Could The Gran Turismo 5 Delay Hurt Sony Sales This Christmas?

Recently, Sony came out and stated that Gran Turismo 5 would be yet again delayed from it’s November 5 release to “Holiday 2010”.  With just three weeks to go, there is speculation aplenty as to what is causing this many times delayed game to be pushed back at the last minute.

According to VGChartz, Kazunori Yamauchi posted on his Twitter, “Apologies for the delay, It’s because time and labor were spent ironing the kinks out of [the game’s] complex system. I’m really sorry. Everyone, it’s inexcusable… Wait a little longer.”

It kind of sounds like they found a pretty critical issue with the game at the last minute.  But only time will tell.  But what does this do to their Christmas lineup?

VGChartz has listed over 200,000 pre-orders for GT5, so while it’s not a blockbuster game for the PS3 like Call of Duty: Black Ops, it’s still a flagship title with a lot of anticipation and buzz about it.  And with any flagship title, any console maker can be guaranteed that many of those pre-release orders will also come with game sales.

Sony’s 2010 sales lead has been precipitously slipping ever since Microsoft released the Xbox 360S this last June.  And while the Move has already garnered 460,000 sales in it’s first month, the highly anticipated Kinect sensor is expected to do far better, even more so with the recent news that major retailers globally have been selling out of their allocated pre-orders.  Sony needs to bolster their holiday lineup if they’re going to maintain the ever so slight sales lead that was at one point over a million unit gap.

Looking at the presales charts so far, Sony could very well lose out to Microsoft at the end of the year if it’s only exclusive in the top ten pre-sales is pushed back too far.  Those software sales may be reduced with people opting to purchase different games instead, or even worse, forgoing the purchase of a PS3 altogether for one of its competitors.

Hopefully we’ll hear some new news soon.  But if Sony doesn’t get GT5 out of the door by Black Friday, I think it could very well have an impact on their year end sales.

Console News For Thursday, October 14th

Playstation Move Moves 470,000 Units In The First Month

VGChartz is reporting that 470,000 unique Move units have been sold in the first month since it’s release with over 600,000 individual Move controllers (including bundles and standalone) having been sold.  Doing the math, that means 130,000 second, third or fourth controllers have been purchased for the 470,000 new Move users worldwide.

While this does seem like an impressive number, I think that the momentum from Microsoft’s ad campaign, and recent reports of retailers actually selling out of pre-orders might indicate that as far as launch goes, Kinect will have a major advantage over the Move. 

With the information available to us right now (which isn’t much since everyone seems to be keeping a lid on Kinect pre-order numbers), I would not be surprised to see Kinect ship out well over 1 million units in it’s first week.  Only time will tell, and November is rapidly approaching.

Source: VGChartz

Crazy Taxi Coming To Xbox 360 and PS3

Sega is remaking the Dreamcast hit Crazy Taxi and putting it out on XBLA and the Playstation network in 720p goodiness.  Sega’s site is currently reporting that it’s available now.  But we know that’s not right because everyone else is reporting a release date of November 23 for PS3 and November 24 for XBLA.  Those crazy kids at Sega…

Now if only they’d release Shenmue.  And a Seaman remake for Kinect would be quite exciting.

I’ll let you all think about that one for a bit.

Track List for Dance Central Released

And it looks to be a doozy.  CVG reports 32 intial tracks for us to sweat and boogey to in our living rooms, bedrooms and parent’s basements are being packaged for delivery.  Of course, we know that Harmonix probably has quite a stockpile of audiophile ammunition in store to release as DLC on day and date of release as well. 

Source: CVG

Gran Turismo 5 Delayed…Again

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming.  Looks like GT5 is pushed back to “sometime around Christmas”.  If Duke Nukem comes out before GT5 does, I’m officially calling it Vaporware.

Halo Waypoint Announces New Noble Map Pack for Halo:Reach

Halo Waypoint has just released some screenshots of the up and coming Noble Map Pack for Halo: Reach.  The new maps are Tempest, Anchor 9, and Breakpoint.   Release price is to be 800MS Points and will have the opportunity for you to add an additional 250 gamerscore to your tally.

Personally I think that ten bucks is a bit stiff of a price to pay for new maps.  But i’m sure that sales of this will do well.  According to Bungie.net, the map pack will be released on November 30.

Source: Halo Waypoint; Bungie

Follow-up To Yesterday’s Best Buy Pre-Order Stoppage

Best Buy has managed to wrangle some additional allocations for the standalone Kinect package.  However, the 250GB 360S Bundle is still not available.  The only word that I’ve received from Best Buy is that they have requested more from Microsoft and should hopefully have some soon.

