Free WiiWare demo downloads are returning to the Wii Shop channel as Ninetendo attempts to boost sales of it's downloadable titles.

The demos will be available in Europe from 5 November, 2010 and will operate on a rotation basis, with titles getting a period of demo availability before giving way to new games. The first demos available on the service will be Furry Legends, Jett Rocket, Zombie Panic in Wonderland and ThruSpace.

Historically, WiiWare titles are thought to have achieved much lower sales than their counterparts on XBLA and PSN, despite the huge install base of the console. Some studios have seen success with the service, however, such as 2D Boy, creators of World of Goo, and Zoonami, which created Bonsai Barber.

Zoonami's Martin Hollis spoke to GamesIndustry.biz recently, about his experiences with the service.

"Well, I think it's a very fine thing. The best thing about it is the size of the marketplace you can access," said Hollis.

"There's a huge number of people who have a Wii, and a goodly proportion of those download games from WiiWare - it's tens of millions of people, and it's not overloaded with games, unlike some other app stores I could mention."

Hollis admits to having a slight advantage due to a featuring in a Nintendo TV ad, however, and acknowledges that the competition on the service is still tough.

"Our experience was extremely positive, but our title was a second-party title and it did have some TV advertising with a spot inside a larger advert for Wii. We assume that has to have an impact. As for margins, it's always the case that, if you make a good game you're selling ten or a hundred times as many units as the guy who made a mediocre game, a game that's maybe a little bit sub-par. Not much, but just a little bit. So that factor completely overrides any other."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...iiware-service ...

Alex Kipman, director of incubation at Microsoft and the brains behind Kinect, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the new motion control tech now only uses a single-digit percentage of the Xbox 360's processing power, down from the previously stated ten to 15 per cent.

Speaking in an interview published today, Kipman said that although the sensor bar impinges on system resources more than was originally planned, it shouldn't affect the ambitions of developers, as even the most demanding of games still leave plenty of 360 processing power to be taken advantage of.

"The answer is, as much as we like to talk about bits and percentages, you take a game like, I don't know, Call of Duty: Black Ops - there's a significant amount of processing, be it CPU or GPU, that still remains on the table," Kipman said.

"So after that, when we came to this revelation about games, and future games that would be coming to Xbox, we looked at it and we said - 'is it worth the trade-off to put on-board processing on the device when we think we can create magical, unique, deep, thorough experiences without it?'"

Originally, Kinect was intended to deal with all of its processing internally, thanks to an on-board processor which waslater dropped by Microsoft to keep down costs.

"That figure of 10 or 15 per cent, we're actually in single digits, but the philosophy is correct," said Kipman. "It's a trade-off... That trade off is easy, it's about the affordability of the device. From the perspective of bringing to market this amazing deal, £129.99 with Kinect Adventures, plus sensor - buy one and have your entire family play, it's a very interesting customer value proposition.

"We can create games which are as rich and thorough and as deep as the games which we have on our platform today and which we will have tomorrow. Then the conversation becomes simple: you start moving into a world which says, why keep something complicated when you can make it simple? We decided to have our cake and eat it too."

Kipman clarified that Kinect functions are modular choices, that they can be included or left out according to developer preference, in much the same way as any other technical option.

"What Kinect brings to the table is a new set of paints and paintbrushes, it broadens the palette and allows you to do different things. Not all features are created equal, you can totally imagine a game that's using practically the entire of the Xbox 360 and still uses identity recognition. You can have a game that uses a small vocabulary of voice recognition that will still have pretty much 100 per cent of the processing. And on and on.

"You can shop, in a way, in the platform by menu, and you can choose the paint colours and paintbrushes you have. This is no different than saying, 'what physics engine, what AI engine, what graphics engine' you're going to be using. I can make the same argument that, hey, I'm going to be using Engine X off the shelf, I'm going to be giving up control over the hardware. There's some amount of resources that I give up for the price of the flexibility and the time to market of using a middleware engine."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...of-the-360-cpu ...

