Folks, before we get to the fractured NPD report, I must rant on something that caught my eye.
Recent analyst findings by investment bank Digi-Capital have found that, in the past two years, hardcore console game sale growth has become relatively stagnant when faced against the rising social/mobile gaming scene.
According to Digi-Capital's findings, the "historically strong" home console games market sector has been flat to down in recent years while the online, social and mobile games market have been growing progressively stronger each year with speculation that it will grow global revenue to a hefty $87 billion market.
Digi-Capital also notes that while social/mobile games are high growth, they are also "unconsolidated." Entry barriers into the market remain low with strong competition without any one dominance from "major competitors," as a result many independents share the same level ground as established competitors.
This is an insult to Hardcore gaming. How dare Social gaming take sales away from the real gaming. You can tell if the game is hardcore by the amount of man hours it will take to finish it and how much junk food you can stuff your face full of.
But the chart in the link in the Works Cited shows what is leaping over hardcore gaming. Consoles are being triumphed by Online, Mobile and PC "Social" gaming. But what triumphs them all, is In-Game Advertising.
Now onto the NPD itself. Or at least a fraction of it. As it turns out, the NPD only released the sales of the Console games itself. The Handheld part was left out(That and the PS2). So I will put up estimates from other sites. Now here's the deal. If it says NPD, I will put down (NPD). But if it comes from another source, I will put the source of it.
Hardware
X-Box 360:381,000(NPD)
Nintendo DS:373,000(VGChartz)
Nintendo Wii: 320,000(NPD)
Playstation 3:267,000(NPD)
PSP:80,000(VGChartz)
PS2:40,000(VGChartz)
Not only does the 360 outsell the Wii, but also the Nintendo DS as the Wii has taken a tumble this year. The PS3 is still behind, but not as bad as the Wii itself. The PSP on the other hand, really took a fall right behind the PS3.
That's the Hardware. But what about the software? Well for one, it ain't pretty
01. Call of Duty: Black Ops* (360, PS3, WII, NDS, PC) Activision Blizzard
02. Just Dance 2 (WII) Ubisoft
03. Dead Space 2* (360, PS3, PC) Electronic Arts - 452K
04. Little Big Planet 2* (PS3) Sony - 353K
05. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party (WII, 360, PS3) Majesco
06. NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PSP, WII, PS2, PC) Take 2 Interactive
07. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood* (360, PS3) Ubisoft
08. Dance Central (360) MTV Games
09. Michael Jackson The Experience* (WII, DS, PSP) Ubisoft
10. DC Universe Online: The Next Legend Is You* (PS3, PC) Sony - 195K
If you were thinking Little Big Planet was gonna dominate, you can think again. Call of Duty: Black Ops was once again the number one title with Just Dance 2 right behind em. Dead Space 2 inches its way behind them and Little Big Planet 2 is on its tail. Zumba Fitness hits number 5 with NBA 2K11 folling behind. Assassin's Creed is also on the charts and MTV's Dance Central is dancing right behind. Closing out the Top 10, DC Universe Online, outselling WoW: Cataclysm for that month.
What will next month bring us? Will Marvel vs Capcom 3 be the top game? Or will Call of Duty give the Super Hero Squad their just desserts? Stay tuned.
Works cited:
Gaming Union
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
NPD of 2010 report
Now you're all wondering "Hey Reporter. The NPD of January is out. Where is it?" Hold your horses everyone. Before we get to that, I'd like to review last year.
First off, the Hardware. 2010 was a great year for the X-Box 360. Not so much for the Wii. Until what happened in December when the Wii overtook the 360, spoiling the 360's chance of taking the Wii's crown. As a result, this happened.
Nintendo DS - 8.56 million
Nintendo Wii – 7.07 million
X-Box 360 – 6.76 million
Playstation 3 – 4.33 million
Interesting is that the 360 is the only one that grew in sales. The DS, Wii and PS3 went down. The PSP numbers were not listed(They would be a bit more than 1.5M) after the PSP sales were not listed. Personally, I blame this on people buying the DS more than the PSP.
Microsoft came close to beating Nintendo on the Console side, but even the Wii still managed to slip past Microsoft and dominate in the Console Sales. Sony finishes last again and with new problems sprouting up for the PS3, it could really hurt the little guy that is Kaz Hirai.
