Science and technology news blog

Thanks to Halo 3, Microsft’s Xbox 360 finally beat the Wii in console sales in the US. However, the disappointing figures in Japan have made Microsoft announce a 13 percent cut in the console’s price. Sony’s PS3 also got a 10 percent price cut in Japan. On the other hand, Nintendo’s Wii is steal beating industry expectations as the units are still hard to find even after 9 whole months of its launch.

Microsoft may also announce a further price cut globally, come holiday season, to be more competitive against the PS3 and also against the Wii. Its been almost 2 years since the Xbox 360 was launched and, despite the hardware problems, the console has enjoyed superlative success thanks to games like Gears of War and Halo 3, with more to come. PS3 on the other hand, seems to be going the Betamax way. It may be well ahead in technology, but even that could not prevent Sony from selling its Cell processor-making unit to be sold.

First Microsoft released an SDK (Software Development Kit) called XNA Game Studio Express for individuals and hobbyists to program games for the Xbox 360. And now Nintendo seems to be following the same path with the release of WiiWare. According to Nintendo, the tool will allow game developers to release smaller and more interesting titles which gamers can purchase and download from the console’s Wii Shop channel.

Well, to me, this is just the next inevitable phase for the console makers as this would enable fans who also have programming skills to create games that they would like to play themselves and in turn earn money as well. It also enables to console to have a more broader appeal. Say for example, my friend would like to play a game that has not yet been released or may never be released. He can then go ahead and create his own game and with the number of consoles that Nintendo has sold, this will give him an opportunity to market this game and earn money from something he enjoys.

Sony, you better be watching as this is another tight slap on their face, not that they need anymore after dismal performance of their next-gen console, PS3.

Sony will not be able to match the success of PlayStation 2 with its new gaming console, the PlayStation 3, according to outgoing Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst. He feels that Sony’s days of dominance of the console market may very well be over.

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s’ Wii games consoles have made rapid strides even as Sony is struggling to deal with production issues that have beset the PlayStation 3. The console was also released one year after the Xbox 360 and appears to have let go of its advantage.

“We expect that there will be a more level playing field this time around than last time,” said Probst. His comments were delivered at an investor conference by Morgan Stanley. Probst added that the main issue with the PS 3 was its cost.

Last year Sony had announced that a high-end model of the console would cost $600 as compared to the $400 price tag on Xbox 360. Nintendo’s Wii is the cheapest of the lot. Probst said that Wii was off to a great start, but it would not be wise to write off Sony.

“No one should count Sony out at this point in the game. This is going to be a long race,” Probst added.

Sony has sold over 115 million PS2 consoles, but is finding it tough to get the PS 3 onto the markets. The latter is set for a European release on March 23.

Nintendo’s Wii console is benefiting from the large price gap between it and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, outselling the PS3 at a ratio up to 4 to 1. Between January 22nd and 28th, The PS3 sold about 20,000 units in Japan. In the same time frame, the Wii had moved another 80,000 units. The PS2 also beat the PS3 with 21,000 units sold in the same time.

PS3 wasn’t the worst performing console during that time frame though, Microsoft only managed to sell 7,000 Xbox 360 consoles as it struggles to grow in the Japanese market. The PS3 launched in Japan on November 11th and has since sold 614,000 units. The Wii launched on December 2nd and has sold more than 1.4 million units since then.

This is a clear sign that Sony needs to drop the price of the PS3, according to Enterbrain’s Hirokazu Hamamura. “There could be a price cut for PS3 by the end of the year, and more software titles will hit the market,” he said. He said the PS3 will pick up after a while but that the Wii will continue to stay ahead for some time.

Nintendo’s Wii game console outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 by nearly three to one last month in Japan, the country’s largest video-game magazine publisher said Tuesday.

Nintendo sold 405,000 Wii units in January, compared with 148,000 PS3s, publisher Enterbrain said.

Wii and PS3, made by two of the biggest players in the $30 billion global video game industry, went on sale late last year in a three-way showdown with Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

A wider range of software titles and a lower price tag is helping the Wii, Enterbrain said.

