Raver32 wrote with a link to a CNN article about the end of Ken Kutaragi's time at Sony. His departure was announced back in April, and now leaves Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) headed by Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCE) former president and COO. "Though no longer a board member, Kutaragi will hold an advisory post at the gaming unit, according to SCE official Sayoka Henmi. The departure of Kutaragi, an icon among gamers, marks the end of an era at Sony Corp. that saw the company long dominate the video game industry with its flagship PlayStation consoles. But it also highlights troubles at Sony amid a series of blunders over the rollout of its PlayStation 3 and intense competition from Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii console and Microsoft's Xbox 360."

Gamasutra has several coverage elements about last month's NPD figures, which unsurprisingly show Nintendo's continued dominance of console sales numbers. A combined 569,000 units sold for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl probably helped some. "According to official sources and a number of independent reports, total industry sales were up 49 percent to $815 million for the month, with hardware sales up 79 percent to $221 million, and the Nintendo DS selling an impressive 423,000 units for the month. The rest of the hardware sales revealed that the Wii sold an impressive 338,000 units for the month, with the Xbox 360's sales down somewhat at around 155,000 units and the PlayStation 3 sold just 82,000 during May in the U.S. On the handheld side of things, the PSP trailed the DS but still sold around 221,000 units, and the Game Boy Advance sold just 80,000 units for the month. Rounding off the major players, the PlayStation 2 sold 188,000 units during May." Those DS sales are nothing to sneeze at, as an analyst group estimates that by 2011 there will be some 112 Million DS units sold ... with an 89% install base in Japan. The site has a further breakdown of last month's numbers, analyzing the dip in overall console sales and the potentials of each platform. The Curmudgeon Gamer is the mind behind that analysis, and he had two further points to make about the numbers on his site.

Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."

Two new posts have appeared on Sony's PlayStation blog, and they mark a significant step forward for the company's efforts to bridge the gap between players and the company. Even their competitors are lauding the decision to join the discussion online. Maybe Nintendo will be next? 1up, in the meantime, offers links to both stories and culls the best content from both entries. From a post by SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton: "We fully realize that past success is no guarantee of future success, but it does give you some perspective. We have to bring the games to market that will showcase what the PS3 can do and ultimately entertain you like no other games have. We need to provide proof of what the PS3 can do for you and work tirelessly to improve the value and justify your investment. At the end of the day, it's always been about the games. To push the boundaries of gaming beyond where they currently lie takes a great deal of risk. I think all the hardware manufacturers are doing that in some way."

Croakyvoice writes "DCEmu is hosting the worlds first Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube Homebrew Coding Contest with prizes of $500 on offer for Homebrew and Emulators for the Wii and Gamecube, The hope is that through this contest an exploit will be released that will allow full homebrew on the Nintendo Wii without a Modchip. Gamecube Homebrew is already on the Wii with a host of systems emulated such as Snes, Genesis, Gameboy and Neogeo."

Bloomberg is reporting on Microsoft's efforts to be more inclusive to 'family' game players. Essentially, Micrsoft admits they're looking to Nintendo as the generation leader this time around, with low cost and family appeal driving their sales numbers ever higher. To that end, Microsoft is looking at a possible price cut and shift in strategies to appeal to a broader audience. This dovetails with comments made by Bill Gates at the AllThingsDigital event regarding motion controls in the future of the console. "Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer wants to avoid the fate of the first Xbox. The console appealed mainly to hard-core gamers, generally males between 15 and 29 years old, and trailed Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 in sales by a 5-to-1 margin ... Microsoft's initial attempts to target children didn't live up to the company's expectations. A November game called Viva Piñata, in which kids build a garden and raise animals that look like piñatas brought to life, didn't make it into the top 20, even with a Saturday morning cartoon created to promote the game." It might not have sold, but VP was an awesome game.

vigmeister writes "A group of Russian kids have uncovered and rebuilt some arcade games from the Soviet era. These games apparently offered free play when someone played well, but no list of hi-scores. Roughly 32 of them have been found and although they are based on other arcade games, I hope these games were unique enough to offer playability for the present day arcade game lovers. 'Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual -- for the purposes of "entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities." Production of the games ceased with the collapse of communism, and as Nintendo consoles and PCs flooded the former Soviet states, the old arcade games were either destroyed or disappeared into warehouses and basements. It was mostly out of nostalgia that four friends at Moscow State Technical University began scouring the country to rescue these old games. '"

