business
December 16th, 2009 at 01:45pm
Under PSP
After a strong 2009, Sony plans to focus its efforts in the coming year on some new initiatives — notably the still unnamed and, with a “Spring 2010 release,” curiously under-promoted PlayStation Motion Controller, 3D games, and the PlayStation Network. In a recent GamePro interview, Sony marketing head John Koller said the company will be focusing on these “three big pillars” going forward, and detailed its plans to expand on each. “I think the areas that are going to be really critical to our success will be family games, as well as shooters and sports games … they’re areas that quite honestly, I think Project Natal and the Wii are going to have trouble matching,” he said of the company’s motion controller plans.
Without getting too specific, the PlayStation Network will apparently be seeing the addition of “a number of very critically demanded features” in the coming year, while the company strives to reach day-and-date release parity between UMD-based PSP games and their digital counterparts from third-party devs on PSN. He even teased the concept of “placing you as a consumer into the game physically” — an idea he called “the Holy Grail of gaming.” We get the feeling 2010 is going to be kind of a weird year, folks.
Sony’s Koller calls ‘motion control, 3D gaming, PSN’ focal points of 2010 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: 2010, 3d, 3d-games, business, john-koller, marketing, playstation-motion-controller, playstation-network, psn, psp-go, sony
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Sony’s Koller calls ‘motion control, 3D gaming, PSN’ focal points of 2010
December 11th, 2009 at 04:15pm
Under DS
Yesterday’s NPD announcement that New Super Mario Bros. Wii had sold 1.4 million copies in the November NPD period was impressive. But Nintendo topped it today by noting that, including sales after the NPD cutoff date, the game has reached a total of two million copies. It’s not Modern Warfare 2 or anything, but it is a very strong start for a game that is likely to have a very long tail. Even just in November, it easily beat New Super Mario Bros.’s first month on DS (which, admittedly, was May and not November).
Nintendo also announced that the Wii has reached a US installed base of 23 million, and that the DS broke the November handheld sales record set by … the DS.
Nintendo: NSMB Wii has sold 2 million in US originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, new-super-mario-bros-wii, npd, sales
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo: NSMB Wii has sold 2 million in US
December 10th, 2009 at 03:30pm
Under DS+ Wii / Nintendo
GamesIndustry.biz reports that the DS has officially exceeded 10 million units sold in the UK. The revelation comes courtesy of data from European number crunchers GfK Chart-Track and, according to Nintendo, the handheld is currently owned by one out of every six UK residents. Of course, there’s no telling how many people have purchased more than one of the console’s many, many iterations. Still, the DS has managed to reach the 10 million mark faster than the PS2 did, just shy of five years since the handheld launched in March 2005.
We’ve been holding this back for a while now, but it’s probably time to just come out and say it: It looks like the DS is a success.
Nintendo DS exceeds 10 million units in the UK originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, GfK-Chart-Track, nintendo, uk, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo DS exceeds 10 million units in the UK
December 9th, 2009 at 08:40pm
Under Wii / Nintendo
Nintendo’s focus on “evergreen” titles has been a staple of the publisher for years now, with marketing support lasting longer than ever with this generation’s major releases. So it surprised us last April when the company said it hoped “word of mouth” would help push GTA: Chinatown Wars‘ lackluster initial sales higher as the months progressed. However, when executive vice president Cammie Dunaway recently spoke with MTV Multiplayer, Nintendo’s traditional message quickly returned. “Part of what’s needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles.”
She also called sales “frustrating, quite frankly,” but declined to comment on Rockstar’s marketing surrounding the release of the game. Dunaway remained diplomatic through the conversation though, only offering, “The old dynamic of ‘throw it on television for a few weeks and then move on and forget it’ just doesn’t work,” giving us little more than a taste of her real feelings behind the release’s marketing push. Check out the whole clip after the break.
Continue reading Nintendo: GTA Chinatown Wars sales ‘frustrating’
Nintendo: GTA Chinatown Wars sales ‘frustrating’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, cammie-dunaway, chinatown-wars, grand-theft-auto, gta, gta-chinatown-wars, interview, marketing, sales, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo: GTA Chinatown Wars sales ‘frustrating’
December 7th, 2009 at 01:30pm
Under PSP
While Take-Two has a number of solid properties, such as BioShock and Borderlands, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto is unquestionably its largest and most important franchise. However, sluggish sales of recent GTA efforts, from the handheld Chinatown Wars to the 360-exclusive DLC Episodes from Liberty City, have Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter worried about the future of Take-Two’s flagship brand.
“Has the Grand Theft Auto franchise peaked? Given the strength of GTA IV in 2008, the question may seem misplaced, but our concern is that the very highly rated new GTA content for Xbox as well as PSP and DS did not perform up to expectations in 2009,” Scahchter notes, while addressing potential criticisms to his claim. “Now, we very clearly understand that these do not represent ‘true’ new GTA titles. However, the fact is that these were compelling titles, attractively priced, and reasonably well-promoted, yet they fell relatively flat.”
Considering well over ten million people purchased GTA IV, the lackluster sales for these spin-off efforts is even more evident. Does the GTA name no longer carry the weight it once did? Or, are gamers simply waiting for a game that doesn’t take place in Liberty City?
