Hasta La Gadget!

Rather like Nokia and its market share obsession, Nintendo just can’t seem to stop talking about its hardware sales lead. The company’s US chief, Reggie Fils-Aime, recently dished some NPD data detailing the specific advantage that the Wii has over its competitors in the US since the current console generation launched: Mario’s team has managed to sell 30.4 million units of its hardware, followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 at 21.9 million and Sony’s PS3, which lags somewhere far behind with 13.5 million total sales. On the more mobile front, DS sales have ratcheted up to 43.1 million, more than doubling the PSP’s 17.7 million shipments to the US of A. Nothing we haven’t heard before, really, but it’s always good to get a statistical update for the sake of keeping flamewars as informed as possible.

Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime dishes cumulative sales numbers for current console generation originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The mystery of what’s actually under the hood of the Nintendo 3DS is likely to elude us until launch date, when the inevitable teardown commences. That isn’t stopping IGN, however, from pooling together its rolodex of sources to report what it believes the specs are: two 266MHz ARM11 CPUs, a 133MHz GPU, 4MB dedicated VRAM, 64MB RAM, and 1.5GB flash storage (in addition to the previously-known SD card expansion). If based on ARM11 architecture, it’d certainly be in good (if not wildly disparate) company: iPhone (original and 3G), the first two generations of iPod touch, all Amazon Kindles, Palm Pixi, a plethora of Nokia handsets, and… the Kin One and Zune HD. Two separate processors isn’t too far fetched, either, as the original DS had both a 67MHz ARM9 and a 33.5MHz ARM7 (quite an uptick, eh?). Digital Media Productions took credit for the GPU back in June, claiming its Pica200 would be the chip of choice. That’s got a maximum speed of 200MHz, which according to this rumor is being underclocked.

So, nothing that runs counter to the admittedly little we got via the 3DS’ FCC leak, and still nothing to keep the Tegra 2 hopeful in check (poor souls). Those with a need to know so passionate it runs through their very being will, as we said before, probably have to wait until it hits retail. And we should find out when that is next week.

Rumored Nintendo 3DS specs include two separate 266MHz ARM11 processors, 1.5GB storage originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo is slashing the DSi to $149.99 and the DSi XL to $169.99 (that’s down $20 apiece) on September 12 in North America, after dropping prices in the UK and Japan in June. We still don’t know what the 3DS will be going for or when it will land, that announcement is still slated for the end of this month, but we’re sure at this price (or any) Nintendo will manage to sell a good many million of the current crop between now and then. PR is after the break.

Continue reading Nintendo dropping DSi and DSI XL prices on September 12

Nintendo dropping DSi and DSI XL prices on September 12 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although foreshadowed, it’s hard to believe that the once mighty Ninty, a company with unshakable profits even during last year’s global economic downturn, just recorded a Q1 net loss of ¥25.22 billion ($288 million) compared to a net profit of ¥42.32 billion during the same 3-month period a year earlier. Revenues dropped from ¥253.50 billion to ¥188.65 billion. Lower DS portable gaming machine prices coupled with a strong Yen (86.5 percent of its sales were outside of Japan) helped pull Nintendo into the red. Regardless, Nintendo continues to forecast a full year net profit of ¥200 billion on revenue of ¥1.4 trillion. We’ll see.

Nintendo posts Q1 loss on strong Yen and lower DS prices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, it’s summer break. What better to do than learn a little piano in preparation for the upcoming release of Harmonix’s Rock Band 3? The next installment — which promises to bring all sorts of new kit to the market — was finally given a release date today, and not surprisingly, it’ll be quickly climbing the Santa Lists of rug-rats the world over. According to the company, the title will ship on October 26th in North America, with the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions priced at $59.99 sans hardware and the DS rendition at $29.99. Hop on past the break if you’re interested in learning about your wealth of pre-order options.

Continue reading Rock Band 3 crashing into living rooms on October 26

Rock Band 3 crashing into living rooms on October 26 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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