On Playfeed: Nintendo DSi announced, larger screens, dual cameras, DSi Shop store

Games With Online Multiplayer Sell More

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: Corporate News, Downloadable Content, Internet, Microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

Multiplayer, Globe with Halo 2 Lobby

A research paper from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research has been released that suggests that games with online support can be crucial to a game’s retail success. Not surprisingly, another way to boost sales is to create a quality game (defined as those with a 90+ score on Metacritic), with these well-reviewed titles outselling the average release well above 5-to-1.

While making good games typically means making good money, naturally, it is a bit surprising to see the report indicate that sales can be doubled by dropping in an online mode. With online games selling twice the number copies that offline titles do, it’s curious to note that over half of games released don’t offer even basic online support.

Click to continue reading Games With Online Multiplayer Sell More

Read More | Ars Technica

Advertisement

July NPD: Wii Reigns Supreme, Xbox 360 Edges Out PS3

Posted by Steve Van Neil
Categories: Corporate News, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Portable/Mobile, PSP, Sony, Wii

jumping MarioAccording to the latest NPD report, the video game industry generated almost a billion dollars of sales in the month of July.  Nintendo’s Wii led the charge with an absolutely astounding 425,000 units sold.  The Wii was followed by the PS2, which sold 220,000 units.  The Xbox 360 sold 170,000 units, once again beating the PS3, which sold 159,000 units.  On the portable side of things, the Nintendo DS sold a whopping 405,000 units, while the PSP moved 214,000 units.  Overall console sales are up almost 43% from this period last year.

All of this begs the question:  Where are people finding the Wii in such great numbers?  I haven’t seen one in a store since the beginning of the year, but somehow Nintendo keeps selling hundreds of thousands of them every month. 

Read More | Next Generation

Sony Believes PS3 Price Drop Helped Boost Sales

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: PlayStation 3, Sony

Sale = Sales has examined the most recent numbers and, happy with what they saw, are attributing their 61% jump from the previous month’s numbers to the PlayStation 3 price drop they announced just prior to E3. They are quick to point out that anticipation for some actual exclusive titles like and may have helped drive interest in their slow-out-of-the-gate console.

Despite the predictably upbeat tone of Sony’s blog post, some have had a less than enthusiastic response to July’s NPD numbers since many analysts predicted that Sony was going to beat the ’s sales in July largely because of the price drop. That the PS3 was still unable to overtake the 360 in sales in spite of a comparatively more affordable price has some worrying that Sony just doesn’t have enough market draw to convince consumers to take the plunge. What is plainly obvious now is that Sony drastically overestimated the price the market would bear: It’s wallet-busting PS3 has lagged in sales from the beginning while Nintendo’s $250 has flown off store shelves consistently for almost a year and as soon as the price went down on the PlayStation, it saw an improvement in units moved.

Read More | PlayStation Blog

65 Nanometer Microprocessors Coming to an Xbox 360 Near You

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: Hardware, Microsoft, Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Internal
Dean Takahashi has a write-up regarding the upcoming 65nm microprocessors reportedly shipping on new units. The more efficient processors are included on the new Falcon boards that are included standard in all units going forward. Of course, still needs to sell its existing stock of 90nm chip systems and as a result is being, shall we say, coy about the new processors and their availability.

Also of note is that these new Falcon boards curiously do not include replacement 65nm graphics processors, which some have speculated are at least partially responsible for the frequently discussed Red Rings of Death issue that Microsoft recently took steps to correct. Takahashi remarks that he expected the 65nm chips—both processor and graphics—to have appeared long before now but speculates that the problems with the 90nm boxes may have pulled Microsoft’s engineers away from the efficiency shift to concentrate on damage control.

The crux of the report is that buying a new Xbox 360 right now is probably not the wisest consumer decision, at least until someone determines how to effectively differentiate between the chip sizes from the outer boxes. Once the last of the 90nm systems have been liquidated from stock all 360s sold will include HDMI and the more efficient chips, which many believe (or perhaps hope) will be more reliable than 360s have historically been. The moral of the story then is for those considering an Xbox purchase to wait for a few months for the holiday buyers to clear out the older stock, something Microsoft hopes you won’t do which is why they remain so elusive with details on the new chips.

Read More | San Jose Mercury

Amazon Sells Out of Elite 360’s in Hours

Posted by Michael Cardiff
Categories: Release Dates, Rumors, Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Elite PackPersonally, it seemed like a strange move to me when Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 “elite” edition. For a console that had really carved out a position for itself in the current-gen competition, it seemed like the Elite was just M$ trying to make their console look more like a PS3. Well, color me wrong, because it seems like the Elite may be selling like hotcakes.

According to videogame news site Punch-Jump, the Xbox 360 Elite edition was posted on Amazon.com yesterday for pre-orders (good luck getting it on Sunday!), and sold out “within hours” of being listed. Of course, it’s not clear whether or not this actually represents M$ increasing their market share… are these truly *new* gamers, or just folks upgrading from their Platinum edition 360’s? We’ll be keeping a close eye on the NPD numbers next month… could this be the edge that Microsoft needs to beat out Sony in this round?

P.S. For those of you that weren’t madly refreshing the Amazon.com homepage on Thursday, you could always try your luck getting a Wii or Elite 360 at Target this week!

