In addition to revealing its latest financial figures, Nintendo has released some interesting facts about its two star performers, the Wii and DS. As revealed in the financials, the Wii has sold over 67 million units since its launch in 2006. Putting that in context, Nintendo reveals that the original Nintendo Entertainment System sold 61.91 units in its lifetime, which now makes the Wii the company's most successful console of all time. As for the DS, it has now sold 125.13 million units, surpassing Game Boy and Game Boy Color lifetime sales of 118.69 million units. That makes the DS Nintendo's most successful piece of hardware ever.

It's important to point out that Nintendo counts all four iterations of the DS in its life-to-date sales numbers. Considering each version has a number of improvements over previous versions, we're sure there's plenty of overlap among consumers. Still, there's no denying that Nintendo's latest hardware lineup has been incredibly successful, even if it was slightly less successful in 2009.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/29/wi...hardware-ever/ ...

The real question about Apple's new multitouch pseudo-computer, dubbed the iPad, is not whether it sucks or rocks. What all of us really want to know is whether it will change the future. The answer? Yes, but badly.

The iPad And The World Of Tomorrow

For those who spent yesterday glued to the State of the Union address instead of tech news feeds, Gizmodo has a terrific summary of Apple's new device. To break it down: The iPad looks basically like an iPhone, but with a 9.7 inch screen. It runs the same software as the iPhone, can connect to the internet, and seems to work nicely for reading books, newspapers and magazines, watching video, checking Google maps, reading your email, surfing the web, and casual gaming (though not PC gaming, as Kotaku's Stephen Totilo points out). Like the iPhone, it has no keyboard - you can touch-type on the screen. Or you can buy a keyboard attachment separately.



Why is this outsize version of the iPhone so important that the internet basically exploded over it yesterday? Mostly because Apple's last two new mobile devices - the iPod and the iPhone - changed the way people think about computers. They really did change the future, by making it glaringly obvious that computing devices are not all desktop PCs - they can be specialized music players, or telephone/internet toys that put the web in your pocket. They are the beautiful, cool poster gadgets for the mobile computer generation; they are what we imagine when we think of tomorrow's machines.



The Mythical Convergence Device

The iPad promises to be just as revolutionary as its predecessors, for one reason. It embodies, as much as possible, the mythical convergence device that technophiles have been craving for almost two decades. The convergence device, which people began to discuss seriously in the 1990s, would be a unified gadget where you could consume many kinds of media, especially TV and the web, with the same gadget.

This is exactly what the iPad does, helped along by the fact that so much television is available online already. And you can add books to this convergence, too (possibly even with a Kindle app). The iPad is also the perfect shape for a convergence box. Its screen is about the size of a quality paperback or small television set. There's none of that scrunching your forehead as you peer into the teeny screen of the iPhone to read a book or watch YouTube.

What I'm saying is that the iPad appeals to a very deep and longlived fantasy in the consumer electronics world: A device that does it all. At least, if all you want to do is consume media.

And there's the problem.



Reinventing The Television

Apple is marketing the iPad as a computer, when really it's nothing more than a media-consumption device - a convergence television, if you will. Think of it this way: One of the fundamental attributes of computers is that they are interactive and reconfigurable. You can change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level. Interactivity on the iPad consists of touching icons on the screen to change which application you're using. Hardly more interactive than changing channels on a TV. Sure, you can compose a short email or text message; you can use the Brushes app to draw a sketch. But those activities are not the same thing as programming the device to do something new. Unlike a computer, the iPad is simply not reconfigurable.

The iPad emulates television in another way, too: You can channel surf through the Apps Store, but you can't change what's playing. Every single app that's available for the iPad has to be approved by Apple first, just like apps for iPhones. That means censorship of "offensive" apps, no apps that compete with Apple (i.e., no Google Voice), and no random app somebody wrote to do whatever obscure shit you want to do. So you've got thousands of channels and nothing on. You can only keep flipping through the channels, hoping in vain to see something other than reruns of Cheaters and Alf.

If you want something new, there are very limited ways of getting it. You can write an app, and it might be accepted to the Apps Store. Or you can write your own (unacceptable) app and hand it out to a few friends, if you and they are technically savvy enough. But most users won't be in that position.

As futurist Jamais Cascio told io9:

This is Apple's big push of its top-down control over applications into the general-purpose computing world. The only applications that will work with the iPad are those approved by Apple, under very opaque conditions. On a phone, that's borderline acceptable, but it's not for something that is positioned to overlap with regular computers.
The iPad has all the problems of television, with none of the benefits of computers.



Back To The Shopping Mall

So if it's not a computer, what exactly is the iPad? It could be just a really tarted-up ebook reader, which would make sense if you consider that the iPad is competing with Amazon's Kindle. So it's a reinvention of the book, a fairly old technology, but in a gleaming new package. Except that package isn't even very new, as futurist and science fiction author Karl Schroeder pointed ...

Nintendo of Japan updated its 2010 release list today, adding Xenoblade and The Last Story to its upcoming Wii slate and dating Metroid: Other M for "Summer 2010." The Nintendo and Team Ninja game was previously "TBA" in Japan.

