Moonlight has released a new version of his excellent app that does everything for the Nintendo DS (a must try):

Heres whats new:


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Moonlight has released a new version of DPGTools for the Nintendo DS.

Check it out Here --> http://mdxonline.dyndns.org/archives/nds/ ...

One of the upcoming commercial games for the GP2X has seen a demo release today, heres the key config:

A : fire
push A a second : power shot
X : bomb
Y : pause

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When we found out that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance would not use the exciting and innovative control scheme that the Wii offers, many a Fanboy staffer cried, ever so softly, in the corner huddled in the fetal position, sobbing heard long into the night. Without a Wii controller in hand, their realistic interpretation of Spider-Man's web-slinging and Wolverine's claw-slashing would only make them look like a fool. With the controller in-hand, at least they could say they were playing a game.

OK, fine...that staffer was me.

Regardless, for those of you who have large amounts of sanity on tap, you may still be looking forward to this title. Surely, with such super-dudes as Ghost Rider, Blade, Spider-Man, The Thing, and Thor, there's plenty of reason for you to want to pick up the Wiimote and beat down a henchman or thirty. If that's the case, then go ahead and drool over the 39 new screenshots after the link.

More info ...

Sales for Japan are in, heres the details:

- DS Lite: 163,572
- PSP: 49,352
- PS2: 25,987
- GBA SP: 2,784
- Game Boy Micro: 1,928
- Xbox 360: 1,389
- DS Phat: 1,159
- Gamecube: 904
- GBA: 34
- Xbox: 14

The DS Lite continues to do extremely well, Xbox 360 continues to do poor to say its the only next gen console there. ...

More on the PSP Price Cut News:

News from CNN

While the price of the PlayStation 3 may prove to be too high for some this holiday season, it's looking more and more likely that Sony will try to tempt consumers with a less expensive handheld gaming system.

As it prepares to launch its next generation machine, Sony is apparently stockpiling finished gaming hardware, which analysts believe to be the PSP (PlayStation Portable). That, they believe, is a signal that the company plans to reduce the price of the PSP as the holidays get closer.

Sony is expected to cut the price of its PSP handheld gaming system this holiday season.

"There is a price cut coming in the second half of the year," said P.J.McNealy of American Technology Research. "[The PSP] has lost momentum. Nintendo has had a great run since it launched the DS Lite and Sony needs to regain some ground."

McNealy said he expects Sony (Charts) to drop the PSP's price by $50 to $149. It's possible the company will also bundle the cheaper system with a game or two as well, though not certain.

The timing's about right for a PSP price cut. (You could argue that Sony has yet to lower PSP prices, although it'd be a pretty weak argument.) When the system first went on sale in early 2005, it was only available via a $250 bundle, which included headphones, a carrying case and other accessories. This March, the company dissolved the bundle, selling just the system for $199.

PSP sales have been solid so far, with 20 million units shipped worldwide (with over 8 million of those to the U.S.). That's essentially a tie with the Nintendo DS, which has sold over 21 million units - but the numbers don't tell the whole story.

While the DS has been on the upswing, thanks to commercially and critically successful games such as "Brain Age" (which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide), "Nintendogs" and "New Super Mario Brothers," the PSP has not had a game truly capture the gaming world's attention since the release of "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories" (published by Take Two Interactive (Charts)) last October.

This holiday, in addition to the expected price cuts, the PSP will see the release of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories," which should help boost sales. And waiting in the wings is an online Sony store that will allow PSP owners to buy, download and play classic games from the original PlayStation system.

A $149 price point would put the PSP in the same range as the DS, which currently sells for $129. Nintendo is less likely to reduce its price as it continues to have problems meeting demand for the machine worldwide.

That could give Sony an advantage - as the PSP can also double as a portable video player. While many studios and retailers have abandoned the system's UMD discs for movies, Sony has struck deals allowing people to transfer content from their Tivos and Web videos.

As for Sony's other big system - the PlayStation 2 - things are likely to remain unchanged for now. While a price cut to $99 is certainly coming eventually, it likely won't happen until next year, say analysts. The installed base of video game machine owners is considerably larger than it was five years ago, making it less critical to get systems in people's hands.

"PS2 sales are still pretty solid, so why would Sony bother cutting their prices if the flow through retail is still pretty good?," asked Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets. "Also, Sony still talks about a 10-year life cycle for the PS2. They've typically been doling out these price cuts every couple of years [and they lowered prices earlier this spring]." ...

