The Gaming News Thread

[Mailman653]

That's quite a task they set out for themselves, if they pull it off they would become the champion of gamers and silence their critics. If they fail, they would be the laughing stock of other publishers and probably lose some cred with gamers.

[Martok]

That's quite a task they set out for themselves, if they pull it off they would become the champion of gamers and silence their critics. If they fail, they would be the laughing stock of other publishers and probably lose some cred with gamers.

Indeed. Hence, why I said it would be interesting to see how it all turns out.


In other Stardock news, Brad has said they're going to officially announce their new fantasy strategy game next Tuesday (Nov. 4). Can't wait!

[TevashSzat]

PS3 sales near 17 million as Sony profits sink

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Electronics and financial services drag down Japanese company; game losses narrow as PS3 outpaces 360 in July-Sept.

Sony wasn't joking when it said last week that it was in for a grim fiscal year 2008. As a portent of things to come, the Japanese electronics company revised its profits projections downward an additional 39 percent for the year, which runs April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009, in all putting them off a full 59 percent from last year's performance.

Keeping in line with those expectations, Sony said today that net profits for the July-September quarter slid 72 percent, falling to ¥20.8 billion ($213 million) from ¥73.7 billion ($755 million) a year ago. Total revenue stood at ¥2.07 trillion ($21.3 billion), off half a percentage point from last year. Operating income skidded 90 percent year-over-year, falling to ¥11 billion ($113 million) from ¥111.6 billion ($1.14 billion).

Sony's bread-and-butter electronics segment, which accounts for the bulk of the company's revenues, saw a .6 percent decline in sales for the reporting period, dipping to ¥1.7 trillion ($17.4 billion). The decline comes despite stronger sales of the Bravia LCD TVs and Vaio PCs. As the company noted last week, the yen's strengthen in the global market as well as tighter profit margins due to increased competition contributed to the company's lackluster performance in this area.

Gamers will be pleased to know that Sony's games segment actually saw some gains during the period. For the quarter, Sony's games arm generated ¥269 billion ($2.76 billion), a 10 percent increase year-over-year. Naturally, the publisher attributed its performance to rising sales of the PlayStation 3 and PSP, with the former shifting 2.43 million units and the latter moving 3.18 million systems. PlayStation 2 sales continued to dwindle during the quarter, falling to 2.5 million units.

Of note, PS3 sales stood 200,000 units higher than those of the Xbox 360 over the same stretch. Last week, Microsoft said that the Xbox 360 sold 2.2 million units during the comparable period of time, which was a 20 percent increase year-over-year. To date, the PlayStation 3's global lifetime sales stand at 16.85 million units.

Though the game's unit saw increased revenue for the quarter, it remained in the red. Sony's games arm posted a ¥39.5 billion ($405 million) operating loss for the July-September period, an improvement over the ¥96.7 billion ($991 million) deficit it posted for the same period last year. Sony noted that this tightening of losses was due to a decrease in production costs on the PS3, an increase in software sales for its flagship console, and strong hardware sales of the PSP.

Not unsurprising considering the global economic crisis, Sony's financial services segment took a significant hit during the quarter, seeing an operating loss of ¥25 billion ($256 million) and falling revenues of ¥100 billion ($1.02 billion). Conversely, the movie business performed quite well--with sales increasing 3.4 percent to ¥196 billion ($2.00 billion)--on the strength of Hancock, Step Brothers, and Pineapple Express.

You know, I find it really hard to understand people all yelling about the doomsday of the PC gamer when consoles have not made ANY money for their producers(Microsoft and Sony here, I don't consider Nintendo's Wii as really a "hardcore" gaming console) A loss of 405 million dollars is nothing to scoff at and its only three months, making the yearly loss easily 1 billion plus. This is only after a ton of improvement too as manufacturing costs have gone down significantly as technology improved. Microsoft doesn't face much better at all and is consistently losing money too. The only reason that consoles have done so well relatively is because their companies are willing to lose billions to prop up their product. If EA tried to waste that much money, their shareholders would kill the board of directors...

[Veho Nex]

PS3 sales near 17 million as Sony profits sink

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Electronics and financial services drag down Japanese company; game losses narrow as PS3 outpaces 360 in July-Sept.

