Firstly their Quarter Three profits were down 41% as the DS entered it’s fifth year and the Wii with it’s third. The profits were estimated at 296.7 billion yen in contrast to 501.3 billion yen. So they’re still making profit, just a few hundred-billion yen less in profit.
So that’s the bad news, the good news lie mostly in the symbolic victories. Thanks to JoshuaJSlone on NeoGaf, by using the numbers given from Nintendo’s own numbers from the conference call PDF, give us a graphic look at where the Wii and DS stand in grand scheme of things chart-wise. The Wii has dashed past the NES in terms of worldwide hardware sales. The DS has managed to overcome the GameBoy and the GameBoy Colour’s sales combined worldwide. Finally, the three titles released this year that Iwata had hoped would sell 10 million copies each worldwide, have done just that with Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and NSMBW accomplishing that mission.
In fact, the reason the profit numbers aren’t any worse are probably due to those three titles saving the game for the company in the last few months of the year and re-igniting the casual gamer passion during the Holiday Sales rush. – The Ben
City building fans should feel a little saddened today. The Monte Cristo team announced today the ending of Cities XL’s online plans. Stating a low subscription base, making the model unsustainable, Monte Cristo will shut the servers down March 8, 2010.
Monte Cristo has however pledged to continue to support the single player content for the game and will be offering “the Bus” for free to solo players as early as this march.
This is an unfortunate event because while the game as a whole was not a “SimCity Killer” it was a decent game made for the genre fans that it served. By losing this component, one could argue the major differentiation, and innovation point for the game, Monte Cristo may have put a nail in the coffin of City building Sims in the future.
Official Release
Dear Mayors,
First of all we want to thank you for your support since Cities XL was released in October of last year, and as far back as October 2007 for some of you.
In early 2007 we decided to be those who would make a new offer to City Builder games fans. Right from the start Cities XL has always been an innovative project regarding its online dimension. Of course, trying something new always comes with a risk.
Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is no longer sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe.
Therefore, it is with deep regret that we decided to put an end to the Planet Offer on March 8th 2010. It will no longer be possible to subscribe to the game starting Monday February 1st 2010.
Nevertheless the Cities XL adventure goes on! Cities XL will evolve into a fully single player game. As soon as march the Bus will be added for free in the solo game. At the same time we also keep on working on new content and new features to keep on improving Cities XL.
We do realize that some of you were real fans of the Planet Offer, and loved to be able to visit other player’s cities and trade tokens between each other. There are simply not enough of us.
Thank you again for your understanding and support.
For more detailed information, you can read the FAQ here.
Over the past week I went through my backlog of games and played through Batman: Arkham Asylum from start to finish, intro credits to end credits. Now while I say I completed it, that’s not really what the Arkham Asylum entry for my PS3 Trophy Profile says. According to the game I’m only about 3/4 from getting 100% and a Platinum Trophy to commemorate the occasion.
This is the double-edged sword of trophies/achievements for me at least. I’ve completed the campaign, found every collectable and solved every puzzle yet I haven’t mastered the last fourth of the game in it’s extra content of challenge modes. These are actually okay by me, the developer has a set of challenges and obstacles that push the player to get a mastery for the game after they beat the campaign and they reward that mastery with the corresponding trophy/achievements.
While I’m fine with that, there’s also the fact that most games offer trophy/achievements for completing a game on the higher/highest difficulty settings. Completing the game on normal earned me both the trophy for beating the game on normal mode and the trophy for beating it on easy mode, but the trophy concerning HARD mode will always be tempting me, the reason many will never get that coveted platinum trophy. Should gamers have to beat a game multiple times just to fill up a progress bar to 100% ?
At least in the case of good games like Arkham Asylum it’ll be a pleasure to go through the journey again someday in the future. And at least certain games like Half-Life 2 and it’s corresponding Episodes have a chapter selection option so I could go back and squish every Antlion Grub.
Achievements have come a long way since 2005 and the layout surrounding them has been settled mostly. I just wish that sometimes, the games didn’t always try to goad me into another playthrough right after the credits finish. But at least if I do make another journey through many of the current games with multiple difficulties, there will be a reward waiting for me at the end, making the journey’s worth a bit more sweet than it already is for a good/great game. – The Ben
This week Brian and Stephen Get together for a regular format show, featuring what you’ve been playing, the latest on Halflife 2 Episode 3, and discuss an article on game features that should probably go away.
This week, Brian, Kyle, Stephen, and Kevin get together to talk about the Life Inside the Box picks for the 2009 Game of the Year awards. The guys cover everything from indie games and downloadable content to action games and first person shooters. It’s a hard-fought battle, with a number of top-tier games vying for the top spot, but only one game can reign supreme. Give a listen and find out just which games were the cream of the crop in ’09.
It’s pretty rare that I look at a press release and am intrigued by the product, but Uber Entertainment’s announcement for Monday Night Combat has caught my eye.
