http://talkplaystation.com/flash-pla...o-firmware-24/ ...

More than 25 million of the video-game industry's most sophisticated and family-friendly consoles have been sold in the United States in the past 2 1/2 years.

But there are only marginal signs that the machines - designed to foster games as a mainstream pastime in a majority of homes - are making any inroads with households that traditionally have been without consoles.

The game industry's signature event, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), takes place this month in Los Angeles in the midst of booming hardware and software sales, driven heavily by interest in Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. The industry is on pace to top last year's record $18 billion in sales by $3 billion to $5 billion, according to the market research firm NPD.

The robust spending, however, seems mostly to be coming from consumers who owned a previous generation of console, such as the PlayStation 2 or original Xbox. Some industry insiders hoped the new consoles, led by the populist appeal of the Wii, would dramatically expand the pool of game-playing Americans. But that appears to remain down the road at best.

Research companies calculate that 40 to 42 percent of U.S. households are using at least one game console. According to some sets of research, that represents little or no growth in recent years.

"We're looking at very slow growth," said David Klein, executive vice president of Centris, a Los Angeles research firm.
Centris measures the current percentage of homes with consoles at 40, unchanged from this time of year in 2006, and up by just 1 percent over 2005.

Adams Media Research puts the percentage at 40.9, up from a 2005 figure of 36.3.

Michael Arrington, one of the firm's analysts, noted in an e-mail that it's likely "most new consoles are going into homes that are either replacing an existing console or adding a second (or third) unit."

The implications for the game industry, whose challenges include rising development costs, are sweeping. An expansion of the game audience offers continued revenue growth, or at least a hedge against a spending slowdown by existing fans.

The tech-laden nature of the latest consoles - which feature broadband Internet capabilities - gives them broader home entertainment potential. And the wider the cultural acceptance of games, the less vulnerable the industry is to social and political critics concerned about violent or adult content.

Nintendo's hot-selling Wii is based on an easy-to-use, one-hand remote control that's meant to entice consumers without previous game experience. Nintendo declined to comment on any internal research it has, although anecdotes abound about the Wii being a hit with moms, dads and grandparents.

Still, that word-of-mouth enthusiasm may not be translating into much real expansion.

"The problem with any consumer survey of that nature is you can get all kinds of wacky results when you try and extrapolate out to (the) U.S. as a whole," industry analyst David Cole of DFC Intelligence said by e-mail.

"You can look at how much the console systems actually sell, but that doesn't account for duplicate households," Cole said. "If you look at most new console purchases today, they are going into households that already own a game system from a previous generation (yes, even Wii buyers)."

The Consumer Electronics Association puts the percentage of households with consoles at 42, the same as a previous peak in 2005. But the CEA's growth projections are notably upbeat. Its research foresees the percentage hitting 44 by the end of the year, up from 37 in 2007, and it expects 27 percent of the people purchasing a console this year to be first-time buyers.

For whatever market growth there is, noted Arrington of Adams Media Research, it's likely the Wii is "doing the most expanding into existing homes that haven't ever . . . taken the console plunge. PS3 and Xbox 360 are being bought almost entirely by folks that are already comfortable with 'doing the console thing' "

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9793586?nclick_check=1 ...

A 21-YEAR-OLD man has been arrested in connection with the brutal murders of French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez.

The friends, both 23, were bound, gagged and stabbed to death in a bedsit in New Cross, south London, on Sunday night.

Police said the man was arrested at 3.40am. He is currently in custody at a south-east London police station.

The arrest comes as police revealed the pair may have been tortured for the PINs to their bank cards.

A police source told The Sun that cards belonging to biochemists Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez are missing and have been used to draw cash at ATMs. Detectives appealed to criminals to help trap the killer - or killers - who tied up and stabbed Laurent 196 times and Gabriel 47 times.

They hope to trace two Sony PSPs stolen during the slaughter at Laurent’s bedsit in New Cross, South East London, on Sunday.

A week earlier, a burglar took a Packard Bell Easynote laptop. Cops want to hear from anyone offered the equipment. The laptop is number FBHg-P-032W. One of the PlayStations was number SO1-0613169-C.

A blaze was started to destroy evidence — using accelerant TAKEN to the flat. Det Chief Insp Mick Duthie said: “It suggests premeditation.” The savage stabbings suggest a sadist like Mr Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs. Forensic psychologist Gerard Bailes said such killers become “highly aroused” by their control over trussed up victims.

