@BrianK

A slow start, but Crysis** sold over 1 million copies. Crysis sold well in Japan and Germany.

http://thegamingsource.blogspot.com/2008/02/crysis-sale-exceed-expection-over-1.html

**Perhaps PC owners are in upgrading phase after Crysis’s release date.

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@Hammer

Thanks for the info on WoW. Again NPD doesn't track online sales. So it obviously misses WoW except for perhaps the first buy of the game itself which is probably more likely to hit a store. Upgrades, online fees, etc. which are bought online are completely missed. Definitely important to get those in there. PC gaming isn't dead, obviously. But, I think the consoles are having an impact.

@BrianK

Despite being a big fan of the Wii, 99% of my gaming time is WoW.

Just adding a followup RE: Drakes Fortune
I'm about halfway through the game, and visually, it's pretty nice. Character movement in particular, is pretty well done.

However, for me, the game is very much on the verge of getting repetitive, as well as irritating on occasion. There's a lot of wall climbing/jumping in the game...this wouldn't be so bad if it were at ALL clear in some cases where you're supposed to jump to, but instead, many of the points you can jump to almost blend in with the walls. I'm in a tower now, and have climbed a chain, 'moved it,' jumped around the walls, moved another chain, now simply can NOT see where the heck I'm supposed to go to to get up the second chain. For a game that was becoming repetitive somewhat already, it's now crossed into annoyance.

It's still very pretty, but I'm unsure I would have spent the $60 on it a second time.

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PS3 @ Home a hit?

Japanese receiption seems tepid. Famitsu asked their readers "What do you think about member services like PlayStation Home?" and the responses were.
• 27.3 percent are interested in trying it out
• 37.3 percent don't care
• 35.4 percent dislike such services

PS3 Devil May Cry 4 is hitting some criticisms and Capcom has responded.
http://blog.capcom.com/archives/839

• 5GB file must be loaded initally and takes ~25 minutes. Capcom's Chris Kramer says this is good because it saves disc swapping and speeds up gameplay.

• Gameplay is sped up 1-3 seconds over the 360 version. Hardly a great improvement.

@BrianK

DMC4 made the top 10 in Japan last week for both 360 and PS3, however, nothing could topple to 800 pound (or should I say 800,000 pound) gorilla that is Super Smash Bros. Brawl:

This week (Last Week) Platform - Title - Publisher - This week's sales (Total sales)

01. (-) WII - Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Nintendo) - 820,000 (NEW)
02. (-) PS3 - Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom) - 205,000 (NEW)
03. (-) PS2 - Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (Bandai Namco) - 117,000 (NEW)
04. (-) PS2 - Haruhi Suzumiya's Wonderment (Banpresto) - 114,000 (NEW)
05. (1) WII - Wii Fit (Nintendo) - 73,000 (1,356,000)
06. (-) PS3 - Disgaea 3 (Nippon Ichi Software) - 55,000 (NEW)
07. (-) 360 - Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom) - 40,000 (NEW)
08. (4) NDS - Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Nintendo) - 34,000 (175,000)
09. (-) PS3 - Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft) - 28,000 (NEW)
10. (2) PSP - World Soccer Winning Eleven: Ubiquitous Evolution 2008 (Konami) - 26,000 (102,000)

ArsTechnia is reporting IBM has shrunk the Cell to 45nm. Production likely to start late this year. Along with the recent blu-ray shrink these 2 should help Sony to make a profit on PS3 hardware.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: ArsTechnia is reporting IBM has shrunk the Cell to 45nm. Production likely to start late this year. Along with the recent blu-ray shrink these 2 should help Sony to make a profit on PS3 hardware.

Uh, isn't that great news for Toshiba who will be making the Cell for Sony? Hopefully, for Sony, Toshiba plays nice and lowers Sony's costs... ;)

Japanese hw sales last week...
Wii - 94,473
PSP - 72,528
Nintendo DS - 67,472
PlayStation 3 - 41,796
PlayStation 2 - 12,115
Xbox 360 - 6,060

Last edited by Lou on 08-Feb-2008 at 12:15 PM.

@Lou
Quote:

Japanese hw sales last week...

Console Data recently did a query on what consoles are owned in Japan.

