Nintendo's pleased with its February sales

March 14, 2008 - Nintendo has revealed sales data for the month of February, as collected by the independent NPD Group. Nintendo sold approximately 587 600 DS units during this month, as well as 432 000 Wii consoles, with these sales making up 47.6 percent of the monthly hardware sales at a combined total of over 1 million units.

Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's executive vice-president of Sales and Marketing, commented "Our momentum has not let up since the holidays and we expect it to continue throughout the year [...] We have the industry's strongest lineup of games for everyone from core to casual gamers."

More than 3.6 million DS games were sold in February, topping the software sales charts. Wii games were somewhat less in total, selling 2.9 million units. 4 out of every 10 games sold were for Nintendo platforms, according to Nintendo's press release. 3 of the top 5 games were for Nintendo systems, two of which were released by third parties.

Over 1.7 million accessories were sold for Wii, and 1.2 million for DS. The total of accessories sold for the Wii was more than that of any other system in February.

Form : http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=22809

Spin Art: Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo's Takes On NPD

Did you know that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all won the console war this month?

Numbers don't lie, but the spin doctors can use them to say anything they want. And the hardware makers' takes on the NPD Group's videogame industry sales results for the month of February are in.

Watch as the masters of media relations twirl and juggle the data before your very eyes, making your head swim with their tricks of language and tempting your taste buds with their chocolaty fudged numbers!

Microsoft's Spin

Xbox 360: Extending The Lead

For February's NPD reporting period, Xbox 360 remained in a supply constrained situation.  The situation is improving and we are confident consumers will soon be able to find the Xbox 360 SKU they seek, in time for the launch of "Grand Theft Auto IV", which we expect to be one of the biggest titles of the year with huge impact on the Xbox 360 platform.

What makes a winning platform? It's more than console sales. It's about consoles + content + community.As you do your reporting this month we thought we’d provide you with what we believe is a complete picture of a healthy console ecosystem, and how Xbox 360 is contributing:

Consoles:

• $332 million was spent on the Xbox 360 platform this month, capturing 39 percent of the generation’s ecosystem, $235 million was spent on the PS3 and $283 million was spent on the Wii. (February NPD data)
• The Xbox 360 platform now has a U.S. installed base of 9.6 million; the PS3 has 3.8 million, the Wii has 8.1 million. (February NPD data)
• February NPD data shows a new Xbox 360 software attach rate of 7.2, nearly twice that of the PS3 or the Wii. (February NPD data)
• 255,000 Xbox 360 consoles were sold during the month of February.  (February NPD data)

Content:

• Xbox 360 leads in games, with six out of the top 10 best selling console games in February. (February NPD data)
• Xbox 360 "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" (Activision) was the best-selling console game across all platforms, outselling the PlayStation 3 version by 2:1. (February NPD data)
• Xbox 360 has the top selling games on its platform. According to February NPD, Xbox 360 sold $184 million in games, with PS3 selling $97 million and Wii $130 million.
• Third party partners find more success on Xbox 360.  In February, Xbox 360 accounted for $159 million of all third party game sales this generation, or 45 percent of share. (February NPD data)
• Xbox 360 has more games available than any other platform, and more than twice the games available on PS3. (February NPD data)

Community:

• Xbox LIVE is the largest online gaming community currently over 10 million strong worldwide, and growing. The PS3 online network is only 2.9 million (U.S. data only) and the Wii has only four million (this number includes North America and Japan). (Microsoft internal estimates)
• Xbox LIVE is opening doors to help turn its 10 million gamers into developers. Last month, Xbox 360 announced community games for Xbox LIVE and will be widely available this fall.
• Today, we are announcing Xbox LIVE experienced 750,000 downloads of seven new community games on Xbox LIVE. They were made available for free, for less than a week. (Microsoft internal estimates)

When you look at lifetime performance of all three consoles, Xbox 360 continues to lead:

Lifetime Ecosystem Performance (US NPD Data):

• To date, $9.0 billion have been spent on Xbox 360 in the U.S, which is more than the competition’s retail dollars combined. This is nearly $6 billion more than consumers have spent on PS3 and approximately $4.5 billion more than Wii.
• Third party publishers make 60 percent of their revenue at retail on the Xbox 360 platform this generation.

