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App Store algorithms down and back up, probably tweaked
Regular users may not have noticed this, but I'm sure developers have -- the App Store's charts have been in a freeze for the past few days, leaving apps in exactly the same positions as they were last Thursday. That might not seem like too big a deal, but for many developers, the App Store charts are where they make or break a profit -- not only do the charts provide a good inkling of how popular an app is compared to others, but the top 10 on the charts provides a huge amount of exposure -- just getting in the top 10 often boosts app sales just by virtue of the extra eyeballs. For the past few days, though, the App Store charts haven't changed, and that usually means that Apple is messing with something, either tweaking the way the charts are calculated, or just plain changing the way that they work. Last year the company fixed an issue where developers could constantly update their apps to keep them on "Recently Released" charts, but this year we haven't quite figured out what changes have been made. At any rate, it seems likely Apple was simply getting things ready for what's sure to be a busy holiday season for the App Store. Hopefully developers who released their apps on Halloween didn't fall too far through the cracks while things were down.
Trainyard's tale on the App Store
About four days ago, I was sitting in a waiting room about to board a train. Bored, and a little restless, I pulled out my iPhone 3G to take a look at the App Store and see if there was anything new that I could download to kill some time. Recently, I'd almost given up on visiting the App Store. With the frustrating performance of my 3G, downloading apps and using them had become more of an endured task than a pleasure. But, on this particular day, I went straight to the UK free download charts hoping for a gem. My eyes immediately scouted the star ratings, and I was quickly drawn to an app that I'd never seen before called Trainyard Express. I think, at the time, the app had a four star rating, well above some of its contemporaries that were similarly placed on the chart. Skipping over the blurb and taking a quick look at the pictures, I thought, this could be a game I actually might enjoy. I like puzzles, and I like trains. So, since I was about to get on one, I downloaded the app. To say the least, I was truly surprised at what a fantastic game I had found. I was totally engrossed for the duration of my journey, not to mention repeatedly returning to the game in the coming days. I enjoyed it so much that I got my wife to download it, too. Why was I so pleased with the game? Two major things struck me. The first being that I was bowled over by how good the game actually is. To me, it's engrossing, looks great, and is a pleasure to play. And secondly, I was delighted to have downloaded a game for free that has so much to offer. That is such a rarity these days that it only reinforced my positive perception of the game. On Tuesday, Matt from Struct.ca, the developer of the game, posted the story (so far) of Trainyard. Matt explains the journey he went through in developing the game as well as the highs and lows of getting Trainyard discovered on the App Store. Since I enjoyed discovering the game for myself so much, it's particularly interesting to read Matt's story of Trainyard being discovered. So, grab a cup of coffee and take five to read the blog post here. Then, go and try the free version of Trainyard Express for yourself. If you like that, go and download the paid version at just £0.59 - I just did. You can catch a demo video after the break.
IDC: Apple's now third largest PC vendor in US with 10.6 percent market share
Apple might be billing its next big event as "Back to the Mac," but don't let that fool you into thinking its computer platform has been waning. Quite to the contrary, according to IDC, which reports the Cupertino team has grabbed third spot in the US PC sales charts with a 10.6 percent market share, bumping the incumbent Acer into fourth. Two million Mac shipments during the period represented an increase of 24.1 percent relative to last year, while the overall PC market turned in a somewhat morose 3.8 percent growth. Gartner's also unleashed its numbers unto the world today, giving Acer the lead for third by the slimmest of margins, but both stat teams agree that the Taiwanese vendor has suffered a bad year along with Dell, which has also experienced some shrinkage. Toshiba's the only major Windows machine seller to see its fortunes improve with double-digit growth, while HP seems to be hanging on to the top spot nice and steadily. Hit the source links for worldwide numbers.
