AllThingsD » gaming console

Will Social Games Erode the Hardcore Console Game Market?

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:01:27 +0000

A new study being released today is challenging the notion that all gamers on Facebook are housewives in their mid-40s.

Instead it finds that social games have begun to eat away at time and money spent on traditional games in the console market.

The report was commissioned by Kabam, the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up that has ballooned to more than 400 employees after raising millions of dollars in venture capital.

Founded in 2006, Kabam has released some of the first hardcore titles for Facebook, including Kingdoms of Camelot and Glory of Rome. More recently, it released Edgeworld and has plans for a game based on the movie “The Godfather.” Essentially, it is in the company’s DNA to go after the traditional game companies, like Electronic Arts or Activision as opposed to going after casual games made by Zynga.

Maybe it is old news at this point that the console environment should be concerned about social gaming. After all, Zynga has managed to get 268 million monthly active users on the platform.

But the company has found some interesting data that supports its theory that all gamers — even the ones who enjoy the bloodiest or most complicated of story plots — will become so-called social gamers.

(But don’t worry, the data also backs up that for now the “casual” social game market is still dominated by females aged 30 and over.)

Even more to the point, it believes hardcore social gamers, who are defined as those who play action or role-playing games on Facebook, will end up the more lucrative portion of the market, even if they are outnumbered by the general population, because of their propensity to play more games and more often.

Some of its findings:

41 percent of all Internet users in the U.S., or roughly 98 million poeple, are playing social games.
Hardcore social gamers, of which 82 percent play console games, tend to play a larger number of social games for a longer period of time than casual social gamers.
About 24 percent of hardcore social gamers report that they’ve decreased the amount of time they are playing on other platforms.
About 22 percent have decreased the amount of money they’ve spent.
78 percent of hardcore social gamers are playing two or more social games and 47 percent are playing three or more.
30 percent of hardcore gamers play social games for more than an hour per day.

The report was conducted by Information Solutions Group and was based on the results of an online survey completed by 1,412 people in April and May. To qualify, participants had to live in the U.S. and have played games on a computer, game console, mobile phone, handheld game player, tablet or social network in the past year. UPDATE: A link to the research can be found here.

Price Cut for PS3; Xbox 360 Ported to Wii

John Paczkowski — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:01:29 +0000

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata likes to say that game console price cuts aren’t the cure-alls many believe them to be. “People often talk about the price cut as if it’s an almighty weapon,” he said this past summer. “The fact of the matter is what a price cut can do is rather limited….At the time of the price cut, we see a momentary spike in sales, but usually that cannot sustain its momentum and [sales] come down to below the price cut level.”

That said, Nintendo is cutting the price of its Wii videogame system by $50 in hopes of growing the market for the popular device as we head into the winter holidays. On Sunday, the company will begin peddling the Wii at a suggested retail price of $199.99.

The new price is the first reduction since the console launched in November 2006 and follows similar price cuts by two rivals, Sony’s (SNE) PS3 and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360.

All three are hoping they’ll attract recession-addled gamers into the market, and according to Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, they’ve got decent shot at it. “Our data shows in the U.S. alone there are 50 million consumers who are interested in playing videogames but they haven’t yet done so,” Fils-Aime told The Wall Street Journal. “They are waiting for product innovation or a slightly better value.”

Price Cut for PS3; Xbox 360 Ported to Wii

John Paczkowski — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:01:29 +0000

The new price is the first reduction since the console launched in November 2006 and follows similar price cuts by two rivals, Sony’s (SNE) PS3 and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360.

Microsoft Packs The New Zune HD With Bells, Whistles And Plenty of Style

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:03 +0000

At long last, Microsoft has made a portable media player that you can be proud to carry around: the Zune HD.

This fourth-generation Zune (Zune.net) is ultra thin and has a stunningly vivid 3.3-inch touch screen that covers most of its surface, doing away with the old device’s touchpad. It comes in one small size rather than the older large and small versions, and has capacities of 16 and 32 gigabytes for $220 and $290, respectively.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Zune HD does a nice job of integrating and artistically displaying content about an artist, song or album whenever possible. It has an acceptable built-in browser that surfs the Web using a Wi-Fi connection, and a customizable Quickplay menu on the home screen that displays your content using tiny, stylish tiles. The corresponding Zune Marketplace finally offers movies—about 500 for renting or buying, half of which have HD resolution. And a $90 docking station works with the device to display its HD content on your HDTV.

