Struggling Nintendo sells 3 million Wii U consoles, lowers forecasts again

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Nintendo’s quarterly numbers are out and the company managed to sell 3.06 million Wii U consoles worldwide during the holiday quarter, following the launch of the new console in November. Combined sales of the Wii and Wii U were about 5.3 million units in the quarter — together coming up short of Microsoft’s Xbox 360,… Read More…

Report: Chinese government could lift 12-year-old ban on video game hardware

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Execs at Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and maybe even Valve are licking their chops this morning at the latest news from China. China Daily is reporting that the Chinese government is in discussions to “opening up the game console market” to out-of-country companies. Since 2000, China has had a ban on the manufacture, sale and import… Read More…

Sony boss: We’ll let Microsoft unveil its console first, then make ours better

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While we don’t have exact release dates for next-generation consoles, we now know Sony’s PS4 will be released after Microsoft’s new Xbox. That’s at least according to Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai. IGN spotted the company’s boss in an article from The Times saying that “Why go first, when your competitors can look at your specifications… Read More…

Xbox 360 wins holiday season in U.S., marks two straight years atop market

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The Xbox 360 is champ once again. Microsoft’s console was the best-selling console in the United States last month, marking 24 consecutive months atop the video game market. NPD research firm released its monthly December’s statistics and the Xbox 360 sold 1.4 million units last month. Even though that led all consoles, it’s an 18… Read More…

Late at night in private club, Nintendo tries to win back the love of longtime fans

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The line out the door at this trendy venue wasn’t for a band — it was for Mario. Nintendo fans packed a rented space in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood Friday night for their first official date with Wii U, the next big thing from the iconic game company. The main attraction: Wii U’s motion-sensitive, touch-screen,… Read More…

PAX: Pirates, ninjas and what’s really happening in video games these days

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Did you know that Nintendo Wii games are 22 percent more likely to include ninjas than games on Sony’s PlayStation 3? Or that games on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are 29.4 percent more likely to be about pirates? Those were a couple unexpected factoids from a panel at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend… Read More…

Sony hides PlayStation 3 sales data as profits fall

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Maybe I’m a nerd, but one of the things I look forward to each quarter is the release of Sony’s earnings, because they provide the final data point that we need to update the status of worldwide game console sales — showing how the PlayStation 3 stacks up against the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360…. Read More…

Xbox 360 marks 18 months atop U.S. console market

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Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sold 257,000 units in the U.S. in June, topping Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii for the 18th consecutive month, according to NPD Group research cited by the Redmond company. That translates into 47 percent market share among current-generation consoles. The latest numbers were down considerably from the 507,000 Xbox 360 units… Read More…

E3: PlayStation gets a lift from Harry Potter and HTC

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Sony surprised the audience at the E3 video-game show tonight with the announcement of Wonderbook, physical books that use augmented reality in tandem with the company’s PlayStation Move controller and PlayStation Eye camera to creative an interactive reading experience, bringing the book to life on the television screen. The company announced a partnership with Harry… Read More…

PS3 sucks less than Xbox and Wii in tough Q1 for consoles

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Sony reported its latest financial results overnight, and the numbers put the PlayStation 3 back atop the worldwide console market for the March quarter. But that ain’t saying much. In a sign of the current weakness of the game console market, the PS3 reclaimed the title despite seeing its unit sales decline to 1.9 million units,… Read More…