DmC Devil May Cry has been delayed. The redesigned Dante will now perform endless aerial combos and smart-ass quips on consoles starting January 15, 2013 in North America and Europe. A PC version has also been announced, and is set to strike “later in 2013.”
Gallery: DmC: Devil May Cry (4/10/12)
Continue reading DmC Devil May Cry delayed, hitting January 2013
DmC Devil May Cry delayed, hitting January 2013 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 May 2012 19:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The numbers for February are in, and while hardware performance was better than it was in January, both hardware and software sales are seeing significant declines when compared to figures from February 2011.
With hardware and software combined, total new video-game sales rang up at $ 1.06 billion for last month; a 20 percent decline from the $ 1.33 billion spent during the same period last year. Breaking that total down, hardware sales accounted for $ 381.4 million of all moneys spent in February, down 18 percent year over year, while software sales accounted for $ 464.4 million (down 23 percent year over year) and accessories sales brought in $ 215.2 million, down 16 percent year over year.
Despite those year over year declines, hardware sales increased 62 percent over January, Vita sales notwithstanding. Factoring in Sony’s new handheld boosts that figure all the way up to 87 percent.
On the software front, the Vita’s best-selling launch title was Uncharted: Golden Abyss, earning a spot among the month’s top 20 overall best-selling titles. The top ten best-selling titles for February can be found after the break, with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning being the only new IP to make the list.
Continue reading February NPD: Hardware sales up over January, everything down year over year
February NPD: Hardware sales up over January, everything down year over year originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
DataSift, one of Twitter’s data partners which currently provides developers and third parties with access to the full Twitter firehose in realtime, is about to unlock a whole new set of Twitter data to the ecosystem. The social data platform has launched Historics, a cloud-computing platform that enables entrepreneurs and enterprises to extract business insights from Twitter’s public Tweets dating back to January 2010 (we originally reported on the pending launch here).
Developers, businesses and organizations can essentially use DataSift to mine the Twitter firehose of social data. But what makes DataSift special (besides the premier access to Twitter data) is that it can then filter this social media data for demographic information, online influence and sentiment, either positive or negative. As we’ve reported in the past, DataSift does not limit searches based on keywords and allows companies of any size to define extremely complex filters, including location, gender, sentiment, language, and even influence based on Klout score, to provide quick and very specific insight and analysis.
Currently, DataSift is the only company to offer historical Tweets from as far back as two years ago. As AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes reported recently, Gnip was the first authorized reseller of historical data from Twitter, Tweets only went past 30 days (previously developers generally had access to 7 days worth of data).
With DataSift, companies can now tap into both real-time and over two years of historical Tweets to filter and extract insights and trends that relate to brands, businesses, financial markets, news and public opinion.
Basically, DataSift aggregates this public social data, enriches it, filters and delivers this data social media monitoring, business intelligence and CRM applications. DataSift enriches every Tweet with details including sentiment, topics, web-links, location and social media influence so that companies can extract meaning and create insights.
As CEO Rob Bailey explains to us, one example of a use case of the historical data could be a mobile handset company that may want to see how a previous product launch unfolded, who Tweeted about it, from what geographic regions, and which customers were positive vs. negative. Financial organizations can analyze popular sentiment, trends and indicators relating to businesses and economic events and news and research organizations can surface new trends around historic and popular culture events. According to Bailey, demand for Historics is high. Almost a thousand companies – including 100 of the Fortune 500 companies – have already joined the waitlist for Historics.
Founder & CTO Nick Halstead tells us that DataSift’s platform is so powerful that it can process a whole month of Twitter data in an hour. He says that currently DataSift us running over half a petabyte of storage.
In terms of availability, Historics is available today as a limited release to existing customers and is currently scheduled to be generally available in April 2012. The service itself is available as either as a corporate subscription or pay-as-you-go service.
Bailey tells us that 2012 is going to be a huge year for the recently launched company, and will be increasing the number of social data sources by a factor of ten. We’ll also see a number of big customer announcements, as well as making the UI of parsing through this social data as easy to use as possible with features such as drag and drop functionality.
