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Dark Souls 2 ships 1.2 million to West in first three weeks
Death factory Dark Souls 2 shipped out 1.2 million copies to North America and Europe in its three weeks at retail. From Software's action-RPG launched in early March, just ahead of Bandai Namco's fiscal year-end, so the shipping figures published today are as of March 31, 2014. That means they don't include last month's PC release, nor do they include sales in Japan because From self-published the game over there. With all that in mind, the third Souls game is showing good progress compared to its direct predecessor; Dark Souls took around a month to ship 1.5 million units worldwide. Around this time last year, From revealed total Dark Souls sales had risen to just under 2.4 million. Looking at Bandai's Namco's end-year report, Dark Souls 2 was Bandai Namco's strongest software performer across the 12 months, although Vita and PSP entry God Eater 2 proved a strong hit in Japan with 700,000 units shipped. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z shifted 620,000 units worldwide, while JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle hit 500,000 units ahead of its Western arrival last month. Bandai Namco's retail and arcade games contributed 155.5 billion yen to net sales, which converts to around $1.5 billion, and the company expects to hit similar numbers this fiscal year. Overall, Bandai Namco posted a net profit of 25 billion yen ($246 million), although that is down 22.6 percent year-on-year. However, the company expects that figure to rise by 11.8 percent for the coming fiscal year. [Image: Bandai Namco]
New Super Mario Bros. U ships 3.89M, Super Mario 3D World almost 2M
Between Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros .U, Nintendo's mustachioed mascot (whose year it wasn't) has shipped almost 6 million units on the Wii U. In figures revealed in the big N's financial briefing, NSMBU is now at 3.89 million for its lifetime shipments, while SM3DW is at around half of that with 1.94 million. Keep in mind that 2D Mario had the head-start on its 3D sibling when it launched alongside the Wii U, not to mention a much larger presence in system bundles. The Mario platformers are two of five Wii U games that have shipped more than a million so far this fiscal year - that's between April and December 2013, by the by. The other three launched after April, so their shipments for the period represent lifetime figures anyway. Coming in third behind the two Marios is yet another Mario, namely Mr. Luigi Mario with Super Luigi U. The green man's standalone expansion to NSMBU shipped 1.51 million after arriving in the summer. It wasn't just the year of Luigi because Wii Party U and Zelda: Wind Waker HD both got on in the act, shipping 1.24 million and 1.15 million respectively after their fall launches.
Dead Rising 3 ships 1 million
Dead Rising 3 shipped one million by the end of 2013, and looks on course to chainsaw through Capcom's initial targets. According to figures revealed by the publisher, the Xbox One launch game took total shipments for the zombicial series past the 7 million mark. As Capcom announced today, Dead Rising 3 smashed the million mark on December 20, 2013, around a month after the Xbox One launched. While shipments don't necessarily translate into sales to consumers, Capcom will be encouraged given the target it set of 1.2 million shipped by the end of March 2014. Like a well lopped zombie cranium, the news drops neatly alongside the arrival of the game's first DLC, the single-player prequel Operation Broken Eagle. According to Xbox's Larry Hyrb you can grab the DLC now, either for $10 on its own or as part of the $30 season pass that also covers the next three major add-ons.
Disney Magical World ships 500,000 in Japan
Disney Magical World shipments surpassed the 500,000 mark in Japan, proving that as far as the 3DS game is concerned, it's not such a small world after all. Alright, we admit we shoehorned that reference in, so try not to take the Mickey. The news (via Gematsu) comes just after Disney announced the game for North America; for the record, it's been out in Japan since August 2013, albeit under the less catchy but even cheerier moniker of Disney Magic Castle: My Happy Life. As for what such a happy life comprises, it's everything from meeting your favorite Disney characters and dressing up like them, to running a cafe and cultivating crops. If you can't wait to slip into a Minnie dress, the good news is that Disney Magical World hits retail shelves and the eShop in North America on April 11.
