Disney’s Interactive Media division has seen a 17 per cent fall in revenues in its second quarter, with a lack of new self-published titles blamed for the drop.

The Interactive Media division was created in June 2008 and comprises both the Walt Disney Internet group and the video game-focused Disney Interactive Studios. Revenues for the division fell to USD 129 million (EUR 97 million) for the three month period ended March 28. However, net income was down by only 2 per cent to USD 61 million (EUR 46 million).

Although no figures were provided for the individual groups within the Interactive Media division, a decrease in revenues at Disney Interactive Studios was said to have been offset by increased revenues from the company’s mobile phone business in Japan.

Lower marketing expenses and administrative costs also helped to offset the fall, as well as the continuing success of the Internet group's child-friendly Club Penguin and Toontown massively multiplayer online titles.

The fall in revenues for Disney’s video games business was contrasted with that of a year ago, when the release of adult-rated license Turok helped to boost sales. More recently Disney has relied more on its own internal media tie-ins, such as High School Musical.

The possibility of a Turok sequel is currently unknown, following job cuts at internal developer Propaganda – as well as Fall Line Studio. Non-traditional Disney titles such as Black Rock Studio’s driving game Split/Second and the first project from Warren Spector's Junction Point are still in the pipeline.

As a whole the Walt Disney Company saw revenues fall by 7 per cent to USD 8.09 billion (EUR 6.08 million), compared to the same period last year. Net income was down by 46 per cent to USD 613 million (EUR 461 million), but these results were slightly above market expectations.

"We had a difficult second quarter due to the weak economy and other factors," said Robert A. Iger, president and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. "At the same time, we remain focused on our core business strategy and believe our creativity, brands and businesses will serve us well as the economy recovers."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...rop-in-slow-q2 ...

During yesterday's conference call discussing the fourth quarter results for Electronic Arts to its investors, CEO John Riccitiello revealed that the publisher believes the current hardware cycle will be an extended one, and that there is no need for new hardware in the immediate term.

"Although we are in uncertain times, we continue to believe we will have an extended hardware cycle and we continue to see robust growth with our various direct service businesses," Riccitiello said in the call's closing remarks.

During a question and answer session immediately after the talk, Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian asked for clarification, commenting "I know at least one of your competitors had already talked about making some R&D investments upfront ahead of the next generation," referring to recent comments by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

"I presume you're talking about some comments from one of our French competitors very recently," said Riccitiello. "I think there's always going to be new aspects - new handhelds, and new peripherals, and new things that are coming out - that involve investment from companies like ours. And there is I think an increased rate of change provided for by first parties. I would look at, frankly, the iPhone as a new platform in the handheld industry."

According to Riccitiello, while EA thinks there is continued justification for investing in new platforms, the company does not see a traditional next-generation hardware shift any time soon.

"If you're looking for good solid reasons for investing in R&D against new platforms, the market is providing us that," he said. "However, I would point out that what traditionally is viewed as a new platform is when the industry, in a consolidated or collective way, steps forward with a more powerful CPU and GPU combination, more processing power, traditionally married to different choices on medium," specifying cartridges and varying disc formats.

"And those big changes are not something that we're seeing the need for in the immediate term, nor do we expect it in the immediate term."

"Frankly, we can do high-definition gaming today that you can show off on the best available monitor that you can spend thousands of dollars for, and that's already provided for," he continued. "I think that arms race...well, I can never say that it's done, [but] the relevance of doing that faster and faster, as it had been traditionally done through the late 80s and the 90s, seems to have subsided."

"And so we're projecting, relative to the core tech we develop for, for that to be a very extended cycle."

Last month, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that his company was investing research and development into the next generation of hardware.

"What we see is that on handheld and on consoles there are lots of things that will happen in the next few years," Guillemot said at the time. "That's why we consider that it's important to recruit now, and train people, so that those investments will come in the next few years. I'd say that some of the needs will come in one to two years, to start working on products."

No traditional next-gen platforms have yet been announced, and given Riccitiello's statements today - and considering EA's close relationship with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony - expectations are low for any major next-generation hardware announcements at E3 in June.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-any-time-soon ...

