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PSP remains leader of EA handheld revenue
Sony's handheld continues to drive profits to mega-publisher EA. According to Pocket Gamer, PSP games generated $258 million last fiscal year. In comparison, DS games only managed to generate $104 million. Similar figures were revealed last year, when EA admitted that they'd rather focus on Nintendo's handheld than Sony's, calling it a more "fun" system.Although PSP sales make the largest portion of EA's handheld revenue, the company may spin the fact negatively. While $256 million is a sizable figure, it represents a 28 percent loss compared to last year. On the other hand, the DS platform seems to be gaining momentum for EA, as it has shot up 149 percent. We don't care too much about these numbers, though. As long as EA continues to make good, original games for our platform, PSP gamers have nothing to worry about.
Analysis determines publisher strengths in console war
While analyst predictions for the current round of the system wars vary greatly, most analysts agree that Sony will no longer enjoy the same level of market dominance it had in previous generations. If you'll grant that premise, what third party developers are in the best position to benefit from this shift in console fortunes?A pair of analysts at 2K Advisors (no relation to the developer) decided to try and figure out the answer to that question with a new metric called the Revenue Attach Rate (RAR). Basically, the RAR measures how much money a publisher makes on system software for each unit of that system currently in the marketplace. All other things being equal, publishers benefit most when systems that give them a high RAR do well, because those system sales translate to more revenue than other system sales.Based on previous generation RARs for the major publishers, the 2K analysts determined that EA and Take Two have the most to lose from increased market share for Nintendo in this generation. Both companies showed relatively weak RARs for the GameCube, which might explain why they have each been falling all over themselves to play nice with the big N in light of strong Wii sales. Activision would benefit most from a strong Microsoft performance, given their high Xbox RAR, while THQ's relatively balanced console portfolio makes them well suited to succeed no matter who wins the battle.The full report is a little technical, but it's full of lots of good data and analysis for anyone following the business side of the game industry.[Source: 2K Advisors]
Motorola gives bleak outlook, plays musical chairs with execs
Okay, look, we seriously don't support laughing at Moto's misfortunes, and that's the truth -- but they just made it too easy here. Above is a screen shot of AP's brief about the sitch as it appeared for us on Yahoo! News. How better to compliment a MOTOSTRY than with a MOTOADVT, right? The ad here is encouraging us to get our news right on our V3xx, even if said news has to do with Motorola's bleak outlook for fiscal '07, apparently. Come on, if you don't get a good belly laugh out of that, you need to check your pulse... so yeah, anyway, the post-RAZR hangover continues at Moto, with CFO David Devonshire "retiring" to make way for Thomas Meredeth effective April Fools' Day. Profit forecasts are also continuing to follow their downward trend, with the first quarter now expected to rake in revenues of $9.2 to 9.3 billion, down from the $10.4 to 10.6 billion quoted just two short months ago. CEO Zander himself blames much of the shortfall on competitors' price pressures in the low-end segment; personally, we blame the shortfall on the fact that we still don't have a frickin' MOTORIZR Z8 in our hands, but what do we know?
Alaska Department of Revenue vaporizes $38 billion account
The Last Frontier is no stranger to computer failure on a noteworthy scale, but the latest mishap far exceeds the severity of yet another e-voting failure. A quick-fingered technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue reformatted a hard drive while handling "routine maintenance work" that contained an account worth $38 billion -- yeah, with a B. To make matters exponentially worse, he / she also deleted the backup drive for reasons unbeknownst to mere men, and we can probably assume that at least a few individuals in the department suffered a near-heart attack when they found the backup tapes completely unreadable. The only remaining proof of the oil-funded account was in 300 boxes of paperwork, which had to be digitized yet again by staff members working incredibly long hours completing work that had just been done a few months earlier. Incredibly, no one was reportedly punished for the incident, and while the recovery efforts were actually finished in just six painstaking weeks, the damage inflicted by a few careless keystrokes totaled $220,700 in excess labor costs. Ouch.[Via Fark]
EA makes a lot of money on the PSP
While it's easy to hate EA, they are still one of the most influential companies in the industry. Their fiscal numbers for 2006 and Q1 2007 were released a few days ago and they reveal interesting information. It's unsurprising that EA makes a lot of money of the PSP: it made $289 million in revenue on PSP sales last year. What is surprising is how much more money that is compared to the Nintendo DS: only $67 million in the same time. Even more surprising is that although EA makes a lot more revenue on the PSP, it has announced much greater support for the DS in the future.[Via PSPWorld]
Apple reports second highest earnings in its history
That's right, boys and girls, Apple reported their earnings for their third quarter today, and things are looking good. Apple had its second highest earnings and sales ever this quarter, which is very impressive if you think back to Apple's meteoric climb early in its history. Apple posted a revenue of $4.37 billion with a profit of $472 million. That's a lot of iPods, about 8,111,000 iPods, with sales of 1,327,000 Macs (75% of which were Intel Macs). This represents a 12% growth in the sales of Macs and a 32% increase in iPod sales.Check out the press release for full details.
Vodafone sheds 21.9 billion in fiscal 2005
Despite a $15 billion sale of Vodafone Japan to Softbank, Vodafone proper managed to lose some $40.7 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31, making it the largest single full-year loss in history for any British company. The world's #2 operator blamed writeoffs and stiff European competition, but another contributing factor could be Vodafone's ongoing trend of hemorrhaging much of their revenue in the form of dividends -- over $10 billion of the Japan sale, for example, was returned directly to shareholders. We know they're denying it, but is a sale of Vodafone's stake in Verizon starting to look appealing? Or is Vodafone itself looking ripe for the picking?
