iPad is a Christmas graveyard for ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Modern Combat’

At the beginning of December, the traditional video game industry attempted another iPad invasion. New versions of “Grand Theft Auto,” “Modern Combat” and “Baldur’s Gate” hit the iOS app market priced between $5 and $10. Over the past years, we have seen repeated attempts by major console and PC industry franchises to tailor their blockbuster games for iPhone and iPad platforms. None have succeeded. As the iOS app market increasingly favors free games with in-app purchases, the old-timers have started failing spectacularly.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
December is the most important month of the year for the iOS app market and the days around Christmas are the hottest period. As consumers upgrade their iPhones or receive their very first iOS devices, they tend to go on mobile app buying binges. That is why mega franchises like GTA and “Modern Combat” launched their latest iOS products at the beginning of the month. The games were supposed to stay alive for at least three weeks. They did not.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The lavishly marketed “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” peaked on iPhone app chart at No.2 on December 8th and plunged to No.36 by December 22nd. It rebounded to No.25 on December 25th. On the iPad, the game plummeted to a shocking No.52 by the all-important Christmas Day, when new iPad owners go berserk on iTunes.
Here is the kicker: on the revenue chart for U.S. iPad apps, the new GTA game had tanked to No.75 by December 25th. This is even worse than the No.52 position on the download chart. I find that genuinely fascinating, because it means that a game with a very stiff download price of $5 is showing weaker revenue performance than on raw download volume.
The GTA title is priced at $5 at a time when 80% of the top-grossing iPad games are free downloads. The top free apps have compelling in-game purchase strategies — “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” does not. As a result, it is getting beaten by titles such as “Fairway Solitaire” and “My Little Pony” in revenue generation. Having massive name recognition and hundreds of millions of units in console game sales helps very little in the brutally competitive iOS game market.
“Modern Combat 4″ has also plunged out of top-50 on the iPad revenue chart just three weeks after its high-profile debut. The $10 update of “Baldur’s Gate” is out of top-200, brought low by its ridiculously high sticker price.
The proud console and PC game champions keep repeating the same gambit in the iOS market: price ‘em high and ignore the in-app purchase angle. They keep failing. When are we going to see a major console game franchise finally adapt to the Apple (AAPL) ecosystem and create an iOS game that is free to download but lures users into an in-app purchase trap effectively?

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Apple still can’t build enough iPad minis

A common issue often presents itself when Apple (AAPL) launches new products: it can’t build them fast enough. We’ve seen it time and time again, most recently when Apple launched the iPhone 5 and 150,000 dedicated factory workers still couldn’t keep up with demand. Now, a report has surfaced claiming that Apple’s manufacturing partners in the Far East can’t build units fast enough to keep pace with Apple’s iPad mini orders.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
According to Digitimes’ supply chain sources, Apple’s parts suppliers have prepared enough components to build between 10 million and 12 million iPad mini tablets in the fourth quarter to accomodate heavy demand. Apple’s manufacturing partners are only expected to ship 8 million assembled units, however.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The report states that yield rates are improving though, and Apple is expected to ship 13 million iPad mini tablets in the first quarter of 2013.

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Lack of low-end BlackBerry 10 phone could be a serious stumbling block in RIM comeback bid

South Africa is one of Research In Motion’s (RIMM) top five markets in the world, and it is a decent proxy for the entire African market. Leading regional carrier Vodacom’s November smartphone statistics illustrate exactly why BlackBerry 10 cannot arrive soon enough… and why RIM badly needs a cheap new BlackBerry 10 model by spring.
[More from BGR: Apple CEO Tim Cook sees pay drop 99% in 2012]
Vodacom holds more than 50% of the South African handset market and South Africa is the largest mobile phone market in the continent.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
On November 12th, Vodacom announced that it had 2.7 million BlackBerry users on its South African network, a number that increased by 300,000 in three months. The number of Android users grew by 200,000 to 700,000 subscribers. The number of iPhone users grew by 250,000 to 500,000.
Of course, there are many ways at looking at these trends but it’s striking that the growth of the BlackBerry user base has slowed down to 12% in a quarter while Android growth is now at 40% and iPhone growth is 100%. Even though the pool of BlackBerry users is still expanding in the most important African market, we are now close to the tip-off point where the absolute number of both Android and iPhone users added each quarter is going to be larger than the number of new BlackBerry subs.
RIM announced last week that its global customer base has finally started shrinking — the BlackBerry subscriber pool dropped from 80 million to 79 million between the August and November quarters.
During the August quarter, RIM still managed to add 2 million BlackBerry subscribers. The non-U.S. BlackBerry subscriber base is still growing, but too slowly to offset the U.S. erosion. This is the trend that the Vodacom November numbers also reflect. In Africa and Asia, that BlackBerry growth slowdown is unlikely to reverse until RIM launches a cheap, sub-$250 model with the new BlackBerry 10 OS.
In South Africa, affluent buyers are now flocking under the iPhone banner, while Samsung (005930) and Chinese vendors are mopping up middle class consumers with cheap Android models. New high-end phones in the $600 range are not going to change this equation.
RIM must strike hard in the low-end market to regain its African momentum. By Easter, Android and iPhone camps will have pulled ahead of RIM in new subscriber additions at Vodacom. Next spring, South Africa could well be the most important global bellwether of RIM’s struggle to recapture subscriber growth.

