GAME CEO Ian Shepherd is hopeful that new console hardware will contribute to a recovery in the games market following disappointing Christmas sales.

"The weakness in the overall numbers was partly driven by the economy and consumer confidence issues," he told MCV. "It was also driven by where we are in the hardware cycle."The hardware market was much more negative than the software market. That tells you the industry and the consumer is ready for more innovation there.
"Whether it is in the handheld space with 3DS and Vita or in the home space with Wii U - all of that will excite the consumer in coming back to the games market again," Shepherd added.
Earlier this month, GAME Group reported a year-over-year sales decline of 14.7 percent for the eight week Christmas period ended January 7.
Group sales fell 11.9 percent in the 49 weeks to January 7, slightly ahead of the overall games market, which declined 13.1 percent during the same period.
The PS Vita release date is just over one short month away now. Cast your eyes over our PS Vita review, if you haven't already.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-new-consoles/ ...

Who could have predicted that 77 million PlayStation Network accounts would have been compromised last April? Who could have known that 3DS would at first struggle, then fly? Who could have guessed what the Wii U would be? Why, an analyst of course!
These future-gazing mystics are paid to try to discern the future from their money-shaped tea leaves. They weigh in on hot topics, declare the fate of companies; they watch, they listen, they never sleep. Who better to peer into the shrouded year ahead and tell Eurogamer what to expect?
Introducing: Jesse Divination! Michael Predicter! Peers Harding-Rolls! And Nicholas Lovesalloutcomes!
OK, back to reality. Michael Pachter analyses for investment firm Wedbush Morgan; Jesse Divnich analyses for research company EEDAR; Piers Harding-Rolls analyses for media research company Screen Digest; and Nicholas Lovell founded respected games business blog Gamesbrief.
Tell us of consoles in 2012
"The Wii U is the big story of the year," prophesied Pachter, "but without knowing specs, price-point and the level of software support, it's hard to predict how it will do. My bias is that it's not significantly more powerful than the current HD consoles, its price-point will not be significantly lower, and software support will be light.
"If I'm right, it will probably have a lukewarm reception at launch."

Michael Predicter.
Harding-Rolls' hunch read: "At this stage, and until we have concrete intelligence on pricing and content for the Wii U, we do not expect Nintendo's next generation console to generate as much interest as the ground-breaking Wii.
"My own view is that the Wii U's product message is more complex and, as a result, will not engage with as wide an audience as the Wii."
"I don't think we'll see anything from Microsoft other than a bigger hard-drive and a lower price-point," Pachter pursued, "and I don't think we'll see anything from Sony at all. The Apple console is probably a 2013 event, so nothing to look forward to this year other than price cuts.
"With that said, Microsoft has a lot of room to cut price (they could probably make money at $199 for a 250GB Xbox 360 with Kinect bundle), so that will be the biggest driver of console sales this year."
Divnich divined: "I wouldn't expect any new hardware announcements from Sony or Microsoft. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 continue to drive substantial profits for the third parties, and given our industry's historical inability to transition between hardware cycles profitably, I don't think the third-parties are quite yet ready to face a new hardware cycle."
"I don't expect a new Xbox to be launched in 2012," Harding-Rolls ran on. "Our expectation remains 2013, but with information on a new Microsoft console hitting the market this year.
"We're currently forecasting 2012 declines in hardware sales for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii on a global basis."
Tell us of portable gaming in 2012
"[PlayStation] Vita will struggle," reckoned Lovell. "The key question will not be whether it sells some initial units, but how it does for software tie-ins, and whether its appeal stretches beyond core Sony fans."
Presaged Pachter: "Sony's PS Vita appears aimed at the hardcore gamer, and will likely have limited success because of a relatively small addressable market.

Jesse Divination.
"The 3DS has broader appeal (both casual and hardcore), but the price-points for casual games are not particularly compelling when measured against $9.99, $4.99, $0.99 and free smartphone games. And the quality of games like Infinity Blade and Dead Space makes the smartphone competitive among even the hardcore.
"I see modest sales for 3DS, good enough to be profitable for Nintendo, but not good enough to offset the inevitable decline in DS hardware and software sales."
Recited Harding-Rolls: "Continued momentum of the 3DS in the first half of 2012 will help decide its future at least with regards to third-party support. If momentum stalls, I fear third-parties will continue to look elsewhere for investment opportunities.
"I expect Vita to get away relatively strongly at launch because of its strong content line-up but, like the 3DS, may suffer due to pricing after the initial rush has subsided. I expect Sony to be reluctant to make any significant pricing move, outside of value bundles, until at least 2013."
"It's true that the sandbox for dedicated portable gaming devices has shrunk as mobile and tablet technology increases its market penetration," Divnich divulged.
"But I believe the market for dedicated portable gaming devices is still large enough to support two competitors - 3DS and Vita. And it is certainly large enough to support healthy profits from the third-party publishers that support them."

Peers Harding-Rolls.
"Without question," pressed Pachter, "the biggest-selling portable gaming device will be the smartphone. The number of gaming apps for iOS and Android is increasing exponentially, and although many are free-to-play, the mobile games sector should still see greater revenue growth than any other."
"Tablets will fly and fly," Lovell harmonised, "although price-points need to fall. The Kindle Fire is interesting, but I am not yet ready to predict that it will be a success. ...

