Nielsen's most recent study of video gamer habits was widely reported and made for great headlines in the gaming press this week. Too bad some key information in the report was wrong. After a follow-up with Gavin McMillan of Nielsen, I learned that the most important graph from the study was mislabeled.
Here is the original graph in the study:
And here is the correction that McMillan sent me:
McMillan confirmed via email that "the report labels are incorrect" in the original study. In January 2009 the correct usage minute percents were as follows: PlayStation 2: 23.7%, Wii: 20.7%, Xbox 360: 18.2%, PlayStation 3: 9.0%, Xbox: 7.9%, and GameCube: 3.3%.
As you can see from this revised data, Microsoft Xbox 360 did NOT defeat Nintendo Wii in the percentage of gaming time Americans spent on the respective systems in January 2009, as was reported by multiple outlets earlier this week. And Sony's PlayStation 3 didn't do nearly as badly as the original graph suggested.
Is any other of the wide-reported data in the study inaccurate? Stay tuned for a response from Nielsen.
Update: Gavin McMillan has confirmed that the above graph was the only error in the report and that it has been fixed in the version of the study available on the Nielsen site.
McMillan also provided me with additional console usage data for January and February of 2009. When you only consider the current generation of systems, the share of American's gaming time in January, Wii is the clear leader:
Wii - 43.2%
Xbox - 360 38%
PlayStation 3 - 18.8%
But before you declare Wii the winner, check out the rankings for February, which change dramatically:
Xbox 360 - 41%
Wii - 39.6%
PlayStation 3 - 19.4%
In February, after the holiday gift hype died down, Wii usage declined while Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 play time increased. This gave Xbox 360 the top spot. Now let's compare these to market share numbers:
(Usage Time via Nielsen, Market Share via VGChartz)
Nintendo may have the biggest market share with the family-friendly Wii, but Microsoft has more dedicated users spending longer hours playing the Xbox 360. You can attribute the difference in time to the Xbox 360's greater number of "hardcore" games and the millions of hours gamers spend playing online with the Xbox Live service. Whether that lead holds in March and through the summer remains to be seen.
And how does Sony fare? The company is in third place no matter how you cut the data, and completely out of the running when it comes to gamers' time. The culprits there are probably the PS3's fewer titles and lower market share. Luckily, the success of the PS2 (most time spent on the overall Nielsen console chart, and over 50 million units sold in the U.S. since launch) helps mitigate Sony's position in the video game race for current generation dominance.
Apple's iPhone 3.0 event today made it abundantly clear that the iPhone is evolving into a gaming machine. Here's why:
1.) With the addition of peer-to-peer communication between phones using Bluetooth, the device gains the ability to deliver true multiplayer gaming--whether that's death matches in a first-person-shooter (like LiveFire) or versus mode in a casual puzzle title.
2.) The ability to make purchases from within applications, means that games will now offer downloadable extras, for a price. In the demo of Touch Pets, for example, the player purchased toys for a virtual dog for a $.99 fee. This opens the possibility for massively multiplayer online games that are free to download but supported by in-game purchases, or even buying extra levels or characters, like the downloads on Xbox Live.
3.) What may be the most transformative feature of iPhone 3.0 OS is the interoperability between the iPhone and its accessories. Now you'll be able to plug a controller directly into your iPhone--imagine a snap-on shell that gives Apple's phone an appearance similar to Sony's PlayStation Portable.
Whether gaming controls, MMOs, or even other models of social gaming emerge, there is no denying that Apple has gained another solid
foothold in the gaming industry. While Nintendo DS has the largest
installed base worldwide, 100 million, the PSP has 46 million (according to VGChartz)--a number that Apple will soon match (there are currently 30 million units, between the iPhone and iPod Touch). The coming Nintendo DSi or PSP-4000 may not be enough of a technological jump to compete with iPhone 3.0.
Other than patting its own back for its technological prowess and capabilities related to launching Palm's Pre, a press event from Sprint today, demoing the device, served little purpose. Well, at least not the purpose we hoped it would.
