The United States International Trade Commission in Washington is asked to block the import of the Nintendo Wii game console and of the various Wii controllers by a company called Hillcrest Labs, which also seeks cash compensation for patent infringement from Nintendo. It seems like a ploy to get Nintendo to pay up the damages as it faces the possibility of not being able to sell the Wii in the United States.Hillcrest Labs issued a public statement regarding the lawsuit and says that "While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has ... [read more >>] Current-gen consoles are still years away from becoming "last-gen" according to analysts and sales figures, but this does not necessarily mean that work on the next-gen devices hasn't started yet. Although manufacturers usually love secrets and tend to deny everything until the last minute, it seems that Nintendo has a different strategy, since the company's president, Satoru Iwata, has just dropped a bomb: Nintendo Wii 2 (yes, the successor of the Wii) is in the works!Speaking with Forbes, Iwata said, "We are always preparing for the next hardware. We are under development. But the hardware is a kind of box that consumers relucta... [read more >>] Nintendo is again riding high, when it comes to financial results, with profits going up more than 33% to reach some 992 million dollars.Hardware wise the Nintendo Wii continues to be a success while the Nintendo DS is going through a tough period. The Wii is still the best sold console in the world, beating both the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft by a wide margin. Overall sales during its lifetime are fast approaching 30 million and the first quarter of 2008 saw sales increase by 1.74 million units over the same period in 2007.Meanwhile, the Nintendo DS is struggling to keep sales equal to those of last year, with ... [read more >>] Revolution for DS or, as it is better known - the R4 chip, is the biggest enemy of the Nintendo DS game developers, since it allows the use of pirated software. Its popularity is so big that, according to studies and surveys, about 90% of the DS games in the United States are pirated! In other words, it costs the industry tons of money.Things could change sooner rather than later, since Nintendo and no less than 54 other companies have filed a suit against the R4 manufacturers, as website Kotaku reports, asking for the cease of marketing, sales and importation of these devices, using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law as legal grounding.... [read more >>] Everybody was sure that Rockstar was going to present the first Xbox 360 DLC when Grand Theft Auto: ChinaTown Wars' first image got leaked. You can imagine that it was a real shocker to find out that, actually, the developers were working on an exclusive title for the... Nintendo DS handheld! Nobody was expecting it, having in mind that the GTA series and Nintendo consoles have never been friends. However, it will happen and this seems to confirm once again the fact that Sony's PSP is going down (I'm saying that because of the "Stories" released for Sony's handheld in the past). However, you might be wondering what Take ... [read more >>] Sega of Europe has announced a new addition to the Storybook Series of Sonic Games, entitled Sonic and the Black Knight and developed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii consoles. This second adventure game will be released in spring 2009 and Sega promises it will offer Sonic fans an experience they will never forget. For the sake of the franchise, we truly hope they are right!As I've said before, Sonic and the Black Knight is part of the Storybook Series that began with Sonic and the Secret Rings and expands the story. The blue hedgehog will be taken into the world of Arthurian Legend and it will be offered the chance to become a knight.... [read more >>] Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto talked to MSNBC, which is partly owned by Microsoft, and sought to tackle growing concerns from videogame players regarding the fact that Nintendo, as a company, was becoming too interested in the casual gamer to pay any attention to the more hardcore fans that have supported the company since it entered the business. Miyamoto assured gamers that Nintendo knows who the most important fans are and also knows that they are the ones buying the majority of the games that the company produces. He said that at E3 the main goal of his company was to show off "new concepts and new types of play that we intend to bri... [read more >>] Just prior to the release of the Nintendo Wii the "console wars" were fought between Sony and Microsoft. Nobody credited the Japanese company with a chance to take the console top spot. Now the hardware sales charts are dominated by the Nintendo Wii, which can at times sell as much as its two rivals combined.The battle of the music simulators has, at the moment, two big players. In one corner there's the Activision published Guitar Hero while in the other corner there's Rock Band from Harmonix. Both the franchises are expected to get new games this fall, in the form of Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rick Band 2 respectively. but I ha... [read more >>] Nintendo has wrapped up its E3 press conference and some really interesting announcements were made by the creator of the Wii gaming consoles. More details on each individual announcement will come soon, but for now let's take a look at the overall Nintendo showing.There were three big games announced, all for the Wii and all aimed clearly at the casual games loving crowd. Cammie Dunaway, vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, said that "much has been reported about the 'expanded audience' for games, but what's really at play is an expanded experience. People of all ages having fun together - wheth... [read more >>] I am not exactly a fan of Nintendo's console. Actually I tend, just like many other hardcore gamers I know, to consider the Wii a console for kids - unworthy of getting my attention, time or passion for games. However, Nintendo's system couldn't care less and sells better than ever, keeping its comfy spot of best selling console of the moment. And its success seems far away from even getting close to an end. And, at first, I could not understand why.In my humble opinion, the Wii's main attraction, its motion sensitive controller, is not exactly that "sensitive" - I find it quite laggy, frustrating and far from being what... [read more >>] |