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Game Consoles – August 2011 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Welcome to the August 2011 edition of the NPD US Video Game Sales Analysis, where we look at video game sales, both hardware and software, for the month of August 2011 based on data collected by the NPD. Half way through August, Sony surprised the market with a $50 price cut for all of its PS3 models, and so for the first time, we can actually analyze the effect of this price cut and see if it allows Sony’s PS3, languishing in third place amongst the home based consoles, to make a much needed comeback.

As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For August 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

Xbox 360 sold 308,000 units, “maintaining the # 1 console spot in the U.S. for 2011” (source: @majornelson)
Xbox 360 holds 43% home based console market share (Microsoft statement)
Wii sells “more than 190,000” units (Nintendo press release)
Sony blames “inventory restraint” for sales in the first half of August, but “PS3 hardware sales were very strong the last two weeks of the month following the $50 price cut” (Sony statement)

Knowing both the Xbox 360 and Wii hardware numbers, and also knowing that the Xbox 360 held 43% of the home based console market share, the PS3 hardware sale is calculated to be an estimated 218,000 units.

And so the figures for US sales in August 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (August 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

Xbox 360: 308,000 (Total: 28.4 million; August 2010: 356,700 – down 14%)
PS3: 218,000 (Total: 17.5 million; August 2010: 226,000 – down 4%)
Wii: 190,000 (Total: 36.3 million; August 2010: 244,300 – down 22%)

NPD August 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of August 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

With the PS3 price drop coming in just a few days ago, this is just the sort of major event that makes predictions extremely difficult. There’s no doubt in my mind that the PS3 won’t come last again (Wii has the third spot amongst the home based consoles locked up), but the main question is can the PS3 outsell the Xbox 360? The price cut being only $50, and with no new console coming with the price cut like two years ago, maybe it will just come short, but it will be a close run race that’s for sure. For games, again, there’s nothing really of note. Usually at this time of the year, Madden NFL dominates, but with the Madden NFL 12 coming at the end of August, it may not have enough time to make such a major impact this time, although it will probably still be the best seller based on pre-orders alone. No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise for the PS3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to be the only two other notable releases in August.

The PS3 didn’t come last, and the Wii did, but this was an easy prediction to make. But it appears I overestimated the effect of the $50 price cut, and with Xbox 360 sales growing compared to July, the race wasn’t a “close run” one at all, with the Xbox 360 still comfortably retaining first place amongst the home based consoles. For software, Madden NFL 12’s delay meant that it was not even included in August’s stats as it fell outside of the NPD August sales window (August is counted as a 4 week reporting period by the NPD, lasting from the 31st of July to the 27th of August), while of the two notable new releases, Dues Ex: Human Revolution was predictably the top selling title.

Let’s focus first on the PS3 numbers, and just how much of an effect the $50 price cut has had. On the surface, it looks like the effect was minimal, but dig a little deeper, and the sales bump will seem a bit more robust. Since the price cut only occurred half way through August, the first thing we need to do is to establish a marker for pre price cut sales. Generally (and historically) speaking, there is very little difference between July and August sales, but August tends to sell a few more consoles than July. Since nothing dramatic actually occurred for the Xbox 360, and the only effects being negative (due to price drop of PS3, encouraging more gamers to buy the PS3 over the Xbox 360), the rise of 360 units from 35-day reporting period of July to the 28-day reporting period August 0f roughly 11% could indicate “normal” seasonal growth.

Or not. So let’s take half of this number and say that, had the PS3 not had a price cut, it too would have grown 5.5%. This would make PS3 sales roughly 156,000 units for the whole month of August, or 5,571 units per day, had the price drop not occurred. The price cut was announced on the 16th of August, and so leaving the price cut only 12 days to affect the August NPD figures (again due to the premature end of the NPD reporting period at the end of august), with the first 16 days of the month “business as usual”. This means that prior to the price cut, 89,143 PS3 units were sold, leaving 128,587 being sold after the price cut. This means an increase from 5,571 units per day to 10,716 units per day (127,587 divided by the 12 days of the price cut) after the price cut, practically doubling sales as a result. This means that had the PS3 price cut lasted for the whole 28 day reporting period, PS3 sales would be almost exactly 300,000 units, only 8,000 units shy of the Xbox 360. Had I simply assumed that PS3 sales would have stayed completely flat between July and the first 16 days of August, PS3 unit sales may have reached as high as 311,000 units.

September would have told us a lot more about the full effect of the PS3 price cut, but the Xbox 360 exclusive ‘Gears of War 3’ should help Xbox 360 hardware numbers more than any other PS3 release would do for the PS3 hardware numbers. And with similar high profile releases that generally favour the Xbox 360 in the coming month, the bump from the PS3 price cut may just fall short of making the PS3 more popular than the Xbox 360 during this holiday period.

For the Xbox 360, a solid 11% rise from July to August allowed it to sit comfortably as the best selling home based console, but as noted earlier, it could have been different if the PS3 price cut had come earlier. Hardware sales are down some 14% compared to the same month last year, but again, this is mostly due to the “Slim” sales bump back then.

