60-40 software split, it's clear evidence that the Playstation 3 consumer is overindexing on GTA IV, and the Playstation brand loyalty that we've been talking about is bearing itself out in the marketplace as we speak.

So when you were looking at the release of the game, you didn't think that the history of GTA on Playstation was necessarily going to bring you guys to 50 percent parity or more [in terms of GTA IV market share]?

To read the rest of our conversation with Dille in its entirety, click on the link below. 

 

On Monday, GameStop exclusively revealed to Level Up that during the first week that Grand Theft Auto IV was available in its U.S. stores, 64 percent of all copies sold were for Xbox 360 and 36 percent for Playstation 3. We sought reaction from both Microsoft and Sony to GameStop's results and our impromptu analysis, a portion of which we shared with you on Monday. Today, we're publishing our conversations with the two console manufacturers in their entirety. First up is Aaron Greenberg, director of product management at Microsoft. Here's what he told us via email:

GameStop has exclusively provided me with the percentage split on their first week sales figures for Grand Theft Auto IV. According to them, 64 percent of the copies of GTA IV sold were for Xbox 360, while 36 percent were for PS3. Given that Grand Theft Auto has been primarily associated with Playstation platforms since Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, are you surprised that the Xbox 360 was able to corral this high a share?

I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero. As you have covered on Level Up in the past, the majority of third party franchises are being developed first on our platform so they end up playing best on Xbox 360 and when you combine that with Xbox Live, we expect this trend to continue as more multiplatform releases hit the market. With that said, it is fantastic to hear that we beat PS3 two to one on Grand Theft Auto sales from a major retailer like GameStop.

Do you expect this gap to widen or narrow over the rest of the year, and why?

It's tough to say, I think GTA IV will have a much longer tail than some of the other blockbuster titles that have released on our platform. I expect that even this holiday as a lot of new console buyers enter the market we will see GTA IV remain a top title they purchase for the console. Then you also have to consider the excitement and buzz that will be generated when Rockstar starts to promote more details around the exclusive episodes coming to Xbox 360. However, it is clear that there is going to be a completely new Grand Theft Auto IV experience coming to Xbox 360 this fall and I think it is fair to expect that it is going to be a driving factor for another big round of sales of the game.

I did a little math of my own with the help of NPD, which says that through the end of March 2008, 9.9 million Xbox 360s and 4.1 million PS3s have been sold in the U.S. That's a total of 14 million units, of which 70.7 percent are Xbox 360 and 29.3 percent are PS3. When I compare this to GameStop's split of GTA IV sales--64 percent on Xbox 360 and 36 percent on PS3--it's clear that GTA IV underperformed on Xbox 360 relative to Microsoft's pre-April installed base, while it exceeded expectations on PS3 relative to Sony's pre-April installed base. What's your reaction to this, and to what do you attribute this result?

To read the rest of what Greenberg had to say, click on the link below. 

1. MEM...ory lane: the first two minutes of gameplay from the last three GTAs
2. WHO...'s the man? Just whip out your earnings and compare notes
3. THE...re is nothing to fear but fear itself when you're making a game
4. RND...S--t just got real in the world's realest borough, for real, son

 Diagram of the influenza virus, courtesy Chris Bickel/Science

In Part I of Bill Harris' 180 Degrees column, he and Armageddon Empires' creator Vic Davis discussed how Davis got into game development, as well as the gamer interest and sales pattern for AE during its first three months of release. In today's second and final installment, the two examine the impact of influential journalists and outlets had on AE's sales in the months that followed. Finally, Harris steps back from his interview to extract some lessons that are invaluable to understanding how independent developers must approach their publicity and marketing campaigns differently from their peers at the big publishers--what Harris calls "the infection vector." Enjoy.

***

Part Three: Post-Release, Four to Six Months

At the end of October, Armageddon Empires was selected as "Indie Pick of the Month" in Games for Windows magazine. With that mention, page views on the website went up sixty percent in one week.

Yes, it was a real boost. Breaking the downward trend was a huge morale booster. The sales benefit was not immediately noticeable and still pretty modest, but it was a definite turning point. I'm still trying to figure out a model for how customers come to make their purchase decision for AE. You could probably identify sub-groups of customers... those who bought within the first 48 hours, those who spend a week with the demo, those who needed to hear something positive from a third party, and those who are still on the fence but might revisit it when their gaming backlog gets whittled down...that type of thing.

Then, in December, there were three prominent mentions. First, in the "Tom vs. Bruce" feature in Games for Windows. A week later, Kieron Gillen posted a highly favorable review at Eurogamer. At almost the same time, Tom Chick put AE as #4 in his top games of 2007 list.

There was more. In early January, Gamasutra/AIGameDev.com gave Armageddon Empires the "Best A.I. in an Independent Game" award, and Bill Trotter posted another highly favorable review at The Wargamer.

Here's what page views and sales look like with the second three months added (the arrow marks three months from launch):

To read the second and final part of Harris' column in full, click on the link below. 

