If the latest sales data are any indication, the videogame industry may be headed for a rough holiday season. NPD Group reports that revenue from consoles and software plummeted during October, falling 16.4 percent from September and 19 percent year-over-year. It was the industry’s seventh consecutive monthly decline.
No doubt about it now, the Wii’s appeal is beginning to wane. Reporting first-half earnings this morning, Nintendo said it sold just 5.75 million of its flagship gaming consoles, a massive decline from the 10 million sold during the same period last year. As a result, Nintendo’s operating profit fell 52 percent to 64 billion yen, missing the company’s own forecast of 100 billion yen, as well as estimates of analysts, who were expecting 90 billion.
“It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.” That’s what ngmoco co-founder and Electronic Arts alum Neil Young said of Apple’s iconic handset at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and it’s worth reflecting on a bit in light of a new report from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi that claims the iPhone OS will soon create pricing and customer migration pressure for traditional gaming platforms.
After nearly a year out of the public eye, Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to it yesterday at the company’s annual music event. It was his first public appearance at an Apple gathering since Oct. 14, 2008, when he uncrated the company’s new unibody MacBooks, and it far overshadowed the new products he was about to announce. In fact, it could be argued that public confirmation of Jobs’s health since his return to the company was truly the most significant announcement of the day.
Apple has sold some 225 million iPods to date, making it one of the most popular electronic devices ever. And it’s sure to sell even more after the updates the company announced at this morning’s event in San Francisco. Among them: Larger, cheaper iPod touches and nanos with cameras and FM radios.
Celebrated game designer Will Wright has a new job: doing whatever he damn well pleases. He’s leaving Electronic Arts, the game publisher for which he developed Spore and the wildly successful Sim City and The Sims franchises, to run Stupid Fun Club, an entertainment think tank developing ideas for everything from toys to TV.
Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:
Perhaps Macworld Expo 2009 will have its “one more thing” after all. In a note to clients this morning, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research speculates that Apple will indeed launch a new product category at Macworld in early January. A netbook.
Since its July debut, some 10,000 iPhone applications have been released to Apple’s App Store and 9,887 of them are still available for purchase. 10,000 apps. An impressively broad ecosystem for just under five months of development. Apple’s year-end list of Top App Store Downloads for 2008, then, is both handy and timely.
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback may not be doing much to improve the company’s share of the search market, but it’s doing wonders for its marketing reach. Microsoft bested University of Phoenix and LowerMyBills.com (the company responsible for those silly dancing cowboy ads that festoon the Web) to claim the title of top display advertiser in June, according to comScore.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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