For the Wii though, August was just as bad as July, and it looks like from this point onwards, it will be third place out of three. The Wii declined the most compared to August 2010 than any of the other consoles, which means that the rumours surrounding the rushing of the Wii U to market, and the “development hell” (source: n4g.com) that ensues, might show Nintendo is more worried about the Wii decline than they’re letting on.

For game sales, August was a disappointing month, due to the lack of new releases, and the delay of Madden NFL 12 to the September reporting period. So Deus Ex: Human Revolution was actually best selling title across all platforms, even though it was only released for 5 days in the August reporting period. The ‘Just Dance’ franchise continues to be the best selling Wii exclusive titles, but in better times, a Nintendo first party title, like Mario Kart (now bundled with consoles) or Wii Play would have been one of the titles. Here’s the full software sales chart for August:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Square Enix, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
NCAA Football (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd (Disney, NDS, Wii, PS3)
Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
Just Dance Summer Party (Ubisoft, Wii)
Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, NDS)
Zumba Fitness (Majesco, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)

Time to make a prediction. I think the Xbox 360 will still come out as the top selling console for September 2011, mainly due to ‘Gear of War 3’, but the PS3 will definitely come closer than it did this month, and with ‘Resistance 3’, it too might benefit from a platform exclusive. The Wii will be third. Games wise, ‘Gear of War 3’ looks set to be a top seller, despite being a platform exclusive release. ‘Resistance 3’, on the other hand, doesn’t look to have the same effect, although it will still sell well. Combined platforms sales may even push ‘Dead Island’ to the top of the charts.

See you next month.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 4 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (11 September 2011)

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years already. So much has changed since then, hasn’t it? I remember I was watching The West Wing, of all shows, when the breaking news alert interrupted the episode (and I never did finish watching that episode until I purchased the DVD box set, some 8 years later).

As for news this week, not a lot, but good in quality always makes up for quantity. And after last week’s acidically toned mega long post, I think this week’s will be a lot “better”, well, hopefully shorter anyway.

Copyright news up front, I’ll start with a news post that I’m actually quite proud of, because I actually spend like more than 10 minutes “researching” it (aka copying what others reputable news organisations have posted), and it also involved use of arithmetic and statistics, two of my favourites things based on the stuff I like to write on a regular basis (NPD analysis, and weekly Blu-ray stats analysis).

This is what the MPAA thinks a movie pirate's movie collection will look like if they stopped pirating, by spending $1,000 more every year on legal goods

But full credit to the MPAA for releasing the info-graphic that I based my “analysis” on, which came to the conclusion that, if the MPAA’s numbers in regards to piracy rates and the cost to the economy are true, it means that every pirate would be spending $1,000 more every year buying legal content. The MPAA’s “statistics” are mostly conjecture, and (in my opinion, wildly inaccurate) estimations. Because you can’t really estimate losses due to piracy, because this would require knowing what pirates would do if they did not pirate any more. This is impossible to calculate because, one, you can’t guess what a group of largely independent people will and will not do, and two, there’s not way to stop piracy and force these people to “do the right thing”. But let’s give the MPAA the benefit of the doubt and let’s say their figures are correct, then what the MPAA is effectively saying is that probably 25% of all Net users in the United States are pirates, and that each pirate is costing the creative industries $1,000 per year, per person, to get to the $58 billion yearly losses that the MPAA mentions. If the MPAA counts every instance of copyright theft as a loss of revenue for the full price of said product, then $1,000 is probably about right. But this is misleading to the extreme, as it would be like saying if jewel thieves didn’t steal $1m worth of diamonds from a jewellery store, they would have purchased the $1m worth of diamonds (I wanted to use my usual car theft analogy, but I think I’ve gone over my allowed quota for the year). And any theft analogy is incorrect anyway, as file sharing is not theft – it’s not paying for stuff you should have, like reading a magazine at a news stand without paying, but it’s quite different than say shoplifting the same magazine.

What’s more disturbing for me, as opposed to a rather harmless, but propaganda-ish infographic, is the MPAA getting involved at the law enforcement level when it comes to anti-piracy operations, even those that are outside of the US. Of course, infographics and misleading stats help the MPAA scare politicians into giving them this sort of access, so this cannot be discounted either. What brings me to this is the news this week that newly leaked Wikileaks documents show the MPAA and the IFPI, two lobby groups, all involved in high level discussions with South Korean anti-piracy law enforcement agencies, and with ICE detailing their operations against warez topsites, the sites that are acts as the point of origin for pirated content on the Internet. On one hand, you might say that having an industry group involved in tackling the industry’s own problems makes sense, but if it’s the industry’s problem, then why is a government agency and two governments, spending precious tax payer resources, to tackle the problem that many experts say are the industry’s own creation anyway, due to outdated business models? This whole idea comes from politicians believing that copyright theft *is* a $58 billion per year problem, but it isn’t, and it’s not costing 300,000 jobs a year. If you want to make such flimsy conclusions from nothing but wild guesses, then I have a few more I would like to make, such as that piracy creates jobs by allowing website operators to make money to provide content to people who had no means to pay for it in the first place. And the people enjoying pirated content end up spending their money on other more essential services and products, and their money won’t end up in the pockets of greedy studios who are already making record profits, or end up giving more money to rich, spoilt Hollywood stars and autotuned pop musicians.

