Posts Tagged “wii”

Xenoblade Chronicles Coming To North America – GS Dates Release as April 2

After much hounding from fans here in North America, Nintendo is finally announcing the release of Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii!  The story of Shulk and his battle against the Mechon captured the hearts of many fans in Japan and Europe, while here in the States and Canada we were only able to share in the tale via screenshots, reviews, or the occasional sneaky importer. Read On »

 

posted December 2, 2011 - 4:54 pm in Gaming, News by

Console News For Monday, December 20

Only a week left until Christmas.  Have you gotten your shopping done? Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation Coming To A DS Near You Dragon Quest fans rejoice!  The 1995 continuation of the Dragon Quest series is finally coming to the States on the Nintendo DS handheld console.  Originally released on the Super Famicom (Japanese Version of the SNES), DQVI was never brought over to the US for commercial release.  No release date yet however,… Read On »

 

posted December 20, 2010 - 1:14 pm in Gaming, News by

A Parent’s Guide To Video Games For Your Kids

This story never gets old. A few weeks ago, I was at BestBuy picking up some goodies for my wife.  While I was in line, a mother walks up with her son that had to be no more than eight or ten years old, and clutched in his hot little hands was a copy of Call Of Duty: Black Ops. I’ve seen this more than once this holiday season mind you.  But for some reason,… Read On »

 

posted December 17, 2010 - 10:25 am in Gaming Life, Parenting by

October Sales Data – Christmas Season Predictions

Nintendo down 50%, Sony Leads The Month Sony led the month of October with over 990,000 unit sales pulling ahead of Microsoft by almost 230,000 sales in the last two weeks.  Two contributing factors to Sony pulling ahead were most likely the launch of the Playstation Move, Sony’s motion controller, and anticipation of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, with people opting to pre-order the Xbox 360S 4GB and 250GB bundles with the Kinect device. More… Read On »

 

posted November 10, 2010 - 8:32 am in Gaming, Opinion by

Video Games Live Comes Back To The Motor City

I am a huge fan of Video Games Live.  And in Detroit, I’ve now had the pleasure of working as a volunteer at both concerts, this year and the one in 2008.  If you haven’t yet been to see this awesome concert in person, I urge you to go right now to their website and check for the soonest date that they will be in or around your city. Conceived in 2005 by founders Tommy… Read On »

 

posted November 5, 2010 - 10:53 am in Events, Gaming Life by

Supreme Court To Hear Arguments On CA Video Game Ban Law

Today, the United States Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in  Schwarzenegger v. EMA.  This case will determine if the 2005 law passed in California banning the sale of violent video games to minors is constitutional or not.

The law overrides the ESRB ratings by requiring a seperate label be placed on video games deemed inappropriate for minors.  The point of contention in the law is the labelling of “violent video games” in the law makes it possible to label children’s games such as “Super Mario Bros.” as violent and require an 18+ label.  This of course could greatly affect video game sales, as well as the type of content that they could sell to minors.

As a parent, I agree with the restriction of sales of violent video games to minors.  However, I believe that the ESRB has created a robust system of ratings designed to catch the attention of parents and make it easy to decide whether or not a game is appropriate for their child.  I also believe that the ESRB’s retail partners overall are doing a good job of enforcing these ratings by refusing to sell Mature rated games to minors.

However, laws passed by the government are usually intentionally vague and are open to broad interpretation, usually doing more harm than good.  And instead of creating an arbitrary system to label games as the government sees fit to label as Mature or 18+, I think that any state government would be better off to partner with the ESRB in enforcing its already established ratings system as they already have 15 years of experience behind them.

~W75

 

posted November 2, 2010 - 8:44 am in News by

News for Tuesday, October 19th

AT&T Offering Free Month of Zune Pass With Win7 Phone

AT&T Wireless is offering a 30-Day trial of Zune Pass with the purchase of a Win7 Mobile Phone.  Dubbed the “Entertainment Pack”, you also get access to 30 days of AT&T’s Uverse services, as well as ilomilo, a new, cutesy Xbox Live game.

