Halle Berry writes Hi there!
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Game Cube Advanced Sony PlayStation Portable
Game Cube Advanced Sony PlayStation Portable are haberano pepper with little squiggly spanish thing h o t hot.
I got this in a newsletter and it cutoff the source. I am still searching the web and will note it. I don't like chasing upgrades in anything. Looks like there is nothing that is going to stop it though. Nintendo caught my eye. Also isn't xbox a player here?
The video game wars -- particularly between top rivals Sony and Nintendo -- are in heavy battle mode during the holiday season, with stores struggling to keep enough of the hottest consoles and game titles on the shelves to satisfy hungry gift-buyers.
Nintendo has been reaping the rewards of the portable gaming craze, with its DS handheld console becoming a hot-selling item this holiday season (Sony's dueling PlayStation Portable is on sale in the United States).
"Consumer demand for the [Nintendo DS] unit is so high, in fact, that many stores are sold out. Those that do have them are limiting sales to one per customer. More than 1.2 million DS units have been sold in North America and Japan in the past month, according to Nintendo. And the company is increasing production to meet the demand," Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported today. The same article gives the device a thumbs up. "Here's the $149.99 question: Is the Nintendo DS worth the price? Yes, it is. New game titles will continue to launch throughout the holiday season, and more than 25 are scheduled to be available by March. In the meantime, gamers still can play Game Boy Advance games and videos on the Nintendo DS."
DS sales are brisk even away from the big cities, as we can see in this tidbit from the Decatur Daily of Alabama. "They just blew out of here," Frank Hass, electronics manager at Kmart, told the paper. "We only had one shipment of about 15 at Thanksgiving. They went first thing that morning." More from the paper's dispatch on brisk Nintendo DS sales: "Dual-screened, it offers video game fans innovative new ways to play. Each unit comes with an embedded communication program called PicoChat, as well as a demo version of Metroid Prime Hunters that features both single and multiplayer action. According to a release from the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., the firm will increase total shipments to North America by about 40 percent, to 1.4 million systems, before the end of the year. Nintendo officials said many retail stores are reporting shortages, and the initial batch of 500,000 units sold out a week after Nintendo DS launched Nov. 21."
TVG, which runs the totalvideogames.com site, posted new sales numbers on its site today, noting that "Nintendo has today confirmed that the Nintendo DS system has now sold more than 2 million units, a million apiece in the US and Japan. With the console expected to sell more than 2.8 units by the end of the year, Nintendo is now setting its sights on Europe."
• The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: Nintendo Holds a Strong Hand With DS System
• The Decatur Daily: Nintendo DS This Year's Spotlight Gift
• Totalvideogames.com: DS Success in US & Japan as Nintendo Targets EU
Nintendo is even girding itself to charge into the digital-music melee. The game giant recently announced plans to sell an add-on gadget that will allow its handheld consoles "to play music and video, the company said, matching a popular feature on Sony's portable game machine. Nintendo is in a heated battle to defend its dominant position in the lucrative handheld market against new competitor Sony Corp., which launched ... its first ever mobile game device, on Dec. 12 in Japan. Nintendo's DS ... has been flying off the shelves but the PSP has generated an equal level of buzz among game fans, in large part because it can also play back music and movie files," Reuters reported last week.
The same article reported on the holiday rush: "The DS is the size of a paperback book with a wireless connection and two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and works with a pen-like device. The PSP is a sleek black device with one long, large liquid crystal display screen. Industry analysts say that both will sell well this holiday season, creating the biggest buzz in the sector since Sony launched its PlayStation 2 game console in 2000. Sony will launch the PSP in Europe and North America early next year." The British tech site The Register concluded that "Nintendo's DS looks certain to outsell Sony's PlayStation Portable, but Nintendo is clearly so worried about its rival that it is already announcing an upgrade that will bring PSP-style music and movie features to its own handheld console."
More on Nintendo's bells and whistles for its DS device, from BBC News: "The add-on for the DS means people can download TV programmes, film clips or MP3 files to the adaptor and then play them back while on the move. The release of the media add-on is an attempt by the Japanese games giant to protect its dominance of the handheld gaming market. Nintendo said the media adapter will be available from February in Japan," the BBC said. "The launch of the media adapter, and the attempt to broaden the appeal of the device, is widely seen as a response to the unveiling of the Sony PSP which was built as a multi-purpose media player and game gadget from the start."
