On today’s episode of the Game|Life Audio Podcast Extravaganza, Chris Baker, Peter Rubin, Marty Cortinas and I discuss the week in news and games:
Nintendo’s redesigned Wii;
Scribblenauts on iOS;
Infinity Blade in the arcades;
and paying up for Catwoman levels in Batman: Arkham City.
The Game|Life Audio podcast, posted every Friday, can be found on iTunes and is embedded …
Nintendo, Sony integrate 3-D into games
Playing off the success of “Avatar” and other movies, Nintendo and Sony are incorporating 3-D technology into their gaming hardware, but with approaches that are sizably different. At the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Nintendo… Nintendo – Sony – Los Angeles – Video game – Electronic Entertainment Expo
Read more on San Francisco Chronicle
BrightEdge Unveils First SEO Platform that Enables Marketers to Manage Organic Search Based on ROI
Breakthrough Technology Helping Customers Drive More Than Billion in Revenue from Organic Search BrightEdge , the leader in enterprise-class search engine optimization (SEO) …
Read more on ebizQ.net
Best Buy lauds Sprint HTC Evo, Android sales
Best Buy’s overall sales are down for the quarter, disappointing Wall Street. But Evo and other Android-related sales are a bright spot.
Read more on CNET
Nintendo reveals 3DS game gadget
Nintendo has unveiled a handheld game machine that will allow people to play 3-D games and watch 3-D movies without the need for expensive eyewear. Users will also be able to take their own 3-D pictures. Nintendo – Video game – Games – Nintendo DS – Console Platforms
Read more on MSNBC
Sales of Nintendo’s DS games are dropping in Europe, and according to Nintendo there’s clear reason why: piracy. With the release of software like R4, it appears that more and more owners of the portable systems are turning to less then reputable sources for their games.
Nintendo stated that they monitored 10 sites where users can download the files necessary to play their games, and tracked a total of 11 billion dollars worth of lost sales. The piracy epidemic is also spreading to the US and Japan, albeit slower then in Europe. Sales in the US have dropped 11 percent, but that could be blamed on the economy rather then piracy. Nintendo has stated that the release of the new 3DS will make it even more difficult for people pirating their games, but as we all know it’ll be just a matter of time.
[via 1Up]
Don’t expect new console hardware from Nintendo in the near future. When asked “When do you think it’ll be time for new hardware?” in a recent interview with Gamespot, Nintendo’s Cammie Dunaway replied, “I don’t think it’ll be any time soon because even though our installed base is, at this point, 5 million households larger than the PS2 installed base was at the same point in its lifecycle, it still has a lot of room to grow.”
Dunaway went on to say:
“If you think of the PS2, there’s been about 50 million sold; Wii, close to 28 million sold. So that says to me that there’s still a big audience out there that we can access with Wii.
That being said, part of Nintendo’s heritage is to always be looking at innovation and to start working on the next hardware as soon as we launch a platform. So we’ll have it ready when we think the time is right.”
That last sentence is probably the key right there. The time likely doesn’t seem right for new consoles from any company, and Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all figured out ways to spur current console sales by adding new and/or improved control schemes. Wii MotionPlus, Project Natal, Sony’s Motion Controller (Orb, Gem, Arc, whatever it’ll be called) all open the door for an entirely different segment of games.
Nintendo’s not quite pushing the envelope as much since MotionPlus is more of an improvement than anything else, but Microsoft and Sony are definitely looking to squeeze more life out of their current consoles. And given the economy, the thought of purchasing a new console this year is likely a non-starter for most average consumers.
The State of Nintendo 2010 Interview: Cammie Dunaway [GameSpot via Kotaku]