AMD Radeon HD 6770 and 6750 spec sheets emerge, give NVIDIA cause for concern
Alright AMD, we still haven't forgiven you for burying the glorious name that was ATI, but if your next GPU refresh is as mighty as these numbers indicate, we might at least let you in from the doghouse. A slide detailing two flavors of the upcoming 40nm Barts chip has sprouted up from two independent sources online, and it shows some appreciable gains between generations. The new HD 67x0 cards appear manifestly speedier than their predecessors -- with faster clocks, more texture units, and more ROPs -- but the fun really gets going when you compare them to the HD 5870 and 5850, AMD's previous high-end cards. Memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate are identical between the HD 6750 and 5850, while the HD 6770 even manages to beat the formerly imperious 5870 in a couple of areas. Of course, this is all still unconfirmed information, but considering that Barts is only an "upper midrange" chip that's already stepping on the toes of last year's finest, we feel safe in expecting some pretty big things from the flagship Cayman silicon when it lands -- which will be soon if all these leaks and rumors are anything to go by. [Thanks, Vygantas]%Gallery-103368%
How-to: figure out the best value iPhone 4 contracts in the UK (updated)
Choices, choices. Do you get the 16GB or 32GB iPhone 4? The black one now or the white one a little later? We can't tell you which variant of Apple's next phone will hold its value best over the coming months, but we can try to clear up a bit of the fogginess surrounding price plans on offer from UK networks. Orange and O2 are the first to drop handset pricing and full contract details, but they haven't made it easy for the discerning buyer, with each carrier offering more than a dozen options. Vodafone, T-Mobile, Three, and even Tesco Mobile are set to follow suit in the coming days and weeks, but we thought we'd get the ball rolling with the pair we have now. Update: And just as we publish this, Voda has gone official with its tariffs. We've now broken them down into a more digestible format as well. Just for you. Update 2: Tesco Mobile has also outed its pricing and it's by far the best of the bunch. Check out the full chart inside the post. Update 3: Three's iPhone 4 pricing has now also been made known.
Paid apps do better in the charts than free ones
Recently, we've seen a big trend of apps on the App Store going free because free apps tend to garner more attention and downloads (and in-app purchases mean that there's still a possibility of making a profit down the line). However, it turns out that there is one benefit of sticking with a paid app: they stay on the top of the charts for a longer period of time. Data (provided by a company called Distimo) for the month of May in the App Store shows that paid apps are "stickier" on the App Store charts; while free apps only lasted a little over a week, some paid apps stayed on the top of the charts for over a hundred days. Why is this? My guess is that it involves something that we've heard a lot of talk about, which is that the habits of paying customers are different from those of "free app" customers. Customers who pay for apps are more likely to leave thoughtful reviews and spread the word about a worthwhile app, both of which will extend the time that an app is popular. Customers who use a lot of free apps tend to buy and dispose of apps quickly, while customers who pay are more likely to find the ones they like and stick with them for a while. After all of the big news about free apps, it's interesting to hear that there are still reasons to stick with paid. As the App Store continues to develop, there are multiple working models for software sales unfolding.
What to do when your Numbers' charts don't paste correctly
The iWork suite of apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) play nice with each other -- for the most part. Objects such as shapes, text boxes and tables created in one app can easily be copied and pasted onto another and retain their styles. Even an image with an instant alpha filter applied will retain its transparency when pasted onto another iWork app. However, the iWork apps don't always play nice with each other when it comes to charts. In particular, copying a chart created in Numbers and pasting it onto either a Keynote presentation or Pages document doesn't always bring the chart's legend with it respective to how it looked in Numbers. Sometimes, the legend may be misaligned, and sometimes it may even show up on a completely different page in the document. To address this annoyance, just highlight all of the elements (the entire chart and the legend, or anything else you want retained) of the chart that you'd like to copy. Then click on Numbers "Arrange" menu and select "Group" (or hit Command-Option-G). Now, the legend of your chart retains its alignment when pasted onto either a Keynote presentation or a Pages document. To alter or undo this, just select "Ungroup" (Command-Option-Shift-G) from the same file menu.
