Nintendo Co Ltd.’s (ADR: NTDOY) Disaster: Day of Crisis for the Wii will debut on the simExchange on Friday, April 20, 2007. The game will be categorized under the Action genre. Shares will open for purchase at 45 DKP (forecasts 450,000 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime).

Disaster: Day of Crisis is a new IP targeting a more mature audience for Nintendo. The premise of the game is to survive natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunami. You will have to run and drive your way to safety. Your character is an ex-elite rescuer experienced in such situations. On top of an angry Mother Nature, there are some rogue baddies after you as well.

The game’s listing was submitted by Shadar.

Electronic Arts Inc’s (NASDAQ: ERTS) Burnout 5 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 will debut on the simExchange on Thursday, April 19, 2007. The game will be categorized under the Racing genre. Shares will open for purchase at 100 DKP (forecasts 1 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime) for the Xbox 360 version and 85 DKP for the PS3 version.

Burnout 5 is the next installment of the Burnout series for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The game will feature an open world in fictional Paradise City. Criterion Games says Burnout 5 will be a complete reinvention of the series.

Burnout 5 is expected in late 2007. The game’s listing was submitted by Renegade242.

Ubisoft Entertainment’s Prince of Persia: Rival Swords for the Wii and PSP will debut on the simExchange on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. The game will be categorized under the Adventure genre. Shares will open for purchase at 70 DKP (forecasts 700,000 copies sold worldwide over lifetime) for the Wii version and 45 DKP for the PSP version.

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords is a Wii and PSP re-release of 2005’s Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones that was featured on the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PC. The game is the third part of the Sands of Time trilogy. For those new to the series, you play as the Prince of Persia (surprise?) in ancient Persia caught in a time traveling plot.

The game places as a third-person action game with a focus on acrobatic abilities. The third installment added stealth to the Prince’s list of abilities in which you can silently dispatch guards. Part of the story is an enchanted sand that has caused the Prince to go schizo. Throughout the game, a darker personality will question what you are doing and at times the personality will even take over, transforming you into the Dark Prince. Once again, you will acquire sand that allows you to manipulate time (basically giving you a do over after you miss a jump or take heavy hits from an enemy).

Rival Swords on the Wii is controlled mostly in standard controller fashion. Moving is controlled with the analog stick and jumping, running, and manipulating time is done by simply pressing a button. However, the camera can be controlled by rolling the Wiimote left and right or using the D-pad. Attacking can be executed by slashing the Wiimote like you would a sword. The graphics are on par with those of the version for the original Xbox.

Rival Swords on the PSP features additional content. Instead of automatically destroying sand portals in previous versions, the PSP game includes an additional minigame in which you dive into the portal to close it. The version also features a chariot race in which you navigate through obstacles and fight the Vizier’s men. Ubisoft also gave the PSP version multiplayer game play in a mode to race through levels against your friends.

The game was released on April 3, 2007 in North America and on April 5, 2007 in Europe. The listing was submitted by Simulazn.

Capcom Co Ltd’s Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii will debut on the simExchange on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. The game will be categorized under the Shooter genre. Shares will open for purchase at 125 DKP (forecasts 1.25 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime).

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a new Resident Evil game designed specifically for the Nintendo Wii. The game plays like an arcade light gun on rails game. The game will automatically move you and monsters will pop up for you to shoot. The Wiimote is used to control the crosshair while the Nunchuk can be used to change your view.

The game’s story will cover Resident Evil 0 through 3 from the perspective of the Umbrella Corporation. You will go through many familiar locations from the previous games, along with the zombies and dogs you have grown so found of.

The game’s listing was submitted by myplague.

Electronic Arts Inc’s Spore (DS) for the Nintendo DS will debut on the simExchange on Monday, April 16, 2007. The game will be categorized under the Strategy genre. Shares will open for purchase at 100 DKP (forecasts 1 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime).

This stock is for the DS version of the upcoming Spore (PC) game. Spore is designed by Will Wright, the famed creator of SimCity and the Sims. It is uncertain how the game will be translated from the PC to the DS.

The premise of the PC game is a simulation of life from the beginning. You begin as a tiny life form in a pool of primordial ooze. You will evolve from a single cell organism that just swims around eating other single cell organisms to the second phase of the game where you have evolved into an animal like creature. The customization of your creature is supposedly limitless. Once you have evolved from here, you will enter the third phase where you organize into a tribe. Not satisfied with that you will build cities and then civilizations. Ultimately, you will leave the planet to build your intergalactic empire. ?

?Spore combines various forms of gameplay, from 2D protozoa eat protozoa action to 3D prey hunting/predator fleeing, from SimCity-like management to larger scale Civilization-like conquest.

