E3

Nintendo celebrates 25 years of Zelda

Nintendo commenced its E3 2011 press conference in grand fashion today, revealing many details about the future of the Zelda franchise. The Japanese video game company first showed off a four-minute video montage tribute, complete with a live symphony orchestra performing "The Legend of Zelda" theme song music to gameplay clips from 25 years of Zelda titles.

Senior Managing Director Shigeru Miyamoto took the stage afterward and seemed downright giddy at the premise of a full orchestra before him. It wasn't long before he gleefully asked the instrumental ensemble to play various Zelda sounds, including: solving a … Read more

E3 2011: PlayStation Vita First Take

Formally unveiled at the company's E3 2011 press conference, the PlayStation Vita aims to provide the most comprehensive portable gaming experience around. We've had some time with Vita, so here's a preview of what gamers can expect before the end of 2011.

Overview Available in two models, the PS Vita will go for $250 or $300, a Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi/3G version, respectively.

Armed with a dazzling 5-inch OLED capacitive touch screen, the Vita also allows players to interact with games through a rear touch panel. Under the hood the Vita packs an ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core) CPU and a SGX543MP4+ GPU.

Its 16:9 screen sports a 960x544-pixel resolution, which is flanked by a front-facing camera that can take 640x480-pixel photos. An identical lens is placed on the back to bring "augmented reality to a new level." Like the 3DS, iPad, and iPod Touch, the Vita will make use of motion control. This is accomplished via a three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer.… Read more

Crave 45: Eau De Nerd (podcast)

Donald and Eric talk about Nintendo's Wii U console and tablet controller, announced at E3 2011. Also, the fate of your keys is determined, a robot tackles a Rubik's Cube, and affordable space travel is nearly here... but not quite.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video… Read more

E3 2011: Q&A with Shigeru Miyamoto on the Wii U

LOS ANGELES--The Wii U, Nintendo's 2012 reinvention of the Wii hardware and of home console gaming, is still a device clouded in mystery. Its controls are intriguing, its capabilities seemingly vast. We had the opportunity to play with the Wii U after Nintendo's morning press conference. To gain more perspective, we had a one-on-one conversation with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, game design legend and creative executive behind Nintendo's first-party games.

Related links • Nintendo E3 press conference • Hands-on with the Wii U • E3 2011: Complete coverage

Time was limited, but I certainly had plenty of questions: about the Wii U, the future evolution of console and handheld gaming, and most importantly, how this all relates to Apple.

Q: What were the influences for the creation of Wii U? A: There was nothing external that influenced us. What really brought about the idea for it stemmed from our original concept for the Wii. We talked about it as the system that would never sleep, using something like Wii Connect 24--meaning, people would be able to access the system very quickly at any time. But, what we found was that as people started getting larger TVs, turning on the TV began to take more and more time than it used to. It was no longer instantaneous. So that became a barrier for people, and people who were watching TV would essentially make the system unavailable for somebody who wanted to play a game or see what was new with the system that day.

And so, with those challenges in mind, we started to look at what we wanted to do for the next system, and started to think that if we can't continue to always rely on the TV, we need to create a dedicated screen just for the system so people can quickly and instantly interact with it, regardless of what was happening on the TV. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1484: The Wii U explained (kind of) (Podcast)

Brian Tong joins us live from the E3 show floor to try to explain this cool-looking new Wii U console/controller thing. Even Cooley seems at least slightly impressed. Also, Sony delivers an apology but kind of a snoozefest of a press conference, 25% of U.S. hackers may be informants (including Antuan Goodwin) and reasoned discussion of Apple's iCloud, iOS, and OS X updates. No, really. --Molly

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E3 2011: Nintendo Wii U, Sony Vita, and the dangers of complexity

LOS ANGELES--The biggest single story from E3 2011 is easily Nintendo's Wii U, the sequel to the best-selling Wii console, with Sony's PlayStation Vita a close second. Both devices were broadly hinted at before (with the Vita previewed earlier under the codename NGP), but this week counts as the official coming out party for both hardware devices.

Both the Wii U and Vita boast impressive features. In fact, both have touch screens, dual analog sticks, and some form of TV-to-portable-screen functionality. But, both are also going against the conventional wisdom of recent tech hardware, adding layers of complexity … Read more

E3 2011: TubeSurround teases halo-style headphones, again

Unleashing the surround-sound capabilities of your game console adds an extra dimension to your gameplay, and TubeSurround is exhibiting at E3 again this year to show off its halo-style Tube Sound Headphones.

The technology has been around for years, and the company's Web site is still as indecipherable as ever, but the basic concept is that you wear the halo around your head and two earbuds stretch down and into your ears. Six mini speakers are positioned incrementally around your dome to create an immersive sound environment with a combination of bone induction and traditional audio sources.

Even hard-core … Read more

Nintendo Wii U: Inside and out

Nintendo found lightning in a bottle with the Wii, and with Wii U--the company's upcoming console--it might have found the bottling plant. Wii U builds upon the barriers broken by the Wii and takes advantage of a touchscreen-equipped controller that offers players a new way to interact with games paired with a console capable of HD visuals.

We'll just state up front that Nintendo did not disclose many pertinent details of its next system at E3 2011 today. There's no official price point. And there's no specific release date. It might come out somewhere between April … Read more

E3 2011: Hands-on with Wii U tablet and games

Earlier this morning Nintendo introduced the Wii U, the successor to the Wii. Think of the Wii U as a sort of DS and Wii hybrid, combining touch and motion controls, with an on-screen HD gaming experience.

We were lucky enough to get some hands-on time with a collection of Wii U game demos and time with the tablet controller; here are our impressions.

… Read more