Future Shop drops price on Zune
The popular Canadian retailer Future Shop has announced they have dropped the price of the Zune 8GB to $100 CAD, down from $150.
The deal will last for the next week on all colors and will prove to be a large undercut on American retailers and other Canadian retailers’ current prices. As of September, Microsoft’s official MSRP for the product is $150 CAD.
It is unclear whether Microsoft or Future Shop prompted the deal but it is odd to see a product at such a high discount while it is still relatively new and not a clearance item.
Future Shop is also selling the 120GB model Zune for $234 CAD, $16 CAD lower than the MSRP.
Xbox 360 to outsell original Xbox
Microsoft has announced that it expects the Xbox 360 to outsell the total sales of the original Xbox by November, surpassing 25 million units worldwide.
Mindy Mount, corporate VP and CFO of the company’s Entertainment and Devices division, says “so far we’ve done a great job appealing to the core gamers. And by the end of this month we expect our global installed base to reach 25 million units, surpassing that of the first Xbox.
“It’s a great milestone for us, but still only a start when you consider that history shows three-quarters of a console’s sales come at a price of USD 199 or lower. We hit that sweet spot in September, making our Arcade model USD 50 cheaper than the Wii and half the price of a PlayStation 3.”
Mount also correctly noted that the recent across the board price cut has had a huge impact on sales around the world. “In the US in September our console sales rose 42 per cent month over month, and in Europe they rose 62 per cent,” she added. “In Japan we’ve had over a 500 per cent increase in sales.”
DSi still selling well in Japan
The new Nintendo DSi continues to sell well in Japan, far outpacing its rival the Sony PlayStation Portable, says figures compiled by Media Create.
For the week ended November 9th, the updated handheld sold 104,897 units, just beating out its predecessor, the DS Lite by 8381 units.
Lagging in third was the PSP at 43,726 units, followed by another Nintendo console, the Wii at 24,726 units sold.
The PS3 moved back ahead of the Xbox 360 and sold 18,354 units compared to 12,759 units for the Microsoft console.
Netflix discontinues HD DVD rentals
Netflix has posted on their site that beginning on December 15th they will no longer ship HD DVD titles, leaving Blu-ray as the consumer’s only HD format of choice.
In February the company stopped purchasing HD DVD movies when Blu-ray won the HD format war but have kept renting out their current stock to those who wanted it.
On December 15th, if you have any HD DVD titles in your queue, they will be replaced with their standard definition counterpart.
There was no word on what Netflix will do with all the HD DVDs after the fact. Hopefully they will go on firesale.
Pic via Crunchgear
Finland to add royalty fees to mobile phones, USB drives?
Teosto (Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society) has officially requested that USB drives and mobile phones with MP3 playback function should join the products — such as DVDs and DVRs — with a recording/storage device royalty fee. Teosto has been fighting for the right to add the fees to mobile phones for two years now and now they want both external hard drives and thumb drives included as well. The proposal will now travel to Ministry of Education where the final decision is made.
Teosto has claimed that extensive amounts of copyrighted recordings are copied to both USB drives and mobile phones each year and therefore the composers have a right for a proper compensation. The fees would increase mobile phone prices up to 12,60 euros (approx. $16) for music phones such as the Nokia’s new touch-screen XpressMusic 5800 and presumably Apple iPhone.
Last year the same happened to HD DVD and Blu-ray discs that carry nowadays a fee of up to 1,89 euros per disc.
The proposed royalties for the year 2009 are as follows.
Mobile phones with MP3 playback:
1,4 euros for up to 512MB of internal memory
2,45 euros more than 512MB but up to 1GB of internal memory
3,45 euros more than 1GB but up to 20GB of internal memory
4,15 euros more than 20GB internal memory
Mobile phones that are advertised as music phones (eg. Nokia XpressMusic series, Sony Ericsson Walkman series):
2,4 euros for up to 512MB of internal memory
7,35 euros more than 512MB but up to 1GB of internal memory
[More]>>
Web-enabled components will triple in five years, says ABI
According to a new ABI Research report, the amount of Web-enabled electronics will at least triple in the next five years, allowing more and more consumers to connect to the Internet via their video game consoles, TVs and Blu-ray players.
