PS4 Sells More than Xbox One in US Nov Sales

Sony has claimed ‘the largest console launch in history’ as Call Of Duty: Ghosts becomes the best-selling game of last month in America.

The PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One in the US during November, although given that Sony’s console was released on November 15 over there, and Microsoft’s on November 22, that’s not an entirely fair comparison.

According to Microsoft’s Major Nelson the Xbox One remains the fastest-selling console of the month at 101,000 units per day. Which gives a total over nine days of 909,000. (Reported to be exactly 909,132 by VGX’s Geoff Keighley.)

Earlier in the week Microsoft announced that worldwide the Xbox One had sold 2 million consoles in 18 days, but that still puts it below the record-breaking 2.1 million for the PlayStation 4.

Given the split release dates and the fact that the Xbox One is released in fewer countries worldwide than its rival it’s still hard to make any direct comparisons but the fact that the PlayStation 4 did so well in America is of key importance.

The US and UK were the only major markets were the Xbox 360 outsold the PlayStation 3 and Sony now have the early lead in both. Even getting close to the Xbox One in America is an achievement for Sony, especially as the PlayStation 4 gained ‘the highest first month sales of a hardware platform on record’.

As usual hardware sales figures are not released as a matter of course, by they can be estimated from the various clues and statistics given. If the Xbox One sold 909,132 then the PlayStation 4 must’ve done somewhere between that and 1.6 million.

The 3DS was the third best-selling console of the month on around 770,000 (up 15 per cent on last year), with the Xbox 360 on 647,000 (down 49 per cent).

The Wii U is estimated to be around 220,000, a 340 per cent increase on its launch figures last year but depending on what PlayStation 3 sales were still almost certainly the worst selling home console of the month.

According to Nintendo Super Mario 3D World sold 215,000 in eight days, although given there are are no sales figures for the other games in the chart it’s hard to say exactly what that means.

In fact for the top 10 below bear in mind that not only are the American sales charts only every month but they don’t include digital sales or bundles, so they don’t give the most accurate picture you could wish for.

However, you can’t help notice that the top 10 doesn’t include any format exclusives, and according to chart compiler NPD software sales were actually down 24 per cent on last year. As you’d expect hardware sales were up, by 58 per cent, but that meant only a modest market rise of 7 per cent overall.

U.S. all formats chart – November

1 (-) Call Of Duty: Ghosts (360/PS3/Wii U/XO/PS4/PC)
2 (4) Battlefield 4 (360/PS3/XO/PS4/PC)
3 (6) Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (360/PS3/Wii U)
4 (R) Madden NFL 25 (360/PS3/XO/PS4)
5 (-) Grand Theft Auto V (360/PS3)
6 (7) NBA 2K14 (360/PS3/PC)
7 (8) Skylanders: Swap Force (Wii/360/PS3/Wii U/3DS)
8 (-) Just Dance 2014 (Wii/360/PS3/Wii U/XO/PS4)
9 (R) Disney Infinity (Wii/360/PS3/Wii U/3DS)
10(-) FIFA 14 (360/PS3/XO/PS4/PSV)

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NSA and GCHQ have been surveilling World of Warcraft

Once, in my more politically active university days, I wrote "flip the flipping Prime Minister" on my MySpace page. As a result, I'm resigned to the fact that I will be ceaselessly monitored by the full force of my government's intelligence services. The less dangerously subversive among you might be somewhat more surprised to learn how far those surveillance tendrils are spreading. According to reports co-published between The Guardian, The New York Times and ProPublica, intelligence gathering has spread to online worlds, with spies having 'infiltrated' World of Warcraft and Second Life.

According to documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, both the US's NSA and the UK's GCHQ created accounts, recruited informers and gathered data in MMOs, and through the apparently more heavily monitored Xbox Live. According to a top secret document from 2008, they saw these spaces as a possible "target-rich communication network," with the potential to give terrorists and other criminal elements "a way to hide in plain sight." Presumably there were also worried about the threat of global boar genocide.

The surveillance was wide-spread enough that the agencies needed a "deconfliction" group, to ensure operatives weren't accidentally monitoring each other, and maybe to organise the intra-departmental raids. Despite all this, the documents provide no examples of any counter-terrorism successes from these actions. That either suggests that terrorists aren't using MMOs as a method of communication, or that they simply think that WoW is too full of carebears.

On Blizzard's part, a spokesperson told the NYT that they were unaware of any surveillance. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission," they said.

It's a fascinating insight into the workings, fears and, to some degree, paranoia of these agencies. Given the abundance of communication that typifies these games and services, it's no real surprise that agencies dedicated to the analysis of data would gravitate towards them. This is a still-unfolding story that will eventually need to form part of the wider discussion about the role of counter-terrorism, and the level to which privacy should be an expectation of a democratic society. Of course, as a guy who writes about PC games, I'm going to make jokes instead.

Source:Blue's News.PCgamer

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Steam hits 7 million concurrent users, more than 1 million playing games at once.

It's great when Steam and other online stores go head-to-head, because stiffer competition for them means lower prices and better service for consumers. One problem with this kind of competition-following, though, is that it disguises how truly lopsided the fight is: Steam is way, way ahead. Over the holiday weekend, the digital download service report it had seven million users logged on at the same time.

As originally spotted in this thread on NeoGAF, almost 7.2 million users were logged into Steam at around noon Eastern Time on Sunday. That's up from six million at this time last year and represents about 10% of the 65 million user accounts Valve talked about back in October. Even more astounding: about half a million of those users were online playing Dota 2.

We don’t know how many of those seven million users were idle or away, but some quick math shows that most of them were not playing a game. Counting up the players in the top 100 games gives us over 1.2 million players at the peak time yesterday. The rest of those six million users likely had Steam running in the background, always connected.

While it is great that sites like GOG and Humble Bundle offer DRM-free alternatives and sometimes lower prices than Steam, we shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture: these shops are doing well for themselves, but for now they’re small fish that pose no threat to the Steam shark. With numbers like this, it’s clear how crucial Steam is for independent developers looking for exposure and success.

Source:pcgamer

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Just Cause 2: Multiplayer Mod to hold final beta test next week, announces Steam release

It's so simple when you think about it. How do you make Just Cause 2 more chaotic and hilarious? You increase its number of players from one to multiple thousands. Only, it turns out that creating something chaotic, hilarious and stable is a lot more complicated. That's why the mod Just Cause 2: Multiplayerhas, until now, been restricted to occasional test weekends, giving fans just a brief window to shoot, grapple or drive their way to mega-carnage. That's about to change, first with a week-long final beta, before - soon after - an official release.

And just to ensure that havoc is easily available to as many people as possible, the mod's creators have announced that the mod is coming to Steam.

"Since August, we've been in radio silence, working hard on the mod," writes Phillip Larkson, one of the mod's developers, before announcing the mod's Steam release. "You'll be able to download the client and server from Steam," he explains, "just like a normal game. This means complete Steam integration, including joining on your friends and more."

First though, one final beta test is planned. It will start this coming Saturday, 7th December, at 8am GMT, and will close a week later on the 14th December. The beta is also being run through Steam. To take part, head to the Just Cause 2: Multiplayer key distribution page, and sign in to grab a Steam redeemable code.

As for the official release mod, it won't be long after the beta. "Two days before the test, we'll release a detailed changelog; and after the test, we'll reveal the release date," Larkson announces. "One thing is for sure, though: come hell or high water, JC2-MP is coming out this year!"

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