Games

We are in a recession. Perhaps it's even a depression. But it's really not that bad. You see, someone, somewhere just spent $41,300 on a Nintendo game.

Is Stadium Events a great Nintendo game? I suspect not many people really know. Because not many people have ever played it. Not many copies were ever produced. Just after it was launched, Nintendo ordered a recall.

It could be that there are only around 200 copies floating around the world. It could be that there are only 20.

Which undoubtedly moved someone to pay such a substantial amount of … Read more

With Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M already on their way to the Wii console this year, it seems that Nintendo has a full release calendar ahead. But in a recent interview with Wired, published on Thursday, Nintendo Vice President Cammie Dunaway said a new Legend of Zelda title for the Wii might also be released this year.

Dunaway said Nintendo's release calendar for 2010 is "night and day," when compared to its releases in the first half of 2009. "And from some of the things that (Nintendo chief Satoru) Iwata has talked about, … Read more

Almost every week for the last few years, it seems, I've gotten a press release or a pitch touting some company's great new Facebook games network or kids' virtual world.

And why not? Companies like Zynga and Playfish are making money hand over fist with their collections of massively popular social games, and 2D Flash games aimed at children like Club Penguin, Webkinz, Habbo Hotel, and others have garnered vast amounts of virtual world investment dollars in recent years.

But to someone who cut his virtual world teeth on more immersive, 3D environments like There and Second Life, these never-ending announcements of new companies trying to jump on the social gaming bandwagon have left me with one nagging question: Where is the innovation?

To find the answer, one has only to do what investigative journalists were always trained to do: follow the money. But while Facebook games like FarmVille and Who Has the Biggest Brain, and social worlds for kids or teens like Gaia Online make financial sense, they aren't all that satisfying intellectually.

After all, while Second Life had no end of technical problems and was about as inviting to mainstream audiences as obscure European philosophy, it had a complex economy, a deep social structure, sophisticated politics and always seemed, to me, at least, as the jumping off point for truly groundbreaking technology.… Read more

Much has been made of the Wii fitness factor, and how the Wii might actually be good for your health. Basically, those who are generally inactive are generally more active when they opt to play the Wii. This is a no-brainer, although my ability to bowl a near-perfect game without barely flicking my wrist might indicate otherwise.

But new research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010 suggests that playing the virtual reality gaming system might not only burn calories, but also appears to help stroke victims improve their motor function.

The pilot study of 20 … Read more

Those hoping to play games on next-generation video game consoles might have a long wait ahead, says Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown, who recently spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

According to Brown, whose comments were originally reported by GamesIndustry.biz, shorter console generations of the past were the result of major upgrades to both CPUs and GPUs that allowed for drastic improvements to the consoles already available. Today, there isn't that much room for improvement, which means the time that elapses between console generations is getting longer.

"Today we have two of the three consoles that operate in full high-definition and are running games at 60 frames per second," Brown said. "If you step back and say if it's a multibillion capital dollar investment for the next generation, the question I would ask is 'if you were to produce that then what would you display it on?' There's really nothing in terms of broadly available consumer viewing technology other than 1080p flat panel televisions. And so you could upgrade in theory, but you wouldn't get the obvious graphical benefit that we saw really drove the sharp transitions in the prior cycle."

The debate over when the current generation of consoles will be replaced has been going on for years.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--At its first-quarter media summit on Wednesday, Nintendo formally unveiled the newest model in its long-running DS line of handheld video game machines, the DSi XL.

With a 93 percent bigger screen than the DSi, the XL is intended to offer a more social gaming experience, as it will enable multiple viewing angles, said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America executive vice president of sales and marketing. That means, she predicted, that when someone plays games on a DSi XL, the machine's larger screens will be inviting to other people nearby, making for more social play.

"This product really fills a gap between portable play and social experiences," Dunaway said, "that up until now is only available on consoles."

The new DSi XL will be available on March 28, selling for $190. … Read more

Sony has filed a patent application for a universal game controller that will work with any game console.

This certainly isn't something I was expecting.

The patent application was filed in August 2008 and was officially made public on Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The application describes a "universal game console controller that has an LCD presenting, depending on what type of game console a user has input, a controller key layout for a first type of game console or a controller key layout for a second type of game console."

Sony's … Read more

The Nintendo Wii might be the most popular console of this generation, but it's suffering from a major issue that could have a profound effect on its success: only first-party titles are selling well on the platform.

To Sony, recent Wii game sales figures from market researcher NPD Group bode well for its own game platform. Speaking to IndustryGamers in a recent interview, Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations Rob Dyer said third-party game developers, looking for a stronger return on investment, are defecting from the Wii to the PlayStation 3:

What publishers have said is, they're not … Read more

The micropayment ecosystem on Apple's App Store is about to change. California-based Aurora Feint, makers of the OpenFeint iPhone developer platform--which is currently the most popular social-development network on the iPhone, is testing out a new version of OpenFeint, called OpenFeint X (ten) that brings its own microtransactions to the table.

This is notable, in that Apple has kept the bare minimum that users can spend on or within an application at 99 cents. OpenFeint is not trying to get around this policy for in-app payments, but it's giving developers a simple storefront architecture on which to … Read more