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 January 31 - February 2/2005 - Lost in Blue On the side of the site shall be a schedule of events. Each day of the week will be some sort of new content. Monday is unconfirmed yet, but I may have a Philip Rational on those days. Tuesday is unconfirmed as well. Wednesday is a new column called Sarah Speaks Up with an original DMG Diva speaking her mind on random things! Woo! Thursday is an official reviews day. Tuesday may join it as a new reviews day too. Friday is a new Viral Speak. No updates Saturday and Sunday. Sound fair so far? Oh! Nintendo has decided to let THQ use their intellectual properties in a few games. So, our dream of a Rugrats go to Zebes game will finally be a reality! "Tommy! Why is the jelly blob devouring Angelica's flesh? Was it need a hug?" Bwa ha ha! Maybe they'll put Wario and Bowser in a wrestling game? I dunno.. I think I would like that. So, this is a three day update as I explain our new schedule to everyone and finish uploading our special gifts for you this February as well as our new schedule of articles! This first week shall be messy! Bear with us! February is at hand and so is a few more bits and tidbits. Sony (Music/Movies/Computer Entertainment) only had a 23% drop in profit this last year. Not bad. I was wondering a little why Nintendo had such a drop and then I realized why: They split Pokemon Company into it's own "company" and seperated their profit reports from theirs for tax reasons early on in 2004. Yeah, so they didn't lose as much money as they say they did. Those liars! he he he. Good news all around the board today. Xbox made a real NET profit for the first time in it's sales life. That means it's a success. Sony wants to put together an iTunes like program for the PSP. Sorry, but that's stupid. (holds up iPod) If you're using your PSP as your main MP3 player, that's a little... RETARDED. It's fine to play MP3s on the thing, but seriously.. get a real music player. However, if Sony truly wants to aim their guns at the other MP3 player with their PSP. Sure. Go for it. Try and win that war. Survival Kids 3 is now called: Lost in Blue and features some awesome graphics, and a trailer with some odd voice acting. It seems like a 3D and just plain beautiful remaster of the original game. Unless Nintendo releases a new Legend of Zelda game for the DS before the end of the year or Another Code is more amazing.. I think Lost In Blue is the game of the year for 2005. It comes out in August in the USA and should be playable at E3. The latest Media Create stats (Jan. 17 - 23) read that the PSP has surpassed the PS2 in sales. Which is wonderful news for me. The Nintendo DS is in third followed by the GBA SP, and then the Game Cube. The sales data takes place before the January 27th release of Catch! Touch! Yoshi! (Yoshi's Touch & Go) in Japan. It sold 23,000 units first day. The PS2 got Radatia Stories from the ever awesome SquareEnix. Game Cube got Biohazard 4 and that sold 117,000 units first day. So, the next Media Create charts should be rather interesting. Of note, is the fact that the other four of the top five systems have shown that they can ALL knock the PS2 out of first. This is the first of many weeks in which the PSP, DS, and PS2 sell neck and neck. All but the PSP have hot selling new name titles for the next week. So, expect the PS2 to see an increase, but not as much of an increase as the Game Cube will see with the release of Biohazard 4. Yoshi's new game is hot stuff. Personally, I really -really- want Nintendo to release that Air Hockey demo from E3 in something. I would BUY it for $10. Especially if it had some crazy wireless play on it. Oh, yeah! AIR HOCKEY! Comment? -PAW- Top? January 25/2005 - GBA is going, going, STRONG. The LEGEND will never die. Not too much going on, playing with stuff. No details on Nintendo's conference have been released. In fact, it's very quiet. Too quiet. But that did not stop Namco from announcing a bunch of games and it did not stop UBI Soft from announcing a new Rayman game for the Game Boy Advance. "Rayman Hoodlum Revenge" is an exclusive title for the Game Boy Advance and is a sequel to a previous Rayman game. UBI Soft also announced that they were bring a cart racer and a platform game based off of a European character named Hugo. Namco has announced that they will be publishing a brand new shooter-style game by WayForward Technology. The makers of Shantae and Xtreme Sports. Two of the best games on the Game Boy Color. Their new GBA game will be out later this year and it will be called: Sigma Star Saga. That should be