New 3DS titles have made a significant impact on the Japanese sales charts, but the number one selling game of the week is Sega's Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity for the PSP - a new iteration in the popular Monster Hunter-esque series that sold 206,654 on its debut.
The second highest new entry, at number two, is Namco Bandai's SD Gundam G Generation World on the PSP with 192,981 sales. The Wii version charted at number 12 with 28,119 units sold.
As a result the highest-selling 3DS title was Level-5's Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle at number three, with 119,591 units sales. An impressive figure considering the charts only take into account the first two days that it, and the 3DS itself, went on sale.
The second biggest seller was nintendogs + cats at number five with 64,213 sales, followed by Samurai Warriors: Chronicles at number six, (49,327) Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition at number seven (44,649), Ridge Racer 3D at number eight (38,226), and Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D at number 15 (26,345). Pilotwings Resort was not part of the Japanese launch line-up.
With the weekend total for the 3DS hardware put at 374,764 the total of all software sales for the format suggests an overall attach rate of almost exactly 1:1.
It has been a generally busy week by any standard, with Nippon Ichi's Disgea 4 also debuting at number four with 79,425 sales and THE iDOLM@STER 2 on Xbox 360 squeezing into the top 10 with a creditable 34,621 unit sales.
As a result there is only title from the previous week in the top 10 (Monster Hunter Freedom 3 at number nine, and only four overall in the top 20.


http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...3ds-debut-week ...

For a man who hadn’t once used the word iPhone in his hour-long GDC lecture, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata still managed to publicly tear into the Apple smartphone empire.
“Rather than offer you a rosy picture of our industry, I would like to discuss three concerns,” he said at the concluding stages of his keynote speech.

Iwata glided through his first and second concern, but the final one he embellished on with the kind of provocative language that, at times, seemed extraordinary for a leading Japanese businessman.
“Game development is drowning,” he declared.
The Nintendo boss recalled that in his 2005 GDC keynote, the audience were developers of many systems, but not commonly mobile devices.



“But today, it may be the majority of you developers who are making mobile games,” he said.
“It gives me concern.”
And, just a stone’s throw from the venue of Apple’s iPad 2 press conference, Iwata exposed his long-harboured dislike of the mobile gaming market unequivocally.
“These platforms have no motivation to maintain the value of the gaming,” he said.
“Quantity is how they profit. The value of software does not matter to them.”
By “them”, he wasn’t simply referring to Apple. Google and Facebook were too the target of his attack.
Speaking to the packed crowd of industry professionals, he claimed that the business of game design is more perilous than ever.
“With so many consoles to publish games on, it is already so hard to attain visibility and status,” he said, before explaining that mobile market is only making life harder.
Citing Forbes data, Iwata claimed that 92 per cent of mobile app downloads are for free content. He said that, in the oceanic smartphone games market, the chance to be visible – and the opportunity to make a living – is remarkably low.
It’s a very confusing time for people. There’s not much stability, he said.
“It confirms for us that our world is changing.”
But Nintendo insists that one defining value remains – “Content is king.”
Quality of product is still distinguishes success from failure, he said.

“But will that still be the case moving forward?” he asked. “Is maintaining high-quality games a top priority, or not?”
Iwata said the only constant in a shifting games industry should be the primary need for quality content.
“Without content, there is no industry,” he said.
This was, make no mistake, Iwata’s declaration that the firm will not join the smartphone race or the $0.99 business. It will not spend three months building a game and then add to it thereafter.
“We really want consumers to appreciate the premium value of content,” he said. “What we make is valuable, and we should protect that value.”
http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...drowning-Iwata ...

Nintendo president admits download services 'have not operated as well as they should have'

Satoru Iwata has admitted that Nintendo has been disappointed in the performance of its downloadable games services.
During his keynote speech at GDC 2011 in San Francisco, the Nintendo president said: “To date, our WiiWare and DSiWare services have not operated as well as they should have.”

The Wii’s games download service was first launched in May 2008, while its handheld equivalent debuted with the Nintendo DSi in 2009. Both have had criticial successes, but no titles have taken off commercially in the same way that some XBLA and PSN titles.
Iwata claimed the 3DS would change Nintendo’s digital fortunes, and then introduced Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime to explain how.
Fils-Aime highlighted three 3DS features that would help drive the use of Nintendo’s download services and other digital functions: the Spot Pass function, the wide range of eShop content and wi-fi access.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ted-by-WiiWare
...

