Posts in category business
by Kyle Orland Sep 5th 2008 6:20PM
Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Since CNBC analyst Jane Wells granted us poor peons a glimpse into "
the ultimate proof Sony is winning" two months ago, we at Joystiq have been eagerly awaiting another chance to hear from her son, the
twelve16-year-old oracle who
sealed Microsoft's fate by trading his Xbox 360 for a PS3. And lo, today the all-knowing king of business analysis
didst speak once more, granting his youthful wisdom to us poor, unwashed masses.
"Hear me!" came the oracle's
booming, high-pitched voice from on high as he surveyed his subjects from his beanbag chair throne. "Though mine PS3 still brings me pleasure, the pleasure of Xbox Live friends may be one that I have treated too lightly. My patience waiting for an offering of new games from Sony has forced me once more to explore the
shores of Azeroth. Lo, though times are tough, do not be tempted by the spawn of Nintendo, for I would not be caught dead with that thing."
With that, the doors of knowledge closed with a shattering thud, once again leaving us confused and in the dark. Still, we thank our benevolent information masters for this new glimpse into the heart of the game industry, however brief.
by Randy Nelson Sep 5th 2008 4:20PM
Filed under: Business
Imagine Square Enix's proposed takeover of Tecmo as a high school "romance." In it, Square is the suave campus hunk who
professes his burning desire for Tecmo, the hottie who could have any guy (or girl) she wanted. But Tecmo not only shoots down the advance, she
decides to "go out" with the scrawny, less attractive Koei instead.
She won't say why or even return Square's calls.
Square turns around and says, "Under such circumstances, the Company is unable to make appropriate modifications to major terms of the Proposal including the TOB price, and determines that it is extremely difficult to continue the discussions with Tecmo based on the Proposal. The Company, therefore, has decided to withdraw from the Proposal."
Blank stares.
"What I'm trying to say is I'm withdrawing my proposal to take you over," Square tells Tecmo, working his idea of emo for all its worth. Tecmo just smiles and says, "Hee! You're funny! Bye-eee!"
The End?
by Kyle Orland Sep 5th 2008 3:50PM
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
OK,
fanboys, before you hit that spittle-flecked "post comment" button after just reading that inflammatory headline question, hear us out. We're not just idly speculating here -- we're basing our query on an unusually frank quote from Microsoft Senior Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business
Don Mattrick. In an
interview with BusinessWeek, Mattrick said that he's "not at a point where I can say we're going to beat Nintendo." Coming from a guy whose
job it is to promote Microsoft's position in the market, that's a pretty big admission of doubt. It's not just Mattrick that's doubtful-- analyst
Billy Pidgeon told the magazine, "I expect the 360 to remain in second place this generation. But it's going to be close."
The question, then, becomes how much this sales position really matters. Microsoft's sales might fall just shy of Nintendo's, but that doesn't seem to be hurting the company's ability to attract
big-name games or roll out
new features for the system. In fact, with Nintendo's decidedly less powerful system catering to a
decidedly different audience, Microsoft's position relative to Nintendo might not matter nearly as much as their position relative to Sony. And on that score Mattrick has no doubt: "We will sell more consoles this generation than Sony," he told BusinessWeek.
by Ludwig Kietzmann Sep 5th 2008 3:20PM
Filed under: Business
Good news, Tecmo employees!
No no, please don't get up. That bed under your desk really looks quite comfortable and snuggly. Now, if you'll just minimize that window filled with
Ninja Gaiden II: Burnt Sienna code ... there, that's it. You'll be pleased to note that
Tecmo has reached a settlement with Hiroaki Ozawa and Tatsuki Tsunoda of Team Ninja, who recently
filed a lawsuit against the
Dead or Alive publisher in response to an alleged overtime pay dispute.
According to
Gamasutra, the pair claimed that employees (like you!) were not paid according to documented overtime hours, going as far as to say that the company created false documents to cover up the salary shenanigans. With this lawsuit wrapped up, it still leaves
one to go with departed Team Ninja boss,
Tomonobu Itagaki.