News via Gamespot

Each year, the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association releases a report of the past fiscal year on the state of the Japanese console gaming industry. The association's numbers indicate that the Japanese game industry hit bottom with a pretty dismal 2004, but bounced back in 2005, according to the Japanese-language Weekly Famitsu.

In 2005, combined hardware and software sales rose 13.9 percent from 2004's 436.1 billion to 496.5 billion yen ($4.3 billion). Software sales accounted for 314.1 billion ($2.70 billion), while hardware took in 182.4 billion ($1.57 billion)--a jump of 51.9 percent, largely due to the sales of two handheld systems. In 2005, Japanese gamers scooped up 4.25 million Nintendo DS and DS Lite units and 2.61 million Sony PlayStation Portables.

Over the past two years, handhelds have grown to control a 63.2 percent share of the Japanese game market. The inverse of the handheld revolution has been a corresponding decline in the Japanese home-console share. It decreased from 68.3 percent in 2003 to 36.8 percent in 2005--a loss of 159.8 billion yen ($1.37 billion) in sales.

Japanese game manufacturers made out quite well in terms of worldwide sales. Global shipments of Japanese products came to over 1.36 trillion yen ($11.7 billion), of which 487.1 billion yen ($4.18 billion) was in software and 872.7 billion yen ($7.5 billion) in hardware. This is a massive increase over 2004's totals, and handheld sales again provided the large hikes. Worldwide, Nintendo exported 7.34 million DS systems and 6.24 million Game Boy Advance SP units. Sony exported 11.36 million PSPs.

One of the more interesting statistics from the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association is the average cost Japanese developers spent making a software title for each game platform. The figures, based on questionnaires sent to developers, don't include budget-price games.

The association found that the most expensive system to develop for is Sony's PlayStation 2, at 139 million yen ($1.2 million) a game. That's more than double the cost of a typical title on Sony's PSP handheld, at 63 million yen ($541,000) a game. On the other end of the spectrum, developing a Nintendo DS game costs a relatively modest 39.8 million yen ($342,000). ...

Marvelous, the maker of the farming-life strategy franchise Harvest Moon, isn't taking time off to celebrate the series' 10th anniversary this year. Harvest Moon: Innocent Life for the PlayStation Portable has already been released in Japan--where the series is known as Bokujo Monogatari--while a Nintendo DS title, Rune Factory, is slated for release there on August 24.

But the company has recently revealed information on perhaps the most anticipated game in the series: Harvest Moon for the Nintendo Wii. It appears that the game--tentatively titled Bokujo Monogatari Wii--will make ample use of Nintendo's next-gen controller to simulate farm chores, according to the latest Weekly Famitsu.

A handful of screenshots in the magazine demonstrated the Wii-mote's capabilities, including swinging the controller like a hoe to till soil, tilting it like a watering can to water crops, and swinging it like a scythe to mow down weeds. In game, icons appear on the screen's right side to cue players when to move the controller, but otherwise the series' mechanics seem unchanged: Players must still tend to their fields and animals if they want their farms to flourish. Bokujo Monogatari Wii's release date and price have not been announced.

The Wii wasn't the only Nintendo system to get a new Harvest Moon game. Marvelous also announced a new Nintendo DS title, called Bokujo Monogatari: Kimi to Sodatsu Shima. The game's main characters--an old man, a mother, and her three children--are shipwrecked on a deserted island, but by cultivating the land, they can eventually encourage people to begin immigrating to it.

According to Famitsu, every operation on the game can be performed with the DS stylus. As in the GameCube's Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, players can choose between a male and female character--whom players can marry off if they find suitable matches. ...

And we've been griping about Blu-ray delays in the good ol' USofA. Looks like the folks Down Under have it way worse, since Sony has just released their BWU-100A internal PC drive for reading and writing Blu-ray discs in Australia, 'cept supposedly the thing can't actually manage to play back is Blu-ray movies. Apparently they're blaming the lack of HDCP-compliant graphics cards, and the fact that there isn't any retail software that can play Blu-ray movies, just the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that ships with Sony's VAIO AR laptop -- assuming of course, that your Blu-ray content requires HDCP to begin with. That would make us wonder why Sony can't just bundle that same software with the BWU-100A, but we're clearly thinking with the addled mind of a consumer. If we were smarter, we'd realise the logic behind releasing products so saddled with rights management that they can't even play back the media they were built for. Luckily, Sony says they're optimistic about resolving both issues soon, and that for now the device is still 100% functional for storage (hooray), and can play back your own home-burnt movies as well (as well as Blu-ray flicks that are HDCP-free). All this can be yours, you lucky Australian you, for a mere AU$1,399, or about $1,075 US. ...