Diablo III, 3DS, Kinect, etc.: a point on the sales of the video game in France

Several sources of information to make a small review of the sales of games and consoles in France since the beginning of the year, with - rare thing - quite accurate figures.

At the Cannes IDEF exhibition for professionals in the video game, GameCharts is a rather complete point on the sales of games, devices and consoles in France. Covered by GfK, the figures disclosed by companies in the sector are not complete, but make a small never superfluous point on the status of the game in France.

In terms of games, since January 1, 2012, the best-selling game in France is other than Diablo III. Released May 15 (which only adds to the performance), the hack' no slash of Blizzard sold best 174.000... And are counted here that sales of boxes, and not many digital copies sold! At the second place positions Just Dance 2 on Wii with best 129.000, evidence that music games are more recipe, those dance work well. It is followed by CoD Modern Warfare 3 that closes the podium with 150.000 copies sold on PS3.

Top 10 best-selling games in France since January 1st:

Diablo III (PC) 174.000Just Dance 2 (Wii) 129.000Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3) 122.000Mario Kart 7 (3DS) 112.000Mario Party 9 (Wii) 107.000Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) 96.000Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (Wii) 81.000Battlefield 3 (PS3) 75.000FIFA 12 (PS3) 73.000FIFA Street (PS3) 68,000

Other information obtained, sales of Kinect, for Xbox 360 motion sensor. At the end of the month of may, are France 697.000 players who have purchased the device. Worldwide, Kinect is 19 million passed copies. The Xbox 360 - more old console of this generation - was able to extend its longevity and find a blow of fasting, even if good Kinect games are rare.

In Nintendo, GameCharts tells us that the Nintendo 3DS has just pass the one million units sold in France. An Honourable performance for a portable console whose much - too - soon anticipated the failure on its release in March 2011, in a market where competition from smartphones and tablets is sharp. But he is still the path to both the DS that passed the bar of the 10 million copies sold. As the Big N show console, the Wii, is approaching 6 millions of machines installed in France.

Include for Les Echos that, in relying on data GfK, are a scene interesting progression of sales of games for download, which is necessarily the wrong boxes by signs sales brick & mortar. Thus, we see that on the first half of 2012, living room consoles sales are down 17% in value (CA EUR 174 million), which represents 443.000 past machines (-20% a year). -Side laptops, this is much better, with a decline in sales of 14%. But PS Vita is released and the Nintendo 3DS instead found the form. And despite the phenomenon of Diablo III, value games sales overall are down 10% (EUR 362 million). Georges Fornay, president of the SELL and former CEO of CES France, this is logical given the fact that have to be end-of-cycle and that the economic situation remains complicated.

But in the end, GfK expects to post stable figures for the video game in any year end. The Institute on the release of the Wii U and 3ds XL, as well as on the growth of sales of dematerialized games should represent CA EUR 550 million against 450 million year passed. 60 million euros (+ 100%) should also be generated by sales of pre-payees cards and online Pass. Finally, note that the accessories and peripherals are in progress, they should generate EUR 88 million for the year.

Diablo III, 3DS, Kinect, etc.: a point on the sales of the video game in France

Several sources of information to make a small review of the sales of games and consoles in France since the beginning of the year, with - rare thing - quite accurate figures.

At the Cannes IDEF exhibition for professionals in the video game, GameCharts is a rather complete point on the sales of games, devices and consoles in France. Covered by GfK, the figures disclosed by companies in the sector are not complete, but make a small never superfluous point on the status of the game in France.

In terms of games, since January 1, 2012, the best-selling game in France is other than Diablo III. Released May 15 (which only adds to the performance), the hack' no slash of Blizzard sold best 174.000... And are counted here that sales of boxes, and not many digital copies sold! At the second place positions Just Dance 2 on Wii with best 129.000, evidence that music games are more recipe, those dance work well. It is followed by CoD Modern Warfare 3 that closes the podium with 150.000 copies sold on PS3.

Top 10 best-selling games in France since January 1st:

Diablo III (PC) 174.000Just Dance 2 (Wii) 129.000Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3) 122.000Mario Kart 7 (3DS) 112.000Mario Party 9 (Wii) 107.000Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) 96.000Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (Wii) 81.000Battlefield 3 (PS3) 75.000FIFA 12 (PS3) 73.000FIFA Street (PS3) 68,000

Other information obtained, sales of Kinect, for Xbox 360 motion sensor. At the end of the month of may, are France 697.000 players who have purchased the device. Worldwide, Kinect is 19 million passed copies. The Xbox 360 - more old console of this generation - was able to extend its longevity and find a blow of fasting, even if good Kinect games are rare.

In Nintendo, GameCharts tells us that the Nintendo 3DS has just pass the one million units sold in France. An Honourable performance for a portable console whose much - too - soon anticipated the failure on its release in March 2011, in a market where competition from smartphones and tablets is sharp. But he is still the path to both the DS that passed the bar of the 10 million copies sold. As the Big N show console, the Wii, is approaching 6 millions of machines installed in France.

