Tesco Direct has stepped up as the first retailer to offer Sony's new PSPgo at a price significantly below its confirmed recommended retail price, listing the console at GBP 199.97 on its online site.

Earlier this week, Sony confirmed the RRP for the console in the UK would be GBP 224.99 - a price which most specialist stores, including Play.com and Game, are currently listing the console at.

But the supermarket giant's online store is now the first to significantly undercut that price, offering the discounted console, plus free delivery, to all pre-order customers. Although it's not clear at present if the sub-GBP 200 price point will remain after the system is released. The store also states a release date of October 2 - one day later than the official release day confirmed by Sony.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...pgo-for-GBP199 ...

Tesco Direct has stepped up as the first retailer to offer Sony's new PSPgo at a price significantly below its confirmed recommended retail price, listing the console at GBP 199.97 on its online site.

Earlier this week, Sony confirmed the RRP for the console in the UK would be GBP 224.99 - a price which most specialist stores, including Play.com and Game, are currently listing the console at.

But the supermarket giant's online store is now the first to significantly undercut that price, offering the discounted console, plus free delivery, to all pre-order customers. Although it's not clear at present if the sub-GBP 200 price point will remain after the system is released. The store also states a release date of October 2 - one day later than the official release day confirmed by Sony.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...pgo-for-GBP199 ...

GameStop has said that the entry of competitors such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart into the used games market has had no "meaningful impact" on its own second-hand sales.

Yesterday, the company said that used games were a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing quarter, growing 19 per cent compared to last year and accounting for 32 per cent of sales.

"We follow very closely every single location where competitors are involved in trades," detailed Julian Paul Raines, COO of GameStop. "So on all of these latest competitor tests, we have not really seen any meaningful impact from those.

"Certainly we will continue to watch that and we just continue to try to get better and better at using that currency but have not seen any impact yet competitively from those."

And with the launch of the new digital PSPgo, GameStop said that it saw an opportunity to capitalise on consumers trading in their old UMD titles which will no longer work on the new handheld.

"It will be a strong contributor to our trade-in process where you have people that will have UMD games that will no longer work on that platform that will fuel additional currency for GameStop," commented Tony Bartel, executive VP for GameStop.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...at-to-gamestop ...

The DS stayed atop the Japanese hardware chart this week, with combined sales of both the DS Lite and DSi more than doubling its closest rival, the Wii.

The handheld console sold 95,957 units in total - 7921 of which were of the older DS Lite. Nintendo's Wii meanwhile, hit second place in the chart with 47,732 units sold.

PlayStation Portable sales were up slightly on last week - totalling 39,882 compared to 33,893 last week.

A significant increase was also recorded in Xbox 360 sales, which saw a 69 per cent rise to 9162 units this week.

Ahead of the PlayStation 3's price cut at the start of September - Sony isn't applying the price reduction in Japan until the slim version launches - sales of the console remained stable at 5944 compared to 5826 last week.

The full Media Create Japanese hardware chart for the week ending August 16 is as follows:

01 Nintendo DS - 95,957
02 Nintendo Wii - 47,732
03 PlayStation Portable - 39,882
04 Xbox 360 - 9162
05 PlayStation 3 - 5944
06 PlayStation 2 - 4907

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...hardware-chart ...

According to US retailer GameStop, Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 could be the best-selling game of all time.

Although sales were down for the company in the most recent financial quarter, the retailer expects the market to pick up due to a strong release slate in the back end of the year, lead by the Infinity Ward shooter.

"Although we have seen some title slippage, we still see a strong fall line-up, led by Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Halo 3 ODST, and expect that Modern Warfare 2 could be the best-selling title of all time," said Julian Paul Raines, chief operating officer, in a conference call to investors.

Pre-orders for the game are strong, said GameStop, with consumers upgrading from the standard and Hardened editions, priced at USD 59.99 and 79.99 respectively, to the Prestige Edition, which ships with night vision goggles for USD 149.99.

