Popular logic dictates that when people are buying games online they’re not doing it in shops. This, however, appears to be a fallacy according to Valve, overlords of popular digital distribution service Steam. Recent data published by the firm suggests that promotions run through the platform can actually boost sales of boxed games.

Speaking to gamesindustry.biz, Doug Lombardi, marketing director of Valve said: “When we do our free weekends on Steam for our products we see an increase in player numbers, obviously, and then we’ll see a spike in sales at the end of the weekend on Steam and at retail,” he said. “And recently we’ve seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it’s just that word of mouth.”

Lombardi also reacted to criticism leveraged at the firm for supposedly attempting to undermine retail, “A lot of the ‘Steam is there to compete with retail’ stuff is sort of sensationalised. We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left 4 Dead than we did at any other chain. We sold more copies of Left 4 Dead at Gamestop than we did at any other chain.” He continued, “We’re supporting them with dollars for promotions and they’re supporting us by delivering top performance in terms of sell-through at their outlet with Left 4 Dead. My hope is that we can replicate that success with Left 4 Dead 2.”

Getting gamers to actually finish games is a big challenge for developers. No matter how well intentioned any gamer is, we’ve all had situations where one particular challenge is frustrating to the point that we eject the disc for one last time and condemn it to shelf somewhere to gather dust for all eternity. This disappointing scenario just isn’t good enough however for Maxime Beland, creative director of Splinter Cell: Conviction. Oh no, he actually wants people to finish his games.

“I want people to play my games and finish them,” Beland told Official Xbox Magazine. “We’re going to ship with difficulty levels, at least a normal mode and realistic mode - like we did on Rainbow Six Vegas. And realistic is going to be really fucking hard - you’re going to need stealth, two bullets is going to kill you, the enemies are going to be super-lethal. And then we’re going to have the normal mode for normal gamers, that are going to spend 12 hours playing our game and not 30 because they’re dying all the time.”

Splinter Cell: Conviction is expected to launch in October 2009.

Developer Reality Pump has shot out a little ‘it’s still coming’ press release to let everyone know that they are indeed moving forward with a sequel to the universally panned fantasy RPG Two Worlds, ingeniously titled Two Worlds II. You might be wondering what rules in this sequel. Well, next to “excitement, sheer enjoyment, and graphics rule,” the game’s plot will pick up a few years after the original and will allow players to explore new places around the fictional world of Antaloor. Reality Pump has infused the game with all new graphics and play mechanics which will surely (hopefully) provide for a more immersing and enjoyable game. A release date is yet to be announced, but it’s coming sometime this winter.

We’ve seen the screenshots of the crazyness EA’s vision of Hell contains. We’ve seen beautiful pre-rendered footage. We’ve heard the ‘it’s a God of War ripoff!’ screams. Now how’s about some actual gameplay footage? Cool music, check. Epic scale, check. Gameplay that looks pretty good (from what little can be said from watching a video), check. A team that has already proven they can whip up a good game, check. We’re guessing it’ll be a good one. 9 circles of Hell, here we come!

“We would love to do a demo,” said Gearbox Software’s Mikey Neumann in an interview with ShackNews. “If and when we do one, I don’t know if it’d be pre-launch or post-launch, because…there’s a lot of factors there.”

Though he didn’t really get into specifics, it’s pretty safe to assume that the artistically ambitious title’s looming November release date is a major factor. With Gearbox rushing to put the finishing touches on their post-apocalyptic sandbox shooter, whose once highly realistic graphics underwent an even more highly publicized makeover, there’s not a lot of time leftover. Testing and certification shave off even more.

“We would love to promise a demo, we can’t quite yet, we just want to get the game done.,” he continued, adding that the team with continue to work on Borderlands after release, designing downloadable content to further expand the fledgling franchise. That’s always the hardest thing for developers to do - you never quite know how the time’s going to work out. We’re doing really well, but I can’t promise it.”

I must admit, I will be bummed not to test drive this risky new property before purchase, but props to them at least for not playing the bonus blackmail game. I’d rather have no demo at all than have it be offered as as a pre-order bonus for the very game I’m pre-ordering.
Borderlands

A new trailer has been released for Timegate’s upcoming drop til you..umm..drop space marine-filled shooter Section 8, flashing flashy phrases like “a new kind of war” and “take combat to a new level” while showing some manly man armor-wearing soldiers of tomorrow in action. Besides all the manly and flashy things, plenty of gameplay also gets shown off, including the game’s big selling point, the burn in action each respawn starts with.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Eidos’ president Ian Livingstone said that 2009 will likely be an “all or nothing” year for videogame publishers, with games either becoming high-selling blockbusters or minor titles with unimpressive sales results. Livingstone’s reasoning for such a claim? He highlights the fact that “there’s a glut of product and in a discerning market there is no room for mediocrity. To make a suboptimal game with a suboptimal marketing spend is a recipe for disaster.” Moreover, Livingstone believes the gap between triple A titles and minor games will only widen, with budgets becoming larger and larger for established mainstream franchises.

Grasshopper’s CEO Goichi Suda (Suda51 for the cool people) told Edge the company will need to look beyond the Wii if it wants to evolve No More Heroes further. “I really want to make NMH a big franchise,” he said, “and with this second episode have a bigger success. I’m putting a lot of care into developing this IP, as I feel there’s a lot of potential.”

Although the Wii has a larger install base, a combination of struggling sales for third-party hardcore games and aspirations that can’t be realized on the console has led Suda to look for other, next-gen consoles. “I think this is the last NMH that is gong to be developed on Wii,” he said. “To expand NMH to new possibilities, we need a new platform. Wii is a great platform, but we’ve done everything we can with it now.”

Considering the work put into the first, and Suda’s comments for the future of the franchise, it will be all the more interesting to see how well Desperate Struggle does when it comes out.

Dead Island came, got us all interested, and then disappeared without even saying “see you soon, honey!” As it turns out, all the blame for why we haven’t written about Techland’s tropical zombie fest since our interview with the company back in April of last year can be put on the worldwide publisher they’ve found for the game. “I can understand how impatient our fans must be to see more news and assets from Dead Island,” Techland’s international brand manager Blazej Krakowiak told G4. “Unfortunately our agreement with the game’s worldwide publisher imposed a media silence on us. All we are allowed to say is that the game is in development and doing great and that all future updates regarding the game will come directly from the publisher.”

Who the publisher for the title is is anyone’s guess at this point, though it should be noted that Techland’s last two releases, Call of Juarez and the more recent Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, were both put on the shelves by Ubisoft.

Twitter has become THE place for breaking news of all sorts; Iran, celebrity deaths, iPhone giveaways. All of these have been heard first from the tweets of various people, so no big surprise that someone let slip that another addition to the Skate franchise would be forthcoming. “I just got told ‘tonight we gotta celebrate’, one of the bro’s got offered to be in SKATE 3,” tweeted Schmitty of Epicly Trife, a Skate website.

Kotaku’s attempts to reach EA for comment have gone unanswered, but we turned on the old TVGB charm and got some answers. According to Shirley Chu, Public Relations for EA, “The Skate team is currently focused on Skate 2 DLC. We have no further announcements planned at this time.”

Yeah, we got the touch.