Snippets: Borderlands props Take-Two, Hasbro sues Atari, games sales up 17% in 6 months

Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:

Borderlands keeps Take-Two afloat (eurogamer) - Take-Two's financial results for fiscal 2009 are out and numbers are down, despite a sterling performance by Gearbox's new IP Borderlands, which passed 2m sales worldwide.

Revenues tumbled 37 per cent to $968m, although Take-Two had expected a weaker cash-flow after delaying key titles like Mafia II. Next year, however, Take-Two will hit back with Mafia II, BioShock II, Red Dead: Redemption and Max Payne 3.

Also, financial 2009 was always going to compare badly to 2008, the year in which Grand Theft Auto IV was released and broke sales records (before Modern Warfare 2 recently smashed those).

Other key sellers for Take-Two this year were Carnival Games with 5m sales, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony and the GTAIV DLC double-pack, Episodes from Liberty City.

Atari sued over D&D licensing agreement (gamesindustry.biz) - Hasbro has instigated legal proceedings against Infogrames Entertainment, claiming the company has committed fraud and breached the terms of its licensing agreement for the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

"Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro's wholly-owned subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, who discovered earlier this year that Atari may have entered into an unauthorised sublicensing relationship with Namco Bandai Partners (NBP) for the Dungeons & Dragons digital game rights,” said Hasbro in a statement.

"While unfortunate that we had to take this action, it is crucial for us to protect the Dungeons & Dragons brand," added Greg Leeds, president of Wizards of the Coast. "We have been working for several months now to reach resolution with Atari, and they have left us with no other choice than to pursue legal action."

Hasbro is seeking compensatory damages for economic losses suffered and a termination of the licensing agreement.

'Core' US game sales grew 17% in last 6 months, says analyst (gamesindustry.biz) - Broadpoint AmTech's Ben Schachter has released research outlining the sales of core videogame titles in the past six months, pointing out that sales in that sector were up by 17 per cent year-on-year.

That seems at odds with the official NPD data, which cited the overall industry numbers were down 12 per cent in that time - but Schachter argues that without including the music game genre or Nintendo platforms, the picture is quite different.

"We believe that 'core' gamers will drive videogame packaged goods growth in 2010 and beyond," he explained, according to IndustryGamers. "2009 was a horrible year for the video game industry and its investors, but a closer analysis highlights that much of the weakness (since Q1) was attributable to the Music genre and Nintendo platforms.

"Core gamer software (which we define as Xbox 360 plus PlayStation 3, but excluding the music genre) has actually grown 17 per cent year-on-year over the past six months in the US according to the NPD Group - while music was down 52 per cent and Nintendo platforms were down 11 per cent.

And yet the ending to borderlands was terrible. DON'T OPEN THE VAULT!

You'll get to see the vault in Borderlands 2

SirGrimNZ wrote: You'll get to see the vault in Borderlands 2

Or 3.
Borderlands was awesome, too bad it lacked 'real' depth.

Midi wrote: 'Core' US game sales grew 17% in last 6 months, says analyst (gamesindustry.biz) - Broadpoint AmTech's Ben Schachter has released research outlining the sales of core videogame titles in the past six months, pointing out that sales in that sector were up by 17 per cent year-on-year. That seems at odds with the official NPD data, which cited the overall industry numbers were down 12 per cent in that time - but Schachter argues that without including the music game genre or Nintendo platforms, the picture is quite different. "We believe that 'core' gamers will drive videogame packaged goods growth in 2010 and beyond," he explained, according to IndustryGamers. "2009 was a horrible year for the video game industry and its investors, but a closer analysis highlights that much of the weakness (since Q1) was attributable to the Music genre and Nintendo platforms. "Core gamer software (which we define as Xbox 360 plus PlayStation 3, but excluding the music genre) has actually grown 17 per cent year-on-year over the past six months in the US according to the NPD Group - while music was down 52 per cent and Nintendo platforms were down 11 per cent.

So, has "casual" gaming done its dash?

Or was it just that the recession had a bigger impact on that sector of the market?

Egor wrote: So, has "casual" gaming done its dash? Or was it just that the recession had a bigger impact on that sector of the market?

i think the casual gaming market got tapped out.. only so many variations of bejeweled that can keep people interested in paying more

Infogrames creating a big mess.