And if the government is to spend tax payer resources to help a well to do industry, while others are struggling, and to do it at the expense of one of the most innovative and fast growing industries, the Internet industry, then this will hurt the economy even more. Which is why a “who’s who” of the Internet business has come out attacking the MPAA/RIAA backed PROTECT IP act, which, despite the controversy, is gaining support in Congress (lobbying money helps soothes the aches from migraines, back aches, and lack of conscience). The founders of Twitter, Zynga, FourSquare, and key people from StackExchange, LinkedIn, and Tim O’Reilly, yes, *that* Tim O’Reilly, has signed a letter asking Congress not to go ahead with PROTECT IP, as it could hurt small Internet businesses, and the broad nature of the act means that it could hurt innovation as well. This comes after more than 100 law professors also signed an open letter asking Congress to reconsider, and after Internet pioneers and top engineers also writing a similar letter urging caution when it comes to messing around with DNS. Hmm, it seems that open letters are not a very effect form of mass action, or the US is run by politicians that don’t care for expert opinion as much as they care about where their next campaign contribution is going to come from. Or both.

Is Righthaven about to file for bankruptcy?

But there’s also good news for those that believe in karma, as Righthaven might have to file bankruptcy due to their recent legal and financial setbacks. Not only has judges started to see through Righthaven’s scheme, which in my opinion, is nothing more than a money making scheme, they’ve started punishing Righthaven by rewarding damages *against* the firm. Righthaven’s biggest mistakes is that they haven’t been able to avoid going to court, and they haven’t been able to do so because the people they’re suing weren’t willing to give up so easily. It’s one thing to sue movie pirates, but to sue those that are interested enough in the news to copy/paste articles and post it on their own blogs, is just asking for trouble. These are clearly opinionated people, who love a good fight, and will stand up for themselves out of principle, even if it end up costing them more money in the process – and these are not the right “targets” for mass copyright lawsuits. And then there’s the news that Righthaven’s second largest client, MediaNews Group, has now pulled out, leaving Stephens Media, which are also the money behind Righthaven, as their only big client. And even that money may no be as forthcoming as before, as Righthaven have apparently asked a judge if they can delay paying the $34,000 or so they owe to one of the “targets”, as they’re having trouble coming up with the cash. If Righthaven does go under, nobody would shed a tear for them, as to paraphrase the new MediaNews Group chief, it was a stupid idea to being with.

It’s not the first time Christofer Sundberg has spoken out against gaming DRM, but it’s always good to hear from developers on the issue. Sundberg is the founder of Avalanche Studios, the makers of the Just Cause series amongst other games. And this week, Sundberg let the world know what he thought of the latest trend in using “always-on” DRM. Suffice to say, he’s not a big fan, mainly because in his opinion, in this day and ages when piracy is rampant and people have a lot of “choice”, even if some are illegal, if publishers are not providing extra incentive for consumers, then they’re doing something wrong. “Always-on” DRM in fact takes away incentive for consumers to pay for games, and even those that do, will have to rely on pirate solutions to play the game without annoying interruptions. For Sundberg, it’s also about trust, and he believes that “always-on” DRM basically says to the paying customer: “Thank you for buying our game, we trust you as far as we can throw you”. Instead, developers and publishers should listen to gamers, even though that don’t buy the games, more – listen to their suggestions, make them feel like part of the development process (because they are a part of it, the end “using it” part of it at least). But Sundberg also stated that it’s mostly up to publishers as to what kind of DRM to use, and if Avalanche’s publishers decide to use “always-on” DRM, there’s not much he can do about it, even if his whole studio will be up in arms against such a move. And this also reminds me to play Just Cause 2 a bit more, since I haven’t really played it after getting it on Steam – I’m such a reverse pirate when it comes to games sometimes, I buy a lot (usually on sale), and then never play them!

High Definition

In HD/3D news, it’s a contractual obligation for the WNR to cover a rumour about Blu-ray coming to the Xbox 360 at least once twice a year, and so with much regret, I bring you the latest rumour.

To be fair, it now makes a lot more sense for Blu-ray on Xbox 360 than even just a year (and a bit) ago, mainly due to the new, slimmer, quieter, faster, stronger (and now less shiny) Xbox 360. And with games coming on multiple DVDs, perhaps Blu-ray is also finally needed for games, although due to noise and loading speed issues, it’s always better to install games to the built-in HDD – so you really only need to do a single disc swap for a game that requires 2-discs, during the install process, and while Blu-ray removes the need to do this, the extra cost of getting the add-on drive would negate any benefit when it comes to gaming, leaving only the benefit of being able to play Blu-ray movies. But with Blu-ray standalone players available for so cheap these days, you can get a budget standalone for the expected $50 cost of the add-on, and so having a Blu-ray add-on doesn’t even make that much sense for movies either. And with Blu-ray competing against Microsoft’s preferred streaming platforms, that’s another reason why Microsoft is in no hurry to launch a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360.

