Microsoft released its Q4 and FY 2008 earnings reports today, with the Entertainment and Devices Division reporting a USD 426 million profit over the year.

The division reported Q4 revenue of USD 1.575 billion - up 37 per cent from 2007 - but an overall operating loss of USD 188 million. For the same period of the prior year, the division reported a USD 1.223 billion operating loss.

Fiscal year 2008 revenue was up 34 per cent to USD 8.14 billion.

Microsoft attributed the revenue increase primarily to Xbox 360 platform sales. It shipped 1.3 million consoles during Q4, compared to 700,000 in Q4 of fiscal 2007.

The company also noted that the cost of revenue decreased 49 per cent due to the USD 1.1 billion charge it took in Q4 2007 related to the expansion of warranty coverage.

Overall, Microsoft reported USD 15.84 billion Q4 revenue, with operating income of USD 5.68 billion and diluted EPS of USD 0.46 - growth of 42 per cent and 48 per cent, respectively, over the same period of the prior year.

For the fiscal year, Microsoft announced revenue of USD 60.42 billion, an 18 per cent increase over the prior year and the fastest annual revenue growth since 1999 according to the company.

Operating income and diluted earnings per share for the year were USD 22.49 billion and USD 1.87, respectively. Microsoft noted that these growth rates were impacted by the USD 1.1 billion Q4 2007 charge related to the Xbox 360 warranty expansion.

For Q1, Microsoft expects revenue in the range of USD 14.7 - 14.9 billion, operating income in the range of USD 5.9 - 6 billion and diluted earnings per share of USD 0.47 or 0.48.

For FY 2009, Microsoft's management offered guidance of revenue in the range of USD 67.3 - 68.1 billion, operating income in the range of USD 26.3 - 26.9 billion and diluted EPS in the range of USD 2.12 - 2.18.

via Gamesindustry ...

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via Joystiq


When it comes to porting Final Fantasy XIII to Xbox 360, Square's of the opinion that it's not the size of the disc that matters; it's how you use it. FFXIII producer Yoshinori Kitase says that his team will "work on trying to find ways to compress the pre-rendered movies and voice that take up a lot of data in ways that don't affect the final product."

Kitase is also looking to the arcane arts of graphics programming "to ensure that the quality [of in-game visuals] remains the same between the two versions," as well. We suggest he trademark the name "Squeaze" for whatever method the team eventually settles on for cramming a Blu-ray based game onto (a number of) DVDs. Such a catchy name will certainly make the tech more marketable to other developers bringing their PS3 exclusives to 360. ...

via Games Industry


Sales of videogame hardware, software and accessories totaled USD 1.69 billion in June - a 53 per cent increase from the prior year.

For the first six months of 2008, US videogame sales have totaled USD 6.1 billion.


Nintendo continues to lead the hardware sales, with the DS and Wii outpacing the competition. Both PSP and PS3 hardware sales outdid Xbox 360 and PS2 sales for the month.

"As expected, Metal Gear Solid 4 realized significant retail sales and drove PS3 hardware acquisition," Frazier said.

Total US hardware sales for the month of June were as follows:

• Nintendo DS 783,000
• Nintendo Wii 666,700
• PlayStation 3 405,500
• PSP 337,400
• Xbox 360 219,800
• PlayStation 2 188,800

Software:
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News from Sonypspplayer:

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Updated Release from Torch:

This is a simple plugin I made a long time ago for my personal use. I just found the source code while going through some old stuff on my computer, so I thought I'd clean up the code a bit and release the plugin.

I realize that there are other plugins that feature similar functionality but I wrote my own because I wanted to be sure its coded optimally, as there are a few careless ways in which these functions can be improperly used (the point of this after all is to conserve battery life).

It does the following when the Hold switch is enabled:
* Switches off the LCD backlight.
* Switches off the actual LCD screen.
(This is important because the backlight and actual screen are two different things. You can have an image being displayed on the screen while the backlight is switched off, such that you can see the image if you use a flashlight. You can also have the screen switched off while the backlight still illuminates the powered off screen.)
* Underclocks the CPU to 61MHz
(Sony has changed the clock speed functions such that only certain combinations of speeds work correctly. Simply trying to underclock to arbitrary values will result in the CPU simply running at the stock speed. I have verified that Hold+ successfully underclocks to 61MHz.)
* The original screen brightness and clock speed are restored when the Hold switch is released.
* Prevents the PSP from going into suspend mode if you accidently push the power switch too far when turning off Hold mode.
* Allows operation of the PSP with the display turned off, to change volume, skip songs etc.

Usage:
Turn on the Hold switch to automatically disable the display and underclock the CPU. Turn off the Hold switch to return the CPU to normal speed and enable the display.

If you push the ANALOG UP button when turning off the hold switch, the display will remain switched off and the CPU will remain underclocked, but you can operate the PSP. This is useful if you just need to adjust the volume, fast forward/rewind, or to skip to the next song, without unnecessarily turning on the display. To return to normal, just press the Screen button.

If you push the ANALOG UP button when turning on the hold switch, it will only lock the keypad like normal Hold mode. The display and CPU speed will not be changed, so that you can watch videos etc. with the keypad locked.

Installation:
You can install it in the seplugins folder, and make an entry in VSH.txt. Thus it will be active in the XMB. Its also possible to use it in games by adding it to GAME.txt, but some games may crash etc., if the CPU is underclocked to such a low value.

Optionally, its also possible to install it in your PSP's flash0 so that it will work without a memory card. For this you can use FreePlay's "NewBTCFNedit" and enable it for VSH mode in the all the PSPBT?NF.bin files. Add it after vshmain.prx.

Credits:
Thanks to adrahil for helping with preventing the suspend mode.

Changelog v2.61
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Fixed a bug that was introduced in v2.6 that caused the control input buffer to completely fill up, hence causing the Analog Up features not to work in Hold mode, when the plugin was used for an extended period of time.

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News/release from Xeeynamo


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News/release from Raphael:


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