Archive for January, 2009

ATI Catalyst 9.1 out – new ATI Video Converter version

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Can’t talk for long. Heatwave here in Melbourne, power might go out, or my computer might explode in the 42 C temperature (107 F).

Just wanted to say that a new ATI Catalyst driver version is now available, the new ATI Video Converter version (also 9.1) is available here. Except the link might be broken for ATI Video Converter, so here are the direct links:

XP (32 or 64-bit) Version

Vista (32-bit) Version

I’ve had a brief play with it, and GPU-Z tells me that the acceleration has improved, and instead of intermittent usage of the GPU, it’s now fairly constant (around 20%). I might have to wait until this evening, or when the heatwave is over, before I can test it in more detail.

Update: Upon further testing, there does not seem to be any improvements. In fact, things seemed worse on some occasions. By all means update to the latest version, but ATI Video Converter is still not using the GPU as much as it should be.

Weekly News Roundup (25 January 2009)

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve, also the eve of Australia’s national day – celebrations here in Australia are going to be doubly big tomorrow, lots of flag waving and dragon dancing. I’m almost over my Shingles outbreak, not really feeling much discomfort anymore, although I’ve been quite busy lately with a new project that will soon be made public. It’s not a Digital Digest thing, but it’s related, and that’s all I shall say for now. But that’s not the only reason I was busy, because I had the December 2008 NPD figures to analyse plus write a yearly NPD roundup, both of which are now up. I love graphs.

CopyrightLet’s start with the copyright section, the last one of the Year of the Rat, which has been a pretty bad year (for us Monkeys, anyway). Unless you’ve been living (or is that hiding) under a rock for the last week, you should have seen the amazing pictures of the Obama inauguration. Change starts this week, but on the copyright front at least, things seems to be moving in a bad direction.

Obama is now the President, but will he stay true to his pro-consumer stance

Obama is now the President, but will he stay true to his pro-consumer stance

Another Obama pick for a top level position has been revealed as yet another anti-piracy advocate, previously working for the BSA. I must say that Obama, who said all the right things during the election campaign in regards to consumer rights, and had the backings of all the pro consumer rights groups, is really taking this whole “team of rivals” thing a bit too far with these picks. We all knew that Joe Biden was a friend of the RIAA, but all this pro big media stuff just doesn’t really fit in well with the rest of Obama’s agendas. Let’s once again hope that these moves are just there to balance out the administration’s views, and that in the end, it will be Obama’s pro-consumer views that will be the policies of the administration, not those of these anti-piracy advocates.

In the “taking copyright control too far” segment for this week, the website in the spotlight it YouTube. They are now apparently blocking material and then asking questions later, blocking legal material and forcing the rightful content owners to lodge a dispute before their content will be uploaded. That’s the problem with algorithm based copyright detection, it’s not very accurate, but to have a human pair of eyes look at everything would be cost prohibitive, unless the RIAA/MPAA want to foot the bill. YouTube is now offering downloads on selected videos, so you can imagine why they might be a bit more paranoid in regards to copyright.

The Dutch have commissioned a report which says that P2P actually benefits the economy. You know what, this doesn’t surprise me one bit. People used to the convenience of P2P will naturally consider other forms of legal Internet distribution. A track you downloaded off P2P illegally just might lead you to buy the album legally. Same with games, movies and all sorts of other things you can buy and download online. It’s like the modern day shareware floppy, try before you buy. Plus there are the other benefits to bandwidth saving and reduction is hosting costs, which will benefit businesses that host a lot of downloads.

High DefinitionIn High Definition news, I want to clear up something first. I get asked why this section is called “High Definition News” and not just “Blu-ray News”. Well, that’s mainly because while Blu-ray is obviously the main focal point of HD at the moment, HD covers much more than just Blu-ray. Topics such as H.264, HDTV, HD downloads, GPU acceleration and even 3D TV are all covered here, so calling it simply “Blu-ray” news would be a bit misleading. Besides, I’ve got the Blu-ray logo to represent this section, and the writing is in blue, so that should appease the fanboys somewhat I hope.

