MojoKid writes "Microsoft's Xbox 360 console is six years old. The Nintendo Wii is five years old, and so is the Sony PlayStation 3. All three are due for an overhaul (can you imagine gaming on a PC that's half a decade old, or more?), and while they're still popular gaming platforms, consoles are really starting to shine as streaming media centers. According to market research firm Nielsen, streaming video on game consoles is up over last year. Xbox 360 owners now use their consoles to stream video 14 percent of the time, which is almost as much as PS3 users (15 percent). But it's the Wii that sees the most time as a streaming device, with Wii owners using their consoles to stream video a third of the time."

RobinEggs writes "Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator and producer of the Zelda and Mario franchises among other works, is stepping down at Nintendo. After personally managing Nintendo's blockbuster franchises for ~20 years, Miyamoto said today: 'What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself. Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small.'" Update: 12/08 21:35 GMT by T : Note that Nintendo is careful to say that this is not retirement, even if Miyamoto's role at Nintendo changes.

mayberry42 writes "Finally, the wait is over — for European fans, anyway. After months (well, over a year) of delays, the latest adventure of Link is finally out. Reviews for the game are consistently favorable. Famitsu magazine has given it a perfect score. IGN says it's 'the greatest Zelda game ever created,' and even the best game for the Wii. Of course, some of you may have already known this, given that it has already been hacked to run on an emulator (and yes, it looks even better in HD). I would love to hear the opinions of you Europeans who've played it. Is it as good as they say?" (Skyward Sword doesn't come out in the U.S. until Sunday, and not until next week for Japan and Australia.) While still complimentary, Giant Bomb's review goes into a bit more depth on the game's shortcomings.

redletterdave writes "PETA believes Nintendo's iconic plumber Mario takes a 'pro fur' stance" because he 'wears the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers' in the new handheld game released Nov. 13. PETA illustrated its disgust with Nintendo in an online campaign called 'Mario Kills Tanooki.' The page includes a side-scrolling Super Mario-style game called 'Super Tanooki Skin 2D,' where you play an angry, skinless tanuki that must chase a bloody raccoon-pelt-wearing-Mario across a 16-bit world and try to reclaim its fur."

An anonymous reader writes "GameStop has confirmed rumors that it is planning to jump into the tablet market with a device dedicated to gaming. '[GameStop President Tony Bartel said] this week that Android was capable of running what he called a "GameStop-certified gaming platform" and that GameStop would be self-branding existing tablet hardware built by an unspecified third-party manufacturer. ... GameStop will sell its gaming tablet alongside consoles and handheld gaming devices from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and others, he said.' There's no release date yet, but the device is currently being tested by consumers. It will apparently ship with its own wireless controller."

An anonymous reader writes "A company named Thinkoptics has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo over the motion controller used with the Wii. Apparently they make a similar product named the Wavit Remote, and they've been granted patents describing its operation. 'And they've chosen the setting most likely to yield a win: the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas. Now, that's not to say that Wavit-maker Thinkoptics will get a win, but this particular court circuit tends to favor the patent holder over all else. The patent in question, U.S. Patent Number 7,796,116, is titled "Electronic equipment for handheld vision based absolute pointing system." Thinkoptics' primary argument in the case is that Nintendo had previous knowledge that the Wii would infringe based on the Trademark Office's rejection of certain claims in Nintendo-filed patents.'"

An article at the Opposable Thumbs blog looks at the struggle between portable gaming devices and smartphones with access to a plethora of inexpensive games. "...most games simply have to be 'good enough' and convenient. If you already have a smartphone and an hour to kill, plenty of top-notch games can be downloaded in a minute for a dollar. With the 3DS or Vita, you're being asked to buy expensive hardware and then feed it with games that cost $40 and up. Smartphones also present a compelling deal for small, adventurous developers: it's inexpensive to create a game for these platforms, and developers don't have to worry about physical storefronts, packaging design, or cartridge manufacturing. Sony is now pushing for a digital platform that relies heavily on downloads with the Vita, but Nintendo still seems to believe the future rests with expensive, physical carts. Trying to buy one of the few digital games available on the 3DS via the system's e-shop is a slow, frustrating process."

Zothecula writes "In an industry obsessed with polygon counts and frame rates, Nintendo's Wii console and DS handheld were the proverbial knives at a gunfight. They were grossly underpowered compared to the competition, meaning Nintendo could sell them at a profit from day one. Their innovative control methods ensured they still sold like hotcakes. An animated GIF of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata holding a DS that printed money became the go to picture to run alongside quarterly announcements of Nintendo's gargantuan profits. If a disheveled man emerged from a time-traveling DeLorean with tales of a near-future Nintendo struggling to sell its latest handheld, I'd have been more surprised about the Nintendo thing. So what on earth happened?"

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the Opposable Thumbs blog: "It doesn't take much raw power to play Nintendo or SNES games on a modern PC; emulators could do it in the 1990s with a mere 25MHz of processing power. But emulating those old consoles accurately — well, that's another challenge entirely; accurate emulators may need up to 3GHz of power to faithfully recreate aging tech. ... As an example, compare the spinning triforce animation from the opening to Legend of Zelda on the ZSNES and bsnes emulators. On the former, the triforces will complete their rotations far too soon as a result of the CPU running well over 40 percent faster than a real SNES. These are little details, but if you have an eye for accuracy, they can be maddening. ... The primary demands of an emulator are the amount of times per second one processor must synchronize with another. An emulator is an inherently serial process. Attempting to rely on today's multi-core processors leads to all kinds of timing problems. Take the analogy of an assembly line: one person unloads the boxes, another person scans them, another opens them, another starts putting the item together, etc. Synchronization is the equivalent of stalling out and clearing the entire assembly line, then starting over on a new product. It's an incredible hit to throughput. It completely negates the benefits of pipelining and out-of-order execution. The more you have to synchronize, the faster your assembly line has to move to keep up."

