Nintendo, Sony Take Big Financial Hits 119
The Installer writes with news that Nintendo is seeing a significant financial downturn to match the general slowdown in the rest of the industry. "Sales of the once unstoppable Wii console have tumbled for the first time since its launch three years ago, sending the gaming giant's quarterly profit down 61 percent." Meanwhile, Sony is feeling the pain as well; the company sold 500,000 fewer PS3 consoles than in the previous quarter, and PSP sales saw an even bigger drop. Interestingly, Sony also revealed that the manufacturing cost of the PS3 has now dropped 70% since it was released. The drop in sales has caused the resurgence of rumors about console price cuts.
Context Matters (Score:4, Informative)
Context matters.
"Meanwhile, Sony is feeling the pain as well; the company sold 500,000 fewer PS3 consoles than in the previous quarter, and PSP sales saw an even bigger drop."
500,000 units is just a number; losing a sandwich is less of a tragedy if you had two of them to begin with. FTFA:
"Sony did release console sales numbers for the period, which also painted a bleak picture. Quarterly worldwide PlayStation 3 sales dropped from 1.6 million units in the first quarter of the past fiscal year to 1.1 million units in the most recent fiscal quarter, while PSP sales plummeted from 3.7 million units to just 1.3 million units. VAIO sales and profitability were also down, though Sony did not offer specific figures."
So selling 500,000 fewer units this quarter in this context means that Sony has sold approximately 30% fewer units than last quarter.
Re:The games... (Score:4, Informative)
I also use a really nice DLP HDTV projector for games and movies, and I cannot tell you what a PITA it is to set up that IR bar underneath the projector image in the front side of my living room but yet have the Wii sit in the back of the room where the projector and my amp sits. I have to disconnect everything when I'm done or my dog will trip over all the wires.
Wireless IR bars have been available a few weeks after the Wii launch. Those really solve the issue with Wii + Hometheater.
The bar does no actual communication with the Wii, just gets power from there.
Re:Intel GMA (Score:3, Informative)
But the Wii is going to be -much- more powerful than the laptop.
Wii's CPU is a PowerPC G3 clocked at 0.73 GHz, and it has less than about 91 MB of RAM+VRAM. The cheapest new laptop is a $300 Eee PC with an Atom CPU clocked over twice that and ten times as much RAM. Besides, I understood Albert Sandberg's comment to mean that publishers don't consider Wii-to-PC ports because a PC is so much more powerful than a Wii, not less powerful.
Even on an "inactive" system, there are hundreds of tiny processes going on, polling hardware, etc. the Wii is more or less truly single tasking.
Do "hundreds of tiny processes" take up half the CPU and nine-tenths of the RAM, even on the version of Windows XP loaded on these low-end laptops? My cousin has an Atom-based laptop, and it doesn't for him.