Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Quote
Nintendo will be a major participant in this year's Tokyo Game Show, Kotaku has learned. This will be the first time since the show's inception in 1996 that Nintendo will participate with a booth at the show.
Traditionally, Nintendo has sat out the Tokyo Game Show. But this TGS is going to be different: Nintendo will have an actual booth. A big booth at that, which is one of the reasons why TGS is four days this year instead of three.
Why Nintendo's sudden appearance? Square-Enix's Dragon Quest IX. Every time a Dragon Quest game has been shown at TGS, the event belongs to DQ. With Nintendo landing a major coup and getting DQIX on the DS (and it's gonna sell a gazillion copies), the company has decided to put in face time.
Rest easy, the DQIX demo will apparently be available via DS download. That means no waiting for three hours plus! An official announcement is expected in the next couple of weeks.
Quote
Electronic Arts Plays Catch-Up After Shrugging Off Wii's Appeal
April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Video-game designer Nick Earl spent eight months holed up with his development team rushing to adapt ``The Godfather'' for Nintendo Co.'s Wii.
The reason for the long hours: Earl's employer, Electronic Arts Inc., like some of its competitors, underestimated demand for the Wii. Instead, game makers put most of their resources into Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.
Now, publishers are scrambling to get titles to the 3.56 million U.S. and Japanese Wii owners who have made the machine the top-selling game console this year.
``Those companies are backtracking,'' said Anthony Gikas, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. ``They're going to need to get their best-branded product on that platform. That will take a good nine to 12 months.''
....
U.S. and Japanese sales of Wii players totaled 1.47 million in January and February, said market researchers NPD Group Inc. and Enterbrain. PlayStation 3 tallied 604,331, while stores sold 584,329 of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 consoles. Wii is also leading in Europe, said London-based researcher Screen Digest.
....
Nintendo's lead will widen, pressuring companies even more. Researcher IDC predicts Nintendo will ship 16.1 million players this year, outpacing Microsoft's 9.87 million Xbox 360s and Sony's 9.1 million PlayStation 3s. Wii game sales will total $2.2 billion, trailing only Xbox 360, said IDC, based in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Electronic Arts wasn't the only publisher slow to see Wii's appeal. New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., maker of ``Grand Theft Auto'' games, had no Wii titles when the player was released and now plans to have three this year, said spokesman Jim Ankner.
Activision Inc., based in Santa Monica, California, plans to release six Wii games this year, giving the second-largest publisher a total of 11, said spokeswoman Maryanne Lataif.
....
Game companies had expected PlayStation 3 to dominate based on the success of PlayStation 2, said John Taylor, an analyst with Arcadia Investment Corp. in Portland, Oregon.
Perceptions changed when Nintendo unveiled Wii last May in Los Angeles. Demonstration consoles attracted long lines of developers waiting to swing a virtual tennis racquet.
``People got their hands on that controller and started playing games and said, `This is fun, this is going to do better than we expected,''' Electronic Arts Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Probst said at a Morgan Stanley conference on March 5.
With six months to go before Wii's release and games requiring a year or more to develop, publishers knew they were in trouble.
...
``We came back and redeployed a lot of our resources,'' said Earl, who heads Electronic Arts' Redwood Shores studio.
The results are seen in ``Godfather,'' where players use their hands to shake the wand and an attachment, dubbed a nunchuk, back and forth as if strangling or jostling someone. The wand also can be used to punch or shoot victims.
``You really feel like you grab someone,'' Earl said.
The Wii may prove to be a windfall, since games cost just $2 million to $5 million to create, a fraction of the $20 million to $30 million spent on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 titles, analyst Taylor said. In addition, Wii appears to be expanding the market, rather than stealing sales from rivals, he said.
[A Ubisoft Rep. says]
``It's not really a bet anymore,'' he said. ``It's a viable system that's going to make us money.''
)Quote
At the London launch everyone who bought a PS3 also received a free 46-inch HD television and a taxi home.
In total, the giveaway amounted to £250,000 worth of televisons to more than 100 gamers.
At the head of the queue, 17-year-old Ritatsu Thomas said the giveaway and PS3 had been worth the 36-hour wait.
He said: "I feel fantastic. I'm delighted that everyone here also gets a television."
Mr Maguire said the TV giveaway in the UK was a reward for gamers' patience.
Quote
Is producing a Wii game something Bethesda would like to do?
It's something we'd like to do, but unfortunately it's not a very good fit with Oblivion. Oblivion is a very demanding game hardware-wise and in terms of graphics processing and raw horsepower. It's not something the Wii was designed to do. They decided not to make the focus on raw horsepower but on interface and so forth.
It's a great console and many of us at Bethesda have one but I know that bringing Oblivion over is not possible - we'd have to do a whole new game.
Is that something you're considering?
It's something we've talked about, but I don't think you could say we're considering it. It's not in our immediate future - maybe something we'll look at somewhere down the road.
What about the PSP version of Oblivion? Is that still due in spring?
It's still in the works; the release date at the minute is TBC. It's a completely different development track. It basically uses nothing from Oblivion, it's a completely new game.
Quote
The Best Buy Gamer Gift card trick works on Wii Points and MS points, so that's $5.00 off the $20.00 cards in store.
If you don't know how to do it, here's a rough rundown:
Go to Best Buy and look for the gift cards.
Find the "Gamers Gift Card" - it's in a CD Jewel case.
Put a few bucks on it. I usually do $10.00, but some put $5.00 or whatever.
Take the gift card out of the case. On the paper that the gift card is stuck to is a coupon for $5.00 off any game $19.99 or higher. Tear that out.
Go back and get the card you want, bring it to the register and give them the $5.00 off coupon. Pay the remaining balance with the amount on the gift card plus cash/credit.
Quote
Originally posted by: Dr. Zoidberg
They ask "How Much" and I say the amount ($15.74 if I'm buying a $20 points card, for example). They will usually look at me funny due to the odd amount but they have never said anything. Then I say I want this item on the second transaction, they ring it up and say $20.99 (after tax). I open the GGC and give them the coupon. They apply it.. Then they say "The total is now.....$15.74.." I can see the realization dawn on their faces that I have just gamed the system. I hand them the gift card and walk out.
QuoteSounds like an indirect or accidental announcement of Guitar Hero on Wii to me.
For the company's 2008 fiscal year, which begins on April 1, Griffith said Activision will have 60 individual products, or SKUs, which would "aggressively target the Nintendo platforms." He said the company "will be focusing on our most successful franchises--Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, and Guitar Hero," though he stopped short of announcing specific new titles.
Quote
Originally posted by: 1up.com
Remember when parents were freaking out because kids were able to load pornography onto their PSPs via memory stick? The pornography industry goes where the money is, and right now the hot item is Nintendo's Wii, which just-so-coincidentally launched a web browser just before Christmas. In the meantime, some sites have already started adapting their designs to fit the slightly skewed resolution.
Ars Technica was alerted by a reader that a certain website that is absolutely not safe for work and you'll have to track down through a mysterious link elsewhere, recently made an alteration to its design when a Wii user approaches. I, um, "confirmed" this information with my own Wii, discovering a link that only appears when accessing via Wii.
Not surprising, but...you know...interesting -- has this happened for the PlayStation 3 browser? Guess I better go...find out.
Now go play with your Wii, you know you want to.