• Reuters: Nintendo to Bring Music, Video to DS Game Machine
• The Register: Nintendo Preps DS Media Module
• BBC News Online: Nintendo Adds Media Playing to DS
PSP sales are expected to surge here too when the device hits the U.S. market in 2005. Too bad it couldn't make it for the holiday sales craze of 2004. After the device's Japanese debut, BBC News reported last week: "Gamers have bought almost all of the first batch ... which went on sale in Japan on Sunday. Thousands of people queued for hours to get hold of one of the 200,000 PSPs which were shipped to retailers. ... Despite the demand Sony said it would not increase the 500,000-strong stock of PSPs it plans to ship by year's end. Sony says it intends to ship three million of the consoles by March 2005. The company is hoping to challenge the dominance of Nintendo in the handheld market." The tech site Engadget snagged one of the consoles before its U.S. debut and wrote a review with pictures from every angle.
• BBC News Online: Gamers Rush to Buy New Sony PSP
While Nintendo is getting lots of ink for its DS console, its soon-to-be-old-school GameCube is getting darts from some reviews, including Washington Post technology scribe Rob Pegoraro, who wrote in his holiday gadget review: "One console, the Nintendo GameCube, is clearly obsolete, with a diminishing supply of new titles. The other two -- PlayStation 2 and Xbox -- are far more competitive. After years of steady work by Microsoft to improve the Xbox's capabilities and the support from its developers -- getting Electronic Arts to write games for its Xbox Live online service this year was a huge coup for Redmond -- the Xbox is now the PS2's equal. Sony's console still offers far more titles, including plenty of PS2-only titles (like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), but the Xbox delivers better graphics and has quite a few exclusive games of its own."
The Game Cube Advanced site will surely take issue with Pegoraro's slam. The site yesterday reported that Nintendo's holiday elves are busy this gift-buying season. "Nintendo of America issued a press release today emphasizing just how hard the company's Consumer Service Department as a whole works during the week between Christmas and the New Year. ... The Big N prides itself on keeping its reps employed in the U.S. in a time when outsourcing is very common in the business world," the site said. "How busy is Nintendo's Consumer Service Department during this time of year? Typically, reps respond to 37,500 phone calls, 7,500 e-mails and 500 letters a week. During 'Crunch Week', the reps respond to over 90,000 inquiries."
How About Some ID for That Game?
Kids and teens are a big part of the video game craze, but not all games are kid friendly. The San Francisco Chronicle gives a primer on buying video games. "In just the past few months, game publishers have released some of the biggest titles for this generation of consoles. One reason behind this bonanza is an expectation that the next-generation gaming consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo may be out either at the end of next year or in 2006. That means that this may be the last major holiday selling season for video games that run on the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox," the newspaper said. "The bad news is that most of the games are rated M, for Mature, by the industry's Entertainment Software Rating Board, mostly for violence and gore. In fact, parents who are unfamiliar with video game titles may want to pay special attention to the board's content ratings and short descriptors. The games are rated EC for Early Childhood; E for Everyone; T for Teens, or 13 years old and up; M for Mature, or 17 years old and up; and AO for adults only, or 18 years old and up."
• The San Francisco Chronicle: Flood of New Titles Not Geared For Kids
An article on the same theme ran in the Sacramento Bee over the weekend, noting that: "With the gift-buying season in full swing, teens and 'tweens are writing out wish lists with typical glee. Two likely items: video game best-seller 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' and Eminem's new album, 'Encore.' Both are considered 'mature media,' and both are wildly popular, having already sold 2 million copies each. And they carry ratings that say they're unfit for children. What's a parent to do? There's no easy answer -- many experts say there is no right age for kids to be exposed to mature content," the article says. It goes on to offer a few tips, which assume that parents have and will take the time to do diligent reviews of games before going to the cash register. "The rating system is just one guideline. To learn more about the games on a child's wish list, parents can ask other parents who have experience with the game. They also can use the Internet, visiting sites such as ign.com to read a review, or the game's Web page to play a demo version. For console games, it's easy to rent one and try it out for a few days."
• The Sacramento Bee: Ready of Not?