Newly Dropped in Price (on worldwide import)


This wont interest most of you, but to those of you like me who brought their Wii from the USA and have a load of games that are no good unless if you have a working US Wii, then this may be a saviour, my us wii has been broke for ages which renders 30 games unplayable, thankfully superufo.com will ship this as a sample or whatever to avoid customs (by air mail to avoid), you do pay more this way however. one reason i hate consoles that arent region free. ...

WiiGait is not a political scandal, it’s a project that records motion data while walking. [Bilal Chishti] and [Zassa Kavuma] are strapping a Wii remote onto each leg and recording the sensor data while making video of the walker at the same time. The two are using an Ubuntu box to pull the sensor data from the Bluetooth-enabled devices and utilizing its built-in webcam for the video. They graph the data for each axis and we’re sure that syncing up data anomalies with the video is just a matter of matching timestamps.
So what good is this? The creators are keeping us in the dark about an end-goal for collected data; this may just be for the experience of using the hardware. But we could see it having uses in making distance runners more efficient, or teaching that bipedal robot how to balance.

http://hackaday.com/2011/03/01/walki...g-wii-remotes/ ...

The Dolphin Team have released a new version
of the Gamecube and Wii Emulator for Windows, heres whats new

Changelog for 7272
Fix the wiimote speaker problem in the core and remove the HLE patch for it.
Real wiimote tested on windows, untested but should work on linux, dunno about osx.
Download Here --> http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/download.html ...

News via nmax








http://www.nintendomax.com/viewforum.php?f=140 ...

Hello everyone! You all enjoying your 3D Tvs and wearing your specs?
What do you mean you don't have one yet? Oh ok you over there has one, cool.
So you been playing your games in 3D then, seeing them come out at you and really feeling the depth? What you mean you don't have any games like that? pfft!!

Ahh yes, stereoscopic gaming. With the advent of release of the 3DS, (with no need for the specs I might add) 3D gaming is the big thing of 2011, but actually its been going on for quite some time....

Which brings us neatly on to the topic of RETRO 3D GAMING (ooooh!)

This is not the first attempt that Nintendo has released a 3D portable console, its first was the virtualboy:



The virtualboy came out in summer 1995 in japan (August 14 US), and was a red/cyan based 3D but recieved a luke warm reception and never made it to europe, so sadly was canned the following year.

Although it did have impressive 3D, because of the monochromatic nature limited its appeal.

Other companies have developed 3D addons for their consoles, but none had gone past the prototype stage.

That leads us on to PC gaming.

3D acceleated graphics cards have made gaming on the pc what it is today, with so many available there have been so many gimmics bundled with them.

And one company decided to add some stereoscopic glasses to the package:



Elsa had bundled these glasses with their Gforce cards around 1999, and were shutter based that synced with the pc, and were wireless using infrared.

They were pretty much comparable to how modern 3D shutter glasses work, so how come they didn't start the 3D stereoscopic gaming a standard back then?

Sadly at the time this was a novelty (half life did look pretty great though!) and was bundled with few demos and tools, but support and compatability mean't it died off pretty quick.

So back to 2011....

You got your latest graphic card, all 3Ded up, but your wondering if you can get your retro fix in a whole new perspective? Well your in luck!

Emulation:

Emulation is pretty much where most retro is played on a modern system, and with more and more plugin based, has allowed console games to be graphically improved, with direct stereoscopic support or to be allowed to be used with the hardware using nvidia 3d vision.

Noteable emulators:
Dolphin, allows stereoscopic display for gamecube and wii with the included plugins

Pcsx2:


N64: with use with the modified rice plugin s3d allows use with nvidia 3d vision

And the rest...

Want to have your classic glide based games in stereoscopic such as tombraider?
well with the use of wrappers with its possible such as http://www.glidos.net/

With so many options for retro games in stereoscopic 3D, the list is endless, feel free to ask questions or post your own findings in the comments or on our forums.

Well i'm off to play a few classic games in HD now, something to write about for another blog me thinks........... ...

I have posted a new announcement throughout the forums for everyone who is unfamiliar with DCEmu's new way of handling news. I know a lot of coders and contributors were unsure on how to get their stuff on the front page so I thought I'd write a quick guide to using DCEmu's fantastic new CMS for posting front page news and releases.

Check it Out ...