fun for everyone involved. Since a lot of people come here to get DS bits as well, here are combined sales data since launch. The PSP recently got a bit of a boost and sold 10,000 more units than the DS as of last week. Will that boost last? Who knows. But here are the full sales data -since launches- for both units. Sold/Shipped in Japan. Nintendo DS = 1,657,684/1,800,000 Sony PSP = 608,906/ 800,000 As you can see, the horses are racing. Although, expect to see information on more than the screen size of the Game Boy Next at E3. We know the screen size (300x200 compared to the DS 256x192) already and we have already heard of Nintendo's small investment in OLEDs all the way back in 2002. That should be interesting to see if it pans out as expected. An active OLED is sharper, sturdier, lighter, brighter, power conservative, and much thinner than a traditional LCD panel. In other words, a 300x200 OLED screen would give the sharp as a knife PSP LCD screen some real competition. Well, I'll divulge the war machine's other "rumored" surprises soon! Look forward to the revolution! On a somewhat healthier note, Nintendo recently donated three special edition DS units to a celebrity charity auction. Those are neat? But things aren't all roses, Nintendo of Japan has lowered their previously ego-flated full year (Four Quarters) profit speculation for the remaining quarter (Q4) from 150 billion yen to only 120 billion yen as of this morning. This is attributable to the fact that there were no huge games for the Cube this Christmas, and that the Yen has taken a few hits after the dollar regained some footing. After posting a third quarter NET profit of 21.31 billion yen as compared to a NET profit of 37.43 billion yen as of last year's third quarter, Nintendo's stock price fell by 2.3%. Later, Nintendo anounced that they have sold over 14 MILLION GBA units in Europe, making the GBA the best selling bit of hardware this year in Europe. I suppose that tonight is the night for people to come out of the woodwork proclaiming Nintendo DOOOOOMED! Well, Thursday is Sony's day to release their profit reports for the quarter that just ended. It will be interesting to see how they do. Their net profit in Japanese Yen was 92.7 billion (Combined from all three divisions of Sony) in the subsequent quarter last year. Of course, Sony has been saved this year by having some of the top movies in their stable. (like Spider-Man 2) Sadly, they don't divide up their profit index so we could compare SCE to Nintendo and Microsoft directly. Oh, well. Thursday is also Konami's gamers day. They announce new things and let people try out some of their latest games... in Japan. So, some lucky stiffs shall try Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow 2 before most all of us. May dracula feast on their souls. Actually, tommorrow has the makings of a sweet day for me. A paycheck, Konami blessing us with announcements, and Sony announcing their earnings for everyone to see. Comment? -PAW- Top? January 15th, 2005 - Back from FATIGUE! Sometimes, updating can be difficult and or hard. However, the news seems to favor these breaks in content. Aside from the recent CES where Nintendo showed off NOTHING, or the recent Mac World Expo where Nintendo showed off nothing. (Duh!) There has not been any real news to report on. The latest bit was about Namco porting the arcade Soul Calibur (Soul Edge 2) to the Nintendo DS. That's good stuff! Oh, Minish Cap just came out and it is worth your purchase, even if it doesn't include Four Swords in it. Nintendo is going to be having a conference on the 17th in Japan that will reveal some more DS and GBA games. I have been pulling lots of shifts. I haven't had a day off since January 1st, but I have Sunday off folks! So, expect some work on reviews! I also got a Viral Speak asking me to mention a pretty nifty flash animation by a small band known as Saint Dragon. It is a bit large for those on 56k, but fun none the less. The best part is the Kariko village bit. Comment? -PAW- Top? January 5th, 2005 - Welcome to the new year, leave your shoes at the door. Who won? While we wait for the NPD stats for the US market, let us go ahead and analyze the market in Japan. But before that, a previous post was written in the self-deprecative style of a Lemony Snicket book. A lot of people thought I was dissing the DS. I LOVE MY DS! Well, here we go! Media Create has released their hardware sales data for the week of the 20 - 26 of December in Japan. They also released what is, more or less, the final unit sales figures for 2004. Looking at the data, the Nintendo DS was the best