Need more evidence that physical media is inching towards the door? Enter this Reuters conversation with Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. While the company — the largest publisher of “interactive entertainment” (AKA video games) — is hurting on sales during the awesome global recession currently underway, he thinks the future is digital. All digital. Riccitiello had this to say on the matter:
“When people think of games, they traditionally think, in the U.S., of what sells on the Xbox, the PlayStation, and the Wii, and they forget about all these online services that are out there… if you add all that stuff up, it’s almost half the industry now. It’s about 40 to 45 percent. Next year it’s likely to be the larger share of the total industry and it’ll be bigger than the console games all put together.”
He went on to say that if EA’s digital arm was a standalone company, “it would be like the darling of Wall Street.” Of course, he’s not just talking about XBLA and the App Store — this is an all-encompassing view of the digital market, including casual gaming, Facebook apps, and WoW transactions as well. It may not be the kind of all-encompassing push needed, but we are hoping this sort of noise rattles the industry enough to mobilize smarter, more centralized methods of online distribution.
EA CEO says digital gaming sales will overtake console numbers next year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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So we know the iPhone has been slumming it and selling itself on Walmart shelves in the US for a while now, but it’s retained a somewhat more dignified cachet over here in Europe. Until today, that is. Just “in time for Christmas,” British retailer Tesco will make it possible for you to buy your socks, no-frills groceries, and shiny smartphone all in the same place. You’ll still be riding O2’s network, thanks to the Tesco Mobile service, but the department store chain is likely to price its contracts more aggressively, as it already has a £30 per month plan that includes unlimited calls, texts, and web surfing. Maybe there’s something to this whole “competition” thing after all then, eh?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
iPhone to be sold by Tesco in the UK, hemorrhages cachet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The newer, embiggened Nintendo DSi LL (as it’s known in Tokyo Town) has been available to the kids in Japan since the beginning of the week, and Enterbrain, Inc. is reporting that Nintendo has pushed 103,524 units in its first two days. To perspectivize things, the DSi was snatched up to the tune of about 170,000 units in the same time period, while the PSPgo sold around 28,000 units. To celebrate, the kids at PC Watch have ripped one of these bad boys — and you’ll never guess what they found! (OK, maybe you will.) Check out the link below for the hardcore details — and don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Nintendo DSi LL sells 103k in two days, ripped open in two minutes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The NPD has released its US video game industry figures for October, which reveal that total monthly revenue from hardware, software and accessories among all manufacturers fell to $1.07 billion, constituting a 19 percent drop from what the American gamer spent over the same period last year. After being toppled from its chart-leading ways in September by a price cut-boosted PS3, the Wii has regained its sales throne by chopping $50 off its own entry fee, making itself buoyant in the US, if not the world. The PS3’s own sales have suffered a slump after the September euphoria, while the 360 is still wearing the dunce cap in third place. Microsoft’s response has been to keep banging that drum about being the only console to show year-to-date growth, but when you’re selling less than half as many consoles as Nintendo, you have to grasp at whatever straws are nearby. Speaking of Nintendo, its DS sales so far this year have continued at such a rate as to threaten its own 2008 hardware sales record — set by the Wii — with ten million units sold. So there you have it: Sony fails to maintain its September lead, Nintendo keeps churning, and Microsoft keeps hoping for better times ahead. Full list of figures after the break.
Continue reading NPD: Wii reclaims lead in US sales, but console gaming market shrinks by a fifth
Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds
NPD: Wii reclaims lead in US sales, but console gaming market shrinks by a fifth originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s not quite a $99 Xbox 360, but if this apparent Walmart scan via Kotaku is to be believed, that $199 Arcade version is getting a $100 gift card promotion going into effect this Saturday. In real terms, that boils down to a $234 Xbox 360 Pro for first-time buyers, seeing as you’ll be needing that $135, 120GB hard drive, too. Also listed are a Sony Blu-ray player for $148 (we’re guessing the currently-MSRP’d $199 BDP-S360), and a $298 HP G60-519WM, which touts a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron, 15.6-inch HD display, Windows 7 Home Premium, 3GB RAM, and a 250GB HDD — not a bad followup at all for that Compaq CQ60. Some interesting spy shots from the Slick Deals forum seem to give credence to the scan, although we’re still playing wait-and-see — that $100 gift card with the Xbox 360 arcade is almost too good to be true, even if it is just a clever tactic to clear shelf space in the lead-up to Black Friday.
Update: Sure as the sun, an official ad has popped up on Yahoo’s front page. Screenshot after the break.
[Thanks, just4onepost]
Read - G60-519WM spotted
Read - $199 Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card?
Continue reading Leaked Walmart ad reveals Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card, $300 HP G60 laptop
Filed under: Gaming, Laptops
Leaked Walmart ad reveals Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card, $300 HP G60 laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember the “platform sales boost” that Sony was tauting after the PSPgo’s release in the US? The question on everyone’s minds was of course how much of that boost was buoyed by the new kid on the block, and while Sony still hasn’t given us any domestic figures (nor will it ever, probably), we now know that the thing sold 28,000 units on its first day of availability on its home turf in Japan. That’s certainly better than the measly 1,000 units moved in Australia over the same period, but hardly encouraging when you look at its predecessors. According to Media Create the original PSP sold 171,963 units in a day in Japan. The PSP-2000? 130,000. UMD may be hated by everyone, but it seems to still have legs.
Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Sony’s PSPgo sells 28,000 units on first day in Japan, physical media points and laughs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nintendo just announced that its interim net profit was cut by more than half to ¥69.49 billion (about $770 million), from ¥144.83 billion last year at this time — figures that won’t be helped by the cheaper Wii price tag announced at the end of September. Speaking of which, Nintendo sold only 5.75 million Wii consoles from April to September (down 43% from last year) and cut its full year sales forecast for the April 09 to March 2010 period to 20 million units, down from an expected 26 million. DS sales were also off 15% from last year and we doubt that a bigger screen on the new DSi LL model will change that dramatically.
Nintendo profits sink on declining console sales, weak game selection originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Like it or not, the PSP Go is loose in the wild, sashaying around with neither physical media nor respect for sensible price-points. Nevertheless, it has generated a rather sizeable boost in interest for the PSP platform as a whole, with Sony saying that sales for all PSPs are up 300 percent over the week before the console launched. It’s easy to see why, given the buzz surrounding the new iteration of the hardware as well as the hugely anticipated Gran Turismo finally coming to fruition. What we don’t know is how many of those new sales were of the Go and how many were of the existing PSP-3000, a stat that would have shown whether indeed the “aspirational” new system would inspire some to just go ahead and buy the old system instead. We know which we would choose, how about you?
[Via gamesindustry.biz]
Filed under: Gaming
PSP Go launch inspires three-fold sales increase for platform originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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