Forget the Ratings, Gaming Is Good for You
Just in time for the game crunch: A study is out to offer up some virtues of video game playing. I am guessing a study is forthcoming on how being a coach potato is healthy. The study found that surgeons who play video games are more precise. Reuters reported more details: "If Dr. James Rosser Jr. had his way, every surgeon in America would have three indispensable tools on the operating room tray: a scalpel, sutures, and a video game controller. Rosser looks like a football player and cracks jokes like a comic, but his job as a top surgeon and director of the Advanced Medical Technologies Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York is to find better ways to practice medicine. At the top of his list -- video games," the wire service reported. "Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster, he says, basing his observation on results of tests using the video game 'Super Monkey Ball.'"
• Reuters: Doctors Use Video Games To Hone Skills
An Uba-Game Deal
The consolidation craze in the software industry is alive and kicking for video game companies too. Electronic Arts has bought a nearly 20 percent stake in French rival Ubisoft Entertainment. "Microsoft and Sony will introduce more powerful game consoles in 2005 or 2006 to allow movielike quality, smooth motion and bigger games. To keep up, game makers must spend more on development, raising the risk per title. Electronic Arts had 27 game titles that sold more than one million copies each in the most recent fiscal year, compared with Ubisoft's 7," Bloomberg reported. "Shares in Ubisoft, whose games include Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, rose 25 percent, to 21.16 euros in Paris, for a market value of 374 million euros ($501 million). The shares had their biggest gain since they started trading in July 1996."
• Bloomberg via The New York Times: Electronic Arts Buys Stake In a Rival Game Maker In France (Registration required)
Electronic Arts is not showing all of its cards yet, but an all-out acquisition of Ubisoft could happen some day. "But some analysts said they didn't expect EA -- which earned $577 million on $3 billion in sales in its 2004 fiscal year -- to be satisfied with this minority stake," the Los Angeles Times reported today. "We believe that this move by EA is a step towards acquiring the entire Ubisoft and is a potential signal that EA may be willing to take similar aggressive moves to acquire other leading video game publishers," Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a research note, according to the paper.
• Los Angeles Times: Electronic Arts To Buy Major Stake In Ubisoft (Registration required)
Santa's Gigantic Helper
This is the equivalent of the Super Bowl for Amazon.com. The online retailer is at its busiest during the holiday season and the Seattle-based company's procurement operations were put under the magnifying glass by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times in articles today. The Chronicle sent a reporter to an Amazon packing and shipping center in Nevada. "Amazon's customers probably don't consider what it takes to get their orders to their doorsteps. But as soon as they click the buy button, a frenzy of activity is set in motion at facilities like this one in Fernley, a small town in the sagebrush 30 miles east of Reno," the Chronicle reported. "That was especially true last week, on what was potentially the busiest day of the holiday shopping season for Amazon. Hundreds of workers were picking items from shelves, boxing them, gift wrapping and driving them away in trucks to points across the country. Watching out for any wrinkle was Jeff Wilke, the company's senior vice president for global operations. His obsession is 'piles,' the accumulation of boxes or products that are the telltale sign of a backed-up system and a potential threat to on-time deliveries."
More from the Chronicle: "Amazon, the biggest online retailer, expects these holidays to be another record breaker. After hemorrhaging money during its infancy, the company has become consistently profitable during the past five quarters. Its shares finished trading Monday at $38.95, down from a 52-week high of $57.82. Amazon's Fernley facility, a largely windowless concrete box opened in 1999, is the size of four aircraft carrier flight decks. Snaking through the center -- and creating a constant din -- are 9 miles of conveyor belts."
• San Francisco Chronicle: Amazon Perfects New Process of Packaging Multiple Orders
The Seattle Times also reported from the Fernley facility, which is an indication that Amazon scored a PR coup by trotting around reporters to get people to write about their efficient operation in time for the holidays. Shoppers will be the true test of this, as will post-holiday reports of whether gifts were shipped out on time. An excerpt from the Times, which explained that the Nevada facility is Amazon's largest. "It's the online retailer's fixation with refining the way it picks, packs and ships items that has enabled it to challenge one of the largest barriers to e-commerce: shipping fees. Amazon helped to pioneer the free-shipping concept when it offered free shipping on orders of $99 or more during the 1999 holiday season. The company extended the offer to customers year-round in January 2000 and lowered the threshold to orders of $25 or more later the same year -- an offer that still stands. Free shipping, combined with deeply discounted items, became a powerful incentive for customers to shop at Amazon, helping the online retailer recharge sales growth," the paper said. "For the four days of Thanksgiving weekend, consumer electronics surpassed books for the first time as Amazon's largest sales category, as customers took advantage of deeply discounted items and free shipping that applied to even bulkier products, including certain TVs."