Next Generation offers up an exhaustive analysis of previous console generation price cuts, and concludes that we are definitely due for some cheaper next-gen action sometime in the near future. The piece includes charts of lowering system prices, as well as a breakdown of how many consoles sold at various price tiers. "Certainly we can use history as a guide, but there are limits to its use for prognostication. The price drops this generation may happen in ways entirely different from what has been suggested above. Maybe the $300 console this generation will be what the $200 console was last generation. Maybe Microsoft will forge ahead with its current price structure until after Halo 3 has come and gone. Maybe Sony will bless the PlayStation 3 with a 33% price drop sometime this year. And maybe Nintendo will give the Wii a small price drop by removing Wii Sports from the package. Those could happen, but don't bet on it."

Last month Game Informer Online was reporting that Nintendo of America's (NoA) marketing and sales team was being moved away from the company headquarters in Redmond. The likely new home cities for staffers were either New York or San Francisco. Either way, it seems as if that choice didn't sit well. GI is now saying that 90% of the folks in those departments have opted not to move, and instead are taking severance packages. Surprisingly, this includes three of NoA's biggest names: Senior Director of Public Relations Beth Llewelyn; Vice President, Marking and Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan; and Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Communications George Harrison. At the moment there is no official confirmation from Nintendo, but if true this would constitute huge change in the message from the company in North America.

An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Pocket Gamer, Zeno Colaço, vice president of publisher and developer relations at SCEE made some revealing comments about his thoughts on the DS and the future of the PSP. 'Some of the DS games have been fantastic. Where in hindsight we've been short is one or two killer apps that would have been able to drive PSP forward'. Despite being so frank on the merits of the competition, Colaço was still tight lipped on the subject of a PSP redesign, stating: 'The technology behind PSP is still top-end and so that doesn't need to be addressed'."

HoboBob writes "It has been suggested that Nintendo will be unveiling some new hardware for the Wii at the E3 media festival, and some are speculating that it could be a hard drive. According to the article: 'Confirmation back in April that Neo Geo games will begin being added to Wii's Virtual Console download service adds weight to the speculation, considering Neo Geo games are huge — some clocking in it at up to 330MB. One of those bad boys would put serious strain on the Wii's memory.'"

GameDaily reports on new numbers from Nintendo, discussing their ongoing success with the Wii's Virtual Console offering. According to the piece, there are now over 100 games available on the service, and some 4.7 Million downloads have been transacted since the system's launch late last year. "Nintendo has been updating the Wii Shop with new Virtual Console games every Monday. The top five downloads worldwide to date have been Super Mario Bros. (NES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Mario Kart 64 (N64), Super Mario World (SNES), and The Legend of Zelda (NES). 'With an Internet connection rate reaching 40 percent, Wii owners have more options than ever to find the kinds of games they love to play,' says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. 'Beyond the Wii Shop Channel, all types of people are getting connected and checking out the information and entertainment options available on the Wii Menu. Whether voting, creating a Mii or just checking the weather, everyone has a favorite channel.'"

Gamasutra reports that, despite the Wii's breakaway sales success, some analysts are skeptical of the Wii's staying power. Other analysts are, of course, pointing out that many of the 'hardcore' titles are expected later this year. "[They] not[ed] that 31% of Wii owners surveyed in March said they expected to play the Wii more often a year from now, compared to 21% of Xbox 360 owners." At the same time, Nintendo of America's George Harrison is questioning the staying power of Sony and Microsoft. According to Harrison, the two larger companies 'lack the DNA' to move with the industry, and keep with the the demand for casual, more family-friendly titles. "'They're really good at reaching a certain customer, and have a real difficulty understanding how we succeed with the customers that we have,' said the senior vice president of marketing and communications. With the sales of Wii and DS hardware crushing the competition in the US, Harrison is confident that Nintendo could take up to as much as 50 per cent of the market for this latest 'next-gen' cycle."

Some excellent news for Nintendo fans: two of the 'big three' games are coming out this year. At an event held in Washington state Reggie Fils-Aime was able to confirm that Smash Bros. and Super Mario Galaxy will be released before the end of the year. Excellent to hear such news, of course ... but other people had different priorities. For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2008. Other than that, the company was all good news in general: "Typically, about half of home consoles in Japan are placed in the living room -- with Wii that figure is 75%. In France, 15 of the top 15 games recently were Nintendo. In the US, Fils-Aime says they are seeing 'early signs of significant market change.' The number of female purchasers of hardware are up 42%. The number of people over age of 30 purchasing Nintendo DS is up 127%. Tighten that age range to people over 35, and the number is up 212%. 40% of Wii owners have connected to the internet. 3.3 million plus Virtual Console downloads." Game|Life has hands-on impressions of Brain Age 2 and Mario Strikers Charged , two of the new games shown off at the event.