Final Fantasy XIII sales plunge in Japan
According to unofficial sales numbers from Japan, Final Fantasy XIII has fallen down to number four on the sales list over there, after a very big million-plus release day and a record-breaking first week. But otaku take heart: even though sales of the game dropped over a million units in the second week, this wasn't unexpected. Final Fantasy games always tend to take a dip after the "day one purchase" audience gets their copies. The last iteration of the series took a 1.5 million unit hit in week two. But even with the lower sales, about 200,000 copies were traded for the appropriate cost in yen, which indicates Square Enix is likely still on track to meet or exceed its six million target worldwide. That's a lot of chocobos. %Gallery-41346%[Via Kotaku]
Math problem: Average winning roll
Here's a question that occurred to me while I was walking home from the subway recently: What's the average winning roll in a five-man group, assuming everyone rolls? That is, if you randomly chose five numbers between one and 100, what is the expected value of the highest one? I know a bit of statistics, but I really don't know how to begin getting at that one. However, I do know how to write a script that will calculate the answer. (Yes, these numbers are only pseudorandom, but I did some limited testing with real random numbers (from random.org) and the results were the same. Besides, I'm pretty sure Ruby's Mersenne twister pseudorandom generator is good enough for testing distributions like this.) The average winning roll out of a group of five people is 82.8 83.8 83.3 (tested over many, many repetitions). Now can any mathemagicians tell me why? The graph above, in case it isn't clear, is average winning roll on the y-axis vs number of people rolling on the x-axis, tested over 100,000 trials for each group (the relatively small sample size is why the first point is not right at 50, and probably why the curve is a little wobbly).
Laptop reliability survey: ASUS and Toshiba win, HP fails
Boy, do we have a nice slab of data for you to sink your teeth into today. The 3-year service history of more than 30,000 laptops has been pored over, analyzed, and reduced to gorgeous comparative charts, which you know you're dying to know more about. We should note, however, that the service was provided by SquareTrade, whose primary business is selling extended warranties, but that shouldn't completely prejudice us against reaching conclusions on the basis of the presented facts. Firstly, netbooks have shown themselves to be on average 20 percent less reliable than entry-level laptops, which in turn are 10 percent more likely to break down than premium machines. In other words, you get what you pay for -- shocking, right? The big talking point, though, will inevitably be the manufacturer comparison chart above: here ASUS and Toshiba (rather appropriately) share the winners' spoils, while HP languishes in the ignominious last place, with more than a quarter of all laptops expected to suffer a hardware fault of some kind within three years. So, does your experience corroborate / refute this info? Keep it gentlemanly, okay?
October NPD: Uncharted 2 takes top spot while hardware sales slow down
After the last two months of price drop-fueled sales surges, it's almost comforting to see all these red arrows. Hardware sales are down 17% from last month and down 10% from the year prior, with only the Wii maintaining any upward momentum as we head into the two busiest shopping months of the year. The PS3 lost the highest percentage, but that's hardly surprising following last month's meteoric 134% spike in sales. On the software side of things, the exceptionally well-received PlayStation 3-exclusive Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took top honors, selling 537K units in just the second half of October. Of course, Sony told us earlier today that the title has broken the coveted million mark (worldwide?) with November sales factored in. The multiplatform Borderlands makes a similarly impressive showing, taking third on Xbox 360 with 418K units sold; however, when you factor in the 113K units sold of the not-top-ten PS3 version (data provided graciously by NPD), you find an impressive 531K in cumulative sales, just missing the top spot. NBA 2K10 had a strong showing with 524K in cumulative sales, "outselling last year's NBA 2K9 by 60% in its launch month" reports the NPD, while last month's champ, Halo 3: ODST, dropped to sixth with 271K in sales. With just four days on shelves in October, Forza Motorsport 3 made a strong showing at #8 with 175K. Slightly less strong was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days' ninth-place showing despite a full month on the shelf. And in last place is the worldwide phenomenon known as FIFA 10 (or, in North America, FIFA Soccer 10). While FIFA 10 may be the "fastest selling sports game ever" in Europe, selling 1.7m in its first week, over here we bought up just 156K copies in a little over a week. -Wii: 507K44K (+10%) -DS: 458K66K (-13%) -PS3: 321K171K (-35%) -360: 250K103K (-29%) -PSP: 175K15K (-8%) -PS2: 118K28K (-19%) Check out the software sales chart after the break.
