Jan 27th - Sony to battle Nintendo as it Works on next generation portable game system

Sony Corp. said Thursday it will debut a powerful successor to its PlayStation Portable handheld videogame system later this year, while creating an application for a suite of older PlayStation games to be played on mobile phones and tablet computers running Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

The new device, code-named "Next Generation Portable," will come with a five-inch organic light-emitting diode touch-screen display, front and rear touch panels and 3G wireless connectivity. Sony said the new machine will be available this holiday season. Pricing for the new machine wasn't immediately available.

Once hailed by a Sony executive as the "Walkman for the 21st Century," the PlayStation Portable has failed to live up to the company's own pre-launch hype. It has sold a respectable 67 million units since its late-2004 debut, but Sony's game machine has been overshadowed by Nintendo Co.'s DS handheld which has sold twice as many units as the PSP in a similar time frame.

Sony's revamped portable game machine will face a new competitive hurdle that its predecessor did not face upon its debut. Powerful smartphones are a new threat, offering simple-to-play titles for consumers looking to kill time, and more sophisticated games that can meet the needs of most traditional videogame fans.

Its handheld rival, Nintendo, is also about to introduce a new handheld device next month. The Nintendo 3DS allows users to play 3-D videogames without the need for special glasses, marking the first major game machine to offer that capability. Nintendo will release the 3DS first in Japan on Feb. 26 and then in March for the U.S. and Europe.

The 3DS will sell for 25,000 yen in Japan and $250 in the U.S. at launch.

Sony also unveiled the PlayStation Suite, which is an application for Google's Android market which will run videogames of a similar quality as those played on older PlayStation consoles. Sony said the new application will be available later this year.

"We want to make possible to play PlayStation-quality games on devices other than the PSP," said Kaz Hirai, president of Sony's networked products and services group.

Jan 12th - Sega has started testing pressure-controlled toilet games/ads display consoles

Only in Japan? .........  In an effort to find new advertising display opportunities, Sega has started testing pressure-controlled toilet games/ads display consoles in mens' urinals at Metro stations around Tokyo, until January 31st. The games are designed to allow male patrons to have a bit of fun and distraction while taking a whizz. Amongst the four games, one measures the strength of urine flow, one allows you to clean a screen with a hose, one allows you to compete against another character trying to flush them away, and the last allows you to try to cause wind to blow up a girl's skirt.

Visit to Nintendo HQ

Last week I visited Ninteno's HQ just outside Kyoto. The guys there are generally positive, (as you would expect from such a dominant company), however the strong Yen is hurting them;


Nintendo profit down 60.6 percent in April-June
TOKYO (AP) -- Nintendo Co. reports that its net profit tumbled 60.6 percent in the April-June quarter from last year, hurt by a stronger yen and fewer blockbuster games. The Kyoto-based maker of Pokemon and Super Mario games posted net profit of 42.3 billion yen ($445.2 million), down from 107.3 billion yen during the same period a year earlier. Sales declined 40 percent to 253.5 billion yen, while operating profit - a measure of its core business - fell 66 percent to 40.4 billion yen. It left its forecasts unchanged for the full year through March 2010. It continues to expects net profit of 300 billion yen on 1.8 trillion yen in sales.

Nintendo Wii sales top 7 million in Japan

Sales of Nintendo’s Wii have topped seven million in Japan since its launch nearly two years ago, as the family-friendly game console continues to grow in popularity, a survey showed Wednesday. Nintendo had sold 7,024,239 units as of Nov 23 since the launch on Dec 2, 2006, according to magazine publisher Enterbrain. That compared with rival Sony’s sales of 2,469,448 PlayStation 3s in Japan as of November 16 since the launch in November 2006, and Microsoft’s sales of 793,105 Xbox 360s since December 2005. Sony and Microsoft have lagged behind Nintendo as their consoles focused mainly on hardcore gamers rather than casual players.
Nintendo has worked on broadening the Wii’s appeal with a controller that can be used, among other things, to simulate the swinging of a tennis racket, and with games such as Wii Fit for the health-conscious. The company is also working on launching the upcoming Wii Music, which simulates playing in a band. Nintendo has also sold a total of 24,127,175 Nintendo handheld DS consoles in Japan since they were first launched about three years ago, Enterbrain said.