2010 has already proven itself to be a big year for games and only two months have gone by so far. From the look of things, March doesn’t seem like it is going to slow down either.

Cross platform heavyweights Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Final Fantasy XIII start off the month strong while Mega Man 10 finds itself sprinkled through the month on the various consoles. Closing out the month on the cross platform titles is Just Cause 2.

Likely the biggest individual release will come from the PlayStation 3 with God of War III. After being the inevitable comparison for Dante’s Inferno, Kratos comes out on March 16th ready to take no prisoners. The PlayStation 2’s lifecycle finally looks to be coming to an end as it only has one release this month.

Take a look below at every game coming out for the month of March.

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Most of us can look back and remember the glory days of video games. Before memory cards. Before hi-res 3D models.

Back when you had to blow the dust out of the cartridge to get it to turn on. Back to the NES. The Nintendo Entertainment System.

It’s been almost fifteen years since the last NES cartridge was produced. Many college kids break out their old systems and play the classics like Super Mario Bros. and Dunk Hunt still to this day. But someone felt like giving the old system one last try.

Sivak Games brings Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril to the NES. True to its 8-Bit ancestors, Battle Kid puts a simple protagonist against overwhelming odds in this platform adventure as players must navigate through the game’s more than 550 rooms.

For a mere $30, players can order the slick see through green cartridge complete with classic black slip case and instruction manual just like we remember begging our parents to buy us back in the days of our youth from RetroZone.  Quantities may be limited.

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Mark your calendars Nintendo fanboys (and fangirls). After a slow start to 2009, Nintendo finished with a vengeance with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for Wii. Not wanting to give Sony or Microsoft any time to regain the top of the NPD sales charts, Nintendo has announced release dates on their biggest titles for the first half of 2010.

According to Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing: “Nintendo finished 2009 with a bang, and we’re continuing our momentum into 2010… With Nintendo DSi XL, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M coming in the first six months of the year, we’re making sure all our fans have great game content to enjoy year-round.”

Here’s what we have to look forward to from Nintendo in the next 6 months and what Nintendo has to say about them.

March 23rd – Nintendo DSi XL
Suggested Retail Price: $189.99
The screens of the Nintendo DSi XL are 93 percent larger than those of the Nintendo DS Lite model, providing a more vivid and engaging play experience. The screens of the Nintendo DSi XL also feature a wider viewing angle, letting friends and family members join the fun.

The new system launches in both Burgundy and Bronze colors, and comes loaded with pre-installed premium software Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters, Brain Age Express: Math and Photo Clock, as well as two free applications: the Nintendo DSi Browser and Flipnote Studio. Nintendo DSi XL will also come with a larger pen-like stylus that allows for a more comfortable grip and enhanced ease of use when playing games that use the Nintendo DS touch screen.

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With the movie business seeing record box office in the form of James Cameron’s Avatar, another business that used to also be thought of as pretty successful seems to have stalled a bit last year. According to Variety, the video game business saw an overall fall in sales of 8% with revenues of $19.7 Billion last year.

That’s down from $21.4 billion in 2008, according to the NPD Group, a company that keeps track of this sort of thing. The industry was expected to take a hit after only four months last year saw an increase in sales over 2008. One of those months, however, was December.

The videogame industry’s $5.5 Billion take in December was the biggest sales month ever, beating the previous year by 4%. Nintendo’s “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” was the winner of the month, selling over 2.8 Million units. Nintendo also sold 3.8 Million Wii consoles during December thanks largely to a price cut on the popular device.

Cost reductions also helped Sony sell 1.4 million PlayStation 3’s and Microsoft to move 1.3 million Xbox 360s. For the year every videogame category experienced a decline aside from sales of portable hardware, up 6%. Console sales were off 13%, and software sales for PC games took an even bigger hit, with earnings down 23% to $538 Million in 2009.

Even with the drop in sales last year, let’s try not to feel too bad for the video game industry. Even though the made 8% less money in 2009, they still managed to rack up $19.7 Billion dollars. That’s a lot of Mountain Dew and salty snack foods.

Even with all the movie and TV news we do around here, we also love us some games — especially when those games tie into a movie. Case in point is the upcoming game from Activision and High Moon Studios: Transformers: War for Cybertron. In case you’re not familiar, the game features two distinct storylines: the Autobot campaign tells a story of heroism to save their home planet against overwhelming odds, and the Decepticon campaign tells a story of an unquenchable thirst for power to control the universe.

You will also be able to “play the game with friends through team-based online co-op, or go head to head in a variety of intense, online multiplayer game modes.” In addition, the game “features a sci-fi art style that introduces to fans the entire living, metallic world of Cybertron, as well as all-new visualizations of the iconic Transformers characters in their original Cybertronian forms.” I don’t know about you but I think that sounds pretty awesome. The trailer isn’t bad either.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is in development and will be released later this year for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC and DS.

Check out the brand new trailer after the jump.

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Today, Netflix announced it will be adding another gaming console to its list of streaming video partners: the Nintendo Wii. The companies are teaming up to bring Netflix’s streaming media service to the console this spring. Of course, in order to take advantage of this service, Wii owners will need to have a broadband internet-connected Wii (who doesn’t?) and a subscription to a minimum $8.99 Netflix plan.