"We believe that Modern Warfare 2 has a chance to be the largest title of all time and obviously we are basing that on the reservation activity that we are seeing in our stores, so we continue to see strong reservation activity," added Tony Bartel, executive vice president.

"We have very strong reservations on the Call of Duty Prestige Edition and that’s obviously a price point. There’s a lot of excitement around the goggles on that, so we have a very strong demand that we are seeing in our reservations. Once that was announced, we had a lot of reservations move from the base version to the Prestige version, which is a very good sign."

The company also gave an indication of titles it expects to boost sales in the first half of next year, including Halo Reach, Final Fantasy XIII, Gran Turismo 5, God of War III, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario Galaxy II, Bioshock 2, Splinter Cell Conviction and Starcraft 2.

"Those are great titles, close to a dozen great titles that we have that will impact us favourably and impact the entire industry favourably in 2010," offered Bartel.

And following a number of high-profile delays, CEO Daniel DeMatteo added that it was unusual for retailers to have a clear indication of titles for the following year, which leads the company to believe 2010 will start with a bang.

"I never remember a time when we had as much knowledge this far in advance of titles that are going to be releasing into the following year," he told investors.

"Many of these titles have moved either because of they just weren’t complete or not ready, which I believe are probably the majority, or some of them may have moved just because of the competition in the back half of the year and maybe the economy."

He also said that hardware sales should start moving again now that Sony has announced a price cut for the PlayStation 3, and the company is assuming that competitors Microsoft and Nintendo will follow by reducing their own hardware.

"The recently announced Sony price cuts and most likely others should get the installed base growing again.

"Historically what has happened is that manufacturers follow the others with a price reduction. We assume in our forecast that some time in Q3 that that will occur, but we don’t have any data on that. We have an assumption it will," he concluded.

The GameStop share price fell by over 7 per cent – just over USD 1.77 – to close yesterday at USD 23.41

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...le-of-all-time ...

Despite a seemingly strong positive reaction from the industry following Sony's long-awaited announcement of a price cut for the PlayStation 3 - and the impending launch of the PS3 Slim - shares in the Corporation continued to fall yesterday, continuing a steady descent from their two-month peak at the beginning of last week.

The stock closed down by 1.4 per cent today on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to sit at JPY 2445 (USD 26.02), declining yet further from its peak of over JPY 2770 (USD 29.48) on August 10 - a drop of around 12 per cent in total.

Investors took exception to the price cut announcement - despite the likelihood that the move will spur console sales for the company globally - with a 3.9 per cent fall in the price coming on Wednesday, the day after the press conference reveal in Cologne.

There is some agreement that if the Western markets, particularly the US, UK, France and Germany, continue to show some signs of macro-economic recovery in the next few months the USD 299 / EUR 299 / GBP 249 price points should fuel sales spikes.

However, if recovery stalls and consumer spending falls apart once again, its numbers are likely to be somewhat less spectacular.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and EA Games president Frank Gibeau both told GamesIndustry.biz this week that they believed the price cut was a very good move for the market.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ny-stock-slide ...

A Bloomberg report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs proposed a possibly illegal truce with Palm against poaching their respective employees is sure to pique the interest of the US Department of Justice, which already is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent. 'Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,' former Palm CEO Ed Colligan reportedly told Jobs in August 2007."
The article notes that Apple was probably reacting to Palm's hiring of Jon Rubenstein, who had been instrumental in developing the iPod and went on to spearhead the Pre for Palm (and has now become Palm's chairman and CEO). "It's the story about the importance of charismatic engineers," said veteran Silicon Valley forecaster Paul Saffo. "People don't work for Palm. They work for Jon Rubinstein. One has to wonder how Steve Jobs ever let Jon Rubinstein leave.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08...Deal-With-Palm ...

Hi All,

Here a new version of PSPCAP32 the CPC Emulator for PSP.

