High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K) DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K)’ Category

Game Consoles – May 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Saturday, June 14th, 2008

May 2008’s NPD figures are out. While not entirely surprising, but it is still somewhat of a shock that GTA IV had absolutely no effect on console sales, and April wasn’t just a statistical anomaly. The Wii is on a wiinner and it’s outselling both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 left and right. The PS3, at least, can claim to have beaten the 360, but as you will read on, the signs are not all that great for both of these console heavy hitters, not when the featherweight is running away with it like that. My prediction from last month was not correct at all, as there wasn’t a bump in hardware sales due to GTA IV. The while I was right in that the 360’s lead would narrow, it has narrowed so much that it’s now a negative. But I least I got the bit about GTA IV selling well and the 360 version selling better right, although any idiot with a keyboard could have come up with that. You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in May are below, ranked in order of number of sales:

Wii: 675,100 (Total: 10.2 million)

DS: 452,600 (Total: 20.1 million)

PSP: 182,300 (Total: 11.7 million)

Xbox 360: 186,600 (Total: 10.3 million)

PS3: 208,700 (Total: 4.4 million)

PS2: 132,700 (Total: 42.2 million)

NPD May 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of May 2008)

As mentioned above, GTA IV had almost no effect on console sales. This is a bit odd, but if you think about it, perhaps makes sense. GTA IV is the game that everybody knew was coming, and it is very likely the people who wanted the game will have purchased consoles ahead of time. If GTA IV had been the first good game on either consoles, then perhaps this would lead to bigger hardware sales as people who waited now finally have a reason to go for it. But that’s not the case, since both the 360 and to a lesser degree, the PS3, already have a pretty good range of games to attract even sandbox style game fans like myself (Crackdown, Saints Row are two examples for the 360).

Sony will be the happier of the two companies. The PS3 outselling the 360 might be a fixture for the future, but I can’t help but feel that, at least when compared to the Wii, both consoles are plateauing or decline, with the 360 declining a bit faster than the PS3. The PS3 is also more than just a games console, it is (in my opinion anyway) the best Blu-ray player on the market for now, so even if it isn’t selling as a games console, it will sell as a Blu-ray player. I have a PS3 and I don’t play games on it, but it is probably the most used piece of equipment in my home theatre at the moment.

Both consoles will have to do several things before it can fully take on the Wii. Microsoft may look towards having a Wii style controller, which when added to its very good Xbox Live Arcade system, might mean cheap Wii style games in HD – quite attractive for those that like the Wii’s control system, but not the (sub) SD graphics. Making the “box” more attractive, at least more reliable and less noisy, should also be on the list of “todos” at Microsoft HQ. The PS3 will simply have to drop in price to make it competitive, plus time will give it a better games lineup as compared to the 360. So it’s not over for either consoles, but their current way of thinking does seem a bit outdated compared to what’s happening around them.

I won’t say too much about Nintendo and the Wii , except to say that they’ve been extremely clever in marketing games to non gamers. What was once considered a suicide mission by many in the industry now look like a stroke of genius (as often the case). Even the DS is marketed differently than say the PSP, which is still aimed at the traditional male demographic. When girls barely in primary school are playing DS, you know you’re onto something.

Let’s have a look at the software figures now. Again it highlights the problem for both Microsoft and Sony. While both had a top 10 title, with Microsoft occupying the top position, it is still a disappointing month for both console giants as Nintendo almost dominated every other position. The only good news for Microsoft this month was that GTA IV on the 360 outsold the PS3 again, this time by an even bigger margin to take it into an almost exactly 2:1 lead (66.3% versus 33.7%). The PS3 only had one game in the top 10 at 4th, which was GTA IV.

Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, Rockstar) – 871,000
Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 784,700
Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 687,700
Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, Rockstar) – 442,900
Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 294,600
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, Nintendo) – 171,100
Iron Man (PS2, Sega) – 130,600
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii, Activision) – 116,800
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS, Nintendo) – 107,000
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS, Nintendo) – 102,000

So while Nintendo has dominated hardware sales for a long time now, that hardware dominance is finally translating into software sales. The Wii, out of the top 10 titles, held 55.4% of the market, with the Xbox 360 down to 23.5% and the PS3 at 12%. The only slight problem for Nintendo, and I mentioned it last month too, is that all of it’s top games are first party games, games that are made by Nintendo. It seems other software publishers either don’t want to, or don’t know how to yet make good games for the console, which is a tricky proposition compared to your standard video game (and standard control system). But as long as Nintendo can come out with innovations such as Wii Fit every year or so, the Wii looks set to dominate for a long time.

