If you like your DS games to be bloody and brutal then you may be up for some disappointment. It was just reported that the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars had poor sales, contrary to what Rockstar was expecting. However, despite the lousy sales, Chinatown Wars still made up half of the DS games sold with an M rating.

If you’re a hardcore DS game fanatic then you probably know about the six other games that are M-rated. These games are Dementium: The Ward, C.O.R.E., Touch the Dead, Ultimate Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil: Deadly Silience, and Theresia. If you combine the sales of these six games, Chinatown Wars would still have sold better. Pretty sad, huh?

According to Bed Feder who is the CEO of Take Two, the culprit for these poor sales is none other than piracy. More than a year ago when the Chinatown Wars was launched, it was almost a sure thing that it will be having huge sales. After all, not only is DS a very popular game console but Grand Theft Auto remains to be one of the best and famous game franchises ever. Not to mention the fact that the game was a critical hit in Metacritic.

However, despite these credentials, the last 12 months brought nothing but bad news for Chinatown Wars. This news has left many critics wondering if the Nintendo DS is a good place for mature-rated games.

Sony and Nintendo continue to lunge for each other’s throats as Sony prepares to launch its Playstation Move this year. Despite the fact that many gamers and techie critics claim that the Move is just out to copy Wii, Sony continues to bash Nintendo by saying that the Wii does not do motion control justice, and that the Move may just be able to do something about that.

According to Sony’s Peter Dille, despite the success of the Wii, the fact remains that it is still fully dependent on the wand which limits its ability to provide a good experience. He then boats that not only will the Move feature no wand or controller but that it will only have a single camera so the body of the player can be used as the interface itself. Sony calls this camera the Playstation Eye which will be able to track the motion controller through a light.

Dille also claims that the hardcore gamers have been looking down on motion gaming due to lack of challenge and precision and the fact that it focuses more on sociability. Sony plans to come up with games that can be enjoyed by the entire family, maintaining motion games’ “social” aspect. At the same time, hardcore games will also be released which will use a motion device that has been experienced before. However, Sony is yet to decide about the game that will become the face of the Playstation Move.

Despite the hype that Dille is directing toward the Move, many gamers still remain unconvinced. First, there are already rumors about the lag time of Move. And it is way too obvious how Sony just wanted to rival the successful Wii by suddenly coming up with a “better” console.

As if the machismo in videogames wasn’t already a common complaint against game developers, the much-anticipated game Crackdown 2 has just announced that it won’t be having any female characters.
Billy Thomson who is the creative director for Ruffian Games talks about the report. He says that although female avatars were present in the first third-person shooter game, technical issues have made the team cut these characters out for the second installment. Thomson says that the production of Crackdown 2 already consumed a lot of memory and that the addition of female characters would’ve forced the team to cut back on the other aspects of the games, such as the animation and the texture.
Thomson also explained that the second game has much more content, and that although girls (and boys) won’t have the chance to select female characters for themselves, they can customize the existing male characters as much as they want.
However, James Cope who is the producer of Crackdown 2 tried to appease fans by saying that the game will have a significant female character. This character would not just be significant in the gameplay but also in the entire franchise of Crackdown. However, this character will not playable as of now, but Cope assures that one never knows what changes there might be in the future.