Slashdot Mirror

Nividia posted sales of USD 892.7 million.

So they offer to settle for $850 thousand?

0.1% of their sales???

Also, who the FUCK would be friends with this moron?

At least one group dedicated to censoring videogames has specifically tried to distance themselves from his antics

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/jack-thompson-is-blasted-by-pro-family-group

So short answer: not even his allies want to be allied with Jack Thompson.

This is what EA is really trying to end. First Sale Doctrine, meet activations....

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-second-hand-sales-are-a-critical-situation

From this gamesindustry.biz article the judge has banned sales of the Wii Classic Controller, Wavebird and Gamecube Classic Controllers.

Sony licensed the patent from Anascape, MSFT got sued as well, but settled. Nintendo fought and lost in court to the tune of $21M. The suit included the Wii controllers, but Nintendo was found not guilty.

There's more information here at bloomberg.

Former Gizmondo executive Stefan Eriksson, who left the company under a cloud of allegations that he had links with the Swedish mafia, has been involved in a car crash which destroyed his $1 million Ferrari Enzo.

The car was travelling at an estimated 120 mph on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when it slammed into a power pole, leaving the vehicle sliced in two. Police believe the Ferrari was taking part in a street race with an SLR Mercedes, worth around $500,000. Perhaps thanks to the Enzo's legendary safety system, Eriksson escaped with only minor injuries. -- Gizmondo exec in million dollar car crash

$3MM was already a relatively low number. Consider the recent statement by David Jones of RealTime Worlds (they of Crackdown) where he says he'd struggle to make a game under $50MM.

Now, that's for a console AAA title with whiz-bang graphics, voice acting, etc. I'm sure the NASA MMO doesn't need to be on that level but I'm not sure the term "MMO" can properly be applied to anything with a $3MM budget, short of stuff like Puzzle Pirates.

I mean there's plenty of MMOs that were made for something closer to free than $3MM (Omerta comes to mind) but I don't think when you hear "NASA" and "MMO" you envision a text adventure.

They should just develop things on SecondLife since the client exists already. I believe they've done that already, but I'm not sure what the extent of it is.

Gaming sites report that Toshiba hasn't given up yet. I guess they want to deplete their HD-DVD hardware before killing the format.

Depends on who you mean. To common people like us, it won't. To the Governments though? With the pro-censorship attitudes we also have in places like the US and UK (albeit to a lesser degree thankfully, but still the same idea - wanting to ban sex and violence, even for adults, because it supposedly harms us; here in the UK, MPs are proposing a bill to allow them the power to ban films and games that even the censors think are okay, and they are passing through a law to criminalise depictions of sexual violence), it probably won't harm China's image. If anything, our Governments will just be envious - pesky things like freedom of speech and democracy prevent them for banning as much as they'd like, as can be done in China. But I bet they'll be saying "Well other countries ban this material, so it's okay for us to do so too".

This article is interesting - usually we only hear about the political kind of censorship in China, but it seems they do the same old "Let's criminalise depictions of things that we claim obviously have a negative effect on society" that western democracies love to do too. And I don't want the same kind of censorship that China has.

It's very much true, Bay is late to the party:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26216

Bay is late to the party:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26216

It has come up before, Bay isn't the first to point it out.

Microsoft owns the rights to a likely-to-be industry standard DRM for digital distribution. MS Wins when the world moves to digital distribution, and they have a vested interest in making sure that happens sooner rather than later.

From June of 2007:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26216

"There haven't been any PSP titles in the Japanese all console chart top 20 since the launch of the PSP slim/lite."

That's flat out false. Two words: Crisis Core.

That's an interesting theory, but it would seem to be one you pulled deep from your nether regions. If you would have read the link you would see that it's because Wii development doesn't require much over Gamecube development so the existing tools and technology from the Gamecube can be reused. This can be correlated by many other developers:

THQ and Ubisoft

Majesco

Sega

Probably more, and I think EA is mentioned in there too, but that was a quick look.

MS are interested in both formats failing.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 26216

No, they need about $8.4 billion dollars in profit for the console division to recoup it's losses. As I understand it the consoles (including games, live and peripherals) themselves have never turned a profit, though the entertainment division has had at least one miniscule profit.

That 8.4 billion comes from:

By 2005 the Xbox had lost $4 billion.
(http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2005/09/12/ microsoft-management-software_cz_vm_0913microsoft. html)
In 2005 the entertainment division lost 391 million.
(http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY05/earn_ rel_q4_05.mspx)
In 2006, the Xbox 360 lost $1.26 billion
(http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2006/10/13/micro soft-lost-126-billion-launching-the-xbox-360.htm)
In 2007, Microsoft has lost $2.76 billion
http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/2006/10/m icrosoft_fisca_6.html
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Microsoft-Loses-2 89-Million-in-Q2-With-Xbox-360-2544.html
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 16432

Now there might be some overlap between Fiscal 2005, and the initial number but given the number's $8.6 billion, even an overlap of $200 million is insignificant to the final number. It is highly unlikely that the Xbox group will recoup those losses in this console generation.

a reminder

another reminder

yet another reminder

I used to be a huge Sony fanboy, but between the pricing, the trainwreck release, the lack of decent titles, and their constant lying about things.... I'm fed up with them.

"Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing." ...
"There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game,"

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 26340

Seems paying for exclusivity is ok but only if you call it "collaboration"

I prefer to think of my video gaming experience as a fine dining experience, as Sony so helpfully suggested. I cannot believe they would betray my trust by discounting their truly unique console to McDonald's-level prices. They've already said it was too cheap, and now they would cheapen it further? Traitorous hounds!

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 25649 Hmmm.... Says nothing about selling through to actual customers. Then again, it says "sold" instead of "shipped". Could be actual sell through.

Found the real article here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 25649 Still don't buy it, but ok.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 25649

^^ In case you're more interested in TFA rather than Square Enix "clarifying" their position on Final Fantasy.

Yes, but Nintendo has announced them as part of their 2007 titles. Well, at least for Japan. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 24672

I'm pretty excited about finally getting some display drivers - the ATI announcement included that - where rather than having the situation they have right now where there are literally tens, close to hundreds of display drivers out there on people's machines, that everybody will have the most current, the most up-to-date driver, automatic bug-reporting and things like that. That's a nice step forward.

Steam will be distributing ATI drivers soon. (see "How would you sum up the current state of the Steam business?" question)

The rest of the two part interview is quite interesting as well.

What's more interesting is that you referenced Katamari Damacy, created by Keita Takahashi.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 12233

He's against the idea of sequels and admits shame(more like regret) at having created a sequel for his game. He wants more creativity in the industry but did a sequel anyway because there was a market for it.

PSP plays a major role in my weight loss plan. Every day I copy an avi from my media library to my mac book pro. I convert it to PSP format with ffmpeg (which has a preset PSP format! Thanks!) which takes about 5 mins for 40 mins of video (a 1 hour show with the commercials stripped). I then copy the convert file to my psp from my mbp via usb which takes

You're refering to the UMD disks, which are indeed very proprietary, but about to go away to be replaced by downloadable movies

"Are they still hedging all their bets on Halo 3?"

Yep

NO, Square-Enix have never suggested that Final Fantasy XIII will be multiplatform. AFAIK that rumor came from a mistranslation of this article http://www.gamefront.de/ that has been going around some message boards. They HAVE confirmed that the FF XIII series will be multiplatform, and have hinted that there will be more than the three we know about, but they've never stated that FF XIII itself will be multiplatform. Also see this interview with Hiromichi Tanaka http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 24297 where he says

"Up to PlayStation 2, all consoles had roughly the same concept of how to enjoy the gaming experience. With next-gen, each has different features and is targeted at a different audience.

So, we have to make different titles for different platforms, depending on what sort of game we want to make and what the users will be expecting; we can choose which platform we want to go for. This is completely different from the old games industry."

Also, the idea of porting a graphically demanding game like FF XIII to the Wii is total fucking nonsense.

Do you think the ramifications of this book impact in the storyline of Diablo 3 the game?

Knaak: This is a pure collaboration between myself and Chris/Blizzard. All that is written is passed by him and the others there. This will be canon and has adjusted earlier info. The ramifications here will be used for any future project ... and I ain't writing for a dead game. :)

It's also interesting there is some speculation has already started over weather Microsoft will release a Blu-ray add-on now. I have to say I agree with the articles coming out this 'validates' the PS3. I know several people that got the '20GB model' and upgraded the HDD for more capacity. Here's an article I didn't see linked above:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 23840

Microsoft's Xbox divisions posts a $289 loss in the second quarter.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 22385

In this article Mark Rein puts the development costs of Gears of War at less than 10M. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 20176 I doubt whether Cars has been made for that amount of money, especially since they could possibly reuse animations & models from the movie. I guess you should include those costs too right?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 22479

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=12559

I'm sure with ethics like that they are really judging the games by their content and not lest say how much the companies "donated" this year.

This award ceremony is nothing but an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences fund raiser and advertising campaign.

Oops, not sure what happened. Here's the source:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 22051

They'll probably just put more stuff on their network for free download like Gran Turismo HD (see http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 21446), and keep adding features via firmware update like they did with the PSP. So the box becomes better value for money in that way.

Still, they'd have to put about 10 free full games on there for me to actually want to buy one, but then I bet I'm too cheapskate to be in the PS3 target audience.

Wow your imagination is amazing ...

Playstation 3 Supply Surpasses Demand
PS3 in Stock, Wii Sold Out says Analyst
PS3 to miss sales targets by 25% - analyst

This means that in 6 weeks Sony managed to outsell the XBox360 in its first few months of sales. Despite the massively higher price tag. Despite HD not being as new and shiny.

The NPD figures are USA only too. The Wii would have sold more but Nintendo shuffled some half a million into Europe for a launch there.