To prove the above, the first story I’m going to post is one about how 3D HDTV is going to fail. I’ve said something similar before, because as long as uncomfortable glasses are required, nobody is going to take it all that seriously. And when glasses aren’t required anymore (holographic vision? HDHV?), will Blu-ray or even TV still exist? Holorooms, perhaps?

Porn is driving the HD industry, Blu-ray and HD downloads included

Porn is driving the HD industry, Blu-ray and HD downloads included

Pornos. Now that has gotten your attention, it looks like you’re not the only one who is interested, because once again, porn is driving the new HD industry. However, the article mentions not only Blu-ray, but also HD downloads, which are possibly a better idea for porn as it’s easier to hide. It’s again interesting to see industry mention HD, but talking not only about Blu-ray, but about the emerging download market.

And they just might need downloads to exceed, because home video is suffering in the face of threats it now faces from the video gaming industry. Blu-ray may help get back some of the money that DVD sales have lost, but even Blu-ray is only alive because of a game console, and the more money people spend on Wii, 360 and PS3 hardware and software, that’s less money they have to spend on movies. It is now a highly efficient process to extract money from consumers, and so there’s little room to get people to spend more money, which is what Blu-ray was all about. Not more money, but money better spend, is what people want, and you can’t really beat the interactive goodness and the longevity the average game provides, rather than the (rather short) 2 hour movie, even if it is in glorious HD (and games are now too, don’t forget). 

GamingThis brings us nicely into gaming. Let’s start with something a little more tasteful, and that’s the news of another PS3 firmware update. Version 2.6 adds a photo gallery, plus DivX 3.11 support. As usual, wait until other willing guinea pigs have sacrificed their PS3s before attempting to update, and also be careful of the well known, but unacknowledged (at least officially), firmware update bug that’s borked more PS3s than any other problem, mine included.

Then we come to the less tasteful stuff, all from Sony (or at least SCE Chairman Kazuo Hirai) as they try to defend their pretty terrible set of figures from the latest NPD figures (all PlayStation hardware actually sold less in November and then in December, then the same months last year – the only game consoles to suffer this fate even in these harsher economic situations).  First up, he bashes the Xbox 360 and Wii by saying that the 360 will soon be forgotten, no doubt in the long shadow the PS3 will cast over the entire gaming industry (my words, not his), and that the Wii isn’t even considered a competitor to the mighty PS3. No, that doesn’t sound arrogant at all, why do you ask?

The "soon to be forgotten" Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 in 2nd half of 2008

The "soon to be forgotten" Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 in 2nd half of 2008

I mean the Wii has only outsold the PS3 by 7 million consoles in 2008 (in the US), which is actually more than the total number of PS3 sold (that’s right, the number of Wii’s sold minus the number of PS3’s sold in the US in 2008 is larger than the total number of PS3’s in existence over there). And the soon to be forgotten Xbox 360, which even outsold the PSP, let alone the PS3, only has double the number of consoles in people’s homes than the PS3, and only had 31% of the top 10 games sold last year, compared to the PS3’s mighty 5.77%.

And that’s not all folks. Hirai continues by saying that the PS3 has been made intentionally hard for programmers because they want developers to take longer to do what the PS3 is capable of doing, to extend the life of the PS3. Gobsmackingly hilarious, but it does explain why most multi-platform games are the same or better on the 360, despite the 360’s inferior hardware. So Sony are admitting they made things harder for everyone so developers can produce sub-standard games at first and only produce games that’s worthy of the PS3 later on, all to make the PS3 last longer? How about making games that are great and better than the competition from launch (I know, controversial), so you can establish yourself as the dominant console for years to come. And better graphics and less buggy controls is not what people want anymore – it’s the innovative concept of the games that people want, and you don’t need 8 cell processors to allow this to happen (cf. Wii).  Of course, their strategy worked perfectly for the PS2, but you only have to look at what other consoles the PS2 was in competition at that time, and what the PS3’s competitors are this time round, to see why it might not work for the PS3. Plus the pricing differences between these consoles. 

