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The traditional home console business is quickly losing revenue share to the smartphone market, according to a new report from mobile analyst firm Flurry.
The report is based only on publicly available data and the company's own estimates, but appears to show that the revenues from smartphone and tablet games rose from 19 per cent of the U.S. portable game software market in 2009 (iOS only), to 34 per cent in 2010 (iOS and Android combined).
At the same time the market share for the Nintendo DS family of consoles fell from 70 per cent to 57 per cent, while the PSP dropped from 11 per cent to 9 per cent.
However, both portable consoles were nearing the end of their lifetime by 2010 - when their revenues might naturally be expected to fall. It is also unclear whether the smartphone revenues represent a true loss in market share on the part of consoles or simply an expansion of the whole category.
However, Flurry characterises Nintendo as, "struggling with its own burning platforming: Nintendo DS". The report is also adamant that smartphone revenues are increasing "at the expense of portable gaming".
Flurry's data for the video games market as a whole in the U.S. suggests that the smartphone and tablet market has risen from 5 per cent in 2009 to 8 per cent in 2010. This is estimated as an increase of $500 million to $800 million.
At the same time portable consoles have fallen from 24 per cent to 16 per cent, while home consoles have increased from 71 per cent to 76 per cent.
Since the report covers only publicly available data this does not include digital sales for any traditional console platform. It also does not include PC titles, although Flurry nevertheless estimates that smartphone and tablet revenues exceeded the estimated $700 million PC games market in 2010.
Although Flurry's data shows Apple's iOS having the high-end smartphone market essentially all to itself in 2009, the Android operating system is now dominant. Apple has closed the gap in recent months though, with the most recent data giving Android a 48 per cent market share, iOS 31 per cent, and RIM 18 per cent.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...s-games-market
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UK consumer group Gamers' Voice has filed an official complaint with Channel 5 over as episode of chat show The Wright Stuff in which violent video games were under discussion - specifically linking them to the shooting of a London teenager.
The show aired on Thursday 14 April and was centred on the possible reasons behind the shooting of Agnes Sina-Inakoju by Leon Dunkley and Mohammed Smoured, who have now been convicted and jailed for the crime.
The pair are members of the notorious London Fields gang responsible for many other violent attacks, including the stabbing of 14 year old Shaquille Smith in 2009.
During the broadcast, host and panel members speculated on whether violent games could have been a significant factor in the boys' behaviour, with Anne Diamond one of the more vociferous voices present. As an illustration of how violent video games can be, the show aired footage of 18-rated Modern Warfare 2's infamous "No Russian" level at 10:30 am - well before the watershed.
Gamers' Voice not only feel that the context and discussion was poorly balanced and argued, but that the airing of unsuitable material before the watershed constitutes a violation of broadcast rules.
"It's nothing new that TV loves to sensationalise gamers and shooters," reads a statement on the group's website.
"Instead of trying to learn and educate themselves as to why people commit horrific crimes, TV loves to target gaming. Gaming is easy to attack and it seems that it can conveniently 'explain the increase violent behaviour'.
"In the episode of the 'Wright Stuff' that was aired on Channel 5 on Thursday 14th April, they discussed the alleged causal link between video games and violent behaviour. In particular, they focussed on the detached way that 22-year-old Leon Dunkley drew a sub-machine gun and killed customers in a London pizza parlour.
"Instead of talking about possible the social, mental or economic problems that could have driven Dunkley to kill, the Wright stuff went straight to what must be the cause for the problem. It wasn't gang culture which puts perceived respect above regard for human life, no, it's first person shooters that are responsible.
"What was even more shocking was that during the introduction to the discussion, they showed scenes from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Specifically the infamous level 'No Russian' where the play can gun down unarmed civilians, if they so choose. So apparently at 10.30 in the morning during the school holidays, it's fine to show scenes from an 18 rated game to set context of how it causes violence, which goes in some way the level ignorance of all involved in the programme on the subject being discussed."
In January of 2011, Gamer's Voice hosted an evening at Portcullis House in Westminster to try and encourage MPs to engage in games. Suprise guest of the evening was Keith Vaz, who'd long been associated with an anti-gaming stance.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...with-channel-5
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Keep fit title Zumba Fitness is the UK's best-selling video game for the second week in a row, with a lack of new releases seeing only older legacy titles triumph in the latest charts.
Sales for Zumba Fitness fell by only 8 per cent from the previous week, with the Xbox 360 version increasing by 14 per cent. The Wii version still accounts for 90 per cent of sales though and has been the number one selling individual format title now for three weeks.
The only new release of note last week was the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Michael Jackson: The Experience, although neither managed to chart in the individual format top 20. Combined sales with the existing Wii and portable versions did reach 15 in the all formats chart though - with 64 per cent of all sales on the Xbox 360.
Instead it was older titles which continued to dominate, with the recent Lego Star Wars III moving up one place to number two as sales fell by only 12 per cent. Crysis 2 dropped one place to number three with a 32 per cent decline in sales.
Electronic Arts still has four titles in the top 10, with FIFA 11 at number four (sales up 88 per cent), Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 at number five (down 11 per cent), and Shift 2: Unleashed at number 10 (down 46 per cent).
FIFA 11 is one of several 2010 titles benefiting from retailer discounts before the Easter bank holidays, with Call Of Duty: Black Ops at number nine seeing a 62 per cent increase in sales, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 up 112 per cent at number 11, and Red Dead Redemption up 458 per cent at number 13.


