Video Game Saga *

Welcome to this week’s Quick Bytes.  This week the NPD released January video game sales, Steam has hacker issues and damage control to deal with, and this Valentine’s Day we can all get Rick Rolled.

This week the NPD gave us January’s video game sales numbers, and sales were not good.  They are estimating that sales fell about 38% year over year.  The numbers may look bleak but when you stop to think about it, we really haven’t seen that many big name games come out so far this year.  Looking a little further into 2012 it seems as though gamers are waiting other projects to release this year.  Further into 2012 we will see highly anticipated games like Twisted Metal on PS3 and Diablo 3 on PC.  So we will see if gamers open their wallets later on this year.

The top 10 games (bases on sales) for January are: 

1.      Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

2.      Just Dance 3

3.      The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim

4.      NBA 2K12

5.      Battlefield 3

6.      Madden NFL 12

7.      Mario Kart 7

8.      Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure

9.      Zumba Fitness 2

10.  Saints Row: The Third

Steam has said that a security breach in November may put some users’ information at risk.  Hackers got a hold of a backup file that contained user names, email addresses, encrypted card information, and encrypted billing information.  The good news is this file seemed to only contain information of transactions done between 2004 and 2008.  Even though this was a backup file it is still a good idea for users to check their credit card and bank statements and make sure everything is accurate.

This Valentine’s Day Rock Band 3 will be releasing some new songs for us to play.  The new songs being released are: 

·        Rick Astley- Never Gonna Give You Up

·        Poison- Every Rose Has Its Thorn

·        Heart- Alone

·        Mr. Big- To Be With You

I thought “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” was released already but it looks like I was wrong.  I do find it funny that “Never Gonna Give You Up” is being released.  I admit I can’t sing, but I would love to see other people singing this song.

Thanks for stopping by for a Quick Byte.

Sources: G4tv.com and Gameinformer.com

Rick-Rolling comes to Rock Band!

EDIT:  Since this thread is news, rather than commentary or opinion, I moved it to the "News Bytes" Forum Catagory--I saw that's where the first Quick Bytes was posted as well.  Tony