Monster Hunter 4 shipments rise to 4 million
Monster Hunter 4 continues to capture big numbers in Japan, with shipments (including downloadable sales) passing the 4 million mark at swift pace. The 3DS action-RPG gobbled up 3 million shipments a month after hitting Japan's retail shelves, and took just seven weeks to add another million to that burgeoning figure. Japan's love affair with all things Monster Hunter is evidenced by the series' total sales surpassing 28 million, but how many of those sales come from outside the country remains unclear. As does the matter of Monster Hunter 4 heading west or not; Capcom is still keeping shush about that.
PlayStation 3 up to 80 million consoles shipped worldwide
The PlayStation 3 passed the threshold of 80 million units shipped on November 2, just ahead of its successor's launch next week. Given the figure was 70 million this time last year, Sony shipped around 10 million PS3 consoles across the prior 12 months. To compare the PS3 with its rivals, the Xbox 360 just beat it to the 80 mill mark back in September. Of course, both consoles still sit way behind Nintendo's Wii, which reached the nine figures of 100 million in June. Another item of note from Sony's announcement is staggering, although it's difficult to quantify exactly. According to the company, the number of "software titles" released for the PS3 is 4,332 as of the end of September 2013 - that's excluding downloadable games. We'd have to think there's a fair few different versions of games in there, but it's still a huge number, even if the console is coming up to its 7th birthday. To the people who've played all 4,332 games, we salute you, you crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy people.
Monster Hunter 4 ships 3 million in a month
More than three million shipments a month after it was released shows Japan is very much in love with Monster Hunter 4. The monster figure includes all download sales of the 3DS game, which was released in the country on September 14. To top it off, the series' total sales are now more than a whopping 26 million. You only have to wander around Tokyo with a 3DS to realize how doolally Japan is for Capcom's action-RPG. 53 of the 158 people that I StreetPass-ed during our Tokyo Game Show trip were playing Monster Hunter 4 (yup, I just counted it), and that was the week after it came out. A fair proportion of the rest were clinging on to MH3 Ultimate.
Apple hits three-year low in smartphone marketshare, shipment figures reveal
Fresh reports on the state of the cellphone market during Q2 2013 have blown through the barn door, and industry analysts are flaunting some fairly impressive figures. Smartphones have outsold their less-intelligent brethren for the second quarter in a row, and Strategy Analytics says shipments hit a record-breaking 237.9 million. According to IDC, Samsung managed to ship a total of 72.4 million smartphones during Q2 -- a 43.9% boost year-over-year -- with help of the Galaxy S 4 and price cuts to the GS3. To put that in perspective, that's more than double the 31.2 million iPhones Apple managed to ship, and Strategy Analytics claims this marks a three-year low in Cook and Co.'s marketshare. While LG and ZTE each occupy third and fifth place, respectively, Lenovo pushed Huawei out of the number four slot by sending out 11.3 million handsets. If you're craving for more stats, hit the break for a trio of press releases.