And that brings us finally to gaming. The NPD report for August is out, and I should have the analysis up in a few days. While only Microsoft and Nintendo provided hardware data for this month, Microsoft again provided some extra info that allows for the PS3 numbers to be deduced.

Despite the PS3 $50 price cut (coming in at the middle point of the month), the Xbox 360 was still comfortably the best selling home based console of the month, selling some 41% more units than the now discounted PS3. This is probably why Sony felt the need to withhold sales data yet again, because many, including myself, predicted the PS3 to at least give the Xbox 360 a run for its money this month, but it did not happen. Maybe, with a full month of discounting on hand, the PS3 will put up more of a fight, but September is a huge month for the Xbox 360 due to the release of Gears of War 3, and with Battlefield 3 and MW 3 coming in October and November respectively, these will again heavily favour the Xbox 360, so it looks to be a good holiday period for the console, even if Kinect Star Wars has now been delayed until after Christmas.

And on that note, I shall end this week’s WNR. See you in a week’s time.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (11 September 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (4 September 2011)

Sunday, September 4th, 2011

We’re in the final stretch, nearing the end, it’s so sad it has to come so soon. It feels I’ve only gotten to just know you, yet we have to part soon. So so soon. 2011, I hardly knew ye. It is kind of ridiculous how quickly 2011 has gone by, although I guess not so much for people of Australia, New Zealand, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Japan, Syria, Somalia, the US, and pretty much everywhere else and for everyone else that’s had something major happen to them in 2011, natural or otherwise. You know what 2011? I don’t think me, and many others, will miss you all that much to be honest.

With an intro like that, you might think that there’s again not much news happening, but actually, this week is quite news-tastic I have to say. So let’s not waste more word count on the intro, and get into the news straight away.

As you would expect, we start with copyright news. What do you think would be needed to convince everyone that copyright protection on the Internet has gotten a bit out of control? That copyright laws are so biased towards copyright holders these days that it’s totally unfair for the rest of us? What would it take for people to realise that there is this huge overreaction to the “piracy” problem? The answer? When a 13 year old Pakistani takes down Bieber and Gaga.

While neither the age, nor the jurisdiction, of the person responsible to taking down the official Vevo uploaded music videos of these mega stars has been confirmed (yeah, as if anything sprung out of the Internet’s 24 hour rumour mill ever becomes confirmed, or need confirmation for it to become fact), but the now banned YouTube user iLCreation, did just that, and it took quite a while for YouTube to react, and only when Vevo (owned by music industry giants Sony and Universal Music) took a more proactive role in getting the video reinstated, did the videos resurface again. If it was someone else, like you and me, and not two of the 4 major record labels asking for reinstatement, then perhaps those videos would never again be seen again (which, to be fair, is not a total disaster). Google/YouTube will be asking themselves how it happened and what they can do to prevent it happening again, although they can conveniently blame the victims here, Sony and Universal (and Warner and EMI), for forcing YouTube to be over-sensitive to copyright concerns in the first place. Just like planking and cone-ing, perhaps takedown-ing could be the next big YouTube thing, where people can compete and see who can take down the most popular legal videos, and for how long. It’s not incitement if I have no real power of persuasion. Or an audience.

By making people type "RapidShare" out manually, has Google really stopped piracy?

So it was either a well calculated thing, timing wise, or an extraordinarily poor one, that Google this week announced that they’re winning the war against piracy. Unfortunately missing the “Mission Accomplished” banners aboard an aircraft carrier stage, Google nevertheless delivered a report on their progress on their various anti-piracy tools, processes and features, all designed to help content holders feel a little more safer at night, and a little less litigious during the day. I don’t know if the number of acts of piracy that removing the keywords “rapidshare” from Google’s auto-suggest and auto-complete function is even quantifiable, but Google seems to think it’s helped. And they’ve now made it possible for content owners to request and have removed infringing content within 24 hours, in which time Google’s lawyers have to fully examine each DMCA takedown request, do the relevant background research, contact the relevant technical departments to implement the ban, all the while filing the appropriate paperwork to record the entire incident to allow for future appeals. I’m imagining some kind of poultry factory farming scenario with chickens replaced by lawyers, and feed replaced by a conveyor belt of money (well, they are still lawyers), and the produce being the “In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.” message you see now and then below Google search results. The next step for Google, as hard as it may be, would be to actually prevent themselves from profiting from piracy websites. If they can do this, maybe they will then get a nice and shiny badge from the MPAA and RIAA for all their efforts, even if it may not actually stop any lawsuits or anything (but the lawyer factory farm would definitely pay for itself if that happens).