The game's listing was submitted by Jayen.

The simExchange is launching the futures market for video games. In this first adventure, the simExchange will be running a market in US monthly sales based on data provided by the NPD Group.

What exactly is a futures market you ask? Futures are contracts between two parties to sell something at an agreed price at some date in the future. The basic idea was that a farmer had some corn he would sell three months from now. However, he didn’t want to worry about what the price of corn would be three months down the road, and so he entered into a futures contract with a buyer that requires the farmer to sell the corn to the buyer in three months at a set price, say $1 per ear. This ensures the farmer a buyer at a price he is comfortable selling in case corn goes down below $1 per ear three months from now, but prevents him from making additional money if the price of corn goes beyond $1 per ear.

In the trading world, futures are often traded with no intention to actually deliver the underlying product, such as corn or oil. Traders are often speculating that something like oil will be worth more or less in the future and they settle the futures contract by paying the cash difference instead of actually selling the oil. For example, an oil futures contract is predicting oil will be worth $55 next month. Mario believes this prediction is too low, but Bowser thinks the prediction is too high. Mario takes the buyer side of the futures contract and Bowser takes the seller side. On expiration day, the price of oil is $60. Instead of delivering any oil to Mario, Bowser just pays Mario $5 to cover the difference.

On the simExchange, futures contracts predict the number of units a console or game will sell in a particular time period. For example, the futures contract PlayStation 3 US March 2007 predicts the number of PS3 units that will be sold in the US in March 2007. If the price is 15 DKP, then the contract is predicting 150,000 PS3 units will be sold in the US in March 2007. If you think that is too low, you would buy the futures contract. If you think that is too high, you would short sell the futures contract. When NPD reports March 2007 sales for the US, the contract will expire. If the PS3 ended up selling 180,000 units, then the contract will pay 18 DKP at expiration, so you would earn 3 DKP if you had bought the futures contract at 15 DKP. Unlike stocks, futures contracts have a pre-specified date of expiration in which they pay out cash and cease to exist.

All futures contracts referring to US sales pay DKP based on sales reported by the NPD Group. Futures contracts will expire at 3PM Eastern/12PM Pacific time on the day NPD reports. If a futures contract is for a game that does not make the Top 10 (games which NPD publicly releases unit sales), than that contract expires at 0 DKP. Margin and diversification rules that apply to stock are applied to the same to futures contracts. March 2007 contracts are a test run of the new futures market and rules are subject to change in the future.

The Platform, Genre, and Search pages now display the predicted number of copies that will be sold globally. You can also sort the Platform and Genre listings by title, prediction/price, change, and percent change. This allows you to quickly see which are the most anticipated games and most active stocks of each platform and genre.

Available Margin to Short now shows a more accurate figure of your total shorting capacity. Shorting now takes into account the cash you will receive.

DKP costs and rewards from bidding have been updated. Please see the simExchange Rules page for the latest rates. The goal is to reward good content submitters and commenters and appropriate bidding.

Stock charts have been fixed so that the candlesticks connect when they should. Certain bugs and other issues such as with the Industry News page have now been fixed.

The simExchange will be down sometime after midnight tonight (Pacific time) as we upgrade servers and apply updates. Trading in the simExchange’s new futures market will begin tomorrow!

Atari, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: ATAR) Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) has declined 29.5% over the past month in a downward decay that has stretched months. Many traders questioned the ultimate success of the blockbuster Neverwinter Nights’ sequel as Atari has remained silent on the game’s sales since its release last November and the game has been absent from US Top 10 PC games charts. The stock had attracted one of the largest short interest on the simExchange.

Yesterday, the selling trend snapped and the shorts were squeezed to cover their positions following a press release from Atari, announcing Mask of the Betrayer as the expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2 and that the franchise has sold over three million copies worldwide. The simExchange’s top trader, Zukaus, pointed to the previous press release when Neverwinter Nights 2 had gone gold that claimed the franchise had sold two million copies. Zukaus inferred that Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) has sold somewhere near a million units, putting the game over the 980,000 copies sales prediction the market was forecasting after months of shorting. The market agreed with Zukaus' comments as the stock rose 24.16 DKP (24.65%) yesterday to close at 122.16 DKP (forecasts 1.22 million copies sold globally). The stock continues to rise today, up 7.33%.

Upon deeper reflection, the IPO for Sony Corp.’s Killzone 2 (PS3) has been revised from 200 DKP down to 150 DKP (forecasts 1.50 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime). Although the game is highly anticipated by many, the historical comps and the low bids for the game’s listing on the simExchange have lead us to reconsider the IPO price.