2008 in video gaming

Notable events of 2008 in video gaming. See also history of video games. The release dates listed in this article are the games' original release dates.

Events

• May 28: Ubisoft announces Beyond Good & Evil 2 during the end of Ubidays at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France, along with a teaser trailer featuring the game's first-two main characters: Pey'j and (possibly, though never focused clearly) Jade.
• June 28: Blizzard Entertainment announces Diablo III at Paris, France.
• November 13: Zeebo was announced. The console is aiming for developing countries.
• March 10, 2009: 5th British Academy Video Games Awards, honuring achievement for video games released in late 2007 and 2008.

Notable releases

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• January 31 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the successor to the Nintendo GameCube's best-selling game, Super Smash Bros. Melee,^[1][2] was released in Japan for the Wii. The game is a joint cooperation between former rival companies, Nintendo and Sega, along with the help of Konami.^[3][4] It is the first Wii game to strongly support online play.^[5] It dominated sales during its first week in Japan and the United States, selling 820,000 in Japan and becoming the fastest-selling video game in Nintendo of America's history with 1.4 million sold in the US.^[6][7][8]
• April 29 - Grand Theft Auto IV was released simultaneously for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A few Hollywood producers have set precedent by beginning to browse video game release dates to check for conflicts due to Grand Theft Auto IV's potential harm to the May 2, 2008 release of Iron Man.^[9] The PS3 and Xbox 360 version has taken the second and fourth positions of Game Rankings' best-rated games of all time, respectively;^[10] as well as being the first console game since 1999 to receive a perfect rating from IGN,^[11] and the first title to receive a perfect rating from GameSpot since 2001.^[12]
• June 12 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PlayStation 3 was released to critical acclaim, earning also a 10 out of 10 from both IGN and GameSpot,^[13][14] and a 94% Metacritic rating.^[15] As of June 26, 2008, the game has shipped 3 million copies worldwide,^[16][17] selling 1 million in Europe^[18] over 500,000 in Japan,^[19] and 1 million in the US.^[20]
• November 13 - Blizzard Entertainment releases the anticipated World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion set for the popular World of Warcraft computer game (MMORPG)^[21] to critical acclaim. It sold 2.8 million copies within the first 24 hours of availability. This makes it the fastest selling computer game of all time.^[22]

Business

• July 15 to July 17 - E3 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California, United States.
• July 31 to August 3 - QuakeCon 2008 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.
• October 2 to October 4 - Nintendo conference held in San Francisco, USA and Tokyo, Japan.
• December 1 - National Amusements' Sumner Redstone sells his controlling stake in Midway Games to private investor Mark Thomas, for $100,000 ($0.0012 a share), and assumes $70 million of senior secured and unsecured debt.^[23]
• December 9 - Infogrames, Atari's parent company, purchases Cryptic Studios.^[24]

Open to the public

• August 21 to August 24 - Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany.
• October 3 to October 5 - E for All at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
• October 9 to October 12 - Tokyo Game Show at the Makuhari Messe International Convention in Mihama-ku, Chiba, Japan.^[25]
• October 9 to October 12 - Games Convention Asia in Singapore.
• October 10 to October 11 - Blizzcon 2008 in Anaheim, California, U.S.A.

Releases

Hardware and software sales

Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (September 2008)

Canada

• Based on figures from the NPD Group:

Video game console sales in Canada (first seven months of 2008)^[26]

Japan

• Based on figures from Enterbrain:

Video game console sales of 2008 in Japan (December 31, 2007 – December 28, 2008)^[27][28][29]

Best-selling video games of 2008 in Japan (December 31, 2007 – December 28, 2008)^[27][28][29]

• Based on figures from Dengeki:

Best-selling video games of 2008 in Japan (December 31, 2007 – December 21, 2008)^[30][31][32]

United States

• Based on figures from the NPD Group:

Video game console sales in the US (first six months of 2008)^[33]

Best-selling video games of 2008 in the US^[34][35]

• Based on figures from the NPD Group via IGN;^[36][37] the games' publishers are listed in brackets:

Best-selling video games of 2008 in the US (by platform)^a[›]

^ a: In the IGN articles used as sources, IGN lists the titles as the "Top 10 Sellers in 2008"; however, the IGN articles were published on December 9–12, 2008, so the articles might not take into account November and December sales figures, as the NPD Group did not release November's console game sales figures until December 11, 2008.^[43]

• Based on figures from the NPD Group:

Best-selling console games of all time in the US (as of May 1, 2008)^[44]

Note: This list only includes games that were released after NPD started tracking video game sales data.

Other

• Based on figures from Enterbrain, GfK Chart-Track, and the NPD Group, respectively:

Best-selling video games in Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States combined (January–July 2008)^[45]

Best-selling video games in Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States combined (July–September 2008)^[46]

References

Current CVG Events