Sony wasn't joking when it said last week that it was in for a grim fiscal year 2008. As a portent of things to come, the Japanese electronics company revised its profits projections downward an additional 39 percent for the year, which runs April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009, in all putting them off a full 59 percent from last year's performance.

Keeping in line with those expectations, Sony said today that net profits for the July-September quarter slid 72 percent, falling to ¥20.8 billion ($213 million) from ¥73.7 billion ($755 million) a year ago. Total revenue stood at ¥2.07 trillion ($21.3 billion), off half a percentage point from last year. Operating income skidded 90 percent year-over-year, falling to ¥11 billion ($113 million) from ¥111.6 billion ($1.14 billion).

Sony's bread-and-butter electronics segment, which accounts for the bulk of the company's revenues, saw a .6 percent decline in sales for the reporting period, dipping to ¥1.7 trillion ($17.4 billion). The decline comes despite stronger sales of the Bravia LCD TVs and Vaio PCs. As the company noted last week, the yen's strengthen in the global market as well as tighter profit margins due to increased competition contributed to the company's lackluster performance in this area.

Gamers will be pleased to know that Sony's games segment actually saw some gains during the period. For the quarter, Sony's games arm generated ¥269 billion ($2.76 billion), a 10 percent increase year-over-year. Naturally, the publisher attributed its performance to rising sales of the PlayStation 3 and PSP, with the former shifting 2.43 million units and the latter moving 3.18 million systems. PlayStation 2 sales continued to dwindle during the quarter, falling to 2.5 million units.

Of note, PS3 sales stood 200,000 units higher than those of the Xbox 360 over the same stretch. Last week, Microsoft said that the Xbox 360 sold 2.2 million units during the comparable period of time, which was a 20 percent increase year-over-year. To date, the PlayStation 3's global lifetime sales stand at 16.85 million units.

Though the game's unit saw increased revenue for the quarter, it remained in the red. Sony's games arm posted a ¥39.5 billion ($405 million) operating loss for the July-September period, an improvement over the ¥96.7 billion ($991 million) deficit it posted for the same period last year. Sony noted that this tightening of losses was due to a decrease in production costs on the PS3, an increase in software sales for its flagship console, and strong hardware sales of the PSP.

Not unsurprising considering the global economic crisis, Sony's financial services segment took a significant hit during the quarter, seeing an operating loss of ¥25 billion ($256 million) and falling revenues of ¥100 billion ($1.02 billion). Conversely, the movie business performed quite well--with sales increasing 3.4 percent to ¥196 billion ($2.00 billion)--on the strength of Hancock, Step Brothers, and Pineapple Express.

You know, I find it really hard to understand people all yelling about the doomsday of the PC gamer when consoles have not made ANY money for their producers(Microsoft and Sony here, I don't consider Nintendo's Wii as really a "hardcore" gaming console) A loss of 405 million dollars is nothing to scoff at and its only three months, making the yearly loss easily 1 billion plus. This is only after a ton of improvement too as manufacturing costs have gone down significantly as technology improved. Microsoft doesn't face much better at all and is consistently losing money too. The only reason that consoles have done so well relatively is because their companies are willing to lose billions to prop up their product. If EA tried to waste that much money, their shareholders would kill the board of directors...

Do it ea, you've done about everything else, give us the reason to find and destroy you.

[Husar]

So here we have two companies who actually take deep cuts into their overall profits (not losses) to please their customers and now that is a bad thing. And EA who just look for their own profits are bad as well so whatever a big company does is bad? Commie!

[Mailman653]

Beatles video game, 09

Atari might pick up Ghostbusters game

[frogbeastegg]

You know, I find it really hard to understand people all yelling about the doomsday of the PC gamer when consoles have not made ANY money for their producers

Console makers lose money on hardware and make a killing on games and peripherals. It's been the case for generations. A console like the PS2 having sufficient success and lifespan to end up cheap enough to build at a profit is a relatively recent development.

[Praxil]

Something ugly is going on over here...

Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It's all one in the same, so I strongly reccommend people play nice and act mature.

Seems to me that this "act" will brake some laws. Unless this is clearly informed on the game cover before the product is bought.

[Martok]

That is disturbing....

[Husar]

Well, if people cannot behave...