So what the hell are Xenoblade and The Last Story? Well, considering that Nintendo also dropped two titles from its release schedule, Monado: Beginning of the World and Cosmic Walker, we're guessing the games could have simply be renamed. Nintendo did the same with Dynamic Zan, now known in Japan as Zangeki no REGINLEIV.

If we're going to keep guessing, we'll get that Xenoblade is the new name for Monado. The game comes from Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos creators Monolith Soft. Plus, of all the games that might feature a Xenoblade, based on the screen shots Nintendo released at E3 2009, Monado is it.

How Cosmic Walker could become The Last Story, we're not sure, because we really don't know that much about the spacebound sci-fi adventure.

Kirby fans will be delighted to know that Hoshi no Kirby for Wii is still on the list. Keep hope alive!

Outside of Japan, there isn't much news for the Nintendo fan. Metroid: Other M is still listed as "2010" for the U.S. and Europe, the same for Super Mario Galaxy 2. There's a listing for The Legend of Zelda for the Wii in Japan—with a TBA date—but no similar listing for other territories.

http://kotaku.com/5459268/nintendo-a...o-release-list ...

Star Wars: Battlefront III may have been binned, but we've heard from sources that the series lives on, in the form of currently-in-pre-production Battlefront Online.

The game, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is currently being worked on by both Lucasarts and Slant Six Games, the studio responsible for SOCOM Confrontation and SOCOM Fire Team Bravo 3.

The title is still in pre-production, so there's no guarantee that we'll ever hear more of it – Battlefront having become somewhat of a cursed property after the recent demise of original developers Pandemic and buy-out of BFIII developers Free Radical – but Lucasarts' insistence on getting a Battlefront game made in spite of all that gives us hope. A...New Hope, even (sorry).

Battlefront Online is, as the name suggests, planned to be online-only, and is tentatively slated to appear in 2011.

Whether this game was the source of that "Battlefront IV" concept art that turned up last year is unknown, but our sources tell us that it is the source of those voice actor rumours from December.

http://kotaku.com/5458570/rumor-soco...lefront-online ...

Star Wars: Battlefront III may have been binned, but we've heard from sources that the series lives on, in the form of currently-in-pre-production Battlefront Online.

The game, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is currently being worked on by both Lucasarts and Slant Six Games, the studio responsible for SOCOM Confrontation and SOCOM Fire Team Bravo 3.

The title is still in pre-production, so there's no guarantee that we'll ever hear more of it – Battlefront having become somewhat of a cursed property after the recent demise of original developers Pandemic and buy-out of BFIII developers Free Radical – but Lucasarts' insistence on getting a Battlefront game made in spite of all that gives us hope. A...New Hope, even (sorry).

Battlefront Online is, as the name suggests, planned to be online-only, and is tentatively slated to appear in 2011.

Whether this game was the source of that "Battlefront IV" concept art that turned up last year is unknown, but our sources tell us that it is the source of those voice actor rumours from December.

http://kotaku.com/5458570/rumor-soco...lefront-online ...

Konami's upcoming PSP title Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has been delayed over a month.

The game was originally penciled in for March 18 in Japan, but will not be released on April 29. The Western release dates will not be affected: the game will still be released on May 27 in Europe (May 28 in the UK) and on May 25 in the US.

According to Konami, the game has been delayed as additional time is needed to make final modifications so that the title meets consumer satisfaction.

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has previously called Peace Walker a "MGS5 class" game.

http://kotaku.com/5459383/metal-gear...layed-in-japan ...

Research data published this week has revealed the games, consoles, publishers and genres with the best resale values for 2009.

Comparing the recommended retail price of the games or systems when they were new with the average price they were sold for second-hand, we see that while every console can be had for serious discounts if you're happy to go second-hand, some games were actually worth more second time around than they were on a GameStop shelf.

You can see the highlights of the findings below -



http://kotaku.com/5459310/which-game...-value-in-2009 ...

When will Japan stop buying Dragon Quest DS games? When?

On January 28, the Nintendo DS remake of Dragon Quest VI went on sale in Japan. Square Enix shipped over a million copies of the game to retailers across the country.

The game was originally released on the Super Nintendo (aka Super Famicom) in Japan back in 1995.
http://kotaku.com/5459471/a-million-...ipped-in-japan ...

Having completed the original BioShock earlier this week, a bit later than most, I'm moving on to BioShock 2 after a short break to absorb it all. That's one game I'll be playing this weekend.

The other is the Nintendo DS role-playing game Glory of Heracles, which I'm having a bit of trouble finishing. Not because it's difficult—far from it—but because my enthusiasm for an RPG this straightforward and derivative is pretty low. Not so for the sequel to BioShock. I'm curious to see if the follow-up to Ken Levine's game can absorb me as much as the first.

I may sneak in a little Demon's Souls if I find the time, as King Allant needs another slaying. And I'm curious to see if I can build up a good Thief class character and get away from my guard/melee standard build for once.

How about yourself? Any new purchases that you'll be playing this weekend?

http://kotaku.com/5459969/what-are-y...g-this-weekend ...