After releasing a video of its much-anticipated Palm Pre smartphone from the CES event in January, Palm's new OS received a lot of buzz from the tech press and blogosphere. But now it's mid-March, and everyone is waiting for additional details. Isn't it about time? Shouldn't we at least know the Pre's price and release date by now?
But after today's event, we are none the wiser. From the beginning it was announced that no release date or pricing info would be revealed. Then why would Palm and Sprint even hold an event? Was it merely to tease tech journalists? The Palm has been shown on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for cryin' out loud. Enough with the teasing! People want details; they want an alternative to Apple and AT&T.
And what new info actually came out today? Sprint's rep, David Owen, says that not all of Sprint's calling plans would be compatible with the Pre. Meanwhile, Palm's lead for Pre, Matt Crowley, says there will be an application store. Other than those details, it was another demo that didn't show anything we hadn't already seen at the CES presentation.
If Palm is going to compete with Apple, then it needs to keep people excited. The company definitely failed to do that today.
In 2008, titles like Grand Theft Auto IV (5 million copies) and Wii Fit (4.5 million) helped the game industry reach $21 billion in sales. But with the recession, gaming may struggle to stay on top in 2009. So how will the big three game-makers fare?
Nintendo
The Nintendo Wii will continue to dominate console sales this year, as evidenced by a record-breaking holiday season -- the company's strategy of innovative controls coupled with casual games marketed to the mainstream proved successful. "It's possible Wii sales will decline this year," says Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "But even if it goes from 29 to 22 million, it will still outsell the others." The Wii will also benefit from the improved controls found with the Wii Motion Plus, which increases the precision of motion-detection -- resulting in more natural character movements on screen. Nintendo will also continue to lead the portable field. The Nintendo DSi, which features a camera and memory card slot and is already available in Japan, is expected to be released in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2009.
And beyond? In 2010, hardcore gamers will flock back to the Wii, after many months away due to a lack of games that appeal to the enthusiast niche or have any innovative content. New Mario and Zelda titles, both likely making use of the Wii Motion Plus, will be released. And details about the Wii HD (comparable to the small improvements of the DSi) will set the blogs a-twitter. This hardware update will help bring the Wii up from its technical inferiority to the high-def generation, but don't expect a completely new Nintendo platform until later. "Major new designs for consoles are on a 5 year cycle," say David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, authors of The Race for a New Game Machine. "All of the console-makers are well on their way with designing next generation game hardware. But the next major new game consoles will probably be in the '11 timeframe."
Microsoft
Microsoft will continue to outpace Sony in 2009 (they sold twice the number of 360s than PS3s in November and December 2008). But, it is doubtful they will ever catch up to Nintendo's system sales. The Xbox 360's interface and online experience will continue to evolve and improve, and the company will continue to push the system toward the casual gaming public with family games and still more price cuts.
Microsoft will also find itself smack in the middle of one of gaming's biggest controversies. When the economy tanks, used game sales increase, which creates friction with publishers over the sale of second-hand games. GameStop is estimated to have made $2 billion in used game sales this fiscal year. "Given the enormous costs of the blockbusters these days (north of $20 million) it's a huge, huge bone of contention between publishers and retailers like GameStop," says John Davison, cofounder of WhatTheyPlay.com. Used games have a large profit margin, and represent 42% of the GameStop's gross profit -- and game developers and publishers didn't get a single cent.
Microsoft will have the opportunity to capitalize on the industry's used-sales-abhorrence with the Xbox 360's successor, likely announced by the end of 2010 and released in 2011. Pachter believes the wait will be longer, "I predict 2013. It used to be hardware manufacturers decided when a new generation begins, now they can't get away with that." When Microsoft does launch, I expect a console that plays downloaded content only and forgoes any discs (rather than supporting Sony's Blu-ray format). Retailers will likely be up-in-arms, resulting in Microsoft supplying download kiosks that sell games on USB flash drives or solid-state memory cards. Game creators, however, will support the digital transition, as there will be no disc to sell back to retailers for their used game racks. Publishers will also get a larger percentage of profit, since the lack of distribution costs will lower game prices and result in more copies sold on average.
