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Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has acknowledged that its current platforms have not performed as well for third parties as they do their owner.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Iwata noted that "it is true that the third party software sales ratio on Nintendo platforms are comparatively smaller in Japan. Wii's third party software ratio is especially low."

Graphs from Media Create data demonstrated this was approximately 26 per cent of total Wii software sales.

He claimed, however, that in terms of units rather than percentages, the DS was "the platform for which the largest amount of third-party software is selling" (with slides putting it at just under 50 per cent) but admitted this was partially attributable to the sheer size of its install base.

Iwata then attempted to defend interational third party sales as "not inferior" to the situation for PlayStation and Xbox.

Using data from Media Create and NPD, he offered that DS's third to first party ratio for US and Japan combined was around 55 per cent versus approximately 45, and slightly closer to 50/50 on Wii.

However, 360, PS3 and PSP first party sales each accounted for less than 20 per cent of total software shifted on those platforms.

Iwata was thus adamant that matters had to change for the 3DS.

"We need to decrease the concern that only Nintendo software can sell well on Nintendo platforms and third party software cannot sell in the same volume.

"We will not make a trend similar to the one found for Wii in Japan now," he promised. "we feel a need to have closer ties with our third party developers from the beginning."

Iwata then presented pre-recorded enthusiastic statements about the 3DS from third-party Japanese lumanaries behind the likes of Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid and Professor Layton.

"The big expectations they hold make me humble," Iwata claimed afterwards. "Together with the third party software people, we aim to expand the sales of Nintendo 3DS, and we will never stop our efforts to expand the gaming population."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...will-do-better ...

Pokemon Black and White has continued its dominance of the Japanese software chart, selling another 828,000 copies to bring its two-week sales total to 3,386,358 units.

The closest challenger this week was SEGA's Yakuza: Black Panther, which sold 174,213 units and helped boost the PSP back into second place on the hardware chart.

Sales of the DSi, Dsi LL, and PSP all increased this week, but Xbox 360 figures almost halved after the brief boost provided by the release of Halo: Reach. Reach itself has now dropped out of the top twenty after a fourth-place debut last week.

Software sales chart - last week's sales figures in brackets where appropriate.

1. Pokemon Black & White (Pokemon, DS): 828,580 (3,386,358)
2. Black Panther Yakuza New Chapter (Sega, PSP): 174,213
3. Wii Party (Nintendo, Wii): 43,077 (1,040,102)
4. Durarara!! 3way Standoff (Ascii, PSP): 21,566
5. Monhan Diary Poka Poka Felyne Village (Capcom, PSP): 18,652 (447,329)
6. One Piece Gigant Battle! (Namco Bandai, DS): 14,339 (174,316)
7. Front Mission Evolved (Square Enix, PS3): 10,421 (61,504)
8. Koihime Musou Otome Ryouran Sangokushi Engi Go-hen (Yeti, PSP): 10,240
9. Yu-Gi-Oh Fighters Tag Force 5 (Konami, PSP): 9,805 (55,684)
10. Winning Post 7 2010 (Tecmo Koei, PS3): 9,714
11. Taiko Drum Master DS (Namco Bandai, DS): 9,653 (225,166)
12. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo, Wii): 9,414 (834,955)
13. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii): 7,720 (2,074,733)
14. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G PSP the Best Re-release Version (Capcom, PSP): 7,585 (430,362)
15. Inazuma Eleven 3 (Level-5, DS): 7,526 (843,883)
16. Winning Post 7 2010 (Tecmo Koei, PSP): 6,355
17. Painting Classroom DS (Nintendo, DS): 6,314 (180,030)
18. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, Wii): 6,191 (2,937,740)
19. Friend Collection (Nintendo, DS): 5,999 (3,424,869)
20. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii): 5,891 (3,996,368)
Hardware sales chart – last week's sales figures in brackets where appropriate.

1. DSi: 49,411 (47,379)
2. PSP: 37,576 (29,866)
3. DSi LL: 32,777 (31,254)
4. PS3: 20,694 (21,096)
5. Wii: 16,908 (14,833)
6. DS Lite: 7,011 (7,137)
7. X360: 2,599 (5,804)
8. PS2: 1,514 (1,390)
9. PSP go: 900 (863)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...anese-top-spot ...

