Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts

Monday, November 18, 2013

Sony Playstation 4 Planning High To Increast Their Fan Hold

The strong first-day sales of the PlayStation 4 console is surely good news for Sony Corp., but it’s way too early to get excited about the boost the struggling company might get.

One million units of the PS4 sold within the first 24 hours of its launch in North America last Friday puts Sony on track to achieve its goal of selling five million units by the end of its fiscal year in March. But the success of a game console business can’t be determined in weeks or even months, said SMBC Friend Research Center analyst Hiroshi Sakai.

“You distribute your console as widely as possible to create a user platform, so you can start making more money with software,” Mr. Sakai said. When strong hardware sales are followed by a string of major hit games, that’s when the business has really taken off. Sony takes a cut from the sales of software created by third-party game developers.

While the PS4 console has received generally positive reviews, many video game blogs have found the list of software titles at the launch disappointing. Still, Sony has promised that more games are coming over the next few months.

With the new hardware, Sony isn’t repeating the same mistake it made with the PlayStation 3, which carried expensive components that initially forced the company to sell the console at a loss. A recent teardown of the PlayStation 4 by Techinsights showed that the total cost of components for the PS4 came to $296, almost $100 below the console’s selling price of $399.

Still, the teardown results don’t mean Sony will record a profit of $100 every time it sells a PS4. Selling a game console involves a lot of other expenses, such as promotional campaigns and fees to secure shelf space at retailers, said Mr. Sakai. While the lower cost of PS4 components compared to its predecessor makes it easier for Sony to minimize losses or break even on the hardware side of the PS4 business, “hardware won’t be a huge money maker,” he said.

“Sales remain very strong in North America, and we expect continued enthusiasm as we launch the PlayStation 4 in Europe and Latin America (on Nov. 29),” said Andrew House, the head of Sony’s video game division.

Sony is off to a good start and it shouldn’t be too hard to meet its five-million-unit sales target by March, said SMBC Nikko Securities analyst Koki Shiraishi. But strong sales in the first few months will only be the first step in Sony’s attempt to create a strong platform for distributing game software as well as other content such as movies and music in the long run, he said.

November is a big month for video game fans, with Microsoft Corp. set to launch its next-generation Xbox One console on Friday.

Source: Wallstreet Journal
Read More

Unknown

- Unknown Updated at: Monday, November 18, 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Steam OS : Linux Based OS Enters Into Gaming Market, Will It Change the Industry?

Meet SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system from Valve, designed for the living room, and therefore with clear designs on Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony’s turf.

Valve took the lid off yesterday, the first of three living room-related gaming announcements. The next one happens tomorrow afternoon, with the final presumably taking place Friday. One of these reveals may be the fabled Steam Box, a kind of living room PC-console ostensibly built and sold by Valve to carry its software digital distribution platform beyond the increasingly staid traditional keyboard-and-mouse paradigm.

This is not Valve dipping a toe in the water, in other words; this is Valve taking full measures and diving in.

That said, we don’t know a lot about what SteamOS is, exactly. Not yet anyway. We know it’ll be freely distributed because Valve says so in plain language, but then so is the Steam client, and that’s been the case since its inception. We don’t know if we’ll be able to modify SteamOS in the same sense that one can modify Linux. In what sense will SteamOS manifest, in Valve’s words, “the rock-solid architecture of Linux”? SteamOS is derived from Linux, sure, but not, one assumes, another Linux distribution with the Steam-for-Linux client folded in.

Here’s a question we can answer in part now: What would gaming on SteamOS (vis-a-vis Linux) be like today? We already know what Steam’s like on Linux — have known since Valve rolled its inaugural Linux client out last February. Forget SteamOS’ ability to stream Windows and Mac games from separate Windows or Mac systems to a SteamOS box for a moment. I’m interested in that technology, but no one knows what it’ll be like, or how tenable, latency-wise (on the PC gaming side of things, players are even less forgiving when it comes to even slight deficiencies in the latter column). Let’s talk instead about Linux games on Steam.

Most of you have no idea what Linux gaming is like on Steam because most of you don’t run Linux. But what if you did? What could you play natively?

Valve maintains a catalog of Steam games online, including one sorted according to Linux support. The latter list’s appeal depends on your gaming proclivities. Do you like strategy games? You’ll find two of Paradox Plaza’s finest here: Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II. Ambient first-person horror puzzlers? See the recently released Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Sprawling, hardcore space flight sims? Egosoft’s X series remains unsurpassed. Top-notch MOBAs? Try Valve’s own Dota 2. Indies galore? There’s Legend of Grimrock, Castle Story, Trine 2 and dozens more.

Shared From Time Tech