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Even Nintendo didn't bet on doing this well,

Indeed, I don't think Nintendo expected cruise ships wanting Wii's or people purchasing multiple consoles for home and travel.

Out of curiosity, I talked to a GameStop employee and asked him how the Wii was doing? Long story short, he claims they get an average of 25 units a week and sell out within 48 hours. 25 units a week (for one store) and they're still selling out months later. It is pretty surprising.

Of course, the real under-rated news is not the Wii but the DS. For all the people I know who won a Wii, I know twice as many who also have a DS. People who wouldn't buy a Wii as even that is too much 'video game' for them. Those "brain" games (Brain Age, Big Brain Academy) is by far the sleeper "killer ap". Who would have thunk that someone would drop $120 just to do some math equations? =P

Though, the DS does have a lot of great (and cheap) games. The Wii? Zelda, Mario Party, Metroid, Raymon, Wii Sports/Play... I've not been impressed with a whole lot else. So, that does say something about the unique frenzy the Wii is causing. Or maybe it's because I'm spending more time playing the Virtual Console? =P (yes, I've been playing on emulators on my PC since 2000, I still prefer the VC)

Cheers,
Fozzy

>With the 60GB version now 'sold out', the 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 is quickly going to be the only option for consumers in stores.

Kotaku/Ars Technica says otherwise

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/40gb-ps3-with-spider+man-3-for-christmas-298145.php

for those too lazy to click Sony may be coming out with a 40GB system for $399 and dropping the price of the 80 gig system to $499 (and including spiderman 3 as a packin for both). Yeah it's an odd move but I've stopped trying to explain Sony's product moved logically long ago.

as far as Rockstar Table Tennis goes: I'd rather play in on my Wii than push buttons on the 360, thank you.

I'd buy a couple just in case.

I don't think this was the best time for Paramount to jump ship on the Blu-ray line. While they _may_ have looked at the numbers involved, units sold, etc., all of that data was over the last year or so. What they didn't really consider was that a lot of non-videophile (aka., people who would buy a specific HD-DVD / Blu-ray player) purchasers were going to start purchasing PS3s...

With Sony's recent price drop, the sales of their console have increased. As far as consoles go, this isn't a tremendous jump -- they're still trailing behind Microsoft and Nintendo as far as sales. As far as HD-Movie players go, however, this is quite a jump. According to 'figures' and sources., they are seeing up to a 135% increase in sales after their price drop. That's a lot of Blu-ray players on the market that weren't there a short time ago.

Personally, I'm pissed! I purchased a PS3 during the price drop and I'm ok with what Sony has to offer for the console and with what movies are presently out (though, admittedly, I'd like more on both fronts), but you'll notice I said 'ok', I didn't say I was a raving Sony fanboy. I think there could be more selection of movies and games -- and it saddens me that I will now not be able to own a 1080p copy of Transformers to watch on my 51" HDTV because some pockets were apparently lined.

I understand that I'm not the norm in the market -- a lot of people don't have HDTVs, and a lot of people that do don't have big-screened HDTVs, but even with that, I think that it's a big step backwards for Paramount to alienate my class of shopper.

Then again, I'm sure everyone who was alienated by the Betamax -> VHS move was saying the same thing then ...

Actually, since the player handles the dice and controls what position they start and end in, a player with exceptionally fine motor control (or larger dice) could throw dice to land on whatever side they want. Thus, each roll of the dice becomes the equivalent of a move in chess: determining which piece(s) to move and how far to move them each turn. The computer should be able to match this capability as well - after all, a computer has successfully bowled a perfect game. Not to mention that each side has methods of cheating this as well - humans can use loaded dice, and computers can use *cough* "random" number generators.

Wrong. It's not. See here:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/bioshock/bioshock-a-lock- for-ps3-250434.php

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2007/06/01/rumor-shocking -revelations-bioshock-coming-to-ps3-eventually/

And even their own goddamn site:

"2K ANNOUNCES BIOSHOCK AS AN EXCLUSIVE
XBOX 360(TM) AND GAMES FOR WINDOWS TITLE
9.27.06
Welcome to the BioShock site. Check out the new screenshots in addition to the environment of Rapture in the Enter Rapture portion of the site. Stay tuned for updates including weapons and plasmids, as well as all the latest information on BioShock.
"

http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/html/news.htm

The only info I could find that it was coming to PS3 was some unofficial quotes from Official Playstation Mag, which although wasn't officially withdrawn by OPM, was, in no uncertain terms, denied by 2k Games.

