At least 700,000 people still have questions about DTV transition
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the federal hotline set up to hear calls relating to the mandatory DTV transition has had over 700,000 calls since Friday morning, the day the analog signals were cut off.
200,000 of the calls were related to the federal coupons towards digital converter boxes, perhaps implying a significant amount of people still do not have the right equipment to receive digital signals.
Another 200,000 calls were from consumers who have the boxes but were confused on how to operate them successfully. The FCC told many to “re-scan the airwaves for digital frequencies,” and says 99 percent of the problems were solved.
Many others called about problems with reception, which is a much deeper problem than simple converter box issues.
“Our job is far from over,” said FCC Chairman Michael Copps. “This transition is not a one-day affair. We have known about re-scanning and reception issues for some time and have been doing our best to get the word out.”
The most callers came from the Chicago, Illinois area, but significant calls came from Dallas, New York, Philadelphis and Baltimore as well.
The Commerce Department recently reported they had sent out coupons for over 60 million converter boxes, but were still receiving over 100,000 requests a day, even during the last week. Research firm SmithGeiger LLC says there are probably still over 2 million households which are not prepared, despite repeated warnings and a full marketing campaign by the government. The most likely groups to not be prepared? Minorities, people over 65, and people under the age of 35.
‘New’ Circuit City to remain online-only for time being
Systemax, the new owner of the Circuit City brand name, has said the company will remain an online-only business for the time being, with the computer maker showing no signs of re-opening brick and mortar stores.
“It’s too soon to say whether Circuit City stores will appear,” adds Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of Systemax’s technology products group. “We’ve only owned it for two weeks, and we haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.”
Systemax currently has 29 CompUSA-branded brick-and-mortar stores. “We’re looking at additional real estate,” says Fiorentino however. “It’s an opportunity of a lifetime.”
The company acquired the name and branding for CompUSA and TigerDirect over the last year as the companies went bankrupt.
Despite piracy, ‘Sims 3′ sells extremely well
Back in May we reported that the latest edition in the blockbuster franchise The Sims had been leaked to P2P, a full 15 days before its official release date.
According to BigChampagne data figures, the piracy rates for the game were very high as well, seeing 180,000 downloads in its first four days of availability.
It appears that the leak is doing nothing to hamper sales however, as Electronic Arts has announced today that the game has sold over 1.4 million units in its first week of availability.
The sales are combined for both the Windows and Mac editions, and the publisher says the game is having the best PC launch ever in company’s history.
“With more than a dozen press awards, strong reviewer scores and positive feedback from The Sims community, we are thrilled with the success of The Sims 3 launch and the early sales indicate that we have another hit on our hands,” added EA Play Label boss Rod Humble.
“The volume of items created with The Sims 3 and downloaded online is a testament to how passionate The Sims players are. It’s their world now, we can’t wait to see everything players create and share.”
EA also noted that the iPhone/iPod Touch version of the game was a raging success as well, hitting the top spot in the App Store’s Top Paid App list in just under 18 hours.
“The game’s sales success along with its strong critical acclaim demonstrates that The Sims 3 mobile experience is a worldwide hit with our customers,” concluded EA Mobile VP of worldwide publishing Adam Sussman.
Sony PSP Go is “a ripoff,” says Patcher
Last week during the E3 Expo, Sony officially launched the PSP Go handheld, which removes the UMD drive, adds a slider design and and is slimmer than previous models.
Today, expert gaming analyst Michael Pachter has called the system a “ripoff,” claiming that Sony is severely overcharging for the handheld in North America. The console retails for $250 USD.
Pachter adds that the current “slim” PSP-3000 is more expensive to build but sells for significantly less.
“I’m sorry to say it, I don’t want to get bad fan mail from the Sony fanboys, but Sony is ripping off the consumer until they sell a couple of million,” says Pachter.
“Disc assembly for UMD costs more than 16GB of Flash does,” he notes. “So this new device doesn’t cost them as much to make as the PSP-3000 and they’ve jacked the price up USD 80. And if consumers don’t buy it then the price is going to come down. They’re making a lot more money on the PSP Go than the PSP-3000.”
Pachter also added that he expects digital delivery methods to become much more mainstream now that console makers are behind the move.
“PSP Go is a game changer for digital delivery and yet they’re still going to support the PSP-3000, they’ve got to keep the retailers happy.
“This year’s show is ‘packaged goods are going away’. Half of all gaming purchases ten years from now are going to be digital. You can see it coming for the first time ever, the console manufacturers are behind it,” he concluded.
PS3 VidZone now available
Sony has announced that the on-demand video service VidZone is now available for free for European PlayStation 3 owners.
