Slashdot Mirror

Your ancestors must have been strongly related to the Titanic Quartet.

• March 2010 lost $1B in quarter
• July 2011 190M loss, declining PS3 sales
• Feb 2012, Lost 1B, PS3 a primary culprit

That was just a few seconds of Googling, and just the first page of results listing the RED in Sony's PS3 area. The only place Sony appears to be getting a profit at the moment is from their remaining stake in Sony Pictures. Sony, the company we've grown to hate, looks like it's heading to the dump. Good riddance.

So....what is the adoption rate for the Wii compared to the other consoles then?

Because, as far as I know it is more or less slightly lower, not "pitiful" as you make out. You seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that most of the top selling games of all time are Nintendo games. In fact, 20 of the top 21 games of all time are Nintendo published.

And how many 20 million plus sellers do the PS3 and 360 have again? The Wii has 6 games (not including Wii Sports) - but the other consoles have none.

The Wii also has 136 million plus selling games compared to the PS3's 143 and the 360's 148 - not so pitiful is it?

The Wii also has more 10 million plus sellers than the 360 and PS3 added together - again, how can that be when it has such a pitiful attach rate?

So, lay it down and dig up your attachment rates - as it sounds like you are just mouthing off ignorantly like a little fanboy, laying down some smack talk from your mom's basement if you will....

So....what is the adoption rate for the Wii compared to the other consoles then?

Because, as far as I know it is more or less slightly lower, not "pitiful" as you make out. You seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that most of the top selling games of all time are Nintendo games. In fact, 20 of the top 21 games of all time are Nintendo published.

And how many 20 million plus sellers do the PS3 and 360 have again? The Wii has 6 games (not including Wii Sports) - but the other consoles have none.

The Wii also has 136 million plus selling games compared to the PS3's 143 and the 360's 148 - not so pitiful is it?

The Wii also has more 10 million plus sellers than the 360 and PS3 added together - again, how can that be when it has such a pitiful attach rate?

So, lay it down and dig up your attachment rates - as it sounds like you are just mouthing off ignorantly like a little fanboy, laying down some smack talk from your mom's basement if you will....

So....what is the adoption rate for the Wii compared to the other consoles then?

Because, as far as I know it is more or less slightly lower, not "pitiful" as you make out. You seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that most of the top selling games of all time are Nintendo games. In fact, 20 of the top 21 games of all time are Nintendo published.

And how many 20 million plus sellers do the PS3 and 360 have again? The Wii has 6 games (not including Wii Sports) - but the other consoles have none.

The Wii also has 136 million plus selling games compared to the PS3's 143 and the 360's 148 - not so pitiful is it?

The Wii also has more 10 million plus sellers than the 360 and PS3 added together - again, how can that be when it has such a pitiful attach rate?

So, lay it down and dig up your attachment rates - as it sounds like you are just mouthing off ignorantly like a little fanboy, laying down some smack talk from your mom's basement if you will....

So....what is the adoption rate for the Wii compared to the other consoles then?

Because, as far as I know it is more or less slightly lower, not "pitiful" as you make out. You seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that most of the top selling games of all time are Nintendo games. In fact, 20 of the top 21 games of all time are Nintendo published.

And how many 20 million plus sellers do the PS3 and 360 have again? The Wii has 6 games (not including Wii Sports) - but the other consoles have none.

The Wii also has 136 million plus selling games compared to the PS3's 143 and the 360's 148 - not so pitiful is it?

The Wii also has more 10 million plus sellers than the 360 and PS3 added together - again, how can that be when it has such a pitiful attach rate?

So, lay it down and dig up your attachment rates - as it sounds like you are just mouthing off ignorantly like a little fanboy, laying down some smack talk from your mom's basement if you will....

“We consider fiscal year 2012 to be the very important year to rehabilitate the electronics division.”

Or even a slashdot article about it. Sony needs to desperately stop hemorrhaging cash.

As late as 2005, Microsoft was eating a $126/unit loss per XBox 360 (just the unit, not peripherals, controllers, etc): http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-taking-126-hit-per-xbox-360-6140383 iSupply priced $470 to build each unit based on teardown and accounting for scale.

$126 x 66m units through January 2012? $8.3 billion so far if it were a constant, but we know that MSFT reported profits sometime in late 2010, so we use the cumulative numbers for 2010... call it 46m, and allow for slop in MSFT's favor to account for shifting in both directions (pricier early on, cheaper later on), and we get $5.7 billion loss so far. Add the RROD fiasco, which Microsoft says lost them over $1bn more, and we come to around $7 billion bucks in unpaid money sunk, just for the 360. So far, it's only been a couple of years, and unless someone can point to where Microsoft has made $7 billion in XBox profits over the past three years (let alone whatever they lost in the pre-360 XBoxes), my point is easily made.

HTH a little. It's back-of-the-envelope, but I favored MSFT heavily in the whole thing to make it fair.