The iPhone version of mobile browser Skyfire has gone live on the App Store a day earlier than expected, following its approval by Apple.
Reports had suggested that the app would be available on Thursday, but it's live in Apple's store right now.
The browser's approval and release is significant, because it claims to be the first iPhone browser capable of showing Flash videos on websites.
Skyfire's technology transcodes the videos into the H.264 codec, to make them viewable on the Flash-averse iPhone.
Another interesting point is that the browser is a paid app for iPhone, costing $2.99 / £1.79 in the App Store.

It joins Opera Mini on Apple's Store as a standalone non-Safari browser for iOS users.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/39324...ve-a-day-early ...

Metal Gear Solid's Raiden will appear as a playable skin in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Joystiq sources say the Raiden "outfit" is unlocked by completing all tasks in the Animus' new "virtual training" mode.


You might remember being able to unlock Altair's robes from Assassin's Creed in Metal Gear Solid 4. You had to complete the game with 50+ knife kills, 50+ CQC grabs and trip less than 25 alerts.


Ubisoft announced free PS3-exclusive DLC for AC: Brotherhood yesterday.

The game's out on November 19 in the UK.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

The uDraw Wii Gaming Tablet is a new ‘platform’ that has already attracted attention from other publishers, according to THQ.
The firm showcased the product in London to retailers last week. The peripheral and its first titles will arrive early next year.
THQ says it has a five-year plan for the device and is considering proposals from third-parties who are interested in developing for it.
“This is a platform launch, not a one-off proposition,” said UK marketing director Jon Rooke.
“We’re approaching this as a long-term commitment – at least, three to five years – and we believe the software will sell well long after launch.

“We can only create so much software ourselves, so it’s great to have people proposing more products for uDraw. A lot of them have even questioned why Nintendo hasn’t created this device themselves, which is very flattering.
“We’d love uDraw to become part of people’s everyday lives, rather than only being used at parties.”
The announcement of uDraw back in August was well-received, with responses that even surprised THQ.
Rooke added: “We were amazed to hear analysts predicting uDraw could sell up to one million units.
"I hope we do sell that much – on day one. That would
be lovely.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/41625/uDra...form-not-a-fad ...

News via http://retroactionmagazine.com/retro...free-issue-45/

Commodore Free issue 45 has been released. The monthly retrogaming zine covers the Commodore range of computers and is available in PDF, HTML, D64 (C64 disk), SEQ and text formats. Highlights this month includes news, Commodore Programming, Commodore Computer Club USA, Interview with Sean – CCC USA, DotBASIC, The Atari Arcade DotBASIC Project and the return of ‘Back to the Past: Issue 6, March ’07′, written by this very author.

Weblink: http://www.commodorefree.com/ ...

News via http://www.nintendomax.com/viewtopic.php?t=12581&f=19

Altourus offers for his first DS project, "Gizmo's Adventure", platform game starring the famous Gizmo Mogwai Gremlins movies.

Controls
----------
Left or Right arrows to move
Hold X to run
Press A to jump

Update: Code and Videos Updated, fixed SEVERAL bugs Including the jump animation playing in reverse order: S

http://nickcrook.ca/ ...

News via http://www.nintendomax.com/viewtopic.php?t=12582&f=19

Ant512 moved to version 0.99.6 "Woopsi" GUI library for creating homebrew for the Nintendo DS on the model of windowing OS Amiga.

http://woopsi.org/ ...

News via http://www.nintendomax.com/viewtopic.php?t=12584&f=6

Eke-Eke also offers version 1.4.0 of his excellent emulator SEGA MEGA DRIVE (GENESIS USA) for the Nintendo Gamecube and Wii, Genesis Plus GX.

changelog:
1.4.0 (01/11/2010)
[Edit] Core / Sound

* Completely rewrote sound processing / mixing: sound chips are now clocked With correct output framerate

to Ensure 100% smooth video & audio playback, With No lag or skipping, while year Accurate rendering of samples per frame number and Keeping PSG & FM chips in sync.