The basic model of the PS3 sells for $416 (49,980 yen) in Japan, double the price of the Wii.

Nintendo has sold a total 1.4 million units of the Wii in Japan, far outpacing the 614,000 PS3s sold, Enterbrain said.

“There could be a price cut for the PS3 by the end of the year, and more software titles will hit the market. I expect the PS3 to be doing better after awhile,” Enterbrain President Hirokazu Hamamura said. “Of course, the Wii will keep running ahead all the while.”

It’s too soon to assess the impact of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii, two machines with the potential to revolutionize video games.

But let’s assume the PS3 and Wii succeed on a level that expands the number of video-game fans, foments new styles of interactive play and even changes the nature of family recreation.

Would that be the pinnacle of what the video-game industry can achieve culturally? Would that put game designers in the same creative category as authors, choreographers, movie directors, musicians and sculptors, to pick just a handful of examples?

Well, no. That’s because three other types of change have to take hold before video games realize their ultimate social clout.

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Some of the video game industry’s smartest minds thought that couch potatoes wanted richer graphics, and more challenging virtual worlds. It turns out that a lot of potatoes simply wanted to get off the couch.

That may be the best explanation for the growing popularity of the Nintendo Wii, the new video game system that has players jumping, punching and swinging, giving them a workout right in front of their television sets.

The Wii, which uses an innovative wireless controller to translate the players’ motions onto the screen, has upset the order of the video game world. In electronics stores and elsewhere, there are growing signs that the Wii has taken the lead in buzz and sales over another new console, the Sony PlayStation 3, which has broken ground in processing power and graphics.

The competitive picture became clearer Tuesday, when Sony reported disappointing profits that industry analysts attributed largely to the shaky rollout of the PlayStation 3 and lukewarm demand for the complex machines.

By contrast, Nintendo said last week that its own third-quarter sales were up 40 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by Wii sales. Both consoles were hard to come by during the holiday shopping season. This week, visits to stores throughout the United States turned up several with PlayStation 3’s in stock, while the Wii was sold out.

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Rabid video gamers could get some help keeping in touch with the outside world this weekend as Nintendo Co. launches an online news service through its popular Wii console.

The Wii News Channel, scheduled to debut Saturday, will primarily feature top news stories and photographs from The Associated Press.

Consoles with a broadband Internet connection and the Opera Web browser will be able to access the free news channel, which will offer AP news in multiple languages. Japanese-language news will come from a separate agency.

There were no immediate plans to sell advertising space, said Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond.

News will be displayed through an interactive map, which users can navigate with the Wii’s wireless controller, Kaplan said.

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Lawyers for the family of a woman who died after drinking nearly two gallons of water in an on-air radio contest are demanding the Federal Communications Commission terminate the station’s license.The development comes as the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of 28-year-old Jennifer Lea Strange, and as the family’s lawyers threaten to file a wrongful-death suit against the station as early as Thursday.

“Despite having a distended abdomen and complaining of significant symptoms of a headache and lightheadedness, the radio station allowed her to leave the premises without any type of assistance or concern. Ms. Strange went home, slipped into a coma and died,” wrote Roger Dreyer, the family’s personal injury lawyer, in a letter Sunday to Kevin J. Martin, the FCC chairman.

“We believe the conduct of the radio management and the on-air staff mandates that your agency terminate the radio station’s license and discipline its ownership for their wanton disregard of the safety of the participants in this contest.”

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The PlayStation 3 recorded its worst week of sales last week since its launch in Japan, according to figures published Friday.

The data, from Media Create, put PlayStation 3 sales at 25,531 units for the week ending Jan. 14. Overall the entire market for newly launched consoles was poor, with total sales of the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 hitting an estimated 128,274 units. That’s the lowest week in sales since Nintendo’s Wii launched in Japan on Dec. 2 and made the market a three-console race.

Wii sales for the week were estimated at 93,708 units, the second-worst week of sales since the 85,439 units sold during the week immediately after the Wii’s launch.

