Nintendo has managed to trump their own sales record in 2008, while completely dominating the industry with over 10 million sales of the Wii console, and 9.95 million sales of the DS handheld.

Before 2008, no video game system had ever been purchased by ten million Americans in a single year. But according to independent sales data released today by the NPD Group, the Wii^™ console from Nintendo did just that, even during these economic times, with 2008 unit sales of 10.17 million. The Nintendo DS^™ portable handheld system came in a close second, with 2008 unit sales of 9.95 million. Each of them broke the previous yearly unit sales record set in 2007 by Nintendo DS with sales of 8.52 million.

Consequently, Wii represented 55% of all next generation home console sales in 2008, while Nintendo DS claimed 72% of all portable system sales in 2008.

“Our type of entertainment has now moved to the point where there is no longer a question that if you offer consumers an expanded definition of what a video game can be, and deliver that idea with quality and affordability in mind, millions of new people will start playing video games,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Concepts like Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band never would have seemed feasible just a few years ago, and now they’re driving growth for our the entire industry.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Future Publishing has partnered with the United Kingdom eSports Association in support of the forthcoming national open videogame championships. The plan is to offer immediate divisions for new games that have a competitive basis. Richard Keith had this to say:

We are delighted to be working with and promoting the UKeSA,” adding: “offering UK industry and gamers a responsible, media friendly framework for competitive gaming is the first step towards aligning the popularity of video games with the true recognition of this pastime.

“By catering for all gamers, professional and amateur alike, it’s a real home for eSports, and it’s an important step forwards that Future want to be a part of.”

Future Publishing
United Kingdom eSports Association

The Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA) has opened up registration for gamers to compete in their 2009 online league. The league will help promote teams on an international level to get them exposure to compete overseas. The league has a qualification process which consists of two rounds. The MSSA houses competitions for PC titles as well as a few console titles on the XBOX360. These games include Counter Strike 1.6, DotA, Team Fortress 2, Quake 3, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: World at War, Starcraft, Trackmania: Nations Forever, Red Alert 3, Gears of War 2 and Guitar Hero. Colin Webster, President of the MSSA expressed the increasing interest in PC gaming in South Africa.

The MSSA is trying to get competitive PC gaming recognised into the Commonwealth Games and All Africa Games. The Beijing Olympics last year hosted the first mind games world tournament and it’s important to promote the games and players. This year we are going to embark on a few projects, one of them being a schools league. We will also be starting our first provincial LAN championships.

Last year the league had SK Gaming’s Swedish Counter-Strike team come down to play with the South African teams and share strategies with the aspiring gamers. The league looks to expand this year including a LAN championship at the end of the league’s season. If you would like to read more about the MSSA, you can view the rest of the article by clicking the link below.

ITWeb: MSSA seeks top gamers

ESEA has recently released an open source plugin for Team Fortress 2 servers.  The “ESEA TF2 League Standards Plugin”.

We’ve decided to release an open source plugin for TF2 that we’re calling the “ESEA TF2 League Standards Plugin”. Installing this on your server will create the same environment you can expect when playing a match on our servers (in respects to damage and on-death freeze cam). We specifically did not include any cvars in an attempt to prevent division among the community.

Instead, we will actively listen to community feedback and adjust and release updates accordingly. By releasing the source, we wanted the community to see exactly what was being modified so there are absolutely no questions as to the what (and how) is being changed.

From the readme:
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1.This plugin removes the on-death freeze cam as well as the random damage range for all weapons in Team Fortress2.
2. Normally every attack has a +/-50% range in damage it can do, this plugin will force Team Fortress 2 to use the middle value of that range.

For example: (Taken from a soldier shoveling another soldier)
Without this plugin all shovel attacks can do anywhere from 32.5 to 97.5 damage. With this plugin all shovel attacks will do 65 damage.

To download the plugin visit ESEA TF2 Server Plugin

Gosugamers.net has made a huge article to prepare for the ESL Continental Finals. In the article they go through all of the players attending with some resent results of each player and a small prediction on how it will go. With players like Sky, Grubby, Moon and Lyn it is almost guaranteed to be a very interesting competition.

Unlike the Seoul event, ESL brought eight players and placed them in a group stage. Tougher competition, but also more interesting.

You can read the whole story by clicking here