Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says the Wii U will learn from the "bitter lesson" of the Nintendo 3DS's troubled launch.
Speaking to investors following confirmation of its huge £578m loss, Iwata promised the platform holder is going all out to make sure the Wii successor heralds a reverse of fortunes for the company.

"We are planning to launch the Wii U, which is the successor to the Wii, during the next fiscal year," he told investors in Japan.

"We would like to show the final format of the Wii U at the E3 show next year. As we learned a bitter lesson with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, we are trying to take every possible measure so that the Wii U will have a successful launch."

In the same meeting the Nintendo boss said he feels "greatly accountable for missing our financial forecast for the half year ended September and revising downward our forecast for the full year".

He explained: "The company was unable to launch much-anticipated first-party titles for the Wii nor for the Nintendo 3DS in a timely fashion in the first half of the term. In the game platform business, creating momentum is very important, but the momentum was once lost, and it has had a large negative effect on our sales and profits."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...on-iwata-vows/ ...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...me-development ...

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[Phillip] and the crew at Voltaic Systems took a look at the Sunnan solar powered desk lamp from IKEA a while back, and while they thought it was pretty useful, there were definitely some things they wanted to change.

First on their list of revisions was to increase the capacity of the stock battery pack. Taking the lamp apart and unscrewing the pack’s lid revealed a set of 3 AA cells, which they swapped out for higher-capacity models with more than double the watt-hour rating.

A beefed up battery is a good start, but the lamp’s tiny solar panel has no hope of topping off the batteries outside of Death Valley. To ensure that they get a nice full charge, a small jack was wired into to the battery pack, allowing the group to connect any size external solar panel they pleased.

Finally, [Phillip] and Co. wanted the ability to charge an iPad2 from the lamp’s battery pack. They hacked in a small USB connector and a slightly modified MintyBoost board to provide a little extra juice to their tablet.

While they are still testing the modifications, they say that everything is working nicely, citing that the extra battery capacity and charging abilities are a great addition.

http://hackaday.com/2011/10/28/upgra...harge-an-ipad/ ...

Make sure your health insurance premiums are all paid up; if you decide to replicate this project you may need it. [Corey], [Kris], and [Jess] built their own go cart which is controlled with a Wii remote. The website has a poor navigation scheme, but if you hover over the horizontal menu bar you can get quite a bit of information about the build.
The cart has two motors which use a chain to drive each of the rear wheels. A pair of H-bridge controllers let the Arduino interface with them. It’s also has a Bluetooth module that makes it a snap to pull accelerometer data from the Wii remote. The front end looks like it uses rack and pinion steering, but you won’t find a pinion or a steering column. Instead, a linear actuator is mounted parallel to the rack, moving it back and forth at the command of the Arduino.
We can’t help but think back to silent movies where the steering wheel comes loose in the middle of a car chase. See if you get the same image while watching the demo after the break. This doesn’t seem quite as dangerous as adding remote control to a full-sized automobile, but we’ve played MarioKart Wii before and know how lousy the accelerator performance can be. Hopefully the firmware kills the motors if the batteries in the controller die.

http://hackaday.com/2011/10/29/wii-r...ure-riding-in/ ...

[Ytai], the lead developer for the IOIO breakout board for the Android Open Accessory kit, figured out how to control just about anything from an Android phone wirelessly over Bluetooth.
When [Ytai] first announced the IOIO breakout board for Android devices, one of the commentors on his post said a standard Bluetooth dongle could stand in for the USB cable between the phone and the IOIO. Wireless control of home automation project and robots was just too good of an idea to let go, so [Ytai] dove into this new Bluetooth project.
After getting a cheap Bluetooth dongle from DealExtreme, [Ytai] found btstack, a lightweight Bluetooth stack that was perfect for an embedded environment. Dealing with the USB driver for a no-name Bluetooth adapter didn’t come as easily, but after a few long nights, [Ytai] emerged victorious.
He still has a few more problems to overcome. Namely, supporting environments where more than IOIO board is available. [Ytai] is thinking about adding support for WiFi dongles, something we’d love to see. Check out [Ytai]‘s demo of wireless control of a servo after the break.

http://hackaday.com/2011/10/29/bluet...n-accessories/ ...