The Keen games and Wolf 3D did not spell it "iD;" they spelled it "ID."

The Wolf 3D splash screen.

And one of the Keen logos. But there were, what, six Keen games? If one of them used "iD" I'd be interested to know/see.

I think people remember that logo as "iD" because of the way the non-serif font has the "I" much thinner than the "D," so they mistakenly remember it as a lower case "I." I just figured by now that people would have moved on to the way id Software has spelled their name since the original DOOM, but stories/threads like these just go on to perpetuate it.

Cmon folks, remember, Blizzard is evil.
Reasons not to buy Blizzard:
#1: They bring lawsuits against third party servers such as Bnetd. http://kotaku.com/gaming/business/blizzard-wins-la wsuit-vs-bnetd-22589.php

#2: They delete your account information and your characters.
I have had thousands of hours worth of Diablo 2 characters deleted by their stupid 90 day rule, and multiple times lost my WC3 account name.

#3: Embrace change. Instead of banning MapHack users, Blizz should have created a separate Realm for them, then integrated many positive features people were using into the client. (More visible enemy life bars, enemy radar, marking location of map exits.) I do approve of them banning cheaters, (users that use MH to PVP, using chest hacks and item duping hacks), but MH should be considered entirely a cheat, it was more along the lines of a 3'rd party mod to enhance gameplay.

Upshot: Their policies suck, and because you can't create your own server without fear of jail time there's nothing you can do about it. Wait until they release the server software before buying.

What's not mentioned in the article is 3rd party gaming support. The map/scripting creator in WC3 is the most totally freakin awesome creation they've ever done. I hated WC3, but played the mods for thousands of hours.

- BadlyBurnedByBlizzard
P.S. Blizzard.. release the source for d2 so we can create new mods/update/improve it.

I'm no expert but I just googled this article that was posted yesterday. It appears that neither console currently supports it but Sony is currently 'working on it'. Good luck. http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/ps3-dvd-upscaling-pr omised-218517.php

Both the 360 and PS3 upconvert DVD's (if your system has the latest updates) but only over VGA or HDMI. Upconverters (of any kind) aren't allowed to use component video due to a licencing restriction on the DVD format.

I'm not sure why you think that article was posted yesterday. If you actually click the link that you posted you can see that it was posted on December 6th, 2006. Check out the one on the same site from May (2007) when that promised upscaling was implemented.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/ps3-firmware-180-tom orrow-262852.php

So yes it does upscale PS2 and DVDs to 1080p and has for a couple months now.

I'm no expert but I just googled this article that was posted yesterday. It appears that neither console currently supports it but Sony is currently 'working on it'. Good luck. http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/ps3-dvd-upscaling-pr omised-218517.php

I don't think we will ever know the answer to this

Easy. When I was a kid I wanted to be like Mike. Or G.I. Joe. Either of them were billions of times more interesting than some guy in a suit who sits around all day listening to other guys in suits drone on and on. Even if that guy was once an actor before I was born. Thats why nobody gave a damn when people tried to pillory Clinton as some kind of failed role model. Because he was never a role model to begin with.

There is hope though. Demand that this game be brought to America and given to kids. When the kids play it, they will see just how badass the President of the United States can be, and once again people will look up to our leaders and demand more badassery from them.

I bet no one out there regrets their Wii360 purchase instead of just a PS3.

I bet this guy is regretting his decision just a little. And Microsoft views Rings of Red as a good thing for sales...so I guess if you do create a device that fails every 3-6 months then your shareholders will be happy because you generate repeat customers with little effort on your part. Way to go Microsoft!

I bet no one out there regrets their Wii360 purchase instead of just a PS3.

I bet this guy is regretting his decision just a little. And Microsoft views Rings of Red as a good thing for sales...so I guess if you do create a device that fails every 3-6 months then your shareholders will be happy because you generate repeat customers with little effort on your part. Way to go Microsoft!

