via kotaku

To promote PSP title DJ Max Portable a live event was held in Korea. All the music was featured in either the first DJ Max Portable or the second game. Plus, There were a DJ mix session, a cosplay event and cameras. Lots of cameras. Sounds like a night out on the town to me.

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via kotaku

Nintendo UK's bossman David Yarnton has revealed to British trade paper MCV some juicy hardware sales figures. And we just know how much you love sales numbers, so here you go. The figures disclosed include total global sales, as well as those in continental Europe and the UK.

Nintendo DS:

Global: 40 million
Europe: 11 million
Britain: 3.1 million

Nintendo Wii:

Global: 5.84 million
Europe: 1.3 million
Britain: 438,000

Says Yarnton:

We've sold close to 438,000 Wiis in the UK in five months. It's really hard to have targets - we have seen unprecedented demand.

Yes, we set targets originally and we have definitely exceeded those. They are continually being re-assessed all the time.

Slight warning: since these come from Nintendo themselves, and don't make the distinction between shipped and sold, take a grain of salt or three. But don't overdo it; after all, since every Wii shipped is being sold, that distinction's probably a touch irrelevant. ...

via kotaku

Nintendo UK's bossman David Yarnton has revealed to British trade paper MCV some juicy hardware sales figures. And we just know how much you love sales numbers, so here you go. The figures disclosed include total global sales, as well as those in continental Europe and the UK.

Nintendo DS:

Global: 40 million
Europe: 11 million
Britain: 3.1 million

Nintendo Wii:

Global: 5.84 million
Europe: 1.3 million
Britain: 438,000

Says Yarnton:

We've sold close to 438,000 Wiis in the UK in five months. It's really hard to have targets - we have seen unprecedented demand.

Yes, we set targets originally and we have definitely exceeded those. They are continually being re-assessed all the time.

Slight warning: since these come from Nintendo themselves, and don't make the distinction between shipped and sold, take a grain of salt or three. But don't overdo it; after all, since every Wii shipped is being sold, that distinction's probably a touch irrelevant. ...

via kotaku



An little 11-year-old girl in Inverbervie Scotland and her mother were shocked when one of the colorful characters in the child's Animal Crossing DS game had called her a '****ing cow'. As children these days are taught the 'screenshot or it didn't happen' rule from an early age, they were lucky enough to capture the precious moment for UK's Metro news. Of course it has to be user-input, seeing as the text is in blue, but how on earth did it get in there?

It's boundless speculation time!

This is the modern-day version of acting out your parents' marital problems with Barbie dolls. The girl sits in her room, listening to her parents fighting in muffled voices, and begins to think she isn't good enough to have a good-natured, friendly Animal Crossing town. She begins sending out letters to her 'friends', first calling Tom Nook a bloody wanker (deservedly so), and eventually getting to the point where she's distilling turnips into alcohol and calling Tippy a '****ing cow'. It isn't until Whitney comes to confront her that she realizes she needs help and brings the DS Lite to her mother, who completely misunderstands. Eventually the truth will come out, leading to a dramatic, "YOU, okay!? I learned it from watching you!"

That or it was a used copy, but that's just boring. ...

via gamespot

Source: A variety of reports linking back to the console partisans at Xbox Evolved.

What we heard: Even skeptics of Halo 2's sales potential on the PC--which is limited only to Vista-enabled machines--can't contest the fact the game is a monster hit on the Xbox. As of March 31, it has sold nearly 5.7 million copies in the US alone, according to the NPD Group. The industry research firm pegs combined retail sales of Halo 2, the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack, the Halo Triple Pack, and both versions of the original Halo: Combat Evolved at a grand total of 11.6 million. And, again, those are just the US retail figures: On its first day on the market in 2004, the game shipped 2.38 million copies worldwide, generating over $125 million in 24 hours.

Needless to say, the level of interest in Halo 3 is somewhere in the stratosphere. Between 60,000 and 80,000 inquiries about the game are made on GameSpot each day, and the mere mention of its title sends story comments into the hundreds. So when reports began to surface today that at least four million people have pre-ordered Halo 3, they seemed perfectly reasonable.

However, at second glance, the news of Halo 3's preorder milestone seems much shakier. They stem from a single report on Xbox Evolved citing "information at five different Greater Cincinnati Gamestop locations." The console fan site claims the four million figure was "verified at all locations" even though "a document showing this information was not revealed." Also, the report claims four million people preordered the game via GameStop alone. That figure seems awfully high, given the fact that GameStop only accounts for around one quarter of US game sales, and there were only 10.4 million Xbox 360s worldwide as of January.

The official story: Calls to six different San Francisco GameStop and EB locations produced an almost uniform answer. "We don't have access to that kind of information," one manager said incredulously. "And even if we did, we wouldn't give it out without the OK from corporate." For its part, GameStop's corporate office had not responded to inquires from GameSpot as of press time.

Furthermore Microsoft--who presumably would want to tell everything with an opposable thumb about four million Halo 3 preorders--refused to even address the report. "No comment," was all a recalcitrant rep would say.

Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus that four million Halo 3 GameStop preorders have been officially confirmed in any capacity. Not bogus that at least four million gamers worldwide will scoop up the Master Chief's adventure in its first few months on the market. ...

via slashdot

The biggest news of GDC 2007 was almost certainly the bright future of the PlayStation 3. Home was interesting, to be sure, but the title that captured the imagination of attendees was Little Big Planet. Edge had a thorough look at the game in their April issue, and now it seems like there might be a downloadable version of the four-player game used to demo the community/toybox at the conference. This 'games 3.0' thing has a lot of people sitting up and taking notice, including Flash and Shockwave developers. GameDaily spoke with MTVN's David Williams about the user-generated content possibilities being added to Shockwave.com and the AddictingGames sites.
...

via slashdot


Newsweek's N'Gai tackles the allegation that the Wii is a glorified GameCube. He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach saying that 'the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn't play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren't actually that interesting. ... They don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had. So it makes sort of the comparison set a little bit difficult.' LevelUp spoke with a pair of technical experts at third party publishers and learned that, essentially, Bach's comments about horsepower are accurate. However,
...

via engadget



In case you're interested in yet another unsubstantiated image (e.g. ZOMG PHOTOSHOPPED / faaaake / etc.) of future Zune firmware builds, here's a couple more shots. Apparently WiFi syncing still isn't in the cards, but the source that sent these along notes that WiFi encryption will work, as will subscription, but you can't send it to another player until you sync back to your PC. Sounds kind of annoying -- so we're not ruling it out. ...

via engadget

Just over a year ago, Nyko busted out a lucrative solution to the world of overheating problems that hordes of Xbox 360 users were experiencing, and even after being lambasted for causing consoles to draw an unsafe amount of electricity, the company hasn't learned a thing. Unlike Pelican's attempt at a snap-on cooling solution for the PS3, Nyko's two-piece Intercooler (larger picture after the break) holds tight to the problematic power pass-through design which could presumably put undue stress on your machine's power supply when running things in high gear. Nevertheless, IGN's review saw no scorching problems during the time it was used, and while it did manage to cool the unit down during hardcore gaming sessions, it came at a cost. The noise level experienced a noticeable increase, but they were impressed by the user-controllable fan speed knob that allowed them to ratchet things down whilst watching a Blu-ray movie. In a brief comparison between the two current options, there didn't seem to be a decisive winner, but judging by Nyko's previous mishap and its refusal to update the design, the choice should be fairly clear.

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