Say the PS3 is a superior piece of hardware. Say that the PS3 was the last console to be released compared to the Wii and 360. Say that the PS3 is better value because it is also a high quality Blu-ray player. But don’t try to justify your mistakes, and the PS3’s many flaws, by making stuff up like this. And I still hold up hope that all of this is just lost in translations stuff, and not really what it appears to be right now.   

Sorry for the rant, but I’m not alone in thinking Sony aren’t doing all they can to make the PS3 the best console on the market, and it’s hard to hear them say that this was all intentional and part of their plan.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this week. Hope the year of the Ox is as good for you as it appears to be for us Monkeys, and that ox (bull) is a good omen for the stock markets. See you next year/week.

Game Consoles – NPD Sales Figures – 2008 Year in Review

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Now that the December 2008 NPD figures have been made available, and I have posted the analysis, I have now covered a complete year in terms of NPD figures and so it’s fitting to now take a look at 2008 through the NPD figures, but mainly concentrating on the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

The total hardware sales figures for 2008 are as follows:

  • Wii: 10,171,000
  • DS: 9,951,000
  • Xbox 360: 4,735,000
  • PSP: 3,829,500
  • PS3: 3,544,100
  • PS2: 2,502,700

This is a breakdown of these numbers, for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii:

NPD 2008: Console hardware sales breakdown

NPD 2008: Console hardware sales breakdown

As you can see, the Wii totally dominated, with the Xbox 360 having a slight lead over the PS3 thanks to the PS3’s stronger numbers at the beginning of the year and the Xbox 360’s stronger numbers towards to the end. To further illustrate this point, let’s have a look at the graphs for the Xbox 360/PS3, broken down for the first half of the year and then the second:

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 1st half of year

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 1st half of year

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 2nd half of year

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 2nd half of year

Quite a turnaround for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. PS3’s slight lead in the first half of 2008 turned into a big deficit in the second. 

Now let’s look at game sales. Looking only at the monthly number one titles, here there are:

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

The ‘sea of green’ will make Microsoft very happy indeed, although the Wii did very respectably with only two entries out of 12. Sony will be disappointed that Little Big Planet and Resistance did not take the number one spot. And with their only number one title occurring in the first half of the year, it further underlines the loss of momentum in the second half.

But only looking at the number one titles don’t really tell us all that much. By extending it to the top 10, we then have the following breakdown in terms of the number of titles sold for each format:

  • Wii: 22,077,100 (46.61%)
  • Xbox 360: 18,924,600 (39.95%)
  • PS3: 6,367,200 (13.44%)
NPD 2008: Monthly Top 10 Games

NPD 2008: Monthly Top 10

Nintendo’s domination is now showing up, because Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart always makes the top 10. The Xbox 360 is still holding on admirably, and the PS3 is doing better because it is now managing to get one or two titles in the top 10 (but as mentioned before, only once at the number one spot). 

But even just looking at the top 10 doesn’t give us a whole picture of the actual top 10 for the year (just the ones that made it to the top 10 for each month, so a game that’s number 11 for all 12 months might actually turn out to be the number one selling game of the year). Luckily, NPD provided the 2008 yearly top 10, and here they are:

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

The Wii domination is now fully showing, with the top 4 titles all Wii ones, but unfortunately for third party publishers, they’re all Nintendo titles. The second half of the table is dominated by the Xbox 360, but this time it’s better news for publishers as there’s only one Microsoft title (and that was actually Epic Games’). The poor showing for the PS3 continues, with only a single title in the top 10, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV (previously a PlayStation timed exclusive), a multi-platform release that was outsold by the Xbox 360 version by nearly a 1.7 to 1 margin.

