I am going to Umrah

I'm leaving tomorrow morning, heading for the holy city of Mecca to do an Umrah. It was a surpreise decision. It's been years since I went there last. Wish me luck, I'll be back on Sunday god willing.

Nintendo refutes Wii hoarding.

Nintendo refuted Gamestop's claim that they were intentionally holding Wiis. GameStop's COO, Dan DeMatteo, said that he believes Nintendo

“intentionally dried up their supply because they made their numbers for the year”

with the Nintendo Wii.
In English: He claims that they had a target for this fiscal year (ends March), and instead of selling more Wiis, they thought of holding the systems to contribute to thier new sales target starting April.

Not true says Nintendo’s George Harrison, senior VP of marketing and corporate communications. As "Next Generation" reported, he said

“No, that’s not at all the case. We have worldwide territories that are all competing over the available production. The Japan and European markets are doing extremely well with the Wii. People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when.”

While Gamestop's claim is a typical and possible conspiracy theory, Nintendo's claim is believable, as it coincides with my sales analysis.

Let me take this as an example to compare between Nintendo's PR & Sony's. Just recently Sony continued its appalling PR activities. In contrast, Nintendo dealt with this very wisely, in the next response, Nintendo justified what many would think is an unjust accusation by Gamestop:

Harrison:

“Every retailer would want to have more [Wiis]. I think [DeMatteo’s comments] may have been GameStop’s way of trying to request more”

He succeeded in defending Nintendo, while making both Nintendo and Gamestop look like companies who care for thier customers. Textbook. Sony should hire him.

Nextgen Sales: A closer look

Total sales figures will not give me the clear picture I need to forecast this war. Sadly the nexgenwars.com tracker does not give you that detail. Fortunately, videogame charts do! Lets see..

XBOX360
Sold 9.66 mil according to vg and 10.84 according to ngw. Lets see the figures; The bulk of the sales is in the US (almost 6 mil). Hmm.., expected as much. 3.4 mil is in the other region which includes Europe, Middle East and Australia. However Japan sold 380K ONLY?
That's not even close to half a million! From 10 million systems, The Japanese bought less than half a million?
No wonder it lacks Japanese 3rd party developers. Microsoft still finds this place tough huh? They are trying though, so this could change. But I really think the Japanese sales figures must rise in order to gain momentum.

Wii
Sold 6 mil according to vg, 5.21 mil according to ngw.
The Wii sales are more or less even in all regions. Almost 2 mil in Japan, 2.3 in USA & 1.68 elsewhere. Its close to a 2 million average across markets. That tells me that unlike the X360 above, All markets are embracing the Wii. Also, the close sales numbers suggest that supply is constant through out the markets (ie: no shortage in one place and surplus in another). The Wii sales growth is the fastest of the three. This even distribution should attract developers from all regions, I expect good diversity in games should this trend continues.

PS3
Sold 2.67 according to vg, 1.77 according to ngw. ...
....
Wait a minute! That's one heck of an error margin! The difference in figures cannot be almost one million units! I know the X360 figures are off by as many but percentage wise, the error margin is huge for the PS3 figures.
Moving on, we will use the vg figures here of course for now. PS3's biggest market is the USA. 1.32 mil. Japan has only 0.83 mil and everyone else bough about 0.52 mil.
That makes sense. The PS3 enjoyed immense demand at launch in the US. Other parts of the world are slow, exactly as the reports from UK, Europe & Australia say (It is still not available in the Middle East despite Sony treating it a part of Europe). The 830k units in Japan is way too little. I understand the Japanese developer's concern now.

What to make of this?
The Xbox 360 is a solid contender. Proven everywhere, except in Japan where no foreign system was successful before. Still, that simply says that their system works but needs Japanese 3rd party support. The Japanese 3rd parties are not endorsing the Xbox360 fully yet as they expect a Japanese system to reign, and are looking at PS3, which continues to disappoint most, leading to slower Japan sales, making the 3rd parties wait until the fog clears (or MGS or FF get released).
The Wii seems comfortable. I expect it to receive proper support in the near future. Its comfortable for the fact that it can coexist with either PS3 or X360. Either it will be the system of choice (for the big budget games), or, if the title goes to Sony or MS, Wii can easily transform into the casual gamer / family game machine which will compliment any gamer.
So:

• Microsoft must focus on the Japanese market now. RPGs. RPGs. And they should steal more exclusives from Sony, like DMC & Ace Combat, and try to make exclusive PS3 games not exclusive which will tip the market to their favour. Oh, and release cute special edition consoles like they did with Blue Dragon. The Japanese will eat it up!
  
• Sony needs to prove to 3rd parties that it still owns the market. They should lower and unify the prices worldwide (or make them closer) and release bundled systems with a big name game. They cannot lower the price now without risking watering down the brand as it will be like admitting it's not gaining sales because it's too expensive. Still, I'd rather they do this + the big budget exclusive + a strong Internet support that at least match or come close to XBLive.
  
• Wii is under alot of demand, shortages will occur. Nintendo needs to address this asap. Once they do, they must immediately release a big budget name (like Mario Galaxy) and offer bundled packages (imagine Wii + Mario + wii sports or wii play). The market will be theirs if they do this. Especially if it happens before MS or Sony do what I suggested above.

Conclusion: War ain't over folks. Some are leading the race, some trailing, but it ain't over yet.

Sony: Americans are cheap. The British cost more.

Ray Maguire (Sony UK managing director) says in a response to the question: "Why is the PlayStation 3 more expensive in the UK than it is in the rest of Europe?":

"If you take what's considered to be the most expensive and the least expensive – consider the US with its massive land and cheap people. Then you look at the UK – a little island where rent and rates are at an absolute
premium, and the cost of people is a lot more."

OK.. lets assume for a moment that I have no PR experience, and that I'm a total Nintendo fanboy with an IQ that's slightly higher than my shoe size. I know nothing about anything, OK? YOU tell me. Does that statement seem right to you?

I know what he's trying to say, but for goodness sake, people will eat you up for that. You don't need any more negative publicity.

Despite the public annoyance with the 425GBP price (around $850 retail), I originally thought that they intended to offer a lower price similar to the American price but couldn't. I may have been sympathetic there. I was way wrong:

-But GBP 425 seems like an odd number. Did you think about pricing the PS3 at
GBP 399 which would have a different feel to it, psychologically?
-No. We
did consider GBP 429, but we wanted to get the best for the consumer.

oh.. I see. you planned on getting MORE money, but you gave people a 4 pound discount. Gee, we don't know how to thank you.

Since launch the only good things I wrote about Sony was "HOME" and the other was the free HD TVs for London. I really need more positive news!

PS3 also plays games!

Ironically, that's true!

Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold

One day, Nike will stop producing sports equipments and focus on thier core business: Sports ads.!

Mud storm: Aftermath

Right, this sudden mudstorm did some damage.
I surveyd the house and saw:

Broken branches

Blown away leaves

Blown down Satellite Dish (fell from the roof)

our neighbours too sufferd fom Broken Branches Syndrome

and my last pic:

The Aluminum shade in the building where I just rented an Apartment in collapsed. I don't think any cars were underneath or they would'ave been smashed. It's a good thing I haven't moved there yet.

I saw more damages on the streets, ripped out trees, falling signs and such. If you got pictures send them in. I'll post them right here.

I hope everyone is OK.

Update (2:20PM)

More pictures of Damage