Archive for August, 2008

Nintendo has now raised it forecasted profit for the fiscal year by 26 percent, citing exceptionally strong sales of the Wii and DS around the world.

The company expects its net income to jump 59 percent to JPY 410 billion, the equivalent of 3.8 billion USD for the year ending March 31st. Nintendo believes sales of the Wii will grow 42 percent for the year and has reversed previous comments that the DS will see sales drop offs.



“This is a very big, positive surprise,” noted Koichi Takatsuka, a senior fund manager at United Investments. “It looks like Wii and DS are selling well, especially in Europe.”

The news prompted Nintendo’s stock to jump almost 10 percent on the Osaka Securities Exchange.

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Limewire has announced that they have added 1.2 million legal, DRM-free tracks to their offical store, with the tracks starting at $0.27 USD per track.

As a P2P device, Limewire is by far the most popular with some reports saying as high as 18 percent of all personal computers have the application installed. Today’s news however marks the third time they have expanded their legal download store, this time signing a deal with “The Orchard“, a distributor of 1.2 million songs from Indie labels.

Greg Scholl, President and CEO of The Orchard, added, “We’re pleased to support the LimeWire store, a retail offering that protects copyrights while fairly compensating artists and labels. This exciting entrant to digital retail offers us a unique opportunity to connect our clients with an online audience of potentially millions of new customers.”

Although tracks are $.99 cents individually if you have a “Platinum” subscription plan, you can download 75 tracks for $19.99 a month, for an equivalent of $.27 cents per track.

Although the store has been struggling since its inception it does offer an interesting marketing opportunity for labels because the store is linked to results in the P2P portion of the application. Users will be linked to buy the song if they search for one that is available from the store. However, the Big 4 record labels are hesitant to sign on especially with Limewire’s past.



“LimeWire Store development has been running at full speed to provide a number of exciting new features, and we are enjoying the opportunity to improve our user community’s experience via the feedback they’ve provided,” said Jason Pelzer, the LimeWire store Technical Director.

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General Motors has announced that it will begin offering optional radios in its 2009 models that include USB ports that can be used for media devices such as the Apple iPod.

The radios will let users play music and charge their media devices without the need for special car adapters. The USB ports will be identical to those found on personal computers.

Currently three models have the radios but the company says at least 5 new models will be getting them for 2009. Those that currently offer them are the Chevrolet Cobalt, HHR and the Pontiac G5. The new models will be the Pontiac G6 and Solstice, the Saturn Sky and Aura, and the Chevrolet Malibu.

Making the offering even more interesting is that you can navigate the libraries of your media devices using the radio’s controls and electronic displays making browsing much easier than using the actual device.

Rival car maker Ford has had USB ports in a few of its cars for over a year now, the product of a joint venture with Microsoft.

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It’s hard to take the Stix Wiimote knockoff for the PC seriously when it looks the way it does. It’s trying to hard. But the proof is in the play and at least one reviewer failed to shake any fun out of the thing. It’s only a 2D controiller after all.

The Stix 200 may look a lot like Nintendo’s wiimote, but it’s more like “a set of slightly unresponsive, highly inconvenient arrow keys” instead of an awesome motion controller. Like the device itself, the PC games that can be played with it are bad. The 3D-capable Stix 400 controller might do better, but the consensus seems to be that it’s not worth the bother after this review. The reviewer pretty much sums it up by saying, it’s the kind of gift “parents who can’t get their hands on a wii should get their children to make them cry.”

[mmoclerks]