Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies, and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls' and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy, and Nintendo. Lithium's customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. 'That alone is addictive,' says Fong. 'They are revered by their peers.' Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. 'People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.'"

Edge Online has an in-depth look at the beginnings of the first PlayStation console. It starts at Sony's partnership with Nintendo, the purpose of which was to integrate a CD-ROM drive into the SNES. A falling out between the companies led Sony to stubbornly pursue a market dominated by Nintendo and Sega. The console's technology and Sony's unusual position in the industry quickly attracted the interest of many developers and publishers, eventually leading to sales that emphatically won that round of the console wars. "'There was a huge resistance inside the company to actually being in the videogames business at all,' explains Harrison. 'The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of PlayStation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Bricked your Wii? Not only will Nintendo charge you for the repair, they will now add an additional fee if they detect any homebrew software. 'Should Nintendo have to pay to repair hacked Wiis under warranty? Maybe not, but they have no (moral) right to gouge customers out of spite for having the HBC installed. This actually poses a technical dilemma for us with BootMii. As currently designed, BootMii looks for an SD card when you boot your Wii, and if it finds the card and the right file, it will execute that file. Otherwise, there's no way to tell it's installed.'"

angry tapir writes "Chris Jager from GoodGearGuide argues that the rise of casual gaming means near-certain death for hardcore gaming. The sales of casual 'party-friendly' games are massively outstripping the sales of classic hardcore games, and the makers of other consoles are taking note of Nintendo's success in attracting non-traditional gamers to the Wii and DS. There is evidence that Sony and Microsoft are both trying to tap into the casual market, and it's only a matter of time before hardcore gaming goes the way of the Nintendo PowerGlove." Of course, the trend toward casual doesn't just involve Nintendo — World of Warcraft's success (and the huge effect it's had on the MMO genre) is often credited to its focus on casual gamers. While it's not unreasonable for game studios to want all players to see all of the game's content, perhaps there's a better way of catering to the more hardcore players than tacking on difficulty modes and "do it the hard way" achievements.

Combat Wombat brings news that the legal battle between the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO) and a host of major tech corporations has come to end, with a large settlement going to the CSIRO. The fight was over a patent on wireless LAN technology, which already earned the CSIRO a victory in court over Buffalo Technology and a settlement with Hewlett-Packard. The remaining 13 companies, which include Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Nintendo, have now chosen to settle as well. "[The CSIRO] will use the money won from a Wi-Fi technology patent battle to fund further research. ... It is unclear how much money has flowed to the CSIRO, but experts say the technology would be worth billions of dollars if royalties were paid on an ongoing basis."

Parz writes "In June, Nintendo will be releasing a peripheral called MotionPlus. This small device attaches to the bottom of the Wii-mote and acts as a more sophisticated motion-sensor to the controller as it currently stands. Its goal is to bring greater parity between a user's movements and the animations that they bring to life on-screen. Gameplayer got some hands-on time with the device, and they are extremely impressed." The MotionPlus will only affect new games; Nintendo has said they have no plans to add support for older titles. Virtua Tennis 2009 will be the first game to support it, and Eurogamer has a look at the game both with and without the MotionPlus.

The recently released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is one of only a handful of mature-rated titles for the Nintendo DS, so the industry is watching closely to see if the traditionally family-friendly market can support such titles. While sales have not been stellar, they haven't been terrible either, easily outperforming previous M-rated titles. If they continue to improve, it's possible we'll start seeing a more consistent effort for "serious" games on Nintendo's portable console. "In the end, Singer said Nintendo hopes that the sales story of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be an encouraging one for game publishers. 'I think strategically, this is a very important game because it helps send the message that great M-rated content can come to the platform and will find a home.'"

An anonymous reader writes "It's been a long-talked-about but never fully realized aim of developers, publishers and format holders to create a game that runs on multiple platforms, but connects and exchanges assets between them — e.g. you play a game as an FPS on a console/PC but control it as an RTS on mobile devices. Now, Rockstar Games seems to have cracked it, on a small scale, with news that a new Flash game will allow PC gamers to generate in-game cash — true to form for GTA-creator Rockstar, it's through 'money laundering' — that is then transferred to its new Nintendo DS title, Chinatown Wars. GameSpy's online technology seems to be responsible for this latest gimmick, but most interesting is the idea that this could allow an interface between platforms like the iPhone and consoles as well. How long until an indie developer creates an MMO that has different interfaces for PC and mobile?"

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday iFixit tore apart the Nintendo DSi and found several internal upgrades from the outgoing DS Lite. It seems that an experienced hand can completely disassemble the DSi in less than ten minutes using standard tools, especially since the job does not require a tri-wing screwdriver. This should make repairing and tinkering with the DSi substantially easier. The DSi now includes two integrated cameras that, unfortunately, have only 0.3 megapixel resolution. This is certainly a bit underwhelming considering most mainstream phones have cameras of at least 1.3 megapixels. As for chips, Nintendo is using a Samsung MoviNAND integrated 256 MB Flash memory / MMC controller chip, as well as a custom ARM CPU + GPU is stamped with the revision code 'TWL.' The DSi's chips all had manufacture dates around September 2008, indicating that Nintendo has been stockpiling these devices for quite a while prior to the North American release."

