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.

Sony has officially made the following couple of announcements:

• The 60GB model will now be priced at $499


• There will be a new 80GB model for $599

These are quite to the contrary to what Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters in an interview that Sony had no plans at present to cut the price of the console. These announcements, however, are for the North American public only. Sony has no plans at present to announce price cuts anywhere else. Which is a surprise, as consumers in Australia already pay a lot more after factoring in currency conversion.

Well Microsoft will not be idling away, they would be announcing some kind of price cuts pretty soon.

Sony execs plan to have over 300 games available for the PS3 by March 2008, effectively doubling the number of titles currently available for the beleaguered console. What I want to know is if just the number of titles available is going to be enough for the console to get out of the mess its in right now. A price cut is whats necessary for the PS3 and the sooner Sony does it the better its going to be for them. However, do not expect Microsoft or Nintendo to stand and just watch. As soon as there is going to be a price cut on the PS3, I am expecting that XBox 360 is going to have one as well. Don’t know if the Wii may get a price cut as its still selling out all over the world.

No matter how hard Sony tries to explain the recent layoffs, it is quite clear that the real reason is due to the below average sales of its PS3 gaming system. With about a 100 people losing jobs in the US in its PS3 division, it is now official that the PS3 has been one of Sony’s biggest flops in recent times.

Sony’s explanation for the recent round of layoffs is that they are restructuring taking place in the company. With about $1.9 billion operating loss last year, this is a move that was anticipated as the PS3 contributed a big margin towards the loss. Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Nintendo’s Wii, the PS3 has seen slow sales on top of which Sony actually makes a loss on each PS3 unit it sells.

A lot of feedback for Sony is to reduce the price of the PS3 to compete more evenly with the Xbox 360. With more units in people’s homes, Sony can then make a profit on games and media sales through its online service which it provides for free. Sony also needs to accept that they made a major mistake by packing the PS3 with technology so advanced that the general public just isn’t ready for, yet.

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.

Sony, struggling to deal with fierce competition from Nintendo and Microsoft, has announced a customizable, networked community service for the console, in which users will be able to navigate in 3D while being represented by avatars.

It is the first practical step of a new gaming concept Sony calls Game 3.0, together with LittleBigPlanet, a community-based game where users play, create and share what they build.

Sony’s ‘Home’ for PS3 users appears to be a mix of SecondLife and Nintendo’s Mii. However, the avatars don’t look like cartoon figures. They are very customizable and designed to look like real life humans. Fortunately, you get some free clothes when you start out, so your avatar doesn’t have to run around naked. If you want to be more chic, just buy a few clothes online.

Players can communicate via voice, text chat (supported by a USB keyboard or a virtual keyboard) and through canned speech and gesture. The environment looks like a luxury resort.

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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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Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) has announced that the PlayStation 3 gaming console will launch on Friday, March 23rd across all PAL territories, which include Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australasia.  The initial launch will be comprised of one million consoles, all of which will be the “premium” 60GB models.  “Following the hugely successful launches of [the] PS3 in Japan and North America, we are absolutely delighted to be able to bring significant numbers of PS3s to the SCEE territories,” said David Reeves, President of SCEE.  Availability of the 20GB model may follow later in the year, depending on demand.

After currency conversion, all consoles available during this launch will cost considerably more than the 60GB PS3 models sold in North America ($600 US) and Japan (¥60,000 or $510 US) late last year.  Gamers in the United Kingdom (£425 including VAT) and New Zealand (NZ$1,200) will both pay approximately $840 US, while the rest of Europe (€599) and Australia (A$1,000) will pay roughly $780 US.

When Ubisoft purchased the rights to the Driver franchise from Atari last year, question marks surrounded one game that was already in development. Last February, Atari announced that Sumo Digital was working on a PlayStation Portable version of Driver: Parallel Lines, which was released on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in March 2006. However, after Ubisoft revealed that it had acquired the rights to the Driver name, little was heard about the game.

Now it appears that the PSP Driver game in development was also included in the licensing deal, with a few strings attached. Ubisoft today announced that Driver 76 for the PSP is currently in the works by Sumo Digital and Reflections, the original developer of Driver, which is now owned by Ubisoft. Ubisoft says Driver 76 isn’t a handheld port of Parallel Lines and will feature an all-new storyline.

Driver 76 takes place in 1976 New York City, two years before the events of Parallel Lines. Gamers will once again be able to tackle missions by car or on foot, with side missions available to help pay for car upgrades. Outside of the 27-mission single-player campaign, the game offers several different game modes for multiplayer action and downloadable content.

Driver 76 has not yet been rated and will be released this March.

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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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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Judging by figures that came out of the US this week, the going for Sony’s console could be tougher than it had expected.

This Christmas was the first time that anyone could see the three next-generation console contenders – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii – taking each other on head to head. And in America, at least, Sony was left struggling.

According to statistics put together by US retail analyst NPD, it was Microsoft’s Xbox 360 that emerged the overall winner during the festive sales rush. The Xbox 360 – already on the market for a year and boosted by the best-selling title Gears of War – shifted 2m units across the US in November and December, narrowly ahead of the Nintendo Wii.

The Wii, revelling in a huge splash of media coverage, managed 1.8m in the same two-month period – despite not launching until the third week of November.

In comparison with these two, however, the PlayStation 3 fared notably less well. Dogged by a lack of stock and higher price, the PS3 sold an estimated 750,000 units following its launch on November 17 – the same week that the Wii hit America’s streets.

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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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