Entries Tagged 'sony' ↓

Forbes is reporting November’s NPD numbers for game consoles sold, including black Friday and Cyber Monday, the bottom line; it is good to be Nintendo.

On Friday, the NPD Group, a research firm, released its November sales report for game consoles. At the top of the pack was Nintendo with 981,000 Wii consoles sold. Behind Nintendo, was the Microsoft XBox 360, with 770,000 consoles sold, and the Sony Playstation 3, with 460,000 units sold, less-than half of Nintendo’s figure. Source: Forbes

Not a bad showing for Nintendo, and not a bad showing for Microsoft either, although Halo 3 sales probably bumped that up a bit. Sony still stuck in last place, even with the price drop and the 40Gig model on the streets. There is little wonder that they did not want to talk about anything until the NPD numbers came out.

It will be interesting to see how Sony responds, if they do, as the PS2 sold 496,000 units in November, more than they sold PS3’s. December’s numbers should be equally interesting, and could cement Sony in a solid 3rd place.

Looks like Wii sold out at 350,000 units while Microsoft Xbox has come in at some 310,000 units, and we are still waiting on the Sony Numbers that are yet to be released, but Todd Bishop is thinking that they came in third in what is shaping up to be the average way that sales are going. Wii wins, Microsoft takes it usual second place, but the sad part of the story is how Sony squandered their first place major lead, even with a big price cut.

Sony hasn’t disclosed the raw number of PlayStation 3 units it sold last week. (A Sony spokeswoman says it will give those numbers when NPD Group stats come out in mid-December.) The company did say that PlayStation 3 hardware sales were up 245 percent last week, when compared with the same week last year, among the top 10 North American retailers. This morning, Microsoft said the Xbox 360 still outsold the PS3 two-to-one last week, according to “estimates from top retailers.” Source: Seattle PI

The interesting part is that while Sony disputes the numbers, you would have thought that with comments like that from Microsoft, that Sony would have been all over that, rather than the tired line of “we don’t disclose numbers until the NPD results come out”. While Microsoft and Nintendo are crowing over major sales, Sony is somewhere in the background hugging the tired line.

In the mean time, this also gives Microsoft and others more room to create buzz, which could translate into sales. We will know more in mid December, but honestly people would have thought that Sony would say something, and that if it was the 245% increase (meaning a 100K unit would come in at 245K units sold, something to note) they will still lag in 3rd place, even with the 40 gig version on store shelves.

They need a much bigger turn around.

11/29/2207 - interesting update on PS3 outselling in Japan in November here.

After having failed to win one of the bigger UK Gaming prizes, the Church of England forgives Sony’s Resistance Fall of Man for using Manchester Cathedral as a setting for a major gun fight, but also rubs in the idea that they lost because they offended the Church of England along the way.

So we do forgive Sony for what they have done, even though they still believe they have done nothing wrong…”These traditions include having courtesy, respecting the dignity of your subject, and admitting when mistakes have been made. “In so many ways Sony have failed to live up to these standards by disrespecting people of faith and the victims of gun crime here in Manchester.” Source: BBC

This makes an interesting point, with a gaming system that has failed to capture the imagination of users and developers alike, it is a technological marvel. The system is being touted as the ultimate living room system, and in the battle for the living room, it is failing to compete against the WII and Xbox 360. It is failing badly, and for a company that was in the number 1 slot for so long, the loss of a gaming award for Resistance Fall of Man being tied to offending the sensibility of people who live in Manchester; well you have to wonder what is going to happen next.

We seriously doubt that Sony is going to recapture the number one slot in video game consoles any time soon. The Church of England while forgiving Sony and the Game Resistance fall of Man, still makes the dig, that they should have been more culturally aware of what is happening in Manchester, long before they made the game.

Sony Home, the idea of a virtual world associated with the ill fated PS3 is now going to be delivered later on next year rather than this year as initially thought. While this might not be a major problem, the real issue is going to be “adoption of a virtual environment” across all ages, and all people.

We have seen this in games like WOW, Final Fantasy and others that are highly successful, but in looking at what Sony Home for PS3 is supposed to look like, it is coming across more as a Second Life kind of process, only this time affiliated with a gaming console. It will arrive a bit late, and just as people who really do have first lives tend to use second life for a bit and then move on.

