(Credit: Microsoft)Matt Rosoff, a CNET Blog Network blogger who writes “Digital Noise,” said in a recent blog post that he spoke to Microsoft’s marketing director, Adam Sohn, earlier this week, and Sohn told him that although Zune sales were poor, Microsoft still plans to release a new set of players before the 2009 holiday season. According to Rosoff, Sohn said “they’ll be a surprising step up from the current models.”
Great. But I don’t know why Microsoft plans to waste its time with the Zune. According to its latest quarterly filing, Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million, or 54 percent, during the last quarter. Considering iPod unit sales were up 3 percent during the same quarter and Apple enjoyed $3.3 billion in revenue, I’m not convinced Microsoft’s plan to offer new Zune models is a good idea.
Instead of wasting our time and its money on the Zune, I’d like to see Microsoft ditch its attempt to make progress in the personal music player market and tackle the handheld gaming space. Why not? It could transfer all its funding and development costs to that division and in the process, jump in on one highly lucrative market.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
Continue reading about Ditch the Zune, Microsoft. Bring me Xbox Mobile
Kaz Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment America president and CEO, told Official PlayStation Magazine in its latest issue that the Xbox 360 “lacks longevity.”
He went on to say that “unless things go really bad, there’s no way that at the end of a life cycle, our competition is going to have a higher install base.”
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But what is “longevity” in gaming hardware? Sony has promoted this idea for years now and it always points to the PlayStation 2 as proof that its consoles have lasting power.
December’s NPD sales numbers might prove the company’s point: 1.1 million PlayStation 2 units were sold in December, besting both the PSP and the PlayStation 3 for the month.
Sony has said on numerous occasions that it plans to keep the PlayStation 3 going for 10 years, and to judge the victor of the console war before that time period is up would be foolish. So far, the PlayStation 3 has just over two years under its belt. If Sony gets its wish, the console will still be in production until at least 2016–a whopping 7 years from now. And quite a bit can happen in that time.
But that doesn’t answer the simple question of whether or not longevity in gaming really matters.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
Continue reading about Does the Xbox 360’s ‘lack of longevity’ matter?
Id Software, the video game developer behind Doom, announced Thursday that it has tapped British author Graham Joyce to write Doom 4. The fantasy novelist has won numerous awards for many of his 14 novels and 26 short stories.
“I can say that Id has hired me to help develop the storyline potential,” Joyce said in an interview with CVG. He chose not to offer any more comments about the pending release of Doom 4.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to Doom 4 even though Id first announced the game back in 2007 and has made no mention of it since. The original Doom became an iconic franchise that helped start this whole anti- video-game-violence nonsense, but more importantly, it set the tone for gaming today. It brought first-person shooters to the mainstream and left an indelible mark on the entire industry.
Doom was an important part of my formative years, as well. Maybe that’s why my love for Doom, even through rough patches (I’m looking at you, Doom 3), has ever diminished.
Remember when Doom first hit store shelves in 1993? It wasn’t like any other game on the market. It included off-color remarks, a gun named BFG (the “F” stood for… you can guess that yourself), and unprecedented violence. Unfortunately, it was that violence that got all the media attention.
But for the rest of us, Doom was something special. It was the graphical king of its time and we marveled at Id’s ability to bring it to life. More importantly, it led to the 1990s gaming boom that changed the industry (and its consumers) forever.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
In a report that could send shock waves through the video game industry, market research firm iSuppli has detailed the real cost and new savings found in Sony’s second-generation Playstation 3.
iSuppli’s report, issued Monday, says that the current PS3 model contains 2,820 individual parts, including Nvidia’s Reality Synthesizer, IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine, and Toshiba’s I/O controller, which are now made using 65-nanometer process technology, compared to 90-nanometer technology formally employed in the previous iteration. That has drastically reduced the PS3’s power supply cost by 30 percent from $30.75 to $21.50.
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Kionix’s three-axis accelerometer in the PS3 controller has replaced the Hokuriku Electronic Industry Co. part, saving Sony an estimated $1.45 per unit.
But perhaps the most important cost savings is in the console’s vaunted Cell processor from IBM. According to iSuppli, the latest PS3 includes a new version of IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine, which is priced at $46.46 — 28 percent lower than its original cost in the first-generation hardware. A new version of Nvidia’s Reality Synthesizer, the console’s GPU, at $58.01 per unit is now priced 30 percent lower than it was in the first generation.
Altogether, Sony’s second-generation PS3 features a 35 percent total cost reduction from the first-generation model. In dollars and cents, today’s PS3 costs Sony about $448.73 to produce, compared to the old model’s $690.23 price tag. That said, the lower cost doesn’t include software, box contents, and royalty expenses.