Xbox 360: Extending the Lead

• Xbox 360 has six of the top 10 best games, ranked by quality. (Metacritic)
• No other game platform delivers downloadable digital entertainment, with family favorites like "Hannah Montana" and "Lost."
• No other platform delivers interactive online experiences to more than 10 million members around the globe.

Now that you've seen the gaming ecosystem from a different perspective, we look forward to hearing your thoughts.

p.s. In case you were wondering, Microsoft is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Disc Association regarding integrating Blu-ray in to the Xbox 360 experience. Games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest and best library of blockbuster games available.

Sony®'s Spin™

PS3 Sales Eclipse Xbox 360 for Second Straight Month; Year-Over-Year Sales More Than Doubled

Total PlayStation Hardware Unit Sales Top 875,969

PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) outsold Xbox 360 for the second straight month with 280,841 hardware units sold in February, 10% higher than Microsoft (according to NPD February 2008 sales data). Year-over-year this represents 120% sales growth.

• Wait, There's More… Next month will see the introductions of heavyweights Grand Theft Auto IV and PS3-exclusive Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and June will usher in the monster 2008 title Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. And let’s not forget DUALSHOCK®3 rumbles to North American retailers in April. The arsenal of 2008 blockbusters including LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, MotorStorm 2, and SingStar, combined with current momentum for Blu-ray, will further PS3 enthusiasm throughout the year.
• PLAYSTATION®Network Is Burgeoning: Currently in North America there are more than 3.3 million registered PLAYSTATION Network accounts and more than 56 million total downloads life-to-date from PLAYSTATION®Store. PLAYSTATION Network total downloads exceeded 6.3 million in February 2008, compared to 6.6 million at the peak of the holiday season in December 2007. Only on PLAYSTATION Network can you find innovative games like Calling All Cars, Everyday Shooter, fl0w, PAIN, Tekken 5, Warhawk and Super Stardust.

PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) continued its trend of strong sales with 243,115 PSP hardware units sold in February, representing a year-over-year increase of 38%.

• If You Think February Sales Were Good… Rave reviews of God of War: Chains of Olympus, wipEout® PULSE and Patapon are already pouring in, not to mention the highly anticipated debut of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII on March 25, which are expected to further PSP sales growth.

PlayStation®2 (PS2) continues to surprise and delight mainstream audiences with hardware unit sales reaching 351,787 units. Additionally, for the third consecutive month PS2 sold more software units than any other console on the market, not only a testament to the staying power of PlayStation products, but also the incredible PlayStation software library.

Power of the PlayStation Portfolio

The PlayStation brand generated the most U.S. retail dollars in the industry for the second consecutive month with $511 million in sales, 52% and 6% higher than Microsoft and Nintendo, respectively. 

• Year to date (Jan-Feb), the PlayStation brand generated nearly $1 billion in the U.S. market, 56% and 15% higher than Microsoft and Nintendo, respectively.
• PlayStation total hardware revenue was $204 million in February, 125% and 11% higher than Microsoft and Nintendo, respectively.
• PlayStation total software revenue in February was $247 million, 32% and 5% higher than Microsoft and Nintendo respectively.

CEO Perspective

"Consumers are recognizing the tremendous value of PS3 and we believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers. With monster titles like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Grand Theft Auto IV launching in April and Metal Gear Solid 4 in June, we’re demonstrating this is the year for PS3."

- Jack Tretton, president and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment America

Nintendo's Spin

NPD Reports Nintendo's Solid U.S. Sales for February

The latest video game industry sales figures reported by the independent NPD Group show that Nintendo DS™ and Wii™ topped the U.S. charts for February. Nintendo DS sold nearly 587,600 units and Wii sold nearly 432,000.

"Our momentum has not let up since the holidays and we expect it to continue throughout the year," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "We have the industry’s strongest lineup of games for everyone from core to casual gamers."

