I wish I had a product which sold every 5 seconds. I might not but Nintendo do with there DS portable gaming console. This number is calculated on the 6 million DS’s sold last year in the US alone. That is around 16,500 a day or around 700 an hour or 11 a minute and finally 0.2 every second. Multiply that by 5 and you get a DS sold every 5 seconds. If that is for the US only image the number if you include the rest of the world!
For more info, click over to the Gizmodo Blog.
Who wants to be able to stream internet radio, schedule television recordings and use OPML RSS feeds (whatever that is) from your PSP? Firmware 3.80 brings that to the table as well as other things. Updated features include streaming Internet Radio player, video scene search, RSS support for OPML and pictures, 1Seg tuners can use an EPG to schedule Japanese mobile television recordings (only on the Slim) and PlayStation Spot now available at BB Mobile Point (Japan only). Is it enough for most people, especially anyone outside of Japan to warrant losing your custom firmware? Probably now sorry.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
Imagine that, a company that actually wants to sell less products. Nintendo have decided to cancel some ads in the U.K, instead filling the spots with DS ads (like that needs help to sell). It has come up after the massive demand for the Wii this Christmas and the inability to meet it in production. Nintendo said they want to “take a responsible stance this Christmas and not fuel demand.” There may be a Wii left on the shelf this Christmas after all (sorry I was being sarcastic).
Check out Engadget for the full article.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were awesome games for the PlayStation 3. Sure you have a few new ones that have been just released that aren’t so bad, but most of them are on all gaming platforms. Sony may have noticed that as well, with it now being cheaper to become a developer for the PS3, seeing there has been a price reduction on the cost of the Playstation 3 Reference Tool. If you are a developer, you can get yours now for $10,250 USD, half of what it use to cost! Lets hope that more game companies will adopt the PS3 and we will finally see some new and unique games for the system.
For more info, click over to the Joystiq Website.
Who wants to download brand new full version games, without having to use a PC or wait for Phantom Entertainment to make a comeback? That is where WiiWare comes in, which is basically full game downloads to your Nintendo Wii. Earlier I talked about the games that were coming to it and a bit of info on the system, but now Nintendo has released a few other snip bits that should quench your fanboy thirst.
Each game will have a size limit of 40MB, which will fill its 512 MB of storage pretty damn fast (unless they let you use either a USB HDD or an SD card). Apparently, the devs will release a maximum of 1 game a month, with a max budget of $US100,000. Seems to be a lot like Xbox Arcade and less like a cool new full featured game download service. Guess we will have to wait for the rain of game reviews before we can make any judgement.
For more info, dance over to the Kotaku Blog.
It seems that Nintendo may be getting in trouble with the MP3 playback feature on the Wii. In the upcoming update to the Photo Channel, Nintendo will take away MP3 playback and replaced with it with AAC playback. Apparently there is a licensing fee to off the playback of MP3 files, and that fee is more then the AAC codec. Its funny that Microsoft and Sony are about to add a great amount of useful features to their consoles as Nintendo is taking away.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
Firstly, for the people who don’t know what DiVX is, it is a codec which is used by most piraters to released movies onto the internet. It is also a very good codec for making very big DVD’s, into smaller more manageable movie files. It seems that Sony will be giving the PlayStation 3 the ability to play them back soon, which means a few things.
It means that, when compared to the X360 (though it may come soon), it will be a more capable media centre machine. It means that people can take their whole DVD collections and put them on the PS3 hard drive, and never need to put another DVD in there very valuable Blu-Ray drive. It means that game developers can add 10+ hours of video to a Blu-Ray disk and still have space for ridiculously large games.
Currently developers can now use the DiVX decoder, but there is no news when the rest of the PS3 owners will have the ability to use it. Expect an update people.
For more info, click over to the Joystiq Blog.
In other firmware related matters, it seems the PS3 is also getting an update. It is now released for the people who want it, and it is titled 2.0. What you get in this firmware upgrade is DualShock 3 support, Remote Start function (start the console from your PSP), Canon printer support, a news ticker and the ability to create and share your own PS3 Themes. Sounds like it does quite a bit, so for the lucky bastards who have one, get online and get it now.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
The days of tearing open your PS2 to mod it to play homebrew (and pirated games) is over. The modchip titled the “Memor 32″ doesn’t require you to open up the PS2 at all, but instead use the memory card slot on the outside of the device. It even has a handy little USB slot to copy your “backups” onto. It is for sale now and can be gotten for a fair $US70.
Gotten over to the Engadget Blog for more info.
Here are some numbers of the Playstation 2 AKA PS2. It was announced in 1999, and was then released in 2000 which saw it sell 900,000 copies in the first weekend (in Japan of course). It is the fastest console ever to reach a 100 million units sold, and is currently sitting around the 120 million mark. With those numbers it doesn’t come as a surprise that Sony have done yet another refresh on the product.
The new PS2, which gets the model number SCPH-90000, and will feature a internal AC adapter, making it easier to take around with you, plus it is lighter while staying the same size as the current modell. Even though it isn’t ground breaking, it is nice to see Sony improving on such an old product and keeping the loyal fans happy.
The price of the new PS2, despite rumor of a $US99 price point, will retail for the same price as the current PS2 ($US140). It will launch November 22 and will come in three delightful colours, which are Charcoal Black”, “Ceramic White” and “Satin Silver”. I’m still waiting for the magical $US99 price point before getting into the slightly retro gaming market.
For more info, click over to the Saving Progress Website.