seller in this Holiday week with 396,674 units sold. This brings the sales of the unit in 2004 to just above 1,286,074. The Game Boy Advance SP sold only 190,268 this crucial week for a 2004 total of 2,530,961 in Japan alone. The Play Station 2 sold 188,134 for a 2,691,666 year end number. Game Cube batted 108,311 for 696,839 and the Sony Play Station Portable (PSP) sold 107,217 for a year end total of 352,295. Over 500,000 units of the PSP have shipped in Japan, and about 1,400,000 DS units have shipped in Japan. Not bad for either system. The Game Cube recieved Mario Party 6 and that sold rather well to boost the Cube's sales up and over the PSP hardware this week. None of the PSP's games made it into the top 10 in terms of sales. The Play Station 2 received a brand new Mario Party-esque game from Square Enix this last week, but that was not enough to dent the GBA SP and DS position on the units sold list. What company sold the most units in 2004? Well, Sony had the PS2, PS One, and PSP on the shelves. Nintendo had the DS, GBA, GBA SP, and the Game Cube. Sony also had the PSX, but the sales of that were too low to even make this list. So, who sold the most hardware this last year? Who's the number one video game system producer? Nintendo 4,711,899 total units in 2004 in Japan Sony 3,057,990 total units in 2004 in Japan Microsoft 37,083 total units in 2004 in Japan I think these facts speak for themselves. Nintendo sold 1,653,909 more total units of their video game hardware than anyone else. More units than Microsoft and Sony combined! Of course, this is just in Japan. Looking again at the figures: Does this mean that the DS has beaten the PSP? A few people seem to think so and a few other people say that it is only because of Sony's terrible shortage of product. Then again, you need to consider what both companies have shipped. DS = 1,400,000 units shipped, 1,286,074 sold. PSP = 500,000 units shipped, 352,295 sold. To calculate who is selling the best, I'm subtracting the unsold products for each. 113,926 unsold DS units. 147,705 unsold PSP units. So, there appears to be more unsold PSP units than DS units. That doesn't bode well for Sony. They are selling at a fare pace in comparison to the Nintendo DS, but they need to up production of the system for the sake of the game software. If things continue in this way, it will be much more profitable to make DS games than PSP games. That will ultimately kill the PSP. Not the battery life, the defects, the size, or the media used will hurt the PSP as much as unprofitable game sales will. Wait! I have one more factor to consider. If the PSP sold consistently at the current rate it is selling, how would it have sold if both the PSP and the DS had equal shipping numbers? Here is where my math gets weird, so bear with me. I would have to double the amount of PSP units sold to get to 1,000,000 shipped and then add what the additional 400,000 would add to it. 352,295(2) + 352,295/5(4) 704,590 + 70,459(4) 704,590 + 281,836 = 986,426 sold units by the end of 2004 at the current PSP rate of sales. That would STILL be less than 1,286,074 DS units. So, the truth is that the DS is selling well and that the PSP will, indeed, have to do some proving to make a dent. It has already made a sizable amount of sales, though. In fact, the PSP may be the most successful competition the Nintendo handheld family has seen since the Game Gear. But, if the PSP does manage to fight off the Nintendo DS, it still has the Game Boy NEXT to contend with. So, don't think the fight will ever really sway toward Sony. If you want a good comparison to a previous race, the PSP is to the GBA/DS family what the Genesis was to the NES. In the end, the Genesis may have been able to "blast process" past the NES in terms of power, but it ended up eating the dust of the SNES. (Even though the MK debacle saved the Genesis for a while.) So, keep a close eye on Nintendo at E3 this year. I suppose that Sony bashing is addictive, because I feel one more round is needed to round out this article. Super Mario 64 DS = 416,125 units sold. Wario Ware (DS) = 377,243 units sold. Sony's "good" PSP = 352,295 units sold. So, Nintendo has software that has sold more than the PSP and in perspective, more than any PSP game. Well, more later! Speaking of software, the Castlevania game for the DS is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow. This sequel uses the top for maps and items and the bottom for gameplay. You have to use the touch screen to seal enemy bosses away. Should be interesting. Comment? -PAW- Top?  
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