Sigh. The "I've observed this with a small sample so that's good enough for me but you need to provide hard data!" thing. Ya that's great debating, other people need more support than you do. Ok, let's take a single data point: CoD MW3. Only available retail for the consoles, DD was only on the PC. Sales? 13.7 million on the 360, 11.5 million on the PS3, 1.3 million on the PC, 0.4 million on the Wii.

Even if you assume 100% of PC sales were DD (they weren't) you still have 25.6 million retail sales to 1.3 million DD sales.

Please remember big numbers of gamers play on the console and consoles don't have most things DD. That right there means there's a massive retail market.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44606/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44605/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44604/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/51881/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/

Sigh. The "I've observed this with a small sample so that's good enough for me but you need to provide hard data!" thing. Ya that's great debating, other people need more support than you do. Ok, let's take a single data point: CoD MW3. Only available retail for the consoles, DD was only on the PC. Sales? 13.7 million on the 360, 11.5 million on the PS3, 1.3 million on the PC, 0.4 million on the Wii.

Even if you assume 100% of PC sales were DD (they weren't) you still have 25.6 million retail sales to 1.3 million DD sales.

Please remember big numbers of gamers play on the console and consoles don't have most things DD. That right there means there's a massive retail market.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44606/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44605/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44604/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/51881/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/

Sigh. The "I've observed this with a small sample so that's good enough for me but you need to provide hard data!" thing. Ya that's great debating, other people need more support than you do. Ok, let's take a single data point: CoD MW3. Only available retail for the consoles, DD was only on the PC. Sales? 13.7 million on the 360, 11.5 million on the PS3, 1.3 million on the PC, 0.4 million on the Wii.

Even if you assume 100% of PC sales were DD (they weren't) you still have 25.6 million retail sales to 1.3 million DD sales.

Please remember big numbers of gamers play on the console and consoles don't have most things DD. That right there means there's a massive retail market.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44606/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44605/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44604/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/51881/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/

Sigh. The "I've observed this with a small sample so that's good enough for me but you need to provide hard data!" thing. Ya that's great debating, other people need more support than you do. Ok, let's take a single data point: CoD MW3. Only available retail for the consoles, DD was only on the PC. Sales? 13.7 million on the 360, 11.5 million on the PS3, 1.3 million on the PC, 0.4 million on the Wii.

Even if you assume 100% of PC sales were DD (they weren't) you still have 25.6 million retail sales to 1.3 million DD sales.

Please remember big numbers of gamers play on the console and consoles don't have most things DD. That right there means there's a massive retail market.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44606/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44605/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44604/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/51881/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/

Saying Console's are dying because of an increase in Table sales is a flawed analysis.

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

If you look back over history, game console sell about 200 million units in any given generation, give or take
In this generation of consoles, there where 3 major contenders, Wii, PS3, and X Box360, total sales of all game consoles exceed 200 million.
Throwing in hand-held game devices, you see there are over 250 million between DS, PSP, Vita and 3DS.

The flaw is to assume that game console sales MUST match tablet tor mobile platform sales in order to succeed. This is wrong.

Just because

a) tablet and phones sales are growing and exceed game console sales
AND
b) software sales on tablet and phones exceed game console sales

does NOT conclude that game consoles are dying.

What the idiots are not understanding is that Game Console HAVE and ALWAYS will be a "NICHE" market.

Generation over Generation growth of units in this NICHE market have increased. The PS3/360/Wii generation sold more units then the PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation. However grown in game consoles HAVE NEVER matched growth of PC's or Tablets or Phones. Game consoles sales have grown year over year, but you will never see 1 billion units sold in any generation. It is wrong to look at unit totals and declare one market segment is in decline.

Also wrong is the idea that someone who owns a tablet will not want a game console, both provide DIFFERENT experiences. A tablet or phone does not replace ALL experiences offered by a console, and vice versa.

Also wrong is the idea that game developers will not support new game consoles. Again, game developers will develop software titles that will match the experience of the target platform. Unique games will be created for Tablets, unique games will be developed for consoles.

When Sony/MS/Nintendo release a new generation of product, the niche market consumers will buy these consoles, I would only declare that game consoles are dying if a new generation of game consoles do not sell as much as the previous generation.

Comparing Tablet and Phone sales to game console sales is ignorant, and this presentation was performed by a complete idiot.

The problem w/ such a system is that one runs short of liquidity and it significantly curtails the ability to do business --- which arguably is a benefit as well, since slowing down financial transactions would help somewhat w/ stability.

What happens when a company like Nintendo takes 100 developers over 5 man years and creates something like Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword --- if people don't have the liquidity to purchase it, one doesn't get an additional valuation for goods of 3.28 million * $50 (disregarding the collector's bundle for simplicity's sake --- anyone know how many were made?) == $164,000,000 [1]

William

1 - http://www.vgchartz.com/game/45669/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/

According to this, Crysis 2 had 0.49 million sales for the PC platform.
You'd think this would put to rest the arguments from pirates that piracy leads to sales as well and truly defeated.
But that would assumes pirates were logical, rational people. You'd have a better chance convincing a Christian of how ridiculous the Bible stories are.