February sales, according to NPD, in the United States:

• Nintendo sold more than 1 million hardware units combined, accounting for nearly half (47.6 percent) of all hardware sold.
• Nintendo DS games topped all software sales, with more than 3.6 million units sold. Consumers purchased nearly 2.9 million software units for Wii. Four of every 10 games sold were for Nintendo systems.
• Three games in the top five sellers for February play on Nintendo systems, including two from third-party publishers.
• Nearly 1.7 million accessories were purchased for Wii, more than for any other system. More than 1.2 million accessories were sold for Nintendo DS as well.

Form : http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/spin-art-micros.html

Analysis of Sony's OLED TV Reveals Design Innovations

The XEL-1 organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV released by Sony Corp of Japan in December 2007 has a display only 3mm thick. In addition to its innovative design, another key selling point is the display performance. We measured and evaluated the display performance with the help of a panel engineer, and came to understand the difficulties that Sony faced in overcoming the drawbacks associated with using OLED panels in TVs, and how it made the best use of the superlative image quality that OLED panels offer.

Extending Service Life
The most intriguing of the difficulties Sony faced was brightness time control. It turns out that after the TV is turned on, the brightness is automatically adjusted through five levels in only 300s (Fig 1). This appears to be a clever way of utilizing still-developing OLED panels.

For example, when the entire screen is white the brightness gradually drops from the power-on level of just under 200cd/m2 after about 20s. After 60s brightness stabilizes again, leveling off just a bit over 150cd/m2. About 150s later it again begins to gradually drop, ending up just under 100cd/m2 at the 300s mark, and then maintaining 100cd/m2 thereafter. In other words, the brightness does not drop suddenly, but rather changes gradually and in stages. The engineer assisting us with the measurements commented that this was a way to prevent most viewers from noticing any changes in brightness.

Brightness control also shows tweaks to prolong display life, reduce power consumption and otherwise improve performance. An engineer from a TV manufacturer explained, "Similar techniques were adopted in PDP TVs and other products in the initial period." OLED light-emitting materials are still being actively developed, and service life is not yet sufficiently long. Light-emitting materials degrade the more they emit, and Sony appears to have reduced brightness as far as possible to minimize this deterioration to make it possible to utilize OLEDs under tough TV conditions.

Pseudo-Impulse Drive
Another innovation to make it easier to utilize OLED panels in the TV is the adoption of a pseudo-impulse drive. Our analysis showed that a black screen 6ms to 7ms long is inserted into every frame (about 16.7ms).

Pseudo-impulse drive is a technique to simulate an impulse drive, like that used in cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs. It helps relieve the retinal afterimage causing blurriness in human eyes, improving apparent motion display performance. It is becoming widely used in liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs where motion display is a problem.

The OLED emits white light, so the motion display performance of the panel itself is supposed to be quite high, but as long as it's a hold type there will be problems with retinal afterimages. Apparently Sony decided that the pseudo-impulse drive was essential for use in TVs, where motion is almost constant.

Power Consumption
While some issues were resolved through modifications to the drive, we found others that still need to be addressed - specifically, power consumption and viewing angle.

A look at power consumption showed that the self-emitting design exhibits about a 10W difference between all-white and all-black states. The average power consumption for all white is 28.4W, and for all black (no emissions) 18.3W. This is the total power consumption for the entire TV, including components other than panel drive; but even so, the TV engineer was surprised at how high it was, considering this is an 11-inch set. We also discovered a slight difference in white and green hues depending on viewing angle (Fig 2).

Sony said from the start that reducing power consumption would be the next development challenge, said Yoshito Shiraishi, general manager in the E Products & Business Development Department of the TV Business Group at Sony. One of the reasons why Toshiba Corp of Japan delayed release of its 30-inch class OLED TV originally slated for 2009 is also thought to have been high power consumption. According to president and chief executive officer (CEO) Katsuji Fujita of Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co Ltd, "OLEDs of 30 inches or more consume two to three times more power than LCDs. It will take a little more time to drop this to at least the level of LCDs."

Color Reproduction
The measurement and evaluation process also identified a number of points where the OLED really shines, such as the fact that the color reproduction range is 106% of National Television System Committee (NTSC) standard (Fig 3).

The OLED panel developed by Sony has a proprietary optical structure that is very advantageous in color reproduction. Reflection is repeated between positive and negative electrodes, and only light of a specific frequency is amplified by the interference effect. This specific frequency is then output through the color filters. Measurements of emission intensity show the effects of the structure clearly.