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China commentaries demand U.S. responsibility on "fiscal cliff"

 China's official Xinhua news agency demanded on Tuesday that the United States live up to its global economic responsibilities, put political infighting aside and sort out the "fiscal cliff" mess.
"Being the world's only superpower and the issuer of the dominant global reserve currency, the United States has a unique role and an unshirkable duty to help cure the ailing global economy," one of its English-language commentaries said.
"In today's economically interconnected and interdependent world, it is more of a benefit than of a burden that Washington honors its global responsibility," the state-run agency added.
"Should Washington fail to pull itself from the escarpment, the repercussions would throw the whole world into a cold winter of stagnant growth and laggard recovery."
A second commentary said the fiscal cliff debacle was a clear example of how poorly the U.S. political system worked.
"These days, both Democrats and Republicans seem more intent on inflicting damage on their political adversaries than working out a better future for their country," it said.
"Americans may be proud of their mature democracy, but the political gridlock in Washington really looks ugly from an outsider's view."
While such commentaries are not policy statements as such, they can be read as a reflection of government thinking.
The United States was on track to tumble over the fiscal cliff at midnight on Monday, at least for a day, as lawmakers held back from supporting an eleventh-hour plan from Senate leaders to avert severe tax increases and spending cuts.
China sits on the world's biggest pile of foreign exchange reserves worth $3.3 trillion and as much as 70 percent of the holdings are still invested in U.S. dollar assets, including U.S. Treasuries, according to analysts.
China is on course to end 2012 with the slowest full year of growth since 1999 and while the 7.7 percent rate forecast in a benchmark Reuters poll is way above the world's other major economies, it is far below the roughly 10 percent annual growth seen for most of the last 30 years.

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Analysis: Economy would dodge bullet for now under fiscal deal

 A deal worked out by Senate leaders to avoid the "fiscal cliff" was far from any "grand bargain" of deficit reduction measures.
But if approved by the House of Representatives, it could help the country steer clear of recession, although enough austerity would remain in place to likely keep the economy growing at a lackluster pace.
The Senate approved a last-minute deal early Tuesday morning to scale back $600 billion in scheduled tax hikes and government spending cuts that economists widely agree would tip the economy into recession.
The deal would hike taxes permanently for household incomes over $450,000 a year, but keep existing lower rates in force for everyone else.
It would make permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.
Scheduled cuts in defense and non-defense spending were simply postponed for two months.
Economists said that if the emerging package were to become law, it would represent at least a temporary reprieve for the economy. "This keeps us out of recession for now," said Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The contours of the deal suggest that roughly one-third of the scheduled fiscal tightening could still take place, said Brett Ryan, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York.
That is in line with what many financial firms on Wall Street and around the world have been expecting, suggesting forecasts for economic growth of around 1.9 percent for 2013 would likely hold.
At midnight Monday, low tax rates enacted under then-President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 expired. If the House agrees with the Senate - and there remained considerable doubt on that score - the new rates would be extended retroactively.
Otherwise, together with other planned tax hikes, the average household would pay an estimated $3,500 more in taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Budget experts expect the economy would take a hit as families cut back on spending.
Provisions in the Senate bill would avoid scheduled cuts to jobless benefits and to payments to doctors under a federal health insurance program.
AUSTERITY'S BITE
Like the consensus of economists from Wall Street and beyond, Deutsche Bank has been forecasting enough fiscal drag to hold back growth to roughly 1.9 percent in 2013. Ryan said the details of the deal appeared to support that forecast.
That would be much better than the 0.5 percent contraction predicted by the Congressional Budget Office if the entirety of the fiscal cliff took hold, but it would fall short of what is needed to quickly heal the labor market, which is still smarting from the 2007-09 recession.
"We continue to anticipate a significant economic slowdown at the start of the year in response to fiscal drag and a contentious fiscal debate," economists at Nomura said in a research note.
In particular, analysts say financial markets are likely to remain on tenterhooks until Congress raises the nation's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the U.S. Treasury confirmed had been reached on Monday.
While the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent for many Americans under the budget deal, a two-year-long payroll tax holiday enacted to give the economy an extra boost would expire. The Tax Policy Center estimates this could push the average household tax bill up by about $700 next year.
The suspension of spending cuts sets up a smaller fiscal cliff later in the year which still could be enough to send the economy into recession, said Chinn.
He warned that ongoing worries about the possibility of recession could keep businesses from investing, which would hinder economic growth.
"You retain the uncertainty," Chinn said.