So onto June next. I don’t think I will make a prediction, but things will probably look similar to this month. Maybe the 360/PS3 positions will be reversed, or the lead narrowed/deepened depending on what games are coming out, but it won’t really make much of a difference to the Wii’s lead anyway. And with GTA IV sales dropping back, total software sales will be down, and it will be interesting to see if Mario Kart and/or Wii Fit can even claim top spot for next month. Until then, have a good one!

Posted in Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 6 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (8 June 2008)

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Still a little bit late this week, but nowhere near as bad as last week. Just having an extremely slow day today for some reason, and weren’t able to get around to do this week’s WNR until just now. No exploding transformers to blame this week.

Let’s start with copyright news as per usual. In another case of copyright gone map, the MPAA has sued two printers. That’s right, two printers. What happened was that some researchers decided to spoof some IP addresses and see if the MPAA’s “piracy catcher” can be fooled into thinking some fake IPs (associated with the printers) are actually pirates. This proves that the MPAA’s piracy detection method is far from foolproof, and this should be interesting for future court cases. The music industry has finally gotten around to suing members of OiNK, the music sharing site that was closed some time ago. Six members have been sued, so I guess only a couple of hundred thousand more to go! And even the big boys aren’t safe, as I hinted at last week – Yahoo has been sued by an India music company. Search engines probably link to more illegal activity than any other site, but that’s the way search engines work – bots don’t care or know what is legal and what is illegal, so why should search engines be punished for something they did not create (and only link to, and not intentionally either)? But I’m sure the big boys can take care of themselves. It’s the little guys that we all need to worry about, because we could be next!

And Canada is going after the little guys by introducing a $500 fine for illegal downloads. Will the police enforce this? Do they have the technical ability to monitor, detect and not get fooled by IP spoofing? And just because I downloaded something illegal, how can you prove that I did it intentionally, or perhaps just followed the wrong link somewhere?

High Definition Onto HD news now, most of this week’s news has been computer related, which I guess will be one of the major markets that the Blu-ray people will go after. First up, LG announced a 6x Blu-ray burner drive, finally getting burn speeds that won’t make you wait an hour or more to burn an entire disc. What is also interesting, as I pointed out in the link, is that LG is heavily discounting their older Blu-ray burner drives, which also reads HD DVDs … I’ve seen them for less than $ 280, down from their original price of more than $500 here in Australia. Could be a good bargain to pick up, especially if you have some HD DVD discs (the fire sales are still going on, with most of the new ones happening in the UK). Of course, having a drive is probably not enough to play movies, if your computer is not up to scratch. Blu-ray playback is one of the more processor intensive activities you will do on your computer, not that much behind playing the latest games at the higher quality and resolutions. So if your computer is not up to it, you can buy a Blu-ray decoder card which takes most of the work away from your CPU/GPU to give you smooth Blu-ray playback. Those who are old enough will remember the Sigma RealMagic line of DVD decoder cards that were popular towards the end of the 90’s – this is basically the same thing for a new century.

For those that do have the power required, but still scratching their heads wondering how to get true high bitrate audio from the Blu-ray discs to your AV receiver, you can use Asus’ new HDMI sound card to transport the audio streams to your receiver to decode (or decode them in software/on the card and output up to 7.1 channels in PCM). It was always a matter of time before HDMI sound cards became available, although since HDMI is also used for video, there is some confusion as to who should be making these cards: the graphics card companies, or the audio card companies. I think you will see similar offerings from traditional graphics card manufacturers too (and since Asus makes both types of cards, they are the perfect candidate to be releasing something like this).

Before moving onto gaming, I must mention the PS3 again as a Blu-ray player. It still makes more sense now than building a dedicated computer based solution. Of course, as a Blu-ray player, the PS3 is hardly the most efficient power user – something like 10W for standalones compared to 160W for the PS3. But the PS3 has many uses, and you can now even turn one into a fully fleged computer running Linux (Ubuntu), and dual-boot into the normal PS3 operating system with ease (and hence, not ruining any of the PS3’s original functionalities). All you need is a bigger hard-drive, because 40/60/80 GB is not big enough. But the trend these days is on the small and efficient, not the big, powerful and versatile. Asus’ Eee PC is just the first in a line of new portable computer designed to not to do everything, but to do enough to warrant a place in your home.