http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...uks-number-one ...

Starting today, US ratings giant ESRB won't even play some of the games it rates before release - it'll have a computer decide instead.

The New York Times reports that the body has written a program designed to replicate the "ingrained cultural norms and predilections of the everyday American consumer".




What this means is, starting with XBLA, PSN and WiiWare titles, game developers will now fill out a digital questionnaire to gauge any "violence, sexuality, profanity, drug use, gambling and bodily function" that could possibly offend players.

The questionnaire will then be judged by ESRB's special tech and a game rating spat out. A human won't review the title until after the game is released, the NY Times reports.

Developers can't simply lie about their content either - if they do they'll likely suffer penalties, it's said, and Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft won't certify games without ESRB's backing.

The system sounds similar to that used in Europe by ratings body PEGI, which has applicants submit their games with a "content declaration". The difference is, PEGI's system then has a (human) independent administrator review the submission, where as ESRB will now reportedly use its computer program to do the job.

The decision is said to be based on the huge influx of titles landing on the ESRB's lap to review, specifically Facebook and Apple games which are currently under the exclusive control of the companies that run them.

Under the new system ESRB could potentially see its logos on all of these social and mobile titles, but it's so far refused to comment on any negotiations with Apple and Facebook about adopting the ratings.

Last year the ESRB rated about 1,600 games, of which up to 30 percent were only online. The digital titles set to be rated under the new system are said to total around 650 games a year.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

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Why wait to find out if there will be a Wii price drop on Monday? Best Buy is selling Wiis on its website for $169.99 right this second. Unfortunately, we can't really glean anything about the manufacturer price from this, as Best Buy has labeled its discount a "sale."

Functionally, though it works out the same either way, with you able to trade $170 for a Wii. It's available in white or black, both variants including Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and a Wii Remote Plus. The older MotionPlus bundle is also available for the same price, if for some reason you'd prefer a bigger controller.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/16/be...170-right-now/ ...

There are endless flavors of "Linux on a stick," tasty downloadable versions of that OS which run from removable storage and let you take Linus' progeny for a spin without dedicating any of your partitions to the cause. There have been ways of making this work with Windows, too, but now Microsoft is getting into the game properly. That leaked version of Windows 8 we looked at recently contains a feature called Portable Workspaces, which enables you to take a 16GB (or greater) external storage device and dump a bootable, runnable copy of Win 8 on there. It remains to be seen just how many copies one could create, and whether they ever expire or, indeed, whether they can themselves be copied onto an HDD like a ghost image, but it's easy to see this as a boon for support personnel. Well, support personnel of the future, anyway.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/15/w...aces-sales-of/ ...

[Choi Ka Fai] has been experimenting with neurostimulation for some time now. His body of work has focused on exploring the possibility of using neurostim devices to replay pre-recorded muscle movements.
Until now, he has been recording his muscle movements as acoustic waveforms for real-time playback in the bodies of his research partners. This usually requires him to sit beside the subject, tethered to a machine. This tends to limit his movement, so he has invested in a new form of movement recording technology – a Kinect sensor.
Using fairly standard skeleton tracking as we have seen in some previous Kinect hacks, he has enabled himself to direct the motion of his subject by merely moving in front of the camera. The benefit of using the Kinect over wired sensors is that he can use any body part to direct his partner’s movements by simply changing how the software interprets his actions. As you can see in the video below, he uses his hands, knees, and even his head to direct the motion of his partner’s arm.
It really is a neat application of the Kinect, and we are totally digging the shaky “human marionette” effect that it produces. Since this was only an initial test of the system, expect to see some more cool stuff coming from [Choi] in the near future.
Stick around to see a quick video of the Kinect-driven neurostim rig in action.

http://hackaday.com/2011/04/13/using...n-marionettes/ ...