1. PlayStation 2: 62.3 percent
2. Nintendo DS: 55.4 percent
3. Super Famicom: 42.5 percent
4. PlayStation: 37. 5 percent
5. Game Boy: 34.3 percent
6. Game Boy Advance: 31.8 percent
7. Famicom: 28.3 percent
8. NINTENDO64: 25.4 percent
9. PSP: 17 percent
10. Wii: 16.4 percent

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @Lou Quote: Japanese hw sales last week... Console Data recently did a query on what consoles are owned in Japan. 1. PlayStation 2: 62.3 percent 2. Nintendo DS: 55.4 percent 3. Super Famicom: 42.5 percent 4. PlayStation: 37. 5 percent 5. Game Boy: 34.3 percent 6. Game Boy Advance: 31.8 percent 7. Famicom: 28.3 percent 8. NINTENDO64: 25.4 percent 9. PSP: 17 percent 10. Wii: 16.4 percent

That Wii # is pretty good when you consider it's only been on the market for 14 months...

Last week's Amazon top 10 from Next-Gen.biz:
Quote:

All Formats: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, subject to 40 percent discount, snatches the No1 spot in a top ten that includes seven Wii titles. Call of Duty 4, at No4, cuts a lone figure as the only non-Nintendo platform representative. 01. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles—Capcom (Wii) 02. Super Smash Bros. Brawl*—Nintendo (Wii) 03. Wii Play w/ Remote—Nintendo (Wii) 04. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare—Activision (Xbox 360) 05. Super Mario Galaxy—Nintendo (Wii) 06. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day—Nintendo (DS) 07. Professor Layton and the Curious Village—Nintendo (DS) 08. Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party Bundle—Konami (Wii) 09. Tomb Raider Anniversary—Eidos (Wii) 10. Endless Ocean—Nintendo (Wii)

Now that there are more Wii's in the wild, it seems that the platform is truly starting to dominate the sales charts.

Oh and Super Smash Bros. Brawl broke 1,000,000 copies sold in just 11 days in Japan making it the fastest selling Wii title released in Japan to date. Perhaps this is the title to take down the (sales) likes of HALO 3 and COD4...? (Wii Play doesn't count, imho).

The next hurdle to tackle in the wonderful world of Wii is shovelware. Average Wii review scores are too far below the competition. Perhaps now that publishers can see solid sales results from the actual quality titles, perhaps now they will be willing to spend more development $$$ than they have been willing to do before. Ofcourse Wii games do get extra criticism for the controls or not being "Wii-specific" enough when the game is a port.

I think the cure is to make the Wii, the base development platform, then scale the graphics up and downscale the controls for other platforms. This is what the PS2 enjoyed in it's heyday, it was the base platform of development and developers learned to get the most from it eventually.

NPD recently stated they will be gathering and tracking online usage statistics. Good! The market is definitely moving to more of an online supply model.

@Lou
Quote:

I think the cure is to make the Wii, the base development platform, then scale the graphics up and downscale the controls for other platforms. This is what the PS2 enjoyed in it's heyday, it was the base platform of development and developers learned to get the most from it eventually.

Many companies right now are making the 360 the base development platform. It's tools for developers are supposedly more mature and easier to use then the PS3. As such the time and cost to market using the 360 are lower then the PS3, read more profitable. Then they port to the PS3.

Mostly the market is focused on which console sells more. This misses out on the penetration rate of games on a console, which the 360 is winning. I forget who, I think it was Microsoft, recently said their game sales and attachment (controllers, HD Players) sales are 3.5x per console that of the PS3. I'm sure this will change as the market continues to grow. But, interesting none the less.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: Mostly the market is focused on which console sells more. This misses out on the penetration rate of games on a console, which the 360 is winning. I forget who, I think it was Microsoft, recently said their game sales and attachment (controllers, HD Players) sales are 3.5x per console that of the PS3. I'm sure this will change as the market continues to grow. But, interesting none the less.

Change is definitely in the air as Wii software sales have been more consistently at the top of the charts since Nintendo has increased production in November.