For those who haven't seen previous versions, Caprice32 is one of the best emulator of the
Amstrad CPC home computer series running on Windows and Unix, written by Ulrich Doewich.
This emulator faithfully imitates the CPC464, CPC664, and CPC6128 models
(see http://sourceforge.net/projects/caprice32 )

This version of PSPCap32 supports IRDA-Joystick box designed by my good friend Buzz
( see http://buzz.computer.free.fr for details).

If you have any electronic skills you may design your own for less than 20$ ! The Schematic and
the PIC source code is provided in contrib folder of PSPCap32 archive.

For those who have never heard about IRDA joystick project, the goal was to connect your old DB9 joystick
(compatible with Atari , Amiga, Amstrad etc ...) or a paddle device to your PSP FAT.
Buzz has written the driver and designed the PCB and programmed the PIC micro-controller,
while i was in charge of emulator enhancements.

What's new in version 1.5.1 :

- IRDA Joystick box support
- Add "IRDA joystick" device support for both
DB9 Joystick and Atari Paddle
- Add menu for IRDA joystick settings and keys mapping
- Add option to choose between IRDA devices
(keyboard such as Targus or joystick using Buzz device)

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/


Enjoy,

Zx.

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smealum has updated his entry into the Neoflash Summer 2009 coding comp:

Nickname: Smealum and Lobo
Project name : DawnSeekers
From : France/USA
Division : NDS GAME
Original entry : YES
Support Motion : NO
In last NEO Compo this project have won in the top 10 : NO

Dawnseekers



Dawnseekers is a full 3D first person shooter for the Nintendo DS coded by myself, smealum, and with graphics made by Lobo.
This is a demo featuring two maps, two weapons and 4 different enemy types. It features a somewhat advanced 3D engine which can not only render very big and detailed maps, but also multiple enemies on screen at once, with some lighting effects (in the demo though, i didn't have enough time to really get the lighting effects to work at their full potential again, sorry for the inconvenience). I wrote most of the code, with the exception of the base of my MD2 loader, which was first coded by the owner of tfc.duke.free.fr, then reused by Payk then finally reoptimized by myself (it can render up to four time faster now).
As far as gameplay goes, it's a rather classic FPS; the goal is to kill without getting killed and to get to the end of each level. There is a backstory that I wrote, but I didn't have time to implement the story telling elements into the demo unfortunately.
Here are the controls :
D-PAD / ABXY to move
R/L to shoot
Stylus to aim/change weapons (only the pistol and machine gun are available at the moment)
Select to open doors (this is very important)
Start to pause (less important. )

Since there are only two maps, there wasn't much of a point in having a saving system, so instead Play launches map1, and load launches map2. It's also possible to access map2 by completing map1, without having to use the menu.

That's probably about it. Both lobo and I have worked very hard for this to happen, so please enjoy.

NOTE : this game was developped with an M3 DS Simply. Unfortunately, I can not guarantee it will work on every other flashcard. This game doesn't save anything on your card, so there shouldn't be any problems, but if there are, it's your fault, not mine.

Updated Text

An update ! I'm posting it here because I have the right to update as long as it's the 20th somewhere in the world, which it is right now. After that, no updates will be posted here.
Anyway, this update adds/changes :
- very big AI improvement (better animations, more coherent behaviour, harder to kill)
- blood stain is gone ! we replaced it with a directional damage indicator, as SwedishFish suggested. It's non-intruisive and gives you information on where the enemy shooting you is, that's better in every way !
- the player is no longer a midget, his height has been adjusted
- doors can now be opened by taping the little button in the lower right corner of the touch screen.
Since the AI is now smarter, I rebalanced the game; health packs now give 30 hp back, enemies only take 4hp away each time they hit you, and they shoot less often. However, they can now shoot while running or strafing, so beware !
Scientists on the other hand are still as scared when they see you, and still won't lift a finger even if you kill all their allies.
I think that's it. So everyone who has posted Dawnseekers on a news website, please also post the update, as the new features are important I think. The link hasn't changed, i've replaced the file.

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