Daetrin writes "Nintendo has announced a large loss for the first quarter of the year and lowered its annual profit forecast. In the three months prior to June 30th Nintendo lost 25.5 billion yen ($328 million) and the forecast is being reduced about 80%, from 110 billion yen ($1.4 billion) to 20 billion yen ($257 million). Nintendo is blaming poor sales of the 3DS and is responding by announcing a price cut from $250 to $170 on August 12. In order to mollify early adopters of the system Nintendo also announced that anyone who has logged into the Nintendo eShop before the price cut will receive 10 free NES games and 10 free GBA games. The GBA games won't be available until later in the year, but Nintendo claims they will be exclusive to the '3DS Ambassadors' and will not be available for purchase on the store in the future." A related op-ed at Wired suggests the new price is still too high, given the rise of cheap portable games on various app stores.

dotarray writes with this piece on GamePron with a piece of game pr0n: "If you're big on nostalgia, but small on space, we might just have the solution for you. A clever gentleman has created a teeny-tiny '80s arcade cabinet that will fit happily on your desktop – and while it might look like a mere mock-up, this one actually works, playing Space Invaders on the miniature screen."

An anonymous reader writes "30 years ago this month, Nintendo released Donkey Kong — an iconic arcade machine that put the company on the video game map and introduced Mario. Technologizer's Benj Edwards celebrated the anniversary by rounding up some of the game's odder sidelights. For instance, it was originally going to be a game about Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl — and among its stranger offshoots was a pocket-sized game in which Donkey Kong and Mario faced off in hockey." Gamasutra has a more detailed article about the game's development.

donniebaseball23 writes "The rate at which hardware iterates in the smartphone and tablet space has allowed the technology to nearly catch up with consoles. It won't be long before we're all carrying small devices more powerful than the PS3, says Doom creator and id Software programming genius John Carmack. Speaking in an interview, he commented, 'It's unquestionable that within a very short time, we're going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles.'" Even if that's the case, Nintendo still wants no part of it.

angry tapir writes "Lots of people are familiar with open source software. Open source hardware, however, is still more of niche category. The Uzebox is an open source, 'retro minimalist' 8-bit games console, licensed under version 3.0 of the GNU GPL. 'The console uses an overclocked ATmega644 microcontroller and classic Super Nintendo controllers, supports 256 colors and 4 sound channels and has an SD card interface from which games can be loaded from.'"

Speaking at a shareholder meeting yesterday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discussed the company's goals for the Wii's successor, which aims to pick up the subset of gamers turned off by imprecise motion control. He said, "Wii was not accepted by core gamers because they did not want to abandon their preferred control approach. Additionally, Wii did not use HD because HD cost/performance at the time was low. Wii U makes it easier to use conventional controls. Also, the Wii U controller is not as big or heavy as it looks." Earlier comments from Shigeru Miyamoto indicate the new console will have more to offer in terms of online capabilities, but Nintendo isn't going to focus too heavily on that.

Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Forbes: "Nintendo started the mainstream push into glasses free (autostereoscopic) 3D gaming with its Nintendo 3DS system earlier this year. While sales were decent for the device, the price point, hardcore focus and lack of killer app games have failed to replicate the mainstream success of Nintendo DSi. But a strong E3 with top-tier 3D games ... should help attract a broader audience to the device, especially once Nintendo offers a price cut. While some have called 3D phones gimmicky, these devices are already commonplace in Asia. And with an influx of new 3D phones entering the market this year, coupled with the Nintendo 3DS, Jim Cameron recently [said] he sees these glasses-free devices as being key for the adoption of 3D TVs in the homes. He said autostereoscopic 3D games will be the entry level for most people to 3D. While the technology for big screen glasses free 3D is still further away, small devices like 3D phones and Nintendo 3DS will show off the technology."

jdkramar was one of several readers to write with news of the Wii U hardware information that's been trickling out since E3. The new console will run a multicore IBM processor based on 45nm architecture (technology currently underpinning Watson), and will have an AMD R700 GPU chipset found in the Radeon 4000 line of video cards. Apparently it will, in fact, run Crysis. Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will use a proprietary 25GB disc format, and won't support DVD or Blu-ray playback. A spokesman said, "The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."

An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo's recent update for the 3DS brought some interesting new features, including something the company may not have intended: the capacity for homebrew coders to create their own software on the platform."

Gamespot spoke at length with id Software's John Carmack at E3 about upcoming FPS RAGE (which is now only a few months away from release), as well as his thoughts on the new console offerings revealed by Nintendo and Sony. He seems optimistic about the Wii U, and rather less so about the Vita. "But you know the technology level on [the Wii U] brings it up to parity with the other consoles, which is nice for us. Previously, the Wii was not a target. Id Tech 5 was just not suitable for the Wii at all. ... now that we're looking at another platform that is eminently suitable for the technology, I'm sure we're going to try and bring it up on there." On the other hand, Carmack and Tim Willits both expressed concerns about whether Nintendo users were the right demographic for id games. Of the Vita, he said, "I wouldn't want to be the executive making the decision to launch a new portable gaming machine in the post-smartphone world. I think that they've picked as eminently a suitable hardware spec as they could for that. ... But of course, by the time they actually ship, there may be smartphones or these tablets with twice as much power as what they're shipping with on there. And a year or two after that, it's going to look pretty pokey."