An anonymous reader writes "At Gamasutra, serious games creator Ian Bogost is making the case that video games should be more mundane, particularly discussing of Nintendo' Brain Age: 'It's certainly a very different kind of game from Halo or even Miyamoto's own Zelda series, games that allow the player to inhabit complex fantasy worlds. Instead, much of Brain Age's success seems to come precisely from the ordinariness of its demands.' Would games become more accessible if they tapped into everyday things a little bit more, as opposed to spiralling off into fictional realities?"

The South Koreans are about to see the PlayStation 3 launched in their nation, and they're getting a treat the rest of the world will have to wait on: a PS3 with an 80 gig hard drive. Meanwhile, NPD numbers show that the company's games division suffered greatly during April, likely as a result of few titles released during that month. "Though the company saw a bump in PSP sales, Nintendo DS continues to curb stomp the portable PlayStation. More disappointing, however, must have been seeing PlayStation 3 decline in sales of almost 50,000 units between March and April ... If April was tough, May looks bleaker. Karraker wouldn't speculate on sales, but outside of MLB 07: The Show's release at the end of April, there are no first-party releases coming to PS3 in May. In fact, there are only two May PS3 games period: Surf's Up and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Both are multi-platform releases."

CVG has up a piece noting the fact that not much about Zelda games have changed since the move to 3D. Chalk that up to the greatness of Ocarina of Time if you will, but the same mirror moving, fire-arrow switch activating puzzles have been in the last several titles. Is it time for some kind of radical change to the equation? "People generally don't like to accept change. But change doesn't always spell disaster. Final Fantasy introduces a totally new cast, setting and theme with each sequel and continues to please fans. Resident Evil 4 completely revolutionised Capcom's horror series and is now viewed as one of the best games ever made ... We still totally adore Zelda but eventually the appeal will tire and the series risks bombing. Nintendo needs to take the bold step and inject something totally new into Zelda. We're not talking about a couple of new items, or a new location - that's been done. We mean a significant change that affects the whole structure and gameplay."

Newsweek's N'Gai tackles the allegation that the Wii is a glorified GameCube. He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach saying that 'the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn't play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren't actually that interesting. ... They don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had. So it makes sort of the comparison set a little bit difficult.' LevelUp spoke with a pair of technical experts at third party publishers and learned that, essentially, Bach's comments about horsepower are accurate. However, "the 'Gamecube 1.5' moniker, while accurate, doesn't mean that gamers won't see graphical improvements on the Wii. 'There are three main differences which will result in graphics improvements. One, the increased memory clock speed, from 162 megahertz to 243 megahertz, means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i. Two, the enhanced memory size of the Wii gives much more room for image-related operations such as anti-aliasing, motion blur, etc. The performance to these memory systems from the graphics chip is also improved. So full-screen effects and increased texture usage seem likely as a result.'"

moderatorrater writes "Nintendo's dominance of the Japanese sales charts continues, as Gamasutra reports on the top games for Japan's 'Golden Week' celebration. The top 21 titles sold in the country were all on Nintendo formats; most actually developed by Nintendo itself. FFXII: Revenant Wings topped the list at number one, and along with five other DS or Wii titles was the only sign of third-party competition in the Japanese best-sellers market. 'With the holiday period functioning somewhat like the Christmas period in the West, there were no new entries in the top thirty - although a number of family friendly titles did reappear in the top ten, with Yoshi's Island DS at number four with 58,948 units sold. New Super Mario Bros. on DS re-emerged at number eight with 51,681 units sold, with the second Brain Training game at number ten.'"

1up has comments from Nintendo's President Satoru Iwata, as he spoke to investors earlier this week. When asked about the possibility of hardcore games coming to the Wii before the end of 2007, Nintendo's president assured gamers and moneymen that Mario and Metroid are coming this year. "It will be from around the end of this summer to the end of this year. We will then launch a new title of Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption although the last one is primarily for the [American and European] markets. These will be the key titles for the period ranging from the summer until the holiday sales season of this year, and I think we will be able to cater to the specific needs you mentioned."