• The Seattle Times: Pick, Pack and Ship And Deliver Profit
Suprnova Falls Into Blck Hole
The BitTorrent-based file sharing site Suprnova.org has gone dark, the Associated Press reported last night. "One of the Web's most popular file-sharing sites has shut down less than a week after Hollywood announced a flurry of lawsuits against operators of such Internet servers. A note posted on Suprnova.org, which facilitated sharing among users of the BitTorrent program, said the site was 'closing down for good.' The collection of links to downloadable files, including music, movies and books, was taken down."
• The Associated Press via washingtonpost.com: Popular File-Sharing Site Shuts Down (Registration required)
CNET also reported on Suprnova's closure and signaled that file-trading will go further underground with the development. The Motion Picture Association of America's "actions have put pressure on a short list of large Web sites that had served as hubs for the BitTorrent community and that had operated for months or even years. Many of those sites have now vanished almost overnight, including the SuprNova.org site that was by far the most popular gathering point for the community, serving more than a million people a day, according to one academic study. The disappearance of the big sites is unlikely to eliminate BitTorrent swapping altogether, but it does bring to a close an era of operating in the open without fear of legal reprisals. The resulting shift to the underground will likely make files harder to find, as traders move onto private networks or smaller communities, file-swapping insiders said."
• CNET's News.com: BItTorrent File-Swapping Networks Face Crisis
File-sharing of course is popular for music. Services like Apple's iTunes pay-for-play music service operate in cooperation with the recording industry. ITunes Window version, however, has been acting and crashing when some customers try to purchase songs, CNET's News.com reported. "Beginning late last week, some Apple users noticed that the Windows version of iTunes would abruptly quit just as they were in the process of purchasing music from the online store. By Monday, more than three dozen users were complaining about the problem in Apple's online forum. An Apple representative declined to comment."
• CNET's News.com: Glitch Blocks Some iTunes Music Sales
Post any deals you find on ebay here please > > >
playstation portable psp
Game Cube Advanced Sony PlayStation Portable
Halle Berry Fan
I got this in a newsletter and it cutoff the source. I am still searching the web and will note it. I don't like chasing upgrades in anything. Looks like there is nothing that is going to stop it though. Nintendo caught my eye. Also isn't xbox a player here?
The video game wars -- particularly between top rivals Sony and Nintendo -- are in heavy battle mode during the holiday season, with stores struggling to keep enough of the hottest consoles and game titles on the shelves to satisfy hungry gift-buyers.
Nintendo has been reaping the rewards of the portable gaming craze, with its DS handheld console becoming a hot-selling item this holiday season (Sony's dueling PlayStation Portable is on sale in the United States).
"Consumer demand for the [Nintendo DS] unit is so high, in fact, that many stores are sold out. Those that do have them are limiting sales to one per customer. More than 1.2 million DS units have been sold in North America and Japan in the past month, according to Nintendo. And the company is increasing production to meet the demand," Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported today. The same article gives the device a thumbs up. "Here's the $149.99 question: Is the Nintendo DS worth the price? Yes, it is. New game titles will continue to launch throughout the holiday season, and more than 25 are scheduled to be available by March. In the meantime, gamers still can play Game Boy Advance games and videos on the Nintendo DS."
DS sales are brisk even away from the big cities, as we can see in this tidbit from the Decatur Daily of Alabama. "They just blew out of here," Frank Hass, electronics manager at Kmart, told the paper. "We only had one shipment of about 15 at Thanksgiving. They went first thing that morning." More from the paper's dispatch on brisk Nintendo DS sales: "Dual-screened, it offers video game fans innovative new ways to play. Each unit comes with an embedded communication program called PicoChat, as well as a demo version of Metroid Prime Hunters that features both single and multiplayer action. According to a release from the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., the firm will increase total shipments to North America by about 40 percent, to 1.4 million systems, before the end of the year. Nintendo officials said many retail stores are reporting shortages, and the initial batch of 500,000 units sold out a week after Nintendo DS launched Nov. 21."