So that’s 2008 in charts and graphs. Nintendo for the Gold, Xbox 360 for the Silver and the PS3 for the Bronze.

Game Consoles – December 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

The December 2008 NPD figures are in, and this month represents the peak in terms of sales before a huge drop off that will occur in January. It’s still the same picture as December, with everything up by compared to November. You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in December are below, ranked in order of number of sales (December 2007 figures also shown, including percentage change):

  • DS: 3,040,000 (Total: 28 million; December 2007: 2,470,000 – up 23%)
  • Wii: 2,150,000 (Total: 17.5 million; December 2007: 1,350,000 – up 59%)
  • Xbox 360: 1,440,000 (Total: 13.9 million; December 2007: 1,260,000 – up 14%)
  • PSP: 1,020,000 (Total: 14.4 million; December 2007: 1,060,000 – down 4%)
  • PS3: 726,000 (Total: 6.8 million; December 2007: 797,000 – down 9%)
  • PS2: 410,000 (Total: 43.6 million; December 2007: 1,120,000 – down 63%)
  • NPD December 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

    NPD December 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

    NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of December 2008)

    NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of December 2008)

    My prediction last month was:

    Steady as she goes, is my prediction for next month. I can’t see PlayStation Home, a beta at that, helping to sell too many PS3s, and with no price drops in view, I can’t see the current situation change much.

    And that’s largely the case. The only “surprise” is that the DS managed to outsell the Wii, which isn’t all that surprising because that’s what happened at the same time last year as well. Once again, we see the PlayStation console numbers in red because sales dropped compared to the same time last year – that’s now happened in both November and December so it’s definitely a trend, rather than an outlier. The good news for Sony is that the percentage difference between last year and now aren’t as bad as last month, with both the PSP and PS3’s percentage drops in single digits. The PS2 continues its slide into oblivion though, selling at only 37% of last year’s numbers (which admittedly, were still quite strong).

    More than 5 million units of Wii and DS were sold in December, which is simply amazing. Last year’s numbers were amazing enough too, at nearly 4 million combined, but the 3rd Christmas after the Wii’s release, it is selling even stronger. The greater sales numbers could be a sign that Wii manufacturing has finally caught up to demand, because availability over the previous two holiday periods was a major issue.

    The Xbox 360 did well, and managed to outsell last year’s respectable numbers. It just missed out on outselling the PS3 by a 2 to 1 margin, by 12,000 units, but if you had told Microsoft earlier in the year that they would be selling neck and neck with the PS3, let alone nearly doubling it in sales, they would have taken it. Not quite pulling a rabbit out of the hat, because price drops are easy but you can only do it so many times, but the change of direction early on in the year to try and emulate the Wii’s success seems to have paid off.  

    The less said about the PlayStation brand the better for this month. Sony will hope that future price cuts and their 10 year plan will start to bear fruit this year, and I think it will (the price cuts especially). 

    Otherwise there’s nothing else to be said that I didn’t already say last month, so let’s get to the software figures. Wii Play has been selling amazingly ever since it debuted, and this month is no exception, except it’s now the number 1 selling software of the month. To be fair, Wii Play is at an advantage compared to all other titles, because it really is a must-have for the Wii, and not even because of the actual software either. The Wii is a multi player console, and so almost everyone need to buy another Wii Remote and Wii Play is the perfect way to do it. Other than this, Call of Duty: World at War continues to sell strong, just like this time last year when CoD4 was the top selling title. And pretty much all of last month’s top 10’s returned, except for Resistance 2 and Wii Music. Both titles are replaced by the “oldie” Mario Kart DS, which is a bit of a surprise. The new Wii Animal Crossing title also did well. The Wii won comfortably this month by taking 55.9% of all sales in the top 10, compared to the Xbox 360’s 31.6%, and only 6.2% for the PS3. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

