Wii U Sales Reach 9.2 Million, 3DS 50.41 Million as Nintendo Posts Financial Results

This means that during the last quarter (from October 1st to December 31st) Nintendo sold 1.91 million Wii U units and 4.99 million 3DS consoles.


The Kyoto-based console manufacturer explained the results as follows:

During the nine months ended December 31, 2014, for “Nintendo 3DS,” “New Nintendo 3DS/New Nintendo 3DS XL,” launched as the newest members of the “Nintendo 3DS” family in Japan in October, got off to a good start and continued to sell well. However, as sales of the “Nintendo 3DS” hardware in the United States and in Europe, where “New Nintendo 3DS/New Nintendo 3DS XL” were yet to be launched, did not grow sufficiently, the global sales of the “Nintendo 3DS” family hardware were 7.08 million units.

As for the “Nintendo 3DS” software, “Pokémon Omega Ruby/Pokémon Alpha Sapphire” and “Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS” enjoyed robust sales with 9.35 million units and 6.19 million units sold respectively, while titles such as “Tomodachi Life,” “Mario Kart 7” and “Pokémon X/Pokémon Y” showed steady sales. There were also a number of hit titles from third-party publishers in the Japanese market. As a result, the global sales of the “Nintendo 3DS” software were 53.04 million units.

With respect to “Wii U,” Nintendo released two big titles, “Mario Kart 8”and “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U,” which enable family members and friends to have fun together in their living rooms. These titles sold 4.77 million units and 3.39 million units globally, and the global sales of the “Wii U” hardware and software reached 3.03 million and 20.59 million units respectively.

iPhone sold over 74.5m over holidays

Most analysts were expecting iPhone 6 to drive a pretty good quarter for Apple (street expectations put it around 65 million units), but the company's just released first-quarter report shows that the company blew past that with a whopping 74.5 million iPhones sold during the holiday quarter. That's up 46 percent and over 23 million more iPhones sold in a quarter than Apple ever has before.

Xbox ships 6.6 million consoles over holidays

Microsoft said that Xbox console sales totaled 6.6 million units and cited "strong holiday season performance," but it's unclear if that's Xbox 360 and Xbox One combined (likely).

Also, for the sake of comparison, Sony recently said that it sold 4.1 million PS4 consoles during its holiday period.

Xbox One is best selling console during the holidays

Microsoft just sent word that its Xbox One console was the top-selling console in both November and December in the US. And "weekly average sales during these months outpaced Xbox 360 by 50 percent at the same point in its life-cycle," the company noted.

To celebrate the holiday sales success, Microsoft said that it's introducing a $349 price point starting on Friday - although in reality, it's actually a continuation of the holiday pricing that helped the company get the sales lift.

In addition to the hardware sales (exact figures weren't provided), Microsoft commented that "Xbox One sold more games throughout November and December in the U.S. than any other current-generation platform.

Next-gen hardware was big overall in 2014. The NPD Group will be sending over dollar sales for the year soon.

No more support for Windows 7

As planned, Microsoft tomorrow to lay down the general support for Windows 7, even though it is the most used operating system.

Tomorrow, January 13 do Microsoft close down the general support for Windows 7 and goes into what the company calls extended support. In practice this means that no new features will be added to the operating system.

Security updates will be released for another five years, but not general bug fixes. Only companies subscribed extended support contracts will have access to bug fixes.

Tomorrow closure of the general support means that Windows 7 has reached half its life and support will be closed entirely January 14, 2020.

In December, Windows 7 market share of 56 percent of all personal computers worldwide and accounted for 62 percent of all Windows computers. Since Windows 8 released Windows 7 has increased its share by twelve percentage points, an increase of 26 percent.

According to several analysts, many companies have chosen to skip Windows 8 and will instead use Windows 10.

Rumor: SAMSUNG Dumps Android?

The mobile giant is said to be ready for a comeback at Microsoft.

- Samsung has tested the software Windows 8.1 on their devices, says a source to the Korea Times.
Samsung is Android phones uncrowned ruler and cooperation between the Koreans and the US Google resin lasted several years. Now, however, reports that Samsung cast longing glances at Microsoft - as previously manufactured phones along with.
- Samsung might be interested to promote Windows Mobile, said a source familiar with.

Above all is said Koreans be worried about Google's growing dominance in the market, something that could eventually threaten Samsung's position. It is therefore looking for more partners.
- By releasing a Windows Phone, Samsung can get more control over their phone shops in low, medium and premium segment, says the source of the Korean Times.

