The Last Story Tops The Charts in Japan

Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi's long awaited Wii RPG The Last Story hit Japan last week, and managed to beat out a flood of new releases to take the top sales spot. 

The Last Story, released just about a year after its first announcement, sold 114,722 units in its first week. This includes sales of a version that comes bundled with a Wii system. 

Is this good or bad? The answer probably depends on how much Nintendo expected of the game. Xenoblade, another high profile Wii RPG, also topped the charts at its debut in June of last year with 83,000 units sold. Established RPG franchises like Tales and Final Fantasy will often see first week sales of 200,000 to well over a million units. 

Last week was packed with new software releases, mostly on PSP. Japan's hottest system saw six entries in the top 10 alone, including such sequels as Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Kenka Bancho 5. 

Xbox 360 also had a pretty big presence this week thanks to games like hostess simulator Dream Club Zero and girls shooting game (that is to say, you shoot girls with your "pheromone" gun) Gal Gun, which made it into the top 20. These types of games are exclusive for Xbox 360. 

Here's the full top 20 covering January 24 through January 30, as passed along at 4Gamer. Release date and life to date sales are in parenthesis. 

• 1. The Last Story (Nintendo, Wii, 1/27): 114,722
• 2. Valkyria Chronicles 3 (Sega, PSP, 1/27): 102,779
• 3. My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute (Namco Bandai, PSP, 1/27): 88,493
• 4. Kenka Bancho 5 (Spike, PSP, 1/27): 58,977
• 5. A Certain Magical Index (ASCII, PSP, 1/27): 56,017
• 6. Dragon Age Origins (Spike, PS3, 1/27): 42,854
• 7. Monster Hunter Freedom 3 (Capcom, PSP, 12/1): 33,338 (4,128,278)
• 8. Dream Club Zero (D3 Publisher, Xbox 360, 1/27): 21,734
• 9. Kingom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix (Square Enix, PSP, 1/20): 20,528 (97,846)
• 10. Donkey Kong Returns (Nintendo, Wii, 12/9): 19,214 (773,893)
• 11. Dragon Age Origins (Spike, Xbox 360, 1/27): 14,000
• 12. Tsuku Monogatari (Furyu, PSP, 2/17): 13,329
• 13. Gal Gun (Alchemist, Xbox 360, 1/27): 12,419
• 14. Wii Party (Nintendo, Wii, 7/8/2010): 10,778 (1,767,425)
• 15. Chaos; Head Love Chu Chu (5pb., PSP, 1/27): 10,753
• 16. Pokemon Black & White (Pokemon, DS, 9/18/2010): 10,654 (5,050,638)
• 17. Inazuma Eleven 3 The Ogre (Level-5, DS, 12/16/2010): 10,437 (388,350)
• 18. Ni no Kuni (Level-5, DS, 12/9/2010): 8,814 (459,967)
• 19. Monster Hunter Frontier Online Season 10 Premium Package (Capcom, Xbox 360, 1/26): 8,055
• 20. AKB1/48 (Namco Bandai, PSP, 12/23/2010): 7,916 (359,859)

The Last Story's top placement gave Wii hardware a tiny boost. Hardware sales remained slow across the board, though. DS may be slowing down as excitement builds for 3DS, which launches in Japan on the 26th. Sony's NGP announcement came late last week, so we'll have to see if there's any affect on PSP sales over the coming months. 

Here's the full hardware chart for the same period, with last week's sales in parentheses. 

• 1. PSP: 34,648 (35,636)
• 2. PS3: 25,149 (23,792)
• 3. Wii: 19,448 (14,547)
• 4. DSi LL: 11,891 (11,720)
• 5. DSi: 9,611 (8,990)
• 6. X360: 3,513 (2,338)
• 7. PS2: 1,938 (1,836)
• 8. DS Lite: 1,059 (1,528)
• 9. PSP go: 280 (198)

ABOUT THIS GAME

Engineer Isaac Clarke returns for another blood-curdling adventure in Dead Space 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed horror adventure. After waking from a coma on a massive space city known as "The Sprawl," the lone survivor of a horrific alien infestation finds himself confronting a catastrophic new nightmare. Battling dementia, hunted by the government and haunted by visions of his dead girlfriend, Isaac will do whatever it takes to save himself and rid the city of the gruesome, relentless Necromorphs. Equipped with a new arsenal of tools to dismember the Necromorphs, Isaac will face the challenge head-on.

 In Dead Space 2, Isaac brings the terror to space. Players will take on bigger, scarier and more epic battles that will keep them on the edge of their seats. Delivering a sensory overload of sound, visuals and action sequences, Dead Space 2 will bring the psychological thrills of deep    space to a terrifying new level.