From willing self-harm, to full on murder, we move onto the news that Hotfile has been ordered to hand over pretty much everything in their possession to the MPAA, to presumably help them build a stronger case against the file hosting website. Hotfile described this early on as “murder by litigations”, and when the MPAA asked the Judge whether it was okay to do it to Hotfile, the judge this week basically said “alright”. And so, Hotfile will now have to hand over the IP address of every uploader and downloader, even for files that are perfectly legal and for users outside of the jurisdiction of the court. And as if injury wasn’t enough, insult had to be added, as Hotfile will also have to hand over a bunch of financial information. It appears though that the MPAA isn’t really that interested in suing individuals, although the very top affiliate probably should start seeking legal advice, but for other uploaders and downloaders, they’re only requested the 3 of the 4 sets of decimal numbers, or enough to identify the country of origin only (I suppose jurisdiction does become an issue after all). Not attempting to win understatement of the year award or anything, but things aren’t looking good for Hotfile.

Pirated downloads will definitely exist on BayFiles, even if they follow the law to the letter as promised

But while one file hosting company may be on the way down, another is only just getting started, and it has a pair of famous founders. The names of Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij might sound familiar, and it’s because they’re two of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay. And together, they’ve launched BayFiles, a new file hosting service that will compete with the likes of RapidShare, and for now at least, Hotfile. Just what the music industry and Hollywood needs, another TPB production, and now an even easier way to upload files and share them with others. But they needn’t be too worried, at least no more worried than they are towards the likes of RapidShare. So still very much worried I suppose. BayFiles will comply fully with the DMCA, and will be as legit as any file hosting service can be, removing files and banning accounts when requested to do so, but not before. And that’s the crux of the issue though, is that the content holders want websites like BayFiles to do the “search and destroy”, while websites like BayFiles, who are mostly more than happy to ‘destroy’, want content holders to at least do the ‘search’ (as they’re really the only ones who know, with absolute certainty, what we are searching for in the first place). But any S&D operations performed by BayFiles, and staying in the vernacular for now, will have a high chance of “collateral damage”, blocking and removing perfectly innocent files just because it was named wrong, or had the wrong bits and bytes in it (to be fair, if you’re really going to go and name a ZIP file containing your work related spreadsheet as “rise_of_the_planet_of_the_apes_dvd_screener.zip”, then perhaps you need more help than a file hosting service can provide, or you really do want to get fired, and are working towards this noble goal by implementing your own reverse boss button). And if services like BayFiles do not exist, then it’s back to the days of spending half an hour sending an 8MB attachment only to get a rejection notice because the recipient is blocking the type of attachment, the size of the attachment, or has a full inbox, and then you get mad and smash your monitor with your keyboard, and gets fired immediately on the spot and has to have security escort you out of the building, after which you go to the nearest bar, gets drunk as a skunk, passes out on the sidewalk outside of your former employer’s building, only to wake up the next day, in your urine stained work clothes, as your former co-workers pass you by on their way to work and look at you with both pity and disgust – you check your phone and there are dozens of text messages from your wife, with the last one saying “I’ve had enough, I’m leaving and taking the kids”. All of this because of the MPAA/RIAA.

Speaking of urine stains (never really thought I would ever write this phrase in the WNR), Wikileaks (heh, leaks) has served up yet another delicious piece of Australian info, regarding the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft’s (AFACT) lawsuit against Australia’s third largest ISP, iiNet. I say Australia, but I really mean America, because it turns out, surprise surprise, the MPAA was the brains behind the lawsuit, even though I had simply just assumed that to be the case anyway in my past reporting without any actual evidence or sources (journalist see, journalist do, journalist no have time for background checking). Anyway, it turns out I was right after all, and leaked US Embassy cables show not only did the MPAA run the show, they also wanted nobody else to know it was them running the show, except if I “knew”, then I gather everybody else “knew” as well. So it wasn’t so much the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft as it was Americans Forcing Australians into a Court Trial (it’s the best I can do with my severely mushy brain today, as I was sure there’s a better word starting with ‘F’ I could use here). The cables also revealed that the MPAFACT didn’t want to sue our largest ISP, that would be the evil behemoth of a corporation known as Telstra (aka Helstra, Tel$ra, a***holes – note the three asterisks, for we here in Australia use the more civilized British form of English, you jumper wearing, lift using, petrol guzzling lorry driving barbarians), because Telstra was a company willing to “fight hard and dirty, in court and out” – touche.

And now for something completely different. Valve’s Gabe Newell is no fan of DRM, except when his company uses it, and he’s once again attacking other companies for taking DRM far too seriously. It seems a curious trends that famous gaming people, most of them work for companies that have a great track record for delivering excellent games, are all not too fussed about DRM, and yet the companies that are well know for coming out with disappointing release after release are the ones hell bent on making the paying customer’s experience as painful as possible all in the name of fighting piracy (I’m excusing Blizzard from the list, even though they’re messing around with “always on DRM” for Diablo III, as they say they’re not doing it for anti-piracy, just for anti-cheating). And while pointing out that Valve’s Steam platform is practically one big DRM engine that locks gamers to the Steam platform, forces users to wait ages to download game updates before playing, allows publishers to use their own DRM on top of Steam’s DRM, and all sorts of nasty DRM like symptoms, you still have to say that gamers, generally, still like the Steam platform. Getting the ‘Steam’ out of a game is not easy if there are no official non-Steam versions of the game, but otherwise, it’s not intrusive DRM on the level of SecuRom or UbiDRM. And while the Steam platform, as with any platform really, is a pain to have to be locked to, there are other benefits such as in pricing (Steam sales are awesome. AWE$OME!!), achievements for games that support it, in-game browsing for those that, like me, prefers to cheat our way to gaming success via walkthoughs, the newly added screenshot taking thingy, and lots of other cool features. You either hate it, or you learn to live with it and eventually love it, but at least some do love it, unlike the totally unnecessary UbiDRM (yes, Ubisoft do provide an enhanced online experience with features that some may like, such as online game saves, and these feature do need an Internet connection – but for every single second of play? It’s like one of those competitions where you can win a car if you’re the last person to take your hands off of it, except here, your “prize” is the ability to play the game you purchased with your hard earned money). But basically what Newell is saying is that as long as gamers are happy, you can get away with a lot of DRM-like stuff, and you know, that’s fair enough.