Canalys: Android nabbed 75 percent of smartphone shipments in Q1
Canalys is back with its latest worldwide estimates of mobile device shipments, and while the analyst group has a divisive way of combining figures, there's plenty of insight to discover in its breakdown of the smartphone and tablet realms. First off, Canalys reports that Android accounted for 75.6 percent of all smartphone shipments during Q1, which is an increase from the 69.2 percent it reported for the previous quarter. As a whole, Canalys estimates that 216.3 million smartphones were shipped during Q1, which is roughly steady when compared to the three months prior. It should come as no surprise, but Samsung is said to lead the category with nearly a third of all smartphone shipments, while Apple accounted for roughly 17 percent of the pie. Meanwhile, Huawei, LG and ZTE are next in line, each with less than 5 percent of the market. Given the prevalence of the iPad, you could just as easily guess that Apple continues to dominate the tablet category and still be right. Here, Canalys estimates that Apple holds a 46.4 percent market share, but qualifies that win, as that the company is losing ground to its Android-based rivals. On the upside, Canalys reckons that the tablet market has more than doubled from the previous year, which means there's plenty of pie to go around. [Image credit: Jon Fingas, Flickr]
Smartphones out-shipped feature phones for the first time ever worldwide, says IDC
Q1 2013 marks the first time that smartphones made up the majority of cellphones shipped across the world, according to numbers from industry analyst IDC. 216 million handsets with computer-like functionality left factories compared to 419 million total, making up a solid 51.6 percent of the pie. Another trend spotted by the pollster was the emergence of Chinese phone makers, particularly ZTE and Huawei, who've notably displaced Blackberry and Nokia in the top five for smartphones sold. Meanwhile, Samsung improved its lead over Apple in smartphone shipments over last quarter, jumping from 29 percent to a 32.7 percent share in Q1, while Apple slid from 23 percent to 17.3 percent. Sony dropped out of the top 5 in that category, while LG surged to 3rd place at 10.3 million units shipped, with Huawei and ZTE rounding out the top 5. Meanwhile, Samsung and Nokia continued to dominate overall cellphone shipments with a 27.5 and 14.8 percent share of the overall market, respectively. However, Nokia itself isn't too optimistic about the feature phone portion of those sales continuing, as it mentioned in its last financial statement. And the fact that people are happy to surf the web on their phones? As we've seen, that doesn't bode too well for the computer industry.
Strategy Analytics: Microsoft's share of tablet market quadrupled after Windows 8
Say what you like about Windows 8, but before it arrived Microsoft's presence in the tablet sphere was as small as it was stagnant. By the reckoning of number-crunchers at Strategy Analytics, just 400,000 Windows-running slates were shipped globally in Q3 of last year -- a figure that was largely unchanged from the year before and which represented just 1.6 percent of the global tablet market. Six months later, now that the Windows-powered Acers, Lenovos and Surfaces of this world have had a chance to get their game on, Microsoft's share has quadrupled to 7.5 percent, with a total of 3 million Windows 8 and RT tablets shipped in Q1 2013. That's still pretty niche, but 3 million units would have equated to a bigger share were it not for the fact that the overall tablet market also grew over this period, from 25 million to 41 million units -- and at least Microsoft can now claim to be a part of that boom. Look past the break for the numerical breakdown.
IDC: connected device shipments up 29.1 percent in 2012, smartphones and tablets rule
Researchers at IDC have had their ears to the ground keeping tabs on shipments for specific types of devices, and now they've painted a bigger picture of the hardware battlefield in 2012. "Smart connected devices" -- a category which includes desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones -- saw a total of 367.7 million units shipped in Q4 2012, up 28.3 percent from the year before. In total, over 1.2 billion units were shipped last year, marking a 29.1 percent upswing from 2011. Naturally, tablets and smartphones drove the boost by carving out roughly 60 percent of the year's combined marketshare, while PCs and notebook shipments sank by 4.1 and 3.4 percent, respectively. While Samsung and Apple each claimed crowns in specific gadget divisions, Sammy came out on top with smart connected devices in 2012 as a whole (and in Q4) thanks to a 20.8 percent marketshare, beating Cupertino by 2.6 percent. Lenovo finished in third place with a 6.5 percent slice, while HP and Dell trailed behind with 4.8 and 3.2 percent, respectively. IDC notes that Cook. and Co. could have come in a more distant second, but the debut of the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini pulled it out of a slump from earlier in the year.
