Archive for January, 2008
Awesome PS3 Sales In Europe
MCVUK interviews Sony’s David Reeves and has some excellent sales news.
“In December we sold just over a million PlayStation 3s during the month,” he told MCV. “That’s across all PAL territories and that’s a sell-through figure.
Over a million from Europe alone? That’s equal to or above Japan and USA combined! NPD sales for USA were 797.6K and MediaCreate sales for Japan total approximately 212.7K for a USA/Japan total of 1.01 million.
Remember this chart? PS3 would look much better if I could get good Europe numbers to include.
“We don’t often mention the competition, but I will give you some interesting data: In terms of installed base in some of our major markets, such as France, Spain, Germany and Italy – plus some distributor territories in smaller markets like Switzerland – our current cumulative installed base is now higher than Xbox 360.
“It has not yet reached that in the UK. But the team here expect to overtake the installed base of Xbox 360 across all PAL territories in late summer. It’s also worth mentioning that last week we outsold Xbox 360 in PAL territories by a ratio of three to one.”
Great news all around!
UPDATE: In negative news, analysts predict that Sony will fall short of their PS3 sales target for fiscal year 2007. Sony previously claimed that they would be able to sell 11 million PS3 units to retailers/dealers during FY’07 (4/1/2007-3/31/2008), however analysts are predicting that they will only reach 8 million.
UPDATE 2: To clarify the 11 million Sony target and 8 million analyst estimate (according to bloomberg): these numbers only include FY’07 sales. They do NOT include PS3 sales before April 1, 2007. These particular numbers are also referring to sales to retailers and dealers, NOT complete sell through to customers.
Kart Attack
Posted by Blackstaffer in K, PLAYSTATION Store, PS3 software on January 24th, 2008
Derrick sent this in a long time ago and I kept forgetting to post it. Sorry Derrick! Anyway, this looks to be a pretty accurate kart racing sim with some pretty good graphics:
Kart Attack is a brand new racing game destined for Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network and Games for Windows – Live. This revolutionary title includes stunning next generation graphics surpassing those found in many AAA titles, and a driving model which is both easy to get to grips with and fun to play. Whether you’re challenging opponents online, trying to beat the stunningly intelligent AI characters or improving your own times at one of our exclusive themed circuits, you’re sure to have fantastic fun with the gaming sensation which is Kart Attack.
Let’s hope it has four player splitscreen!
Burnout Paradise: No Splitscreen (Again)
Posted by Blackstaffer in B, PS3 software on January 23rd, 2008
Now that Burnout Paradise is making its way to stores, threads are popping up on the forums like this one and this one asking about splitscreen support. Lots of people (like me) want splitscreen support, but it also looks like lots of people just don’t care.
Here are the people that should and do care about splitscreen:
- Families. If you have several kids all wanting to play a game, then splitscreen support in a racing game is vital. What else are you going to do, buy two TV’s and consoles?
- Room-mates. If you’re just living with a friend after graduation or some college buddies in a dorm, wouldn’t it be great to sit down and race the tracks together?
- Social people. This is the group that I fall into. I regularly have people at my place to play videogames. MotorStorm never makes an appearance because it has no splitscreen. And you know? MotorStorm is exactly the kind of game we like. If it had splitscreen, we’d be playing it all the time!
People that don’t care about splitscreen:
- Gamers who live alone and don’t have gaming friends that aren’t online. Uh… what else can I say? This seems to be the group that developers are targetting, so it must be large.
So frankly, I don’t understand why there isn’t more people complaining about the lack of splitscreen. How can the latter group possibly be large enough to warrant developers dropping splitscreen support? Some people say that adding splitscreen support will (a) decrease the quality of the graphics and (b) increase development time. To those points I say (a) only in splitscreen mode which I’ll gladly accept, and about which nobody complained in previous generation games, and (b) I’ll wait for it, it can’t add that much time.
I really hope that developers rethink this strategy…
PixelJunk Monsters Demo
Posted by Blackstaffer in P, PS3 software on January 23rd, 2008
Last night I downloaded the PixelJunk Monster Demo from the Japanese store. It’s actually an english-language game! Supposedly it’ll be available tomorrow in the North American store as well.
The game is like the web-browser game Desktop Tower Defense, but with a few small changes.
You can’t build a tower just anywhere. You have to convert a tree into a tower. This severely limits the game in that you no longer control the path the baddies must take. But I personally didn’t really care about this restriction.
To do anything, you actually have to move your character to do it. To build a tower, you need to move your little guy over to a tree to convert it. That’s not too bad. But when your towers kill off the baddies, you have to collect the gold yourself. That’s a real pain in the butt!
One other change is that you can upgrade towers by paying for it, like the original, or you can also make your character dance in front of the tower for a bit, which comes in handy when you have no moola.
The demo gives a pretty good indication of what the game is like, giving you a tutorial level plus a full level to play around in. It does have two-player co-op, which I’ll try with a friend eventually. If that’s good, I might still end up buying it. If not, then nope.
Splinter Cell: Conviction Not Coming to PS3
Posted by Blackstaffer in PS3 software, S on January 23rd, 2008
VideoGamer.com reports:
Ubisoft has confirmed to VideoGamer.com that Splinter Cell: Conviction, announced as a PC and Xbox 360 title, will not be coming to PS3 and will not be coming out on April 1, as previously rumoured.
Which is really too bad. I enjoyed playing a Splinter Cell game co-op with a friend of mine on his game cube and was hoping a Splinter Cell game with good co-op would make its way to the PS3 soon.
Ah well.
[via N4G]
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