Grand Theft Auto franchise may have ‘peaked,’ according to analyst originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: analyst, ben-schachter, business, grand-theft-auto, grand-theft-auto-chinatown-wars, grand-theft-auto-iv, take-two, take-two-interactive
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Grand Theft Auto franchise may have ‘peaked,’ according to analyst
December 2nd, 2009 at 05:40pm
Under Wii / Nintendo
Yesterday’s announcement that TNA Impact!: Cross the Line would be heading to DS and PSP by way of SouthPeak Games (a game left over from the collapse of Midway Games) wasn’t exactly a shock to ardent followers of the franchise. The question of whether or not TNA would pursue additional games on current-gen consoles (360/PS3/PC), however, remained up in the air. We spoke with a TNA representative last evening who told Joystiq that the company is “working on a long-term solution” for the development of said games.
“We absolutely want a long-term partner for video games, and it’s super important to TNA to have a long-term partner for games on the current consoles like 360 and PlayStation,” the rep said. And though he admitted (after much prying, in fairness) that development of that next TNA game on 360/PS3 is “kind of open to the market” in terms of a developer/publisher, the company “likes SouthPeak as a partner now” and “would like to continue to work with them.” For now though, SouthPeak will only retain the right to publish the TNA back catalog and the upcoming handheld title.
TNA seeking ‘long-term partner’ for future 360/PS3 TNA Impact! games originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, game-development, southpeak, southpeak-games, southpeak-interactive, tna, tna-impact, tna-impact-cross-the-line, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading TNA seeking ‘long-term partner’ for future 360/PS3 TNA Impact! games
December 1st, 2009 at 09:00pm
Under Xbox+ Xbox 360
According to Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, Xbox 360 sales saw a serious increase thanks to the post-Thanksgiving shopping madness known as Black Friday. While Greenberg doesn’t disclose specific numbers, he notes in a recent tweet that Black Friday granted the Xbox 360 its “biggest sales week of the year,” with Microsoft selling over twice as many units than the previous week. That certainly sounds like a lot, though the average weekly sales in October — based on NPD figures — were slightly above 60,000 units.
Assuming November’s weekly average was similar, Microsoft certainly didn’t come close to topping Sony’s impressive Black Friday total of 440,000 PS3 consoles. And let’s not forget Nintendo’s Black Friday success: 550,000 Wii consoles and DS / DSi sales in excess of one million units. Rest assured we will break down the exact November numbers once the NPDs shake out later this month.
[Via Gamasutra]
Greenberg: 360 sales more than double over Black Friday originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: aaron-greenberg, black-friday, black-friday-2009, business
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Greenberg: 360 sales more than double over Black Friday
December 1st, 2009 at 12:00am
Under Xbox 360
Erik Estavillo — otherwise referred to as a “professional plantiff” by
GamePolitics for his laundry list of legal claims — has subpoenaed Microsoft’s Bill Gates in his suit targeting the company for his run in with the
Red Ring of Death. According to court documents filed in a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the subpoena demands Gates hand over paperwork that reveal the “true and relative number of actual Xbox 360 units that have been fixed by Microsoft over the past 3 years.” Estavillo also seeks data pertaining to the number of broken Xbox 360 consoles and the amount of people banned from Xbox Live for “piracy” between November 28, 2008 and 2009.
While Estavillo is looking for answers to questions every journalist has been seeking, his track record of legal battles places him in eccentric territory. Estavillo is also suing Activision Blizzard claiming characters in World of Warcraft walk at an intentionally slow pace in order to bilk customers of more monthly fees. In the claim, he subpoenaed actress Winona Ryder and Depeche Mode member Martin Gore. Estavillo has also filed suit against Sony for being banned from online play, stemming from comments he supposedly made during matches of Resistance: Fall of Man; and Nintendo, for issuing firmware updates that disabled his Homebrew Channel.
‘Pro plantiff’ Erik Estavillo subpoenas Bill Gates in RROD suit originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: bill-gates, business, erik-estavillo, lawsuit, legal, microsoft, red-ring-of-death, rrod
By Mister-X
Continue Reading ‘Pro plantiff’ Erik Estavillo subpoenas Bill Gates in RROD suit
November 30th, 2009 at 08:45pm
Under Wii / Nintendo
Nintendo tells the San Francisco Chronicle that sales of the Wii were up 85 percent week-to-week following the September price drop. The Chronicle’s piece is mostly an examination of Nintendo’s challenges in staying top console for a fourth Christmas in a row, with expectations that the console will have plenty of stock available this holiday for the first time since release.
The Wii may not have the explosive sales that it’s maintained for the last few years, but Nintendo is still swimming in cash. Perhaps a slowdown in Wii sales can be seen as a good thing — we know how Nintendo loves to introduce hardware revisions when the going gets tough slower.
[Via Gamasutra]
Nintendo: Wii price cut drove sales up 85% originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, cammie-dunaway, nintendo, sales, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo: Wii price cut drove sales up 85%
November 30th, 2009 at 12:30am
Under Wii / Nintendo
Nintendo’s says it will investigate possible copyright infringement in Nokia’s N900 smartphone after a Nokia blog post showcased the device playing retro games through the use of an emulator application. According to Edge, the video (which is no longer available) featured someone playing Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, and also showed off buttons that supposedly opened emulators for Nintendo’s Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES and SNES.
Nintendo UK PR manager Robert Saunders told Edge the company was unaware of the smartphone’s emulation feature and stated that Nintendo would take “rigorous steps” to protect its intellectual property. “Our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place,” Saunders added. Even if the feature ends up on the cutting room floor, we imagine some crafty hackers are already taking steps to get emulation software working on the Nokia device. Just like they do with everything else.
Nintendo investigating possible copyright infringement in new Nokia smartphone originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: business, copyright, copyright-infringement, emulation, intellectual-property, legal, nintendo, nokia, roms, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo investigating possible copyright infringement in new Nokia smartphone