Of course, since you say it's "boring," I'll give you the hint that you should skip to pages 24 ("Epic's Improper Withholding of Updates, Improvements, and Enhancements") and 30 ("Epic's Misrepresentations in Connection With the Unreal Engine 3 and the Agreement").

"Under heavy pressure from whom? Xbox Live subscriptions are up, beating projections (I think Moore said they crossed the 7 million subscriber mark at E3). The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly)."

Xbox Live is certainly a supperior offering to anything found on the Playstation or Wii consoles, but I think the numbers have beed fudged a little bit. Because there are two different Xbox Live service levels, one of which is free, it makes me wonder exactly how many of these subscriptions are paid for and how many are silver members. The Nintendo DS supposedly has had around five million unique users connect to their online service. There have been about five million virtual console sales on the Wii to date.

However, these numbers really don't tell us much useful information. For starters, we don't know how many of those Xbox Live subscriptions are gold memberships. We also don't know the amount of content purchased or arcade game sales either. Without more information Xbox Live could be pulling in money hand over fist, or it could be something that's barely scraping by. The Nintendo DS number doesn't tell us how many regular online users there are. For all we know the vast majority tried it out a few times and then quit playing online. The Wii numbers don't give us a good idea of the number of unique users that have purchased a game. I've bought around ten VC titles personally and if that's how it generally plays out, maybe only half a million Wii owners buy VC games.

Without better information it's pretty stupid to say that Xbox Live is a huge success for Microsoft. Unless they produced a report on exactly whith parts of their gaming division are profitable, we can't really determine if Xbox Live is a money maker or if it's bleeding money just like most of the division. In 2004, they had surpased the one million subscriber mark, which is significant because all subscriptions were paid at that time. However it still didn't indicate whether or not that was total subscriptions or active users. However, even if they're not making money from gold memberships, they still do sell arcade games and other online content now, but I haven't seen any figures on this information to indicate how successful it's been.

Keep in mind that any numbers that come from a company are usually deceptive in some way or another.

Got a link to this 5.5 billion loss?

All I can find is further articles backing up the current losses and other articles pointing out that Sony's games division is suffering double the losses of MS'

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Xbox-Sinks-into-a-1 -26-Billion-Hole-30776.shtml

http://kotaku.com/gaming/hms-playstation/playstati on-biz-may-post-2-billion-loss-260674.php

Well, I did find one link but it was from a random poster in an anti-XBox 360 forum thread on playstation.com, hardly the most authoritize source.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/specs/the-psp-slim-detail -breakdown-278897.php

Does this mean the PS3 will finally support force feedback as well, for devices like, say, a racing wheel?

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sixaxis/no-force-feedback -for-ps3-racing-wheels-either-226250.php

Microsoft might be 3% short of where they want to be, but their sell through is 400,000 units short of what they thought they would sell in fiscal year 2007. That's at least 25% short of their goal for the year (based on having 10.4m sold in 2006).

I agree that the Xbox 360 has a better portfolio of games, but your comparisons with the Wii or PS3 aren't completely accurate. I haven't seen a Wii game yet that rivaled the better games of the original Xbox, regardless of what processing power it may have. The Xbox charges for their online gaming and that the PS3 is currently 50% more than the Xbox, not twice as much as you said. (The PS3 is also rumored to drop $100 soon.)

Oh give me a break. Sony has the money to do the same and with many exclusives that have left had the comfort level of prior exclusives to keep many if they wanted. The problem with Sony is more ego than anything, they have been king of the conosole world for two generations and still believe they are indomitable. There is an interesting article at
http://kotaku.com/gaming/gag-order/scea-prez-we-do nt-buy-exclusivity-274862.php

about how Sony refuses to pay for exclusivity (though that wasnt the case when they were trying to kill Sega and Nintendo two generations ago, look at square), IMHO this will be their downfall. It's amusing that Sony bashes Nintendo's over-dependence on 1st party development yet they are well on their way to the same dependancy. When it comes to product wars you do what you have to do to win, if MS gets the leg up on Sony only Sony will be the blame.

Submitted without comment...

Games have been trickling out since most of the game producers are of the wait-and-see variety.