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Senate approves "fiscal cliff" deal, crisis eased

 The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives.
In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent low tax rates on the middle class that have been in place for a decade.
But the measure did little to rein in huge annual budget deficits that have helped push the U.S. debt to $16.4 trillion.
The agreement came too late for Congress to meet its own deadline of New Year's Eve for passing laws to halt $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts which strictly speaking came into force on Tuesday.
But with the New Year's Day holiday, there was no real world impact and Congress still had time to draw up legislation, approve it and backdate it to avoid the harsh fiscal measures.
That will need the backing of the House where many of the Republicans who control the chamber complain that President Barack Obama has shown little interest in cutting government spending and is too concerned with raising taxes.
All eyes are now on the House which is to hold a session on Tuesday starting at noon (1700 GMT).
Obama called for the House to act quickly and follow the Senate's lead.
"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," he said in a statement.
"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it. But tonight's agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans," Obama said.
Members were thankful that financial markets were closed, giving them a second chance to return to try to head off the fiscal cliff.
But if lawmakers cannot pass legislation in the coming days, markets are likely to turn sour. The U.S. economy, still recovering from the 2008/2009 downturn, could stall again if Congress fails to fix the budget mess.
"If we do nothing, the threat of a recession is very real. Passing this agreement does not mean negotiations halt, far from it. We can all agree there is more work to be done," Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, told the Senate floor.
A new, informal deadline for Congress to legislate is now Wednesday when the current body expires and it is replaced by a new Congress chosen at last November's election.
The Senate bill, worked out after long negotiations on New Year's Eve between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also postpones for two months a $109 billion "sequester" of sweeping spending cuts on military and domestic programs.
It extends unemployment insurance to 2 million people for a year and makes permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.
'IMPERFECT SOLUTION'
The tax hikes do not sit easy with Republicans but conservative senators held their noses and voted to raise rates for the rich because not to do so would have meant increases for almost all working Americans.
"It took an imperfect solution to prevent our constituents from a very real financial pain, but in my view, it was worth the effort," McConnell said.
House Speaker John Boehner - the top Republican in Congress - said the House would consider the Senate deal. But he left open the possibility of the House amending the Senate bill, which would spark another round of legislating.
"The House will honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement if it is passed. Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members ... have been able to review the legislation," Boehner and other House Republican leaders said in a statement.
Boehner has struggled for two years to get control over a group of several dozen Tea Party fiscal conservatives in his caucus who strongly oppose tax increases and demand that he force Obama to make savings in the Medicare and Social Security healthcare and retirement programs.
A campaign-style event held by Obama in the White House as negotiations with Senate leaders were taking place on Monday may have made it more difficult for Republicans to back the deal. In remarks to a group of supporters that resembled a victory lap, the president noted that his rivals were coming around to his way of seeing things.
"Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Obviously, the agreement that's currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently," he said to applause before the Senate deal was sealed.
Obama's words and tone annoyed Republican lawmakers who seemed to feel that the Democrat was gloating.
"That's not the way presidents should lead," said Republican Senator John McCain, Obama's rival in the 2008 election.
A deal with the House on Tuesday, while uncertain, would not mark the end of congressional budget fights. The "sequester" spending cuts will come up again in February as will the contentious "debt ceiling," which caps how much debt the federal government can hold.
Republicans may see those two issues as their best chance to try to rein in government spending and clip Obama's wings at the start of his second term.

