HorseRace
Latest
Dart-shooting contraption uncovered at Hong Kong horse racing track
It looks like some horses at Hong Kong's Happy Valley Racecourse narrowly averted a nasty surprise at the starting gate last week, after an elaborate remote-controlled device was discovered buried in the track prior to the start of last Wednesday's race. According to The New York Times, the contraption was rigged to shoot a dozen liquid-filled darts into the horses as they left the gate, although officials have apparently yet to determine exactly what the liquid consisted of. They're also not sure of the motivation of whoever is responsible for the device, although the speculation seems to be that it was an attempt to fix the race. Those with knowledge of the foiled plot could be in for even bigger winnings, however, with police now offering a $128,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest.
Gray Lady confirms Wii's early success
You can always count on the New York Times to confirm what most people have acknowledged as conventional wisdom weeks ago. To that end, the Gray Lady today has an article looking at the relatively warm welcome the Wii has received when compared to the PS3. The Times recounts more now-tired tales of hard-to-find Wiis, PS3s piled in shops, and the Wii's potential appeal to new gamers ("My husband broke a sweat playing golf on there," one mother declares). The biggest fireworks come from Sony spokesman Dave Karakker, who derisively calls the Wii an "impulse buy" and Nintendo marketing head Perrin Kaplan, who angrily argues that Sony's reports of slow Wii shipments are "absolutely inaccurate." Save it for the ring, fellas. Possibly the most notable thing about the article, though, is the absence of any practical discussion of the Xbox 360 and its effect on the next gen race. Sure, the 360 might seem like old news compared with the more recently released systems, but it does have a multi-million unit head start and just this past holiday saw a multi-platinum ultra-seller. Surely its impact warrants more than a passing mention in the eighth paragraph. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
Wii auctions outpacing PS3 on eBay
Cruising around eBay the other day for a deal on every single NES game, we stumbled across eBay Pop, a great little feature that lets you easily monitor the popularity and average selling price of various game consoles (and other products) on the world's most popular internet auction marketplace. Looking at the results for the past two weeks (above) we can see the Wii is the undisputed auction leader, selling over twice as many units as the PS3. That doesn't mean the Wii's dominance will last, though -- the number of PS3 auctions has shot up nearly 50 percent over the past two weeks, outpacing the Wii's increase by a good 20 percent. The Wii is also in the lead for price inflation, with auctions finishing at an average of 151 percent of the retail price. PS3 auctions average around 127 percent of retail (though this might be slightly higher when accounting for lower priced 20GB units) and, surprisingly, Xbox 360 premium auctions are selling at an average slightly less than the system's $399 retail price. Also surprisingly, more people seem to want the original NES than the 360 core system. Guess people really want that hard drive. While these stats aren't indicative of the entirety of internet auctions, or even directly relatable to actual in-store sales of the systems, the regularly updated numbers provide some good data for those of us who thrive on the horse race aspects of the console transition.
NY Times: Strong holiday for new consoles
The New York Times' Matt Richtel today takes a look at how the big three console makers did over the holiday season. Besides mentioning the now-familiar CES sales announcements from Sony and Microsoft, the story has some interesting quotes from analysts and retailers. Most surprising among those quotes might be confirmation from Gamestop COO Daniel A. DeMatteo that Playstation 3's are available at "hundreds" of the company's stores, while Wii consoles "virtually disappeared" when they came in. It's hard to evaluate this statement without knowing how many of each system Gamestop received -- indeed, analyst Paul-Jon McNealy notes earlier in the article how Sony "seems like they're really ramping up production." Still, the widespread reports of PS3s sitting on shelves does put a damper on Sony Senior VP Peter Dille's claim that "you can declare us a winner right now." We have to agree with Microsoft's David Hufford: "That sounds like spin." We'll see just how much spin when NPD releases its December sales numbers on Thursday. [Thanks Falafelkid]
Preliminary: Xbox 360 wins holiday sales battle [update 1]
The console sales horse race is more of a marathon than a sprint, but a Register report shows Microsoft edging out the competition in the all important holiday season. The report quotes preliminary NPD numbers mentioned on CNBC to show that Microsoft sold about 2 million Xbox 360s from Nov. 1 through Christmas day, beating out the Wii's estimated 1.8 million in sales. Sony lagged behind with an estimated 750,000 consoles sold through over the two months.A look at last month's numbers and some quick math shows that all three console makers picked up considerable steam going into Christmas, selling two-to-three times as many system in December as in November. The healthy numbers are also encouraging in light of last December's year-on-year decline in the game market as a whole.Consider these numbers to be hearsay until we can verify the actual NPD numbers later this month, but as it stands now it looks like a relatively un-merry Christmas for the PlayStation 3.[Thanks, Tom Stone][Update: Changed to reflect that Christmas may have been fine for Sony and their PlayStation brand as a whole. It only appears to be an un-merry Christmas for the PS3 ... but we won't know for sure until NPD verifies these numbers or releases their final report.]