Properly onto gaming now, the PS3 wants to be a Wii. The Wii-envy by Microsoft and Sony is beginning to become quite obvious. PS3 games can also now using in game advertising to generate income. Perhaps this will lead to cheaper game prices. Nielsen, the well known research agency, has come up with figures showing that the Xbox 360 dominates the console usage charts, with both young and older users preferring it over the Wii (second place) and the PS3 (third place). If a serious problem like the RRoD haven’t killed off the Xbox 360, then there’s a good reason and it is because it’s a great games console, despite all the problems. The Wii might be innovative and fun to use, but I haven’t used mine for weeks now, and I still haven’t used the PS3 for gaming yet. Bad news for 360 owners though is that the exclusive downloads for GTA IV is being delayed to early 2009, as opposed to late 2008. Not a huge problem of course as there’s just so much stuff to do in GTA IV that I don’t think people will be finished with the main game by then (well, not me anyway, but I’m the type to stretch out a game over a really really long time – I still haven’t finished Twilight Princess!).

That’s the news for this week. The website (and myself) is still recovering from the great datacenter disaster of 2008. Next week should see slowly come back to normal. Can’t say that for me personally though, since I haven’t been normal since I was a little kid (and I wasn’t that normal back then either).

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (8 June 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (1 June 2008) – The Late Edition

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

“Better late than never” is probably the best phrase to use right now. As you may have read about elsewhere, the server in which this site/blog was hosted went down around Saturday evening (US central time) and did not come back up until late Sunday evening, a downtime of about 30 hours. You can read the details of this incident here.

Anyway, the show must go on and I bring you this late edition of the WNR. The last few days haven’t been very pleasant, and I’m sure it was more unpleasant for the people who worked hard to restore services.

In copyright news, in a reverse of what normally happens, someone working for a bittorrent tracker has managed to infiltrate into an anti-piracy lobby. I’m sure very useful information was obtained which would help protect trackers from further assaults in the future. And these assaults are gathering pace too, with Usenet indexers the next target. These lobby groups and organisations, such as the MPAA, are very powerful indeed and somewhat shady in their dealings with various government bodies around the world (but then again, which lobby group isn’t?). Even the big boys, this time Google, is struggling to deal with the assuault by anti-piracy groups which could threaten the very foundations of the modern Internet. I know Google have their own self interests to take care of, but when they say the situation is this serious, I tend to believe them. There will be a day when lawmakers and judges make a new law or ruling that will threaten the very existence of the Internet, because if linking to (but not hosting) questionable content is illegal, then the Internet itself is under thread. The nature of the Internet is a web of links, so every site can be linked eventually to any other site. Google’s search engine links to probably every site in the world … some of them are indeed questionable, but does that make Google liable for these bad links, or the people who actually created and host the bad content?

And what about when people download something illegal. Is it the fault of the person who did it, or the fault of the ISP who allowed the person to do it? Groups like the RIAA or MPAA seem to want ISPs to take action and filter out “bad” content, as it’s much easier to control (and sue) ISPs than it is to tackle individuals. When big businesses force other businesses such as ISPs to determine what you can and cannot do with services you’ve paid for, then we’re in real trouble folks!

High Definition Onto HD news, good news for Michael Bay’s Transformers fans, the Blu-ray version of Transformers is coming to a store near you in September. Michael Bay has been a proponent of Blu-ray for quite a while, even though Transformers up until now has only been available in HD exclusively on the HD DVD format. It will be interesting to see if Blu-ray technology can turn a bad piece of filmmaking and scripting into a good movie. More good news, but this time for a good Director’s good movies, is that Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is being worked on for Blu-ray as I type, with a tentative release date of 2009. I already have 2 copies of each movie (standard and the collector’s edition), but I think I might want this third copy too.

There are also some good news in hardware too, with Wal-Mart introducing $298 Blu-ray players. The players, under the Magnavox brand and manufactured by Funai (as reported in the WNR two editions ago), are only Profile 1.1 though, which lacks support for Internet connected features (Profile 2.0) found in quite a few new movie releases. And for $50 more, you can pick up a Samsung Blu-ray player that does support Profile 2.0 and more audio decoding features, so perhaps it isn’t a bargain after all. Once players reach down to $198, then we might see a surge in sales. At the other end of the hardware pricing scale, is this new Blu-ray/HDD (500 GB) recorder by Panasonic. Retailing for more than $2,000, it is strictly in the realm of early adopters, and with news of a new 1 TB (that’s 1,000 GB) disc format that is backwards compatible with Blu-ray, perhaps Blu-ray as a recording format won’t even get off the ground. Even Sony is moving away from Blu-ray based camcorders to use solid state storage, which is cheaper, faster and comes in larger capacities (and less prone to damage too). And what about Blu-ray audio-only discs? One is available already, and there’s no technical reason why they cannot be produced en mass since it’s basically just a normal Blu-ray movie with a static video track.