Source: AT&T; ilomilo

Best Buy Still Doesn’t Have Any New 250GB Slim/Kinect Bundles?

Apparently Best Buy is still having issues with procuring the $399 Xbox 360S Bundle with Kinect for pre-order.  With Microsoft stating that this is a bigger launch than that of the 360, you have to wonder exactly how many units have been pre-ordered, since the 360 only had 400,000 units available when it launched in 2005.

Source: BestBuy

Kinect To Launch With 17 Titles This November

Looks like the guys over at Wired UK have gotten the up-to-date launch list for Kinect this November.  Not much has changed with the exception of a couple more games from Konami.  With all of the sports and fitness games releasing at launch, there are going to be a lot of skinnier geeks this coming spring.

Source: Wired UK

Call of Duty: Black Ops Stolen From The Presses?

Apparently, some guy (or gal) in Alabama swiped a few copies of COD: Black Ops from the presser not too long ago.  Shortly thereafter, the enterprising thief sold the copies to a few upstanding gentleman on some of the forum sites dedicated to cracking and copying software.  One person in particular, “Ungodly Leaker”, who was responsible for the leaking of Halo: Reach apparently had posted that they received a copy as well. 

With almost 1.8 million pre-orders placed, this looks to be yet another very hot download for the less than ethical gamer.

Source: Escapist; VGChartz

Halo: Reach Stats Updated By Bungie

Bungie released updated statistics on gameplay and matchmaking this last Friday.  Some interesting numbers:

  • 16,445 Man-Years have been spent playing Halo: Reach (Not to be confused with Dog-Years)
  • 784,000,000 player-games have been played (1 game with 4 players is tallied as 4 player-games)
  • 544,000,000,000 Credits have been earned (spend that money, playa!)
  • 3,900,000 Screenshots have been uploaded (and plenty of them feature juvenile looks at Kat’s “bad side”)
  • 5,970,000 total files have been uploaded (your bandwidth bill is in the mail)
  • 300,000,000 Mountain Dews were do’d
  • If only the real world economy was based on Halo dollars…

    Source: Bungie.net

     

    posted October 19, 2010 - 8:56 am in Gaming, News by

    Console News For Monday, October 18th

    Weekly Sales Update: Microsoft Pulls Ahead of Sony for Year On Sales

    Microsoft this week finally pulled ahead of Sony in sales for the year by 1,000 units for the year last week.  This comes after Sony managed to have a commanding 1 million unit lead before the 360S was released last June.  While it’s still anyone’s game with the Christmas season looming, things are looking well in Microsoft’s favor.

    By the numbers:

    Console Americas Japan EMEAA Worldwide
    118,030 51,427 92,225 261,682
    92,079 2,700 68,995 163,774
    70,156 18,659 69,405 158,220
    61,067 12,266 57,356 130,689
    21,449 34,747 29,503 85,699

    Source: VGChartz

    Total monthly sales for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 stand at 269,067, 308,145, and 343,265 respectively for October.  With a few weeks to go, it looks as though console sales are starting to warm up for the Christmas season.  Unfortunately for Nintendo, it doesn’t look like the Wii will be doing well this month, being behind number 2 placeholder Sony at 269,000 sales for the month so far.  This is a shortfall of almost 40,000 units behind Sony and a little over 60,000 units behind Microsoft.  This may turn out to be the first October that Nintendo has failed to sell more than 1 million units since launch.

    Konami Dates Kinect for Xbox 360 Titles

    Konami recently released a presser announcing the dates of their upcoming Kinect for Xbox 360 titles.  Konami, not to be outdone by upstart Harmonix in the dance ring is releasing Dance Evolution on November 10th along with CROSSBOARD 7, a racing game with animals.

    On November 25th, Konami will release Sports Island Freedom under their Hudson Soft brand.  This title will add a few unique sporting events to the already sports packed game line-up including: Archery, Paint Ball, Beach Volleyball, Dodge Ball, Kendo, Mogul Skiing, Snowboard Cross and Figure Skating.