iMac ship times lengthen in Europe
Ship times for Apple's latest generation iMac slipped to four to six weeks for the 27-inch model and three to four weeks for the 21.5-inch model in some European Apple Stores. As noted by MacGeneration, these changes first appeared in France on Monday. A quick check of other European stores suggest this delay affects most of Europe. Unlike the iPad and iPhone which sold like hotcakes, Apple's Mac shipments in Q1 2013 slipped by 700,000 units. This decrease was attributed in part to cannibalization by the iPad. Supply constraints also hindered Apple's ability to deliver the new iMacs in a timely manner. "We believe our Mac sales would have been much higher absent those constraints," said CEO Tim Cook during the company's latest earnings conference call. [Via AppleInsider]
iOS, Android grab 92% of smartphone shipments
The smartphone market is quickly boiling down into a two-party system, so to speak, with both iOS and Android picking up a whopping 92 percent of smartphone shipments over the last quarter of 2012. In 2011, 32 percent of smartphone shipments consisted of other operating systems, like Windows Phone, RIM's Blackberry or Symbian. But in the last year that number has shrunk, to the point where only 7 percent of smartphones shipping are not iOS or Android, and it seems unlikely to rise again. In the same time period, about 20 percent of smartphones shipped were iOS devices, as compared to 70 percent of devices shipped being Android. That may make it seem like Apple is losing a lot of market share, to Google's operating system. And that may be true, but let's not forget why: not only do Android phones tend to be cheaper (which means device makers can make and sell more), but there are also dozens of Android devices available from nearly as many companies, as opposed to Apple's relatively small (and, of course, exclusive) product line. As a platform, Android is shipping more smartphones than Apple is. But comparing the two isn't necessarily the best comparison, especially as a factor of Apple's success in the smartphone market. Regardless, this report shows that the smartphone market in general is more mature than ever: there are currently two big players in terms of smartphone operating systems, and it's going to be harder and harder for anyone else to gain a foothold in the future. [via TMO]
IDC: Samsung extends lead over Apple in smartphone marketshare, while Huawei and ZTE increase influence
Right off the heels of too many financial reports and yet more smartphone research, IDC has weighed in with its own thoughts and analysis, noting that demand for smartphones is -- unsurprisingly -- not letting up. While the global market for mobile phones grew by 1.9 percent in the last quarter, "strong holiday smartphone sales" meant that units shipped were almost equal that of cheaper feature phones. 219.4 million smartphones shipped -- 45.5 percent of all phone shipments -- was slightly below IDC's optimistic predictions for Q4, but it's still been a notable quarter for new competitors like Huawei, which elbowed LG out from the top 5. IDC's senior analyst Kevin Restivo puts it down to Huawei's advantage in low-cost devices, not to mention its placement within China -- a country that can't get enough of phones. ZTE also placed within IDC's Top 5 smartphone vendor leaderboard in the last quarter, with a 4.3 percent marketshare, although Samsung (29 percent) and Apple (21.8 percent) continued to dominate the top spots. Samsung saw a 76 percent increase since Q4 2011, extending its lead over the iPhone maker, while Huawei, now third, saw an 89.5 percent year-on-year increase on its smartphone shipments. Estimates on Sony's shipments place it fourth, with a decent 55.6 percent change since the same quarter in 2011. Annual smartphone sales saw a more familiar pecking order, with Samsung, Apple, Nokia, HTC and RIM filling the lead positions. Year-on-year changes for Nokia, HTC and RIM were negative, likely affected on both sides by the aforementioned champions and new contenders -- the Finnish phone maker dropped shipments by 54.6 percent according to IDC's figures. Prefer your metrics and year-on-year changes tabled? Well, we've added both the quarterly and annual summaries right after the break.
PS3 up to 70 million shipped worldwide, Move over 15 million
PlayStation 3 worldwide shipments reached the 70 million mark as of November 4, Sony announced today. The figure is confirmed as being "sell-in," meaning it represents the amount of units sold to retailers rather than to customers. Sony also revealed Move, the PS3's motion controller, is now up to 15 million shipped as of November 11.The announcement comes shortly after Microsoft confirmed Xbox 360 reached the same milestone in its latest earnings report, The current-gen home console leader is the Wii, up to 97.2 million as of September 30. Sony also announced worldwide sales of PS3 software is now over 595 million. A bit of quick maths says that equates to around 8 and a half games per console shipped. As for what exactly constitutes half a game, we'll leave the suggestions to you.
