Roundup: Building43 launches for net enthusiasts, Twitter verifies accounts and more
Here’s the latest action:
Nintendo fends off patent trolls — The game industry leader just won yet another patent suit, this one falsely claiming that the Wii can play DVD movies.
Rambus settles with EU — The memory chip designer has agreed to cut some of its royalty rates to settle antitrust charges in Europe. Bloomberg has the story.
Building43 launches, inspires glee in internet groupies — Robert Scoble’s latest project, an online community for internet news junkies has gone live…. Continue Reading
Nintendo CEO: Wii care about your heartbeat, but not your iPhone, the recession or free games
Satoru Iwata is very excited about your heartbeat. The chief executive of Nintendo wants to capture it on his new Wii Vitality Sensor, an add-on peripheral for the Nintendo Wii, so that video games can tune in to your level of excitement or relaxation and make use of that as a kind of control in future Nintendo games. While Sony and Microsoft announced motion-control devices that were trying to catch up with or leapfrog the… Continue Reading
Dean’s video report on the latest trends and great games of E3
Here’s a video I shot with Alexa Lee of Ooyala at the Microsoft Xbox 360 booth at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles. After three and half days at the 40,000-attendee event, I’ve soaked in some of the interesting trends. In this segment, I talk about the trend toward a deeper connection between humans and game machines, as evidenced by everything from Microsoft’s Project Natal to Sony’s “magic wand” controller. I also mention some… Continue Reading
Sony’s PSP Go: boasts wider screen, but still no “touch”
Details of the latest version of Sony’s PlayStation Portable, the PSP Go, keep leaking out.
If the details are correct, this new device will be one of the headline grabbers among all of the new developments at the E3 game show next week.
Engadget reports that Sony will announce the PSP Go on Tuesday.
The gadget has 16 gigabytes of internal flash memory for storing games, videos and music. And there is no Universal Memory Disc drive, the proprietary Sony format that has… Continue Reading
Anticipating E3: the video game giants prepare to show their cards
The E3 video game trade show gets under way Monday, and is expected to draw more than 40,000 people with a new grandiose format.
Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, it will be much more like a Las Vegas extravaganza than the boring, press-focused shows that drew 4,000 or so people last year. And yes, those booth babes (below) will be back, as well as 3,500 journalists.
(Listen to my NPR Weekend Edition interview on E3).
There will be… Continue Reading
Peeling back another layer of detail on Microsoft’s secret gesture-control system for games
We reported recently that Microsoft was preparing to announce a gesture-control system for the Xbox 360 at the E3 show in Los Angeles starting Monday. Now we’ve peeled back another layer of the secret.
The motion-sensing control system that Microsoft is working on is key to its attempt to win back market share from Nintendo. We’ve heard that Microsoft is not only working with 3DV Systems on this but also one of 3DV’s competitors, Prime Sense.
Sony… Continue Reading
Does game quality translate into better financial performance?
John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts, came into EA a couple of years ago with the commitment to improve the quality of the big company’s games. During his calls with financial analysts, Riccitiello regularly cited average review scores for the company’s games.
That raises the question of whether there is a direct relationship between the quality of a game to the bottom line. Metacritic, which aggregates review scores by a bunch of established game reviewers, has… Continue Reading
Ubisoft closes a year of expansion and profits for game business
Ubisoft reported fiscal year results with good sales growth and a decent profit despite the recession. For the year ended March 31, the French game publisher reported sales of $1.47 billion, up 18.4 percent from $1.3 billion a year earlier.
Net income was $95.6 million, down 37 percent from $152 million a year earlier. The Paris-based company reported the strong growth in the face of economic headwinds and its own aggressive expansion. One of the strongest… Continue Reading
Is the video game exercise trend getting overloaded or just starting?
In video games, Nintendo starts the trends and then the copycats pile in. At some point, gamers get jaded and the trend collapses.
Nintendo made the exercise-gaming trend into a phenomenon with Wii Fit, which has sold more than 10 million copies since its launch a year ago. That’s more copies than the original Halo. Now other companies are piling into the exercise game craze as couch potatoes get off the couch. Sega announced Daisy Fuentes… Continue Reading
The top 12 trends of the video game industry
It’s good to step back and get a good look at the various cross-currents in the games landscape. Over the last few weeks I’ve been surrounded by game developers at the Login online games conference in Seattle and the Quo Vadis game developers event in Berlin, both events where I was invited to speak, and have seen several trends emerging — some good, some bad. Here they are:
1. Game startup financings have slowed from last year. Everyone… Continue Reading
Video games slide down the recession slope as April sales fall 17 percent
Hurt by the recession and a tough comparison to a year ago, video game sales fell 17 percent in April compared to a year ago.