PlayStation 2 333.2K
PlayStation 3 1.36M
PSP 654.7K
Xbox 360 1.31M
Wii 3.81M
Nintendo DS 3.31M
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 2.82M
WII FIT PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 2.41M
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 1.79M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 1.63M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 1.12M
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Feb-07 1.01M
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 936.1K
ASSASSIN’S CREED II 360 UBISOFT Nov-09 783.1K
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Nov-09 728.5K
MARIO & LUIGI: BOWSER’S INSIDE STORY NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Sep-09 656.7K
Thems some numbers alright. What can you say except that this is has been one crazy generation in terms of sales. Quality wise we’re still going to be debating that for years to come, but this generation has just exploded in terms of units purchased, both hardware-wise and software-wise.
More detailed info to come as they come to light.
Upate: Here’s the analysis from NPD’s Anita Frazier:
Overall
“The video game industry experienced its biggest sales month ever, besting last December by 4%. It wasn’t enough, though, to compensate for the sales decline throughout the year, and so full-year sales came in 8% below last year’s record-setting revenues.”
“The only category to see an increase over last year was portable hardware, which was up due to a 7% increase in the average retail price. The DS platform, across all categories, contributed 17% of total industry dollars in 2009, up three points from 2008.”
“Unit sales were down only 6% from last year. Average retail prices were down in all categories except for portable hardware and accessories, which led to the greater dollar sales decline.”
“December marks just the fourth month of the year where the industry saw an increase over last year. January and February were both up, and since the decline that began in March, only September experienced growth. The big sales this month, particularly on the hardware front, is a positive move for the industry headed into what will hopefully be a recovery year in 2010.”
Hardware
“There are a lot of hardware records this month. The PS3 realized it’s biggest month of sales ever, and the first time sales have exceeded 1 million units. The Wii and the DS also had their biggest sales months ever, and in fact the two platforms hold the top two spots in sales of any hardware device in a single month. Overall, it was the biggest month of sales for hardware on both a dollar and unit basis.”
“This current generation of console hardware has outsold the last by more than 9 million units during the first 50 months in the market.”
“Hopefully, the big increase in the overall install base of hardware systems will bring good things for software sales in 2010, especially with the incredible line-up of content coming out early in the year.”
Software
“The best-selling game of the month was New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which also captures the third spot on the annual top 10 list for 2009.”
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the fourth best-selling game of all time. In fact, 3 of the top 10 games of all time are Call of Duty games.”
“The music/dance genre was the best-selling genre for the month and second best for the year behind first-person shooters.”
“Madden NFL 10 had a big month selling 1.5 million units across all platforms, besting last December’s performance of the ’09 game. December’s sales made up some of the lost ground realized out the gate when the title came to market in August.”
“Software sales in December were more concentrated among the top games this year than last. This year, 20% of sales came from the top SKU’s, whereas last December it was just 12%.”
“6 of the top 10 games totaling 20.8 million units for the year were on the Wii platform as compared to 4 last year at 19 million units.”
Accessories
“7 of the top 10 accessories items in December were for the Wii platform, along with the Xbox Live Points card and wireless controllers for the Xbox 360 and PS3.”
This week, Brian, Kyle, and Kevin welcome newcomer Eric Keihl to the show. Kevin, finally having someone else who has played Brutal Legend, embarks on a long discussion with Eric of the game itself and possibilities for sequels in the future. Kevin and Eric, not having been present last week, also make some predictions for the new year. Also featured this week is another healthy discussion on the WAR! update for TF2, with an added perspective now that the update has had some time to settle.
After replaying Fallout 2 and Tactics, I’ve found myself interested in the strategy genre again, especially turn-based and grid-based games. I started to replay X-Com and Jagged Alliance, but I soon realized that I wanted to try something else. Not just anything else though. Something… old-school in design, yet it would still take the best parts of the modern era and fuse them seamlessly into gameplay. Enter Darkwind.
Darkwind is a persistent turn-based car combat MMO with elements of EVE (the good parts, anyway) and the old board game Dark Future. Yes, you read that right. How does it work? It’s rather simple, actually. (more…)
On the other hand you have both Capcom and SEGA saying how they’re probably going to be focusing more of their efforts on the HD twins due to the slow sales of their Mature-themed titles on the system. The fact that their recent Wii titles with actual effort put into them haven’t been met with the same success as Nintendo’s own titles have caused both companies to give a “Not really” line to the press when asked if they’re going to continue testing the Wii waters with Mature titles.
According to the link above from Industry Gamers, Sega of America studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos said that many used the Dead Space title made for Wii as a “litmus test” that EA put actual effort into and not just skimping on the details because it was a Wii title. The end result like most of these “tests” was less than flattering sales in the end, a “slow burner” that doesn’t give the team much satisfaction and hope for future prospects on the system.
So while we have the Wii breaking every monthly record the PS2 set during it’s prime we also have third party companies giving the Wii the same reaction they gave previous Nintendo consoles during the past decade. One of apathy and a general feeling of “Meh” with their tests with the Wii consumer market just not living up to their hopes. – The Ben
This week, Brian and Kyle get together and talk about their spoils from the latest Steam mega sale and the other games they’ve been playing. The main story this week is the predictions that the guys make for the coming year – including big ideas for Nintendo and Valve. Get your pens ready and make your predictions now – we’ll be revisiting these forecasts next year to see how accurate they were.
