Eying business opportunities during the summer holiday, Microsoft Taiwan Corp has aggressively embarked on a series of promotional activities for its Xbox 360 video game consoles.
"Sales of Xbox 360 in the summer alone will account for 30 percent of the whole-year figure," Cary Chen (陳傑樺), senior product marketing manager at Microsoft Taiwan's entertainment and device division, told reporters yesterday.
To help achieve its goal, the company announced yesterday that it would cooperate with the five-star Far Eastern Plaza Hotel to promote the consoles.
From yesterday until Aug. 31, locals and foreigners who hold alien resident cards who stay at the hotel will be able to play on the consoles in the comfort of 50 selected rooms.
Microsoft's partnership with the hotel is the latest of several cooperative relationships it has formed since its Xbox 360 hit local stores in mid-March.
Microsoft has joined forces with companies from various industries, hoping to cash in on the delayed debut of rival Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 (PS3).
These partnerships have involved carmaker Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (
Microsoft Taiwan is also planning to form a partnership with another drink company to promote the Xbox 360 soon, according to Chen.
This summer, Xbox 360 fans can expect to see 21 games added to the current lineup of 60 games, he said.
Of these new titles, two will cater to local tastes as they have been developed by Taiwanese firms.
XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技) is set to launch a role-playing game next month, while FunTown (戲谷) will follow a month later by introducing a mahjong game, he said.
While Softstar Entertainment Inc (大宇資訊), was the only local company to work with Microsoft Taiwan when it was developing titles for the first-generation Xbox, around 15 domestic gaming developers are doing so for the new Xbox, Grace Chou (周文英), the company's senior manager, said in March.
Chen declined to offer sales figures in Taiwan, but Microsoft previously estimated that global sales of Xbox 360 will hit 5 million to 5.5 million by the end of this month, and rise to 10 million by year's end.
In November, Nintendo Co will launch its Wii consoles, priced at under ?25,000 (US$215). Sony, meanwhile, will sell the PS3 for US$499, while the Xbox 360 sells for US$399.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts