News
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Wants to “adapt” to social, smartphone.
Business isn’t booming for SEGA on consoles, and that’s because of “sluggish” personal consumption in Europe and the US, and “stagnant” personal consumption in Japan.
SEGA cited a need to “adapt” to an audience whose “expanding” demand was for social network and smartphone games.
A six month money report covering activity from April to September recorded a total of 6.6 million global sales of SEGA games. Over three million of those were attributed to “Catalogue” and a further million to PSP. The continued popularity of Yakuza helped PS3 be the most popular console to buy SEGA games on (on which 620,000 games were bought).
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Sony’s dogs Move faster than Microsoft’s.
Global sales of PlayStation 3 aren’t far off those of Xbox 360. And Sony is gaining on Microsoft.
The latest numbers (based on sales up to 30th September 2010) show the rival consoles only five million units apart: 39.2 million PlayStation 3s to 44.6 million Xbox 360s.
But globally PlayStation is selling faster: Sony recorded 3.5 million PS3 sales from the start of July to the end of September whereas Microsoft reported 2.8 million Xbox 360 sales.
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Sony’s Networked Products and Services division “contributed significantly” to improved results.For the second quarter of Sony’s financial year, ending September 30, the segment of the company that includes PCs and games achieved profit before tax of 6.9 billion yen ($85 million). For the same period last year the division saw losses of 59 billion yen ($731 million).
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One louder.
Here’s what we were picking from: Out This Week.
It was never going to match last week for quality – but the quantity continued as the games industry tipped another skip-load of new releases into the shops in week two of the seasonal rush. And this week, it seemed like there was something in the water.
“Albion! Where everything you touch turns to fun,” sang Tom of Fable III, apparently experimenting with reviewing videogames in the style of an MGM musical. Which was appropriate, considering the spring in this lovely game’s step although unlike Brigadoon, it’s British to the core. It may not be the revolutionary RPG we wanted, but it’s a wonderful place to be, and it’s just for us.
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He’s 16th, behind Kanye but before Obama.
AskMen.com has voted Activision boss Bobby Kotick the 16th most influential man in the world.
“This brash 47-year-old CEO has openly admitted he has no interest in producing games that don’t have the potential to be exploited year after year on every platform imaginable,” reads Kotick’s entry on the AskMen list.
“He has also infuriated legions of gamers by suggesting a strong desire to raise prices and charge for cut-scenes. It’s radical ideas like these that have led more than one talking head to call him ‘the Hitler of the Gaming Industry’.”
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Plus: MS research spend up $65 million.
The global total of Xbox 360 consoles sold now stands at 44.6 million, Microsoft has announced. And the game-per-console attach rate has risen to 8.9.
Those figures arrive after an “exceptional” three month performance by the house that Bill Gates built – particularly the Entertainment and Devices Division.
From the start of July to the end of September, Microsoft sold 2.8 million Xbox 360s worldwide – 38 per cent more than during the same period last year.
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Games business a money-maker again for electronics giant, thanks to increased console sales, lower manufacturing costs.
Last year, the July-September quarter was a dire one for Sony, with the company losing ¥26.3 billion ($326 million) on ¥1.66 trillion ($20.6 billion) of revenues. Today, the company reported earnings for the same period in 2010, and the result was decidedly different–¥31.1 billion yen ($385.4 million) of profit on ¥1.73 trillion ($21.5 billion) in revenues.
One reason for the increased profitability is that the massive restructuring Sony underwent last year–which saw 16,000 people laid off–is finally paying off. Another reason, though, mentioned by the electronics giant was the improved performance of its Networked Products & Services division, which includes Sony Computer Entertainment.
During the same period last year, the Networked Products & Services division posted a ¥59 billion ($731.5 million) loss. From July-September 2010, the sector posted a ¥6.9 billion ($85.5 million) profit, thanks to higher PC sales and “the strong performance of [the] PlayStation 3 resulting from significant hardware cost reductions and higher sales.” The company did say that the games business shrunk year-over-year overall, reflecting lessening sales of its other platforms, the PSP and PlayStation 2.
As a result of the better-than-expected earnings during the July-September quarter, Sony now expects a profit of ¥70 billion ($867.7 million) for the full fiscal year, up from ¥60 billion ($743.8 million). It expects to sell 15 million PS3s during the year, as well as 8 million PSPs and 6 million PS2s. Software-wise, it predicts annual sales will be flat at 115.6 million PS3 games, 44.4 million PSP games, and 35.7 million PS2 games.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Sony posts $385 million quarterly profit, credits PS3” was posted by Tor Thorsen on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:30:02 -0700 -
Hybrid coming to XBLA next year.
5th Cell, the studio which brought us the Scribblenauts series, is hard at work on a brand new game.
Titled Hybrid, it’s a third-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Despite this, 5th Cell is promising “a completely new gameplay experience never seen before in the genre”.
A new site is up over at Whatishybrid.com, complete with teaser trailers and storyline snippets. It seems there are two sides at war, the Paladins or the Variants, and not all the characters in the game are human.
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New ways to blow stuff up.
Fresh from going live with a comprehensive patch earlier this month, more new DLC has been announced for MAG.
Developer Zipper Interactive has lifted the lid on the Escalation pack, which brings new maps, game modes and weapons to the PlayStation 3 multiplayer FPS.
The new Escalation mode supports up to 96 players, or one 32-man platoon for each PMC, and pits Raven, SVER, and Valor against each other at the same time. The first PMC to score the pre-designated number of points before the timer runs down wins.
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17-year-old game sells by the bucketload.
Super Mario All-Stars: 25th Anniversary Edition has topped the charts in Japan after its first week on sale.
The game unseated the all-conquering Pokémon Black/White, selling an impressive 308,000 copies in the process.
The Wii re-release gathers together SNES-era remakes of the first three Super Mario Bros. games and bundles in a commemorative booklet and CD soundtrack.