During an economic climate where fear and doubt rules the day, it’s never a good thing to see something video game related releasing bad stats.  According to Variety, Spike’s Video Game Awards are not doing well:

It’s a question I myself almost forgot to ask, until the topic came up recently. So I checked with Variety’s ratings expert Rick Kissell, who provided me with the figures, via Nielsen: 680,000 people watched the Spike Video Game Awards on Dec. 14. That’s down 26% from the 2007 total and the second lowest since they started in 2004 (a bit higher than 2006’s 618,000 but barely more than half of 2004’s 1.23 million).

Source: Variety

Rumor has it that the next Grand Theft Auto game is going to be released by the end of this year according to Lose talk in the leated Game Informer.  RockStar North is already working on the next instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which should be ready for release this holiday season in November of 2009.

“We’re not talking about new DLC or a collection of previously available DLC, we’re talking about a full retail game. We expect this title to follow the suit of previous GTAs and use a subtitle such as GTA: San Andreas, etc. Tokyo might be a possible setting for the game, but details are non-existent at this time.” – Game Informer Issue 190

Sources say that Vice City shipped almost exactly a year after Grand Theft Auto III.

Sources: Playstation Universe , Kotaku

In the year 2008, one console stood above the rest when it came to Video Game Rentals; and that was the Xbox 360.  According to Rentrak, and Video Essentials; 7 of the top 10 titles in this past year belong to the Xbox.

  “In 2008, Xbox 360 jumped up two titles from 2007 with seven of the Top Ten Renting Games, versus having five of the Top Ten Renting Games the previous year. In 2008, seven of the Top Ten Renting Games were rated Mature, versus in 2007 only four of the Top Ten Renting Games were rated mature.”

Source: Kotaku

It appears that the gaming organization iDemise has aquired former Mug N Mouse team as their new Counter-Strike 1.6 team.

  Official Roster:

Josh “punkville” Dacus
Travis “tuBBy” Bechtol
Alex “hazard” Martins
Ric “iNERTiA” Bundy
Andy “icy” Keefe

Source: Gotfrag

Gamers around the world have eagerly anticipated the release of the Nintendo DSi but only gamers in Japan have been able to enjoy it until now.  However, Kotaku is reporting that Nintendo will be dropping it on U.S. shores in April.

The next Nintendo DS, dubbed the DSi, is rumored to be launched in the United States in April of this year, according to a report from IGN which cites “multiple sources close to Nintendo.”

According to the report, the follow up to the tremendously successful Nintendo DS Lite will land on U.S. shores on April 4 and for a premium price of $179.99. That’s $50 more than the cost of the current model and in line with Japanese pricing.

Source: Kotatku

SK-Gaming has now officially released ReMinD and SoJu. The reason, according to SK’s manager reis, was that since the competitions in WC3 are becoming more individual and because of this changes had to be made for a smaller team. ReMinD hasn’t really performed on a high individual level lately, but played really good versus WE in the WC3L grand final. SoJu on the other hand recently took first place recently at NiceGameTV league season 2. Both players will probably keep playing WC3. The duo was also called “the best 2on2 team in the world” by MYM]Losemann in an interview on mymym.com which is quite a lot said coming from a rival manager.

The remaining SK roster consists of:

June “Lyn” Park
Daniel “miou” Holthuis
Seo Woo “ReiGn” Kang
Dong Hwan “viOlet” Kim

Source: http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/21449-SK_Gaming_bids_farewell_to_Soju_and_ReMinD
Source:http://www.mymym.com/en/coverage/548/15.html

Those of you Rock Band fans looking for the 3rd installment might be disappointed in 2009.  According to Kotaku:

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos says that Rock Band may be taking the year off in 2009, with the developer focusing its efforts on the Beatles game it announced in October. Instead, expect more music.

Rigopulos said at the Billboard Digital Music Live keynote at CES that the Harmonix team will be directing its “creative energy” to the still-untitled Beatles video game project and expanding the catalog of tracks available for Rock Band and Rock Band 2. The Rock Band music library crossed the 500 song mark.

Source: Kotaku