Blue Castle Games is on a roll.

The Burnaby video-game developer’s Dead Rising: Case Zero has sold nearly half a million copies on Xbox Live Arcade, according to publisher Capcom. The game bridges 2006’s Dead Rising and Blue Castle’s Dead Rising 2, which will be released for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on September 28.

When I interviewed Blue Castle president Rob Barrett this summer, he said that he wanted to keep working with Capcom. “We’ve had a fantastic relationships with them,” he said.

Barrett got his wish.

Today at the Tokyo Game Show, Capcom announced it was acquiring the studio. Capcom’s managing corporate officer, Keiji Inafune, made the announcement during Capcom’s press briefing.

Blue Castle Games becomes Capcom Game Studios Vancouver.

Also announced was that Blue Castle/Capcom Vancouver is working on another downloadable chapter in the Dead Rising storyline. Dead Rising: Case West will be released exclusively for the Xbox 360. No release date was specified.

The epilogue will feature Chuck Greene, protagonist of Dead Rising 2, working with photojournalist Frank West, who was the hero of the first game.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

The mood at the Richmond Centre shopping mall was buoyant on Saturday, and not just because the sun was shining. No, the close to 400 people lined up outside the mall would have been there even had the rain – which was forecast – been torrential.

They were there for the grand opening of another Apple Store.

Michael Chira was first in line, having queued up at 6 p.m. on Friday night (September 10). He and many others were there to get a new iPhone 4. The devices have been in short supply since they became available in Canada on July 30.

The retail location, on No. 3 Road in Richmond and at the south end of the mall, is the 18th Apple Store in Canada. Earlier on Saturday, the 17th location opened in Newmarket, Ontario. Apple Canada representative Tara Hendela said between 500 and 600 people lined up for that event.

Nooshin Toloui, who is in charge of Apple stores in Western Canada, and who was on hand to open the Lower Mainland’s first Apple Store in 2008, walked media through the new location prior to opening.

“It’s exciting to see growth in Canada,” she said. She went on to explain that Apple’s retail stores are a “place for customers to come and play with the merchandise”. All the devices in the store, from computers to iPods, iPads, and iPhones, are in working order and are preloaded with content so customers can get hands-on and play music, watch movies, and even try out the latest killer feature for new iPhones and iPod Touches: FaceTime.

As with other Apple stores, the Richmond location is also a hub for learning and support, with the Genius Bar, public workshops, and the “one-to-one” program, which for an annual fee of $100 gives customers a year of personal training from one of the Apple Store “creatives”.

Part of the Apple Store grand opening program is for the employees to cheer the masses who have assembled, and 30 minutes before the doors opened, the blue-shirted Apple staff ran circles around the new customers, cheering, clapping, and throwing high-fives.

Toloui told me that every store is unique in its own way, but she expects the Richmond location to be distinguished by its staff and customers. Although she’s been with Apple for more than six years, and has opened more than a handful of stores, she’s still excited.

“I love what I do, I love the people I work with, I love the customers that come into the store,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

In this week’s Georgia Straight, I look at the implications of embedding the Xbox Live experience into the Windows Phone 7.

I also speak with IUGO’s Sarah Thomson about what the developer will be bringing to the platform this fall when the system launches.

This holiday season, gamers might finally help Microsoft gain some ground against Apple in the struggle for supremacy in the mobile market. When devices running the Windows Phone 7 operating system are released this fall – from manufacturers including HTC, LG, and Samsung – they will come equipped with Xbox Live, Microsoft’s digital-media delivery service.

In this week’s edition of the Georgia Straight are my reviews of Shank, developed in Vancouver by Klei Entertainment and the new Lara Croft adventure, Guardian of Light.

Both games were created for digital distribution to PCs and consoles, on PSN and XBLA.

Get the lowdown on both games.

Today’s Georgia Straight magazine is a high-tech special issue, and includes my feature story looking at Vancouver’s game development sector.

The mood is optimistic.

If there’s been one overarching theme in Vancouver’s video-game industry during the past couple of years, it’s been layoffs. As recently as the spring, Radical Entertainment and Slant Six Games shrank in size, adding to the stress of a sector that has suffered numerous job cuts and studio closures since the fall of 2008. But that may be about to change. In the remainder of 2010 and early 2011, Vancouver developers are set to release some of the year’s biggest, and best, games.