Alright, back to work! And go brush your teeth, seriously.
by Ross Miller Sep 5th 2008 12:50PM
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Intel is rumored to be heavily courting Microsoft for inclusion of its high-performance GPU
Larrabee in the next-generation Xbox, according to
The Inquirer. Its source states that Intel is willing to make a lot of major concessions, the logic being that inclusion in the console would compel game makers to develop for the chipset, thus increasing interest in the consumer PC market and making a dent in the GPU market dominated by ATI and Nvidia. It's certainly not a far-fetched scheme; we'd be surprised if Intel
didn't at least make a pitch to Microsoft, regardless of the actual terms.
The Xbox 360 currently uses a PowerPC-based CPU from IBM and a GPU designed by ATI. Should this rumor prove true, our first reaction is "cool" and our second is to wonder about backwards compatibility, which
became an issue given that the original Xbox's GPU was based on a different, Nvidia-based architecture in comparison to its successor.
[Via
Tweaktown; Thanks, Tigerj]
by Alexander Sliwinski Sep 5th 2008 10:20AM
Filed under: Culture, Business
Ghostbusters: The Game may
not have a publisher, and its fate may
not be clear, but that didn't stop the title from being advertised on lanyards at
PAX.
Variety spoke to Penny Arcade's business guy, Robert Khoo, who said that Sierra signed to do the lanyards in January and sent them in June. It wasn't even until two weeks before the show that Sierra, the
abused and neglected stepchild of Activision Blizzard, "pulled out of displaying
Ghostbusters."
Khoo explains that there wasn't enough time to get a new lanyard provider, so even though
Actilizzard isn't going to benefit from the promotion, they still paid the bill.
by Alexander Sliwinski Sep 5th 2008 12:00AM
Filed under: PC, Strategy, Business
Stardock has revealed that its sleeper PC hit
Sins of a Solar Empire has sold over half a million copies. The company's CEO Brad Wardell tells
Gamasutra that 400,000 units were sold at retail, while 100,000 in sales came from digital downloads. Not bad for a full-bodied PC strategy game that cost less than a million dollars to make.
Wardell is certainly becoming an
interesting character in the narrative of this industry, with relatively small publisher Stardock really
stepping up. He explains part of
Sins' success is that it was designed to run on a "four-year-old video card" and still look good. He says there might be a "piddly super-mega effect" that gets missed, but the result is more sales for the game, a strategy which sounds similar to
Blizzard's take on being a PC developer.
Sins' first mini-expansion,
Entrenchment, will be available for $10 later this year.
[Via
Big Download]
by Randy Nelson Sep 4th 2008 8:30PM
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Business
Samsung UK consumer electronics boss Andy Griffiths doesn't see a lengthy lifespan for the
Blu-ray format. Speaking to Pocket-lint, he said, "I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10." 10 years as in the
product cycle Sony has mapped out for PS3, which features Blu-ray as a core technology?
Griffiths' prediction could very well be accurate, but consider DVD, a format that is still going strong 12 years after the first player launched in Japan in 1996. To put things in perspective, Blu-ray players only hit the scene two years ago. With adoption of HDTVs continuing at a steady pace and that whole
victory over HD-DVD thing, the format (for video, at least) has to have at least
six years left in it.
by Ludwig Kietzmann Sep 4th 2008 4:37PM
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Take-Two Interactive's third-quarter fiscal results have proven that crime really does pay, with law-breaking blockbuster
Grand Theft Auto IV leading sales, alongside
Top Spin 3 and
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. The three-month financial period, ended July 31, 2008, saw the publisher rake in net revenues of $433.8 million, nearly double the $206.4 million it earned during the same, GTA-less quarter of 2007.
If you're reading this paragraph, we can only assume that you're keen on seeing even more numbers. Like $51.8 million, Take-Two's net income for the quarter and a considerable improvement on last year's net loss of $58.5 million. In terms of notable expenses, Take-Two burned through $12.6 million in "stock-based compensation," $1.8 million for "business reorganization" and $5.4 million for "professional fees and legal expenses," primarily aimed at warding off the advances of EA. Finally, net revenues for Take-Two's first three quarters in total were just over $1.2 billion, versus $689.2 million for the same period a year ago.
In summary:
Grand Theft Auto IV = money.
by Ludwig Kietzmann Sep 4th 2008 4:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Business
Having already come to an arrangement with Japanese star developers Goichi "Suda 51" Suda and Shinji Mikami to publish a
mysterious horror franchise*, who could blame EA for
stalking showing interest in other Eastern talent? Speaking to
MTV Multiplayer, David DeMartini, who oversees the EA Partners program and a board swathed in secret plans, candidly admits, "EA looks at the top 20 developers in the world and we try to sign anything those guys are working on."