* Improved PSG & FM Chips With CPU execution synchronization (fixed point precision).
* Improved Accuracy YM2612 core General (SSG-EG, MSC mode ,...) (based upon Nemesis Recent testing is real hardware)
* Improved YM2612 emulation LFO accuracy: fixed "Spider-Man & Venom: Separation Anxiety" (intro)
* Fixed bug YM2612 With Timer B: fixed "Langrisser Hikari II" / "Der Langrisser II (Sega logo)
* Fixed YM2612 context saving / loading.
* Fixed YM2612 state on reset.
* Removed outdated Accurate People & less YM2612 core
* Added configurable DAC resolution YM2612 emulation.
* Added configurable FIR resampler & fast (thanks to Blargg & AamirM) removed libsamplerate support.
* Added configurable low-pass filtering
* Added configurable 3-Band Equalizer (thanks to Neil C).
* Added an option to boost SN76489 Noise Channel.
* Adjusted SN76489 cut-off frequency.
* Implemented Blargg's blip in SN76489 core buffer (all channels are now lineary Interpolated)

[Edit] Core / VDP

* Added support for CRAM writes Düring horizontal blanking (Striker, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel ,...)
* Added support for 2-Cell vertical scrolling in Interlaced Mode 2
* Added support for undocumented Some mode register bit
* Added proper emulation of HV counter latch: Fixed Sunset Riders Intro
* Added pixel-accurate emulation of mid-line display on / off (Nigel Mansell World Championship PAL, Ren & Stimpy's Invention PAL ,...)
* Improved 2-cell emulation VScroll Accuracy is verified as real hardware (Gynoug, Cutie Suzuki no Ringside Angel, Formula One, Kawasaki Superbike Challenge)
FIFO * improved timing accuracy: Sol Deac fixed intro
Sprite masking * improved accuracy (thanks to Nemesis for history test program)
* Improved sprites processing accuracy: fixed (a) masked sprites in Mickey Mania (3D level), Sonic 2 (VS mode).
HBLANK flag * improved timing accuracy: Mega Turrican fixed (Sky level)
* Improved horizontal blanking & HINT / VINT occurrence timing Accuracy Measured we have real hardware.
* Improved HCounter Accuracy in 40-cell mode, we have Measured real hardware.
* Improved Accuracy in WTP highlight color mode to match Observed results were real hardware

[Edit] Core / CPU

* Updated Z80 core to last version (fixed interrupt mode 0 timing and Some ILO guidelines).
Some Z80 instructions * fixed timing.
* Fixed state of Z80 registers are reset (Issues with sound & Defender Defender 2 in Williams Arcade Classics)
* Improved Z80 interrupt Accuracy
68k * improved accuracy (initial + Reset timing self-vectored interrupts handling).
* Improved timing 68k Accuracy for divu / DVIS (thanks to Jorge Cwik) & Mulu / Muls instructions.
68k * Implemented undocumented flags for Behavior divu / IDLH instructions (Bloodshot / Battle Frenzy)
* Improved Z80 & 68k cpu execution / synchronization by using Master Clock Accuracy as common reference (now run EXACTLY 3420 M-Cycles per line).
* Z80 & 68k cores modified to use external Directly cycle count INSTEAD of intermediate counters.

[Edit] Core / Extra

* Added Game Genie emulation hardware.
* Added Action Replay and Pro Action Replay hardware emulation (only Preliminary Pro Action Replay 2 medium).
* Added Sonic & Knuckles "lock-on" support.
Cartridge * added "Hot Swap" feature.
* Added missing EEPROM support in more games.
* Added VDP emulation lockout (TMSS).
* Improved emulation of copy-protection hardware found in Some unlicensed cartridges (Mulan II Pocket Monsters).
Realtec map * fixed emulation: Fixed missing sound in Balloon Boy / Funny World.
Lightgun * fixed auto-detection: Fixed default cursor position in Lethal Enforcers II.
* Simultaneous use of multitap enabled & J-CART (Super Skidmark 6-player mode)
* Lots of code cleanup, bugfixes & optimization.


[Edit] Gamecube / Wii

* Implemented custom font engine (internal uses are IPL & GX hardware rendering).
* Implemented custom GUI engine (GX uses hardware rendering & multithreading)
* Implemented advanced menu interface (IR pointing, game snapshots, cheats & saves manager, visual & sound effects, BGM support, etc.).
* Improved audio / video synchronization to Ensure 100% smooth video & audio playback.
* Improved soft-reset button support, now works more like real Mega Drive / Genesis (model 1) reset button.
* Improved layout lightgun cursors.
* Added automatic loading feature ROM (Played last game launches Immediately When starting The emulator)
...