Fun with Game Industry Headlines
Here’s a screenshot of a Gamesindustry.biz email I received today. Speaks for itself, I think… though this industry just cracks me up sometimes. 
Links below if you want to read the actual articles.
Links:
MS DOING BETTER THAN EXPECTED – CFO
GAMES SECTOR IS “WEAK” – SONY CFO
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It took me a while to realize the humor in the two statements.
I think both Nintendo and Microsoft show that the games sector is quite strong.
But in Nobuyuki’s defense, there isn’t anything else he could’ve said that doesn’t make Sony look bad to the public…
Nice Work Microsoft! Sony has a lot of talk, but the question is: will PS3 actually live up to it’s expectations? What people expect about PS3 and what it will actually have could be 2 VERY different things, and anyways, it’s all about the games. If it makes Sony feel special to pack a $600 blu-ray player in their consoles and take a big loss on profits, but it doesn’t mean they will be the best if they don’t have the games or the online experience to back it up.
I think the PSP vs. the Nintendo DS shows how important games are. The PSP has a lot more features, graphical power and "cool" factor (according to most PSP users).
But in the end, the DS is doing 5X or more better than the PSP. Why? The amount of "good" or enjoyable games on the PSP is limited, while the DS has a lot available.
I don’t actually have a PSP, but I’m wondering how enjoyable the WiFi experience is… I hear little about it, while most people are playing their DS games online.
The PSP is a fun handheld but they designed it wrong for certain games such as first person shooters. There is no second stick and they put the stick and gamepad on the same side. Makes playing a FPS more complicated than it needs to be. The wireless on the system works flawlessly, even has an auto shut off if the wireless unit is not in use, saving battery power. Surfing the Internet on a PSP is very cool, if for nothing else than a conversation starter for other people, I get tons of comments when I use it. The only other bad things to the unit is the proprietary format of the memory, UMD movies (look great, cost too much), game load times are somewhat long on some games, and lousy file system on the memory card.
On the DS the WiFi is only enabled when it is needed.
Browsing on a handheld does seem cool, but then again there will be a browser available for the DS soon. Although it would’ve been nice if it was always available.
I liked how they did the joystick, it’s unique. I think that is what they should use on cellphones. Instead of the tiny real joysticks that don’t work.
I think one other issue is the battery life. I don’t know exactly how long it lasts, but I know my DS can go for 10 hours. (Unless you use wireless of course)
Kinda funny.
Still if you read the article it shows that with a 70% increase in revenue MS had an operational loss.
Sony sold a similar number of PSP (4 mil this year) as Xbox360s(6 somthing mil) and considered it weak.
It’s a bit like GM saying that the US automotive market is weak and Porsche saying they hit record sales.
Sony sold 47 Million new copies of PS2 games this quarter compared to 50 million the quarter before. 97 million new games in 6 months. That is staggering.
Yep – I was just amused by the close conjunction of the articles – didn’t even care about the deeper article (though I figured some people might).
As to the PSP joystick, I have to admit I like the concept, but I just wish it was higher up on the device. Maybe I have big hands or something, but I find it uncomfortable to use. Almost wish I could switch the D-pad and the stick – that would feel right.
A 94% drop.
Sony’s last quarter group net profits were $14.3 mil, down from $240.2 mil for the same quarter last year. Sony’s game division showed a $366.6 mil loss compared to a $69,000 profit same time last year. The low profit last year was probably due to R&D for the PS3 and the massive loss this past quarter is obviously due to production of the PS3 with no sales (since it’s not released yet). Still it’s a little bit more hemmoraging than "a little weak" implies.
According to Gamasutra.
Kalroy
my 360 died recently. i feel i need to tell everyone. ;sigh; funny thing is my N64 still works.
joe- isn’t your 360 underwarranty?
You aren’t a modder are you?
joseph— my 360 is no longer under warranty (purchased in April or May)… It’s kind of funny how 360′s bought before December ’05 got their warranties extended from 90 days to 1 year…. So now, even though I purchased mine more recently, they have a warranty and I do not.
Sorry, I felt like ranting.
Oh, Ozy, since you work with Microsoft and the Xbox team, I was wondering if you might have the answer to one of my questions:
Will we start seeing items on the marketplace coming out in 1080p? My TV can only handle 1080i, but I would be interested to see what the file size differences are between 1080p/720p/480i/p…
I never realized the warranty was so short.
Given that the warranty distribution times are typically based on the normal distribution of the expected lives of the unit, MS is guessing that the XBOX units will last from 1-2 years on average. That seems pretty typical for low end consumer electronics.
There should be almost no filesize difference with the addition of 1080p.
1080p is going to be a supported software upconversion. If they were truly adding extra resolution to textures and the files would be 2.25 times as big. It would be a big pill to swallow for XBOX LIVE to suddendly push out more than twice as much data for a feature few Xbox Live users will use.
1-2 years expected lifetime? That’s terrible!
Thats just a guess based on theory. It means that a very small number of units fail in the warranty period, something on the order of 3% or less.
It may also have to do with the cost of in warranty repairs. If the units have a low failure rate but a high cost of repair the warranty will be short.
I really couldn’t see a 90 day warranty on a device that will last for decades or is inexpensive to repair.
The last thing that could inspire such a warranty is if you expect your users to use your product in a non-recommended way. For instance shoving your powerbick in a nest of power adapters right behind your entire home theatre setup.
Then again this is a game console. Imagine how supprised I was to find out a 2000$ powerbook has a similar warranty @_@
It seems that many other people are having problems with an XBL update maybe yours is part of it
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/01/xbox-360-update-bricking-consoles/
Check the back of your 360 for the manufacture date. It doen’t matter when you bought it, as much as when it was made for some of the issues right now. I bought mine in April, but it was made in Sept ’05. My power cord died recently, and 1-800-4my-xbox is rplacing it for free.