High Definition

In HD/3D news, oh George, what have you done again. Mr. Tweak It is at it again, and the new Blu-ray version of the Star Wars trilogy (and the crappy prequels), will be different again to the DVD version, which is different to the Special Edition VHS, which is different to the original theatrical release.

You know you’re an a*** when you’ve got an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the thoughtless changes you’ve made to your own film, and but I guess critics of fanboys like myself do have a point in that it is “his film”, after all. Actually no, they’re not right. It’s not his film, no more than Citizen Kane was Orson Welles’ film, no more than the Statue of David belonging solely to Michelangelo. Film is a shared medium, and our combined experiences when viewing essential the same piece of content is what makes it one of the greatest icons of the 20th century. It would be like if Leonardo Da Vinci rose up from the dead and started making changes to the Mona Lisa! The civilized world would be outraged if that were to happen, also slightly frightened by the sight of a zombie Renaissance Man, and slightly confused wondering why he hasn’t decomposed completely by now.

Lord Vader's reaction when he heard that Lucas was messing around with the original trilogy again

So when, in the last WNR, I mentioned that George Lucas would change creepy puppet Yoda in Episode I to the slightly comical digital version used in Episode II and III, I didn’t really give a crap because, I mean, it’s Episode I. Nobody cares about the prequels, and Mr. Lucas should feel free to chop and change all he wants – maybe he will eventually make the worst movies ever made watchable. But if you go and change Return of the Jedi, and not only that, but probably the most important scene in the entire film universe, by mirroring a line of “dialogue” taken from one of the worst scenes in the entire Star Wars film universe, and already the butt of a many Internet jokes, then you’ve officially gone over to the dark side and nothing, not even adding “No” in post-production, can redeem you. This is the changed scene by the way, so for those that are curious, but don’t want to buy the expensively priced Blu-ray set to find out how disappointed they should be.

Look, some will say the reaction to the change is an overreaction, and they may be right. But why change, what for me, was a perfect scene. The pleading of the son, the true evilness of the master unmasked, and the silent, determined, change of heart from the father, from the dark side back to the light. Perfect. Vader does not need dialogue to make it clear what was going through his mind, why he was doing what he was doing, and the silence actually enhances the scene. Well, not any more. In the words of Simon Pegg, what a f**king shame.

And finally in gaming, Sony is taking advantage of the recent PS3 price cut by doing some rebranding, and distancing themselves from the whole PSN fiasco. Nothing too drastic, but it seems the arrogant and slightly misleading (from a class action lawsuit perspective) “It Only Does Everything” has been changed to “Long Live Play”, and the awkward and curiously name Qriocity service has been renamed Music Unlimited, and along with the PSN, now all fall under the Sony Entertainment Network banner, along with Movie Unlimited for, um, movies. Only the PSN doesn’t follow the naming convention, yet, so don’t be surprised if it’s renamed Gaming Unlimited at some point, although not now because it would be far too obvious a PR exercise right now.

For the slogan change, it’s good Sony are trying to move way from the previously, highly arrogant and, plainly false one from before. But a cheetah doesn’t change its spots overnight, not if the leopard has anything to say about it, and another Sony exec has been caught calling the Xbox 360 “inferior technology”, and accusing Microsoft of using developer requirements to protect the aforementioned inferior technology. The Sony exec was responding to a Microsoft exec saying how multi-platform titles were usually better on the Xbox 360 because of Xbox Live and DLC exclusives. Both have their points, but Microsoft’s console was not the “inferior technology” that has had to drop prices recently just so it can stop being third in a three way race.

Wow, that was a bit longer, and more caustic, than I thought it would be. On some days, you get into this groove when writing, and you know what, it’s fun to just go along with it, enjoy it, until the very real threat of defamation lawsuits pull you back a bit. This was one of those days.

See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), Movies, News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (4 September 2011)

Game Consoles – July 2011 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Welcome to the July 2011 edition of the NPD US video game sales analysis. For July, only Microsoft provided actual figures for hardware sales, stating 277,000 units of the Xbox 360 was sold, and that their console accounted for 45% of the home based console market share. Later on, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter revealed that Wii sales had dropped 25% compared to the same month last year. With these three facts, we can then deduce the PS3 sales figures, for which Sony has yet again remained silent on. For those that are new to this, this analysis looks at US video games sales figures compiled by NPD, unreleased by NPD due to pressure from the gaming companies, but then leaked by various sources, including gaming companies, if/when it suits them.