Given all the improvements of this new Zune, it’s a shame that this makeover stopped short of revamping its commerce system, which is still too confusing. Rather than inviting newcomers to the Zune and its online store by allowing them to use real money to buy content, it is still tied to the points system made popular by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox gaming console. In this gamer-friendly system, the cost of one song is 79 points, roughly the equivalent of a dollar, and users must buy points in buckets ranging from 400 for $5 to 5,000 for $62.50. People who are trying to watch their budgets don’t need the hassle of calculating points per purchase. And Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle e-reader and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store have proved that using dollars and an uncomplicated one-click system is a successful strategy.

The way I prefer to get the most out of the Zune system is by using the Zune Pass for $15 monthly. This charge allows free continuous streaming of music from any computer’s browser as long as you log in, and includes 10 free MP3 downloads a month that are yours to keep even if you bail on using the Zune software. The Zune Pass lets you listen to Smart DJ playlists that can be built in one of three ways: using your own library; using a mix of Marketplace content and music from your library; or using only songs from the Marketplace. These also can be set to last for a certain amount of time—say for a 30-minute jog or a two-hour party.

I created several Smart DJ playlists including one using Dierks Bentley as the seed artist from which other suggestions were generated. This country singer was a good test for the Zune software because Mr. Bentley’s music blends new and old country sounds. I set the Smart DJ to produce a mix using only content from Marketplace and it returned a great list that included songs from newer group, Little Big Town, as well as older stuff like Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” Any Smart DJ list can be dragged onto the Zune HD.

Apple’s iPod Touch is the Zune HD’s biggest rival and its iTunes Store has much more content in all categories compared with Zune Marketplace. But let’s put music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and music videos aside and say we’re satisfied with the amount of content offered by Zune Marketplace.

One of the iPod Touch’s best features is its ability to access Apple’s App Store, a catalog of 75,000 applications. The Zune HD only dips its pinky toe into a pool where Apple is already swimming laps: Only nine apps can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace (all are free). They’re colorful and simple to use, but nine apps won’t be enough to compete head on with the iPod Touch.

The Zune HD uses Quickplay (shown on second player from left) to instantly display certain content.

It would be a real boon to Zune if it somehow inherited the gaming genes of Microsoft’s already-established Xbox, especially considering how Apple has heavily marketed the iPod Touch as a portable gaming system. Microsoft will only say that later this year Zune will offer apps for Twitter and Facebook as well as 3-D games like “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.”

The only same-capacity model in the Zune HD and iPod Touch is the 32-gigabyte, which costs $290 and $299, respectively. The Zune HD is smaller than the iPod Touch so its organic light-emitting-diode touch screen is 3.3 inches compared with the Touch’s 3.5-inch screen. The Zune fits easily in any pocket and is just 0.35-inch thick. A thin horizontal button on the face of the device takes you to the home screen, and a hidden button on the left side pulls up an on-screen menu for volume and playback controls—or just tap the screen when content is playing. It doesn’t have a speaker like the iPod Touch, so you’ll always need earbuds to hear anything that’s playing.

Quickplay is one of my favorite features on the Zune HD. It uses tiny tiles to visually represent your content in four categories: currently playing; anything pinned (or labeled with a shortcut tile) to Quickplay; a history of recently opened content; and anything that’s new to the player. This includes all of your photos, videos, music, Web pages and apps. I easily pinned AllThingsD.com, a “Saturday Night Live” video and a favorite photo to the Quickplay menu. Clever animation sends this menu to the background of the home screen or swiftly pulls it into the foreground when needed.

I rented and downloaded the movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and opted to pay 360 points for the HD version rather than paying 240 points for the standard-definition version. A helpful on-screen explanation described the advantages of each according to where it would be played. Movie rentals last for 14 days or 24 hours after you first press play.

Listening to music on the Zune HD is a lot of fun—and even educational. Whenever the screen goes idle while playing a song, large images of the artist and album cover fill the entire screen while text—album name, artist name, song name—scrolls across these images. With one touch, I saw a list of other albums and songs by that artist, an artist biography, related artists, and pictures of the artist. This is a lot more interesting than staring at one image on the screen, and I learned a lot of new information about musicians I’ve been listening to for years.