Toshiba (haven’t mentioned them in a while) is trying to get back into the digital video scene by releasing updated specs for the DVD format, which allows HD content to be stored on regular DVDs and played back on enhanced DVD players. Toshiba is a major player in the DVD industry, having received most of the royalties from the format, so is Blu-ray fails, then enhanced DVD+HD might be more attractive to consumers. I doubt it though, because I think the boat has been missed in regards to upgrading the DVD format, which was Toshiba first suggestion when Sony came up with Blu-ray. But there is no reason why you cannot store 720p content onto a dual layer DVD and still get excellent quality. But it will mean an upgrade to the hardware anyway to add new video decoding suppoirt, even though the disc format hasn’t changed.

In gaming news, the Xbox 360 has basically won the GTA IV war as more and mores stats indicate it has benefited more than the PS3. One will have to wait to see if this is a long term victory, or just the last hurrah before the PS3 takes over as the dominant console of this generation, but only if you completely ignore that little white box with the blue glowing lights and funny controllers. Microsoft and Sony likes to dismiss it as a fad, even though both are working on similar style controllers for their own systems.

And how everything could have been so different, with Sony finally admitting that the PS3 was on life support during it’s very much trouble launch. Had the PS3 failed then, albeit very unlikely to happen in any case due to the PS2’s dominance, Blu-ray would have lost too and who knows what other changes there might have been. A HD DVD based Toshiba GameStation? A Sony PS4 that is basically a clone of the Wii? An Xbox 720 that still RRoDs within the first three months? Actually that last part might not be too far off from the truth …

Okay, that’s it for “this” week. More WNR in 5 days time, hopefully the server will still be online at that time.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (1 June 2008) – The Late Edition

Blu-ray: A Tale of Two (and a half) Polls

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Just before Toshiba threw in the towel, I ran a poll on Digital Digest asking our visitors when they were planning on getting into high def (either Blu-ray or HD DVD). Shortly after Toshiba had broken the hearts of HD DVD supporters worldwide, I ran another very similar poll, this time asking people with the knowledge that Blu-ray has won the format war when they were going to get into Blu-ray. The two polls, when you analyse the results, paints what I thought was a very interesting picture. Then there’s the poll that I’m currently running, which is about Blu-ray hardware pricing.

Just a note to say that none of these polls are scientific in nature. They are more just a general indication of the feelings of people who have found this website.

Let look at the first poll, results below:

Poll: When do you plan on getting into Blu-ray/HD DVD?

It’s interesting to note that a large percentage of people who voted had already gotten into Blu-ray or HD DVD, which I guess for a website of this nature, it isn’t too surprising. What wasn’t too surprising back then was the fact that an equally large number of people were waiting for the format war to end before jumping into either format. The rest of the people were split between waiting a certain time prior or not wanting to get into HD at all. Remember that this poll was taken just before HD DVD folded, but it was at a time when the writing was already on the wall.

Now let’s look at the second poll:

Poll: Now that Blu-ray has won the format war, when do you plan on getting into Blu-ray?

Now the above two polls couldn’t have been more than a month apart, but the results are somewhat different. Around 10% of the people polled still didn’t want anything to do with HD. Another 10% in both polls signalled that they wanted to wait another 6 months. But it seem the people who said they were waiting for the format war to end basically switched to the “when DVDs are no longer available” camp, and a bunch of former HD DVD supporters probably went with them.

While again stressing that these polls are nowhere near scientific enough to tell us much, but I thought it was interesting to see that the poll did manage to predict that there wasn’t going to be this surge of Blu-ray buying by curious by-standers (those waiting for the format war to end) and former HD DVD users. It seems when the format war was raging, people used it as an excuse not to get into HD, and when the format war ended, they found another excuse to use.

And then you look at the current poll I’m running (still not fully finished), and you begin to see perhaps just why people are staying away from Blu-ray:

Poll: What are your thoughts about Blu-ray hardware prices?

Obviously, people are always likely to say prices are too high, but the lopsided nature of the result shouldn’t be ignored. I will run a similar poll about movie prices next, and it will be interesting to see whether the results are as one sided.