Gamasutra breaks down console sales in light of price cuts
Source: NPD Group; via Gamasutra If you're like us -- and, we figure after all these years we've been secretly brainwashing you, you are -- then the recent console price cuts were met with your curiosity over how these discounts would affect the vast gaming sales landscape. Fortunately, Gamasutra has posted a chart (using NPD figures) that measures how the price cuts altered two factors: each console's average sale price during the month of September and its year-to-date sales (through September). This first figure proves the most telling about how the market reacted to the slashed prices. For instance, the average price at which PS3s were purchased in September was a flat $300; meaning an overwhelming majority of buyers responded favorably to the discount. Though the price of the Wii didn't get cut until the last week of September, the console's average price dropped to $218 -- also indicative of a reactionary market surge. The average Xbox 360 purchased price, however, actually increased by a buck to $261. By Gamasutra's calculations, folks purchased three Elites ($300) for every Arcade model ($200) sold during the month. The PS3 was the top-selling console in September, which is the first time it's ever managed a first-place sales finish. It's still in last place in the 2009 year-to-date totals, though, and Sony's system would need to outsell Xbox 360 by about 35,000 units every week until the end of the year to break even with its competitor. Passing up the Wii, however, would require an act of divine intervention -- Nintendo's console is currently sitting on YTD sales of 4 million, which is more than twice the total of PS3 sales.
BG Hero tracks your battleground activity
I'm really impressed with BG Hero. We take a look at these stats sites pretty often, but I have never seen a site targeted strictly at PvP data like this one, and with such a clean and interesting view. Unfortunately, it's still getting off the ground, so we're probably going to give the server a run for its money with this link, but give it a few days and head back there when they've smoothed things out.It'll track your plays and wins in each BG, obviously, but you can also get a whole bunch of graphs and numbers about how you're doing each time you play, including HKs per BG, and killing blows per battleground that you play. The app also tracks your totals daily and weekly, so if you get your character in there and let it update over a period of time, you can see just how you're doing. Pretty amazing stuff if you've been playing a lot of battlegrounds lately (and with the extra XP in there, why wouldn't you?). We're told the site is still being worked on, so expect more updates soon (and Phood is keeping info flowing on his blog), but in the meantime, it looks like a great way to look at your BG progress in more detail.
Wii Sports Resort barely bests Wolfenstein in the UK
We're not sure what's more impressive: That a cricket game was actually outselling Wii Sports Resort for two weeks in the UK, or that Nintendo's latest minigame melange only outsold Wolfenstein by 2,000 copies for the week of August 16 to 22. That's what the latest numbers and report from Chart Track show, placing the id Software / Raven shooter at the top of the PS3, 360 and PC charts for its first week on sale.We'll have to wait for NPD's numbers to see how the FPS fared on this side of the pond, but it's pretty obvious that -- the world over -- everybody loves killing some Nazis. Take a peek after the break to see what else the Brits have been buying up lately.Source -- Chart Trak, week ending 8/22Source -- Wii Sports Resort keeps Wolfenstein at bay
Nielsen: 360 has most 'active users' in 2009, Wii has fewest
We imagine those six multicolored lines you see above are going to cause quite a stir among the various fanboy contingencies -- they represent the percentage of "active users" on different consoles in the first half of 2009, according to survey data compiled by Nielsen. As you can see, the Xbox 360 dominated the charts, while the ubiquitously successful Wii came in dead last by a huge margin, ranking below the PS2, original Xbox and GameCube.Our initial reaction to this data was that Nielsen is high on pot, but we can kinda understand what caused the Wii's disappointing placement on the list -- the chart is tracking the percent of console owners who use their gaming hardware on a regular basis. Everyone and their dog owns a Wii by this point, but very few actually play them consistently, according to Nielsen's findings. Meanwhile, there's only a handful of GameCubes out there that haven't been converted into lunchboxes, and their owners apparently use them a bit more frequently.If you're looking for a more straightforward breakdown of console usage, Nielsen also figured the overall usage totals for each console. That chart's posted after the jump. (You'll find it slightly above the deluge of inflammatory comments.)[Via IndustryGamers]
Surprise! Final Fantasy VII tops June PSN charts
The top 10 chart for PSN releases in the month of June is now out, and it's quite an interesting list. It's no surprise that Final Fantasy VII is sitting pretty at the top, but we're intrigued to see that Wolfenstein 3D managed to hit the number two spot. Not only that, but it beat out Metal Gear Solid, which got no higher than number four, directly below Resident Evil, which released in May. So PS1 games seem to be selling pretty well. After two years of consumers clamoring for more PS1 classics, we're not surprised, but hopefully this will spur publishers to release more in the near future.