    Source: GamersHell

    Microsoft Spending $1 Billion on Kinect, Windows Mobile 7 Marketing

    Microsoft is shelling out a lofty billion dollars on their marketing campaign for Kinect and Windows Mobile 7 to make sure it stays in the game of…gaming…and…phoning.  Money spent includes Ads on Nickelodeon and Disney (presumably for Kinect.  Unless they’re marketing phones really early nowadays),  product placement ads on Glee and Dancing with the Stars’, a Times Square Event and ads in various magazines.

    What really makes me angry about this is that there are plenty of innovative products that Microsoft comes out with that just get thrown at the wall just to see if they stick.  Perhaps if they gave the Zune team a bit more than enough to cover money for lunch, they’d see more ZuneHD sales.

    Source: TheNextWeb

    Nintendo Wii Getting NetFlix Without A Disc

    Following in the footsteps of the Xbox 360 and PS3, Netflix and Nintendo have announced that you will no longer be required to use a disc to stream your multimedia goodness on the Wii without the use of a disc.  Which is great, if you like watching your hi-def shows in 480p.  Good future proofing Nintendo.

    Source: Business Wire

    Fallout: New Vegas DLC Announced Before The Game Even Releases

    Bethesda Softworks recently announced that Xbox Live will be getting the first New Vegas downloadable content before the PS3 will.  Now, call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t we be talking about the game before it launches?  And not its DLC?

     

    posted October 18, 2010 - 12:48 pm in Gaming, News by

    Console News for Wednesday, October 13

    VGChartz Releases Sales Numbers For Week Ending Oct. 2

    Wii – 138,378 PS3 – 149,925 Xbox360 – 179,491

    Sales figures are in and they aren’t looking pretty for Nintendo.  The Wii lost more ground against both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 last week by 11,000 units and 41,000 units respectively.  This is part of a continuing slide in sales that began with the Xbox gaining ground in July after the release of the 360S line, and recently became worse as the PS3 vaulted over the Wii by 22,000 units in September.  Trends continuing the way they are, it’s very possible that Nintendo could find itself being left in third place for 2010’s total sales.  The tally so far (Beginning from 02-January):

    Wii – 7,162,858 PS3 – 5,614,468 XBox 360 – 5,610,057

    Source: VGChartz

    The other surprising twist is Microsoft closing in on Sony after packing in almost a million unit lead through June.  Microsoft has since seen a massive boost in sales as older units were marked down to make way for the 360S, and the subsequent sales of the newly styled unit.  The gap for the year is now only a paltry 5,000 units.  If this trend continues, Microsoft is poised to come in number one for home console sales for the year.

    NPD Discontinuing Public Disclosure Of Console Sales

    An article posted yesterday by VG247 states that as of now, NPD will not be releasing monthly hardware unit sales figures to the public, leaving the console manufacturers to do so. 

    According to Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, “I pay a lot for access to the data, and probably could have skipped the hardware piece and gotten from the manufacturers directly, so they don’t want paying customers like me to turn off their subscriptions.”

    The question I have to pose is how can he pay so much money for all that data and still be so horrible at predicting stuff?

    Source: VG247

    AT&T Uverse coming to Xbox 360

    Documents leaked to Engadget show that not only is AT&T Uverse coming to the Xbox 360 for real, but real soon.  November 7th actually.  Just in time for the holidays and coinciding with the release of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, this should be quite a booster on its own. 

    The question is, will it be enabled with a Kinect friendly menu as was demonstrated with the upcoming ESPN app at E3 earlier this year?  Only time will tell!

    Unfortunately, I see this as being a mutually exclusive deal.  Meaning, that other big name providers such as Comcast will likely not be able to participate in releasing their own version, leaving people to either go without, or forcibly switch over to AT&T for their service providing.  Perhaps Sony will work out a deal with another player?

    Source: Engadget

    So far this Christmas season is looking to be quite lively in the console world if your name doesn’t have ‘end’ in it.  I’ll be making my console sales predictions at the end of the month.  You may want to stay tuned.

    ~W75

     

    posted October 13, 2010 - 10:07 am in Gaming, News by