1080Living

New PS3 Slim outsells WII, 360 3 to 1

Lee — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:41:38 +0000

Not one week into its UK sales debut, Sony’s re-imagined, slim-sized PlayStation 3 is already enjoying massive sales, up nearly 1000 percent over the prior week. The UK and Denmark market-researcher Chart-Track, which reported that figure, told biz watcher MCV “the sales increase is very impressive,” adding that the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 as well as both the Wii and DS Lite by a striking three-to-one ratio.

Points of order: Sony’s PS3 was only behind by a million units in Europe prior to the new model’s debut, so the sales jump has the benefit of a presumably less standoffish customer base (compared to the US, where the unit sales gap is roughly nine times wider). There’s also the question of who’s buying the new units: Are they predominantly new customers, or substantial numbers of existing ones? The answer to the latter will be decisive in effecting the sustainability of the UK-based sales uplift. Then there’s the “calm before the storm” factor. In Japan, sales of the PS3 were down dramatically in anticipation of the new model’s launch on September 3rd. The “three-to-one” week-over-week unit sales leap in the UK probably owes something to a similar effect.

How do things look in the US? We’ll need NPD Group’s numbers to say for sure. Preliminary reports from controversial sales tracker VG Chartz suggest sales doubled last week, but VG Chartz’s figures are notoriously dodgy and frequently “adjusted” without attribution after accredited trackers release their own.

Top DVD & BluRay rentals April 2009

Lee — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:16:59 +0000

Top April DVD rentals

The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Spirit
Marley & Me
Seven Pounds
Slumdog Millionaire

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Video Games sales slump in March

Lee — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:57:54 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO– Videogames sales took a surprising turn south during the month of March, as the slowing economy combined with fewer blockbuster releases.

According to a report from the NPD Group, sales of game software in the U.S. fell 17% during the month, compared to the same period the previous year. Wall Street analysts had largely been expecting sales to remain flat for the period.

Game hardware shared a similar fate, with sales falling 18% for the month. Accessories fell 15% during the period.

Part of the challenge for the industry was a difficult comparison with the previous year. Last March saw the release of three big titles, including Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros: Brawl, which sold 2.7 million units during the month. Other big sellers last year were Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas from Ubisoft and Army of Two from Electronic Arts Inc.

“This is very much like September of last year, which did not compare favorably to September of 2007 as the result of a huge game launch, Halo 3,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

The biggest title this time around was Capcom’s Resident Evil 5, which moved 938,000 units on the Xbox 360 and another 585,000 units on Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3. Halo Wars from Microsoft Corp. sold 639,000 units for the company’s XBox 360.

Nintendo’s top performer was Pokemon: Platinum Version for the handheld DS, which moved 805,000 units. Nintendo also saw three older titles — Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart — remain in the top-10 ranking.

Among gaming hardware, Nintendo continued to rule the industry with the Wii, which sold 601,000 units. The company’s handheld DS sold another 563,000 units.

However, sales of the Wii slipped 20% from the previous month. The XBox 360 fell only 15% from the previous month, while the PS3 fell only 7%. The 360 sold 330,000 units while the PS3 sold 218,000 units.

“If there was one area that surprised me this month, it was hardware sales,” Ms. Frazier said. “While it’s not unusual for March hardware sales to be lower than February, I thought we’d see higher unit sales on most platforms.”

Gaming industry analyst Jesse Divnich from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research said the drop in game sales for the month was likely more the result of a tough comparison than the weakening economy.

“We were going up against the biggest non-holiday month that gaming has ever seen,” Mr. Divnich said. “I don’t think this is any indication of the health of the industry.”

Blockbuster denies BK rumors

Lee — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:59:22 +0000

Blockbuster (BBI: 0.7136, 0.0336, 4.94%) denied on Tuesday it plans to file for bankruptcy protection, swatting down rumors that sent shares of the world’s largest movie rental chain down nearly 80%.

“We don’t intend to file for bankruptcy,” spokeswoman Karen Raskopf told FOX Business.

The comments come in contrast with an earlier Bloomberg News report that said Blockbuster hired a bankruptcy law firm to evaluate restructuring, which could include a “pre-packaged bankruptcy.” Reuters also reported the debt-laden company hired investment bank Rothschild to explore restructuring options, including a Chapter 11 filing.

The reports sent Blockbuster’s stock down 77% before it was halted. Shares of Blockbuster never reopened for trading on Tuesday.