The figures for US sales in July 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (July 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

Xbox 360: 277,000 (Total: 28.1 million; July 2010: 443,500 – down 38%)
Wii: 190,500 (non official estimate) (Total: 36.1 million; July 2010: 253,900 – down 25%)
PS3: 148,000 (non official estimate) (Total: 17.3 million; July 2010: 214,500 – down 31%)

NPD July 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of July 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

I think the Xbox 360 will experience its first year-on-year decline in ages, but still comfortably stay at the top of the home based console hardware sales charts, leaving the Wii and PS3 to fight it out for second and third place, and I think the Wii might be better positioned to win for some reason. It’s NCAA Football season again, so it will be the top seller, but otherwise, not a huge month for games again.

An almost perfect prediction, a rare event indeed. The Xbox 360 did experience its first major year-on-year decline, and it actually was the biggest fall out of the three home based consoles, but despite this, it still managed to comfortably be the best selling home console for July 2011, which is on record as the worst performing month since October 2006. And as I had predicted, the Wii won the fight against the PS3 for second place, but in full honestly, both of these consoles performed horribly, adding to the misery that is July. And new hit games were far a few between in July, and so game sales slumped as well.

As expected, the Xbox 360 saw its first major year-on-year decline since 2009 (I think). It is expected because this time last year, the new Xbox 360 “Slim” had just been released, and the sales surge from this event actually managed to give the console a 119% lift in sales compared to July 2009. So obviously, with no new consoles in July 2011, year-on-year sales dropped as a result, and I suspect this will continue for a few more month. The Xbox 360 was still the best selling home based console, with a massive 45% of the home based console market share for July – that it sold almost twice as many units as the PS3 is testament to its growing dominance.

Despite a price drop, the Wii languished in a distant second place, dropping 25% in sales from the same month last year (which was even compared to July 2009). There’s not much positive things one can say about the Wii, and coupled with alarmingly decreasing DS/3DS sales (prompting Nintendo to drop prices on the 3Ds only a couple of month after release), Nintendo will hope there are no delays to the release plans of the Wii U.

As for the PS3, this appears to be the worst month since July 2009, with a 30% sales drop compared to last year. And unlike the Xbox 360, the PS3 really has no excuses. There’s still growth between 2009 and 2011 (of around 20.5%, compared to the Xbox 360’s 36.5%), but this is comparing the pre-Slim and pre-price cut PS3, with the current one. Which is probably why Sony has just announced a price cut for the PS3, which should allow sales to surge a bit.

So overall a pretty bad month for video games, but with the economy the way it is and with most of the consoles many years into its release cycle, it’s probably not unexpected. For games, it’s been a quiet month as well, with NCAA Football dominating as it usually does at this time of the year. Just Dance 2 for the Wii continues to show off its staying power in the top 10, this time coming 5th. Here’s the full software sales chart for July:

NCAA Football (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
Major League Baseball 2K11 (Take 2, Xbox 360, Wii, NDS, PS3, PS2, PSP, PC)
Zumba Fitness (Majesco, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)
Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)
New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, NDS)
Mortal Kombat (Warner Bros., Xbox 360, PS3)

Prediction time. With the PS3 price drop coming in just a few days ago, this is just the sort of major event that makes predictions extremely difficult. There’s no doubt in my mind that the PS3 won’t come last again (Wii has the third spot amongst the home based consoles locked up), but the main question is can the PS3 outsell the Xbox 360? The price cut being only $50, and with no new console coming with the price cut like two years ago, maybe it will just come short, but it will be a close run race that’s for sure. For games, again, there’s nothing really of note. Usually at this time of the year, Madden NFL dominates, but with the Madden NFL 12 coming at the end of August, it may not have enough time to make such a major impact this time, although it will probably still be the best seller based on pre-orders alone. No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise for the PS3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to be the only two other notable releases in August.

See you next month.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 2 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (14 August 2011)

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

Another pretty quiet news week, and once again, NPD has “released” stats for US video game sales in July 2011. More on the later though, let’s get through the small number of interesting news items this week in this relatively short WNR.

In copyright news, a couple of weeks ago, the story of a 70-year-old grandma being “caught” downloading video porn by a copyright law firm made the headlines.

If you have a Wi-Fi connection, you need to use WPA2 encryption

This week, a blind man is accused of doing the same. In a scenario that is likely to be repeated over and over again, the man, only known as Doe 2057, suspected that the Wi-Fi router his wife set up might not have been secured, which possibly led to neighbours abusing the connection to download Japanese porn, despite the man living in a “very upscale building”. Before we get to the rights and wrongs of copyright law firms, people really need to be more careful with their Wi-Fi routers. By not securing it, anyone could connect and use up your Internet bandwidth, and that’s actually a best case scenario. Worst case, they would have access to your network, and hence any file shared on the network. The same also applies to routers that use the default password (or no password). And I think router makers have to take some responsibility as well, as far too many routers ship with factory settings that do not have security turned on or use the easily broken WEP protocol – it makes them easy to install, a bit more compatible with older wireless devices, but a little bit of hand-holding in the set up software wouldn’t make the process that much more difficult either.