Sales of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 totaled 9,035 units, according to the data. The year-old console got a boost in early December when the “Blue Dragon” title was launched and offered as a bundle with the machine, but weekly sales are now dropping back to levels seen before that game was launched.

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Using the Wii-mote can be a truly physical experience.  But like most things, once you learn the techniques, the natural tendency is to make less work for yourselves.

For example, when we first started playing Wii Sports Tennis, we were doing the full on tennis motions, full back swing, following through and smashing with gusto.  Thought this is a heck of a lot of fun, after a while it was evident that the game could be played sitting on the couch and flicking the wrist.

The point is that the Wii-mote provides a unique, fun way to play games, especially with a group.  Laughs aplenty and grins all round.

But when the last drink has been drunk and your guests have left you, or you just want some solo play, there is a definite reluctance (especially as a seasoned video gamer) to put the full physical effort in.

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For video-game players, the holidays are clearly the busiest, most wonderful time of the year. The shopping season is when most of the biggest games are released and when hardware makers like Nintendo and Sony usually unveil their snazziest products.

For people who actually make games, however, the holidays can actually be kind of slow. That’s because by December their new babies have been shipped out the door, the boxes are in stores and warehouses and all that is left to do is sit and wait for the sales data to come back from NPD, the market research firm most everyone in the industry depends on.

For 2006 the big day was Thursday, when the firm released its annual retail report of hardware sales and the Top 10 selling console games of the year. (The data released on Thursday do not include PC games.) The list includes a mixture of sequels and newcomers; some well regarded games didn’t make it at all.

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Although Nintendo claimed a big victory in the opening battle of the next-generation console wars, selling more than 600,000 of its Wii systems in North America shortly after its launch date, new sales data indicates that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 actually won the holiday wars.

According to research firm NPD, Microsoft sold two million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States from the beginning of November through Christmas Eve. Over the same period, Nintendo sold 1.8 million Wii consoles, while Sony  moved some 750,000 PlayStation 3 units.

However, the numbers might be a little misleading in terms of the overall struggle for control of the multibillion dollar gaming market, according to Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research.

One reason for the Microsoft victory has to do with the fact that both Nintendo and Sony ran into supply problems in the days leading up to the big holiday push, according to Gartenberg.

“It is not a surprise Microsoft sold more consoles,” he said. “They had more readily available. The real test will come when everyone is on equal footing with regards to available units.”

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Gamers are in for a lot of new videogames in 2007. Those looking forward to “Halo 3” on Xbox 360 can now see new footage of the game courtest of developer Bungie. Although no release date has been announced, you can bet the game will be out by Thanksgiving of 07.

Sega is bringing its “Virtual Fighter 5” to PlayStation 3 on February 20. But the game is also now heading to Xbox 360 this summer, so both next gen systems will get the newest take on the classic brawler.

Ubisoft is bringing its best-selling “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent” to PlayStation 3 in 07. The game’s already been released on every other platform. Ubisoft previously announced that the next “Splinter Cell” game will be an Xbox 360 exclusive.

Now that all three major game console vendors have launched their next-generation gaming machines and the portable entertainment market is also healthy as ever, the race for consumer spending is on, analyst firm Ovum said in a recent report.

The competition will be especially intense this holiday season, one which will likely serve as a barometer for their performance in the coming new year, according to Ovum’s research executive Carl Gressum.

Microsoft, noted Ovum, had a full year to fine-tune its machinery, and with Sony’s recent difficulties getting the PS3 to market, it has a golden opportunity to solidify its position in the market.

Microsoft has also brought out more popular games titles, such as Gears of War, which should boost sales in the US and Europe. However, Japan will remain a tough sell with the launch of Nintendo’s Wii, it added.

By the end of Q3, the Xbox 360 had to-date sales of 6 million units, compared to the projected 4 million Wii shipments in December 2006 alone.

Although Microsoft has also added video download services to the Xbox 360 platform, the report said this is unlikely to have a significant impact on consumer demand during the holidays, adding that its 20GB hard disk is hardly sufficient for video downloads.

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