Mario and Zelda score record sales on Black Friday
Nintendo’s newest flagship video games, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land, have both sold over 500,000 units in the U.S. alone, according to an interview with a Nintendo executive.
Both of the games are critical to Nintendo’s sales this holiday season, which has turned out to be a very competitive season among game publishers and hardware makers. Roughly 40 percent to 50 percent of annual U.S. retail sales take place … Continue Reading
Netflix’s Qwikster game rentals may have short shelf life, thanks to cloud gaming
Netflix today spun off its mail-order DVD business into a new service called Qwikster, which will include mail-order video game rentals. Given Netflix’s immense success with the movie business, you might expect the games rental business to fare just as well.
But this is not the early 2000s, and the game rental service will face stiff competition from what might be one of the biggest revolutions in gaming since the advent of digital distribution: cloud … Continue Reading
Games industry vet Jordan Weisman: game technology is at its peak
Video game consoles have reached a point where they are so powerful that companies no longer need to focus on adding more horsepower to the devices, said game industry veteran and Harebrained Schemes founder Jordan Weisman.
“All the heavy lifting has been done — now comes the fun part of figuring out how to use it well,” he said.
Game hardware and software developers should now focus on finding new ways to engage gamers, Weisman … Continue Reading
Nintendo: No Smash Bros. for Wii U any time soon
A sequel to Nintendo’s hit fighting game, Super Smash Bros., won’t come out on its next console any time soon, according to a column written in Famitsu by the game’s creative lead Masahiro Sakurai.
That could end up being a big bummer for Nintendo when the Wii U launches. Smash Bros. Brawl was a huge hit on the Nintendo Wii. It’s partially responsible for the Wii becoming a huge success with casual gamers and a … Continue Reading
Wii U priced near $600 on Australian game retailer site
How much will the Wii U cost? A hint might be found on EB Games Australia, which is pricing Nintendo’s next home console at $598 Australian dollars, or roughly $634 in US dollars.
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto said Tuesday that the Wii U would not feature graphics significantly more powerful than current console generations. That’s because the Wii U was intended to strike a balance somewhere between bringing in high-definition graphics and remaining cheap and accessible … Continue Reading
Nintendo: Wii U not significantly more powerful than Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Nintendo’s next console, the Wii U, will not be significantly more powerful than the consoles in the current generation like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto said.
The new console will strike a balance somewhere between bringing in high-definition graphics and performance and remaining cheap and accessible for gamers, he said. The Wii was not a graphics powerhouse like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but the console was much cheaper and … Continue Reading
This year’s coolest technology at E3
With the video game industry’s largest trade show over, it’s time to wrap up some of the highlights. Here’s a look at some of the coolest new types of gaming technology VentureBeat saw at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Gaikai embeds games in Facebook — Gaikai is the business-oriented equivalent of OnLive that gives game publishers a way to stream high-quality games through a web browser. The company showed off the technology by letting companies render … Continue Reading
This is the Wii U, Nintendo's Wii successor (video)
Nintendo revealed the Nintendo Wii U, the successor to the Nintendo Wii, today at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, Calif.
The first Wii was a huge success for Nintendo and started the motion gaming craze, leading Sony and Microsoft to also release motion controllers for their home gaming consoles. The Wii sold more than 86 million units total and was a smash hit with casual gamers. It has one of the widest install … Continue Reading
Microsoft to Kinect owners: you're going to Disneyland
Microsoft will unveil three new games for its Kinect device tomorrow at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles — one of which will literally be a trip to Disneyland.
The game will let players take a virtual tour of a carbon copy of Disneyland, a popular theme park in California that features Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Microsoft has rebuilt the whole experience of visiting the Magic Kingdom piece for piece, … Continue Reading
Microsoft sells 1 million Kinect motion controllers in 10 days
It’s now safe to say that motion-controlled gaming isn’t just a fad.
Microsoft said it has sold 1 million units of its newest motion-control system for the XBox 360, the Kinect, in just under two weeks and is on track to sell 5 million controllers by the end of the year.
The system records a person’s movements and allows them to control games using their bodies. The Kinect controller also features a microphone array that … Continue Reading
Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console's are doing just fine
Five years ago, video games were in a “golden age.” The Playstation 2 was dominating sales and found its way into most households, and gamers still plugged controllers into their systems to play their games. Then people began texting on their phones — and the world changed forever, said Nintendo of America’s president Reggie Fils-Aime.
Video game developers and console manufacturers face a completely different set of problems now that social networks like Facebook and … Continue Reading
Nintendo loses its top U.S. sales and marketing exec
Nintendo of America said today that its top sales and marketing executive will leave the company to accept a position outside of the video game industry.
Cammie Dunaway, a former Yahoo executive, joined Nintendo’s U.S. division in November, 2007, replacing Reggie Fils-Aime, who is now the U.S. division’s president and chief operating officer. During Dunaway’s tenure, Nintendo rode the success of its Wii game console and the Nintendo DS portable to the No. 1 position … Continue Reading
How Apple could undermine console gaming with TV app games
Apple’s Steve Jobs is an expert at disrupting other companies’ businesses. Just look at what the iPhone did to Nokia and Motorola, two leaders of the cell phone business who are now trying to chase Apple.
What would happen if Jobs turned his eye to console gaming? More disruption, most likely. Apple has already disrupted portable gaming on the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable. The iPhone and iPod Touch have hurt those businesses … Continue Reading
Live demos show how the Nintendo DS and the Wii can be hacked to spread malware (videos)
Two hackers showed how they can hack Nintendo‘s handheld and console game devices to spread malware to whatever networks they are connected to.
At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas, Ki-Chan Ahn (below) and Dong-Joo Ha (right) showed off a number of demos of how they could crack the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii and use them to upload malware. They said users don’t expect malware to be loaded on game console devices, so … Continue Reading
Qualtré raises $8M to get your gadgets moving
Two hackers showed how they can hack Nintendo‘s handheld and console game devices to spread malware to whatever networks they are connected to.
At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas, Ki-Chan Ahn (below) and Dong-Joo Ha (right) showed off a number of demos of how they could crack the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii and use them to upload malware. They said users don’t expect malware to be loaded on game console devices, so … Continue Reading
