"Can portable gaming devices be more expensive than home console gaming machines?" That was a question Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said his company was contemplating the answer to, at Nintendo’s investor Q&A last week.

Late into the conference, the subject of competing with the iPhone was brought up once again when an investor inquired if Nintendo were interested in increased connectivity with their portable devices, going forward. To this, Iwata replied that, while he wasn’t a fan of services where consumers would have to shoulder a monthly fee, he was interested in a [Amazon] Kindle-like service and touched upon the subject of pricing portable hardware.

"On the other hand, I find the business model of Kindle rather interesting. Once you buy the hardware, the 3G communication functions are already inside, so you are able to do a sort of the cell phone’s packet communications. However, the customers do not pay money (directly for the communications.) When the customers make the download purchase of a book, that packet fees are included in the charge of the book. On the other hand, I read somewhere that they are yet to make a profit. Nevertheless, in this business model, customers are not required to shoulder the cost. And the service is now being expanded beyond the U.S. to the world. I do not know if the Japanese companies, say, telephone carriers, are happy about the business model. Probably, they are unhappy. Still, I think they were able to come up with a business model which is not bad.

"We have to set the price of portable game machines that are affordable to the customers. Today, some people are already starting to criticize by saying that Nintendo, whenever it launches new model, is increasing the suggested retail price. Including the need to assess such questions as, "can portable gaming devices be more expensive than home console gaming machine?," as one of the future possibilities, we would like to review the possibility of being able to be connected wirelessly and how the trend in the technologies evolve in order for us to come up with our own solutions that can smartly take advantage of new technologies but does not require monthly payments by the customers. Wireless communications and portable game devices go hand in hand very well. We would like to continuously think about that in this fashion and hope to have our answer."

Iwata concluded by stating, "Whenever I received the question, ‘Won’t Nintendo integrate cell-phone functions to its portable game devices?’, I always answered, ‘It will be OK if our customers do not have to make monthly payments.’ Basically, I have not changed that answer."

Readers might want to note that the DSi LL already costs as much as a Wii in Japan at 20,000 yen.

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/11/15...than-consoles/ ...

[svofski] has a friend who is a pixel artist. They really wanted to try out their skills on a c64, but were missing a mouse. The original mouse for the c64 was not only serial, but used a different method of communication than more modern mice. [svofski] built this adapter to translate the ps/2 data to something the c64 can use. The writeup describes the build in detail and even has the PCB and source code available for download.

http://hackaday.com/2009/11/14/mouse...o-c64-adapter/ ...

New from Divineo USA



The Blaster CK3 for the Xbox 360 from Team Xecuter.

Compatible with all versions of Xbox 360 and all DVD drives (Hitach, Samsung, Benq & Liteon
New Improved Design
USB / Liteon Support For Liteon Drives
Includes a FREE CK3 Probe for No Solder Liton 7xxx Key Dump
Includes a Free Bonus Unlock Tool for the Xbox 360 ...

A Florida teenager says he was kidnapped at gunpoint, driven to a Walmart and forced to buy his captors a PlayStation 3 for the new super-low price of $299.99. Cops have arrested one suspect.

The Naples, Fla. teen says two guys in a white pickup truck blocked his car as he tried to enter a gated community where his friend lives. Two guys, one with an assault rifle, the other with a pistol, jumped out, drove him to his stepfather's home in another gated community to steal some jewelry. Then it was off to Walmart with stepdad's credit card.

There, the victim says one of his captors demanded he buy him a shotgun. But it being past 8:30, the gun counter was closed. So the bandits said they'd settle for a PS3 Slim, which the victim bought. They then set him free, and he went running to the law.

Yeah, there's been one arrest, and it sounds like there's surveillance footage, but let's show a little skepticism here. If this is true, two dudes just went to a hell of a lot of trouble and are facing a whale of a stay in the joint to pull off the heist of a lifetime - a PS3 - before turning loose their rich captive. Kidnapping, plus a gun crime doesn't just get pled down to loud muffler and disorderly conduct because you netted $300 in merch. Plus there's the matter of the suspect's fingerprints not being found inside the house.