In addition to display characteristics, we also examined pixel structure. Each subpixel appears to be provided with two thin-film transistors (TFT), as show in Fig 4. This is probably the minimal structure, with one for switching and one for drive. Normally three or four TFTs are used with a compensation circuit to minimize luminance variation due to variation in TFT characteristics, so this is indeed a simple design. Fewer TFTs is effective in increasing the aperture ratio. Previously we estimated the aperture ratio at about 75%. Improvements in manufacturing technology have reduced the variation in TFT characteristics, and made it possible to cut the number of TFTs used.

by Takuya Otani

Form : http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20080226/148048/

Who wants a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1? Get your own XPERIA X1 on pre-order today!

I think it would have been easier to ask, "who doesn't want a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1?" As Sony Ericsson's Windows Mobile-powered, high-res touchscreen, sliding QWERTY superphone, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is quite possibly the most anticipated WinMo device that we've heard of to date. And, in a seeming effort to cash in on all the buzz surrounding the super slick smartphone that just oozes sexiness, a slew of online retailers are offering the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 for pre-order.

So, just how much couch-change are you going to need to scrounge to get a taste of the 3G'd goodness that is the XPERIA X1? Well, if you venture over to MobileCityOnline's corner of the internet, you'll find the XPERIA X1 available for $999 - that's $200 less than the $1199 retail price. Keep in mind that there is no official retail price set for the X1, not to mention any carrier-subsidized pricing. These retailers are just making  up prices for better or worse.

And, as such, pre-order pricing on the X1 is like Britney Spears on a bad day - it's all over the place. For instance, WirelessGalaxy wants you to believe that the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is worth a whopping $1428 - discounted from their own special retail price of $1500.

Smart Mobile Gadgets has the X1 available for the super-specific price of $979.94. I guess these guys want to make sure that they clear their margins on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 - even if no one really knows the retail price at this point.

Thankfully, there are retailers that seem to be putting their money on the high-end XPERIA handset weighing in with a lighter price-tag. The more reasonable end of the e-tailer spectrum shows CellHUT offering the X1 for just $699 - down from their retail price of $899. And, bringing up the bargain-basement side of things, Clove Technology is offering the X1 at a too-good-to-be-true price of just £395!

Right, so I think it's safe to say that no one knows just how much the X1 is going to cost. As  Sony Ericsson's top-of-the-line offering, any device bearing the XPERIA brand should command a hefty price. If you want to hedge your bets, you might want to put in a pre-order for one of the bargain deals above. But, read the fine print… it might come back to bite you.

[Via: Pocketables]

ASUS GPS to debut 3D realistic city maps

The Asus R700 is an upcoming detachable vehicle GPS unit that incorporates realistic 3D maps which look like something we might have seen in the film 'Total Recall' - very futuristic.

The technology could help drivers who are routinely confused in big cities with multiple lanes and daunting skyscrapers. While we wonder at the accuracy of the data and how the unit will fully illustrate the surroundings in high density areas, of a city like Sydney - we're all for new GPS technologies that help getting around easier. And we also wonder what happens to the GPS data in places that a little less populated outside of the cities.

The 4.3inch R700/R700t models sport Bluetooth 2.0 for clearer conversations and can even speak out the SMS content to allow drivers to get on with the job of driving. With 1GB of flash memory, a micro SD card slot, it gets everything chuggling along on a 400Mhz processor with the standard SiRF STAR III GPS chipset that most of the cheaper units rely on these days. The unit is not available in Australia yet, but is on the way.

A built in TMC (Traffic Message Channel) on the R700t unit will also serve to notify users of traffic delays and can automatically recalculate a new route for the user when the vehicle passes into a traffic obstruction. TMC services have appeared in Melbourne but are yet to launch in Sydney and other cities.

ASUS aren't the only ones pushing the 3D map idea. An English software company called 3Dlabs has already successfully trialled the idea at a number of trade shows across the world. The 3dlabs website has a few pics that give you an idea of how detailed the technology will appear in their GPS units.

Form : http://www.pcauthority.com.au/news.aspx?CIaNID=72040