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Political brinksmanship still threatens US economy

Even if U.S. lawmakers prevent the worst of the so-called fiscal cliff, the brinksmanship in Washington over taxes and spending is likely to continue damaging the fragile economy well into 2013.
A months-long political standoff over fiscal policy has already taken its toll, adding uncertainty that has discouraged consumers from spending and businesses from hiring and investing.
The squabbling seems sure to persist even if the House of Representatives goes along with a partial fix passed by the Senate in the early hours of Jan. 1. Under that plan, taxes will rise on individual incomes over $400,000 and household incomes over $450,000 and on the portion of estates that exceeds $5 million. The House is expected to vote Tuesday or Wednesday.
But lawmakers appear to have postponed tough decisions on government spending, giving themselves a reprieve from cuts that were scheduled to begin taking effect automatically Jan. 1. That just sets the stage for more hard-bargaining later.
And another standoff is likely to arrive as early as February when Congress will need to raise the $16.4 trillion federal borrowing limit so the government can keep paying its bills. House Republicans probably won't agree to raise the debt limit without offsetting spending cuts that Democrats are sure to resist.
"Even if they cut some small deal, the process and what is left undone still means there's a lot of uncertainty," says Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.
After Jan. 1, asks Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, "what induces the two sides to stop fighting and start compromising? ... We're kind of in the first act of a three-act play," Harris says. "One of the key messages from the cliff is that this stuff just doesn't get resolved quickly."
The fiscal cliff itself was created to force Democrats and Republicans to compromise.
To end a 2011 standoff over raising the federal debt limit, they agreed to a Jan. 1, 2013 deadline to reach a deal over taxes and spending. If they didn't, more than $500 billion in 2013 tax increases would begin to take effect, along with $109 billion in cuts from the military and domestic spending programs. The sharp tax hikes and spending cut would threaten to send the economy over the cliff and back into recession.
But negotiations to avert catastrophe have highlighted once again how far apart the two parties are on taxes (Republicans don't want to raise them) and spending (Democrats are reluctant to cut government programs).
"We're learning about how deep the impasse is," Harris says. "Both sides have decided that they were willing to go to the last minute."
Political gridlock has been rattling financial markets and shaking consumer and business confidence the past two years.
After a fight over raising the debt limit last year, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's yanked the U.S. government's blue-chip AAA bond rating because it feared that America's dysfunctional political system couldn't deliver a credible plan to reduce the federal government's debt. S&P cited an overabundance of "political brinksmanship" and warned that "the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge."
The Dow Jones industrials dropped 635 points in panicked selling the first day of trading after the S&P announcement.
Harris contrasted the latest budget brawls with previous budget agreements in the 1980s and 1990s. Those deals generally included deficit cuts that were spread out over time and were sometimes bipartisan.
That's better for business and consumer confidence than the repeated partisan standoffs and threats of sudden tax hikes and spending cuts that Congress now engages in.
"The process matters almost as much as what they actually do," Harris says.
Outside Washington, the economy has been getting some good news. Europe's financial crisis appears to have eased, reducing the threat of a renewed financial crisis. And the U.S. real estate market finally appears to be recovering from the housing bust.
But the old worries have been replaced by new ones about political gridlock, says Joseph LaVorgna, an economist at Deutsche Bank.
The partisan divide has left businesses and consumers wondering what's going to happen to their taxes and to federal contracts.
Companies have plenty of cash. But they reduced spending on industrial equipment, computers and software from July to September, the first quarterly drop since mid-2009 when the economy was still in recession. And hiring has been stuck at a modest level of about 150,000 new jobs per month this year.
"What we see is fear," says Darin Harris, chief operating for Primrose Schools, an Atlanta company with 250 franchised preschools in 17 states. He says franchise owners have been reluctant to invest in a second or third school until they know what tax rates are going to be and where government spending is headed. "All those things make our small business owners reluctant to reinvest."
Consumer confidence fell in December for the second straight month, according to a survey by the Conference Board, which blamed the drop on worries about the fiscal cliff. The uncertainty is also believed to have dinged holiday shopping, which grew at the slowest pace this year since 2008.
"Every kind of brinksmanship moment is a reminder to people to not trust the economy," Harris says.

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