'group'에 해당되는 글 4건

  1. 2008.12.16 How To Have Wii Fun by CEOinIRVINE
  2. 2008.12.07 Blackstone Gets Into Clean Tech by CEOinIRVINE
  3. 2008.11.30 Probe Eyes Pakistani Militants by CEOinIRVINE
  4. 2008.11.26 Warner Music Group 4th-quarter profit rises by CEOinIRVINE

How To Have Wii Fun

Business 2008. 12. 16. 06:58

Sorry to spoil Santa's secret, but at least 2 million of you will wake up during the holidays to discover you're the proud owner of a shiny new Wii. During November, Nintendo sold an unprecedented number of consoles, reports the NPD Group, driving the total population of Wiis in the U.S. to 15.4 million. Nintendo's waggle-controlled consoles are now owned by some 20% of the U.S. population.

And of course you want a Wii; it is only the hottest holiday wish-list item since Hypercolor tees. And with the Wii's widespread appeal--bringing family members of all ages together for bouts of virtual tennis or bowling--its an easy gift everyone will enjoy. Kids want to be blasting away at on-screen targets with the Wii Zapper. Friends want to share their "Animal Crossing" experiences, live, over the Internet with the chat-capable Wii Speak. We all want to design our own Mii so we can watch its body inflate and deflate as we progress through "Wii Fit's" workout regimen.

It is not just the console, though, whose sales are soaring. The past two years have been a Battle Royale of sorts as consumers have stalked UPS delivery trucks and harassed GameStop (nyse: GME - news - people ) employees in the hopes of snagging an all-too-scarce Wii. With the steady influx of new owners, every old Wii game is new again. Unlike most videogames that, at best, have a three-month retail shelf life, six-month old Wii games still top the monthly best-sellers lists.

Personal trainer "Wii Fit," which was released last May, sold 697,000 copies this November. "Wii Play" is over a year old, but sold almost 800,000 units last month--rivaling sales of Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Xbox 360. The six-month old "Mario Kart" sold over 600,000 copies. Conversely, the new "Guitar Hero: World Tour" sold less than half a million copies on the Wii.

"We are seeing a new paradigm where titles such as 'Wii Play' continue to perform in the top 10 month after month," says Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "With so many new consumers discovering videogames, these titles are something they haven't experienced." Even "Wii Music," which had disappointing sales at launch, is "picking up steam," Dunaway says. That means Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) games are no longer constrained to the narrow "launch window" demand curve that the industry thought governed most videogame sales. And it puts Nintendo in the position of trying to craft new retail strategies to ensure its games remain visible amidst all the new titles popping out for the Wii.

That explosion of games creates something of a dilemma for new Wii owners. Some 306 games were released for the Wii console in 2008 compared to 264 for the Xbox 360 and 201 for the PlayStation 3, according to EEDAR's GamePulse database. This glut of content--much of which isn't very good--makes buying a Wii game a leap of faith. Publishers want to capitalize on the growing audience of Wii gamers, but few outside of Nintendo have learned how to make a good Wii game. The average review score for games on the console is 62 out of 100.

'Business' 카테고리의 다른 글

Finding A Virus Scanner That Works  (0) 2008.12.16
Meta Data: Got 'Wii Fit,' Now What?  (0) 2008.12.16
School For $6 A Month  (0) 2008.12.16
Oil up sharply near $50 as OPEC readies output cut  (0) 2008.12.16
Toyota delays Mississippi assembly plant  (0) 2008.12.16
Posted by CEOinIRVINE
l

the private equity giant leads funding round in biofuel startup Coskata.

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Amid the uncertainty of the financial markets, private equity giant Blackstone Group is getting into clean tech. Its first investment: Coskata, an Illinois start-up that says it can make next-generation ethanol from non-food sources for approximately $1 a gallon.

Coskata, which announced the investment Friday, did not disclose how much it raised in its third round of financing, but the company is said to have raised $40 million from Blackstone (nyse: BX - news - people ) and other investors.

Blackstone made its investment through its newly formed clean-tech fund. A spokesman for Blackstone said the company can't comment on the fund because it is still in the fundraising process. But Blackstone announced in August it was creating a clean-tech energy group headed by James D. Kiggen, formerly of investment manager AllianceBernstein (nyse: AB - news - people ).

"We are thrilled to have an investor the caliber of Blackstone working with us," Coskata CEO Bill Roe said in a press release. And lucky, too. The credit crisis dramatically slowed the pace of investment in Coskata, which began its fundraising roadshow in late June and had been hoping to announce the deal with Blackstone two months ago.

Roe added in an interview with Forbes.com that the onset of the credit crisis made the fundraising "a white-knuckler." "We were happy to get [the financing] closed because it was getting more and more difficult," he said. "Several people who were in the book had to get out of the book because they couldn't make a cash call" to come up with the money by the deadline for the fundraising. The problem: the seizing up of the financial markets. Interest is still high in the future of next-generation ethanol, despite the drop in oil prices to $42 a barrel, Roe said.

Coskata is about 80% of the way through building a commercial demonstration plant outside of Pittsburgh. The company hopes to open the plant within six months and aims to have a full commercial-scale production plant up and running by the end of 2011. By then, Roe expects oil demand will return to normal with prices in the $70-a-barrel range.

Most of the so-called cellulosic ethanol companies that Coskata is competing with are pursuing a biotech approach, using enzymes to break down plant mass into fermentable sugars. Coskata, however, is pursuing an approach that doesn't use enzymes. Instead, the plant matter (also called biomass) is gasified, then sent to a proprietary bioreactor where micro-organisms consume carbon monoxide and hydrogen and spit out ethanol.

