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Posted
Sep 04 2008, 04:36 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Microsoft has decided that it would rather be the video game market share leader than make a buck at the business. (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)
Redmond cut the price of its Xbox 360 to $199. That drops it from its previous sticker of $279. The action may take some business away from the Sony PS3, but it is more clearly aimed at market leader Nintendo which has remained in the front spot for months with its $250 Wii.
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Posted
Aug 12 2008, 03:48 PM
by
Todd Harrison
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After analysts expressed high hopes for the company's future, shares for Amazon jumped over 9%, to $88.09, on Monday. While Amazon is widely expected to maintain their industry lead in e-commerce, many believe they'll see an extra boost from sales of the Kindle, Amazon's new electronic book reader which is gaining intense buzz.
It marks the first time in years that something in the literary world has attracted this much attention - without involving a school of witchcraft and wizardry.
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Posted
Jul 17 2008, 10:50 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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If you want to sell TV shows and movies online, you've got to keep it simple. Make it easy. Apple knows this. So does Netflix, which is expanding its subscription service online. But Amazon straight-out failed in this area with its clunky Unbox download service. So it went back to the drawing board and has a new effort out today. The new store, called Amazon Video on Demand, has 40,000 movies and TV shows and ups the ante in the online video business with two significant breakthroughs. First, Amazon has partnered with Sony Electronics to get the store directly into the TV -- Sony Bravia TVs, specifically. Second, Amazon holds the videos you buy on its end, and you can watch them by logging in to Amazon from different computers or devices. Amazon shares are up less than 1% to $72.13. Here are more details about the service, which Amazon chose to announce in today's New York Times.
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Posted
Jul 15 2008, 03:44 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Microsoft has had its Xbox 360 in the market for over two years. The product is hardly mature. The current round of video game consoles which includes the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii are just getting a number of the big new games designed to play on them.
But, progress is ever hungry and Microsoft wants to add features to its console which will give it a broadening appeal. The cornerstone of the new add-ons are avatars, odd little people and characters that users can create to personalize the game experience. According to the FT, "Both Microsoft and Sony will use avatars to make online gameplay and socialising more appealing on their consoles."
In addition, Xbox users will be able to share photos and watch movies at the same time even though they are at different locations.
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Posted
Feb 19 2008, 12:21 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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The battle to become the high-definition replacement for the DVD is over today, with Toshiba's decision to pull out of the HD-DVD business. Toshiba will stop making HD-DVD players and aims to stop shipping them to retailers by the end of next month. No one else makes standalone HD-DVD players. Expect to see huge sales on HD-DVD players and movies over the next two months, but don't let anyone you know take the bait: this format is dead, dead, dead. Still, Sony's Blu-ray camp shouldn't be celebrating just yet. Sure, Blu-ray won this battle for high-definition video, but it faces
much bigger challenges in the race for consumer adoption. Its biggest competitor is and has always been the plain old DVD.
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Posted
Dec 14 2007, 11:01 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
 Give Nintendo credit for at least trying to address the Wii shortage frustrating many parents this month. The company said today that you'll be able to buy a raincheck that will guarantee a Wii gets into your hands....by the end of January.
Here are the rules: You can only buy the raincheck at a GameStop store on Dec. 20 or 21. And you have to pay full-price ($250) for the system at the time you buy the raincheck. Here's the funny thing: Nintendo is guaranteeing the Wiis but then saying the rainchecks are only available as supplies last. And we've seen how long anything related to the Wii lasts in stores.
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Posted
Dec 03 2007, 05:13 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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I was shopping at a Best Buy in San Jose yesterday and here's what I found: 
Stacks of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. When I asked where the Wiis were, a saleswoman gave a small snort and shook her head. The store was out.
It's a common scenario across the country, and in other parts of the world. A year after its release, the console that many expected would be in third place has become a hit of such proportions that people still line up overnight to buy one. I've had a Wii since its launch, and spent a good chunk of the weekend playing "Super Mario Galaxy." This console definitely holds up over time.
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Posted
Nov 27 2007, 02:49 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
 Steve Jobs has come up with an invisible vacuum that sucks people into Apple stores. That's what it sounds like from reading research done by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
Munster's team spent six hours staring at people outside of mall-based Apple stores last weekend and found that 27% of people walking within 25 feet of an entrance went inside.
And here's a stat that could make retailers drool: An average of 462 people entered an Apple store each hour last Friday during the company's Black Friday sale. I've seen quite a few Apple stores and can't imagine that many people crammed in. Apple has created more space this year by removing the cash registers and giving employees handheld scanners.
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Posted
Nov 09 2007, 06:58 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Sony head Howard Stringer talked Blu-Ray this week during a visit to Manhattan, saying his format is in a "stalemate" with HD-DVD. He played down the battle as no biggie.
"It doesn't mean as much as all that," he said. He added that the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD teams once talked about uniting under one format, but that didn't happen.
I think Sony just blinked. Stringer drops bombs like these just as we're heading into the holiday shopping season? Shoppers are going to be picking a side in the great Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight, but does Sony even care?
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Posted
Oct 18 2007, 10:31 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Sony makes some historic blunders. One of the biggest was making digital music players that wouldn't play MP3s, the most popular digital music format. Those devices played Sony's own ATRAC format, which the company killed a few months ago.
Sony hasn't learned from its mistakes. Consider the PlayStation 3, the too-expensive game console that hasn't become the hit the company wanted. Sony's finally selling a cheaper PS3 in the U.S., just in time for the holidays. It'll cost $400, but will have only 40 gigabytes of storage -- half that of the standard version, which is getting a price cut to $500 from $600.
That's fine. Some people don't need more than 40 gigs anyway in a video game system. But get this: the cheap PS3 won't play games made for the PlayStation 2. That feature is called backward compatibility, and it's a dealbreaker. A typical PlayStation 2 owner probably has a nice library of video games. The new PS3 won't play any of them.
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