Realizing that, and considering the PS3’s current price tag of $399, iSuppli has found that Sony is still losing money with each sale of its console. But Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst at iSuppli, believes Sony may be able to break even in 2009.
“With its new-generation PS3, Sony has come closer to breaking even, although it probably hasn’t quite reached that mark yet,” Rassweiler said in a statement. “With iSuppli’s estimated PS3 cost at $448.73, the product retailing in the United States at around $399 and taking into account other expenses, the PS3 may be able to break even in 2009 with further hardware revisions.”
Great, but is that enough time? With Microsoft and Nintendo outselling Sony’s console each month with ease, Sony’s window of opportunity is almost closed.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
Continue reading about Why Sony needs to (but can’t) drop the price of the PS3
ThinkFree, a company that specializes in “next-gen” office productivity solutions, announced Tuesday that it has launched its ThinkFree Netbook solution, which will deliver word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications for Netbooks running Intel’s Atom chipsets, like the Asus Eee PC or the Acer Aspire One.
According to ThinkFree, its …
Originally posted at Webware
Continue reading about ThinkFree launches office suite for Netbooks
I may be going out on a limb here considering Little Big Planet, Far Cry 2, and countless other titles will be hitting store shelves over the the next few months, but I don’t care. After playing through the world of Fable II and considering the impression it made on me, I can say, without a doubt, that Fable II is 2008’s game of the year.
Now, I know that Dan Ackerman told us all last week that Dead Space should top the list for this year’s best game, but I have to disagree.
But then again, Fable II is an acquired taste. It’s not the kind of game that will make the world rejoice, but it’s the kind of game that any person who enjoys a fantastic storyline, even better gameplay, and a living, breathing world, will enjoy. In other words, the Wii gamer–someone who only enjoys playing Wii Sports or Wii Fit–will probably look at Fable II as a relic of the past that holds little merit. But for the rest of us–those that love gaming and enjoy varying styles of gameplay–Fable II will sit atop our lists as one of the best games we’ve ever played.
Trust me. It’s that good.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
Continue reading about Why ‘Fable II’ is the game of the year
Quite a bit happened Tuesday at T-Mobile’s conference introducing the G1, the world’s first Android-based phone. Sure, it offers GPS, apps, and an open platform to make every iPhone lover cringe, but one major announcement that many have glossed over is the inclusion of Amazon.com’s DRM-free MP3 store pre-loaded on each Android phone.
On October 22, thousands of people will be introduced to DRM-free music and Amazon’s store. Many of those people won’t know the value of owning DRM-free songs and others may wonder what Amazon’s MP3 store is. But once they find out for themselves by downloading songs onto their G1, you can bet that they’ll never look back at iTunes again.
Why? It’s simple really: iTunes is a locked-down service that will only let you play your songs on Apple devices. Quite the contrary, Amazon’s DRM-free store will let you download songs online or now, on the G1, and let you take that song to any other device you wish. Want to add it to your iTunes library? Go for it. Want to put it on your Zune? What are you waiting for?
Sure, we’ve known about this for quite some time–the store already has 6 million songs, you know–but there is a huge base of people who have used iTunes for so long that they don’t even know what’s out there. Some may not want to switch and will continue using iTunes, but now that Amazon’s store is slowly gaining some of the limelight, Apple should start paying more attention to Amazon’s offering.
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Quite a bit happened Tuesday at T-Mobile’s conference introducing the G1, the world’s first Android-based phone. Sure, it offers GPS, apps, and an open platform to make every iPhone lover cringe, but one major announcement that many have glossed over is the inclusion of Amazon.com’s DRM-free MP3 store pre-loaded on each Android phone.
On October 22, thousands of people will be introduced to DRM-free music and Amazon’s store. Many of those people won’t know the value of owning DRM-free songs and others may wonder what Amazon’s MP3 store is. But once they find out for themselves by downloading songs onto their G1, you can bet that they’ll never look back at iTunes again.
Why? It’s simple really: iTunes is a locked-down service that will only let you play your songs on Apple devices. Quite the contrary, Amazon’s DRM-free store will let you download songs online or now, on the G1, and let you take that song to any other device you wish. Want to add it to your iTunes library? Go for it. Want to put it on your Zune? What are you waiting for?
Sure, we’ve known about this for quite some time–the store already has 6 million songs, you know–but there is a huge base of people who have used iTunes for so long that they don’t even know what’s out there. Some may not want to switch and will continue using iTunes, but now that Amazon’s store is slowly gaining some of the limelight, Apple should start paying more attention to Amazon’s offering.
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