VidZone currently runs the service from their own independent website, and is has deals with Sony BMG, EMI and over four thousand independent labels. The service on the PS3 will be ad-supported and will allow gamers to stream over 25,000 music videos and “behind-the-scenes commentaries.”
“VidZone is not just about giving music fans access to thousands of music videos, but offering a completely interactive and personalised music experience,” says VidZone CTO Michael Russo.
The VidZone application is available for download via the PS Store and will allow users to create playlists, save a video library, or select any individual video from the catalog.
“Music has always been popular on PS3 and now VidZone is set to transform the way we view music videos by letting you completely tailor your experience and is just one more reason for PS3 to be the most valued player in your living room,” concluded Isabelle Tomatis, hardware and platforms marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
The app will be available in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, German, Spain and Australia.
Hulu loses audience share, but gains views
Hulu, the joint online video site owned by NBCU, Disney and Fox had another strong month in April, gaining views for the sixth consecutive month.
However, the site lost market share as YouTube and Turner Network gained even more viewers during the period.
For the month of April, 397 million videos were viewed on Hulu, up almost 5 percent from March. Hulu remains the number 3 video site in the U.S, behind the clear market leader YouTube and Fox Interactive sites which include sites such as MySpace.
Hulu’s audience share fell however, from 2.6 percent to 2.4, as YouTube jumped 15 percent month-on-month and Turner Networks jumped 63 percent in the same period.
Harman Kardon to release first BD player in US
One month after announcing its release in Europe, Harman Kardon has announced it will release its first Blu-ray player, dubbed the BDP-1, in North America as well.
The BDP-1 will also have “advanced audio codec support and will play back 1080/24p videos without pulldown conversion.” A USB slot allows for JPEG and DivX playback from flash drives.
Harman Kardon is known mainly for its home theater A/V products but has been expanding of late. It will support MP3, WMA, LPCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, and DTS-HD Master Audio audio formats.
A view of the player shows that it has HDMI 1.3a connectors, as well as component and RCA video outputs, an Ethernet jack, coaxial and optical audio outputs and analog audio output.
The player will hit shelves during June with a price tag of $500 USD.
ESA CEO speaks out about piracy, DRM
ESA CEO Mike Gallagher has spoken out this week about both piracy and DRM in the gaming industry, and GamePolitics has made a nice summary of his remarks.
In regards to piracy:
“Piracy is a scourge. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, of the intellectual property and the creativity and the energy of the investors in this industry and the artists who make the great games. Period. Okay?”
“It’s a problem of such degree that it’s between two and three billion dollars a year that it costs our industry in this country alone. When you look at piracy across all of entertainment, it’s a much bigger number when you put in movies and look what it’s done to the music industry. So, the going-in proposition has to be a recognition that piracy is wrong, it’s illegal and it should be stopped…”
In regards to DRM:
“There are business models that say, ‘You know, we’re going to build our business model around giving it away for free and having the revenue come in in other ways.’ We [in the video game business] do that too. We do that too. But for those companies who go forward, they’re entitled to protect - using DRM - to protect their content. And I realize that it is a subject of some controversy with gamers and consumers because, like other similar types of devices, most often they negatively impact the law-abiding gamer.
“But it’s one of those things that we have to be vigilant about. It’s vitally important to preserve the ecosystem and the jobs in the industry and the next great game. If you don’t make money off of the games that are made now you’re not going to see the ones that come later like you saw at the press briefings already at E3.”
PS3 price cut coming in August?
Sure we have heard rumors that a Sony PlayStation 3 price cut has been in the works for months now, but new “industry sources” are saying today that a $100 USD price cut is coming in August, right alongside the release of the sure-to-be blockbuster Madden NFL 2010.
“Industry sources indicate Sony is planning a $100 price cut on the PS3 in mid-August, just prior the launch of Madden (8/18) and the start of the back to school shopping season. This will naturally be a positive for the industry,” says Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.
He also notes that the video game market, despite a recent downturn, is still doing great.
“While software sales for the first half of 2009 are expected to be down mid-single-digits, we believe the second half, in contrast, will likely be up 10 to 15 percent driven by a robust lineup, easier comparisons and potential price cut(s),” he concluded.
The rumor would coincide with recent comments by GameStop CEO Daniel DeMatteo, which says that a price cut is imminent in the Q3 2009.
Giganews ups retention to 300 days
Giganews announced last week that they had set a new Usenet milestone, upping binary retention to 300 days, a first for any provider.
Retention time is how long Giganews stores data available without deleting to make room for new content.
“Reaching 300 days of retention is a definite high-water mark for us and for Usenet as a whole,” Philip Molter, Giganews CTO added, “As the industry leader, we are excited to offer such lengthy retention times to our customers, and we continue to work toward our goal of a full year’s worth of binary retention.”
The company added that it plans to up retention time again to one full year (365 days) by August.