Crysis 2 sold about 500'000
Call of duty: Modern warfare 3 sold about 950'000

Crysis 2 sold about 500'000
Call of duty: Modern warfare 3 sold about 950'000

Okay, I know posting anything that sounds even remotely negative about PC gaming is very taboo here, but I'd rather post and be realistic than watch Slashdot continue it's circle jerk into a pit of self-reassuring ignorance.

I doubt for a second that he meant the 95% figure literally, but simply meant that a high proportion of PC players pirate the game.

It's nothing whatsoever to do with console players putting up with worse games, that's one of the most blatant demonstrations of jealous bitterness I've seen here.

The fact is there's some truth in Ubisoft's stance and whilst I have little sympathy for them as a company because of their misguided DRM attempts that doesn't mean they are wrong.

The fact remains that PC game sales are lower, see here for example with 2 major releases listed for the week ending 12th November:

http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php

We have, for MW3:
X360: 6.6 million
PS3: 4.7 million
PC: 0.3 million

Okay, how about something that's always been designed more as a PC game, and IMHO plays better on a PC and reaps the advantages of mods where consoles can't - Skyrim?:
X360: 2 million
PS3: 0.9 million
PC: 0.5 million

These figures are quite depressing for the PC, perhaps the biggest selling PC release in the last few years (decade?) Starcraft 2 shifted 3 million in it's first month. Very respectable for presumably the highest selling one off it still doesn't really come close to say, the Call of Duty series in the 360 which breaks 5 mill in a week (not a month like SC2) each year for the past few years despite the game IMO having gone downhill.

It's pretty well established then that the PC market just doesn't shift as many units as the console market does, it just can't compete in this respect, but there are other factors too - PC gamers are used to paying only £29.99 at most in the UK market for games, versus £39.99 for console games, so not only does the PC face lower sales figures, but lower sales profit also.

The problem is made worse by the fact the PC is simply more expensive to develop for and support, because of the unfortunate situation of having a massive set of hardware and software combinations to deal with many of which can result in sometimes show stopping bugs if not resolved, and, to further maximise sales, where a larger set of configuration settings is needed, and in some cases a large set of content to support these varying configurations giving varying levels of performance each person's system provides.

The net result is that there's really questionable benefit to supporting the PC platform, particularly when the time spent to support the PC would probably better spent making DLC for a console release in terms of profit, and whilst you may well want companies to release for the PC anyway, they're not charities, they're businesses, and they'll do whatever maximises their profits. That often means not supporting the PC.

But it's not all doom and gloom for the PC, I think it's somewhat beneficial, the last few years has seen a massive boom in really really good indie games on the PC because large companies abandoning the platform for higher profit console platforms has left that hole open for indies to compete. There are still areas where PCs are king too - games where decent worthwhile mods can be made, and MMOs - whilst there have been attempts, consoles are next to useless for both of these things.

I know some people will argue with me and say "Well, Steam doesn't release their stats" and that sort of argument, but it doesn't matter- the reality is that these companies have deemed developing for PCs to be not financially worthwhile however you try and spin it, and getting mad at them wont help.

Personally? I just enjoy gaming, so prefer to be pragmatic and have a gaming PC as well as an XBox 360 so that I can enjoy the best of both worlds. I can enjoy console only releases and some pretty fucking great ind

Dedicated PC gaming that requires a Windows PC is a niche now, maybe 10% of the market. The other much more popular options are mobile play (phone and handheld), console, and web games--the last of which also work on Linux. There are a hundred people who don't care one bit about PC gaming for every person like you. Look at a recent best seller list Exactly two of the top fifty games is a PC title--and that's not even considering the giant mobile phone gaming market you were trying to leave out of this. As for launch date issues, from that list I'd already finished the main campaign in Batman: Arkham City, on the PS3, before the PC version was even released. And for your example, Call of Duty, the XBOX version of "Black Ops" is at #32 there; the PC version isn't even on the chart.

Check out the best selling video games for an objective look at just how small the PC market is now. Super hits like The Sims, WoW, and StarCraft might clear 10M copies sold. Meanwhile, there are 28M copies of Mario Kart and 12M people who *paid* for Angry Birds--along with hundreds of million who play for free. I do my gaming on my PS3 and run Linux on my PCs. There is more gaming than I can keep up with even dropping the PC as a platform to track, and it feels good to not care what Microsoft is doing anymore on the desktop.

http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php?reg=America&date=&console=&maker=

Granted, I'm unfamiliar with the above site and how accurate their numbers are, but to me, 2.7 million games sold in one week across ALL platforms says otherwise. It doesn't break it down by price point, by the top game on their list for the week (Mario Kart Wii) still retails for $47 on amazon. That doesn't sound like very very few to me. Sure having to go get or ship a physical copy isn't as convenient as the instant gratification of digital distribution, but on-line retailers tend to blow the brick and mortar shops out of the water when it comes to media. I can't speak for the rest of the population, but most of the games I'm willing to pay $40 for, I'm also willing to wait for. If I've got 10 minutes to kill, I'm bored, and I want something new then I'm probably not going to want to wait, and well, probably not willing to spend $40 for that 10 minutes either. As for critical mass, I'll agree with that, though I wouldn't be surprised if the industry itself is pushing away from more traditional handheld types. It's a bad feedback loop, no gamers, no games yet no games, no gamers. Not many new properties or franchise iterations were brought to the 3DS to start with. In my completely uninformed opinion, I'm guessing a lot of the big studios are focusing their portable divisions on breaking into smartphones and tablets. The traditional style handheld brings PC/Console level games to the portable market, costs are probably on par with regular console/PC titles and then have to sell for a lower price point. The simple kill 5 minutes games on the smartphones cost next to nothing to develop so who cares if the price point is $1 or $2, that's cheap enough that many people will impulse buy, I would assume they are looking on getting more entrenched in that market since it probably looks like people are just printing money.