The Wii's success was soon evident to everyone though and most of the large game makers jumped on the bandwageon. However since games aren't produced in an instant, you'll see an avalanche of games released for the Wii, starting late '07, but mostly throughout, and towards the end of, '08.

News is surfacing that some companies are shifting focus from Sony to Nintendo entirely:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/the-tide/big-japanese-pub lishers-shift-from-sony-to-nintendo-271785.php

My guess is that this'll keep happening unless/until the PS3 somehow manages to pick it sales up significantly and reach some form of critical mass.

There are only 23 games with an AO rating. They can be seen here

If you want AO games then you should get something other than a Wii. I'm not saying that to be mean or derogatory but because the new report is that Nintendo has officially said that it's against their policy to have an AO rated game on the Wii.

If everyone _thought_ that the Wii was for kids before, well Nintendo just confirmed it.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/original/nintendo-nixes-a o-manhunt-270741.php

Both Nintendo & Sony have said that AO-rated games will not be allowed to play on their consoles.
So an AO-rating basically means Rockstar HAVE to change the content or trash the game.

Interesting to note that Nintendo is not going to allow Manhunt 2 to be released on the Nintendo Wii. Their argument is that they do not allow games rated AO.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/original/nintendo-nixes-a o-manhunt-270741.php

Well, i feel almost obliged now (source)...

Nintendo DS:

Global: 40 million
Europe: 11 million
Britain: 3.1 million

Nintendo Wii:

Global: 5.84 million
Europe: 1.3 million
Britain: 438,000

As for gameplay, I think this picture gives some good clues. The monster that plummeted into the ground provides for the PVE aspects -- no doubt you'll have skills, weapons, etc. that you can level up as you fight the aliens. The other guy who's there repairing the street that the monster just destroyed is doing a kind of farming. The destroyed monorail in the background (cue Simpsons monorail song) provides an opportunity for a quest. Driving the garbage truck might be either a quest or even a profession.

That's just what I can see in the picture. I can imagine periodic earthquakes which shake pieces loose from buildings and need to be replaced. Some kind of "build this piece in a virtual environment using Lego Set #4987" type of stuff, etc. Could be interesting for those into that kind of stuff.

Don't forget the partial recall, relabelling and delay of the massively underwhelming Halo 2 for Windows Vista - all caused by an error message with a Bungie developer's hairy arse mooning away at the unsuspecting user.

You really can't make this up.

this just in - whiny goons mod slashdot

offtopic - did lowtax getting faceplanted in a boxing ring make slashdot news? no? wow.

I know your trolling, but I'd just like to point out these fun facts:

3 Million PS3s sold -- not copies of Resistance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3

3 to 4 million copies of Gears of War sold
http://kotaku.com/gaming/neogaf/rumor-gears-of-war -hit-4-million-244018.php

I haven't played it, but apparently Resistance is a good game which was well received:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance:_Fall_of_M an#Critical_Reception

Unfortunately for your argument, Gears was much moreso:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_War#Receptio n

Yes, you should be scared. Very, very scared. Here's more.

Actually, 102K wiis were sold last week in japan.

Japanese sales charts via Kotaku

This may however be trumped by SNK's Witch touching Game later this year.

It's called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. You touch Japanese schoolgirls to see if they practice the dark arts. Nintendo said " it isn't pr0n," but after they said that they mouthed "it's totally pr0n." Enjoy.

I'm amazed that with all of Jack Thompson's very public antics that his personal web site has a higher page rank than all the "evidence" against him.

I think most of us do stuff from time to time that we're embarrassed about, but I wonder if Mr Thompson is or has ever embarrassed by what he does. Sad to think he didn't wake up the next day and think "Damn. Did I really file that? What was I thinking!" Mistakes are fine, but someone without any introspection is someone who will never learn or grow.

The difference between Nintendo and the other two, is that Nintendo is a games only company. They rely solely on their hardware and software sales. On the other hand, Sony and Microsoft's consoles are just one division of a much larger conglomerate. And that conglomerate can support the other gaming divisions until they finally do get out of the red, or the stock holders, whatever, demand that division to be sold off or folded. Microsoft's gaming/Zune divsion might have lost 300 million dollars, but the company as a whole took in over 14 billion dollars in revenue. I know it can't go on forever, but Microsoft at least, is committed to this industry, for better or worse.