    1. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 1,460,000
    2. Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360, Activision Blizzard) – 1,330,000
    3. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 999,000   
    4. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 979,000
    5. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii, Activision Blizzard) – 850,000
    6. Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 745,000
    7. Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360, Electronic Arts) – 629,000
    8. Mario Kart (DS, Nintendo) – 540,000
    9. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3, Activision Blizzrd) – 533,000
    10. Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii, Nintendo) – 497,000

    Next month will see a huge drop in terms of sales, which is part of the usual cycle. Stock availability could affect sales, and usually the better selling consoles will do worse in January compared to the lower selling ones that still have plenty of stock left. So if Wii, DS and Xbox 360 sales struggle, while PS3 sales improve in comparison despite no popular new games or price cuts, then this is one possible explanation. 

    Another blog post will be up soon which looks at the 2008  in review.

    See you next month.

    Weekly News Roundup (18 January 2009)

    Sunday, January 18th, 2009

    Hello again. Yes, I’m still standing from my attack of the Shingles (hmm, title for new George Lucas movie perhaps?), although it was pretty bad earlier in the week. I got considerably better as the week went on, and I even had the energy to write a new guide for the newly released DivX Converter – the guide shows you how to make PS3/Xbox 360 compatible H.264/AAC videos using DivX Converter. It’s not the most feature rich encoding tool you’ll find, but if you need a quick and dirty H.264 encode, then it will do fine. Other than that, it was still a mostly quiet week.

    CopyrightOn with copyright news, the makers of RealDVD are still feeling confident that they can beat the MPAA. The trial is set to start next month, and it will prove to be an important one. Real Networks do have a point in that their software actually adds more DRM to DVDs, and does not attempt to remove or circumvent any existing measures. There is a valid point in which the MPAA makes (shocking, I know) in relation to the CSS license, and whether Real are allowed to decode CSS in the way they’re doing, but on the point of copy protection, RealDVD doesn’t make the movie any easier to distribute online – in fact, it makes it harder and I can’t see how the MPAA can argue against this. To be fair, a sticker on the DVD telling me not to copy it is a stronger copy protection method that the weak CSS algorithm.

    Only a couple of days until President-Elect Obama becomes President Obama. All eyes on the “change” that is supposed to be coming, and as posted last week, things are not looking great so far from a copyright perspective. However, things seems to be picking up on the Net Neutrality front and we might now get legislation to keep the Internet the way it is, as opposed to give control of it to big media and content owners.

    High DefinitionIn High Definition news, the economic crisis hits home this week as Circuit City closes its doors. Living in Australia, I have had no dealings with Circuit City apart from protesting their decision to support the defunct DIVX format (not to be confused with the DivX codec), as opposed to supporting DVD way back in 1998. But it just goes to show that nobody is immune, and Sony are especially exposed to the downturn due to their high costs in promoting both Blu-ray and the PS3.

    Circuit City has closed its doors

    Circuit City has closed its doors

    2008 has certainly been a year to forget for Sony, despite it getting off to a brilliant start. With the format war won, and PS3 sales beating the Xbox 360 back in February, things looked great. But then a couple of things happened (or didn’t happen), and Sony are now seen as one of the major losers of 2008. Blu-ray didn’t pick up as expected after HD DVD failed, and it has only now started to show it can hold its own against DVDs. In gaming, the Xbox 360 price cuts along with the never-ending Wii popularity meant that the only console the PS3 was able to beat was the PS2. And then the financial world collapsed, and all CE firms felt the impact, but especially Sony because they had two extremely expensive projects to support, both also facing serious competition from all over the place. Blu-ray seems to be standing on it’s own right now, although a lot of money is still being spent by Sony to promote it (see the Sony Blu-ray hardware promotions on Amazon.com). The PS3 still needs massive price cuts that will mean more losses for Sony in the short term at least. All they can do now is to keep their head down, take the loss and hope that in the meantime, the alternative media delivery systems and Nintendo/Microsoft haven’t taken control of the market by the time things improve.

