Date: Mon, 25. March 2013 18:40:32

In the next few days, Microsoft is expected to announce their next generation console, dubbed the ?XBOX 720? at this year?s GDC (Game Developer Conference).  This is right on the heels of Sony?s recent PS4 announcement and lackluster sales announcements for Nintendo?s Wii U.  These new game consoles will sell, but just not as well as they once did.  Gaming and the gaming industry has changed since 2005 when the PS3 and the XBOX 360 were first announced, and those changes will impact how well the new consoles sell in the future.  I want to delve into a few of these variables, starting with mobility. Mobile Gaming Impact

Date: Fri, 17. May 2013 18:05:41

The Xbox 360 topped the charts again in April, marking the 28th consecutive month Microsoft?s gaming console has outsold Sony?s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo?s Wii consoles. According to research from NPD Group, the Xbox 360 accounted for 42% of current-generation sales with 130,000 units sold last month. It wasn?t all good news, however, as sales plummeted 50% from 261,000 units in March. As a whole, the industry continued to struggle in April with total gaming sales down 25% year-over-year from $657.5 million to $495.2 million. Microsoft and Sony?s next-generation consoles are expected to help sales pick up when they launch ahead of the holidays this year.

Date: Mon, 16. July 2012 21:30:01

Nintendo announced last week that sales of its 3DS portable gaming console surpassed 5 million units in the United States, a 500,000 device increase from March. The gaming company, which is attempting to recover from an annual loss, in June sold more than 155,000 3DS consoles, more than 150,000 original DS handhelds and almost 95,000 Wii consoles, Bloomberg reported. For the second consecutive month, Nintendo controlled 75% of portable-hardware sales. The company is predicting a 37% sales jump with the introduction of the 3DS XL, a new handheld that features a 90% larger viewing area, for $199 on August 19th. Nintendo will also launch its next-generation Wii U console ahead of the holidays, and both devices are expected to help

Date: Fri, 15. February 2013 11:50:53

Nintendo (NTDOY) now faces the very real prospect of having an absolute flop on its hands. As Microsoft (MSFT) moved an estimated 281,000 Xbox 360 consoles in the U.S. in January to take the top spot for the 25th consecutive month, Gamasutra reports that Nintendo sold ?well under? 100,000 Wii U consoles last month. The site estimates that sales may have fallen between 45,000 and 59,000 units in January, which could mark the worst month for a Nintendo console since before the original Wii launched. This is not the first sign of trouble for Nintendo?s Wii U. The new console has not been well received in the U.S., U.K. or even in Japan, and Nintendo recently lowered its first-quarter outlook as

Date: Tue, 26. August 2008 17:53:52

AP - Of the three video-game console manufacturers, Microsoft was the first to embrace online gaming, and its Xbox Live has become essential to anyone who wants to play against faraway competitors. Sony and Nintendo are trying to catch up with, respectively, the PlayStation Network and the Virtual Console.

Date: Thu, 21. February 2013 16:38:32

Count Goldman Sachs analyst Takashi Watanabe as being pessimistic on the PlayStation 4?s chances for success. Per Business Insider, Watanabe has penned a new research note that casts doubt not only on Sony?s (SNE) new console specifically, but on the gaming console business as a whole. Specifically, Watanabe thinks that smartphones and tablets are poised to erode consoles? installed base because more people can get their gaming fix through cheap games such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope rather than spending $60 to buy the latest version of Call of Duty. This lower installation base leads to negative reinforcement where developers are less likely to invest in developing top-notch games for the platform, which further erodes consumers? willingness to shell out cash

Date: Tue, 2. February 2010 15:06:07

andylim writes "According to Engadget, John Koller, Sony's head of PlayStation marketing, recently said that 'Apple's entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony. When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP.' What's odd though is that everyone knows that the mobile phone gaming market is a huge and yet neither Sony nor Nintendo has made a gaming phone yet. Recombu.com thinks that Nokia could enter the space with PSP-like devices and it has come up with a concept phone called the Ovi Orion, which would bridge the gap between phone and console, 'If the iPhone is Wii, then Ovi Orion would be Xbox and offer Xbox Live style features. A serious gaming phone for serious gamers.'"pa href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/02/01/151203/Why-Has-No-One-Made-a-Great-Gaming-Phone?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=10/02/01/151203"/a/ppa href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/02/01/151203/Why-Has-No-One-Made-a-Great-Gaming-Phone?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lIg_ptG8bnbyNkprBlGhsuEECns/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lIg_ptG8bnbyNkprBlGhsuEECns/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lIg_ptG8bnbyNkprBlGhsuEECns/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lIg_ptG8bnbyNkprBlGhsuEECns/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/7i51qNJsq_k" height="1" width="1"/

Date: Mon, 11. February 2013 13:00:17

At a quick glance, it looks like it could be “game over” for the video-game-console business. Sales of consoles in the U.S. dropped 21% in 2012 to just over $4 billion, and figures from the manufacturers of the three top systems were lackluster over the crucial holiday season.  When announcing its quarterly earnings last month, Microsoft said its Xbox-division revenue dropped 29%. At Sony, lower PlayStation 3 and PSP sales were responsible for a 15% drop in revenue for its video-game division. Nintendo?s next-gen console Wii U also failed to generate as much interest as originally predicted. Last month, the company said it had sold only about 3 million consoles and that it would sell a million more through March, a sharp drop from the 5.5 million it initially anticipated selling. There?s less demand for the physical games these days too. According to research company NPD Group, game sales fell from a little over $11 billion in 2011 to less than $9 billion last year. Retailer GameStop says sales of new video games over the holiday season dropped by about 5%, and sales of used games dropped by 16%. ?It’s tracking to be the worst quarter the company’s ever had in the used business,” Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham & Co., told the Wall Street Journal. Analysts blame a lot of the slump on timing. ?It is a cyclical market,? says Lewis Ward, research manager of gaming at IDC. ?The usual lifespan is 10 to 12 years for a console, and we are in a trough right now.? (MORE: Why the Next Hit Video Game May Be Crowdfunded) But the Wii U?s underwhelming sales illustrate that even the market for new consoles will be challenging, leaving the industry pinning its hopes on Sony and Microsoft. Sony is expected to unveil the next version of the PlayStation as early as this month, according to the Wall Street Journal, and start selling it some time later this year. Microsoft is also supposed to introduce its new Xbox this year, and analysts say the

Date: Wed, 4. August 2010 14:57:33

AP - Twelve years is an eternity is the video-game business. In 1998, the Microsoft Xbox didn't even exist, and games for the top consoles mdash; Sony's PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 mdash; were still regarded as kids' stuff in comparison with the more demanding fare you could play on a PC.

Date: Mon, 9. May 2011 06:41:30

This spring 2011 the global gaming industry – >$70 billion in total revenues -- is in upheaval.  For years, the three game console manufacturers  -- Nintendo (console and hand-held – in 2010 Mario, the iconic moustached game character, celebrated 25 years of gaming history), Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox -- can be likened to three race cars in an early Nintendo game hurtling around a track, each taking turns as the front-runner.