Well there you have it: digital sales have outpaced physical sales. For PC games, that is. According to the all-seeing, all-knowing NPD Group, there were 11.7 million digital sales of PC games during the first half of 2010. That compares to 8.2 million physical sales. Clearly Steam and others like it are on the right track. → Read More
When the NPD Group released their August figures, there was a little summer surprise for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Turns out that while Wii sales have slowed down a bit, the overall volume hasn’t really changed that much. That translates to good news for the PS3 and Xbox 360, as their sales have gone up while the Wii’s overall have gone down. → Read More
Starcraft II has already set the record as the fastest-selling real-time strategy game of all time, at least that’s what Blizzard claims. Analysts expect 7 million copies sold this year. Considering that this is just the first part of the game that’s quite a win and Blizzard is of course happy about it. Why sell something only once when you can split it up to parts and sell it three times? This… → Read More
Think what you want about 3D TV, but it’s here already, and we’ve just seen the beginning. But are people actually buying the devices, as a few dozen models are now available in the US, Japan and other places? The Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business daily, recently investigated the 3D TV market in Nippon. What they found out could be of interest for the US and European markets as well. → Read More
You know how every month you see stories like “Red Dead Redemption sells X copies, Super Mario Galaxy 2 sells Y copies,” etc? All of that data comes from the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales. What NPD never used to track was digital download sales—Steam and the like. That’s why’d you see doom-and-gloom stories like, “PC game sales fall 50 percent last month.” Yeah, because… → Read More
The iPhone turned out to be a mega-hit in Japan’s competitive cell phone market, and the iPad is poised to replicate this success. Tokyo-based market research firm BCN [JP] today said Apple’s share of the domestic notebook market more than tripled in May (on a month-to-month basis) to reach 11.5% – thanks to the iPad. → Read More
Five hundred and fifty eight million hard drives were shipped in 2009. Think about that for a moment. Five hundred and fifty eight million. Of those, 175.2 million (or 31.4%) carried the Seagate brand name while 165.2 million came from Western Digital. According to The Information Network, WD pulled ahead in the first quarter of 2010, selling 51.1 million hard drives compared to Seagate’s 50.3… → Read More
It looks like people are still buying computers. Research firm iSuppli Corp believes that netbooks and Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) notebooks are poised for significant growth in 2010. Notebook PC shipments overall are expected to hit 209.5 million this year, up 25.5% from last year. In particular, sales of netbooks, or smaller and cheaper versions of a notebook, are expected to grow 30% to… → Read More
Last month, we reported that according to some rumors in the industry, Sony is seriously considering relaunching their portable gaming device, the PSP Go, with a price cut and marketing campaign. And today, Tokyo-based research firm Media Create released [JP] the latest hardware sales numbers for Japan, one of the biggest video game markets in the world.
And these numbers indicate that… → Read More
Our best buddy, Scott, he of ScottEVest, just started its massive 40%-off sale. They have plenty of great stuff including the Quantum and Evolution jackets and my favorite, the cotton hoodie. → Read More
So this is pretty handy. An Internet wizard has put together Steam Games Sales, a Web site that aggregates all of Steam’s current sales and puts them in one easy-to-read list. → Read More
So it wasn’t all bleak last year, SSD manufacturers experienced a 14% increase in sales, along with a total of over 11 million drives sold. That’s a whole lot of memory chips. → Read More
Looks like the recession is helping at least one industry. NPD Group reported that the video game industry turned in $5.53 billion dollars in sales for December, topping the results from last year by 4 percent!