That doesn't stop WBBH-TV. Be sure to watch that video. I don't know East Naples or Immokalee from Muncie, Indiana but it sounds like the reporter's reminding us both places are the H-double-O-D hood. And remember, "Jane," (if that's your real name) you're not safe anywhere, even behind rich people gates. Another shining example of local news teaching you to hate and fear your world.

http://kotaku.com/5404689/ps3-it-only-does-kidnapping- ...

Conflict currency - it's not cash, but goods or valuables that are small, easily liquidated, easily smuggled. Diamonds are the classic example. We might have to add Modern Warfare 2 to the list, after what just went down in Pennsylvania.

Cops in Meadville, Pa. say a man went into a Gamestop there at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, informed the clerk he had armed help out the door who'd start shooting if anyone called police, and so therefore start handing over the merch. I like that style. The hell with this finger-in-the-jacket-pocket shit. Just let your imaginary friend be your accomplice.

The guy made off with 100 copies of MW2, plus some other items for a total cash-and-prizes value of $6,900.

I'm not sure what surprises me the most, the ballsiness of the robber, or the fact a GameStop still had 100 copies of this 19 hours after its midnight release.

Also, please tell me the "other items" were some refurbed PS2s with balky DVD drives. Please.

http://kotaku.com/5404750/heist-nets...dern-warfare-2 ...

It makes sense to release your mostly-theoretical (so far, anyway) desktop OS-based slider handset with the world's newest and best version of Windows, but it when your slider handset is dubbed "xpPhone" things become a bit more muddled. But that's the word from Pocketables, who's been in touch with ITG and learned that the MID / phone will not only ship with a Windows 7 option, but also be available in 4.3-inch, 4.8-inch and 7-inch screen sizes. There's also rumors of price ranging from $500 to $700, but what we'd really like at this point is a bit of a demo of this thing in action -- especially now that there's a similar ViewSonic-branded device breathing down its neck.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/14/i...indows-7-lose/ ...

Starting today through January 31, 2010 all movie trades will be FREE at Goozex! That means you don't need any tokens to get movies on Goozex for the next two and half months. Other Goozex Movie Promotion: Trade Any 10 Movies & Get A New Free Movie

Also, dont forget that if you have points accumulated, you can put them towards BRAND NEW items through the Goozex Exchange (BETA)

Source: Goozex Newsletter/Forum ...

I have a new release that I'd like to get posted here. It's called PSPEText. You can find it here: http://sites.google.com/site/qbradq/projects-1/pspetext with source and Makefile included.

Here's the ABOUT section from the readme:

PSPEText is a kernel-mode plugin that allows you to pause any PSP game at any
time and read text files stored on the memory stick. This is useful for reading
FAQs from sites like www.gamefaqs.com while playing your favorite PSP games.

This text reader supports both a 60-column display and an 80-column display,
which can be switched between at runtime. The 80-column display is a little
less readable, but a must-have for reading FAQ files.

Also, I'm working on a new port of the Frotz Z-Machine emulator to PSP. I've got the actual emulator working and am now working on the user interface. Given that, I'd like access to post on the news forum.

Thanks for your consideration!
QBRADQ ...

Uberjack has posted this update on his site:

It’s been a while since I last wrote a post, so I thought it only fair to update on my recent work.

I considered the requests to write another port of Castaway, and actually began porting two different versions to PSP. Both attempts ended similarly – 4-color mode works, but the 16-color mode sets the emulator in an infinite loop, from which it never exits. My attempts to get in touch with the earlier developer of Castaway (PSP) were unsuccessful, so after about a week of hitting brick walls, I abandoned the work. I may still return to it eventually (VICE PSP was shelved for about 3 months before I got it to work), but I’m not completely certain, and would rather not make any promises I can’t keep.

Other than that, I got a Google Android phone recently, and found myself fascinated with the platform. The idea that one can actually look at the source code of one’s own cellular phone seems almost surreal, yet it’s very much a reality. I’m currently working on an XBox Live Profile viewer, which will be releasing soon – if you’re interested, check back in a while. I’m fairly certain that I will not be porting any emulators to the platform, as its controls are woefully inadequate for proper game enjoyment, and the platform is more or less limited to Java development (read: managed platform; considerable speed limitations).

That said, I’m not abandoning PSP development. But I do feel like I should take a break for a while.

http://0xff.akop.org/2009/11/10/your...even-stranded/ ...