1. GTA...IV's Metacritic takes a hit; said hit is defended
2. HMM...Building a more civil gamer for more civil discourse
3. POP...Cap goes all Dr. Evil with the budget for its next casual game
   
4. RND...What would Charlie Rose say about this Fortune story?

 

Before the April 29th launch of Grand Theft Auto, industry observers declared their intentions to use the sales as a way of determining the state of the ongoing battle between the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. After all, the Xbox 360 has the installed base advantage, with 9.9 million units sold since its November 2005 debut as compared to 4.1 million units of PS3 since its arrival November 2006, according to the market researchers at the NPD Group. What's more, savvy gamers would certainly know that Xbox 360 would be the exclusive home for Rockstar Games' planned-but-as-yet-unrevealed downloadable content. But the last five major Grand Theft Auto games either premiered on or remained exclusive to PS2 and PSP, and the bulk of those sales took place on PlayStation platforms. So could consumers' perception that GTA is somehow a PlayStation franchise give Sony the edge in unit sales, or at least enable the installed base-lagging PS3 to punch above its weight and take a greater share of GTA IV units sold than its market share would suggest?

We won't have a complete answer about how things shook out here in the United States until later this week, when the NPD Group releases its sales data for the month of April. But thanks to the kind folks at GameStop--North America's largest specialty videogame retailer--we've got a partial answer. According to sales information that GameStop has released exclusively to Level Up, 64 percent of the copies of Grand Theft Auto IV sold during the first week were for Xbox 360, while 36 percent were sold on PS3. Put another way, that's a roughly 2 to 1 sales advantage for Xbox 360.

To read the rest of our exclusive report about the first week sales split for Grand Theft Auto IV at GameStop, along with reactions from both Microsoft and Sony, click on the link below. 

 Armageddon Empires, developed and published by Cryptic Comet

It's been almost three weeks since we unveiled our plans to add a select group of columnists who would contribute monthly posts to Level Up. Today, we're pleased to introduce our third columnist: Bill Harris of the blog Dubious Quality. "Smart and caustic" is how we described Harris' writing when he made his Level Up debut last fall with a provocative post titled "How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding." The Austin, Texas-based analyst (who does not cover videogames in a professional capacity) will share his thoughtful, acerbic and often contrary observations with the Level Up faithful in a monthly series titled 180 Degrees. In his first column, which we're presenting to you in two parts, Harris speaks with designer and developer Vic Davis about the unusual path to success for his independently released turn-based strategy game Armageddon Empires, complete with charts derived from sales and site traffic data that Davis helpfully provided. For some excellent insights into how an indie developer can overcome the challenge of reaching an audience, read on.

***

On July 18, 2007, Vic Davis and Cryptic Comet released Armageddon Empires, a turn-based strategy game in a post-apocalyptic setting.

There was very little pre-release publicity, which is not unusual for an indie game. And like most indie games, the initial interest in Armageddon Empires steadily dropped in the first three months following release.

At this point, Armageddon Empires was on a very traditional arc for an indie game. This arc would end, soon, in game death.

Then, a funny thing happened. It didn't.

Instead, Armageddon Empires became the surprise indie hit of 2007, and sales have continued to increase into 2008. What made this game different is an interesting case study for indie developers who are having difficulty getting traction with their own games. I interviewed designer and developer Vic Davis, who shared his insight on the process of getting an indie game noticed.

Part One: Pre-release

You're 39 years old and you're tired of working for someone else, so you decide to make a game. That really sounds quite insane.

After I got out of the military I had intended to go back and work in the intelligence community when I finished my graduate degree. After my first child was born, though, I started re-evaluating priorities. I wanted to control my own fate and make my own decisions. I also had to come to grips with the fact that I enjoyed work more as a craftsman (even if digital) than a leader.

What made you decide to get into gaming development?

To read Part I of Harris' column in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes note of our MSM reviews lament
2. GAM...e recognize game: Sam Houser calls EA's Riccitiello "the real deal"
3. CAN...BioShock survive being spliced with Hollywood's DNA?
4. RND...Stringer Bell, Al Swearengen and Tony Soprano on iTunes?

 Promo image for the 1983 film "Never Say Never Again," courtesy The Nostalgia Factory 

When we saw the news this morning that Criterion Games' much-debated-then-much-praised Burnout Paradise would be coming to PC, we were more than a little surprised. That's because in the past, the studio's creative director Alex Ward has made some playfully disparaging comments about gaming on PCs. So as we were Googling for one of his previous statements on the matter to throw into this morning's High Score post, we came across a statement that he had made previously to...us. Here's the exchange we had on the subject back in the fall of 2006:

What about PC gamers? You've been critical of the PC in the past. What would you say to someone who's finished F.E.A.R., they've finished Half-Life 2, they've finished Quake IV. They've seen their little brother rocking out with Black on the console, and they want to know, "When is Alex Ward going to show me some love?"

Never. I'm just being totally honest. I could lie, right, and say "Maybe you'll see a PC game from us in the future." No.

To see the rest of what Ward told us back in Fall 2006, along with some screenshots and the full text of the press release, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: The gospel of Level Up leads to faith-questioning and public stoning...
2. HMM...while the PCGA unexpectedly turns a former blasphemer into a convert 
3. THE...80-20 rule, as re-envisioned by the mad geniuses at Rockstar Games
4. KIC...k in the door, wavin' the four-four/All you heard was "Poppa don't hit me no more"
5. MEA...nwhile, over in Europe, Sony's claim of "Victory!" goes unrefuted
6. RND...The must-see movie of holiday 2008. But will there be Happy Meals?

1. EGO...trip: We fake it so real, we are beyond fake
2. EGO...trip: Our recent post on the MSM and game reviews, considered
3. TEN...The Bo Derek age of videogames is officially upon us
4. WHE...n, oh when will the PCGA smite the blasphemers?
5. GTA...IV failed to respect Shaolin. Will Shaolin have its revenge?  
6. RND...Safe for work porn? Only the best for you, Dear Reader