That means game sales have fallen for the second month in a row, with sales in March also falling 17 percent.
Overall U.S. game console hardware, software and accessories saw sales fall to $1.03 billion compared to $1.24 billion a year ago, market researcher NPD reported. Software fell even more, sinking 23… Continue Reading
Microsoft’s gesture-based game control to debut in 2010
Rumors are rife that Microsoft will introduce the gesture-based game control system we wrote about earlier this year at the E3 show in Los Angeles in June.
We hear the same thing, as far as the announcement goes. But we also believe that Microsoft will not actually introduce the system to Xbox 360 consumers until the fall of 2010. That’s a long way off, which means it may take Microsoft a sum total of four years… Continue Reading
Nintendo posts soaring profits but warns of a slowdown ahead
Nintendo scored record profits for its fiscal year ended March 31, but the Japanese console king warned that its profit would dip in the coming year due to an expected slowdown in Nintendo DS handheld sales.
Operating profit was $5.64 billion — that’s an astounding figure that is more than Electronic Arts’ $4.1 billion in revenues — for the fiscal year, up 14 percent from a year earlier. Net profit was $2.8 billion, up 8.5 percent… Continue Reading
Sony to unveil new PlayStation Portable at E3?
Sony is expected to reveal a new PlayStation Portable game handheld at the upcoming E3 trade show in Los Angeles, according to published reports.
Sony certainly needs to do something. The Nintendo DS consistently outsells the PSP by 2 to 1 on a worldwide basis, with the DS topping 100 million units worldwide to Sony’s 50 million units sold.
The pressure is on even more than usual since Nintendo launched its DSi, the third version of… Continue Reading
Will the game industry slow, or is it just getting started?
I’m giving a speech today in Berlin, Germany at the Quo Vadis game conference. I was asked to talk about the state of the game industry and the prospects for game startups. Here’s an abridged version of the speech for those who want an overview of investment in games.
I love games. I played the original Pong when it first came out. I played Wing Commander in the early 1990s until my right arm became too… Continue Reading
So much for recession-proof: U.S. video game sales take a 17 percent dip in March
U.S. video game sales have held up in the recession, until now. Sales of console games, hardware and accessories fell 17 percent in March to $1.43 billion from $1.72 billion a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group.
So much for the talk that games are recession-proof. The March results are a big contrast to February, when game sales rose 10 percent, and January, when sales were up 13 percent.
Despite the drop in March, NPD… Continue Reading
Nintendo to launch this summer the long-awaited Wii MotionPlus to improve controller accuracy
Nintendo announced today that it will launch Wii Sports Resort, a sequel to its flagship console game Wii Sports, and an improved version of its motion-sensing controller dubbed the Wii MotionPlus. Both are due to come out this summer.
First out of the gate is the Wii MotionPlus, a long-awaited accessory that attaches to the bottom of a Wii controller to make it more accurate. It will debut at $19.99 on June 8 in the U.S…. Continue Reading
Roundup: Twitter worm makes the rounds, Obama buying Detroit cars, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Teenager admits creating Twitter worm — An Easter twitter worm infected at least hundreds of users when they visited certain pages of Twitter members. Turns out, it was created by by Mikeyy Mooney, a 17-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, the owner of StalkDaily.com, who said he was looking for a way to make money. The worm left messages promoting his site, StalkDaily. Mooney released a second worm Sunday and he said more may… Continue Reading
Nintendo DSi makes gaming more social
The Nintendo DS has sold more than 100 million units, more than twice the amount of its rival, Sony PlayStation Portable. The Nintendo DSi debuting this week in the U.S. will likely further cement the Japanese company’s hold on the handheld gaming market because it makes portable gaming more social and personal. The DSi launches on April 5, with lots of midnight store openings across the country.
As game designer Will Wright noted, the Nintendo Wii… Continue Reading
Graham Hopper expands Disney’s video game kingdom
Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, gets to see a broad swatch of the video game business, since his video game titles range from hardcore titles such as the upcoming racing game Split/Second to the Toy Story game for the Wii that will accompany the release of Pixar’s next big film. Disney is in the midst of tripling its investments in video games and Hopper now oversees 1,200 employees… Continue Reading