    Cheaper and cheaper DVDs are causing headaches for studios

    Cheaper and cheaper DVDs are causing headaches for studios

    The point of Blu-ray was always to prop up dropping DVD profits, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. The latest figures show that Blu-ray and DVD sales combined dropped by 5.5% compared to 2007. This is despite Blu-ray posting a 178% increase in sales, because DVD sales dropped 7.3%. In my follow-up forum post, I broke down the numbers and worked out that for every $1 increase in Blu-ray sales, there’s a $5 drop in DVD sales. The problem is that even though each Blu-ray makes more money, every cent someone spends on Blu-ray automatically means less money spent on DVDs. People are not buying the same movie on both DVD and Blu-ray, and why would they? And while Blu-ray movies are more expensive than DVDs, this does not always translate into more profit, after higher manufacturing costs plus promotional costs are factored in. Another problem is that Blu-ray movie pricing are dropping as well, along with DVDs, and so people are getting more for their money than before – so they’re naturally spending less because one can only physically watch so many movies in a time period. If I can now buy 10 movies a week instead of one due to price drops, then I might not buy 10 movies and spend the same amount of money because I don’t think I can watch 10 movies in a week. And once people get a taste for cheap movies, they are less likely to buy more expensive ones, even if it offers better quality. They’ll just end up spending less and less, and this is exactly what the studios are trying to prevent. The solution? I think they have to make it more convenient to search for and get movies into people’s homes. If that means promoting online purchasing and instant delivery, like how MP3s have taken over from CDs, then so be it. Blu-ray is just too similar to DVDs and while this familiarity is great for getting people to adopt the format, it also means that same problems that DVDs have are not solved. At best, it will buy some time for the industry to come up with a new way of doing things, but as the sales figures show, it’s not really helping much at the moment.

    Or instead of going with the new, how about going with the extremely old? Panasonic thinks they’re onto a winner by combining good old VHS with Blu-ray. Seems a bit wrong to me, to be honest, a bit like still including a floppy drive with your latest i7 computer, at least one without a multi-card reader.

    GamingAnd finally in gaming, Microsoft says they don’t plan on releasing a new console anytime soon. They can still do a bit to improve the Xbox 360, which can still play games that offer excellent quality visuals, although any recent PC can beat it for graphics these days. Two words Microsoft, ‘cool’ and ‘quiet’ – make these two qualities of the Xbox 360, and you really won’t need to release a new console in the short term.

    3D is a big thing at this year’s CES, and Sony promises PS3 3D gaming. But wait, aren’t most PS3 games already 3D (or 4D, as Sony’s PR department claims)? No, these are actual 3D games where you wear those headache inducing glasses. This reminds me of the Asus VR-100 3D gaming system for the PC, and I nearly got one of those back in 1999. I’m all for immersion, but the Wii can do it with a $5 piece of equipment. And no headaches.

    A sneak preview of one of the graphics in my 2008 review: hardware sales numbers

    A sneak preview of one of the graphics in my 2008 review: hardware sales numbers

    I should have the NPD figures for December 2008 up next week – it’s slightly delayed because I’m also writing the year in review which will feature lots of nice graphs. I probably shouldn’t tell you the conclusion before I publish the article, but I think it’s fairly easy to guess what it is anyway. The Wii is the big winner, obviously. It was twice as popular as the Xbox 360, which itself was almost twice as popular as the PS3. Nintendo is the even bigger winner because the big software hits were theirs (thanks to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the usual suspects of Wii Play, Mario Kart and Wii Fit). The Xbox 360 game developers were the other big winners. There was only the single PS3 title in the yearly top 10, and that was the PS3 version of GTA IV which sold 1.4m copies less on the PS3 than on the Xbox 360. Nine out of the twelve monthly number one games were Xbox 360 ones, two were Wiis, and only a single number 1 hit for the PS3 (MGS4).

    Okey dokey, that’s it for this week. Hope 2009 has been pleasant for you so far, because it hasn’t really been that great for me thanks to the varicella-zoster virus. Curse you, stupid virii.