DeMartini explains that deals such as the Suda/Mikami one represent "something that is very unique and very special," despite being, like many of our relationships, "slightly uncomfortable for both parties." We're dying to see the results of EA's collaboration and share DeMartini's unshaken hope that it "will serve as a springboard to a successful formula that we can apply to some of the other great Japanese designers." You know, like
Gackt.
*It's the franchise that's mysterious, not the horror. We're quite certain it'll have obvious, horror-inducing things like ghosts or Rihanna albums. by Kyle Orland Sep 4th 2008 1:00PM
Filed under: Retro, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Microsoft has long acknowledged that it considers $200 the "
sweet spot" of console price points. Now that the manufacturer has finally hit that sweet spot with the
new $199 Xbox 360 Arcade, we've been wondering exactly what kind of impact Microsoft can expect, historically, in its bottom line. Luckily, Matt Matthews over at Edge Online did all the heavy lifting for us
over a year ago, looking at the effect of system pricing on sales numbers in the last generation of the console wars.
The results, as you can see above, are pretty clear. Only 13% of original Xbox systems sold at the $300 price point, and a plurality of sales came at an eventual floor of $150. Sony's PS2 similarly only sold a quarter of its eventual installed base at a price greater than $200 (Nintendo's Gamecube never sold for greater than $200).
Of course, history is an imprecise guide here. The original Xbox dropped under $200 within six months of its initial release, while the Xbox 360 went nearly three years (
exactly 1018 days) before hitting the sweet spot. And while the original Xbox also had competition from Sony and Nintendo, it didn't have to compete with "premium" configurations offered by Microsoft itself. Still, we can't imagine being the first current-gen system to be available for under two Benjamins will
hurt sales of the system. For now, the unanswerable question remains: Exactly how much will it not hurt?
by Ludwig Kietzmann Sep 4th 2008 12:30PM
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
It seems Activision Blizzard is still uncertain as to who it's gonna call -- to publish ectoplasmic epic
Ghostbusters. Speaking to
MCV, the newly melded megapublisher was still hesitant to divulge the "
absolutely not cancelled" game's fate, along with the fate of fellow Vivendi leftovers like
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
In the wake of
Vivendi UK's closure, Activision Blizzard's general manager for the region, Andrew Brown, pointed out that while "Crash, Spyro and Prototype will definitely be released this and next year," the company was still in the midst of "reviewing its options regarding titles that it will not be publishing."
Sound familiar? If the games are found unsuitable for Activision's immense sequel conveyer belt, it's likely that they'll be shipped off to more eager publishers.
Still, aren't you utterly relieved to learn that
Crash Bandicoot and
Spyro the Dragon are just fine? We were worried there for a second.
by Ross Miller Sep 4th 2008 9:30AM
Filed under: Culture, Business
Square Enix's proposal to buy an Itagaki-less
Tecmo has been rejected. According to
Reuters, the
Ninja Gaiden and
Dead or Alive publisher instead said that it would merge with Koei, making it entirely within the realm of possibility that we'll soon be playing
Dynasty Warriors Xtreme Kingdom Beach Games.
Tecmo said Koei would offer "a greater chance of boosting corporate value" (our analysis: Koei wouldn't overshadow Tecmo like
Square Enix would). The
Final Fantasy publisher, which
initially offered $206 million for a merger "on friendly terms," said it would try to (infinite un)discover more details on the Koei merger in order to figure out Tecmo's rationale and then decide what to do next. This isn't the last (remnant) we've heard of it.
by Alexander Sliwinski Sep 4th 2008 2:00AM
Filed under: Culture, Business
Square Enix
announced today that two new execs have been hired for the American branch of the Japanese publisher. The two men will sit around for three to five years between
Final Fantasy editions twiddling their ... oh, wait, what? They'll be "focusing on expanding
Square Enix's presence in the North American" market?! Well, isn't that just a game changer.
Ron Scott, formerly a bigwig at
Activision, will take the role of senior vice president of sales and marketing. David Hoffman will become director of business development, focusing on expanding North American development partnerships. Now we wait and see what the two execs pull off for the hardcore JRPG publisher outside of its native land.
Next Page >
_thumbnail.jpg "i am 8-bit: 2008")