The newly added Web browser on the Zune HD gets the job done, but has downsides. Its on-screen keyboard for entering names of Web pages has very small keys and doesn’t use predictive typing to fix your mistakes. Some Web pages rendered normally on the browser, but a couple—like Georgetown.edu—looked normal only when I turned the Zune HD horizontally.

As with other Zunes, this Zune HD has a radio receiver and now uses HD radio for finding more stations with clearer signals. If you like a song, an on-screen button tags it for buying and downloading immediately or later.

The Zune HD is a great-looking little player, and users will especially appreciate its Quickplay menu, rich collection of artist information and mesmerizing screen. If its points system was scrapped and its Zune Marketplace was filled with more content, I’d like it better.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

PS3 Price Cut Tomorrow?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:05:44 +0000

“[If the price were any lower] I’d lose money on every PlayStation I make.” So said Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer last month. And while that remark might seem to preclude a price cut on the PlayStation 3, a price cut might be exactly what we get come tomorrow.

In a research note today, FTN Equity Capital Markets analyst James Hardiman said “evidence is mounting” that Sony will announce a PS3 price cut, perhaps during its Tuesday presentation at GamesCon.

Videogame analyst Heath Terry of FBR Capital Markets shares this view, and in a note to clients, he put a dollar figure on the cut. “With Sony set to announce a $100 price cut on the PS3 on Tuesday at Gamescom in Germany according to our retail checks, we believe the other hardware manufacturers will respond with a combination of price reductions and bundling strategies that should drive significant acceleration in hardware sales,” Terry wrote, adding that the cut, should it come to pass, will mark “the first of a series of catalysts that should drive a return to growth” for the videogame industry.

Certainly, it would give Sony (SNE) a nice boost in sales in the run-up to the winter holiday consumer binge. And given its most recent financials, the company could really use one right now.

Sony Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Walkman With Lousy Earnings

John Paczkowski — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:24:26 +0000

More bad news from Sony. This morning the electronics giant posted its second straight quarterly loss and reiterated its forecast for another year of red ink.

Sony’s net loss in the quarter was 37.1 billion yen ($390 million), a brutal change from the 35 billion yen profit in the year-ago period. Still, it was smaller than the 109.6 billion yen loss analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting. That said, all three of Sony’s core electronics divisions registered losses for the quarter.

Not a good sign. Because while the company’s smaller-than-expected loss proves its cost-cutting measures have been effective, it also shows that Sony (SNE) must do more than just slash jobs and suppliers if it ever hopes to regain its position in the market. For while cost-cutting might improve Sony’s bottom line, it’s not going to make the company competitive against Samsung, Nintendo and Apple (AAPL), who’ve usurped its position in TVs, gaming consoles and media players, respectively. What Sony needs most is not more cost-cutting; it’s a new gotta-have-it product.

Seriously. It’s been, what, 30 years since the debut of the Walkman?

Where Your Old Gadgets Find a Second Life

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:32:45 +0000

It’s a fact of life and one of the reasons I have a job: digital electronics will eventually break or get replaced. But it’s hard to know just what to do with the gadgets that get left behind. Some people stuff them in junk drawers. Others want to donate or recycle their old electronics, but worry about compromising private data. And plenty of people want some monetary compensation.

This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this — and some of them may even pay you for your old products. The bad news is that you’ll likely receive only a fraction of what you originally paid, especially if you waited a while to get rid of it.

Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to “lock in” a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future. MyBoneYard.com accepts only laptops, desktop PCs, cellphones and flat-panel monitors, and gives Visa (V) gift cards rather than cash.

I was surprised to receive significantly different value offers from Gazelle and VenJuvo when trying to sell the exact same products on each site. In one instance, VenJuvo offered me $30 more than Gazelle for a digital camera; another time, I got $15 more from Gazelle for an old Apple (AAPL) iPod. It’s worth the extra step to shop around at more than one of these sites before getting rid of something.

Both ask a few questions about the item, including its condition and whether or not it still has the accessories that originally came with it. Gazelle determines a product’s value using retail — think Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) — and wholesale channels; VenJuvo uses similar criteria and also looks at competitors’ prices.