Blockbuster confirmed it hired bankruptcy specialists Kirkland & Ellis LLP but said the law firm will assist it with its ongoing capital raising initiatives. Specifically, Blockbuster is seeking to restructure a revolving credit facility that is due to mature in August.

Raskopf also said the halt in trading is a “normal course of action” due to market rumors the company wanted to clarify.

Blockbuster, which has more than 7,500 rental stores in multiple countries, has struggled as people have moved away from the traditional store-based movie rental business and begun watching movies online. The company’s primary competitor, Netflix (NFLX: 46.98, 0.61, 1.32%), saw its shares rise as much as 12% before paring its gains.

Blockbuster, in order to save its business, offered a year ago to merge with then-struggling electronics company Circuit City. The merger was not taken seriously by the market or Circuit City and the proposal never took off. Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2008 and now is in liquidation.

PS2 CRUSHES WII, PS3, and Xbox/360

Lee — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:42:36 +0000

The PlayStation 2 received 30.2 percent of all console gaming minutes in 2008 (January to October), according to the Nielsen Media Research group. That statistic is a bit surprising until you consider that Sony has sold more than 140 million PS2s since its launch. With the largest footprint, the PS2 should have the largest usage base.

Top Console Usage (by percent of minutes played)
PlayStation 2 (30.2 percent)
Xbox 360 (18.3 percent)
Wii (13.5 percent)
Xbox (9.1 percent)
PlayStation 3 (7.7 percent)
GameCube (4.4 percent)
Other (16.9 percent)

Admittedly, these PS2 numbers are surprising and very impressive. The PS3 is still struggling against the Wii and Xbox and this data certainly doesn’t let the PS3 off the hook, but it does show that there might be a long-tail effect in place for console games.

Even more impressive data from Nielsen is the fact that World of Warcraft (WoW) users average 671 minutes (over 11 hours) per week. In any given minute, “almost 1 percent (0.723 percent) of all PC gamers are playing WoW.”

Blu-Ray lifts UK sales 378%

Lee — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:35:48 +0000

Blu-ray sales in the UK didn’t keep up their mind melting increases from earlier in the year, but considering the economic slowdown worldwide, a 378% jump from 2007 doesn’t seem too disappointing. The British Video Association and Official Charts Company numbers point out a 1.9% lift in DVD sales as a whole in 2008, including 3.7 million on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight finished the year moving 281,000 Blu-ray copies as the UK’s best selling HD release. We’ll see how things proceed in ‘09, hopefully with cheaper players on the way.

BD Black Friday Sales Triple

Lee — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:36:36 +0000

Stand-alone Blu-ray Disc player revenue during the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday more than tripled from a year earlier.

$30 million was spend for 147,000 Blu-ray players during the week and 1 out of 4 video-disc players sold was Blu-ray machines up from 6% a year earlier.

Sony and Samsung, selling their cheapest Blu-ray players for $179 and $199, respectively, accounted for 85% of Black Friday week.

With continued sales growth through the holiday season, Blu-ray player makers will ship 911,000 machines during the fourth quarter and about 2.2 million for the year, according to DisplaySearch.

Source: Video Business.

Denon BD players

Lee — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:01:40 +0000

Okay, I’ll have to admit I asked for this a bit. In my last post about Denon Blu-ray players I demanded to know what Denon would describe as ‘high-end’, after their ‘entry-level’ player cost $900.

Well, this is it. It’s the catchily-named DVD-A1UD, and it’ll play back Blu-ray discs, Super Audio CD (SACD), DVD-Audio, DVD-Video and plain old CDs. The DVD-A1UD is the replacement for the Denon’s previous universal DVD player - the DVD-A1XV. Full specs are over the jump.

It costs a massive $5000. I can safely say that I don’t know anyone who’d splash out $5000 on a DVD player, but someone must, or they wouldn’t make the damn thing. It’s going to show up across Europe in March 2009, in either a silver or black finish. Who knows, perhaps by then you’ll be rolling around in pots of money. Denon can only hope.