Last year, Argos, Asda and Tesco made headlines by accepting trade-ins.
For years, second-hand was the domain of the specialists – GAME’s way of coping with the aggressive pricing of online retailers and those pesky grocers.Suddenly this was under attack. Tesco would accept used games in its Extra stores, Asda rolled out ‘Buy, Play, Trade’ in 234 outlets, while Argos customers could check prices online.
Yet in the months that followed, these pre-owned offers have floundered. MCV has received numerous complaints from customers who have been unable to trade their games in because of unwilling staff. One dumbfounded consumer even told us of how he was questioned by security for bringing in a bag of games.It doesn’t sound like specialist retailers have much to worry about.
SPECIALIST?POWER
“If you look at our pre-owned business over the first six months of the year compared to last year, it is broadly the same size,” GAME CEO Ian Shepherd tells MCV.
“That’s even as we have seen the rest of the market go down, so pre-owned as a proportion of our business has increased to just over 30 per cent for the first six months of this year. And that’s despite the noise from the competition.
“A measure of just how resilient our pre-owned business is that the margin has gone up during the first six months. And that tells you it is very difficult to do trade-in well. We have been doing it for a long time, and we have a lot of skills and expertise.”
But this doesn’t mean the generalists have had no effect on the pre-owned sector, as the editor of used game bible Game Guide,
Chris Ratcliff explains: “Non-specialist activity in the used games market has had an impact, if only to publicise the culture of trading-in games. “There is a general atmosphere that this experiment has faltered and watching the supermarkets over the last 12 months, I get the impression that their foray into used games was more about the headlines than the service.”
NOT GIVING UP
Earlier this year Tesco admitted to MCV that its pre-owned offer “had yet to take off” and that it needed to improve the interaction between staff and the customer.
Asda says its main focus for now is on new games, but that pre-owned remains a small but important part of its business.Why have they found it so hard?
“Poor databases, infrequent maintenance of used pricing and an absence of monitoring and comparing their trade-in and re-sale prices against a rapidly changing market,” lists Ratcliff.
“Generally, supermarkets’ used games shelves are stale with haphazard pricing. I have seen used games up to twice the price of the new one on an adjacent shelf.”
So has this been one big failure for the generalists? No, at least the grocers don’t think so. In reality these retail giants have barely got started in pre-owned. Asda and Tesco both say the ability to trade-in is something customers want, and so they will offer it. There just needs to be a few changes if they want to compete with the specialists, Ratcliff adds.
“With modern technology, centralised systems and good pricing information, non-specialist staff can easily update prices.“I see no evidence of similar systems in use at supermarkets.”
It’s too early to dismiss the generalists’ push into pre-owned. The growth of supermarkets in games over the past two years only highlights what these talented teams can do given time.
But as it stands, GAME, HMV and indies have little to worry about. For the time being at least.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/featu...e-owned/087015
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Publisher EA has countered the belief that digital will eventually cannibalise the packaged games market.
The evidence, EA’s boss claims, comes from its FIFA series. FIFA has been a cornerstone of the console market for nearly 20 years but has in recent times expanded onto new platform such as iOS and Facebook.
Yet this year’s FIFA 12 has been the series’ fastest selling boxed instalment yet.
“The telemetry data is pretty clear. When we extend our brands in the new platforms, we actually create more users for our packaged goods games,” he told investors.
“So it's actually a very virtuous cycle that drives frankly a stronger brand and a stronger revenue opportunity. And without putting too sharp a point on it, FIFA's development costs have not been escalated in line with this type of growth in revenue opportunities so it's a margin expander.”
It’s a healthy cycle for all markets, of course. More boxed sales means more consumers for the digital side of the business.
“We're seeing over 2m people now already engaged in FIFA Ultimate Team. I think it's fair to say when I look at the projection going forward, we could get as much as 25 per cent more digital revenue on top of the core packaged goods business,” EA COO Peter Moore added.
“Last year, we did over $100m with Ultimate Team, which was FIFA 10 and FIFA 11 combined. So as I said in the statement it's already at $13m, I think approximately 25 per cent on a go forward run rate feels like a good figure for me.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ea-di...d-sales/087051
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Samsung has become the largest manufacturer of smartphones on the planet.
Shipments in the last quarter grew 44 per cent to give it 23.8 per cent of the market. The firm sold 27.8 million units in Q3, up nearly four times from a year ago, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. That helped the Korean firm's smartphone profit double to $2.2bn.
The 44 per cent growth is almost four times as much as last year, and is attributable to the great success of its Galaxy range and, to a lesser extent, its Wave bada devices.
And the growth also takes Samsung ahead of Apple, which saw iPhone sales fall by 16 per cent to 17.1 million units in Q3, according to the report.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/and-t...t-apple/087053
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