Most probably in a foreign language (to you):

German:

http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/the-darkness-2/news/digital_extremes,46721,2323827.html

http://www.gamesaktuell.de/Fear-3-PS3-234579/News/Fear-3-Online-Pass-nicht-im-PlayStation-Store-erhaeltlich-Gebrauchtkaeufer-ausgesperrt-831504/

http://www.c-kn.de/spielkonsolen/capcom-will-den-markt-fur-gebrauchte-videospiele-austrocknen/

The first article is the most revealing...

English:

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/86590/florida-sheriffs-treat-gamers-like-criminals-for-trading-in-used-games/

I have some references to refute it, how about that?

Look at the hardware and software sales for 2011. Yes, xbox 360 and Kinect are doing well, a kinect game is #3 for top selling game for 2011 so far. However, it's flanked by numbers 2,3 and 4 which are all Wii games. Wii Sports has been out for what, over four years and it's STILL beating the top kinect game? Come on folks, the kinect is a nice device and MS struck a home run with it. But the top selling device in history? NO. What you're seeing is that everyone who already had an xbox 360 bought one, but its not driving xbox 360 sales the way the wii appeals to casual-gamers. It's just not happening.

Yups - real hard to find sales figures. If only there were a video game chart site around somewhere.

Oh....wait.....

http://www.vgchartz.com/hardware_totals.php

Nevermind.

Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360. That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But, despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being profitable since 2008.

Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you cite your source?

XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite). Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our annual report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business - we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010, this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business. Steam is close to that (cite).

Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.

-foredecker.

Other highlights included Kinect and Xbox sales, which helped the Entertainment and Devices business beat $1 billion in annual operating profit for the first time ever... Microsoft's Xbox business racked up more than $7 billion in operating losses in the early years, but if it continues to crank at the current rate, the company might finally start earning back its investment in a few years.

I hate to say it, but if the Kinect is the most innovative MS can get after spending $7 billion, they're screwed.

Lastly, as anecdotal evidence, I visited my sister and her gamer husband over the holidays. They did have a kinect, but we spent the time playing guitar band instead. They didn't even mention it as a "must see".

Other highlights included Kinect and Xbox sales, which helped the Entertainment and Devices business beat $1 billion in annual operating profit for the first time ever... Microsoft's Xbox business racked up more than $7 billion in operating losses in the early years, but if it continues to crank at the current rate, the company might finally start earning back its investment in a few years.

I hate to say it, but if the Kinect is the most innovative MS can get after spending $7 billion, they're screwed.

Lastly, as anecdotal evidence, I visited my sister and her gamer husband over the holidays. They did have a kinect, but we spent the time playing guitar band instead. They didn't even mention it as a "must see".

Other highlights included Kinect and Xbox sales, which helped the Entertainment and Devices business beat $1 billion in annual operating profit for the first time ever... Microsoft's Xbox business racked up more than $7 billion in operating losses in the early years, but if it continues to crank at the current rate, the company might finally start earning back its investment in a few years.

I hate to say it, but if the Kinect is the most innovative MS can get after spending $7 billion, they're screwed.

Lastly, as anecdotal evidence, I visited my sister and her gamer husband over the holidays. They did have a kinect, but we spent the time playing guitar band instead. They didn't even mention it as a "must see".

Well, the PSP (which also launched at $250) has nearly 67 million sales compared to the PS3's 47 million. And the Nintendo DS has 145 million sales compared to the Wii's 85 million, or the PS3 and Xbox 360's 98 million combined.

That said, it sure would be nice if the 3DS has a tv-out function...

Lives with his brother in Manhattan, so presumably single. If you live someplace as nice as a NYC apartment, go ahead and cast those stores. Used to live there myself, and everybody I know who has a nice place there doesn't say LOL; not placing my bet on you so far.

DS Dominates worldwide and in every region. Totals in millions. Japan: DS: 31.7 PSP: 15.7 US: DS: 50.6 PSP: 20.3 EU: DS: 56.5 PSP: 26.6 TOTAL:DS: 138.9 PSP: 62.5 http://www.vgchartz.com/home.php

NYC subways for whatever reason seems to present a very different ecosystem than the rest of the country.

From looking around, you'd think that Sony PSP are absolutely dominating the Nintendo DS. However, in reality the DS has sold more than twice as many as the PSP.