Microsoft has warned that messy floors "with clothes all over the place" will prevent Kinect from working properly. The company also advised against putting the sensor in "a noisy environment", using the examples "on top of your Xbox" and "on top of your subwoofer".

"We rely on the floor for a number of different parts of the technology," said Mark Plagge, Kinect's senior project manager, during a set-up video.

"You'll see when the sensor first boots up that it actually does this tilt down, and what it's doing is it's looking for the floor plane. Titles use the floor plane as a point of reference for the skeletons as they're moving throughout the title.

"The floor plane becomes very important, so if you have a very cluttered floor with clothes all over the place and we can't get a good look at the floor - it's a great thing if people can clean that up and move things out of the way."

The Kinect sensor should be placed in the horizontal middle of your telly at either the top or bottom. Exactly where will likely be bossed by the location of your telly's speakers, as having the sensor too close will mean audio interference.

"The other thing is that you want to put as much distance between you and the sensor as possible, so [placing the sensor] higher up actually tends to put an extra foot between you and the sensor," explained Tian Lim, director of Kinect development.

"The ideal play space starts about six feet away from the Kinect sensor. Some games will need you to move side to side quite a lot, so you'll want to know there are three-to-four feet on either side of you."
The requirements don't stop there. People with halogen spotlit rooms may encounter difficulties, as the Kinect sensor prefers an even light source throughout.

"To have really bright lighting in one spot and really dark lighting in another spot: as you move between the two you might actually look a bit different to the sensor, [and it will be] a little bit harder for us to keep track of you throughout the play space," said Kareem Choudhry, principal development manager on Kinect.

Don't panic if you can't remember that, as you'll be walked through each of the elements by on-screen Kinect setup tools.

...

Microsoft has warned that messy floors "with clothes all over the place" will prevent Kinect from working properly. The company also advised against putting the sensor in "a noisy environment", using the examples "on top of your Xbox" and "on top of your subwoofer".

"We rely on the floor for a number of different parts of the technology," said Mark Plagge, Kinect's senior project manager, during a set-up video.

"You'll see when the sensor first boots up that it actually does this tilt down, and what it's doing is it's looking for the floor plane. Titles use the floor plane as a point of reference for the skeletons as they're moving throughout the title.

"The floor plane becomes very important, so if you have a very cluttered floor with clothes all over the place and we can't get a good look at the floor - it's a great thing if people can clean that up and move things out of the way."

The Kinect sensor should be placed in the horizontal middle of your telly at either the top or bottom. Exactly where will likely be bossed by the location of your telly's speakers, as having the sensor too close will mean audio interference.

"The other thing is that you want to put as much distance between you and the sensor as possible, so [placing the sensor] higher up actually tends to put an extra foot between you and the sensor," explained Tian Lim, director of Kinect development.

"The ideal play space starts about six feet away from the Kinect sensor. Some games will need you to move side to side quite a lot, so you'll want to know there are three-to-four feet on either side of you."
The requirements don't stop there. People with halogen spotlit rooms may encounter difficulties, as the Kinect sensor prefers an even light source throughout.

"To have really bright lighting in one spot and really dark lighting in another spot: as you move between the two you might actually look a bit different to the sensor, [and it will be] a little bit harder for us to keep track of you throughout the play space," said Kareem Choudhry, principal development manager on Kinect.

Don't panic if you can't remember that, as you'll be walked through each of the elements by on-screen Kinect setup tools.

...

News from the Openpandora Team

More news already!

How many Pandora Boards are out there?
While most of you guys would say "just below 1000", this is not entirely true anymore.

Yeah, there are about 800 - 900 boards in the hands of the users already - but according to a notice we got from Texas today, there are already 1000 more almost finished.
(Almost finished means: They have been populated by the machine and are just missing the manually placed parts like volume wheel, etc.)

So you could say: The boards doubled. It looks like October 18th is a realistic date for them to finish after all!

Cases finished, boards on a good way - what's left is the nubs.

To squeeze the most out of them, they are also trying a way more sturdy, high-grade automotive silicone material.
However, that material needed to be ordered - and won't be there until sometime next week (we don't know for sure when yet, but we're gonna ask).
So on the downside, it still takes a bit longer - but on the other side, it means that the quality of the nubs should be top-notch!
You guys waited so long, you don't deserve nubs that fail after a few weeks!
And be honest: Do you rather want to wait a bit longer and get proper nubs or get your unit NOW the flakey ones? (be careful what you reply, as we could ship one with the old ones to you - but on your own risk)

Of course, we'll make sure to have everything prepared when the nubs are finished to get the Pandoras as fast as possible out to you.