Sony
Sony may drop the PlayStation's price by $50 or $100 come the start of their fiscal year in April, increasing sales, but the resulting competitive playfield (Xbox 360 for $199, Wii for $249, and PS3 for $349) will not favor Sony crawling out of third place, as the cash-strapped public continues to side with the cheaper game systems. Strong sales of the PSP (and of the last-gen PlayStation 2) will help Sony's game division mitigate the slowing PS3 growth. And a solid-state-equipped PSP 4000 will spark a resurgence in the portable's popularity.
But Sony's future is rather staid. It will put all of its attention into a smaller and cheaper PS3 to capitalize on the Blu-ray format, but will delay a new system launch as long as it possibly can. As Pachter put it, "Sony will absolutely not launch a new system first. And Microsoft won't do so until it is absolutely right to." Sony can't afford to be the first to jump to another generation with expensive systems that are sold at a loss -- the company took a major hit on the launch of the PS3 and it will not look to repeat that mistake. With a new Xbox probably coming in 2011, I expect Sony, like Nintendo, to wait until 2012. It will need something truly game-changing, unlike the PS3 launch, to compete.
The Game Industry
Overall, how will the video game industry do in 2009? Titles, on average, won't sell as well as before, but the drop won't be as profound as in other forms of entertainment. "In times of trouble people do like to 'nest' and spend more of their entertainment time at home," says Davison. "Video games fit into this particularly well, as generally speaking the entertainment 'ROI' is pretty high." Companies may respond to the decline by dropping prices. Furthermore, companies will take fewer risks, banking on sequels and remakes rather than original IPs. Exclusive games being released for a single console will be few, favoring multi-system releases, as publishers strive to push their products to as many eyeballs as possible and recoup their investment.
The biggest publishers, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and the hardware manufacturers themselves, will continue to dominate. But, with improved digital marketplaces on the consoles' respective online services, independent developers will survive in their niche -- a considerable portion of Sony's at least 170 million downloads (PDF, right click to save) are games that have been purchased, and over 28 million games have been sold on Xbox Live Arcade. Downloaded games and digital movies account for over a billion dollars in earnings in the last three years. And the big publishers will use digital expansions for existing games to reap additional profit from already published games.
There is no reason to panic for the video game industry, recession-proof or not. There are plenty of good games, such as Killzone 2 and Halo 3: ODST, on the horizon.
Mac Rumors, among the most popular and best-known websites covering Apple, was hacked during its live coverage of today's MacWorld keynote presentation. Readers were shocked when one of the liveblog's auto-updating text messages said: "Steve Jobs Just Died." Many thought this was a poorly worded joke, but then a retraction was posted shortly after. From there the text messages got more esoteric and vulgar. (Screens below -- NSFW due to expletives.) It's unclear which group of pranksters is responsible for the intrusion, but the they were making plenty of jokes about the security features of Apple products.
Tonight's Dark Knight Blu-ray event was the first ever BD-Live experience in America. But the live text commentary featuring the film's director, Chris Nolan, left much to be desired. The questions that were texted in resembled the same hit or miss quality as online chats -- and only rarely related to what was actually happening during the live viewing of the film. As for the questions that were interesting, even those garnered little attention because most of Christopher Nolan's typed responses were short.
Nolan talked about Heath Ledger's process for creating his version of the Joker, which was captivating, especially since the extras on the disc barely mention the late actor. Further, discussions about IMAX and 35mm filming vs. digital filming were highly technical, probably turning off some. Later, Nolan artfully dodged questions about a third film. And there was a live marriage proposal between two fans -- but did we need it? And why did Nolan ignore a question about piracy?
Though interesting, this BD-Live event didn't fully represent the future of home entertainment that Blu-ray promises to offer us. Both Nolan and the Dark Knight deserve better than what was experienced during this event. In fact, the film should have had audio commentary to begin with. And even a tribute documentary to Ledger might have been a worthy inclusion. Hopefully, Warner Bros. learns from this experiment and comes back with a richer experience next time.
