Frictionless Insight

It's the first Monday of a new year, but Nintendo is keeping its tradition of releasing downloadable games for the Wii. Today's new downloads are:

If, for your New Year's Eve, you prefer word games to heavy drinking, Microsoft has a solution for you. Today, Merv Griffin's Crosswords is available as a download through Xbox Live Arcade.

Once again, it's Monday, so (once again) Nintendo has added more downloadable games for the Wii with two WiiWare titles and once Virtual Console game. This week's additions are:

It may be Christmas Eve, but Microsoft has still added another downloadable game for the Xbox 360. This week's addition comes from Eidos. Puzzle Arcade is available for 800 points ($10) and has Xbox 360 owners solving jigsaw puzzles using their console. The game includes around 35 jigsaw puzzles. More are available as premium downloads or can be created using the Xbox Live Vision camera.

Digital Eel, in conjunction with Shrapnel Games, has released Brainpipe: A Plunge to Unhumanity as a download for the PC. The game can be purchased for $15 and is an endurance-run-style arcade game that features eyeball buttons.

Thanks to the upcoming holiday, Sony has released downloadable games through the PlayStation Store early this week:

Blizzard, part of Activision Blizzard, is thrilled to gloat that its massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft now has around 11.5 million subscribers worldwide following the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Paradox Interactive has released Global Crisis, an expansion pack for its game Supreme Ruler 2020 as a PC download through its GamersGate portal for $20. The expansion adds 20 new scenarios, a new map and various tweaks and improvements to the original game.

Nyko's Charge Station Quad, designed to keep four Wii Remotes charged and on hand for use, has shipped to stores and is now available for $50.

Nintendo has released another three downloadable games for the Wii:

Publisher: Turbine
Developer: Turbine

Platform: PC
Reviewed on PC

Windows System Requirements: Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 64 MB nVidia GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 with DirectX 9.0c, 9 GB HD space, 2x DVD ROM, internet connection, Windows XP

"Moria. Once it was glorious, the greatest of Dwarf-cities, but now its fabled halls are filled with shadow and death. Men and Dwarves whisper its name with awe, and even Hobbits know enough to fear it. Known by the Dwarves as Khazad-dum, Moria is a realm far greater than any have imagined. Filled with incredible treasures and unspeakable dangers, the Black Pit has been the bane of many, but has never been fully explored until now."

Electronic Arts offered more details on EA's plans to cut costs and fire staff. To achieve annual savings of $120 million, EA expects it will incur restructuring charges of $55 to $65 million over the next few quarters. In doing so, EA expects to cut 10% of its jobs worldwide, more than EA previously expected.

Atlus plans to release The Dark Spire for the DS on March 10, 2009. The Dark Spire will be a dungeon-crawl role-playing game in the style of old PC games like Wizardry (and will even feature a mode in which the dungeon appears as a black-and-white wireframe image.

A variety of games have been added to the PlayStation Store today, including new releases for the PlayStation 3 and older games for the PSP:

Atlus USA has acquired the North American publishing rights to Hammerin' Hero, a side-scrolling brawler for the PSP. The game should be released on March 3, 2009, and has players beating up "corporate evil across Japan."

PopCap's game Mystery P.I. - Portrait of a Thief is now in stores for the DS. The hidden-object-style game has players tracking the theft of stolen paintings and was developed together with Black Lantern Studios.

Capcom has shipped the Wii version of Neopets Puzzle Adventure. The game is already available for the PC and DS and has players interacting with the Neopets world by playing variants on the classic games of Go and Reversi.

Developer Red Rocket Games announced itself to the universe today (despite being around since 2005), as a developer of casual games for PC and Mobile gamers. The company was founded by Jung Suh (of GameFly) and Scott Yu (formerly a technical art director at Electronic Arts). The company is headquartered in Shanghai with an office in Bellevue, Washington. Red Rocket plans to use its access to Chinese developers to keep costs low.

GPU manufacturer nVidia is now providing downloadable driver updates for notebook computers with nVidia GPUs. As notebook owners know, such updates were not previously provided, sticking average notebook owners with the same configuration they had at purchase. Recognizing the increasing importance of notebooks in PC gaming (and nVidia's desire to distribute its PhysX drivers), nVidia is improving its support for mobile GPUs.

Square Enix currently plans to release Dissidia Final Fantasy for the PSP in the middle of 2009. The game will feature battle system new for the Final Fantasy series created by the folks behind the system used in Kingdom Hearts as well as plenty of cameos from Final Fantasy's most famous characters. The game itself features characters participating in the epic battle between the goddess of harmony and the god of discord.

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: Black Hole Entertainment

Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
Reviewed on Xbox 360

Whether by the Hordes of Chaos or the Empire, villages and cities in the world of Games Workshop's Warhammer are always being ravaged by one force or another. In this real-time strategy adaptation of the turn-based tabletop strategy game, you can maraud as an Imperial army or orcish horde in the seemingly eternal war that plagues the Old World.

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: Black Hole Entertainment

Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
Reviewed on PC

Windows System Requirements: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB nVidia GeForce FX or ATI 9600, 3 GB HD space, internet connection, Windows XP or more recent operating system

Whether by the Hordes of Chaos or the Empire, villages and cities in the world of Games Workshop's Warhammer are always being ravaged by one force or another. In this real-time strategy adaptation of the turn-based tabletop strategy game, maraud as an Imperial army or orcish horde in the seemingly eternal war that plagues the Old World.

Take-Two Interactive released its financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year ended October 31, 2008.

Nintendo has settled a lawsuit that it file against peripheral manufacturer Nyko. The lawsuit accused Nyko of infringing on Nintendo's patents relating to the Wii Nunchuk controller when Nyko manufactured the Kama wireless controller. Nyko will continue to sell a redesigned version of the Kama wireless controller.

This week's Xbox Live Virtual Arcade release is a free advergame called Doritos Dash of Destruction.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Midway confirmed that it will significantly cut its staff and will incur around $20 million of costs related to the company's financial position and change of control.

Codemasters' game Rise of the Argonauts has shipped to stores in North America for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The game has players taking on the role of Jason, traveling the ancient world and battling mythological creatures.

Sony Online Entertainment, in conjunction with LucasArts, has released the first expansion for the Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game, called Squadrons Over Corellia. The expansion adds 250 playable cards and 22 cards redeemable for loot within the massively multiplayer online game Star Wars Galaxies, all of which can be purchased a few at a time.

Developer inXile entertainment has acquired another online property to transform into a game. The company has released console and mobile versions of the internet hit Line Rider. Now, inXile is working on a mobile version of Fantastic Contraption, an online physics puzzle developed by Colin Northway while also working on monetizing traffic to the Fantastic Contraption site.

Mastiff has shipped its game Deer Drive for the Wii to stores in North America. The game has up to four players participating in a hunting party shooting deer with the Wii Remote.