Finally, software. We all know what's number 1. Courtesy of NeoGAF
01. Call of Duty: Black Ops** (360, PS3, Wii, PC, NDS) ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
02. Madden NFL 11 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP) ELECTRONIC ARTS
03. Halo: Reach** (360) MICROSOFT
04. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) NINTENDO
05. Red Dead Redemption (360, PS3) TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE
06. Wii Fit Plus** (Wii) NINTENDO
07. Just Dance 2 (Wii) UBISOFT
08. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2** (360, PS3, PC) ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
09. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood** (360, PS3) UBISOFT
10. NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, PC) TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE
Call of Duty was once against the Number one sold game and this time it was the new Black Ops. Madden NFL also proved to be a dominating factor with Halo Reach right behind them. Interestingly, New Super Mario Bros Wii of 2009 also made it on the list with Red Dead Redemption behind that. Wii Fit Plus is Nintendo's other title in the Top 10 and Ubisoft's Just Dance 2 right behind. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from 2009 also did well. Rounding out the Top 10 are Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and NBA 2K11.
With that out of the way, bring on 2011 and the first NPD of that month. Yeah I bet Microsoft will 1up Nintendo.
First off, the Hardware. 2010 was a great year for the X-Box 360. Not so much for the Wii. Until what happened in December when the Wii overtook the 360, spoiling the 360's chance of taking the Wii's crown. As a result, this happened.
Nintendo DS - 8.56 million
Nintendo Wii – 7.07 million
X-Box 360 – 6.76 million
Playstation 3 – 4.33 million
Interesting is that the 360 is the only one that grew in sales. The DS, Wii and PS3 went down. The PSP numbers were not listed(They would be a bit more than 1.5M) after the PSP sales were not listed. Personally, I blame this on people buying the DS more than the PSP.
Microsoft came close to beating Nintendo on the Console side, but even the Wii still managed to slip past Microsoft and dominate in the Console Sales. Sony finishes last again and with new problems sprouting up for the PS3, it could really hurt the little guy that is Kaz Hirai.
Finally, software. We all know what's number 1. Courtesy of NeoGAF
01. Call of Duty: Black Ops** (360, PS3, Wii, PC, NDS) ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
02. Madden NFL 11 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP) ELECTRONIC ARTS
03. Halo: Reach** (360) MICROSOFT
04. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) NINTENDO
05. Red Dead Redemption (360, PS3) TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE
06. Wii Fit Plus** (Wii) NINTENDO
07. Just Dance 2 (Wii) UBISOFT
08. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2** (360, PS3, PC) ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
09. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood** (360, PS3) UBISOFT
10. NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, PC) TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE
Call of Duty was once against the Number one sold game and this time it was the new Black Ops. Madden NFL also proved to be a dominating factor with Halo Reach right behind them. Interestingly, New Super Mario Bros Wii of 2009 also made it on the list with Red Dead Redemption behind that. Wii Fit Plus is Nintendo's other title in the Top 10 and Ubisoft's Just Dance 2 right behind. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from 2009 also did well. Rounding out the Top 10 are Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and NBA 2K11.
With that out of the way, bring on 2011 and the first NPD of that month. Yeah I bet Microsoft will 1up Nintendo.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Where was I again on the PS3 hacked? Oh wait it was Barbara Streisand's pad
I dunno where my brain was. But if you remember, last December, a group of hackers called Fail0verflow managed to hack the PS3. Why? Because long ago, famous iPhone jailbreaker George Hotz exploited a hack through the PS3's Other OS option, forcing Sony to remove it for good.
But what happened recently was that George Hotz(Sometimes referred to as Geohot) decided to post the entire Firmware release itself(Which we aren't providing, thank you very much). The end result? The PS3 has been compromised and Sony got pissed off so much they sued him under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and won a temporary restraining order against him.
Ironically, their rival Microsoft decided to send George Hotz a free Windows Phone for his trouble
But as for Sony, they're now going after ANYONE with anything to do with the PS3 hack, going through sites like Google and Twitter. Speaking of Twitter...
Kevin Butler, Sony's fictional spokesman and vice president of several fake departments who appears frequently in PlayStation 3 commercials, retweeted the console's jailbreak code last night after apparently believing that it was a reference to the board game, "Battleship."
"Lemme guess, you sank my battleship?" read the tweet on @TheKevinButler. It was followed by the complete code, which had been tweeted to Sony's account by user @exiva. The user, whose name is Travis La Marr, according to his Twitter page, followed the code with a message to Sony: "come at me."