TVG, which runs the totalvideogames.com site, posted new sales numbers on its site today, noting that "Nintendo has today confirmed that the Nintendo DS system has now sold more than 2 million units, a million apiece in the US and Japan. With the console expected to sell more than 2.8 units by the end of the year, Nintendo is now setting its sights on Europe."
• The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: Nintendo Holds a Strong Hand With DS System
• The Decatur Daily: Nintendo DS This Year's Spotlight Gift
• Totalvideogames.com: DS Success in US & Japan as Nintendo Targets EU
Nintendo is even girding itself to charge into the digital-music melee. The game giant recently announced plans to sell an add-on gadget that will allow its handheld consoles "to play music and video, the company said, matching a popular feature on Sony's portable game machine. Nintendo is in a heated battle to defend its dominant position in the lucrative handheld market against new competitor Sony Corp., which launched ... its first ever mobile game device, on Dec. 12 in Japan. Nintendo's DS ... has been flying off the shelves but the PSP has generated an equal level of buzz among game fans, in large part because it can also play back music and movie files," Reuters reported last week.
The same article reported on the holiday rush: "The DS is the size of a paperback book with a wireless connection and two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and works with a pen-like device. The PSP is a sleek black device with one long, large liquid crystal display screen. Industry analysts say that both will sell well this holiday season, creating the biggest buzz in the sector since Sony launched its PlayStation 2 game console in 2000. Sony will launch the PSP in Europe and North America early next year." The British tech site The Register concluded that "Nintendo's DS looks certain to outsell Sony's PlayStation Portable, but Nintendo is clearly so worried about its rival that it is already announcing an upgrade that will bring PSP-style music and movie features to its own handheld console."
More on Nintendo's bells and whistles for its DS device, from BBC News: "The add-on for the DS means people can download TV programmes, film clips or MP3 files to the adaptor and then play them back while on the move. The release of the media add-on is an attempt by the Japanese games giant to protect its dominance of the handheld gaming market. Nintendo said the media adapter will be available from February in Japan," the BBC said. "The launch of the media adapter, and the attempt to broaden the appeal of the device, is widely seen as a response to the unveiling of the Sony PSP which was built as a multi-purpose media player and game gadget from the start."
• Reuters: Nintendo to Bring Music, Video to DS Game Machine
• The Register: Nintendo Preps DS Media Module
• BBC News Online: Nintendo Adds Media Playing to DS
PSP sales are expected to surge here too when the device hits the U.S. market in 2005. Too bad it couldn't make it for the holiday sales craze of 2004. After the device's Japanese debut, BBC News reported last week: "Gamers have bought almost all of the first batch ... which went on sale in Japan on Sunday. Thousands of people queued for hours to get hold of one of the 200,000 PSPs which were shipped to retailers. ... Despite the demand Sony said it would not increase the 500,000-strong stock of PSPs it plans to ship by year's end. Sony says it intends to ship three million of the consoles by March 2005. The company is hoping to challenge the dominance of Nintendo in the handheld market." The tech site Engadget snagged one of the consoles before its U.S. debut and wrote a review with pictures from every angle.
• BBC News Online: Gamers Rush to Buy New Sony PSP
While Nintendo is getting lots of ink for its DS console, its soon-to-be-old-school GameCube is getting darts from some reviews, including Washington Post technology scribe Rob Pegoraro, who wrote in his holiday gadget review: "One console, the Nintendo GameCube, is clearly obsolete, with a diminishing supply of new titles. The other two -- PlayStation 2 and Xbox -- are far more competitive. After years of steady work by Microsoft to improve the Xbox's capabilities and the support from its developers -- getting Electronic Arts to write games for its Xbox Live online service this year was a huge coup for Redmond -- the Xbox is now the PS2's equal. Sony's console still offers far more titles, including plenty of PS2-only titles (like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), but the Xbox delivers better graphics and has quite a few exclusive games of its own."
The Game Cube Advanced site will surely take issue with Pegoraro's slam. The site yesterday reported that Nintendo's holiday elves are busy this gift-buying season. "Nintendo of America issued a press release today emphasizing just how hard the company's Consumer Service Department as a whole works during the week between Christmas and the New Year. ... The Big N prides itself on keeping its reps employed in the U.S. in a time when outsourcing is very common in the business world," the site said. "How busy is Nintendo's Consumer Service Department during this time of year? Typically, reps respond to 37,500 phone calls, 7,500 e-mails and 500 letters a week. During 'Crunch Week', the reps respond to over 90,000 inquiries."