If everything is prepared, we can assemble 200 units per day.

October 17th is my birthday - and my wish is: All boards finished and non-failing, great-working nubs at least ready for mass production.

http://boards.openpandora.org/index....le-2010-09-30/ ...

News from the Openpandora Team

That's the weight of 2000 cases that are packaged up and leaving for UK tomorrow via air.

What - why tomorrow? They were packaged up and finished last week, weren't they?

Yeah... but guess what: There was the Moon Festival - and naturally, all exporters wanted to get THEIR stuff on the plane, and that tripled the shipping costs.

We won't get any more boards before the new nubs have been mass-produced anyways, so we decided to NOT pay a fortune to ship them.

Wait - no more boards until the new nubs are there?

Right. The tested nubs worked better than the ones before, but they still break more easily than the final ones. Using those slows everything down, as we need to desolder broken ones from otherwise working boards, and quite a few might fail after a few weeks, too, which would've lead to a lot of RMA costs and bad reputation.
The last testing prototype of the nubs lasted 7 times longer already in the stress test, the new one is already being tested right now. We aim for at least 500K cycles (last one had 300K, the first ones under 100K). Hopefully we get more good results of the nubs until the end of the week (well, testing takes some time and can't be sped up )

Hey - does that mean: If I have I Pandora, I need to ship it back to get the nub replaced?

No. While the amount of breaking nubs is higher than it should be, it doesn't mean your nubs will break for sure. As long as they work fine, there's no need to replace them.


Okay... so what's currently happening and what's the plan?

Once the cases arrive in UK, Craig and team are preparing the cases so that we only need to pop-in the boards when they arrive while I keep soldering the LCD-Cables.
I'm pretty fast with that already and can solder 100 in two hours. If I solder 10 hours a day, it's 2 1/2 days for the rest of the cables (got about 1500 finished so far).
The company in Texas keeps producing and testing boards without nubs. Hopefully they stick to their promise that they finish them all until October 18th - but until now, they still claim it.
When the nubs arrive, they will be soldered onto the boards and the boards will go to UK ASAP to be put together into final units.


Some other news, regarding software

I started to work on Hotfix 5. I already fixed a few bugs and added some features and are now extensively working on the Tweak settings where you can set the OPP level, default clock, maximum overclock, etc.
I also plan on including a theme selector for XFCE4 (or better: GTK+) which allows people to install themes with bigger scrollbars, etc. more easily.

I also started to rebase our current OS on the latest OE Testing tree... which means: The whole system will be updated to a newer version.
I have no idea yet how this will workout, but it's something I want to try. DJWillis and notaz are helping me there, so some bugs like Midori rendering problems or the non-working detailed view in Thunar will most likely be fixed then.

TI has also updated the 3D drivers, though I don't know how fast we can include them, but we'll work on that, too.
But much more interesting: If you check this thread on GP32x.com, you can see that TI actually released a demo version of the Adobe FlashPlayer for the Cortex A8. And yes, it runs on the Pandora!
It's still slow, but it's just a first demo release, TI will most likely improve it. As Flash is running way faster on the N900 (which uses the same CPU), we know there's still a lot of potential.

Well, that's it so far.
Any question / feedback / etc. welcome as usual

http://boards.openpandora.org/index....kg-2010-09-28/ ...

Newly released for Pandora



MPD client with included standalone mpd. Although an MPD client, ommpc is designed as a standalone player and will start/stop it's own standalone mpd or use your already installed version. A fully featured playlist driven player with music library .

Now with Last.fm scrobbling.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...?0,0,0,0,6,133 ...

Newly released for Pandora



GoldenDict
http://goldendict.org/

Dictionary for the Pandora.

Run it for the first time, it will create the path "pandora/appdata/goldendict/portable/content", put your dictionaries on this directory.

Free dictionary downloads are available at the GoldenDict homepage.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...?0,0,0,0,8,209 ...

Newly released for Pandora



Transmission is a lightweight BitTorrent client

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...,0,0,0,112,208 ...