Boring as all these statistics are, the bottom line is people spent a whole lot of money on video games last month. The previous record was set in December of 2008, which was the first… → Read More
There was plenty of talk ever since Lehman Brothers exploded in mid-2008 about how would consumers cope. Would they keep buying widgets in the face of insane job cuts? Would they keep buying, but only at a fraction of what they had in the past? Let’s take PC sales, a pretty good barometer of where the average person is. (It’s a big purchase, but not like buying a car or house.) Shipments of new… → Read More
This guest post is written by Matt Bell, VP of Sales and Business Development for Azaleos. Azaleos is a company focused on putting the things in the cloud that make the most sense for large enterprise; application management. Matt offers appealing insight because he has grown sales for companies during both of the last two economic meltdowns. This post expands on Vivek Wadhwa’s post It’s… → Read More
Would it be foolish to begin this story with the words “poor Microsoft”? I mean, the company isn’t exactly hurting for money, and yet it looks like 2009 was the year that the Xbox 360 finally died in Japan. Not that the Xbox 360 ever really did well in Japan, but this year it looks like everything fell off a cliff. → Read More
The iPhone officially went on sale in China at the end of October and in Japan in summer last year, but many people in one important Asian market were still waiting for it the whole time: Korea. After getting the official government approval in mid-November, the country’s number two mobile carrier, KT Corporation, started rolling out the iPhone on November 28. And it can be happy about a pretty… → Read More
Looks like Ubisoft hasn’t had a great couple of months, either. The France-based publisher reported today a 52 percent decline in sales for the six months that ended on September 30 compared to the same period last year. (Fiscal years tend to begin in March.) A 52 percent drop translates to €166 million, or around $246 million. → Read More
This is just wrong. I’ll admit, I didn’t enjoy “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. I thought the plot was weak and contrived, and I was slightly offended by the dumbing down of the film (robot urination and racial stereotypes? give me a break). I realize that the original “Transformers” wasn’t exactly the height of cinematic art, but it was better then the sequel. → Read More
It hasn’t been the best couple of months for Nintendo. Profits were down for the six months leading up to September, which the company blames on the strong yen and the Wii’s price cut. Net sales, too, were down, some 34.5 percent. Fair enough, and those reasons are likely to explain Nintendo’s situation, but is there something else going on? I know Pat Buchanan, the older gentlemen that he is… → Read More
Interesting note regarding DJ Hero, where “interesting” means “potentially bad news.” One of those fancy analyst types, someone at Cowen and Company, has slashed sales expectations by a little more than 50 percent. That’s nothing to brush aside if you’re Activision. → Read More
This probably won’t come as a surprise to any of you, but September was a Very Big month in the life of the PS3. For the first time ever, since its launch in fall, 2006, the PS3 was the best-selling video game system. See what amazing things happen when you price a product at an affordable level? → Read More
Oh, dear. The first sales reports of the PSP Go started trickling out yesterday, and they were sorta so-so, let’s say. (It’s no PS3 Slim, that’s for sure!) More details have emerged today, and, again, the PSP Go isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire. → Read More
Just in case you need a cheap computer Wal-Mart has got your back. They’re working with HP to sell a Compaq Presario for $298 and a number of laptops that are well under the $400 range.
The laptop will have 3GB of ram, 160GB hard drive, and will include Vista.
Why all of this information is showing up in a Reuters article is beyond me. → Read More
Every once in a while you get a story so strange and horrible that it takes a while to sink in. I’m talking about the suicide of a Foxconn employee who was caught doing something with an “iPhone prototype” and jumped out of the window. Matt wrote: So the story goes that a 25-year-old man at Foxconn – where iPhones are born – was to send 16 iPhone prototypes to Apple… → Read More
According to survey of 2,300 Japanese retail stores, the iPhone was #1 in customer popularity, beating out all of those crazy, wonky phones they sell in Tokyo with names like the WonderFetus 100 Softbank X200-900 and the Brad Pitt Special Edition E900 from Sanyo with built-in TV tuner, can-opener, and fishing lures. → Read More
Earlier today, reports started flowing in about Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster claiming 750,000 iPhone 3GS devices were sold over the weekend. In a news release, however, Apple claims that that number is off by more than 1/4, saying that sales actually exceeded 1 million units. In addition, the company says six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days… → Read More
Help me out here, guys. I have zero sympathy for video game developers and publishers who cry poverty vis-à-vis used video game sales. At the same time, I have zero sympathy for the likes of GameStop, what with its hyperactive employees always trying to sell me some added nonsense, when it claims that used video game sales help expand the video game market as a whole. → Read More
Could a new Roomba be hitting the streets? Tipster Kason Jinkaid writes: Not sure if this excites you, but I heard from a Costco salesperson that they’re getting new Roombas “soon”, though that could mean months. They aren’t stocking the ones they’ve been carrying (model 550). Also Woot just sold off a bunch for 535s for ~$100 less than what they usually sell for, so… → Read More
Heads up, fans of the hit TV series Lost. Amazon has a little sale going on through July 16 that may interest you. Buy two seasons on Blu-ray and you save $20; buy three seasons and you save $30; buy four seasons and you save $40. You’ll need to enter the promo code LOSTBLUS to see the discount. → Read More
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