Release Date: January 25, 2011

MSRP: $59.99

Also on: PC, PS3

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

Genre: Action 

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Visceral Games

Online Play: 8 Versus

Expansions: Dead Space 2: Severed,

Esp Game Or Google Image Labeler -Great Ideas Based On Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new term coined by Jeff Howe and it refers to taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community –a crowd. Projects that have been carried out so far have been very successful and prove the great power of the crowd. CrowdsourcingPower has started a business based on this concept, giving any individual the possibility to earn extra money working on a data base.
In this article, I will presnet the ESP Game, which is a brilliant idea and a great example of a successful crowdsourcing project.
The ESP Game was launched in 2004 and it gets people to label images as a side-effect of playing a game. The image labels can be used to improve image search on the Web. The game was created by Luis von Ahn from Carnegie Mellon University. Google bought a license to create its own version of the game in 2006. The Google version is known as Google Image Labeler.
In the ESP game two partners who don’t know each other are paired up and asked to agree on a word that would be an appropriate label for an image that they both see. The two partners cannot communicate. They both enter possible words, and once a word is entered by both partners (not necessarily at the same time), that word is agreed upon and becomes a label for the image. The game encourages the players to assign “obvious” labels, for the two partners to come to an agreement in the shortest possible time.
Having two people play together makes the game more fun and the information obtained accurate. Since the only thing the two partners have in common is that they both see the same image, they must enter reasonable labels to have any chance of agreeing on one.
The game goes on for two and a half minutes, and during this time the players have to label 15 images. There are also prizes given out weekly, such as $20 to $50 gifts, and everybody who gets more than 50,000 points a week can win a prize.
Even if the game is designed in such a way that people have fun, its main purpose is for Google to ensure that its keywords are matched to correct images. Each matched word helps Google build an accurate database used for Google Image Search in order to return better search results.
Image recognition is a task that computers cannot currently complete. Humans are perfectly capable of it, but not necessarily willing. The game made this task look fun, so now, there are people who play the game over 40 hours a week! It’s like they were hired full time to label images! But instead of it being a tedious boring job, they are just playing a game, while also “helping the world become a better place”. (quote from the esp game site:http://www.espgame.org/gwap/about/)
This is a great example of a successful crowdsourcing project that shows how a community or a crowd of people can bring their efforts together to accomplish a huge task and create something useful and of great value.
With the tools that we have available now, in the Internet Age, with groups being able to come together and communicate easier than ever before, it is amazing to see big projects being so easily accomplished.
Crowdsourcing is a model that works great! It’s been proven by so many successful projects. I am sure that more and more business people will apply this concept to various projects and to create successful businesses.
Google, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, LEGO, Pepsi, Canada’s Cambrian House, Eli Lilly (Innocentive), Kraft, General Mills, Nike, MasterCard, iStockphoto, Zebo are just a few of the companies that have had successful crowdsourcing projects. CrowdsourcingPower is a new company that gives any individual the opportunity to earn money through a crowdsourcing project.

Useful Car Parking Games Info

If you are a driver and you own a car for some time now, I guess you know that parking is just something you can't avoid and as much as you would love to have an easy spot to have your car parked onto, you will never be in for the same joy everyday.

The educational purpose

That's why you should really take a closer look to some games that might help you out with that. Car parking games are just some very easy, fun and interactive games which will utterly make you feel better at the end of a hard day at work and at the same time they will also give you some ideas on how to achieve that perfect car parking while playing them.

Playing such games you will never have to fear about accidents or fuel expenses you would normally have to keep in mind if messing about with such attempts in real life. What's best about them is that you can easily find them anywhere on the internet and most of the times you will not be required to pay a dime to play them. Now you will definitely be able to identify all of those mistakes you were making while parking your car.

Game difficulty levels

In order to properly fuel your car parking mania some of these games actually present you with 3 difficulty levels: beginner, medium and hard. If you choose the beginner mode, you will be given a wide open space where you will have to park your car in. The medium level, will add some cars in your way to make things a little harder and if you choose the last difficulty level, you'll be given small spaces with lots of cars and tight parking spots.

Amazing graphics

And with the advances of software, these games now look superb. Featuring crisp graphics, a simple gameplay and beautifully crafted sounds, these games are just the recipe of success and can be played by anyone regardless of their age. Thinking that only kids can play them is an utter misconception and there are many adults that after a long hard day at work, will indulge into a quick parking lesson to relieve their stress.


Perfect for children
If you have children these games will be perfect for them as they don't instigate to violence or other such behaviors, like most games nowadays do. On top of that, you don't need to pay for these games as most of the times you will be able to find them for free. As such, you can use the money you would've normally spent on a violent and utterly negative game for your child's mind, to buy him some toys or pay the internet bill.

Car parking games are some of the most positive games a parent can choose to let his son or daughter engage in without feeling worried about any negative impacts. On top of that, they will teach them how to be responsible when it comes to the things around them.

R4 Card - For a New Gaming Experience

R4 card is a gaming device used in gaming consoles like Nintendo R4. These are small chip like devices that are inserted in the Slot I of these consoles. They basically help in increasing the memory of the Nintendo R4 ds. These cards are adapters and do not have their own memory. They use the memory of the Micro SD card. The micro SD cards are inserted inside the R4cards.

