- XNA authors to receive 70% of revenue. This is fantastic news and will further motivate a massive push onto this development and publishing platform. We will see innovation and diversity that has been suppressed since the 8 bit days. This is brilliant all round for gaming.
- SCi (EIDOS) loses £100 million on sales of £134 million. So they have cleared the decks and the coming year brings some big releases. I still think that they are fundamentally the wrong size to succeed as a mainstream global publisher of boxed retail product. We will see.
- Wii takes top five positions in UK sales chart. And even more remarkably the number five game isn’t a Nintendo first party title. It seems like no end is in sight for the phenomenal Nintendo gravy train. But dominance like this doesn’t do the rest of the industry any favours.
- Treyarch are developing the new James Bond game, Quantum Of Solace. And they say that it won’t be disappointing (in terms of game quality). They have a point, license based games don’t have a reputation for being any good and as an industry we have no excuse for churning out rubbish. People have to work hard for the money they spend on our games and we should respect that.
- Kazuo Hirai Sets 150m Lifetime Target For PS3. Well it is nice to have targets. To be frank there is no reason why it shouldn’t do this if Sony get their act together in every department and in every territory. At the moment they still seem to lack the impetus necessary to drive large sales numbers but things are certainly getting a lot better than they were.
- Sony PSP continues to sell massively. But it is used primarily as a media player and any games played are most likely to have been downloaded (stolen) using the internet. With 75 millionish sold and the current rate of sales, this could overtake the PS2 if it is left in production long enough. Presumably Sony are making a profit on the hardware on this one.
- Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment president thinks that PlayStation 3 operations will be profitable by March 2009. This is important for the industry, the platform holders are not in this just for the glamour. The bulk of the turnaround will come from reducing manufacturing costs of the PS3 console. Sony have taken a huge hit on how expensive each unit has been to make but they have a high level of expertise at bringing down manufacturing costs. They need to be commercially viable in order to go to war with Microsoft and Nintendo.
- Microsoft Xbox division makes profit of $426 million for the year. They are being rewarded for their vision and tenacity. It will take a while to get their investment in Xbox and Zune back but eventually there is no doubt that this will become the most profitable part of the whole company.
