Hasta La Gadget!

Kickstarter saw a lot of action in 2012, and there were a ton of funded projects that ended up being a huge hit, the Pebble smartwatch and the OUYA game console just to name a few. Today, the online start-up service released some crazy statistics and figures of 2012, the main number being almost $320 million in pledges during those 12 months.

In total, 2,241,475 people pledged $319,786,629, resulting in 18,109 successfully-funded projects. This means that backers pledged $606.76 per minute on average. Out of the more than 2.2 million people who backed Kickstarter projects, 570,672 of them backed two or more projects, while just over 50,000 back ten or more. 452 people backed 100 or more projects.

Kickstarter also notes that people in 177 countries have backed projects, which accounts for about 90% of all the countries in the world. Furthermore, out of the 13 categories that Kickstarter has, Music was the most-funded category, seeing over 5,000 successfully-funded projects, and the Games category saw the most money pledged, over $83 million.

Other categories, including Art, Film, Music, Publishing, and Theater each had more than 1,000 funded projects. Out of the 18,000 funded projects, 17 of them raised $1 million or more, which says a lot about what it takes to have a very successful project on the online service. 17 projects is only 0.0009% out of the funded projects on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter achieves nearly $320 million in pledges in 2012 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

AT&T has announced some pretty impressive numbers about their fourth quarter sales in 2012. The company reports that they have sold over 10 million smartphones during Q4 2012 alone. The previous record was 9.4 million smartphones sold in the same quarter in 2011, so this year’s numbers may not be a huge increase, but progress is certainly progress.

Overall, the latest results suggest AT&T smartphone sales for all of 2012 will be about 26.7 million units, slightly ahead of its previous forecast of 26 million. earlier last year. The carrier is trying to bounce back from the third quarter, when it added only 151,000 contract subscribers, compared to 1.5 million with Verizon.

AT&T averaged daily sales of more than 110,000 smartphones, which includes iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 devices. AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega said that the carrier’s subscribers “are the industry’s most valuable postpaid subscribers with average revenues twice that of non-smartphone subscribers.”

Verizon had good things to say about its fourth quarter as well. CEO Lowell McAdam yesterday called their Q4 2012 “historic” and mentioned that it was their best quarter ever as they added 2.1 million net subscribers. AT&T plans to report its full fourth-quarter results on January 24, and Verizon on the 22nd.

AT&T reports record smartphone sales in Q4 2012 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the holiday shopping rush comes the expectation that console and game sales will enjoy a boost. According to Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, however, that wasn’t quite the case for the Wii U. Bhatia said in a note today that sales of the Wii U and its games at GameStop have come in under expectations, which is a bit surprising considering that Wii U sales have seemed generally healthy so far.

Indeed, the Wii U sold 400,000 units in its first week on the shelves in the US, and while we don’t have any numbers for Europe, we do know that the console managed more than 300,000 sales during its first weekend of availability in Japan. Despite that strong start, Bhatia said that there has been an abundance of Wii Us on shelves at GameStop, which suggests slow sales. Bhatia also said that the attach rate for new console sales was “low,” so players aren’t buying many games when they go to pick up their new Wii U.

That may be easily explained – after all, a number of launch titles for the Wii U were simply ports of older Xbox 360 and PS3 games. Perhaps gamers are waiting for more new titles before deciding to splurge on Wii U games? Bhatia points out that the Wii U Deluxe bundles are selling better than basic models, which is hardly surprising considering the Deluxe bundle offers a 32GB hard drive to the basic set’s 8GB of storage.

The Deluxe bundle also bestows a pack-in copy of Nintendo Land upon consumers, so it’s pretty easy to see why customers are opting for that edition over the basic set. If this is true, it’s rather disappointing news, but remember that the Wii U is still very young. 2013 will be a big year for the new console, so we’ll be getting a better idea of how it’s performing as we slowly make our way toward 2014. Stay tuned.

[via GameSpot]

Analyst: Wii U underperformed at GameStop during holiday season is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like Runic Games is ending 2012 on a very high note, announcing over Twitter today that Torchlight II has sold more than 1 million copies since its release back in September. In this era of Call of Duty and Skyrim selling millions of copies on launch day, that may not seem like much, but it’s important to remember that Runic is a smaller studio without the resources to roll out huge marketing campaigns. Add to that the fact that Torchlight II launched just a few months after Diablo III, and Runic has a lot to celebrate with those 1 million sales.

Of course, depending on who you talk to, you might hear that Torchlight II is better than Diablo III, despite the fact that it was developed by a smaller team and is offered for a fraction of the price. Torchlight II gave fans who didn’t care for Diablo III‘s skill and item system a more traditional action RPG experience, complete with attribute and skill points for each and every level up. Attribute and skill points – a staple of the action RPG to many – were missing from Diablo III, which didn’t sit well with some gamers.

Torchlight II likely has its low price point to thank for such success. Players get a lot of game for just $20, so it isn’t much of a surprise to see the game doing so well. If you haven’t picked it up and want to see what all of the fuss is about, you might like to know that it’s available for $15 in the Steam holiday sale from now until January 5.

Does this mean we’ll see another Torchlight? Perhaps, but it probably won’t be coming anytime soon. Runic recently said that it’s going to lay off the Torchlight series now that Torchlight II has arrived, ditching the plan to make an MMO set in the universe. The success of Torchlight II, however, might just make the studio change its mind when it comes to future installments. Stay tuned.

Torchlight II hits 1 million sales milestone is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung’s latest phablet-style smartphone, the Galaxy Note II, has proven its worthiness over in the states, but what about in the company’s own home land of South Korea? It turns out that Samsung has sold one million Galaxy Note II units in the motherland alone, just over 90 days after launching back in September.

Samsung announced last month that they sold over five million Galaxy Note II units worldwide, and it’s very likely that number has grown since then, and will continue to grow for some time now. Sales of the Galaxy Note II were three times higher than its predecessor as far as early sales numbers are concerned.

The Galaxy Note reached 10 million-unit sales in 10 months after launch, but the Galaxy Note II is expected to reach that milestone in half the time given the current momentum that it has. Samsung says that a variety of new applications along with S-Pen functionality mostly contributed to the continued popularity of the device.

The Galaxy Note II features a gigantic 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a 1280×720 resolution. On the inside, there’s Samsung’s own Exynos 4412 quad-core chip clocked at 1.6GHz paired with 2GB of RAM and up to 64GB of internal storage. It also comes packing with a huge 3,100mAh battery for all day productivity.

[via MK News]

Samsung Galaxy Note II sales top 1 million in South Korea is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.