The figures on nexgenwars.com are clearly pulled from thin air though.

It basically just takes time and research to estimate the numbers as closely as possible.

Now for the new consoles it is a little harder since there is no previous sales data to go off of. What I do for these is research how many they are expecting to have on launch and by the end of the year. For the launch counter I get it to around the number expected, and then I slow it down to pace it so that it will reach a good estimate for the end of the year, and as usual I will adjust anything if any official word comes in.

This means that in 6 weeks Sony managed to outsell the XBox360 in its first few months of sales. Despite the massively higher price tag. Despite HD not being as new and shiny.

The NPD figures are USA only too. The Wii would have sold more but Nintendo shuffled some half a million into Europe for a launch there.

The figures on nexgenwars.com are clearly pulled from thin air though.

It basically just takes time and research to estimate the numbers as closely as possible.

Now for the new consoles it is a little harder since there is no previous sales data to go off of. What I do for these is research how many they are expecting to have on launch and by the end of the year. For the launch counter I get it to around the number expected, and then I slow it down to pace it so that it will reach a good estimate for the end of the year, and as usual I will adjust anything if any official word comes in.

According to the firm's preliminary estimates, as reported by CNBC, around 2 million Xbox 360 units were sold in North America from November up until December 25.

The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours.

link

In addition, Wedbush is estimating that Sony sold 600,000 units (800,000 cumulative) of PS3 and that Nintendo sold 1.3 million (1.8 million cumulative) units of Wii in December.

link

So NPD (the most accurate tracking company in North America) is predicting that Nintendo sold 1.8 Million Wii in North America as of December 25th, the analyst firm Wedbush Morgan is saying 1.8 in 2006, and your number says 1.2 (likely 1.2 Million in December).

On top of that in Japan the current numbers are 1,000,250 Wii vs. 456,750 PS3 where the Wii has been out for 5 weeks compared to 8 for the PS3; Nintedo has also launched in Europe and sold 325,000 consoles in 2 Days in Europe. So we have a number of 3,125,000 Wii sold before we know how many Wii systems were sold in europe over the past 4 weeks; if you assume sales of approximately 200,000 per week (a reasonable estimate) the Wii as sold ~4 Million units to 1.5 Million PS3 systems shipped.

Sony has shipped 1 million, Nintendo has sold about 4 million and launched after the PS3!

Okay, first off, the Wii hasn't sold 4 million in North America, it's sold 1.2 million. And that's an estimate. So now, Sony shipped maybe 200,000 (I'm pretty sure the 700,000 in the article is worldwide) in November and 1 million six weeks after, which puts them neck and neck. Where are you coming up with Nintendo selling 4 million?

DSG, the owner of Currys, Dixons and PC World say they are expecting four shipments between now and Christmas.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 21561

Here's hoping that there are more than 2 in each crate.

To me, the most interesting thing is that not only the larger amount of consoles are all sold out, Nintendo is making profit for each console sold as well.

I said "US" as in the United States, not "Us". There is nothing in the statement that says Sony is shipping 600k units to the United States at a rate of 100k a week like you say multiple times.
You also made another statement above about Amazon and Target getting restock. Where are the links for this information? You keep making statements that are unfounded.

A good statement is factual and founded in reality. For example I can say that the PS3 has an attach rate of 0.98 and I can follow a statement like that with a supporting link: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 21062

I will make the following correction: the itwire.com.au was a misreading, that's 100,000 additional units per week to christmas. As for CNN's 2 million Wii's I can't confirm it; it was a CNN TV report that they have not placed on the web. GI discusses a little about Canada's Wii launch in a NOC executive who tells us they will have 4 million shipped by the end of the year. They also state that Canada had 200,000 Wii units and makes up 10% of North America. If shipped in those percentages, 200,000 units to 10% of North America means 2million units in all of North America. There are many news stories refering to analysts who predict only about half the number of PS3s made it out, but yes, we will have to wait for more official numbers.

I see no reason not to think Nintendo will have a big lead over Sony in the US. Both companies are committed to constant resupply, but Wiis just move out faster.

Future and Sony confirm ongoing relationship

Following the announcement that the US Official PlayStation Magazine is to close, Future Publishing and Sony Computer Entertainment have confirmed that the UK version will continue.

My source
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 21101

Microsoft is paying for repairs for the first batch of 360's shipped. [1] I've had the three-redlights problem that had to be shipped in to MS, and it sounds like quite a few others online have as well.

Lik-Sang sold grey imports and was subject European rules governing such things.

Sony was entirely within their rights and the law to bring suit.

The specifics of the action and the judgement can be read here.

I don't know where you got your numbers but MS had over 5 Million SOLD in June and they're expecting 10 million by this holiday. So yes in it's first year is is outselling the PS2, for whatever reason, be it supply or demand.

Also I believe the GP is refering to the Austrailian market who figures show that the Xbox 360 is currently the fastest selling console in Austrailia.

Personally, Lik Sang knew the risks of what it was getting into, and got what was coming to them.