With that said, now I'm going to take a five-minute pee break, just like the one Nolan took during tonight's event. Maybe I'll find some relief from my disappointment.
Need a Christmas gift for that friend who drinks a little too much at parties, and then wants to drive? Or maybe you're even distrustful of your own driving after a rocking New Year's Eve? Then David Steele Enterprises just may have the perfect gadget for you. The company's iBreath, an accessory for the iPod, helps you to self-administer a breathalyzer test. After five seconds of breathing into it, it will display your blood alcohol level. The iBreath will run you $79 when it's released the end of this month, after a long wait from 2006 when an initial model never made it to market.
Don Bassler, CEO of David Steele, says, "It's for people who imbibe alcohol. iBreath is a tool to assist them to make intelligent and safe decisions." And by the way, the iBreath also features a built in FM tuner. Just a little something to occupy your time while you hail that taxi, or wait for your body to process all that alcohol.
Apple has announced that Macworld 2009 will be its last. Long gone are the days of Steve Jobs unveiling iPhones, MacBook Airs, and the like. What's worse? Jobs won't even present this year's keynote. You have to wonder if this decision has more to do with Steve Jobs' health or his future at the company (or the future of the company for that matter), than the company's ubiquitous presence.
Can tech sites survive the loss of the reality distortion field? Will Apple geeks weep at the end of an era? And what huge announcements will be made at the last keynote in January? Stay tuned.
Steve Jobs shows off the new MacBook Air at the last Macworld.
Microsoft announced today that on Black Friday its Xbox 360 game console outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 at a 3 to 1 ratio. That record weekend of sales puts the 360 over 25 million systems sold worldwide, surpassing the sales of the original Xbox -- and in only three years.
Say what you will, but Microsoft clearly learned from the mistakes it made in the last console cycle. It gambled at launch that being the first one to market (a year before rival Sony) and with more cost effective components (DVD rather than Blu-ray), would give them an advantage. Since then, Microsoft has created a robust online community with significant sales of digital content (simple games and extra content of game discs) and a respectable digital media strategy (sales of video downloads, streaming Netflix). And with the wide support of developers, it continues to offer more titles than its competitors.
With the move at the start of September to lower the price of the console, Microsoft has ensured the 360 is recession-proof. And the recent monthly sales date released by research firm NPD Group confirms that -- with the gap in U.S. sales between Microsoft and Sony only increasing since August. Money-strapped Americans will not pay $400 to $500 for a game system, even if that includes Blu-ray. I am sure that trend will continue through holiday game sales.
So where does Microsoft go from here? Besides continuing the strategies that have worked for them so far, it needs to amp up the promotion -- including some impressive exclusives. And maybe then it will create the buzz necessary to leave the war with Sony behind and take on Nintendo.
CNN reported today that a woman successfully received a transplant of a section of trachea made from her own stem cells.
That's right. Doctors grew her a windpipe grown in a lab.
For years, scientists have been saying stem cell research could lead to a revolution in medicine. For me, this is the first tangible result of that. The future that has been forecasted by experts has begun to become a reality. What organs or tissues will be grown next? How many lives will be saved?
As the last decade has gone by there has been so much technological and scientific growth. The Internet has gone from downloading pieces of images on Usenet to streaming HD films. Cars are now electric, or automatically react to accidents, or park themselves. Objects, and even buildings, are being made from green materials. Videogames near photorealism, films present us whole new worlds, and television has hundreds of high-definition shows.
I have followed futurist Ray Kurzweil for the last few years. While I am not sure our society is climaxing to a singularity, I agree with his observation that societal change and technological progress has rapidly increased. In ten years where will my examples above be replaced with?
We may be hearing about routine transplants from stem-cell-grown organs. The Internet may be a massive social network connected to everyday objects and completely customizable in every way. Electric, hydrogen, or solar cars may be the norm. Sustainability and green living will be every day life. Videogames will be photorealistic and feature very detailed simulations of the real world (or fantasy worlds). And the first 3D or holographic televisions will probably be hitting the market.
And maybe I will be able to get those bionic eyes I have always wanted.
Nintendo
Microsoft
Sony