If you worry about someone stealing your digital data, you’ll likely not feel comfortable dropping something in the mail that’s chock full of personal information, especially if it no longer powers on to allow the owner to wipe this information.

Both Gazelle and VenJuvo accept at least some types of digital cameras, laptops, MP3 players, GPS devices, camcorders and gaming consoles. Gazelle also accepts cellphones. But they don’t take everything. Gazelle doesn’t take LCD TVs and VenJuvo doesn’t accept satellite radios and portable hard drives or any smartphones or cellphones other than the iPhone; neither accepts desktop PCs.

I took the closest look at newly released Gazelle, owned by Second Rotation Inc., and walked through the simple start-to-finish process of selling a gadget and receiving money from the site. After pulling up the site, people can find their product and its value by choosing from a list of nine categories or by typing some part of the product’s name into a search box.

I sold Gazelle a first-generation iPod Mini with four gigabytes of memory for which my boss paid $249 in 2004. I answered a few questions about the product: Yes, it still powered on; no, I didn’t have the original AC adapter, manuals or software installation CD, and it was in “excellent” condition, according to my assessment. Gazelle placed its value at $25.

At this step, I opted to add the iPod to my box and check out, but users can also add other items to a box, including electronics for recycling. Gazelle’s policy is that it pays 100% of shipping costs for any box shipped to the company, so long as there’s at least one item in the box worth $1. Eighty percent of transactions qualify for a free box; the rest can be sent with printed-out prepaid shipping labels, but you must find packaging.

Gazelle lets users receive payments via a mailed, paper check or using PayPal; money is received either way within five business days. People can also donate their money to one of 23 causes, including the American Red Cross and World Vision. I opted for PayPal, and the $25 amount was deposited shortly after Gazelle received the iPod.

I sent the old iPod to Gazelle in a brightly colored, empty box that arrives at a customer’s door a few days after he or she sells the device to Gazelle. I secured the old iPod in the box using balled up paper, and sealed it with packing tape. A prepaid shipping label was already stuck to it, and I needed only drop it off at UPS.

If Gazelle receives a product and decides that it isn’t worth what you said it was — either more or less — and you’d rather not sell, the company will ship the product back, free of charge. But while Gazelle’s site guarantees users that they’ll receive their money, and that personal data are safe with the company, no money-back guarantee is offered.

Gazelle hopes to calm nerves by posting detailed instructions on the site about how to wipe a device of all private information. But the company hasn’t yet done this, and numerous users will remain skeptical even with such instructions.

I also poked around on VenJuvo Inc.’s Web site of the same name, www.VenJuvo.com, which is derived from two Greek words meaning “support, assist and delight sellers,” according to the company. This site, too, buys products back from people, though it pays via check, PayPal or Kmart (SHLD) gift card. Users fill out similarly simple questionnaires on each product to help assess value. Unlike Gazelle’s style of mailing boxes to users, VenJuvo gives users only prepaid shipping labels to print out and stick on a box that the customer must supply.

One notable difference between the sites is Gazelle’s broader range of products. In the case of digital cameras, for example, Gazelle accepts 80 brands while VenJuvo takes only Canon (CAJ), Sony (SNE), Olympus and Kodak (EK). Unlike with Gazelle, if you send VenJuvo a product that isn’t worth what you said it was, the company won’t return the product free-of-charge; instead, it will charge you for shipping.

If users choose to receive a gift card, they get a 10% added value. While VenJuvo doesn’t let people donate a product’s value to a cause, it will add this feature next week and will include different causes (like Ronald McDonald House and Big Brothers Big Sisters) than those found on Gazelle.

Unlike Gazelle, VenJuvo will always take items for recycling and will pay for the shipping, regardless of whether you traded something in for a value.

A useful resource for general electronics recycling is the Consumer Electronics Association Web site, www.MyGreenElectronics.org, which locates nearby electronics-recycling centers according to ZIP Code. And almost every computer manufacturer has a recycling program in place; some will even recycle computers that aren’t their own brand.

One way or another, it’s time to clean out the old junk drawer. Just be sure to do some comparison shopping if you want money for your old products.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com