Matrix One gets delayed at customs, manufacturer suspends new orders of $90 tablet
In early August, we reported that the Matrix One $90 tablet was finally available for sale, but it now seems that the celebration was a bit pre-mature. Anyone who might've ordered the bargain bin slate must now wait for the company to move through a mess of red tape, as Matrix One has revealed that all of its shipments have been delayed at customs. While the company hasn't given any specific reason for the holdup, it's since suspended the ordering process as it waits for the current shipments to clear. For its part, Matrix One states that it's diligently working toward a resolution and promises to provide further updates as they become available. If you're concerned about your order, feel free to hit up the company directly. You'll find everything you need in Matrix One's full statement after the break. [Thanks, Michael]
Apple reportedly changing some iPad mini ship dates
Apple has been tweaking some of the reported delivery dates for its new iPad mini products, according to reports from a few people who've preordered the LTE-enabled version of the devices. Originally, Apple was reporting a ship date of November 23 for most of the day-one preorders, but that date has since been changed online to "mid-November." That most likely means that Apple is already running out of early shipments, essentially delaying delivery of the units by a few days or even more. Apple has already predicted shortages for some products, so this news isn't exactly unexpected. This is probably little consolation to folks who can't wait to get their fingers on the new iPad mini, but it's a good problem for Apple to have.
IDC: Samsung and Apple still kings of the smartphone market, Nokia loses top five spot to RIM
IDC's third quarter figures are in, complete with a few unexpected shake-ups. The entire cellphone market grew 2.4% over the same time last year, but smartphones drove the majority of that, showing growth of 45.3% and beating the analysts' expectations. Of the 179.7 million smartphones shipped, Samsung and Apple devices accounted for almost half of them, with the companies retaining their number one and two positions in the market, respectively. IDC notes that iPhone shipments didn't increase, but this is somewhat expected given the latest iteration was released only a short time before the end of the quarter. What we find particularly interesting is that Nokia was ousted from the top five smartphone players and replaced by RIM. Whether Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices will put it back in contention remains to be seen, as does the effect BB10 and RIM's new handsets will have on the market. ZTE finished fourth in the list thanks to increased sales in North America, with HTC rounding up the top five vendors with continued uptake of its power devices. With a bunch of new handsets coming to the table and the holiday season fast approaching, look out for even more surprises in the fourth quarter numbers, due early next year.
Gartner and IDC: PC shipments tumbled over 8 percent in Q3, only ASUS and Lenovo escaped unhurt
We don't often summarize market share in one word, but: ouch. Both Gartner and IDC have trotted out their preliminary estimates for PC market share in the third quarter, and the two agree that this summer was a dire one for the traditional computer. Outside of ASUS and Lenovo, whose price-focused strategies and key acquisitions kept them ahead of rivals, virtually every major vendor saw its PC shipments collapse versus a year ago, often by more than 10 percent. Total worldwide shipments declined by more than 8 percent in either estimate -- enough to make a flat second quarter seem rosy by comparison. Lenovo took the top spot in Gartner's study, although IDC is counting workstations and kept HP in its usual lead. As for the US, it's almost better that we don't look. Gartner and IDC believe that the American market sank by respective 13.8 or 12.4 percent amounts, and the steep global declines repeated themselves in the one country for everyone but Lenovo. Even a market share gain for Apple came only because its shipments dropped at a gentler rate than most of its peers. Whether it's the US or worldwide, don't assume that inventory clearances ahead of Windows 8 were the only factors at work, though. Both research teams point to continuing world economic troubles as influences, and IDC contends that buyers are still skipping PCs in favor of smartphones and mobile tablets. There's often a jump in computer sales between the summer and the fall, especially with a new OS on the way, but we wouldn't count on a return to the halcyon days.