There are currently 60 million electronics components worldwide that are Web-enabled and ABI says there will be over 200 million by 2013. Internet-protocol-enabled TVs, which are the standard in Japan, will become commonplace in the USA, adds the report.
“One of the main facets of multi-screen offerings will be Web-based user interfaces and rich Web content across all three screens,” ABI research director Michael Wolf said in a statement. “Beyond the PC and mobile environment is the Internet-connected TV screen.”
More and more TV makers are integrating Ethernet ports into their TVs and Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players are doing the same.
Companies such as Netflix have encouraged the pushing of Internet capability by signing deals to have digital copies of movies streamed directly through Blu-ray players or TVs.
Over 800,000 Wii consoles sold in October in US
Nintendo sold 803,210 Wii consoles in the United States for the month of October, marking a large jump from last month.
According to figures from market research firm NPD, the Nintendo had better supply for its hit console and increased sales from 687,000 units last month.
Sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 fell again from 232,400 units in September to 190,000 for October. Because of a recent across the board price cut, the Microsoft Xbox 360 saw a decent sized sales jump from 347,200 units in September to 371,000 for October
“The price reduction on the Xbox 360 is paying dividends at retail as the platform realized a 7% unit sales increase over September,” said analyst Anita Frazier. “Keeping in mind that September was a five-week month while October had four [weeks], the sales pace increased 33%.”
Even with diminished sales, the PS3 still made huge progress year-on-year selling 57 percent more consoles than in October 2007.
EA brings fitness game to the Wii
Electronic Arts, seeing the huge popularity of Nintendo’s Wii Fit , has announced they will be releasing their own fitness game, EA Sports Active next March for the Wii console.
The game will have tennis, boxing, soccer and other sports which gamers can play using wireless controllers attached to their arms and legs.
The game will retail for $60 USD and will include a book on healthy eating.
Electronista says Sports Active “centers around a pair of leg straps that hold both the Wii remote and nunchuk in place as well as a single resistance band for the upper body. The set lets Nintendo’s own controllers properly track exercise across the whole body and also introduce enough physical stress to provide strength-based exercise.”
Netflix looking for more video-streaming deals
Netflix has announced the hiring of former Macrovision Solutions executive Greg Peters in an effort to secure more video-streaming deals.
Peters will become VP of partner product development and report to current Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt.
“Greg’s expertise in all aspects of the product development lifecycle—from vision to design to implementation—will be a significant asset to Netflix and our partners as we push toward our goal of eventually enabling all U.S. households to stream Netflix to their TVs,” Hunt said.
Netflix has gone on a tear recently securing deals with Samsung, TiVo, Microsoft, Disney and Starz, all in an effort to boost their “Watch Instantly” streaming service. The library currently has over 12,000 titles available with another 3000 titles expected by the end of the year.
Update: Dreamworks drops HD DVD, but wont make Blu-ray for now
It seems Dreamworks has gotten the OK from Toshiba to drop HD DVD because they have cancelled all upcoming HD DVD titles including the anticipated “Bee Movie” that was set for release in North America on March 11th.
Dreamwork’s parent company Paramount also announced that it would be ending HD DVD releases beginning on March 4th.
The studios differ however with their future plans. Paramount plans to release on Blu-ray right after they drop HD DVD while you wont be seeing any Dreamworks titles until at least the summer. There was no word on what each studio’s first release will be.
Earlier this week Dreamworks’ CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg made a statement saying that the studio was still committed to HD DVD thanks to contractual obligations. From his mouth, “We have a partnership with Toshiba and have an obligation to see this through,” he said. “It really is in [Toshiba's] court at this point to really declare what the next step will be.”