[Taking a loss to build a brand] isn't working for them in the Xbox market [...] Microsoft is still being outsold 4-to-1 by the current winner.

What winner? VGChartz shows Xbox 360 outselling Wii in both Americas and EMEAA. Or are you including DS in Nintendo's tally, in which case you could include Windows in Microsoft's?

By the way 60K preorders, for comparison, is about 1/4th the total sales of Modern Warfare 2 on the PC

Not saying you're wrong but do you have a cite for that? I'm curious on the figures.

The console versions had at least 2.2 million preorders in the USA: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/5514/americas-preorder-charts-11th-oct-09/
With 10 million units sold in 12 days: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/5953/modern-warfare-2-hits-10-million-units-sold/

So a tiny percentage of the sales are for the PC version? Perhaps people really didn't like the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 - I heard some complaints about it by PC gamers. Or perhaps PC gaming is going a different direction.

Because Starcraft 2 had 1.5 million copies sold in 48 hours. And I don't think there's a console version of that yet. http://www.pcworld.com/article/202460/starcraft_ii_sales_top_15_million_copies_in_48_hours.html

1.5 million units is a lot more than 60K. I don't think this indie game is targeted at console gamers.

But yeah maybe a bunch bought thousands of copies of this indie game with accounts/credit card numbers not belonging to them. So I'm curious to see which happened :).

By the way 60K preorders, for comparison, is about 1/4th the total sales of Modern Warfare 2 on the PC

Not saying you're wrong but do you have a cite for that? I'm curious on the figures.

The console versions had at least 2.2 million preorders in the USA: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/5514/americas-preorder-charts-11th-oct-09/
With 10 million units sold in 12 days: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/5953/modern-warfare-2-hits-10-million-units-sold/

So a tiny percentage of the sales are for the PC version? Perhaps people really didn't like the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 - I heard some complaints about it by PC gamers. Or perhaps PC gaming is going a different direction.

Because Starcraft 2 had 1.5 million copies sold in 48 hours. And I don't think there's a console version of that yet. http://www.pcworld.com/article/202460/starcraft_ii_sales_top_15_million_copies_in_48_hours.html

1.5 million units is a lot more than 60K. I don't think this indie game is targeted at console gamers.

But yeah maybe a bunch bought thousands of copies of this indie game with accounts/credit card numbers not belonging to them. So I'm curious to see which happened :).

I'll translate: "I've made my bed with Apple. I've looked at an Andriod phone, once on the internet and whilst I pay some random tribute to make me seem like I'm not a fanboy but I'll praise Apple immediately after because my ego will never permit me to conceive that anything could ever be better".

I think the shoe is in the other foot. Both my brothers happen to have android phones (because neither can tolerate ATT, younger one almost cried when he had to give up his iPhone.) Truth is that Android feels more like a Windows Mobile killer than an iPhone competitor.

See my above statement. Apple is a non-competitor to Sony, MS and Nintendo. So much of a non competitor it's not even worth mentioning.

Really, I think you definitively are very biased... http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/08/09/daily32.html

Mobile gaming is nothing in the west. It's something in Asia (Japan and China specifically)

That's funny. I guess then that the fact that the combined software sales of DS and PSP software sales in America outselling Japan's by 62.5% is just an optical illusion or result of some one's random number generators... http://www.vgchartz.com/hardware_totals.php?type=Software&sort=Total

The iGaming fad will be over in a year or so.

I said that 2 years ago (who on earth would play with just on-screen controls, I said.) I lost a lot of money [due to not pursuing opportunity] for thinking that way.

As soon as enough Andorid, Symbian and Meego phones support Flash 10 a copy of a flash game will no longer sell for US$5.99.

You would be shocked what people pay money for. And it's not only iPhone owners, people buy games for Android, XBox Live Arcade, PSN, WiiWare and DSWare that make Facebook games look like next gen killers.

Oh and not sure why you say 5.99, the average iPhone game is between $0.99 to $2.99, only big studios like EA or SquareEnix seem to try to sell titles for higher amounts (and their games are FAR from "flash games".)

You don't like the iPhone? Well, there are alternatives out there for you (provided you are in an actual position to afford any) but I hope you are not the economical advisory for any kind of software company. You may loose your job soon if anyone realizes how much money you made your company loose by convincing them iOS is a fad (either that or they will send you to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.)

Whether you like it or not, the iOS devices are a huge phenomena, and most of the reason behind it is precisely the "restrictive" app store that happens to do most of it's movement in the games and entertainment categories. If you ignore them as a developer, you are a fool.

PS: pardon my English, not my first language.

How about this one: on its opening month, Modern Warfare 2 moved an impressive 6 million combined on 360 and PS3 in North America, but only 170,000 on PC. If we presume that there is an additional %50 for digital sales, the PC is still seeing less than 10% of the sales of the 360 and PS3 averaged together.

As someone who deals with publishers regularly, you expect a PC title to sell about %10 of what an identical console title will move. Breaking 150k on a PC is a strong achievement. 150k on a console would be beyond a failure.