'Business' 카테고리의 다른 글

Hyperinflation forces Zimbabwe to print $200 million notes  (0) 2008.12.07
Sonoco Suffers Aging Pains  (0) 2008.12.07
Google's Invisibility Cloak  (0) 2008.12.07
Recession Could Wipe Out The iPod  (0) 2008.12.07
What's Your Economic Outlook?  (0) 2008.12.07
Posted by CEOinIRVINE
l
BERLIN, Nov. 28 -- Pakistani militant groups on Friday became the focus of the investigation into the attacks in Mumbai as India and its archrival Pakistan jousted over who was responsible. Both sides pledged to cooperate in the probe, but tensions remained high amid fears the conflict could escalate.

Pakistan initially said Friday that it had agreed to send its spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, on an unprecedented visit to India to share and obtain information from investigators there. Later Friday, however, Pakistani officials changed their minds and decided to send a less senior intelligence official in Pasha's place, according to a Pakistani source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was unclear what prompted the reversal, but the Pakistani source said the Islamabad government was "already bending over backwards" to be cooperative and did not "want to create more opportunities for Pakistan-bashing." Pakistan's defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told reporters in Islamabad, "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Meanwhile, Indian authorities ramped up their accusations that the plot had Pakistani connections. "Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a news conference in New Delhi. Other Indian officials echoed the statement, but none provided details.

Evidence collected by police in Mumbai, along with intelligence gathered by U.S. and British officials, has led investigators to concentrate their focus on Islamist militants in Pakistan who have long sought to spark a war over the disputed province of Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over Kashmir, the battleground between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan that each country claimed soon after India's partition in 1947.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said additional evidence has emerged in the past 24 hours that points toward a Kashmiri connection. "Some of what has been learned so far does fall in that direction," the official said, declining to offer specifics.

"We have to be careful here," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "When you posit a Kashmiri connection, that puts Pakistan on the table. That is huge, enormous, but what does it mean? It can be anything from people who were [initially] in Pakistan, to maybe people who used to be associated with someone in the Pakistani government, to any gradation you could find."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has sought a rapprochement with New Delhi, rejected widespread suspicions in India that Pakistani intelligence services may have supported the Mumbai gunmen. "The germs of terrorist elements were not produced in security agencies' labs in Pakistan," he said Friday.

Analysts said Pakistan's pledge to assist in the investigation and send its spy chief to India was a sign of the high stakes involved. When armed Kashmiri militants tried to take over the Indian Parliament in December 2001, the fallout was immediate, as both countries responded with a massive military buildup along their shared border.

"A Pakistani link here would be so utterly damaging, all the way around, to Indo-Pakistani relations," said Shaun Gregory, a professor of international security at the University of Bradford in England and a specialist on Pakistan. The decision to dispatch Pasha to India, he said, "does signal a determination on Pakistan's part to clarify that even if there's a Pakistani link here, that it had nothing to do with the government."

A senior Pakistani official said the idea for Pasha's visit came during a telephone conversation Friday between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. Singh, who had previously blamed the Mumbai attacks on groups "based outside the country," offered to provide evidence to Gillani.

"One way to ensure that" was to send Pakistan's intelligence chief, the Pakistani official said. "If there is evidence, share it."


Posted by CEOinIRVINE
l

Even as its fourth-quarter profit beat Wall Street expectations, Warner Music Group Corp. Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. said Tuesday the company was keeping a tight rein on CD shipments ahead of what could be a rocky Christmas season.

"I don't think any of us know what the Christmas shopping season will be," he told analysts on a conference call. "We are managing inventory very, very carefully and we are not over-shipping."

Warner Music, whose artists include Linkin Park and Madonna, said lower income tax expense and increased digital revenue drove its profit for the fiscal fourth-quarter to Sept. 30 up 20 percent, although it still lost money for the full year.

Quarterly earnings climbed to $6 million, or 4 cents per share, from $5 million, or 3 cents per share. Income tax expense was nearly halved to $13 million.

Revenue slipped 1 percent to $854 million from $867 million as consumers shifted toward digital music and digital piracy continued. The company's own digital sales, which make up 20 percent of total revenue, grew to $167 million from $131 million.

The results easily beat the average estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who had predicted a loss of 2 cents per share on sales of $837.6 million. Analysts' estimates typically exclude one-time items.

Warner shares rose 22 cents, or 7.9 percent, to $3.02 in midday trading.

Recorded music revenue dropped nearly 4 percent to $707 million, while the unit's digital revenue increased 26 percent to $156 million. Best sellers included releases from artists such as Metallica, Kid Rock, T.I. and Mariya Takeuchi.

Warner said its investment in signing and developing artists paid off as it increased its U.S. market share by 0.5 percentage points from a year ago to 21.5 percent in the quarter.

Standard & Poor's analyst Tuna Amobi kept a buy rating on the stock.

"Despite piracy, we still view digital revenue as key bright spot, though relatively small, amid (a) continued music CD industry sales decline," he wrote in a research note. "Amid retail shifts, we keep a cautious holiday outlook."

For Warner's music publishing division, revenue climbed 14 percent to $156 million as digital revenue surged 57 percent to $11 million.

Warner reported a full-year loss of $56 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with a loss of $21 million, or 14 cents per share, in the prior year. Losses from continuing operations totaled $35 million, or 24 cents per share, compared with a year-ago loss of $8 million, or 5 cents per share.

Annual sales increased 3 percent to $3.49 billion from $3.38 billion.

Looking ahead, Chief Financial Officer Steve Macri cautioned that worldwide economic volatility and the timing of Warner's release schedule "may result in back-end weighted fiscal 2009 results."

One reason the company faced a tough comparison was the sale of 5 million albums of Josh Groban's "Noel" in the fourth quarter last year, he said.

Posted by CEOinIRVINE
l