Konami has announced that a new Silent Hill game, titled Shattered Memories, is due out this fall for the Wii, PS2, and PSP. "While the game shares its twisting plot with the original PlayStation game, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories takes a different path in many, many ways. Characters can be approached but will offer different responses and be found in different places, while new clues and gameplay paths can be followed." The Wii version will make full use of the Wii Remote, taking the role of both phone and torch, as well as being used to "pick up, examine and manipulate items to solve puzzles along the journey." According to the Opposable Thumbs blog, the choice not to develop for the PS3 and Xbox 360 was due to the development costs associated with those consoles.

suolumark writes "The CSIRO has won what could be a landmark settlement from Hewlett Packard over the use of patented wireless technology. The settlement ended HP's involvement in a four-year lawsuit brought by the CSIRO on a group of technology companies, in which the organisation was seeking royalties for wi-fi technology that is used extensively on laptops and computers worldwide. CSIRO spokesman Luw Morgan earlier said legal action was continuing against 13 companies: Intel, Dell, Toshiba, Asus, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, SMC, Accton, 3-Com, Buffalo, Microsoft and Nintendo."

cstrep writes "Eight years ago, Opera introduced Mouse Gestures as a way to speed up your interaction with the browser, and focus on what's important: Content. In 2005, Voice Navigation was introduced, and more recently we've worked with Nintendo to create a browser that takes full advantage of the 'Wiimote' and later, the touchscreen in the DSi. Today Opera introduces Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with Opera easier on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed 'Face Observation Opera Language,' we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser."

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how high the major game publishers can set prices, so makers are sometimes unable to charge enough to cover the cost of producing titles. The cost of making a game for the previous generation of machines was about $10 million, not including marketing. The cost of a game for the latest consoles is over twice that — $25 million is typical, and it can be much more. Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer for Nintendo of America, says publishers of games for its Wii console need to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit, but the majority of games, analysts said, sell no more than 150,000 copies. Developers would like to raise prices to cover development costs, but Mike McGarvey, former chief executive of Eidos and now an executive with OnLive, says that consumers have been looking at console games and saying, 'This is too expensive and there are too many choices.' Since makers cannot charge enough or sell enough games to cover the cost of producing most titles, video game makers have to hope for a blockbuster. 'The model as it exists is dying,' says McGarvey." As we discussed recently, OnLive is trying to change that by moving a big portion of the hardware requirements to the cloud. Of course, many doubt that such a task can be accomplished in a way that doesn't severely degrade gameplay, but it now appears that Sony is working on something similar as well.

dougisfunny writes "The Wii System Menu 4.0 has been released. It adds a number of features that people have been waiting for, including the ability to use SDHC cards, as well as the ability to download and play things directly off of the SD/SDHC card rather than the internal memory. This was announced at GDC09 by Nintendo's President Saturo Iwata in his keynote address. More information can be found at Nintendo's website."

Dave Allen writes "Despite Nintendo publicly claiming no direct competition with the iPhone or iPod Touch with its new DSi console, reports have been leaked about the Big N actively encouraging developers to begin work on small form gaming and non-gaming applications for the DSi's download service. This is the first step toward Nintendo putting together a direct App Store rival, and could be the marketing hook it's been desperately searching for to convince gamers to upgrade their DS." It seems only fair that since the iPhone is now a gaming platform, the DS is becoming a PDA. And, if the only difference between them is a 3G wireless connection, the rivalry can only get more fierce.

Saul J writes with an update to the patent lawsuit that was filed by Fenner Investments back in 2007 against Nintendo and Microsoft. The suit alleged that the two companies had infringed upon a patent for a joystick port interface. The trial was set to begin today, but now Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court in Tyler, Texas has ruled that there is no need for a jury trial. One of Nintendo's lawyers said, "Nintendo has a long history of developing innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. We also vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent, despite the risks that this policy entails."

Dutch Gun writes "Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (Tycho and Gabe) of Penny Arcade have been honored by the Washington State legislature with a resolution. The bill praises their charity work (PDF) with Child's Play, for attracting tourist dollars by starting the Penny Arcade Expo, which has grown to become the largest video game exhibition in the country, providing student scholarships, and for their leadership role within the computer gaming community. Washington State is home to at least 45 game development companies, including such notable names as Nintendo of America, Microsoft, Bungie, Valve, ArenaNet, PopCap, Gas Powered Games, Monolith, Zipper Interactive, Snowblind Studios, and more. This is a marked departure from the typical news involving governments and gaming. One could see the courtship of the computer gaming industry by the State of Washington as a shrewd political move, given the current tough economic times and the seeming resistance of the entertainment industry to recessions. Or, perhaps a bit less cynically, this might just be a sign that gaming has reached a critical threshold of mainstream normalcy."

Craig writes "DCEmu has released an article detailing the current state of the homebrew scene on all game consoles, from the Sega Dreamcast to the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo Wii. It even covers unreleased consoles such as Pandora and GP2xWiz. The article explains what is needed to run emulators and games, and whether or not it's worth bothering for each console."

IGN reports that Nintendo has unveiled the Classic Controller Pro, a new input device for the Wii of a more typical design than the Wii Remote. "From the info we've already got on the PRO, we know it's a larger controller, not only in thickness, height, and width, but it also makes use of one of the more well-received concepts out there, which is the extension grips, which gives it a GameCube, Xbox Controller S/360 look. As you can see, the Z buttons (Z/L and Z/R) are larger now, and placed like the R1/R2, L1/L2 setup found with Sony controllers. The PRO even borrows from the Nyko Classic Controller and Click Grip."

Nintendo, in its annual report to the USPTO, has requested help in dealing with piracy overseas, both from the US government and from several other countries in particular. China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and Paraguay are listed as the greatest contributing nations to piracy of the company's products. Nintendo suggests, for example, that "Chinese customs officials must stop shipments of game copiers and other infringing products out of China, and China should work in the coming year to eliminate barriers to its enforcement laws," and that "the Spanish government implement laws protecting the creative copyright industry and enact laws against Internet piracy."