But with nobody taking any responsibility, the large majority of consumers ignorant of the need to secure their routers, copyright law firms are taking advantage of biased copyright laws. It’s certainly opportunistic, you have to say. The problem is that to actually fight the charges, as Doe 2057 found out, it’s usually more expensive than just paying the on average $2,500 settlement fee. And the copyright law firms know this, and have exploited it beautifully. It was also revealed this week that the number of people being “sued” this way, in the United States lone, has reached over 200,000, according to stats being kept by TorrentFreak. That’s half a billion dollar worth of settlement fees, but assuming not everyone pays up, it’s still a 8 figure amount that many law firms would be delighted to take in over the course of several years. If you ever get caught, you should definitely check out EFF’s page on mass copyright lawsuits, and learn about your options.

A new study seems to show that good games are pirated more, which might sound like common sense to you and me, but nevertheless the study “confirms” it as fact. Except it sort of doesn’t. The TorrentFreak article on this study has more details, including the top 10 list of most pirated games, there are a few cases, such as the awful TRON Evolution game, that still managed to be popular with pirates, despite being unpopular with critics. Similarly, the fairly average and not all all popular (sales wise) ‘Two Worlds II’ managed to get into the top 10, and the hugely popular Starcraft II wasn’t the most pirated game (Fallout: New Vegas was, which is fair enough I suppose). I would actually like to see a study that tries to find a correlation between game sales, piracy rates and the quality of the game. What I would like to know is that if high quality games have a higher or lower ratio of pirated copies versus paid for copies. And then take into consideration things like the exclusive online features of the game (eg. Starcraft II’s Battle.net support), as well as any DRM employed (eg. Ubisoft games). I think the results may be very interesting.

Speaking of DRM, Walmart is pulling out of the digital music business according to leaked memos, and this has implications for those that purchased DRM’d music from them prior to 2007 (before they went DRM-free). Luckily, Walmart seems to be doing the right thing and will keep the DRM servers online (they learned the hard way about turning off DRM authentication, back in 2008 when they tried it and met with strong public condemnation). But how long will they do it? Indefinitely? At some point, Walmart will decide unilaterally that it no longer needs to maintain DRM authentication, and all those “purchases” would be made invalid. The sensible thing for Walmart seems to be to transfer the DRM’d songs to DRM-free version, which should not really be that difficult, but I suppose it means extra licensing costs. It again highlights the problem with DRM, not only for consumers, but for content providers having to get locked in to a proprietary system for an undefined number of years.

High Definition

In Blu-ray/3D news, I posted a 3-in-1 news story just yesterday on developments in the 3D world.

The first of the three is not really that interesting, a story about 3D glasses vending machines outside of selected cinemas in California. The fact that people may pay $70 for a pair of passive 3D glasses out of a vending machine, in this economy, just seemed funny to me.

A standard for 3D glasses could help end consumer confusion and lead to cheaper glasses, but will it help 3D uptake?

The second story is slightly more interesting, but let’s talk about the third one first, which is about AT&T’s U-verse no longer carrying the ESPN 3D channel, due to low consumer demand. The blame is either with lack of 3D devices being sold, or lack of interest, and both could be true. The thing is, 3D is a gimmick, and one that perhaps you might want to give it a go from time to time, but the majority of TV watching will be in 2D.

Back to that second story, and this one is about a new standard for active 3D glasses being formed by Panasonic, Sony and Samsung, three of the biggest manufacturers of 3D. Panasonic hinted at this quite a while ago, especially when it found that Samsung’s active 3D glasses can actually workon Panasonic sets, but only if you wear them upside down, the ridiculousness of this probably prompted a rethink by these manufacturers. They also plan to address a major problem with home based active glasses, in that they’re mostly based on infra-red or RF signals, both of which are susceptible to interference, and in the case of IR, line of sight issues. Hopefully, with a standard in place, and other manufacturers signing up, the cost of 3D glasses can decrease over time.

And finally in gaming, as mentioned earlier, the July NPD figures have been released. Microsoft, as usual, were the first to provide actual hardware sales figures, not surprisingly because their Xbox 360 was the best selling home based console yet again. They also made it interesting by announcing the market share figures, at 45%, which meant that as long as one Nintendo or Sony release figures for the Wii or PS3, then we would know the sales number for the other (based on a simple calculation).

Unfortunately, neither companies came out with any figures, and it was left to Analyst Michael Pachter to come up with the good, via a sneaky reference to the Wii’s year-on-year result. So once I get all the maths done, I should have the NPD analysis up.

Alright, another short-ish WNR, but if there’s no interesting news, then there’s no interesting news, it’s not as if I can make it up or anything. Or maybe I can?

See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Electronics, News Roundup, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (14 August 2011)

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Game Consoles – August 2011 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Weekly News Roundup (11 September 2011)

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Game Consoles – July 2011 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Weekly News Roundup (14 August 2011)

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