How About Some ID for That Game?
Kids and teens are a big part of the video game craze, but not all games are kid friendly. The San Francisco Chronicle gives a primer on buying video games. "In just the past few months, game publishers have released some of the biggest titles for this generation of consoles. One reason behind this bonanza is an expectation that the next-generation gaming consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo may be out either at the end of next year or in 2006. That means that this may be the last major holiday selling season for video games that run on the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox," the newspaper said. "The bad news is that most of the games are rated M, for Mature, by the industry's Entertainment Software Rating Board, mostly for violence and gore. In fact, parents who are unfamiliar with video game titles may want to pay special attention to the board's content ratings and short descriptors. The games are rated EC for Early Childhood; E for Everyone; T for Teens, or 13 years old and up; M for Mature, or 17 years old and up; and AO for adults only, or 18 years old and up."
• The San Francisco Chronicle: Flood of New Titles Not Geared For Kids
An article on the same theme ran in the Sacramento Bee over the weekend, noting that: "With the gift-buying season in full swing, teens and 'tweens are writing out wish lists with typical glee. Two likely items: video game best-seller 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' and Eminem's new album, 'Encore.' Both are considered 'mature media,' and both are wildly popular, having already sold 2 million copies each. And they carry ratings that say they're unfit for children. What's a parent to do? There's no easy answer -- many experts say there is no right age for kids to be exposed to mature content," the article says. It goes on to offer a few tips, which assume that parents have and will take the time to do diligent reviews of games before going to the cash register. "The rating system is just one guideline. To learn more about the games on a child's wish list, parents can ask other parents who have experience with the game. They also can use the Internet, visiting sites such as ign.com to read a review, or the game's Web page to play a demo version. For console games, it's easy to rent one and try it out for a few days."
• The Sacramento Bee: Ready of Not?
Forget the Ratings, Gaming Is Good for You
Just in time for the game crunch: A study is out to offer up some virtues of video game playing. I am guessing a study is forthcoming on how being a coach potato is healthy. The study found that surgeons who play video games are more precise. Reuters reported more details: "If Dr. James Rosser Jr. had his way, every surgeon in America would have three indispensable tools on the operating room tray: a scalpel, sutures, and a video game controller. Rosser looks like a football player and cracks jokes like a comic, but his job as a top surgeon and director of the Advanced Medical Technologies Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York is to find better ways to practice medicine. At the top of his list -- video games," the wire service reported. "Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster, he says, basing his observation on results of tests using the video game 'Super Monkey Ball.'"
• Reuters: Doctors Use Video Games To Hone Skills
An Uba-Game Deal
The consolidation craze in the software industry is alive and kicking for video game companies too. Electronic Arts has bought a nearly 20 percent stake in French rival Ubisoft Entertainment. "Microsoft and Sony will introduce more powerful game consoles in 2005 or 2006 to allow movielike quality, smooth motion and bigger games. To keep up, game makers must spend more on development, raising the risk per title. Electronic Arts had 27 game titles that sold more than one million copies each in the most recent fiscal year, compared with Ubisoft's 7," Bloomberg reported. "Shares in Ubisoft, whose games include Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, rose 25 percent, to 21.16 euros in Paris, for a market value of 374 million euros ($501 million). The shares had their biggest gain since they started trading in July 1996."
• Bloomberg via The New York Times: Electronic Arts Buys Stake In a Rival Game Maker In France (Registration required)
Electronic Arts is not showing all of its cards yet, but an all-out acquisition of Ubisoft could happen some day. "But some analysts said they didn't expect EA -- which earned $577 million on $3 billion in sales in its 2004 fiscal year -- to be satisfied with this minority stake," the Los Angeles Times reported today. "We believe that this move by EA is a step towards acquiring the entire Ubisoft and is a potential signal that EA may be willing to take similar aggressive moves to acquire other leading video game publishers," Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a research note, according to the paper.
