Two months after it’s release Sony is reporting that sales of the PlayStation Move have reached over 4.1 million units worldwide. “The number not only shows clear success of the launch of the new motion sensing controller but also indicates positive momentum going in to the holiday season and to the year 2011.” states Sony. The 4.1 million figure does not include stand alone sales of the Navigation controller or the PlayStation Eye camera. GameIndustry .biz

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PlayStation Move Sales Pass 4 Million

Today, Activision announced the closing of two development companies today: Liverpool-based Bizzare Creations, of Blur , the 360’s Project Gotham Racing, the acclaimed downloadable game Geometry Wars , and the very recently released James Bond 007: Blood Stone fame, and Iowa-based Budcat Creations, known for making PS2 ports of Activision games, like Guitar Hero, Band Hero and a Wii and PS2 FPS,  Medal of Honor: Vanguard . Budcat is also famous for it’s development of Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts in 2005. Both Bizzare and Budcat were acquired by Activision Blizzard relatively recently, with Bizzare in being bought in 2007 and Budcat being bought in 2008. Activision is also closing it’s California-based Quality Assurance company. Bizzare will lose a total of 200 employees and/or staffers, Budcat is to lose it’s entire staff of 60 people, and the California QA cuts will number in the 20-30 range, putting Activisions layoffs today at approximately 300 people. Just in time for the holidays. Happy Holidays, Bizzare and Budcat employees! Instead of that Christmas bonus, you instead get unemployment checks. Today, which started out good with the release of potentially the best Need for Speed and Assassin’s Creed in both of their series’, has ended rather depressingly. Today is a sad day for the video game industry. No, I am not being melodramatic.

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Activision to Close Budcat Creations, Bizzare Creations

CoD2 was never released on the PS3, probably because it came out before the PS3 was launched. But CoD3 was released for the PS3, but without the split screen support and map packs that 360 users enjoyed. In MW2 split screen, we had to play against “Guest 2″ and “Guest 3″ while 360 users got to play against named opponents. (I assume this was the case in WaW and MW1 as well, I just don’t remember.) 360 users got map packs before PS3 users as well. Now, PS3 users are getting shafted by Activision one more time. Is it getting to the point where we have to just expect this and be content with our second-class status? What am I talking about? Split screen online support, where the second player gets to log in under their own Xbox Live account on the 360, while PS3 users do not get the equivalent PSN support. Just makes you kind of mad, doesn’t it? Is Microsoft’s wallet at play here? Or is Activision just lazy? Or do they really just like to baby their 360’s because they just like them so much more? Oh, and before you go saying that the PS3 doesn’t support this kind of dual login, just stop right there. It does. Resistance 2, released two years ago , supports this feature, and does a great job of it. It’s in the firmware, Activision. Use it!

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Activision Shafts PS3 Users (Again) (Black Ops)

Get a glimpse of the epic single player campaign of  Call of Duty: Black Ops as Activision and Treyarch shows off another explosive trailer of the hotly anticipated shooter sequel. Call of Duty: Black Ops releases on November 9 on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS and PC.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Gets Single Player Trailer

I tested out WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe and it converts videos a lot faster than I thought. First video I converted was a 720P .mkv Naruto anime with subtitles. Quality was great and it completed a 23 minute anime conversion in 9 minutes, so not shabby at all. Plus it keep the subtitles intact. On the PS3 Preset you can select 720P or 1080P or you can just select a .MP4 file (720×480 or 720×576). It has a lot of built in presets which is nice for example: Sony Device: PSP Video (*.mp4), PS3 Video (*.avi, *.mpeg, *.mp4, *.wmv), PS3 HD Video (*.avi, *.mpeg, *.mp4, *.wmv) General Video: AVI, DivX, XviD, MP4, FLV, AVC, MPEG, DVD, WMV, MOV, Youtube DVD: DVD Format VOB (*.vob), DVD Folder High Definition Video: HD AVI Video (*.avi), HDAVC Video (*.mp4), MPEG4 HD Video (*.mp4), MPEG-2 TS HD Video (*.ts), WMV HD Video (*.wmv), Quick Time HD Video (*.mov), Youtube HD Video (*.mp4) Apple Device: iPad (iPad Wi-Fi, iPad Wi-Fi+3G, iPad 16GB, iPad 32GB, iPad 64GB), iPod (iPod classic, iPod touch, iPod nano), iPhone (iPhone 3G S), Apple TV, Apple TV HD Microsoft Device: Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune, Zune HD Portable Device: General mobile phone, PDA, BlackBerry, Creative Zen I was given 20 copies of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe to giveaway on PS3Blog.net! Normally this software costs $49.95 So if your interested, donate 150 points to the lottery account , max entry of 4 entries please. There will be plenty of winners so be sure to enter the lottery! I’ll pick a winner at random on October 19th at 9 PM Mountain Time (MT). – NOTE: This giveaway is only for Windows [Microsoft Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7] I was only given windows license codes. But there is a Mac Version and it’s called MacX Video Converter Pro . WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe builds 160 video codec and 50 audio codec, a perfect multi-functional combination of HD Video Converter, DVD Burner and Website Video Downloader. Without any third-party codec, it can support Multi-track HD video M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV BDAV and MPEG-TS video movies. It also supports converting all the High Definition and HD-Camcorder videos, to both portable and console players, such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc,. Supporting Multi-CPU and Hyper Threading, WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe offers up to 15x real time video converting speed. Full details on what the software can do here . If you need support please contact them here .