Fight Night Round 4 knocks out its UK chart competitors
So it turns out Fight Night Round 4 is a real hit over in the UK. A real hit. That's a joke. What isn't a joke is that the game is enjoying a second week at the number one spot, despite competition from Tiger Woods Pro Tour 10, which debuted at number 2. We say "competition," but no matter which one you buy the money's still going in EA's pocket -- something that doesn't happen when you buy Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which surged from number 6 to number 3 this week.The bundling of Wii MotionPlus with Tiger Woods doesn't seem to have impacted too much on sales, as it debuted at number 4 in the Wii charts. Grand Slam Tennis -- which is also bundled with MotionPlus -- swapped places with EA Sports Active, jumping from number 3 to number 2. None of which seem to be able to get close to that other Wii peripheral, Wii Fit, which sits comfortably at the top of the Wii chart, as usual.
Gamer DNA: Plenty of market opportunity in MMOs [part 2]
Another good measure of player engagement is by the average number of hours in a particular play session. Remember what I said about EQ2 being a success by any rational standard? The number of hours the EQ2 player spends in his game is illustrative of that point.
Gamer DNA: Plenty of market opportunity in MMOs
Today, we have another in a continuing series of articles written by the highly talented Sanya Weathers for GamerDNA. In this, her latest column, Sanya looks into the numbers and just what the breakdown for MMO players means.When you compare groups of MMO consumers, grouped by game title, it's easy to be overwhelmed by World of Warcraft's market dominance. Indeed, many developers have learned the wrong lessons from Blizzard's success, and copied/are copying WoW features – without copying WoW's reasoning, methodology, or execution. The results are products that feel derivative and incomplete, with features that the consumers identify as being less than organically developed. Furthermore, WoW's market reach is so extensive that the most influential players in a social network sense will identify a borrowed feature as being WoW's (even if WoW itself borrowed the feature), and cost the new product credibility as innovators.Still, when you just look at the data, it's hard to avoid the desire to copy WoW. As we saw last week, WoW players log in more often, and play for longer sessions.
Apple market share drops slightly in the past year
Don't look now, but Apple's slow market share incline may have just turned into a slow decline. Not only does a new report by research and advisory company Gartner, Inc say that Apple's market share in the US slipped just a little bit over the past year (from 7.5% to 7.4%), but that as you can see above, there's a steep little decline from the 8% it was in the last quarter of 2008. The PC market overall is down as well, a 6.5% decline since the beginning of last year.Does that mean it's time to sell the AAPL stock? Probably not -- as you can see from the graph, there's still been a nice steady growth in market share since 2006, and the current economy has all ships falling a little bit with the tide as it goes out. But it does mean that Apple might be having more trouble than they want breaking out into more of the market. If that is their goal anyway -- Gartner's report also notes that Apple's relatively higher ASP (Average Selling Price) "created challenges for it in the tough economy," but when have we ever known them to go cheap?So Apple's not up in the short term, but who is? Well maybe Goldman Sachs is. But we don't entirely trust those guys. And in case you're wondering: none of this is actual financial advice, and none of it should be used to make any decisions that might lose you money. You've been warned.[via TechMeme]
