Reggie divulges juicy new details about some upcoming DS features.

THE LEGEND BUILDS: NINTENDO DS OFFERS BOLD NEW FEATURES

DS Gets Free Retail Game Downloads, Voice Chat and a New Look

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 9, 2006 – The video games industry's "story of the year" for 2005 is growing even more compelling early in 2006, as Nintendo today announced major new initiatives for its hot-selling Nintendo DS™ portable game system.

Documents and photos filed with the U.S. government answer many detailed questions about the Nintendo DS Lite.

Since the DS Lite was announced in January, Nintendo has been typically quiet about any details of the system, and no actual photos have been released (the announcement was accompanied only by rendered artwork). All that has changed in the past couple of days, since Nintendo's filing with the Federal... Read more...

You can still find it on PC, though.

Peter Molyneux's Hollywood simulator, The Movies, was originally announced as a multiplatform release even though it was clearly designed as a PC game. Since Activision was publishing it, "multiplatform" included GameCube, although it would be missing the extensive online features of other versions.

Supplies limited. Act now... or wait until April.

Production of Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix was temporarily discontinued ahead of last year's holiday season. Throughout the last few months, shoppers have found it nearly impossible to find this game in stores. Depending on whom you asked, length of the discontinuation ranged from "some time next year" to "indefinitely."

Thumper gets his mac on.

SEGA’S QUIRKY LOVE COMEDY 'THE RUB RABBITS!' SPRINGS INTO STORES

SAN FRANCISCO (February 7, 2006) – SEGA® of America, Inc. today

announced the release of The Rub Rabbits!™ exclusively for the

Nintendo DS™ system. The Rub Rabbits! delivers an all new “rub comedy”

adventure that leverages the unique touch-screen and voice recognition

Just one game, but it should be ready within the first months of the system's existence.

Activision released its quarterly fiscal results earlier today, announcing that they were the #2 independent publisher for the past three months, thanks to games like Gun and Call of Duty 2.

During the accompanying conference call, CEO Robert Kotick talked about the company's plans for the next-gen.... Read more...

Ubisoft will bring Taito's DS RTS/RPG game to western markets this Spring, complete with Nintendo Wi-Fi support.

UBISOFT TO BRING LOSTMAGIC™ TO THE NINTENDO DS™ SYSTEM THIS SPRING

Innovative RPG/ACTION Game Takes Advantage of the Stylus and Wi-Fi

Capabilities of the Nintendo DS System

SAN FRANCISCO – FEBRUARY 2, 2006 – Today Ubisoft, one of the world’s leading

video game publishers announced that it will publish and distribute

Nintendo's Takao Ohara and Katsuya Eguchi will discuss development decisions, challenges and lessons learned about their recent Nintendo DS projects in two newly-announced presentations.

Nintendo is waking up to Game Developers Conference. In 2004 Eiji Aonuma discussed some of the design philosophy behind The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Last year the company's president, Satoru Iwata, conducted a keynote presentation (and press conference) at the show. For the first time, the company also displayed its products on the showroom floor.

Laruent Fischer will be filling in the role formerly held by Jim Merrick.

When Jim Merrick announced that he'd be coming back to Nintendo of America from its European counterpart (before leaving the company altogether), Nintendo didn't say who'd be taking over for the marketing maestro. According to 1Up, Laurent Fischer is up for the job.

Formerly the marketing director for France, he had this to say:

The oddly titled Dreamworks CG film is, of course, being adapted into a video game.

DreamWorks Animation SKG & D3Publisher of America Sign Worldwide Publishing

Agreement for Flushed Away

First Games Based on the Animated Feature Film Scheduled for Q4 2006

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- D3Publisher of America, Inc. (D3PA), a

publisher and developer of interactive entertainment software, today

Cute little pets make their way to game stores.

TAMAGOTCHI(R) CONNECTION(TM): CORNER SHOP(TM) CELEBRATES GRAND OPENING IN RETAIL STORES

Popular Tamagotchi(R) Characters Now Available on Nintendo DS(TM

SANTA CLARA, Calif., (January 31, 2006) – Leading video games publisher and developer NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. announced today... Read more...

Hands-on with Naruto: Clash of Ninja and Naruto: Ninja Council!

Naruto: Clash of Ninja and Naruto: Ninja Council are being co-published by Tomy and D3Publisher, who were nice enough to invite us out to Naruto Community Day! This includes hands-on with the first English releases of Naruto games, interviews and Q&A, and delicious ramen.

Naruto: Clash of... Read more...

A new job listing suggests Midway is working on a first person shooter for all three next-generation platforms.

Midway has posted a new job listing for a Level Layout Designer on a "Next Generation First Person Shooter." While such a posting is usually unremarkable to the average gamer, this one holds a sliver of encouraging information. Midway lists Nintendo Revolution as a target platform for this Unreal 3 engine-based title.

Tom Clancy's latest and greatest won't show up until later this year, but it's still coming to GameCube.

Sam Fisher is returning to GameCube for at least one more mission, but you'll have to wait until the fall to play his newest game. Double Agent was only recently unveiled in print magazines, but Ubisoft wasted little time in revising the game's ship date. Although the official statement below is vague on the actual ship date, the publisher's financial statements, also released today, mention September 2006 as the magic month.

ONLINE-GET!

According to Nintendo UK General Manager David Yarnton, Nintendo's Wi-Fi service has just recently broken the three million mark as far as confirmed connections. Launching this past November, WFC has quickly grown to be quite popular, with more than an estimated half a million actual [active] users, according to Yarnton. To put that into perspective, it took Xbox Live three years to aquire 2 million subscriptions.

You could win sweet Tony Hawk prizes just for playing the excellent DS version over Nintendo WiFi Connection!

Update: See below for the new start time for the tournament! It's noon on Feb. 4th, not midnight as previously reported.

PGC is proud to help promote the first sanctioned online DS game tournament (that we know of, anyway). User Moellenium in the Tony Hawk's American Sk8Land (THAS) forums has organized a single-elimination tournament, and Activision has been kind enough to donate some great prizes for the winners.

Well, not yet. Japanese gamers can mark their calendars for April 20th, though.

Mother 3 (or EarthBound 2 in North America) has been in development for a very, very long time; after a number of years some fans even considered it vaporware. Fortunately, gamers starved for info were finally thrown a bone this past November. However, even though the game was confirmed to still exist, creator Shigetsao Itoi was reluctant to give a release date.

The evaluations are underway.

The deadline has passed, and we are now making our final selections from the top applicants. Those selected for the job (probably two people) will be notified later this week.

As always, I am humbled by the enthusiastic response to our volunteer positions. With dozens of great applicants for... Read more...

We're going to be thankful for a lot more than a turkey dinner come Thanksgiving if Iwata holds true to his claim.

Japanese newspaper Sankei Shinbun had a chance to interview Nintendo president Satoru Iwata about his company's plans for the future. Chief among those plans is the Revolution console, and Iwata had some useful things to say on that subject.

The most important thing to come out of the interview... Read more...

Nintendo’s spokesman reaffirms Nintendo’s affordable pricing with a tangible figure.

In an interview with News.com, Nintendo Vice President Reggie Fils-Aime discusses his company’s New Year’s resolutions.

Most significantly, Reggie reiterates that Nintendo’s new console will be affordable at less than $300.

Since you mentioned pricing, I assume the Revolution will be accessible to gamers for substantially less than $700?