Include for Les Echos that, in relying on data GfK, are a scene interesting progression of sales of games for download, which is necessarily the wrong boxes by signs sales brick & mortar. Thus, we see that on the first half of 2012, living room consoles sales are down 17% in value (CA EUR 174 million), which represents 443.000 past machines (-20% a year). -Side laptops, this is much better, with a decline in sales of 14%. But PS Vita is released and the Nintendo 3DS instead found the form. And despite the phenomenon of Diablo III, value games sales overall are down 10% (EUR 362 million). Georges Fornay, president of the SELL and former CEO of CES France, this is logical given the fact that have to be end-of-cycle and that the economic situation remains complicated.

But in the end, GfK expects to post stable figures for the video game in any year end. The Institute on the release of the Wii U and 3ds XL, as well as on the growth of sales of dematerialized games should represent CA EUR 550 million against 450 million year passed. 60 million euros (+ 100%) should also be generated by sales of pre-payees cards and online Pass. Finally, note that the accessories and peripherals are in progress, they should generate EUR 88 million for the year.

Free: point optical fibre in France

In short, 60% of the French will have the fiber by 2022 and the remaining 40% will have to be jointly covered in collaboration with local authorities, ARCEP and the set of French operators.

The Convention Free 2012 in the presence of Maxime Lombardini held this weekend, it was question of the development of the fixed and mobile operator as well as the future of new technologies that will be used. Including, a good part of the agreement was the subject of the deployment of fiber optics at the national level.

The recent echoes on the subject seem not really good, and its Director General said while that Free is not only facing this problem of deployment of fiber in France and that other operators are in the same case. However, he qualifies that things are still progressing and that it can announce that almost all of Paris is fiber to the horizontal. For memory, the deployment of the fiber must be two axes. Horizontal, first to connect the heart of operator's network and buildings and vertical then to mount the fibre in each apartment and Pavilion. According Free, there still thousands of fibres to Paris to get a blanket full, but the harder remains to be done by the operator.

All operators abound in the same direction and indicate that they have many difficulties to get fiber in French homes. Mis en cause, the Trustees of building agreements or local communities which slow to give their agreements or who are too hesitant in the light of work by operators. According to figures reported by UniversFreebox, with an investment of€ 600 million by the troublemaker of the French Internet, it hopes that all its subscribers spend the FTTH (Fiber To The Home) at least in the capital by the end of next year. To facilitate the appointment of laying of fibre and making terminal optical (BTEP) in the apartments of Paris and other cities soon, Free will implement an approach simplified directly by the subscriber interface Freebox.

Outside the dense zones, which concentrate much of the French population, investments for fibre deployment will be jointly undertaken much orange at 80% and the rest by Free, and SFR. Thus, Free hopes to achieve the objective of 60% of the population covered by the optical fiber by 2022, dense and moderately dense areas would be affected. For the remaining 40%, Free plans to work with local communities to find a common solution to bring fibre to the pavilions. Because if non-dense areas represent only 40%, the profitability is lower for the operator.

It appears also that local authorities propose to fiber according to their own solutions, which complicates interoperability with operator and plans to ask the ARCEP to justify this practice. But in the end, who will pay the Bill in these non-dense areas? Local and regional authorities under the auspices of imposed regulations? The owners of the lodges wishing to pass the very high speed?

Intel Lynx Point: more than RAID, but accelerated boot

Some information about the next range of chipsets Intel 8 series, Lynx Point, coming while the series 7, Panther Point, has just launched...

Processors Intel Ivy bridge that integrate a new Intel HD 4000 iGPU, offer a good overclocking potential. Launched only a few days ago and already tested by us (the Core i7-3750K and i5-3570K), these chips are accompanied by a new series of chipsets, the Intel Series 7 Panther Point.

Even if this launch took place there is very little time, a few eyes are already turning to the next series for code Lynx Point. The introduction of the new range of processors that will be released next year called Haswell, will be also accompanied by a new series of chipsets, as you guessed it, the series 8.

If we stick to the latest information unverified on these upcoming chipsets, the Z85 will lose the RAID, a sacred loss for the unconditional support of clusters of hard drives. What is sure to be of interest to manufacturers of RAID controllers to create a new range of special motherboards RAID. It is also expected that the entire range will give the possibility to users of basic control technology RST (Rapid Storage Technology) according to three possible choices, energy efficiency, maximum power, or in between.

Last information about Lynx Point, the startup of the machine time reduction, more specifically, the time of loading the EFI and the detection of components and peripherals. Intel will offer, in association with a disc SSD of the caster to more quickly detect hard disks used for a much shorter load times that currently. This will of course work with the fondeur… disks There are still a whole year to discover these new chipsets, we still have some time before us.