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Sony looking into paid subscriptions for PS3 online area

Sony’s Kaz “Riiidge Racer” Hirai said during a presentation yesterday that Sony expects the PlayStation Network for the PS3 and PSP to generate $500 million in revenues this fiscal year, but, he also added another thing, a far more disturbing picture…

Hirai mentioned that Sony was looking into “premium subscriptions” for the online service, much like Xbox Live Gold on the Xbox 360. The PS3’s bit selling point has always been that it’s free to play online, and that may change soon. Hirai is quoted by CVG saying,

“Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services.”

Great. Just as we thought the PS3 was catching up to the Xbox 360.

Modern Warfare 2 brings in $550 million so far

It’s no secret that Modern Warfare 2 was going to move a lot of dough for Activision, but how much? Well, $550 million, that’s how much, according to the publisher. The game has now sold almost 10 million copies, and has generated over half a billion dollars in revenue in the first five days of its release. While you’re crunching over those number, you can check out our Modern Warfare 2 review.

Xbox 360 sells 10 million units in Europe

Europe has usually always come in second to North America when it comes to game and console sales, despite having a larger population. Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360 has sold 10 million consoles in Europe, Africa and The Middle East (although the latter two only account for a few hundred thousand units).

The console has sold 12 million units in North America and 1 million in Japan since its release back in 2005, with worldwide sales topping 30 million.

EA CEO frustrated by weak Wii game sales

During a recent conference all, EA CEO John Riccitiello expressed his frustration with games on the Wii selling not as well as they have, and not selling as well and they used to. He said,

“To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share.”

Riccitiello also added that Nintendo should support 3rd party developers more, and that EA has reached out to Nintendo to partner up and push third party titles even stronger.

Nvidia’s DX11 graphics card delayed until 2010?

Fudzilla claims it has details that point towards Nvidia launching their next generation graphics chip, codenamed Fermi, in January 2010, as opposed to in December, as originally planned. Granted, Nvidia never officially announced a release date, but did mention December as a viable time.

However, DigiTimes — a far more reputable source than Fudzilla — claims that the date is even further into 2010, as Nvidia CEO stated that the card will likely launch in the first fiscal quarter of 2010, which begins in March. If true, this will mean that AMD’s cards, which are already out, will be given a good 6 month head start as the only DX 11 cards available on the market.

EA acquires PlayFish for $300 million

EA has announced that they’ve acquired social network game developer PlayFish for 300 million dollars. PlayFish, which makes games for social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, will receive an additional $100 million if certain sales/revenue goals are met before 2012. PlayFish has developed 10 titles which have 60 million active users on Facebook and MySpace and over 1 billion play sessions each month.

Nvidia posts $107m profit in Q3

Despite falling behind in both sales and technology to arch rival AMD, Nvidia managed to turn a solid $107 million profit in Q3, on revenues of $903.2 million, mostly fueled by the mobile and laptop sector. Compared to last year, that’s an increase of 16%, and from the previous year by 18%. The company said that it expects revenues in Q4 to be up 2% from previous year.

The company is set to release their brand new graphics card and technology later this year, called Fermi.

Activision Blizzard posts $15m profits in Q3

The newly merged mega-publisher Activision Blizzard just posted their Q3 financial results, where they revealed profits of just $15 million on a whopping $703 million in sales, which as any businessman and wall street analyst will tell, isn’t the best profit margin. The revenue increased almost $100 million compared to the same time last year, but that year, the company lost $108 million. Now $15 million doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all. Activision Blizzard still expects sales to top $4 billion this year.

Namco Bandai posts $66m loss in 1H 2009

Publisher/developer Namco Bandai has posted some rather dim results for the first half of 2009.

The company lost $66 million, while it posted a profit of $14 million during the same period last year, so it’s quite a decline, mostly attributed to lack of decent titles during the period. The company still expects sales to reach $94 million this year, fueled by Tekken 6, of which 2.5 million copies have already been shipped.

WiiWare demos coming

Nintendo has revealed that the company plans on offering demos for their downloadable-only Wii games from WiiWare. Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata told investors during a Q&A session that the feature is in development, and will be tested with demos of a few selected titles, before demos are rolled out to cover most of the lineup. Nintendo hopes that the demos will increase sales in the WiiWare store, as it’s currently trailing competitors from Microsoft (Xbox Live) and Sony (PSN).

Assassin’s Creed 2 pre-orders up 10-20% over original

Analyst Mike Hickey of Janco Partners predicts that pre-orders for Assassin’s Creed 2 are up by 10 to 20% over the original. Ubisoft projected the original game to sell 3 million, but it sold a whopping 8 million copies to date. The analyst expect the sequel to outsell the original, which might be a tough task, considering Assassin’s Creed 2 is going heads to heads with Modern Warfare 2.

Iwata confirms, “The Wii has stalled”

In a rather surprising move, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata said in an interview that the Wii “has stalled”, after selling 40% less units in 2009 compared to 2008. Iwata contributes the slow sales due to the fact that there weren’t many great games released on the Wii this year, “Games of high demand could not be continuously released and the good mood has chilled”, Iwata said in an interview with Japanese newspaper Mainichi.

He further revealed that Nintendo misjudged the market conditions, and concluded by saying that they are now focusing on next year, and is determined to deliver key titles that will boost console sales.

Nintendo reports declining profits

Nintendo’s latest financial results show a decline in profits, mostly due to lower Wii sales and a lower price on the console as well. The company reported a profit decline of 52% compared to last year, but still, unlike its rivals, Nintendo made a $750 million profit, and it still makes money on every Wii console sold, despite a new $199 price point.

Nintendo also revealed that the company has sold 56 million Wii units worldwide, while the DS has sold 113 million worldwide. Nintendo said they expect to sell 20 million Wiis this year, down from 26 million they projected last year.

Xbox 360 sales reach 34 million

At the recent sales and earnings announcements, Microsoft revealed that their Xbox division almost doubled the profits compared to last year. While overall Q3 profit declines 18 percent to $3.57 billion, the Entertainment and Devices profit jumped from $159 million to $312 million. Likewise, both game sales and Xbox Live revenue increased considerably as well, compared to last year.

Microsoft also revealed that the installed base for the Xbox 360 was now at 34 million worldwide. In comparison, the Wii has an installed base of almost 55 million, while the PS3 base is at 24 million.

Peter Moore: disc based gaming a “burning platform”

Speaking PLAY Digital Media conference, EA’s Peter Moore has described sales model for regular, retail disc-based games as “burning”, noting that EA is focused on digital distribution and Moore advised other publishers to do the same. Moore noted that disc based games might completely go away within the next ten years.

…we’ll recognize it 10 years from now when we tell our grand kids, we’ll tell them we used to drive to the store to get shiny discs that have bits and bites on them and we’d place them in this thing called a ‘disc tray,’ and it’d whirl around…and they’ll go ‘What?’”

Check out more or Moore’s thoughts at Gamasutra here.