Sony Playstation 4 hits 1million sales in less than 24hrs

Sony Corp. (6758) sold more than 1 million PlayStation 4 consoles in North America during the first 24 hours of sales, though the company said some buyers reported glitches including the device suddenly turning itself off.

The sales, which top initial results for the predecessor PlayStation 3 in 2006, come as Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai tries to make the video-game console the centerpiece of a corporate turnaround strategy. Pressure has intensified on Hirai after the company last month surprised investors by reporting a second-quarter loss.

Brenden Hartnet, left, and Sydnee Mencuri, center, celebrate after purchasing the Sony PlayStation 4 console during its midnight launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013. Photographer: Erin Lubin/Bloomberg

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Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Mia Saini reports on the release of Sony's PlayStation 4 gaming console. She speaks on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Source: Bloomberg)

Jordan Smith, left, and Kayla Brittingham, share a kiss after purchasing the Sony PlayStation 4 console during its midnight launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. Photographer: Erin Lubin/Bloomberg

Sony is getting a head start on competing for the attention of game players with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), which is releasing the Xbox One later this week. The Tokyo-based electronics maker has priced its console at $399, or $100 less than the Microsoft machine, as it seeks an edge in the $93 billion-a-year industry before the Christmas shopping season. Some players said the power-indicator light blinks before the device shuts down.

“No other consoles in the U.S. sold 1 million sets during the first day, so I think having some issue is not unusual,” Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo, said by phone. “In the long term, the major problem will be whether it can continue to provide interesting game software.”

‘Isolated Incidents’

Sony is aware some consumers reported issues with their PS4 systems and is monitoring for additional reports, Satoshi Fukuoka, a Tokyo-based spokesman, said in an e-mail today.

“We think these are isolated incidents and represent a very small percentage of total units shipped to consumers to date,” Fukuoka said, declining to elaborate. The company is still making and shipping the consoles, he said.

The company’s website said problems associated with the blinking light include no picture or sound coming from the television.

Sony shares rose 0.9 percent to 1,862 yen at the close in in Tokyo trading. The benchmark Topix index gained 0.2 percent.

Nintendo Co. (7974) also faced criticism last year after its new Wii U console required an immediate firmware update out of the box, and some consumers complained their machine was damaged during the process.

Sony will have adequate supplies of the PS4 through Christmas and stands by earlier projections for sales of 5 million units by March, Jack Tretton, president and chief executive officer of the company’s U.S. computer entertainment division, said Nov. 11. The device goes on sale in Europe and Latin America on Nov. 29.

Source>> Bloomberg

Samsung and Intel introduces Open Source Operating System "TIZEN"

In the mobile world, Android is one of the dominating forces. So it’s always refreshing to see some new potential competition join the game which, as CNET reported, is just what happened this week at the Mobile World Congress. Pioneered by Samsung and Intel, Tizen is an open operating system which could draw in some major attention from mobile carriers because they are invited to play around with it and customize it for themselves, something most other OS’s don’t allow.

The reason carriers are so interested in having control over a phone’s operating system? It will allow them to maintain more of the interaction between its subscribers and the apps that they download. We can only imagine this would result in them being able to either put an end to, or take a cut of, the money that some of the bigger companies make via their apps. (Of the two, the latter makes more sense.)

Speaking of apps, though the Tizen Association won’t disclose numbers, it said that, by launch, there will be thousands of apps ready for users to download. No word yet on which apps will be available, but a good guess is that the top dogs – Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, for example – will likely be among them.

Samsung will release the first line of Tizen-operated phones, with Huawei models following suit shortly after. Europe-based Orange and Japan-based NTT Docomo are the first two carriers that have agreed to offer phones operating on Tizen, with the latter being the first to launch with Samsung models this summer. Orange says that by next year, they’ll introduce the phones to emerging markets, which could be a tough sell; the first Tizen phones will likely be priced in the $300 range, whereas phones in emerging markets typically fall in the $100 range.
We’re looking to see what the introduction of this operating system will do to the mobile market. No word yet whether it will make its way to the U.S. market; it will probably depend on how well it fares overseas.

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source>> Digital Trends

Sony set to launch "Play Station 4" this november: Expects to sell 3million PS4 consoles by the end of the year.

Sony is expecting to sell at least three million PlayStation 4 gaming consoles by the end of the year and five million by next March according to president and chief executive officer of Sony’s U.S. computer entertainment division Jack Tretton. 

During a recent interview, the executive pointed out that Sony is running a marathon, not a race, in terms of next generation console sales. Getting out to a nice start is a good thing to do which is exactly what will happen later this week when Sony drops the PS4 a week ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox One. The PS4 will launch in the US on November 15 followed by Europe two weeks later on November 29. By the end of the year, it’ll be available for purchase in 32 countries. That is, if stock holds up.

Tretton seems confident that Sony will not run into any supply issues this holiday season like those that crippled sales of its predecessor back in 2006. He said the only hurdle left that is not a non-issue until it’s over is launching the console, having people engage with the network and having it all go smoothly. Whether or not Sony will be prepared to handle the massive influx of new users on its network this holiday season, however, remains to be seen.
The three million mark falls in line with analyst Colin Sebastian’s worldwide PS4 sales forecast released last month. What’s more, Sony’s game operations chief Andrew House also predicted five million consoles sold by the end of March 2014.