Sony Home should have the same issues that any other reality simulator has, although if Sony is smart theirs will come with their own police force because they are going to need it. Sony describes home as:

”Home” is a real-time interactive online world much like Linden Lab’s “Second Life” and other so-called “metaverse,” except it’s designed for PlayStation 3, Sony’s newest home console. Millions of people now enter “Second Life” on personal computers, moving avatars, or computer graphics images of themselves, in a virtual universe. Major companies are also setting up shop in “Second Life,” and analysts see great potential for such virtual worlds as a communication tool and real-life business. Source: AP

The interesting part is that their imagination has them doing something that they should have been doing long ago as businesses are rethinking their involvement with second life.

It might be too little, too late, long after the horse has left the barn sony is bothering to notice this one, frankly they would do better to emulate a working solution like Xbox Live rather than second life. There are going to be a lot of problems involved in the process, and they are going to be dealing with a lot of issues that maybe they will not be prepared to deal with, let alone enforce.

Not one to be undermined by the huge pile of preorders, branded products, and other fun stuff that is going to happen when Halo 3 ships this year, Sony decided that it would be excellent to do a bit of creative vandalism of the Halo 3 Wikipedia entry.

The stupid part is that Wikipedia and security folks are on to this one, so they will backtrack this puppy, and Sony SECA was stupid enough to use their own IP address as the source of the edit. Sony was caught red handed being naughty and showing poor sportsmanship when it comes to one of the hottest games for the Xbox.

On the Halo series page at Wikipedia, an edit originated from Sony Computer Entertainment casts aspersions on Microsoft’s Halo 3. In the Halo 3 section of the Halo page, Sony added “(Halo 3) wont look any better than Halo 2.” Since then, the Halo page has been corrected and locked from further vandalism. Source: N4G

The Wikipedia entry is even more amusing as they have put up the edits right here on the main page. You can’t miss it.

This is being picked up by just about everyone from Xboxnowonline, to games radar and others. While it is good that people are caught doing this, the idea of vandalizing the Wikipedia entry might have sounded like a good idea, but in the end is going to cost Sony even more, just at the time when they are already under fire for a poorly performing PS3.

Pocket Gamer and Gizmodo are talking about the advent of the Play Station phone, which in light of the rumors about the Zune and Google (gphone) phone, and the reality of the Iphone, well its plausible, and might just happen. Although as usual there is going to be nothing definitive about the whole thing, at this point with the media links trying to generate hype about the whole thing, maybe is better than nothing.

Sony Games desperately needs something that is going to work and compete with Nintendo and Microsoft at this point. The PS3 is not it, they have no viable hand held gaming platform (sorry PSP, but you are not a Gameboy or DS killer), and as they firmly establish themselves in 3rd place rather than first place, we are not surprised to see a number of rumors, supposed patents, and other information coming from Sony, in an effort to build buzz.

The Sony Ericsson gaming boss, Peter Ahnegard, said that a PlayStation-branded gaming phone would be coming by Christmas. He also added that it might not be this Christmas, which probably pissed whoever he was talking to off to no end. Source: Gizmodo

A convincing interview over at Pocket Gamer about the idea of a PSP or Sony branded phone from Ericsson makes it sound plausible and defendable. We are sure that there are people in Sony’s corporate office desperately trying to figure out where they went wrong, and how they can recover market share that is firmly in the hands of Wii and the Xbox 360. Maybe they think this will be the killer app, but with all the issues around Sony right now, it is going to be problematic.

Reports over the weekend have caused confusion over the idea of Bioshock containing or not containing a root kit as DRM. The sad part is that this is Sony we are talking about, so the believability that Sony did not learn, and tried but once again to install a root kit into their software or music is quite believable. This time though, not quite true at least as the game Bioshock is concerned.

The news spread quickly but gamer bob (site is having difficulties today) while he did find the software SecuROM, as an anti-copying device, but just about everyone has agreed that this is not a root kit type of software. It might be annoying, but it is not a root kit.

On the other hand, Sony’s USB Sticks however do have commercial software using root kit type cloaking mechanisms.

The good part, no root kit on bioshock, the bad part is that Sony is still doing the standard thing, and this makes the whole idea of purchasing a Sony product “risky for users”. There is a lot of risk in having something running on your PC with cloaking mechanisms, and what we are seeing is that Sony still has not figured this out, starting from 2005.

At this point we are not going to be surprised if people distrust Sony, and start tearing apart everything they make to see if there is some form of DRM cloaking happening. Most people will not notice and most people will not care. But Sony’s credibility is very strained right now when it comes to what commercial products are safe to purchase for the average person.