...

You’re not still playing nDoom in black and white, are you? What decade do live in? Thankfully, the Doom port for TI-nspire calculators has been upgraded to support color. That is if you’ve got the hardware to run it.
The video after the break (and the image above) shows a TI-nspire CX running the popular first-person-shooter. It’s seen several upgrades since the beta version which we saw piggy-backed with a different TI-83 hack a year ago. The control scheme has been tweaked, and a menu system was added. It’s not the same on-screen menu that you would see with the DOS version of the game, but it accomplishes that same thing. This port is packaged with the Ndless program that unlocks the hardware so that you can perform your own hacks.
Unfortunately there is still no sound available for the game but that is a project for a different time. We know it must be possible because we’ve seen a TI-84+ used to play music stored on a thumb drive.

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/19/doom-...color-upgrade/ ...

[George] is a Neo Geo aficionado, and among his collection of paraphernalia, he hasa MVS-Mini game console. His mini “Multi Video System” is a 2-slot model, meaning that it can hold two game cartridges at a time, which are indicated by plastic cards inserted in the cabinet’s face plate. Instead of swapping those cards out each time he changed cartridges, he thought it would be far cooler to install digital displays instead.He scoured just about every retail store he could before finding a handful of small 5” digital picture frames that looked to fit the bill. After some careful cabinet modifications he had them wired up and ready for display. The frames don’t hold a ton of pictures, but they do support the use of SD cards. [George] says that he’ll likely just buy a ton of small SD cards, swapping them out whenever he changes games, though over time that might become as tedious as swapping out the plastic cards.We would love to see [George] take his new digital display up a level, so be sure to share your ideas in the comments. Perhaps we can persuade him to automate things a bit.

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/19/addin...rcade-cabinet/ ...

We know some folks are very upset by the scrapping on vintage hardware, so let’s all observe a moment of silence for this NES controller.Now that that’s behind us we can live vicariously through [Burger King Diamond's] project. He polished up the NES controller and repurposed it as an enclosure for a portable MP3 player.His first step was to remove some of the yellowing of the plastic using Retr0brite. He admits it wasn’t bad to start with but now it’s sparkling like new. Next, he started planning how everything would fit in the case. Luckily the MP3 player operates with one AAA battery which leaves plenty of room.Just above the A and B buttons you can make out an opening that he cut in the case for the MP3 player’s LCD screen. The bezel from the original case works well for cleaning the rough cut opening. The buttons on the controller have been patched into the controls on the MP3 board, and the opening for the controller’s cable now holds the headphone jack. There’s also a USB port mounted next to it for easy file transfers.The one thing we would like to see is a rechargeable battery so you don’t need to open the case to top off the power. But all in all this is a fantastic build!

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/19/nes-c...yer-enclosure/ ...

Here’s one way to really keep the component count low. [David] developed an NES controller that doesn’t use any buttons. The copper clad has been milled to provide a pad which registers a button push based on capacitance. The board has a SIL header at the top, making it easy to plug into the Arduino board that reads the inputs.
[David] had trouble getting the Arduino pin read functions to respond fast enough for he NES console’s expectations. He ended up using commands to access the ATmega’s peripherals directly in order to achieve the target timing. Speaking of, he did his own sniffing of the communication scheme using a logic analyzer. The results of that work, as well as the board files and code are available at the site linked above. And there’s a demo of the controller used to play Super Mario Bros. in the clip after the break.
This is actually a tangential project using a PCB mill which he’s developing through Kickstarter. This certainly shows that the mills works as designed.

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/19/nes-c...ad-of-buttons/ ...

Renowned piracy advocate The Pirate Bay has issued a lengthy statement saying that the proposed SOPA legislation would do nothing to stop it operating.
“They want to make the internet into a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers,” it reads.
“The public opinion on this matter is clear. SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top-level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.”
The somewhat questionable finger of accusation then turns on the rights holders themselves.
“To fix the ‘problem of piracy’ one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating ‘culture’ but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and TV shows that make them think that they're fat.”
It even goes as far as to suggest that the movie industry is underpinned by an inherent hypocrisy as it, itself, was built on ‘piracy’.

“Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would ‘do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear’,” it explains. “He called it the Kinetoscope. Because of Edison’s patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North American east coast.
“The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: ‘stole’) other people’s creative works, without paying.
“The reason they are always complaining about ‘pirates’ today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
“It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existence in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/pirat...stop-us/090005 ...

Sony Ericsson has seen its status slip from fourth/fifth biggest OEM in the world to the ninth.
It was hoping an focus on Android would turn its fortunes around, but that switch didn't make too much difference as the Xperia range failed to match sales of rivals like Galaxy and Desire.
Ahead of its rebranding that will see future handsets drop the 'Ericsson' moniker, the company has reported a pre-tax loss of €247m for Q4 2011. The company said it shipped just 9m units in the fourth quarter, down 20 per cent on last year.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/xperi...-losses/090007 ...