Read More | Punch-Jump.com

Microsoft’s Xbox Quarter: Losses Shrink, So Does Revenue

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Yesterday, Microsoft reported their quarterly results for the period ending March 31, 2007. Overall, the results were good for the company, moving to record profits based largely on getting Vista and the latest version of Office out the door. Still, for gamers, one thing has stood out – while losses in the Entertainment and Devices Division shrunk, so did revenues.

Dean Takahashi at Mercury News describes this reduction in sales as a “disturbing trend.” Since Microsoft doesn’t break out revenues by subgroup in the Entertainment division, it’s really hard to understand where this leaves the Xbox 360. Comparing March totals, Xbox 360 sales were down around 30% year-over-year, but this reflects a time period where Microsoft was still pretty much in the initial honeymoon phase of the console launch. Microsoft notoriously had supply problems during the first few months, but by March had seemed to catch up with demand, so the company was probably still dealing with early adopters.

More interesting is Takahashi’s dissection of the company’s ongoing losses with the Xbox 360. Even with cost reductions in hardware and having a really strong tie rate, the company is still losing money per console. With the estimated figures in the article, this projects to $53 lost per console. We can’t really know what the financials behind the Xbox 360 are, but project this to Sony, where their tie rate is much lower and the console hardware cost is much higher, or Nintendo, who claims to make a profit on each console sold, regardless of software sold later.

Read More | Microsoft’s Q3 Results

Read More | Mercury News

Nintendo Has Record Year on DS, Wii Sales

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii

Nintendo Nintendo just announced their financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007, and the numbers are huge. Revenues are up 90% to 996.5 billion yen, over $8 billion US. Profits are also up, nearly 150% to 226 billion yen, nearly $2 billion in profit.

Nintendo moved over 23 million DS handhelds, just an insane number, along with 5.84 million Wii consoles. The Wii number seems to be short of Nintendo’s projections of 6 million units—this would seem to point to a genuine supply constraint on Nintendo’s part. Some analysts had suspected that Nintendo was holding back shipments of the Wii because Nintendo had “made their numbers” but Nintendo’s results would seem to indicate that this was not the case.

Nintendo’s projections have them selling 14 million Wii consoles in the upcoming fiscal year, and 22 million DS handhelds. 22 million would seem to be a conservative estimate, given their strong sales from the previous year. 14 million Wii consoles moved, though, would seem to indicate a fairly decent ramp up in Wii production in order to meet their targets. Overall, though, the console that both Sony and Microsoft dismissed seems to be poised to challenge for the lead in worldwide sales.

Nintendo’s full press release continues below

Click to continue reading Nintendo Has Record Year on DS, Wii Sales


March NPD Data Hits, DS, PS2, Wii Lead Sales

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox 360

DS LiteThe NPD sales data for March has been released, and Gamasutra is reporting on the sales numbers. Overall, the sales data pretty much seemed to follow expectations. The Nintendo DS again showed strong sales, moving over 500,000 units in March. Sunday’s release of the latest in the Pokemon series might have the potential to even spike this further in April and May. The PSP sold 180,000; this month’s price drop would seem to ensure an increase for April. Of the non-portable consoles, the PS2 continues to have legs, moving 280,000 consoles and outselling all of the current generation platforms. This was probably helped a bit by the release of God of War II, which sold over 833,000 units.

Within current generation platforms, rankings stayed the same. The ever-supply-constrained Wii moved 259,000 consoles; Nintendo has promised more supply, but this may not happen for a few months. The Xbox 360 continued to hold on, with 199,000 units sold, and Sony’s sales numbers held relatively steady at 130,000 units.

Read More | Gamasutra

Playstation 3 Sells 165K in UK

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Culture, PlayStation 3

PlayStation 3 Despite reports of low turnouts at midnight launch events for the PlayStation 3 in Europe, Sony managed to break records for console sales during its opening weekend, moving over 165,000 units in the UK. ChartTrack in the UK believes that this sells through approximately 75% of the initial launch allocation for the UK, and surpasses all other console launches in the territory, including the Wii and the Xbox 360. Gamasutra also reports on UK software sales for the opening weekend, with Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm taking spots one and two in the top ten. Of course, launch weekends are generally for the hard core; generally the first couple of million consoles sold are the easiest. Time will tell how Sony’s console does as its purchasing demographic shifts.

Read More | Gamasutra

NPD: Nintendo DS, Wii Lead Hardware Sales

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360

Wii February’s NPD data has been released, and things look good for Nintendo. 1up has the details on video game sales for last month, and the Nintendo DS sold 485,000 units, the Wii 335,000. For the rest of the next-generation hardware, Microsoft maintained its sales pace by moving around 228,000 consoles, while the Playstation 3 saw a significant drop to 127,000. The PSP didn’t do much better against the DS, moving 176,000 handhelds.

The only bright spot for Sony would be that in the non-handheld category, the PS2 took second behind the Wii, selling 295,000 units, showing that their now last-generation technology still has plenty of legs at retail. Still, having their PS3 sales drop by nearly half over last month’s sales is a significant change; if new software from Sony can’t change course, the company may have to do something drastic to turn things around.

Microsoft should be pretty happy; while they didn’t lead the pack, the company will surely trumpet their increase in year-over-year sales. That, and having the number one game at retail for the month of February, Crackdown will also help. 1up’s article also further details the rest of the software charts for the month.

Read More | 1up

Advertisement