The UpStream

According to analysts, the Wii title Red Steel 2 sold only 50,000 copies its first week. In comparison, the original Red Steel sold over a million. The game itself is good, abandoning everything that was wrong with the first game, and has received glowing reviews from critics and gamers, yet there have been nearly no sales.

There are a couple of possibilities as to why. The first being that the terrible gameplay of the first game killed any hope of success for this one. It was a Wii launch title, so everyone bought it because it was the only non-minigame disc available at the time. That doesn't indicate that they ever finished it, and if they did, were immediately jonesing for some more. The fact that the developers made so many changes indicates even they knew it was a terrible game.

You may have heard of the game entitled Transformers: War for Cybertron which takes place before Optimus and the gang come to earth to cause ear splitting explosions and other various hearing related problems. Well, it looks like something extremely interesting and cool is coming out of this story line. Given that the game is placed in a time where transformers have never really been seen this means that there is tons of room for customization! Now you are probably asking yourself, "But why would I customize my own Transformer?" The answer is simple my friends, because if you plan on playing Transformers: War for Cybertron online, you will get to create your very own Transformer! There are countless possibilities when creating your Autobot or Decepticon. You get to chose from four archetypes being: The Scout, The Scientist, The Leader, and The Soldier, all having different powers and specialties at their disposal to wage war against the other side. But wait there's more! Thanks to this ambiguity of the games setting you also have to choice of changing into a wide variety of vehicles not necessarily set in reality. You can be anything from a space tank, to a fighter jet if that is what you desire. Needless to say I am truly looking forward to getting my hands on this game come June 22nd. Look out Decepticons cause here comes PLuGBoT!

Hit the break to check out the game trailer

Activision and ex-Infinity Ward leads Jason West and Vince Zampella find themselves in a bit of a tiff after Activision filed a lawsuit alleging that West and Zampella went behind Activisions's back by talking to their closest competitor (supposedly EA) with regards to Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 3. Activision also alleges that they kept post-poning the pre-production work on the game to have more leverage in negotiations with Activision. The two were then fired March 1st. In the 23 page lawsuit filing Activision stated,

Over the last 6 months or so, popularity of gLee has increased significantly. As part of the popularity, a number of flashmob events have been organized. Some of them officially, some of them unofficially, all of them awesome. Most recently, FOX Television planned a major flashmob in Seattle, Washington for yesterday. They produced a pair of instructional videos hosted by the choreographers for the show and hosted several rehearsals over the past few months.

With all of this hard work, what were they expecting to get out of this? Well, FOX says they wanted to create a fun experience. Obviously they wanted to create a media buzz for the return of the show this Tuesday both on TV and online, and it seems to have been successful.

Hit the break to see the flashmobs.

We already remember the words that people were using when Microsoft's Silverlight service launched over a year ago. Ugly, Horrible, Lacking, Under-performing. It was a very sad time. The MLB dropped Silverlight for Adobe, which caused a huge uproar and a loss of followers who are loyal to baseball. Even worse, a list of glitches over at Netflix caused the platform to be under fire.

Luckily, times have changed. Call Silverlight butter because they're on a roll! Microsoft has seen a plentiful bounty with NBC using Silverlight to stream the 2010 Winter Olympics as well as CBS using them for a mainly lag-free NCAA Men's college basketball tournament. CBSSports.com had reported to have streamed more than 11 million hours of live audio and video using Silverlight. Even Netflix has had a change of heart, stating that managers are generally happy with the service and performance with delivering digital content over the Internet. To make things better, Microsoft has announced that they are teaming up with Intel and Broadcom to make Silverlight work on set-top boxes and other devices. Also, later next week we should expect a release date for Silverlight's latest upgrade.

Mobile gaming has been evolving as of late. Nintendo added social gaming to their DS series a while back. Microsoft has announced the inclusion of Xbox Live in WinPho 7. Even the Apple mobile platform has a couple of choices for gaming networks, including OpenFeint and Plus+. When iPhone OS 4.0 releases this summer, Apple users will have yet another choice - Apple Game Center.

Game Center will have all of the features you would expect to find in a social gaming network - achievements, friends lists, leaderboards, matchmaking, profiles, etc. What does this mean for OpenFeint and Plus+, though? Both companies seem to have been prepared for this possibility down the line and appear to have a plan in place to not necessarily compete against it, but use it to enhance their own product offering. ngmoco's chief publishing officer, Simon Jeffrey, said in an email statement,