Now the bad news. Similar to the service on the PS3, the Wii will not have an embedded application like it is on the XBox 360 and instead will require a Netflix application disc which must be inserted in the Wii while accessing content. Given that, still ready to jump on board? If so, you can sign up now to receive additional information and reserve an application disc at Netflix’s website.

Even with having to use the disk this is still great news for those of you who use a Wii and don’t have an XBox 360 or PS3. We realize that not everyone can have more than one console and many people prefer the Wii over the other two. So, even though it took some time, we’re glad this service will finally be available for you — silly inserted disk requirement not withstanding.

Capcom has been proud to bring customers the Nintendo DS hit Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright in the past. Now, they intend on trying to capture lightning in a bottle once again by moving the investigation from the court room to the crime scene itself. Coming February 16th, Capcom is releasing Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth for the Nintendo DS and DSi.

Remembered as the rival of Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth returns from a month long vacation to find out that his office has become a crime scene. This demo lets players go through the early part of the investigation as Miles tries to figure out who the victim is, contradictions in the crime scene that point to foul play and a rival prosecutor who is looking to muck up Miles’ investigation.

The game takes Miles through a series of episodes, the first of which can be played below in the included Flash Demo. The game itself will feature over 15 total hours of gameplay (a hefty amount for a hand-held game). Players will investigate scenes and logically try to piece together pieces of evidence. When confronting possible suspects, they will have to listen carefully to the logic being used in their testimony and find inconsistencies from what they are being told and what they know as fact.

Check out the first trailer for the game below, which will be available for the Nintendo DS on February 17, 2010.

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Late last week, the NPD Group who is in charge of tracking, compiling and interpreting sales numbers for the video game industry released their console and game sales figures for the month of October with some surprising results. These numbers do not include Walmart sales or digital distribution of games. Let’s take a look.

Console Sales

1. Nintendo Wii: 506,900 (up from 462,800)

2. Nintendo DS: 457,600 (down from 524,200, includes all Nintendo DS SKU’s and Nintendo DSi)

3. Playstation 3: 320,600 (down from 491,800)

4. XBox 360: 249,700 (down from 352,600)

5. PSP: 174,600 (up from 146,000, includes all PSP SKU’s and PSP Go)

6. Playstation 2: 117,800 (down from 146,000)

So what does this mean for the video game industry? A few things. Nintendo takes back their top non-portable spot after losing it last month to the price reduced Playstation 3. Back over the half million a month mark, the Nintendo Wii price reduction to $199 had been a long time coming and has shown it was enough of a stimulus to even beat out the Nintendo DS as the top selling console of the month. While Sony made a huge campaign out of their price drop back in September, Nintendo has been more subtle about theirs, only posting in circulars instead of the TV adds Sony has used to attempt to make up ground.

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Score: 7.5 – Nintendo Wii – $49.99

Bakugan. Two years ago, much like name like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and various other soon to be Japanese trends, the word “Bakugan” would have meant nothing to the average person, and especially not to any children or parents. Now, it is an obsession selling DVDs and tiny shape changing balls that play a game that could be described as a combination of Magic: The Gathering, the Transformers and marbles. Activision has taken this license that has become popular enough to earn itself a spot as this month’s McDonald’s Happy Meal toy and brought it in to the video game world.

Gameplay:

As mentioned above, the Bakugan game plays much like a combination of a collectible card game and marbles. Players place cards on the field that contain magnets in them. They then take turns rolling their Bakugan, trying to land on a card. Players try to steer their ball towards the appropriate card while their opponent takes pop shots to divert the ball in the opposite direction in a shooting gallery style minigame.

When they do, the small Bakugan ball will pop open, revealing the monster inside. When two monsters land on the same card, their stats are compared and extra cards are played to enhance the power of the monster. The Bakugan with the highest total wins. This formula ends up translating really well in to the video game format.

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Score: 6.5 – Nintendo Wii – $29.99

Now, I know what you are thinking. Another collection of minigames on the Nintendo Wii. Afterall, it is the defining “genre” of the system right? At San Diego Comic Con, we got the chance to sit down with Hudson and get a first peek at Deca Sports 2.  The followup to their million seller, Deca Sports, Hudson didn’t set out in hopes of improving the ten sports of the original. They looked to put out ten new sports that could only be made as fun as possible through the unique control of the Nintendo Wii.

Gameplay:

Gameplay in Deca Sports 2 is going to inevitably going to be compared to WiiSports and WiiSports Resort. Both franchises are collections of sports games, although the original WiiSports has shown it is more of a tech demo than anything else in terms of actual being a “game.” Deca Sports 2 must also overcome the stigma already attached to it from the lack of WiiMotion Plus.

Not because they didn’t wish to include it, Hudson simply didn’t have enough time after the release of WiiMotion Plus to include the new technology in the game and still keep it on schedule for its recent release. Should Deca Sports 2 have the same level of success, it is highly likely that the third in the series would include WiiMotion Plus.

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