There are some complicating factors in PC, though. For one, per-unit sales do not map nearly as cleanly with money spent or profitability. There are a lot of titles in the $5 clearance aisle that move on impulse, and buffer up the raw number sold without actually helping developers to eat. There are titles that move better on PC than on console due to interface and other questions. Flight Simulators, RTS, and MMO's, while the floor fell out of all of them a while back, they still do better on PC's than consoles. Sadly, though, the upper end a PC-only game can realistically expect to move these days is about 500k units, which is a break-even point for a moderately conservatively budgeted title.

World of Warcraft also sucks up a genuinely stupid amount of user dollars every year. It is in and of itself 1 Billion dollars per year. But it's really not fair to assess the income potential of future games on that particularly freakishly large nugget (many companies have gone broke trying). And when you're talking about the overall "health" of the PC gaming industry, it is hindering development rather than helping.

Also, PC as a gaming platform is permeated by flash and other downloadable mini titles, many ad-or-microtransaction supported. These do not bridge over to consoles well, which is where developers actually pay the rent. It takes a very different title, development methodology, and mindset to even survive on the PC side of things.

Overall though, it's difficult to make a giant blockbuster-sized game on the PC and expect to make your money back. Blizzard is one of the last developers trying it, with Starcraft and Diablo rehashes coming out soon. But, again, Blizzard is raking in 1 BILLION dollars a year from WoW. They can afford to take risks like that. Other than them, there is an updated Civilization soon, and then nothing but console ports as far as the eye can see. And even those are becoming thinner, as chasing the last 100k in sales might not offset the additional development and supply chain costs.

Poke around http://www.vgchartz.com/ for a while and see how a PC release generally does against a console release. Their numbers aren't thorough, and sometimes they're off by a lot, but they're usually in the right ballpark. I don't see anything released in the past few years that broke 2 million units on the PC.

Are you really so hard of thinking? I criticized you for pulling figures out of your arse. Your response is even worse. Let me explain it to you in small pieces to increase your chance of understanding.

Units of what exactly? I'm a little puzzled, you're suggesting you can't find annual sales figures, and then suggesting you have some annual sales figures

I don't have access to actual sales figures. But I provided estimates from a reliable source (NPD is recognised as an industry standard for estimates of units sold in the games market and they have access to a lot of figures that the public do not).

So then you provide some figures instead of pulling them out of your own arse. Let's see where they come from shall we:

* Polling end users to find out what games they are currently purchasing and playing
* Polling retail partners to find out what games and hardware they are selling
* Using statistical trend fitting and historical data for similar games
* Studying resell prices to determine consumer demand and inventory level

That taken from http://www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php. Or in other words they pull them out of their ass. So which do I trust more: a market research company trusted by the industry who estimates sales at 20 million based on access to non-public info, or somebody with a fucking Z in their name who ran a phone poll and estimated 100 million units......

Hmmmmm. Keep trying, you may actually find a source to back up your imaginary figures you look hard enough.

"Although I can't find annual sales figures for consoles in 2009 I have at least looked a bit harder than you to find some real figures: NPD sales figures for the US in 2009 show 22.6 million units sold for the Wii, 20.4 million units for the xbox360 and 8.7 million for the PS3."

Units of what exactly? I'm a little puzzled, you're suggesting you can't find annual sales figures, and then suggesting you have some annual sales figures and then separating them out and suggesting the PC sells more? This makes very little sense. Here's some real figures:

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly.php?date=2010&reg=America&date=2009

The right hand column contains the total software sales, as you can see, these destroy your assertion that PC sales are in any way close to console sales.

Seriously? Did you even look at the Wikipedia citation you provided? The Wii had sold 13.4 million units as of 14 November 2008 . The Xbox 360 had sold 18.6 million units as of 31 December 2009 , more than a year later. In other words, all your source proves is that the Xbox360 manages to beat the Wii if you give it a year's head start.

Look at the actual current data, from like VGChartz or something. The Xbox360 sold 170,000 units last week versus the Wii's 80,000; however, total sales are 33 million for the Wii and 23 million for the Xbox360. Like I said, although the Xbox360 is selling more right now, that's more likely to be due to a recent price drop that was advertised. This is blatantly obvious if you compare the chart from 12 June vs 19 June - Xbox360 sales move from a steady 50,000/wk to 130,000/wk after the price cut is implemented. In terms of total sales, on the other hand, the Wii is has won quite handily.

Anyway, they didn't just produce the second most popular console in the world - they also produced the second least popular console in the world. Coming second place in a three-way contest isn't that great (and in this case, all it really seems to mean is that the PS3 is kind of a commercial flop - it's got half the sales of the Wii!), and it gets significantly worse when you account for the (large!) mobile gaming market.

But the shovelware titles are the best-selling. According to VGChartz.com, Imagine: Babyz and Imagine: Fashion Designer have each sold nearly 3 million copies each. Compare that to the sales of some of the highest-rated DS games:

Fire Emblem - Shadow Dragon: 480,000
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - Grimoire of the Rift: 640,000
Castlevania - Dawn of Sorrow: 340,000

Store shelves are stocked with shovelware for one reason: they sell. Heck, for years people were whining about the lack of 'adult' games for the DS, then Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (excellent game, BTW) was finally released. The game sold so poorly it's been ported to the iPhone and PSP to help recoup development costs.

