chris-deering
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Former SCEE exec Deering joins PlaySpan
Former PlayStation Europe head, Chris Deering, has joined the advisory board for PlaySpan, a company that has nothing to do with PlayStation and everything to do with the wild world of in-game money making. Self-described as the "first publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network," PlaySpan expects to benefit for Deering's ten years behind the desk at SCEE as the company works to position itself in the lucrative virtual goods market.PlaySpan is better recognized by gamers for its subsidiary brand, PayByCash, which offers payment solutions on a variety of online titles, including Ultima Online, Everquest II and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Even so, we're fuzzy on what exactly Deering will be advising the company on, though we imagine his time will be split between coming up with imaginative ways to reach into gamers' pockets and deciding what horse to bet on in the current hardware race.
Former Sony boss predicts Sony and Nintendo tie at end of current gen
If one was to make an estimation as to the end of the console race today, it would appear Nintendo has things on lock. But, the future isn't always certain, so some folks don't mind coming up with their own guesses as to where we're headed in the years to come. The latest person to toss their 2 pennies into the fountain is former SCEE president Chris Deering. He thinks that come 2011, the Wii and the PS3 will be in a dead tie.How can this be, with the monthly NPD numbers and weekly Japanese sales figures showing Nintendo selling truckloads of its hardware? Well, for Sony, Deering predicts that combined sales of its PS3, PS2 and PSP devices will be around 240 million units, which he also predicts for Nintendo, but they'll have done it with only the DS and Wii. For the Xbox 360, Deering predicts it will have a base of 40 million units.240 million units, though? That's just lunacy, in our eyes. But, hey, if anyone can reach that figure, it's Nintendo. As for Sony doing it, well, there are a lot of PS2 consoles out there ...We guess we'll just have to wait and see!
In a hardware sales photo finish, it's a Sony Nintendo tie!
It's a race that won't be finished until 2011, according to Chris Deering (former head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), but he's already calling it a tie between Sony and Nintendo. Keep in mind, this was after week ending numbers came out showing over 40,000 Wii units sold in Japan, with the PS3 a distant 9,500 units sold. So, clearly there's a lot to do in three years.Deering arrived at these figures "by triangulating Screen Digest and IDG data. He also took into account factors such as the growth of hi-def and the grey gamer market, the emergence of new game engines and increasing ubiquity of wi-fi access" and we imagine he probably tried out runestones, tarot cards, and a ouija board just to be safe.What's impressive are the sheer numbers alone. He predicts that by 2011 both Sony and Nintendo will have sold 230 million total machines each (Sony: PS3 + PS2 + PSP; Nintendo: Wii + DS), and that the Xbox 360 will have reached a user base of 40 million. The only thing is, the 360 has already reached the 20 million mark, so he thinks it'll continue on that track for the next three years at exactly the same pace, due to the "set-top box hi-def phenomenon."He also concludes that the number of potential gamers will reach 2.5 billion due to the amounts of consoles, computers, and mobile phones sold, to which we say... isn't everyone a potential gamer?