After realizing its mistake, Sony removed the tweet from Kevin Butler's Twitter feed. The company did not mention its error and instead went back to cracking jokes about the PlayStation 3, as it normally does in that Twitter account. However, people did capture screenshots before Sony removed the tweet.
Oops. Looks like Kevin Butler screwed up.
But it's not just lawsuits. Rumor has it that Sony may end up going the serial input route for its future PS3 games
The rumored scheme would require gamers to input a serial number like PC CD-keys of old and verify them with Sony's authentication servers. The codes would allow five activations, sharply limiting each game's resale value.
While Sony certainly has the right to do what it can to limit piracy and protect its intellectual property, saddling legitimate consumers with a pain-in-the-ass code input that also restricts the end-user's ability to give away or resell their games is pretty *** unfriendly to gamers.
Sony knows how to make the PS3 backwards compatible, even going beyond what the PC did.
Sony is still in a world of hurt everyone. And personally, I blame this all on Nintendo. If it weren't for Nintendo, no one would have to hack the Playstation 3 and Sony would not have gotten butthurt. I dunno where Nintendo lands in all this, but I blame them because I'm a bias a-hole.
Come on Sony. Direct your lawsuits to Nintendo for their success. See how far you can go.
You can read more info at
Kotaku link 1
Exophase
Kotaku link 2
TechRadar
CNet
GameInformer
But what happened recently was that George Hotz(Sometimes referred to as Geohot) decided to post the entire Firmware release itself(Which we aren't providing, thank you very much). The end result? The PS3 has been compromised and Sony got pissed off so much they sued him under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and won a temporary restraining order against him.
Ironically, their rival Microsoft decided to send George Hotz a free Windows Phone for his trouble
But as for Sony, they're now going after ANYONE with anything to do with the PS3 hack, going through sites like Google and Twitter. Speaking of Twitter...
Kevin Butler, Sony's fictional spokesman and vice president of several fake departments who appears frequently in PlayStation 3 commercials, retweeted the console's jailbreak code last night after apparently believing that it was a reference to the board game, "Battleship."
"Lemme guess, you sank my battleship?" read the tweet on @TheKevinButler. It was followed by the complete code, which had been tweeted to Sony's account by user @exiva. The user, whose name is Travis La Marr, according to his Twitter page, followed the code with a message to Sony: "come at me."
After realizing its mistake, Sony removed the tweet from Kevin Butler's Twitter feed. The company did not mention its error and instead went back to cracking jokes about the PlayStation 3, as it normally does in that Twitter account. However, people did capture screenshots before Sony removed the tweet.
Oops. Looks like Kevin Butler screwed up.
But it's not just lawsuits. Rumor has it that Sony may end up going the serial input route for its future PS3 games
The rumored scheme would require gamers to input a serial number like PC CD-keys of old and verify them with Sony's authentication servers. The codes would allow five activations, sharply limiting each game's resale value.
While Sony certainly has the right to do what it can to limit piracy and protect its intellectual property, saddling legitimate consumers with a pain-in-the-ass code input that also restricts the end-user's ability to give away or resell their games is pretty *** unfriendly to gamers.
Sony knows how to make the PS3 backwards compatible, even going beyond what the PC did.
Sony is still in a world of hurt everyone. And personally, I blame this all on Nintendo. If it weren't for Nintendo, no one would have to hack the Playstation 3 and Sony would not have gotten butthurt. I dunno where Nintendo lands in all this, but I blame them because I'm a bias a-hole.
Come on Sony. Direct your lawsuits to Nintendo for their success. See how far you can go.
You can read more info at
Kotaku link 1
Exophase
Kotaku link 2
TechRadar
CNet
GameInformer
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Controversy for the sake of lulz
There's nothing like a good week of people causing controversy. Case with 2 stories. The first story came from Treyarch when community manager Josh Olin had this to say
“It’s a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence,” he added. “Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by “pundits” and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian.
“The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do.”
Ya know, I think we are doing a good job at pissing off game developers by pretending to be a bunch of angry gamers. Maybe we can convince SEGA to create the most boring Sonic game by saying that every Sonic game after Sonic 1 sucks because it adds something new.
Of course, I could be wrong. As it turns it, it is over the poor performances of the PC and PS3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops, compared to the X-Box 360 version of that game. Of course, the proper way for normal CoD fans to protest is to act like a gangster and cuss up a storm. Why well because
With Call Of Duty online players a famously foul-mouthed bunch it is entirely natural for Treyarch’s community manager to witness the worst of it. Olin’s Twitter feed shows he is a regular target of abuse.