The students, both 23, were on post-graduate projects at London’s Imperial College. Flowers were laid yesterday at Clermont-Ferrand University in central France, where both studied.

Family and friends have paid tribute to the pair.

The father of Mr Ferez described his son as “incredibly gifted”.

Olivier Ferez, a nurse, told a national newspaper: “We are just in shock and completely devastated.

“Gabriel is, was, the most intelligent, affectionate, wonderful son anyone could ever want.

“He had such a bright future and now that has gone.”

According to Le Parisien, Mr Bonomo’s best friend at school, called Aurelien,

said: “You could always count on him.”

Another friend, Erik, said: “He was really happy all the time. He was a party

type, always open to other people.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1386293.ece ...

SEGA has been on a roll lately, bombarding both the Nintendo DS and Wii with numerous exclusive titles. We have already seen a slew of home console Wii revivals published / developed (House of the Dead, NiGHTS, Samba de Amigo), plus recent announcements of Platinum Games’s gory MadWorld, whilst the Nintendo DS has the former Clover Studio team’s Science Fiction RPG ‘Infinite Line’, as well as Image Epoch’s RPG ‘World Destruction’. But it seems Nintendo’s previous fierce rival has plenty more to offer fans.


This new role-playing game, exclusive to the Nintendo DS, is called Blazer Drive and since the official website has now opened, the first firm details have emerged. Rather than relying on outside developers as in the case of Infinite Line and World Destruction, this appears to be an internally-developed game based on a fresh new manga show in Japan, an anime that apparently is actually linked with SEGA and its development team. The manga is written by Seishi Kishimoto, who is actually the twin brother of Naruto artist Masashi Kishimoto, and an accomplished manga creator himself.

In this game translation, players will take on the role of Shiro, a young, trendy teenager who uncovers his hidden Blazer skills after actually being personally attacked by a Blazer. Shiro, along with his long-time friend Tamaki, who is also a Blazer, is asked by an unusual man called Kuroki to team up with the Guardians to help them make the Tokyo of the future a much safer place.


As 1UP.com states, from the early information released so far:

In the near future, Tokyo has been radically redeveloped to become an “enviro-friendly” city, one where nature and man-made structures freely intertwine, and everyone presumably drives water cars and eats gluten-free soy hamburgers. The main energy source in this reborn city is Mystickers, odd sticker-like objects developed by the Next corporation that can summon energy from whatever they’re attached to. Mystickers are a part of normal life in Tokyo, and while they’re normally harmful if you’re silly enough to stick one on your arm, some people (called Blazers) have the ability to do just that — they can control the Mystickers’ power and use them to make themselves super-strong or able to wield magic-like abilities. Blazer crime has naturally become a problem, and a group of good-hearted Blazers called Guardian has been formed to fight them. And now you’re about to join the Guardians.”

Blazer Drive sticks very closely to its anime roots in terms of appearance, but its battle system is definitely something different. “Before battle, you must decide which Mystickers you want to equip your characters with, similar to setting up a deck in a card-based RPG. During the turn-based fights, you’ll use the stylus to drag Mystickers onto your party members’ arms to unlock attacks and unleash combos and special skills, making your choice of Mystickers a vital part of every conflict in the game.”

http://www.nintendic.com/news/2614 ...

LowLines posted this:


http://llref.emutalk.net/pages/proje...ser/index2.htm ...

renejr902 has posted a very truthful comparison of emulators on handhelds such as GP2X, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, PSP, GBA and Nintendo DS.

Ive mirrored the comparison in our off topic forum, agree or disagree via the comments here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=118811 ...

renejr902 has posted a very truthful comparison of emulators on handhelds such as GP2X, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, PSP, GBA and Nintendo DS.

Ive mirrored the comparison in our off topic forum, agree or disagree via the comments here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=118811 ...

renejr902 has posted a very truthful comparison of emulators on handhelds such as GP2X, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, PSP, GBA and Nintendo DS.

Ive mirrored the comparison in our off topic forum, agree or disagree via the comments here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=118811 ...

renejr902 has posted a very truthful comparison of emulators on handhelds such as GP2X, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, PSP, GBA and Nintendo DS.

Ive mirrored the comparison in our off topic forum, agree or disagree via the comments here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=118811 ...