Construction:

Direct Mechanical Ground Construction, embodying concepts for thorough vibration resistance
Denon’s original Advanced S.V.H. mechanism, newly developed for low specific gravity, vibration resistance, quiet operation, and high precision.
Seven block structure, to thoroughly prevent mutual interference caused by electrical and magnetic factors; 18.9 kg weight

Audio Quality:

Dynamic Discrete Surround Circuit-HD (DDSC-HD), achieving high-quality sound
Denon Link 4th to achieve the world’s first jitter-free transmission
of digital audio via HDMI
Advanced AL32 Processing Multi Channel, Denon’s proprietary technology that optimizes audio performance, used for the first time in the DVD-A1UD
Discrete 192-kHz, 32-bit D/A converters for all channels
Multi-channel support from Denon’s proprietary Compressed Audio Restorer function (2 Channel for MP3/WMA, Mutli Channel for Dolby Digital/DTS)
A/V Pure Direct (two HDMI output ports)
Dolby Pro Logic IIx and DTS Neo:6 decoding, in addition to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
Support for SACD, DVD-Audio and HDCD

Video Quality:

Denon’s video circuitry for high picture quality, to produce a richer video image from DVD [REALTA, highly acclaimed Silicon Optix video processor]
Digital Noise Reduction, effective for both HD content from BD media and SD content from DVD media
1080/24p output, for maximum enhancement of film texture
Denon Pixel Image Correction (D.P.I.C.), for more natural curvature correction
Dual HD video processing to individually select HD resolutions for HDMI & Component out
Vertical Stretch (supporting the CinemaScope aspect ratio for anamorphic lense),
a world’s first in a universal player with Blu-ray
Source Direct, to output disc content in its original resolution
HDMI (ver. 1.3a, supporting Deep Colour, High Bit Rate Audio output), for transmission of high-definition video and audio signals

User Friendliness:

Easy-to-read and easy-to-operate G.U.I. (Graphical User Interface)
Support “BONUSVIEW” functions
“BD-Live” ready
Support for HDMI Control (Consumer Electronics Control)
Backlight for all remote control unit buttons

PS3 outsells 360

Lee — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:15:51 +0000

The video game industry is booming around the world despite economic downturns seen in some countries like America. Three firms are battling for the gamers’ money around the world including Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Bloomberg reports that the Nintendo Wii outsold the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 in the U.S. last month. Nintendo sold 666,000 of its Wii consoles in June compared to the 405,500 PS3’s sold and 219,800 Xbox 360’s. It’s interesting to note that the PS3 sold nearly 200,000 more units for the month than the Xbox 360.

Both Sony and Microsoft recently increased the size of the hard drive inside their respective consoles to lure new buyers. The minimum hard drive on the PS3 will now increase to 80GB with the Xbox 360 growing to 60GB. NPD Group says 10.9 million Wii consoles have been sold since it launched in November of 2006 – that tally pushes the Wii past the Xbox 360 in total U.S. sales despite the Microsoft’s consoles one-year head start. The Nintendo Wii is still all but impossible to find in many areas of the country, something Nintendo keeps promising to remedy with increased production of the consoles. The gaming industry as a whole is booming right now with total industry sales rising by 53% to $1.69 billion in June, up from $1.1 billion in June of 2007. Bloomberg reports that console sales have grown 54% to $615.1 million from $399.2 million last year despite. NPD analyst Anita Frazier says that total sales for the gaming industry in 2008 are likely to reach $22 billion.

PS3 2.40 firmware causing grief, pulled by Sony

Lee — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:14:51 +0000

The official PlayStation forums (via Kotaku) are exploding today after the recent and long-awaited 2.40 firmware update for the PlayStation 3 hit consoles with some added surprises. Owners of every model of PS3 are reporting problems ranging from the small — microphone’s cutting out — to the monumental — consoles remaining frozen at the initial wave screen. In response, Sony has taken down the update for the time being and made an update to their knowledge center post for the 2.40 boss with the following text:

“UPDATE: 7/2/2008, the PlayStation 3 system software version 2.40 has been temporarily taken offline and will not be available for download as our engineers examine any possible issues with this update. The Knowledge Center will be updated with information as it becomes available; please check back here for further details.”

Before they took action, Sony PR director Patrick Seybold told Joystiq they are “looking into it right now and will work with those customers [to] directly address any issues they may be experiencing.” Unfortunately, the only currently known fix for those with a non-operational system is a save game-erasing hard drive reformat. One could always transfer saves over to another media device prior to reformat, but the only other option at this time is sending it in to Sony for a $150.00 repair. Given Seybold’s comments, presumably Sony will be working out other fixes for systems that were broken with the update soon. As we reported earlier, the massive update includes an in-game Cross-Media Bar, the much talked about Trophy system, and many more features. We’ll update with further info when the 2.40 update goes back online.