Yes folks, we're back to the drawing board. Again. With a litany of wireless technologies floundering about and struggling to find real traction in the market, a cadre of market powerhouses have joined up to take wireless streaming to the next level -- or so they say, anyway. The newly formed WiGig Alliance aims to use unlicensed 60GHz waves in order to stream just about anything you can think of: HD video, images, phone contacts, instant messages, audio, etc. This "unified" approach differs from most other alternatives, which generally pick one niche (1080p video, for instance) and stick to it. If the more than 15 technology firms have their collective druthers, the WiGig specification will find its way into everything from set-top-boxes to telephones to home stereos, ready and willing to stream to other WiGig-enabled devices at a moment's notice.

The group consists of household names such as Microsoft, LG, Dell, Samsung, Marvell, Nokia, NEC, Intel and Broadcom (just to name a few), and when we spoke to executives about the announcement, they told us that plans were to have the specification available to member organizations in Q4 of this year. The sad part is that this likely means we won't see shipping products with the WiGig logo for another year after that -- if we're lucky. We can't argue that some stability would be nice in this volatile sector; after all, we've been waiting for promising products like Belkin's FlyWire to ship for well over a year. The execs we spoke with couldn't speak on behalf of the partner firms in terms of what WiGig products were looming on the horizon, but as we alluded to earlier, the playing field is wide open. Honestly, we'd love for this to take off and finally give high-bandwidth wireless applications the support it needs to flourish, but as we've seen over the past few years, the road ahead ain't an easy one to walk.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/06/h...ng-over-60ghz/ ...

Finally the day has come when PSP 3000 Owners can Join those of us and play homebrew, Davee has released his ChickHEN Homebrew Enabler, heres the full details:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Finally the day has come when PSP 3000 Owners can Join those of us and play homebrew, Davee has released his ChickHEN Homebrew Enabler, heres the full details:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Finally the day has come when PSP 3000 Owners can Join those of us and play homebrew, Davee has released his ChickHEN Homebrew Enabler, heres the full details:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

R4i Adapter is the latest development in flash cartridge technology for the Nintendo DSi. Compared with other R4 Series the R4i is an adapter so you can use a microSDHC card (up to 32GB) with your Nintendo DSi this allows you to store much more and allows you to benefit from all the following features, for example watch movies, play music, browse pictures, read ebooks etc.
Features:

1. Same size as an original DSi game cartridge.
2. Built-in PassMe (NO need for any boot cart ./ passcard etc.)
3. Uses microSD memory card (Trans Flash) as storage.
4. Boot clean dump images (downloadable from internet)
5. Very simple to use: drag and drop files to the microSD card and play.
6. Standard FAT system support.
7. Supports different speeds of micro SD cards.
8. Supports HC memory cards.
9. Upgradable Firmware ( OS / Bios / Kernel )
10. Touch screen control and robust skinning support.
11. No battery needed, back up the save file directly into the microSD card.
12. Homebrew support, IO lib available on launch.
13. Supports WiFi, DS rumble pack and DS browser.
Including:

R4i Card (Slot-1)
USB microSD memory card reader / writer
R4i hard case and lanyard


More... ...

Recently the last few months i cant be the only one who has noticed that Homebrew on all consoles has suffered a downturn, most notably on what was the biggest homebrew scene of all the PSP and second biggest the Nintendo DS.

Soon the PSP3000 will be cracked for homebrew and that will bring a mass of new Homebrew users, the DSi is being worked on and you never know when a breakthrough will come.

Add to that the Dingoo A320, the Gp2x Wiz and Pandora will bring many new users and reiginite many of the older fans of homebrew.

As always with the Homebrew scene on every console theres quiet times and then theres explosions, the real fans of Homebrew will always be around for the next big thing. ...

via Gizmodo


Remember that weird, pink, angular 'Android Hero' handset that HTC semi-leaked back in January? Well, here it is, in the flesh plastic.

The Hero adheres to HTC's established Android phone conventions (read: it has a chin), barring two major details: it looks like it's got a 3.5mm headphone jack, and doesn't have a trackball. Styling is decidedly utilitarian, and its Razr-esque jowels and a StarTACian profile and finish even evoke the 90s a bit.

As for where this phone will fall in HTC's product line, it's hard to say. Assuming Android in common, there are only so many ways you can distinguish one touchscreen handset from another. One theory: it does look a hint larger than the Magic, a factor which, combined with its new 3.5mm headphone jack and lack of a QWERTY keyboard, could indicate an emphasis on multimedia. But even that's a reach.

Luckily, HTC is a fairly leaky ship, so we shouldn't have to wait too long to find out more. Check out the rest of the photos at CodeAndroid. ...