The only obstacle to cooperation is Samsung's ongoing royalties dispute with Microsoft. After the Americans' purchase of Nokia mobile manufacturer refuses to pay the computer giant royalties for patents on hardware - because they believe that Microsoft ended up in a monopoly situation.

However, Microsoft does not dumber than that they understand the importance of having the Samsung board, Windows Phone will be something in the future.
- If companies sort out their legal dispute, Samsung fabricate devices with Microsoft's mobile platform. As the earliest this can be done in the third quarter of this year, said the source to the site.

4K Blu-ray Gets a Name: Ultra HD Blu-ray

Victor Matsuda, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s (BDA) global promotions group, confirmed at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that new of the new Blu-ray disc format will be ULTRA HD BLU-RAY and not 4K Blu-ray. 

This makes sense as the resolution of 3840×2160 is not the same as of Digital Cinema 4K (4096×2160).
However, Matsuda did not predict when UHD BLU-RAY will hit retail. Licensing of the new format is expected to start in mid-2015, and Matsuda expects to see the first 4K UHD Blu-ray discs to be produced by the end of the year.

At this year's CES we saw the launch of the cross-industry UHD Alliance consortium, the debut of new 4K TV sets and the unveiling of a prototype 4K Blu-ray Disc player from Panasonic.

However, as it typically happens when a new format debuts, content would be the driver behind 4K’s success or failure. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has already produced and distributed approximately 170 4K titles, 75 of those being feature films. Netflix has alredy shot its own "House of Cards" series in 4K and plans to produce all future original series in the high-def format. Comcast unveiled that the company has already experimented with not only 4K, but also 8K, broadcasts.

Here is what we know so far about the Ultra HD Blu-ray standard.

First of all, the new UHD Blu-ray discs will use the HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) codec, aka H.265, and utilize a transfer rate of up to 100mbps to support the ultra-high definition picture quality with low levels of data loss.

Obviously, streaming services cannot compete support that high transfer rates yet. For instance, Netflix’s USA ISP Speed index reports that through the network of the fastest overall service provider, Verizon FIOS, it can only push a 3.27mbps from server to viewer, on average. In the UK,Virgin Media is rated at 3.49mbps.

Although not officially confirmed yet, the disc capacity will be 33GB per layer and we should expect both dual-layer (66GB) and triple-layer (100GB) discs.

In addition, Ultra HD Blu-ray will require a new player, but that these new players will be backwards compatible, able to play all current Blu-ray and DVD software.

The maximum allowable gamut will be the Rec.2020, which has proved to be unattainable on video displays so far. In the end, we should most probably see the Digital Cinema Initiatives P3 gamut to be used, but in any case, the UHD BD standard needs to be future-proof.

The video will be encoded at 10-bit precision, allowing for almost no visible banding artefacts.

UHD Blu-ray supports video at 3840×2160 (progresive) at up to 60 frames per second (progresive. This is an improvement over existing Blu-ray, which allows for 60fps content only at 720p (the 1920×1080 resolution supports 24fps as it’s maximum progressive frame rate).

But most importantly, the new standard supports High Dynamic Range video, which requires greater than 8-bit video anyway.

Ultra HD Blu-ray is also expected to include some optional but very interesting specifications. One of these will be "Digital Extension" or "Digital Bridge," which could allow consumers to securely move and copy movie content from the UHD-BD discs to their own hard drives and to mobile devices.

Tegra X1 has a teraflop of processing power

Nvidia's new chip is based on Maxwell PC architecture

Nvidia has claimed that its new X1 chip will be the first mobile processor with a full teraflop of computing power.

The X1 is an update to the Tegra K1, which was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show last year. It combines an 8-core 64-bit CPU with a 256-core GPU based on Nvidia's Maxwell PC architecture, and it will feature in products available in the first-half of 2015.

Lizard Squad hacker arrested

Member of group claiming responsibility for PSN, Xbox Live downtime arrested for unrelated cyber-fraud

British police have arrested a 22-year-old man connected to Lizard Squad, a hacking group that claimed responsibility for a series of distributed denial of service attacks that took down Xbox Live and PlayStation Network over the holiday break, The Daily Dot reports.

18 500 000 PlayStation 4 units sold

Over 10.9 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, 81.8 million software sales

Sony has now sold through more than 18.5 million units of the PlayStation 4 to consumers.