Could Lair 1.5 be getting ported to the Wii?
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/12/lair-control-fix-may-be-in-the-works/
Quote:

Recently, the company's president, Julian Eggebrecht, told IGN "If we find a chance in the future that would bring Lair to the audience which didn't get any access, that would be fantastic," he said. "I can't say anything quite yet, but there might be something in the works there. We might have a chance yet to bring those back to the table and hopefully, if that should happen, they would give the game a second chance."

followed by these comments in an IGN interview:

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/851/851287p1.html
Quote:

Asked about the Wii game's state of completion, Eggebrecht responded: "We're pretty much at a state where we're almost done with the engine. At the same time, we've also been working on content quite a bit because we had enough running very quickly on the platform that we were able to. But the biggest milestone or mark right now is that we're almost done with the engine and it does everything that the PS3 did and then some, quite frankly. So we're pretty happy with that.

later
Quote:

"Whatever we're working on will at least blow you away in a lot of the technical aspects. We're really trying to do everything to squeeze the maximum out of the machine," he said. "I'm also hoping we're going to pay respect to what the console is all about, which is the innovation in terms of controls, in terms of accessibility, new experiences, things like that. We're really, really trying hard. I hope it's going to pay off. In terms of what we're working on; is it for third-party publishers, is it for a Nintendo first-party, what title is it? I won't give you a clue."

Prior to developing Lair, they were linked to a Pilot Wings game for the GC that never manifested. Also in the interview, the talk about modernizing TURRICANE and expressed deep respect for the Metroid Prime franchise.

As I said before, there's a change in the air...

Last edited by Lou on 12-Feb-2008 at 06:53 PM.

Microsoft blames themselves for Jan/Feb sales --

Microsoft is seeing shortages of its Xbox 360 video game console in the United States, as the company failed to anticipate strong post-holiday demand, an executive said on Wednesday.

"We're literally out of stock in many stores. We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit.

"Retailers have been really upset, they are on allocation. It is a lag I think we're seeing in January and that may continue into February, then as spring ramps up, we'll be able to meet that demand

Last edited by BrianK on 14-Feb-2008 at 04:01 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: Microsoft blames themselves for Jan/Feb sales -- Microsoft is seeing shortages of its Xbox 360 video game console in the United States, as the company failed to anticipate strong post-holiday demand, an executive said on Wednesday. "We're literally out of stock in many stores. We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit. "Retailers have been really upset, they are on allocation. It is a lag I think we're seeing in January and that may continue into February, then as spring ramps up, we'll be able to meet that demand

LOL, a bit of hubris in those quotes from MS... Tell them not to worry, Nintendo is putting more Wii(s) on the shelves to make up for their loss... ;)

@Lou

Yeah more Wii! But do Wii game suck? A bit of humor there but this is one take on why Wii games rankings are lower then either 360 or PS3.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @Lou Yeah more Wii! But do Wii game suck? A bit of humor there but this is one take on why Wii games rankings are lower then either 360 or PS3.

I read that before post #272 and addressed it there without specifically pointing at that article.

The Wii, like the PS1 & PS2 before it, is the target of shovelware. Also, please read the interview with Factor 5's Julian E. about publishing $'s and how to get the most out of the Wii from a developer's point of view.

Basically, without taking advantage of the unique design of the Wii's gpu, the most you will ever get is PS2-level graphics. The Wii can perform 8 graphical effects in its memory without having to have resend the data through the pipeline (8 stages). The 360 gpu is an extension of the GC's original design but that more traditional shader routines vs. the GC/Wii's fix-function T&L operations. A different fix-function can be applied in each stage to create the same effects possible with traditional shaders. Most developers don't understand the process. Factor 5 had access to ArtX developers when the GC was being designed and are quite familiar with it. The Wii has 8 pipelines vs. the GC's 4. Hollywood also operates 3x faster than the GC's Flipper.

Last edited by Lou on 14-Feb-2008 at 05:58 PM.

@BrianK

The Good news for the PS3 is that it will come down in price this year.

IBM Announces Cell Processor Shrinkage
PS3's CPU now manufactured in 45-nm process.

this IMHO, is just what the PS3 needed and this year Sony might be able to turn things around with the shrinkage.

Quote:

Consequently, they will produce less waste heat, which is always a good thing. Sony will also benefit from lower production costs, as the smaller chips will allow for higher yields.

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