It’s that time again, the NPD Group has released its hardware and software sales figures for the month of August. As expected, Electronic Arts’ Madden dominated the software side of the charts, pushing a whopping 2.3 million units across all platforms it was released on combined.

“Madden NFL ‘09 was the top-selling game of the month, and launched with 2.3 million units out of retail doors in it’s first month, besting last year’s ‘08 title by 2%,” noted NPD analyst Anita Frazier. She added, “Year after year, the industry can count on the Madden release to bring folks into stores during the relatively lazy days of late summer.”

In the hardware sector, sales overall took a rather sizable slump compared to last month. Nintendo still managed to take the top spot, however, with 453,000 Wii and 518,300 DS units sold. Meanwhile, the close battle between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 continued in August, with the consoles shifting 195,200 and 185,400 units respectively.

All in all, not a surprising month by any means. With the Xbox 360 price cut now in full effect, September figures should be far more interesting. more »

Publisher Ubisoft has revealed that it plans to include subtitles for the deaf or hard of hearing in all of its internally developed projects, beginning with Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia and Shaun White Snowboarding.

This commitment entails modifications to some of our game engines, as well as the inclusion of subtitles in the conception phase of game development. For our games that are already well into production, Ubisoft will include subtitles in all games in which it is technically possible.

Good on Ubisoft. Even as someone who doesn’t have trouble hearing, I prefer using subtitles when available.

Electronic Arts announced today that the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game, originally scheduled for a fall debut, is now slated for a worldwide summer 2009 release to coincide with Warner Brothers’ live-action film.

“We’re excited about the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game in development and its high level of authenticity and playability,” said Robert Nashak, Vice President EA Casual Studios. “We are creating an immersive game experience that Potter fans around the world will really enjoy playing as they fly and duel their way through the story of the film. The game will feature new Wii gestures and increased gameplay capabilities across all of the platforms.”

Expected, to say the least. We can only hope that they’ll end up using the extra development time to deliver a more polished game.

Trio Emu_kidid, Sepp256 and TehPola are working on a PlayStation (PSOne) emulator for the Wii and GameCube. Dubbed WiiSX, the ambitious project is still in its early stages, but already looks more than promising with games like Chrono Cross running at near-playable speed as evidenced by the video clip shown above. Right now, all the code is running on an interpreter engine. The developers plan on switching over to a dynarec-based core in the future, in hopes of squeezing extra performance out of both consoles.

Expect the first “preview release” of WiiSX to hit later this year.

WiiSX Preview - PS1 Emu for the Wii [TehSkeen]

Surprise! Nintendo went ahead and announced a Wii and DS compatible WiFi router today. It’ll hit Japan on September 18 at a price of 5800 yen (around $54). Seeing as nearly every standard router out there works with both systems, we’re left feeling a little perplexed as to why Nintendo would bother bringing a peripheral like this to the market - especially with more pressing issues at hand, like a centralized storage solution for our WiiWare and Virtual Console titles. Oh well, guess this is good news for those less tech-savvy folks, which make up a large majority of Nintendo’s userbase.

Square Enix is withdrawing from the proposal it made last week to acquire Japanese-based publisher Tecmo. Square Enix received a written letter of rejection yesterday and immediately responded to Tecmo with questions regarding their decision to enter consolidation talks with Koei. No reply was received, and as such, Square Enix is stepping down from its offer, noting that it is “extremely difficult to continue the discussions with Tecmo” based on the current proposal.

Full release after the jump. more »

Nintendo has sent along a selection of nine new screenshots from its upcoming Wii Remote and Nunchuk powered title Wii Music, showcasing a number of playable instruments in the game, ranging from drums to trombones.

Wii Music is scheduled for an October release in both North America and Japan.

Wii Music Screenshots

This week’s Wii Shop Channel update kicks off with a bang. The fabled Nintendo and Square Enix collaboration known as Super Mario RPG (800 Wii Points) is now available on the Virtual Console. Joining Mario is NES classic Chu Chu Land (500 Wii Points).

On the WiiWare front is Hudson’s sea-life simulator My Aquarium (500 Wii Points). Billed as a “relaxing Wii experience that allows you to enjoy a virtual aquarium in your spare time,” the game allows players to build up to six different aquariums, complete with 40 selectable species of fish. You can feed your fish and even breed them provided that certain conditions are met. Not so exciting, but with Super Mario RPG out, who cares?

According to a Reuters report, Square Enix is planning to purchase Tecmo, owner of the popular Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises. Today, the RPG-focused publisher placed a bid valued at 920 yen per share, for more than half of Tecmo’s shares.

As of writing, Tecmo has yet to respond to the bid, which expires on September 4. If rejected or ignored, Square Enix does not plan to reup the offer, as it is aiming for a friendly transaction.

The move would no doubt broaden Square’s portfolio, which consists largely of RPG centric titles.

Square Enix says aims to bid for Tecmo shares [Reuters]

Speaking in an interview with Danish-based site Gamereactor, High Voltage Software CEO Eric Nofsinger revealed that the company is aiming for a March 2009 release of The Conduit, a futuristic first-person shooter in development for Nintendo’s WiiWare platform. Elsewhere in the interview, it was mentioned that the team is working to incorporate voice chat support in multiplayer.

Full video after the jump. The Conduit will be fully playable at Penny Arcade’s PAX expo, which kicks off later this week on Friday. more »