Latest News - Page 2210

Sony reports impressive Q1 earnings revenue driven by strong segment sales growth.

Profits surge in Sony Corp's new quarterly financials, with key segments like the company's semiconductor arm which makes its lucrative image sensors, the video cameras segment, and its financial institution all seeing big jumps in net sales revenue of 41.1%, 27.3% and 30.3% year-over-year spikes respectively.

Sony earned 1.858 trillion yen ($16.8 billion) in net sales in the three-month quarter ended June 30, up 15.2% year-over-year from Q1'16.

Japanese games titan Sony Corp today revealed its first quarter financials for the fiscal year ending March 2018, showing strong growth due to increased semiconductor, image sensors, and financial institution segments, along with a highlight at total lifetime-to-date PlayStation 4 shipments.

In its Q1 earnings for Fiscal Year 2017 the Tokyo-based technology giant has revealed new metrics on the PlayStation 4's sell-in figures. According to the data, Sony shipped 3.0 million PS4s in the three-month period ended June 30, 2017, down 14.28% year-over-year from the 3.5 million units shipped in Q1'16. In total, Sony has sold-in 63.3 million units to retailers as of June 30.

Remember this is sell-in, as in shipments to retailers who purchased the consoles in bulk for a discounted rate, not total sales. As of June 13, Sony has sold 60.4 million PlayStation 4 units globally.

Sony Pictures, a division of Sony Corp, today announced that it has agreed to purchase majority stake in popular American anime producer Funimation.

Sony Pictures has acquired 95% of equity interests of renowned animation distributor Funimation for $143 million, the company has announced. Sony Pictures remains an ailing branch for Sony Corp, with the segment recording a $719 million loss in Fiscal Year 2016 operating income, and sales and operating revenue dropping 3.73% year over year to $8.06 billion.

"Sony Pictures Television Networks ("SPTN"), a division of Sony Pictures Television Inc., an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation ("Sony"), today announced that an SPTN affiliate has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 95% of the equity interests in a Japanese anime distributor, Funimation Productions, Ltd. for approximately 143 million U.S. dollars," reads an official press release put out by Sony Pictures.

Samsung has announced that the Exynos 8895 is now capable of peak download speeds of up to 1.2 Gbps. This is an increase of 20% over earlier this year when the same modem was capable of 1 Gbps.

However, as Samsung worked with the Japanese modem equipment company Anritsu, they were able to squeeze another 200 Mbps of peak bandwidth out of their modem.

This would bring Samsung up to par with where Qualcomm has been with their latest modems since last year. This also means that users with Exynos-based Samsung Galaxy devices should expect similar but not equal experiences to those with Qualcomm-based Galaxy devices. There are still many other ways that modems can perform differently, like battery life that Samsung isn't talking about.

SpaceX is currently using the Falcon 9 rocket for the company's launches, but the bigger Falcon Heavy should take those launches over soon. Elon Musk first mentioned the Falcon Heavy rocket in a September 2005 news update. The rocket was scheduled to fly in 2014, then 2015, but there have been delays, and now, the company is aiming for the second half of this year.

SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk explained last year that developing the Falcon Heavy proved to be much more difficult than they previously thought, but it seems that the company is on track. Back in May SpaceX conducted the first Falcon Heavy static fire test which was a success.

Elon Musk has now announced that the company plans the first Falcon Heavy launch for November.

On the heels of strong first quarter earnings assisted by Capcom's first Nintendo Switch game, the Japanese games-maker says the console is "very strong" and it'll likely release more games for the machine.

Despite being priced at $39.99, Capcom's newly released Ultra Street Fighter II managed to sell 450,000 units globally across the Nintendo Switch's 4.7 million worldwide install base in a single month, outperforming the company's expectations. "Ultra Street Fighter II (for Nintendo Switch), which was released in May 2017, made an excellent start and proved to be a smash hit," Capcom wrote in its fiscal Q1'18 earnings report.

Capcom asserts that Ultra Street Fighter II was massively popular in Europe and North America where it sold 350,000 copies, and less-so in Japan where it saw 100,000 copies. In comparison, Japanese Switch owners purchased 670,995 copies of Splatoon 2 in three days.

Capcom reports strong growth for the first quarter in Fiscal Year 2018, pushing net sales up by 7.5% year-over-year and an incredible 2,080% earnings spike in digital contents segment operating income.

Capcom has kicked off the fiscal year ending March 2018 with impressive earnings across the board; not only was revenue positive in all gaming sectors, earnings rebounded year-over-year thanks to consistently strong sales of key flagship titles.

The Japanese games-maker reported net sales of 11.746 billion yen ($106.172 million) for the three month quarter ended June 30, 2017, up 7.5% year-over-year. Operating income was 784 million yen ($7.08 million) up an amazing 208% year-over-year from Q1'16's loss of $726 million yen. Ordinary income for the quarter was 772 million yen ($6.97 million), up a big 137% from the substantial 2.08 billion yen ($18.8 million) loss last year. Capcom's total profit was positive this quarter, pulling in 521 million yen ($4.70 million) and up 136% from last year's big 1.41 billion yen loss.