• Los Angeles Times: Electronic Arts To Buy Major Stake In Ubisoft (Registration required)
Santa's Gigantic Helper
This is the equivalent of the Super Bowl for Amazon.com. The online retailer is at its busiest during the holiday season and the Seattle-based company's procurement operations were put under the magnifying glass by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times in articles today. The Chronicle sent a reporter to an Amazon packing and shipping center in Nevada. "Amazon's customers probably don't consider what it takes to get their orders to their doorsteps. But as soon as they click the buy button, a frenzy of activity is set in motion at facilities like this one in Fernley, a small town in the sagebrush 30 miles east of Reno," the Chronicle reported. "That was especially true last week, on what was potentially the busiest day of the holiday shopping season for Amazon. Hundreds of workers were picking items from shelves, boxing them, gift wrapping and driving them away in trucks to points across the country. Watching out for any wrinkle was Jeff Wilke, the company's senior vice president for global operations. His obsession is 'piles,' the accumulation of boxes or products that are the telltale sign of a backed-up system and a potential threat to on-time deliveries."
More from the Chronicle: "Amazon, the biggest online retailer, expects these holidays to be another record breaker. After hemorrhaging money during its infancy, the company has become consistently profitable during the past five quarters. Its shares finished trading Monday at $38.95, down from a 52-week high of $57.82. Amazon's Fernley facility, a largely windowless concrete box opened in 1999, is the size of four aircraft carrier flight decks. Snaking through the center -- and creating a constant din -- are 9 miles of conveyor belts."
• San Francisco Chronicle: Amazon Perfects New Process of Packaging Multiple Orders
The Seattle Times also reported from the Fernley facility, which is an indication that Amazon scored a PR coup by trotting around reporters to get people to write about their efficient operation in time for the holidays. Shoppers will be the true test of this, as will post-holiday reports of whether gifts were shipped out on time. An excerpt from the Times, which explained that the Nevada facility is Amazon's largest. "It's the online retailer's fixation with refining the way it picks, packs and ships items that has enabled it to challenge one of the largest barriers to e-commerce: shipping fees. Amazon helped to pioneer the free-shipping concept when it offered free shipping on orders of $99 or more during the 1999 holiday season. The company extended the offer to customers year-round in January 2000 and lowered the threshold to orders of $25 or more later the same year -- an offer that still stands. Free shipping, combined with deeply discounted items, became a powerful incentive for customers to shop at Amazon, helping the online retailer recharge sales growth," the paper said. "For the four days of Thanksgiving weekend, consumer electronics surpassed books for the first time as Amazon's largest sales category, as customers took advantage of deeply discounted items and free shipping that applied to even bulkier products, including certain TVs."
• The Seattle Times: Pick, Pack and Ship And Deliver Profit
Suprnova Falls Into Blck Hole
The BitTorrent-based file sharing site Suprnova.org has gone dark, the Associated Press reported last night. "One of the Web's most popular file-sharing sites has shut down less than a week after Hollywood announced a flurry of lawsuits against operators of such Internet servers. A note posted on Suprnova.org, which facilitated sharing among users of the BitTorrent program, said the site was 'closing down for good.' The collection of links to downloadable files, including music, movies and books, was taken down."
• The Associated Press via washingtonpost.com: Popular File-Sharing Site Shuts Down (Registration required)
CNET also reported on Suprnova's closure and signaled that file-trading will go further underground with the development. The Motion Picture Association of America's "actions have put pressure on a short list of large Web sites that had served as hubs for the BitTorrent community and that had operated for months or even years. Many of those sites have now vanished almost overnight, including the SuprNova.org site that was by far the most popular gathering point for the community, serving more than a million people a day, according to one academic study. The disappearance of the big sites is unlikely to eliminate BitTorrent swapping altogether, but it does bring to a close an era of operating in the open without fear of legal reprisals. The resulting shift to the underground will likely make files harder to find, as traders move onto private networks or smaller communities, file-swapping insiders said."
• CNET's News.com: BItTorrent File-Swapping Networks Face Crisis
File-sharing of course is popular for music. Services like Apple's iTunes pay-for-play music service operate in cooperation with the recording industry. ITunes Window version, however, has been acting and crashing when some customers try to purchase songs, CNET's News.com reported. "Beginning late last week, some Apple users noticed that the Windows version of iTunes would abruptly quit just as they were in the process of purchasing music from the online store. By Monday, more than three dozen users were complaining about the problem in Apple's online forum. An Apple representative declined to comment."
• CNET's News.com: Glitch Blocks Some iTunes Music Sales
Post any deals you find on ebay here please > > >
playstation portable psp
Game Cube Advanced Sony PlayStation Portable