Netflix App Finally Available On PS3 On October 18

Joystiq has just confirmed that an app for Netflix will now be available for the PS3 starting on October 18.  Users will no longer be required to insert a disc to run the Netflix application on PS3.  Video details here.

Source: Joystiq

As always, comments are welcome.

~W75

Kinect Selling Out All Over The UK. What about US?

Reports that Play, Amazon, and other retailers in the UK are selling out of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 are big news on the web.  But what about at home?

A quick websurfing does show that online retailer Newegg is sold out of the standalone device (stock# N82E16874103199), the 4GB Xbox 360S bundle (stock# N82E16868105044) and the 250GB Xbox 360S Bundle (stock#N82E16868105045).  However, Gamestop, Amazon.com (not to be confused with Amazon.co.uk), and most other major retailers are still offering pre-orders.

What does this mean?

While it’s fantastic news that the Kinect sensor is doing so well in the UK, this most likely means that the number of Kinect units that have been allocated to the UK was significantly lower than what has been allocated in the US.

Newegg is not a huge retailer of Xbox items in the United States.  And thus, they have most likely not received a large portion of the units allocated for the launch.  So they most likely have just hit their limit.  However, the larger retailers who make up the bulk of Xbox console and software sales should be granted the largest share to hand out to the consumer.

A twist!

However, after surfing BestBuy.com.  I found this:

Updated 1:18PMEST

I called Best Buy and verified that they have indeed stopped taking pre-orders for the Kinect 250GB bundle, and the standalone unit.   They did say that they have gone to Microsoft and requested additional units to be allocated.  So while this is not likely a long term issue, it does look like for the time being they are out of stock.  However, the 4GB units are still available.

Continued checking does show that Gamestop is still accepting orders.  More news forthcoming.

While I was going to say that it’s most likely just going to be the smaller retailers that would sell out, it would appear that Best Buy has thrown a monkey into my wrench.

Update 7:04PM – Best Buy now has the standalone unit available for pre-order, however the 250GB consoles are still sold out.

Console News for Wednesday, October 13

VGChartz Releases Sales Numbers For Week Ending Oct. 2

Wii – 138,378 PS3 – 149,925 Xbox360 – 179,491

Sales figures are in and they aren’t looking pretty for Nintendo.  The Wii lost more ground against both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 last week by 11,000 units and 41,000 units respectively.  This is part of a continuing slide in sales that began with the Xbox gaining ground in July after the release of the 360S line, and recently became worse as the PS3 vaulted over the Wii by 22,000 units in September.  Trends continuing the way they are, it’s very possible that Nintendo could find itself being left in third place for 2010’s total sales.  The tally so far (Beginning from 02-January):

Wii – 7,162,858 PS3 – 5,614,468 XBox 360 – 5,610,057

Source: VGChartz

The other surprising twist is Microsoft closing in on Sony after packing in almost a million unit lead through June.  Microsoft has since seen a massive boost in sales as older units were marked down to make way for the 360S, and the subsequent sales of the newly styled unit.  The gap for the year is now only a paltry 5,000 units.  If this trend continues, Microsoft is poised to come in number one for home console sales for the year.

NPD Discontinuing Public Disclosure Of Console Sales

An article posted yesterday by VG247 states that as of now, NPD will not be releasing monthly hardware unit sales figures to the public, leaving the console manufacturers to do so. 

According to Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, “I pay a lot for access to the data, and probably could have skipped the hardware piece and gotten from the manufacturers directly, so they don’t want paying customers like me to turn off their subscriptions.”

The question I have to pose is how can he pay so much money for all that data and still be so horrible at predicting stuff?

Source: VG247

AT&T Uverse coming to Xbox 360

Documents leaked to Engadget show that not only is AT&T Uverse coming to the Xbox 360 for real, but real soon.  November 7th actually.  Just in time for the holidays and coinciding with the release of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, this should be quite a booster on its own. 

The question is, will it be enabled with a Kinect friendly menu as was demonstrated with the upcoming ESPN app at E3 earlier this year?  Only time will tell!

Unfortunately, I see this as being a mutually exclusive deal.  Meaning, that other big name providers such as Comcast will likely not be able to participate in releasing their own version, leaving people to either go without, or forcibly switch over to AT&T for their service providing.  Perhaps Sony will work out a deal with another player?

Source: Engadget

So far this Christmas season is looking to be quite lively in the console world if your name doesn’t have ‘end’ in it.  I’ll be making my console sales predictions at the end of the month.  You may want to stay tuned.

~W75