Hasta La Gadget!

Olympus is reporting a $56.7 million loss for its first quarter of 2012. While its coveted medical imaging arm remains profitable, its life-science and industrial unit suffered thanks to corporate belt-tightening. Unsurprisingly, its low-end compact camera market is shrinking, but sales of its OM-D E-M5 ILC increased by 50 percent, offsetting some of the losses and reducing operating losses from $89 million last quarter to $19 million in this one. Like many of its Japanese rivals, it’s also found a strong yen has stifled its return to productivity, a trend that isn’t likely to change soon.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Olympus hangs $57 million loss on austerity, strong yen and declining compact camera market originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 05:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Activision’s financial results for its second quarter have landed, and things are looking pretty good for the massive publisher. Net revenue came in at $1.075 billion for the year, which is actually better than the $950 million the company was expecting. Earnings per share landed at a pretty healthy $0.16, which was again ahead of the company’s $0.13 EPS projection for the quarter.

However, even though Activision managed to exceed expectations, it still came up a bit short when compared to the same quarter last year. In Q2 2011, Activision managed to pull in a net revenue of $1.146 billion and was able to boast an earnings per share of $0.29. A significant difference to be sure, but that doesn’t mean Activision had a bad quarter.

It was quite the opposite actually, with Activision announcing that Diablo III has brought in a whopping 10 million players since launching on May 15. We already knew that 3.5 million of those sales occurred in the game’s first 24 hours of availability, and with roughly 1 million of those players getting in for free thanks to the World of Warcraft annual pass, that leaves about 5.5 million sales in the three months since launch.

World of Warcraft‘s subscriber numbers are down a bit, with Activision reporting 9.1 million monthly subscribers at the end of the quarter. That’s a little low compared to where World of Warcraft was at its peak, but those numbers will probably get a boost (at least temporarily) when Mists of Pandaria is released in September. Activision also announced that Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was the number best-selling console game in the first six months of the year “overall in dollars,” which is to say that the company had to count the toy sales in order to name Skylanders the top-selling game.

The company has upped its outlook for the year as a whole to $4.33 billion, and expects to bring in $740 million next quarter. Activision’s boosted outlook is based on the upcoming releases of Mists of Pandaria, Black Ops II, and Skylanders Giants, so that expectation could change if one of those games under-performs. Even if that happens, though, it’s pretty clear that Activision is poised to rake in a ton of cash this year, so we’ll let you go back to wishing you were Bobby Kotick now.

Activision Q2 report: Diablo III captures 10 million players is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sony’s first-quarter figures for 2012 show that despite the company’s optimism three months ago, it’s made a net loss of $312 million. It pulled in a whopping $19.2 billion in sales for the three months ending June 30th, partly credited to bringing Sony Mobile fully into the family. However, the cost of restructuring the Mobile Products and Communications Division (of which Sony Mobile is a part) came to $143 million, wiping out the additional gains to record a loss of $356 million. Gaming-wise, the PlayStation maker suffered a $45 million loss as falling sales of the PSP and PS3 were only partially offset by the sales of the PS Vita. There was better news in its imaging division, while sales of compact cameras fell, DSLRs and “Professional” products took up the slack, resulting in a profit of $160 million.

In a trend we’ve seen across the Home Entertainment industry, sales of LCD televisions continued to fall, forcing the company to eat a loss of $126 million. Movie and TV recorded a loss of $62 million, although that’s primarily due to a dip in advertising sales in India and the cost of marketing (but not producing) The Amazing Spider-Man, the profits of which won’t be recognized until September. Finally, while it spent big to purchase EMI this quarter, big-ticket albums like Usher’s Looking 4 Myself and One Direction’s Up All Night helped the division make a profit of $92 million. While Sony’s treading water to execute Kaz Hirai’s “One” Strategy, it’s still got $8.4 billion stashed under the mattress, and in the face of lower sales, is hoping that reduced costs will help it make $1.6 billion in profit by the end of March 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Digital Cameras, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs

Sony releases Q1 2012 financial results, eats $312 million loss originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Capcom is looking pretty good at the end of its first quarter for the year, thanks in no small part to the success of Dragon’s Dogma. We’ve known for a while that Dragon’s Dogma has passed 1 million units shipped, but today Capcom reiterated that figure – along with the intention of turning Dragon’s Dogma into a series – in its quarterly report. Total Dragon’s Dogma shipments currently sit at 1.05 million, with the game doing particularly well in Japan.

Overall, Capcom’s net sales increased 55.8% year-over-year, settling at ¥18.62 billion ($238 million). Operating income came in at ¥2.66 billion ($34.03 million) for the period ending June 30, climbing 244.4% year-over-year. Finally, net profits landed at ¥1.32 billion ($16.9 million), which is a whopping 290.2% increase over Q1 2011.

So Capcom is looking pretty good all around heading into its Q2, but strangely enough, some of thanks for the successful quarter belongs to Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Despite leaving some critics underwhelmed, the game has managed to ship 450,000 copies so far, so it seems that fans don’t care all that much about poor review scores in this instance. Dragon’s Dogma and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City are the only titles listed as “major” releases for the 3-month period, so Capcom apparently made a significant portion of its revenue from just those two last quarter. Capcom also says its social efforts, such as The Smurfs’ Village and Snoopy’s Street Fair, brought in a steady stream of revenue throughout Q1.

We’re indifferent when it comes to Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, but it’s good to see that Dragon’s Dogma is exceeding expectations (at least in Japan). It was a solid open-world RPG title that wasn’t without its flaws, but luckily it sold well enough to warrant a sequel, so Capcom will have a chance to fix those issues with upcoming titles in the series. It’ll be exciting to see where the franchise goes next, and it just goes to show that not all gamers are opposed to giving a new IP a go this late in the generation. Let’s hope that Capcom gives the franchise the attention it deserves and transforms it from something good into something excellent.

Capcom posts strong financial report for Q1 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

MetroPCS has announced that it pulled in $1.3 billion in the second quarter of the year, only slightly more than it managed in the first. It made a profit of $149 million, well up from the $21 million it pulled in between January and March, despite shedding around 200,000 subscribers in the process. The company’s deliberately concentrated on raising cash at the expense of new subscriptions in preparation for its 4G LTE for All project, due to begin in the third quarter. It revealed that it now has 700,000 LTE subscribers, up from the 580,000 present in March and that it plans to have a full 10MHz of spectrum allocated for the super-fast mobile standard in “most major metropolitan areas” by the end of the year. As for devices that’ll take advantage of the 4G goodness, MetroPCS says that we can expect to see either six or seven new LTE handsets by year’s end, each which will be priced between $99 and $149.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

MetroPCS 2012 Q2 sees profits skyrocket to $149 million despite losing nearly 200,000 subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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