Industry news articles

The Nielsen report on American console usage percentages contains some mislabeled data, according to a correction sent to Fast Company by Nielsen's Gavin McMillan. In the original PDF's Figure 4, "January 2008 to January 2009 Video Console Usage Percents," the Wii and Xbox 360's positions are transposed for January 2009. The correct chart appears above, showing that Wii usage, at 20.7% of the total recorded usage minutes, exceeded 360 usage (18.2%) in January.
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Sales in the Japanese software chart continued sinking this week -- the top-ranked game sold only 34,000 units. Although not traditionally a busy time of year for the market, the results are still below the norm of even a year ago. Namco Bandai’s new Mobile Suit Gundam game on PSP remained at number one, with many older titles such as Mario & Luigi RPG 3 and Warriors Orochi Z moving back up the top 10 – also atypical for the Japanese charts.
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Interesting... The choice here is really between investing for the Xbox 360 and PS3 -- since their capabilities are fairly similar -- or the Wii. I would caution investors and developers that the larger installed base of the Wii is really a bit of a red herring.
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Legendary Sims and Spore creator Will Wright is ready to try something new. Electronic Arts announced today that its Maxis guru is leaving to head up what's described as a new "entertainment think tank" called Stupid Fun Club.
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Nintendo's Wii is the home console that sees the least amount of use in the US, according to new research by Nielsen. In the company's State of the Video Gamer report for the month of December 2008, the Wii had an average usage of five days, compared to 6.8 for the PlayStation 3 and 7.1 days for the Xbox 360. The average usage session clocks in at 58 minutes for Nintendo's home console, while the PlayStation 3 records 64 minutes and the Xbox 360 78 minutes.
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Over the past 6 weeks we have had 4 different No1's ('Streetfighter IV', 'Killzone 2', 'Empire: Total War' and for the last 3 weeks, 'Resident Evil 5'). However, Nintendo’s breather after strenuous exercise is over and 'Wii Fit' (+1%) is back on top in the run-up to the Easter break, equalling Nintendo’s own longest serving All Formats No1 record way back in 2000 with 'Pokemon Yellow' and 10 weeks at the top.
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- DSi: 57,401 13,832 (19.42%) - PSP: 54,148 11,617 (17.66%) - PS3: 22,825 2,610 (10.26%) - Wii: 17,276 819 (4.53%) - DS Lite: 8,408 540 (6.03%) - PS2: 5,246 179 (3.53%) - Xbox 360: 4,849 592 (10.88%)
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MotorStorm alloy wheels, Killzone Zippo lighters, SingStar nail varnish and LittleBigPlanet breeze blocks – all and more could be on the way with SCEE confirming the appointment of Target Entertainment as its consumer product licensing agent for PlayStation software IP. Target will look to take many of Sony Europe's biggest brands to all manner of consumer products including clothes, toys, stationary, housewares and gifts.
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John Koeller, SCEA Marketing Director, states that the drop in PS2 price will impact Wii sales. "We do look at those as similar consumers. So, yes, we do think the $99 price point could steal some share [from Wii]. From a technological standpoint, the Wii is much closer to the PS2 than it is to the next-gen consoles."
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A neat article from MTV about rumbling's heard at GDC about Q-Games (PixelJunk Monsters, Eden etc). Seems other 'indie' developers are taking umbrage with Q-Games 'cozy' relationship with SONY.
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