And here I thought Halo fans had it worst.
Moving from Activision to Electronic Arts, they themselves have stirred up some of their own controversy. This time, by using parents as a means of promoting Dead Space 2
Well, actually, it is, since a "parent advocacy group" is calling out the campaign for the same reason I think it's stupid: it completely overshoots (and in many ways insults) its target market, pandering to a demographic that won't (and shouldn't) even be looking at the game, let alone buying it.
If you haven't seen it, the campaign focused on the reaction of mothers to the game's gorier and scarier moments. It closes with "Dead Space 2. It's everything you love in a game, and your mom's going to hate it."
What is this, 1993? Does Dead Space 2 do what Nintendon't? Dead Space 2 is a game rated Mature, meaning it's pitched at people who at their youngest are 17 years old. But these "moms" in many cases look more like "grandmothers", which makes things worse: either EA is pitching the game at kids who think pissing off their parents is cool (kids who shouldn't be playing the game), or it thinks the children of these women - who would be in their twenties and thirties - think pissing off their parents is cool.
Neither scenario makes EA look too good.
That's right. A commercial where mothers are shocked at the contents of the game and are even shocked that their shockiness is being exploited by a commercial. It even got the attention of Common Sense Media who requested to the ESRB to sanction the ad itself, due to making it irresistible to teens and young boys. They also had this to say.
"We think it violates the ESRB's Principles and Guidelines for Responsible Advertising Practices," Steyer wrote. "The question is does the ESRB stick up for kids or not."
I say they shouldn't. That's government overreach of our children. We don't need no stinkin rating system telling us what to do while we fail to look up information on a game and end up buying the violent game for our child by accident.
Okay, maybe I have drank too much tea right now.
Works Cited:
Next-Gen: Edge Article
Kotaku
LA Times.
“It’s a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence,” he added. “Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by “pundits” and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian.
“The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do.”
Ya know, I think we are doing a good job at pissing off game developers by pretending to be a bunch of angry gamers. Maybe we can convince SEGA to create the most boring Sonic game by saying that every Sonic game after Sonic 1 sucks because it adds something new.
Of course, I could be wrong. As it turns it, it is over the poor performances of the PC and PS3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops, compared to the X-Box 360 version of that game. Of course, the proper way for normal CoD fans to protest is to act like a gangster and cuss up a storm. Why well because
With Call Of Duty online players a famously foul-mouthed bunch it is entirely natural for Treyarch’s community manager to witness the worst of it. Olin’s Twitter feed shows he is a regular target of abuse.
And here I thought Halo fans had it worst.
Moving from Activision to Electronic Arts, they themselves have stirred up some of their own controversy. This time, by using parents as a means of promoting Dead Space 2
Well, actually, it is, since a "parent advocacy group" is calling out the campaign for the same reason I think it's stupid: it completely overshoots (and in many ways insults) its target market, pandering to a demographic that won't (and shouldn't) even be looking at the game, let alone buying it.
If you haven't seen it, the campaign focused on the reaction of mothers to the game's gorier and scarier moments. It closes with "Dead Space 2. It's everything you love in a game, and your mom's going to hate it."
What is this, 1993? Does Dead Space 2 do what Nintendon't? Dead Space 2 is a game rated Mature, meaning it's pitched at people who at their youngest are 17 years old. But these "moms" in many cases look more like "grandmothers", which makes things worse: either EA is pitching the game at kids who think pissing off their parents is cool (kids who shouldn't be playing the game), or it thinks the children of these women - who would be in their twenties and thirties - think pissing off their parents is cool.
Neither scenario makes EA look too good.
That's right. A commercial where mothers are shocked at the contents of the game and are even shocked that their shockiness is being exploited by a commercial. It even got the attention of Common Sense Media who requested to the ESRB to sanction the ad itself, due to making it irresistible to teens and young boys. They also had this to say.
"We think it violates the ESRB's Principles and Guidelines for Responsible Advertising Practices," Steyer wrote. "The question is does the ESRB stick up for kids or not."
I say they shouldn't. That's government overreach of our children. We don't need no stinkin rating system telling us what to do while we fail to look up information on a game and end up buying the violent game for our child by accident.
Okay, maybe I have drank too much tea right now.
Works Cited:
Next-Gen: Edge Article
Kotaku
LA Times.
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