Taking a new approach to tackle piracy, Green Heart Games rolled out a "cracked" version of its title Game Dev Tycoon to illegal downloading sites.

The bizarre move was actually aimed at teaching players of pirated games a hidden lesson. For the first few hours of play, the cracked/pirated version functions normally; but the player's up-&-coming studio soon start encountering a serious problem.

Videogame Heavy Rain generated much more than what it cost to develop, Quantic Dream Chief Executive Guillaume de Fondaumiere said.

According to Fondaumiere, Heavy Rain cost 16.7 million euros (nearly $21 million) to develop but it generated more than 100 million euros in return for Sony.

Speaking at a recent conference in Poland, he added that Heavy Rained reinforced Quantic Dream's belief that new ideas could be financially successful.

Overall game sales slipped nearly 10 per cent year-on-year in March, as per stats released by research firm NPD Group.

Gamers spent nearly $993 on gaming hardware, software and accessories during last month, as compared with $1.1 billion in the corresponding period of the previous year. Taking used, rental as well as digital sales into account, the industry raked in an estimated $1.9 billion during last month.

The Internet is abuzz with reports about the screens shots and release date of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, though developer Ubisoft is yet to make an official announcement regarding that.

Based on a leaked trailer for the fourth-generation Assassin's Creed game, unconfirmed reports claim that the eagerly-awaited game will be available from October 29 this year.

The leaked trailer also claims that the Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag will also become available on next-generation gaming consoles.

DmC (Devil May Cry) is a mind-blowing re-imagining of a Capcom series will allow players fit into the boots of popular protagonist Dante, but all set to be released new game is quite a departure from the past games.

Apart from redesigned Dante, players will experience that the new game is a slick, stylish, cool and a fast-paced affair too. Ninja Theory, well-known for its work on Heavenly Sword, has developed the new game and has successfully taken the franchise into a new direction.

Announcing the debut-week sales of the Nintendo Wii U game console in North America, Reggie Fils-Aime - Nintendo's American corporate president - said that the November
18-launched game system was "effectively sold out at retail" last week.

Noting that the demand for the Wii U is "quite strong," Fils-Aime - citing the retailers' internal Nintendo sales data - revealed that the launch-week sales of Nintendo's new game system in the US stood at over 400,000 units.

With Nintendo's new Wii U console set to hit the US markets this coming Sunday, GameStop has recently revealed that its software pre-orders for Wii U have surpassed a rather enviable `1.2 million units' figure.

According to GameStop, which will get in 500,000 Wii U units for launch, the number of software pre-orders received for the Wii U is nearly two-fold more than those which the company had received for the Wii software before it was released.

With rental service GameFly having recently announced the officially launch of its PC client, the company is apparently celebrating the launch by offering a free download of BioShock.

To avail the free BioShock download offer from GameFly, the users need to have a system which runs Windows XP or a later version of the Windows OS, and at least 1GB of RAM and 7GB of free hard disk space. In addition, another pre-requisite for availing the offer is the GameFly download client, which can be installed on the site.

According to the figures shared recently by Activision Blizzard, the first week sales of World of Warcraft (WoW)'s latest expansion - Mists of Pandaria - touched nearly 2.7 million copies; with the digital sales of the MMO game surpassing the retail sales.

With figures revealing that Mists of Pandaria's digital copies outsold the physical copies by around 4:1, the 2.7 million copies sold of the newest WoW expansion in its first week comprehensively beat the earlier estimates of investment bank Lazard Capital Markets.

In an interesting move which will enable gamers to make their own movies on their home computers, Valve announced a new, powerful movie-making tool – dubbed Source Filmmaker – on Wednesday.

According to the information which Valve - the company behind blockbuster titles such as "Portal," "Left 4 Dead" and "Team Fortress" - shared about the new software, the Source Filmmaker tool essentially makes use of the company’s Source game engine for creating high-end, animated movies.

In a Tuesday announcement, social gaming platform Zynga said that it is looking to expand its reach to more players --- be it via Facebook, or a separate Internet website, or even from a mobile device.

The expanded platform - Zynga With Friends - will essentially benefit from the most popular brands of the company, and will mark a further extension of the initiative which the San Francisco game developer launched in March this year, with the beta release of its redesigned Zynga. com website.

In what apparently will be Sony's biggest sales event in recent times, the company is all set to launch its new handheld, the PlayStation Vita, in a big way in the US and Europe on today, February 22.

With Sony having stated that it is taking the long view for the soon-to-be-released PS Vita handheld gaming console, reports have revealed that the device's debut will come amid celebrity-studded parties, midnight store openings, as well as a $50-million sales promotion.

According to reports, Hasbro and Zynga, which are competitors in the online videogames arena, have entered into a partnership in the physical world of toys and board games.

Going by the terms of the partnership announced on Thursday, Scrabble- and Monopoly-maker Hasbro will develop a new line of toys as well as games based on Zynga's highly popular online offerings, including "Mafia Wars" and "FarmVille." The first of the products from Hasbro will hit the markets this fall.

According to the statistics recently released by market research firm The NPD Group, 2011 witnessed a notable plunge of 8 percent year-on-year, from $18.4 billion to $17 million, in total US consumer spending on video games at retailers.

Despite the fact that the performance of video game content across retail and digital saw a boost due to alternative monetization strategies, the 8 percent drop in total US video games sales revenue during 2011 was a result of a decline in video game retail sales across hardware, software as well as accessories.

In an announcement just before Christmas, Enterbrain - which publishes the Japanese magazine Famitsu - revealed that the sales of the Nintendo 3DS in Japan had crossed the `4 million' mark; with 500,000 units of the device having been sold during the Christmas week alone!

The Nintendo 3DS witnessed a rather rough start, both in critical and financial terms, with the rather tepid customer response to the device - which was launched in Japan in February - resulting in a plunge in the stocks for the game company in July.