The Final Fantasy IV DS remake only sold 1.04 million copies. If more people actually bought the quality DS titles, we would see more of them. Vote with your wallet!

You could actually look it up, and you would see that the Wii is still doing better at this point then the PS2 was doing this many weeks after launch.

Given that the PC gaming market is really a joke compared to the console market I think DirectX is really rather meaningless.

When the Top 50 selling games world wide contains only 3 PC games The Sims, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft it's time to say that DirectX for the PC is over rated.

Since the Wii and PS3 use a custom modified version of OpenGL for their hardware I'd also have to side with OpenGL as at least being relevant to professional games.

However, I must say that I do not like having words put in my mouth. You made a statement about what could reduce the piracy rate. I pointed to an article that explored those very things, ran figures for them, and noted that those things had no effect on the piracy rate at all. I was speaking entirely of the ratio of pirated copies to legitimate copies, and you kept trying poke holes in the argument that a download is equal to a lost sale. I never made that claim, the article never made that claim, and frankly the claim was irrelevant to the ratio. That makes it a straw man.

And I pointed out that we really have no way to know at all whether or not those "things" really had an effect on the piracy rate, regardless of what graphs your article has. And that, as a result, your claim of those "things" being an "utter failure" at affecting piracy is such an extreme statement that it's only valid if we were otherwise assuming every pirated download as a lost sale. Not a straw man at all, nor was it putting words in your mouth.

I will point out, though, that if the sales figures for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are representative of a successful game - over 6 million copies sold for console vs. approximately 350,000 sold for PC - then the reason that the big game makers are going for the console market has a lot more to do with the size of the market than it does with the financial cost of DRM. Console games are less complex to develop (the PC game platform is really something like a hundred similar platforms, all with their own quirks, whereas a game that works on one X-Box 360 will work on all X-Box 360s), have fewer piracy issues, and a far larger market.

Well first, you got your facts wrong. http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5826 I dunno, maybe you have a bad source but according to my math, 12% of 7 million comes to 840,000, not 350,000. I also find it quite amusing that you would choose MW2 as your example of poor sales on the PC. You are aware that several hundred thousand gamers boycotted the game, precisely because it didn't offer the value that it should have? http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw The main reason though that some developers are finding it hard to get PC game sales to match console sales is because PC gamers are too busy playing games on their PCs that simply can be done properly on console. Namely, MMOs. Or to be specific, WoW. And yet, despite all the boycotts, despite all the piracy, despite the millions of gamers who previously would have been their target audience that are now plaing MMOs, they still managed to sell enough copies of MW2 for PC to make it the most successful PC version of Call of Duty ever. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/modernwarfare2/news.html?sid=6241052 Yep, I guess they should just pack in their PC gaming devision because it's clearly not profitable enough.

Or, put bluntly, why would any developer put the effort into selling around half a million copies for PC if they're REALLY lucky when they can put less effort into selling a few million for consoles first?

Maybe because the game they want to create just won't work well on consoles? Or maybe because there's already so many games for consoles available, and with the big publishing houses focusing more on consoles it's a lot easier to make a profit on PCs? How about because the installed base for PCs dwarfs that of all modern consoles put together? Not all games have to be cutting-edge 3D you know. The PC game market includes far more than the retail boxed products, and way more than consoles could ever hope to offer.

And that is my last word in this discussion. I will not reply further.

Good for you.

No, but I expect a game that nets $1 Billion to do at least something that has never been done before. Something.

When a first person shooter that brings nothing new to the table sells 4.7 Million copies on its first day, yet a game like Muramasa: The Demon Blade sells under 200,000 copies over the course of 3-4 months, there is something seriously wrong with the culture.

Wii sales fell off a cliff? Did they land in a pile of money or something? The Wii was SOLD OUT for almost 2 years after launch, that's well beyond any conceivable novelty factor. I'm sorry you think the wiimote isn't an elegant controller like the rest of the world does (and it is), but it's accuracy and ease of use is second only to the mouse and keyboard for FPS's. The stick controls the ps3 and xbox rely on for shooters is clumsy and requires autoaiming for most games, something development houses have to accomodate or their games feel inaccurate.

The reason so many third party games are considered sub-par for the wii is because three dimensional interfaces have never been fleshed out, and no one knows yet how to fully utilize all the extra input options. So to play it safe few games (besides first party ones) really take a chance on 3d motion input, instead relying on the well known stick and button controls we've been using for decades. It's the same story with the iphone right now (tell me thats a novelty too, i dare ya) Few game developers get creative and utilize multitouch in fun an interesting ways, and most end up treating touch input the same as they would a mouse.

Long story short, it's the Wii that has yet to really come into it's own. The PS3 and XBOX have their niche crowds and eye candy, and netflix is a nice bonus, but after 50-100 hours of gameplay i really could care less if it's rendering in 1200p at 240hz. I still think Quake is fun, and X-Com, and HoMM. I even get a kick out of MUD's, and they have no graphics at all. The Wii is only going to get more fun as developers find more creative ways to use this newfangled "third dimension" that they've been raving about on the tubes.