Nintendo's awkward and truly backwards-implemented online voice chatting app is a mess, and a huge portion of Nintendo Switch owners simply aren't using it.

The Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app, which requires Switch owners to use their phone while playing Switch games in order to chat with friends in online multiplayer games like Splatoon 2, has been released as part of a "free, limited test" to arm Nintendo with much-needed feedback on its incoming online service. However, gamers simply aren't using the app: analyst firm Sensor Tower reports that just 17% of the Nintendo Switch's full 4.7 million global install base, or 780,000 users, have downloaded the app on both Google Play and Apple's iOS Store.

The vast majority of Switch Online app downloads were in the United States, and Sensor Tower's data shows just how little Japanese gamers care about voice chatting. This strongly reinforces the believe Nintendo is marketing the Switch for the Japanese market first, as Japanese gamers typically do not use voice-based interactions while playing online games. While it's worth noting the Switch Online app only works with Splatoon 2 right now, the game is massively popular in Japan: in 3 days it sold 670,995 units, meaning one out of every two Switch owners in Japan bought the game.

Modders are bringing Rockstar's massively popular Grand Theft Auto series to space in a move that could counter No Man's Sky or Mass Effect: Andromeda's space exploration.

A consortium of GTA modders are making an ambitious new mod called Grand Theft Space, which will allow gamers to explore the heavens and land on planets throughout--and beyond--the solar system. "I've heard little rumblings in the past of people wanting to make space mods. I've seen map-editor satellites, and space ship looking vehicles, the whole 9 yards," GTA Space modder sollaholla said on the mod's announcement page. "But nobody seems to have ever made it so you can actually go in space. So I said, 'Screw it, I'm gonna make a space mod.'"

The modders want to include a ton of features including a fully-fledged psychics system to emulate the free-floating zero-g of space, as well as planet exploration, gunning down aliens and other unknown intergalactic baddies, joyriding and cruising in vehicles on planet surfaces, and a few missions thrown in to boot.

EA is rolling forward with its plan to integrate the Frostbite engine and the action genre into all of its games.

In May 2016 I predicted that BioWare's then-secret new IP would be action-based. Fast-forwarding to today and Anthem, BioWare's newly announced IP, indeed puts action first above RPG and adventure elements. Before Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, I predicted the game would have heavy action elements instead of the beloved tactical squad-based content the series was known for; lo and behold, the game delivered just that.

In a May 2016 Investor's Day Presentation, Electronic Arts confirmed it would start focusing heavily on the action genre in a bid to leverage an untapped market. Now in 2017 the games giant has reinforced that initiative with confirmations it will continue pushing an action focus for its new games.

Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen confirms BioWare's Montreal team has been integrated into Jade Raymond's new EA Motive studio.

Two months after Mass Effect: Andromeda launched to dismal critical reception, reports from Kotaku's Jason Schreier indicate EA down-sized BioWare Montreal, the studio that made the game, and put the Mass Effect series on hiatus. The remaining BioWare developers were then spread out across EA Motive and BioWare's core Edmonton division to help work on the latter's new IP, Anthem, the reports continue. Now EA has officially confirmed the fate of its Montreal studio, validating the reports from May of this year.

While discussing R&D spend in a recent quarterly earnings call, EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said BioWare Montreal has been moved into the EA Motive studio to help Jade Raymond's team develop a new IP.

Although BioWare Montreal's massively panned and hugely criticized action-RPG suffered in the long run, EA confirms Mass Effect: Andromeda strongly contributed to revenues and helped the company pull in record first quarter earnings.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is undoubtedly bombed in the public eye, but according to EA's latest fiscal Q1'18 earnings call, the game bolstered its quarterly revenues with strong sales. With a fully-monetized strategy the game helped in a number of ways including live service earnings, digital downloads, and total net sales.

Net sales for fiscal Q1'18 were $775 million, up 13.63% year-over-year from fiscal Q1'17's $682 million, and $25 million (3.33%) above EA's guidance for the quarter. "Year-on-year growth was driven by the Mass Effect: Andromeda sales captured in the quarter and by FIFA," EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said during the company's fiscal Q1'18 earnings call.

EA's Battlefield empire continues to grow with a strong userbase that's constantly engaged with new content.

Electronic Arts is one of the major gaming titans who not only sees the value of engagement and monetization, but defines it with industry-leading strategies. As a result the company is a titan among its peers, earning billions with its live services initiatives--in its first quarter, EA made more in digital live services than it did in games, pulling in $420 million or a whopping 61.67% of EA's first quarter digital net sales earnings. EA confirms Battlefield 1 was a major driver for its 22% live services growth. But it's not only about making money: EA has to continually engage players with new content.

The company reports that Battlefield 1's community has grown to 21 million unique players across all platforms as a result of EA's content-rich pipeline and macro/micro-monetization paths. The publisher and DICE have belted out a number of new updates and content packs to keep players busy, and even touted a big new announcement for the WWI shooter at Gamescom.

All of Capcom's major games releases last year failed to hit their sales forecast targets set by the company.