InMobi, the largest independent mobile advertising network, on Friday announced its “Mobile Insights Report: North American Edition” for the month of January, reports AppleInsider. Thanks to the launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple’s iOS mobile platform surged 12 points to surpass Google’s Android operating system in North American ad impressions. Apple’s share of 23.2% in October of 2011 increased to 35.3% in January, with Android losing 3.2% in the same time frame for a 32.7% share in January. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry mobile platform dropped 8.9% from October to January to an 11.6% share. “The iOS growth we are seeing may be attributed to the tremendous success of iPhone 4S and iPad in the ecosystem,” said Anne Frisbie, vice president and managing director for InMobi’s North American operations. “Overall, we are excited to see InMobi’s available impressions exceed 55 billion in North America, and look forward to continuing our rapid growth through 2012.” The data comes from InMobi’s advertising network, which serves more than 93.4 billion ad impressions around the world each month.
Move over, Sonic CD — you’re last week’s news. EA’s remake of Midway’s arcade football series, NFL Blitz, is top dog now, securing the No. 1 spot as PSN’s most-downloaded game of January 2012. We’re going to chalk that one up to playoffs fever.
On the PSOne Classics side, Final Fantasy VII bested the competition, and Corpse Party managed to be the PSP’s most popular download. Hit the break for the full list of PSN games — the entire lineup of January’s best performers can be seen over on the PlayStation Blog.
Continue reading NFL Blitz tops PSN downloads for January
NFL Blitz tops PSN downloads for January originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, Ltd., parent company of original device manufacturer Foxconn, reported huge revenue growth of nearly 50% for the month of January, Taiwan Economic News reports. The manufacturing giant enjoyed performance that beat forecasts last month, with revenue ballooning 47.9% year-on-year to NT$ 274.6 billion, or approximately $ 9.1 billion USD. Revenue was down 13.3% sequentially after a big December capped off a hot holiday quarter, but the seasonal decline was expected and well below the average 20% fall off Hon Hai typically sees between December and January. Hon Hai’s nearest competitor Quanta Computer saw revenue grow 2% to NT$ 78.3 billion in January, and rival Compal Electronics reported a dip of 22% to NT$ 43.7 billion in January. Read BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech
We talk a lot of trash about Valentine’s Day because it’s hilarious and easy, but in all honesty, there’s nothing wrong with two people using the greeting-card holiday as an excuse to express their love for each other. To make up for our maliciousness, we want to help facilitate that lovin’ by providing some nice background music for your romantic evening.
Start off the night with the acoustic cover of Skrillex’s Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Bear Cavalry embedded above. Once things get a little cozy, follow that up with this piano version of Intuition by Feist, and when the moment is right, throw on Glory Box by Portishead to shift the mood into overdrive. Leave that on repeat for as long as necessary, and then bring things back down with Bjork’s All Is Full of Love. Now, get a room you two!
Continue reading Japanese hardware sales, January 30 – February 5: Love song edition
Japanese hardware sales, January 30 – February 5: Love song edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sales of video game hardware and software in the United States plummeted last month according to new data from market research firm The NPD Group. The firm’s January figures suggest that sales of video game hardware fell 38% to $ 199.5 million, down from $ 324 million in January 2011. Video game software sales slid 38% as well in January, falling to $ 355.9 million, and sales of accessories in the U.S. dropped 18% year-on-year to $ 195.2 million. Total industry sales were down 34% to $ 750.6 million. “January retail performance experienced steep declines with a lack of software launches, and poor Hardware and Accessory performance partly related to bad comps from Kinect-related success in Jan’11,” NPD analyst Liam Callahan said in a statement. “Outside of BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech
Both hardware and software video game sales were down by a great deal in January, according to the latest report from NPD. Both categories dropped 38% year over year in the US, and video games sales in total dropped from $ 1.14 billion in January of 2011 to $ 750 million this past month. NPD’s Liam Callahan attributes the drops to a lack of new launches: Last January, Microsoft’s Kinect propped up hardware sales, and Dead Space 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, and DC Universe Online did the same for software, but there weren’t equivalent launches in the market this year.
The full list of the top ten titles is after the break. Just Dance 3 held down the number two spot, again landing in front of the very popular Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Zumba Fitness 2 also made it into the top ten, but Activision’s Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is likely the most important game for January.
In addition to landing on the list at 8th, Skylanders is seeing huge sales in the accessories category, making up 22% of total accessory sales overall. The game’s single character pack was also the best selling accessory during the month of January, and these numbers should bode well for the series and its future iterations.
Finally, despite that big drop in hardware sales, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg points out that the Xbox 360 has remained the highest-selling console on the market, selling 270,000 units with a 49% market share.
Continue reading January NPD: Sales down without big launches, Skylanders a hit for accessories
January NPD: Sales down without big launches, Skylanders a hit for accessories originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
DmC Devil May Cry delayed, hitting January 2013 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 May 2012 19:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