Posted in High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K) | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (25 May 2008)

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Sorry for the lateness of this roundup. Life once again got into the way of work, and the only reason why most of my roundups are not late is because most of the time, I have no life. There’s not a lot of news this week either, despite me having no life … quiet news weeks do happen from time to time, and last week’s news bonanza more than makes up for this week anyway. So let’s get started.

Actually before I start, I wanted to say something about the “If I were to buy a computer today …” feature that I ran this week. It relates to a poll that I ran on the site a few weeks ago, in which I asked the age of people’s computers. I was expecting that most people’s computers would be between 2 and 4 years, and I was right, but what I didn’t expect was so many people who have computers over 4 years old. In fact, 55% of those polled had computers older than 2 years. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, since my two computers are both over four years now, and they will be closer to five years by the time I replace them. It looks like the time when people swapped computers every 18 months has ended, as computers get more and more powerful and we have less and less reasons to upgrade. But this also means that when you do buy a computer, and just like buying a new car, you need to be careful what you buy to ensure that it can last 3 or 4 years for your needs. Hopefully, the “If I were to buy a computer today …” feature can help you do just that. Anyway, onto the real news.

In copyright news, popular torrent site Mininova is being sued by the Dutch anti-piracy agency for obvious reasons. The MPAA has won another victory in court, this time winning $4 million against websites ShowStash and CinemaTube. Is it me or has there been a lot more piracy related lawsuits than usual? But everyone knows that these sites are just a move to Antigua away from being completely safe from the copyright cops, although to be completely safe, the individuals who operate the site have to move there too (but out of all the places you are “forced” to go, Antigua is not the worst). The alternative is to do what Napster are doing and go legit, and Napster are now offering 6 million DRM free songs for purchase. And as one forumer quipped, they were offering DRM free songs back when it all started too (except DRM wasn’t the only thing free about those songs). On the PC front, Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell says that PC games piracy is near an end thanks to TPM chips currently being shipped with motherboards. I’m a bit skeptical. And do people still play games on PCs?

High Definition Onto HD news, Denon are going to release cheaper players that still cost about 10 times more than your average DVD player, but it’s still cheap for Denon standards. Denon, Onkyo are brands that you buy if you want to best and are willing to pay through the nose for it. For everyone else, Pioneer or Sony is good enough. While hardware prices are something people do not like (see our current poll for the quite lopsided results), another thing they don’t like is how old movies look on Blu-ray, with the poor color reproduction and noise compared to recent releases. The problem seems to be grain, which old movies have plenty of due to being shot on film. But does removing grain destroy the original look and feel of the movie, considering many directors are adding in grain deliberately these days to give the film a grittier look. I for one think they should leave film grain alone and concentrate more on removing dirt, scratches and other things that occurred after the film was shot, not during. The suggestion that studios should skip older movies for release on Blu-ray will more than likely kill off Blu-ray as a format. Just because a film is old, it doesn’t mean that it can’t look fantastic on Blu-ray, with or without grain.

But while grain is a very 2D problem, the future of movies seems to be shifting to 3D (but we’ve heard this before, in the 80’s in fact). TV manufacturers are lining up to produce 3D TVs that won’t require glasses. I’ve also been fascinated with 3D, but I’ve yet to experience it without those headache inducing glasses.

And finally in gaming, there is a leaked photo of what the Xbox 360’s motion controller could look like (or what I call the Xbox Wii-60). To be honest, it looks more like one of those dodgy Asian Wii clones designed by someone who got confused and fused it with the 360 design. It won’t out-Wii the Wii though, so I don’t know why Microsoft is bothering to be honest. The Xbox 360 Spring Update appears to be cancelled as well, as Microsoft devote more time to fixing their DRM portability related issues (being able to play downloaded stuff on more than just the original console, especially after your old one died from the RRoD and you got yourself a new one). Has Microsoft run out of ideas for the 360? Can’t believe they are going to skip an important update for some boring DRM stuff that never should have been a problem in the first place. Or maybe they are keeping the best stuff for the Jasper update of the hardware.

And good news for those who hate fanboys … they may not be able to reproduce offsprings thanks to the toxic chemicals founds in game console plastics. Of course, the same toxic chemicals are found in just about any modern appliance, so I think the future of the human race is pretty much doomed.

And on that light note, we end this week’s news roundup. See you next week at, hopefully, the usual time.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (25 May 2008)

DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K)’ Category

Game Consoles – May 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Weekly News Roundup (8 June 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (1 June 2008) – The Late Edition

Blu-ray: A Tale of Two (and a half) Polls

Weekly News Roundup (25 May 2008)

Pages

Links

Categories