Capcom expected to sell 4 million copies of Resident Evil 7 by the end of the fiscal year, and they missed that target. Even with three months to accrue sales after the fiscal year ended, Resident Evil 7 still didn't hit the target 4 million copies sold; as of fiscal Q1'18 the game sits at 3.7 million units sold, just 300,000 copies shy of the target.

The company wants to ship 2 million more units of Resident Evil 7 by the end of the new fiscal year on March 2018, bringing the total lifetime to date sales estimate for RE7 to 6 million copies at the end of this period. Capcom has also said it expects Resident Evil 7 to sell 10 million copies in its lifetime. The game has officially recouped Capcom's development costs, but it still fell short of its projected sales.

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of 'Fate of the Furious, we have fifteen Blu-rays to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

The ride isn't over. Now that Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon and Brian and Mia have retired from the game-and the rest of the crew has been exonerated-the globetrotting team has found a semblance of a normal life. But when a mysterious woman (Oscar winner Charlize Theron) seduces Dom into the world of crime he can't seem to escape and a betrayal of those closest to him, they will face trials that will test them as never before. From the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, our elite force will crisscross the globe to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos on the world's stage... and to bring home the man who made them a family.

How many 'Fast and Furious' films has Vin Diesel appeared in?

Brendan Greene might not be a household name yet, but you might have heard of his gamer tag 'PlayerUnknown' as he's the creator of smash hit PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which has now made over $100 million.

During a recent interview with CNET, Greene said that he doesn't think of himself as a gamer. He played games growing up, but he was never super into games or well-known series like The Legend of Zelda. Greene said: "I don't consider myself a gamer, compared to a lot of people I meet at these conventions where their life is dedicated to games. I enjoy games, but I don't consider myself on that level. I've never played Zelda. I've never played these classic games because they don't interest me".

While he didn't play Zelda, he played ultra-realistic military games like Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Greene added: "I played the absolute s*** out of that game until there were no more servers left. I loved the whole idea of it: the fact there was bullet drop, that it was somewhat realistic, and I could go be a sniper quite easily".

The world of VR might not like hearing what EA boss Andrew Wilson has to say, with the EA CEO stating that VR isn't ready just yet, and that EA sees more potential in AR right now.

EA recently released their Q1 FT18 financial report, where Wilson had some choice words to say afterwards: "So I'll start with VR and AR. Not a lot of new news on VR for us and as you see there's not a lot of new news for VR in the industry. People seem to have come to terms of the fact that VR while an unbelievably wonderful innovation for how you consume interactive entertainment and all forms of entertainment for that matter is going to take a couple of years at least to going to get to a point where it is truly a mass market consumer opportunity. We still are in the same position we were in which we have enabled core VR capability in our Frostbite engine".

He added: "We have delivered a console experience in the course of delivering a mobile experience and we'll continue to push on the boundaries of what's a sports game look like inside of VR? What's first person shooter look like in VR? What's an action adventure game look like in VR? And that's really at a design level and something that will start to manifest in the marketplace in the years to come".

Intel announced its flagship Core i9-7980XE processor during Computex in June, but didn't provide details on its clock speeds. But now there's a leaked slide on the upcoming Core X "Skylake-X" processors, including the 7980XE.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-7980XE processor will reportedly feature a 2.6GHz base clock, with Turbo Clock 2.0 speeds of 4.2GHz, and massive Turbo Clock 3.0 speeds of up to 4.4GHz. Remember, the Core i9-7980XE is an 18C/36T processor, with a large 165W TDP and even bigger $1999 price.

If we compare the 7980XE against AMD's just-launched Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X, AMD wins in more departments than you think. AMD loses with the amount of CPU cores and threads with 'just' 16C/32T (versus 18C/36T) and a max CPU clock of 4GHz under XFR.

More details have emerged about Samsung's two mid-range processors, the Exynos 9610 and 7885.

The Exynos 9610 is essentially a re-hash of what Samsung released this year, but with 10nm and using all ARM processors. The Exynos 9610 is expected to ship with an ARM Cortex A73 CPU cores paired with A53 little cores. The GPU will also be a G71, meaning that none of the parts of the SoC itself will be anything new. Previous rumors stated that it might have a Mali G72 which is ARM's latest GPU core technology.

Read also: Samsung overtakes Intel as biggest chip maker

For the last 25 or so years, Intel has dominated the world as the biggest chip maker. This is different from manufacturers of chips because many manufacturers are fab-less manufacturers that rely on chip makers like Samsung and Intel to fabricate their chips. There are other companies like TSMC and Globalfoundries that also manufacturer chips, but they don't quite do it at the scale that Intel and Samsung do.

Now, Samsung overtook Intel position and became the biggest chip maker in Q2 2017.

Part of that reason has to do with the fact that Samsung has been expanding their chip manufacturing business and doing so at a rapid pace. Samsung's customers include the likes of Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung. Between those three companies, it seems logical that Samsung could ship enough chips to overcome Intel's chip shipment numbers. Intel mostly manufactures chips for themselves and does so in PCs and servers, but very rarely for mobile.