This R4 card has a slot where these micro SD card can be inserted by giving it a push. It has a spring mechanism which keeps the card locked inside unless given a second push, which makes the card come out. These micro SD cards can have memory up to thirty two GB. This nds R4 is a total entertainment device. One can use it to listen to music, watch videos, read e books, surf the net and even save important documents as well as pictures. One can use this device to save as well as transfer data. Now you can transfer games from one system to another using this device. You can surf the net and download games directly from the net with the help of this device.

This device is like your USB storage device and has a rewritable memory. You can now delete the games you have got bored of and add new games to your gaming console. These cards are very user friendly and you don't need to install any software from the net to make this run on your gaming console. All you need to do is, run the CD that comes with the device and your R4 DS card is ready to use.

Buy R4 DS

It is very important that you buy these cards only from an authentic dealer. An authentic dealer will give you after sales service as well as a guarantee on your card. In case of any problem you can exchange it for a new one. It is difficult to identify an authentic dealer, so make sure that your ds lite R4 comes with a guarantee card as well as all the features that are there in an r4 sdhc . You can buy this card online also. In fact before buying it, compare all the rates and the features of the r4 cards that are being sold by different dealers or you can buy it from the R4 showroom.

The best thing about these cards is that they are not very highly priced. Now one will not have to waste their gaming consoles when they get bored of it. They can simply add on the new games. These cards come in a nice carry case which has a very sleek look. The color of these carry cases are mostly black.

These cards have enhanced the value of the gaming consoles. Use them for a new gaming experience. Buy it online or from an authentic showroom, but make sure that your R4 card has all the features so that you do not miss out on anything.

For any help on r4 cards , check out the info available online; these will help you learn to find the Nintendo ds lite r4!

Burn XBOX Games Whenever You Want - Here's How!

If you're lucky enough to have an XBOX, you probably have asked yourself if it's possible to burn XBOX 360 games on your computer. This inquiry has been raised many times so we decided we would show you how this is done. Thankfully it's actually incredibly easy to do.

Obviously, you aren't able to utilize a regular burning program to burn games. This is because normal CD copying software can't make sense of game discs. This may sound odd, but your computer just can't make sense of the data on the game disc initially. You will need special software for this function.

Thankfully, there are now companies that have designed specific video game copying software that makes it easy for your computer to make sense of the information on the disc. These softwares allow your computer to make backups of your XBOX discs.

We want to make you aware that these softwares are meant for individuals to produce legal backup copies of games. If you buy a XBOX 360 game and you require to copy it to have a backup, you can legally use this program. We aren't promoting any illegal burning of XBOX games.

It's super easy to use these programs. As soon as you install the software, it pretty much operates automatically. You'll just need to open the software when you want to backup a game. With a few clicks of your mouse you can have an exact copy of the original game (usually takes about 20 minutes).

You will simply place the game in your disk drive and your computer will then create an image of the game info. When the image has been produced, you put in a blank DVD or CD and the game info is transferred onto the blank disc.

As you can see, there's really not much that you have to do on your end. Once you have the right type of software on your computer you can make a copy of any game whenever you want.

It's a good idea to look for a guarantee when you do purchase a video game copying program. Just in case you are not happy with it or it doesn't work on your system, then you have a method to get your moneyback.

Another important note - don't spend too much! This may sound obvious - you are obviously looking for the best deal. Sadly we have seen some software prices over $85 - this is way too much. The highest-ranked program that I know of is far less than $50.

Here's The Easy Way To Burn Wii Games - A Quick Guide To Copying Wii Games

We all know how popular the Nintendo Wii has become. In a short period of time, it has already taken over the gaming industry by storm. Since more and more people have the Wii now, we have been getting a number of questions from people wondering if it's possible to copy Wii games on their computer. Today we're going to answer that question and show you how you can burn Wii games.

Obviously, you aren't able to use a regular CD burning software to copy Wii games. The reason for this is that normal burning programs can't read video game discs. It may sound odd, but your computer just can't make sense of the information on the disc at first. So that your computer to be able to read the game discs you need a specific program.

Thankfully, there are now businesses that have put together specialized game burning programs that make it possible for your pc to read the data on the disc. This makes it possible to copy Nintendo Wii games with your disc drive.

We should mention that these softwares are intended for people to make legal backups of games. If you buy a Nintendo Wii game and you wish to make a copy to make a backup, you can legally use this program. We aren't promoting any illegal burning of Wii games..

It's a snap to utilize these softwares. Whenever you want to copy a Wii disc you just have to put in the game disc, launch the software and it will start to burn the game.

You will simply place the Wii game in your disc drive and your computer system will then create an image of the game information. After this step, when you put in a blank CD or DVD disc, the system will burn the game info to the disc.

When you buy a software like this, pay attention that you get a moneyback guarantee. On the rare chance you aren't happy with it or it doesn't work on your system, then you have a chance to get your funds back.

Another important note - don't pay too much! That may sound obvious - I'm sure you are searching for the best deal. Sadly there are some software prices over $95 - that's just too much. You will find a software that lets you copy Nintendo Wii discs for well under fifty bucks fairly easily.