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PS3 HD Video Converter Giveaway!

via PSU , talented actors Gary Oldman and Ed Harris have lended their voices to Call of Duty Black Ops. Gary Oldman will play the role of Viktor Reznov from World of War and Harris will be a main character of a CIA operative, Jason Hudson. Additionally David Goyer (writer of Batman) will be joining the team as a script consultant and story development support. …man..ever since The Rock with Sean Connery, Ed Harris has always been a military guy in my eyes.

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COD Black Ops Signs On Ed Harris and Gary Oldman to Lend their Voices (Bonus: David Goyer Helping With Story)

In case you still haven’t heard, a new James Bond game is in the works for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Scheduled to arrive this holiday, here’s a early sneak peek at James Bond 007: Blood Stone . For a first look I give it a 7.5 out of 10 , I’ve bought the previous James Bond video games and  this one might be one of Best. Who knows I could be wrong, we’ll get more details soon to make a better guess if this is a buy or rent . Your thoughts on the trailer?

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James Bond 007: Blood Stone debut trailer

Activision reported their financial results for the first quarter of 2010, ending March 30th. No surprise to anyone the company raked in profits thanks to sales of World of Warcraft and ,of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warefare. The company’s net revenues came in at  $1.3 billion, while its non GAAP net revenues finished at $714 million.  “Our better-than-expected first quarter performance was driven by strong global consumer demand for Activision’s Call of Duty and Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft.” CEO Bobby Kotic stated. “Throughout the remainder of the year, we plan to release our strongest video game lineup ever based on some of the industry’s highest quality, profitable franchises,” he said. That “strongest video game lineup ever” includes  Guitar Hero 6 and DJ Hero 2   to be released later this year along with yet another Call of Duty game.

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Activision’s Revenue For 1Q 2010: $1.3 billion

Straight out of left field comes the news today that Bungie have signed a 10 year publishing deal with Activision, leaving Microsoft to join the multi-format publisher. So surely this means PS3 owners will also get Bungie titles in the future? Pretty exciting news, I may not be the biggest fan of Halo (and this doesn’t mean Halo on PS3) but it’s great to see a developer of this calibre now able to release games for Sony’s machine too. It is a surprise to see Bungie sign with Activision though considering the recent shenanigans with Infinity Ward . Will be interesting to see where Bungie go from here!

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Bungie Joins Activision, Bungie Games On PS3 Now?

So it looks like the first lawsuit has raised its head about the Linux removal. While I understand peoples heart felt feelings about its removal, I can not comprehend those who would prefer to have Linux and suck money from Sony through lawsuits instead of having them use that same money towards more game development and R&D. I’m sure this suit will go no where, but its still interesting how far people tend to get away from gaming. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Sony Computer Entertainment America for the removal of the ‘Other OS’ feature from the PlayStation 3. In March, Sony released firmware v3.21 that disabled the feature, disallowing users install the Linux operating system. The update was not mandatory; however those who chose not to download it were cut off from a number of other features, one of which included signing in to PlayStation Network. The suit, filed on April 27 by Anthony Ventura of California, seeks to redress Sony for the “intentional disablement of the valuable functionality originally advertised as available” for the Playstation 3. The disabling of Linux support is not only in breach of the sales contract between Sony and its customers, the suit says, but also a deceptive business practice “perpetrated on millions of unsuspecting customers.”

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Sony Being Sued for Linux Removal