Filed under: Gaming

It looks like the folks at Nintendo HQ have cause to bake a celebratory Wii cake, as Reuters reports that the company is now Japan’s fifth-biggest in terms of market value after word of solid earnings performance pushed shares higher in trading today. According to Reuters, the company’s market value now stands at ¥8.69 trillion (or about $72 billion), which places it ahead of both NTT and Honda Motor Co. The jump, of course, is largely due to demand for the Wii and Nintendo DS, which has also caused the company to up its operating profit forecast by a hefty 37 percent to ¥370 billion ($3.1 billion) for the year to March 2008. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo doesn’t see that demand letting up anytime soon either, with it now saying it expects to sell 16.5 million Wiis in the current business year, along with 26 million DSs — both numbers of which are 18 percent higher than previous forecasts by the company.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Denon has launched a pair of tabletop music players with plenty of features, including wireless streaming and the nearly-ubiquitous dock for your iPod. The $500 S-32 can decode MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, WMV, and Rhapsody subscriptions, while the $700 S-52 adds a CD player, HD radio tuner, satellite radio support (no mention of which service, although won’t that be a moot point soon, anyway?) and a USB port for future expansion. Both players will start rocking your desk in October.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming

Sony is reporting that its overall net profits more than doubled during the past quarter, bolstered by the success of films such as Spider-Man 3, and snappy sales of its traditional electronics. Things in the company’s PS3 camp, however, still looked a little bleaker than the Japanese giant had probably hoped for. Losses for the game system rose from 26.8 billion yen to 29.2 billion yen, with 710,000 units sold worldwide — not real impressive when compared to competitor Nintendo’s Wii sales of 3.43 million. In a somewhat ironic aside, Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, a division of Nielsen Co. which tracks video game activity, says that the most played game system last month was Sony’s seven-year-old PS2. The report shows the aging system leading other consoles with 42 percent of use, followed by the original Xbox at 17 percent, and Xbox 360 at 8 percent. The Wii and PS3 fall at 4 and 1.5 percent, respectively. Should be food for thought for everyone at Sony who doesn’t think backwards compatibility is a big deal.

Read — Sony net profit doubles despite PS3 losses
Read — PS2 most-played console in June

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

Just in case you missed it yesterday, Apple did indeed confirm that it’ll ship the iPhone to a few major countries by Q4 2007, which ends September 30th. Most signs point to the UK, France and Germany as being those lucky “majors,” and Apple also mentioned it’ll announce carriers (plural) in the coming months. The rest of Europe will have to wait until 2008, presumably as retribution for recent seasons of Eurovision.

Update: A re-read of the transcript seems to point at Q4 of the calendar year, not their fiscal year. In other words, December not September.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Transportation

As we told you in March, the technology-bucking drivers of New York City have put their collective foot down and said “no” to GPS systems in city taxis. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a non-unionized group with more than 8,400 members, claims it will call for its drivers to strike if city leaders don’t retract plans to install GPS units in 13,000 cabs. No new information there, but recently the NYTWA announced that September would be its target month for the walkouts, putting a very real timetable on what would be a crippling move for the city. If you’ll recall, the touchscreen devices would allow passengers to pay by credit card, check the news, and map their taxi’s location. The systems would also track pickup and drop-off points (information taxi drivers already report), but cabbies fear their employers will use the information to keep tabs on their whereabouts. The NYTWA plans to specify the date and length of the strike next month, so you’ll know more when we do.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!