[citation required]

For which part?

The sales figures can be found here: http://www.vgchartz.com/chartsindex.php

The anecdote about Monster Hunter Tri is here: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/10/10/afx4204151.html. 'Due to high development cost of titles for PS3, we have decided to switch the platform to which we release our Monster Hunster 3 title,' Capcom managing corporate officer Katsuhiko Ichii said.

It's kind of like Idiocracy.

Take this brand new game, Bayonetta. It looked like a pretty bad-assed title; I recently found out that they added a "one handed gameplay mode". You can watch a video of it over there.

There aren't many games that allow you to play one-handed. You might be able to get by with one hand on certain RPGs -- leaving the other hand free to grab some popcorn during those really long cutscenes -- but, for the most part, it just doesn't work. Of all the upcoming games we wouldn't expect to play one-handed, Bayonetta sits right at the top of the list. As an action game from Hideki Kamiya, the mind behind Devil May Cry, we can't even imagine trying to play it without two hands sweatily clamped around the controller.

Or how about the Nintendo trend of games "playing themselves"?: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, future titles will play themselves

Are games too hard for you, Johnny? Don't worry -- Shiggy's got your back. Starting with upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii, future Nintendo Wii titles will be shipping with the ability to, well, play themselves. In an interview with USA Today, the man who birthed Mario confirmed the existence of "demo play" for the next Mario game and "future games, too" -- essentially an option to allow the game to play itself when the player encounters an area too difficult for them to handle.

Or take a look at the trends in console sales. VGChartz. The new world gaming order is here, and it only cares about the casual gamer.

The casual gamer has money, and he'll gladly take part in microtransactions to buff his character out.

A YouTube video has surfaced displaying the megaton of content that will be offered when the game hits retail in a few days. Most of it only affects Franchise Mode. You can download advanced trainers, staff, and scouts as well as a plethora of game-breakers such as temporary boosts to player and coaching statistics.

So, yes. New graphics are in, new gameplay is out. Small studios can die, nickel and dime-ing is in. Damn it. Where'd all the gamers go.

Oh, that's right. I'll let VGcatz sum it up for me: Nerd Rage

End Transmission.

Now if I'm going to have an 8 man LAN in my garage, it's all gotta go through battlenet, sucking up my bandwidth?

That's not a necessary conclusion. Blizzard already uses P2P stuff for, e.g., the Blizzard downloader; it's very possible that Battle.Net will only mediate such connections at the beginning, then drop out.

From my chair, Blizzard would be utterly stupid to require that LAN play go through their servers. Starcraft 1, a decade-plus-old-game, was the 10th best-selling PC game in June in the US. I'm sure that the SC2 announcements have helped over the past months, but one of the main reasons it has such holding power is that it's such a popular competition game. Look at South Korea's pro gamers.

You think that Jaedong or Flash or Boxer are going to be happy if their competitions have any chance of being disrupted by a little excess lag (remember, these are players that have 300 to 400 actions per minute sustained for a 20 minute game and peaking higher), or Blizzard's servers going down, or anything like that? Hell no. I suspect there are few things that Blizzard could do that would be more likely to cripple SC2 on the pro gaming scene than what you suggest. And that means that (1) Blizzard has a bunch of stupid people making decisions and will require all traffic to be external, (2) Blizzard will be releasing a special version of the game or server for these high-profile competitions (but then what will they practice on, how will they figure out who gets the special version, etc.), or (3) Battle.Net will only mediate.

Which is it going to be? I don't have a crystal ball. It could be any of the three. But I think that assuming that it will be #1 is a big assumption.

What I've been doing the last year is every time I go into a game shop, I go to the chart wall and rule out:

1. Film tie ins
2. Sequels
3. Sports games (e.g. Fifa)

Then you sorta get a chart worth considering (you may want to filter out some of the FPS games too). Actually, here we go, using the top 20 chart from here: http://www.vgchartz.com/aweekly.php after filtering the above you have:

1. Wii Fit
2. The Conduit
3. BlazBlue: Calamity trigger

So out of the top 20, you have 3 games that aren't complete rehashes of an old concept, no wonder game sales are down. And I haven't even seen 2 or 3 in action, they may well be just another FPS.

So it would be rather retarded for Apple to try and enter the PDA market, because there really isn't one.

Other than the 13 million iPod Touches, I'd agree with you. Seriously, if the iPhone is a phone + PDA, and you remove the phone...

Take a look at: http://www.vgchartz.com/

It gives you a rough idea of where the Wii is in comparison to current gen game system consoles. While living room consoles give it a 50% market share on this site, adding the handheld market brings that down quite a bit. As it only lists current gen, it doesn't show the PS2 which is still selling quite well.

On the other hand - Microsoft is coming out with the Natal motion system and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 had something in the works too (does it??).

And like somebody else said - you're forgetting the PC gaming market as well. Not a lot of motion controlled gaming in that area.