Hasta La Gadget!

Another year, another chance for Nintendo to deliver what it’s alternately denied and teased since day one — a successor to the Nintendo Wii capable of displaying games in high resolution. Will Nintendo finally make it happen? Multiple totally anonymous sources say yes: they told Game Informer, IGN and Kotaku that just such a system will debut at E3 2011 in June, possibly with a teaser of some sort next month. While the ninja moles didn’t provide many hard details — mostly just the typical iffy claim that the system will wipe the floor with competitors in terms of speeds and feeds — they told IGN that it will support 1080p resolutions and be backwards-compatible with games for the Wii. Naturally, we’ll believe it when we see it… so here’s hoping we see it fairly quickly.

Wii HD rearing long-rumored head at E3 2011? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo’s miniature white monolith has sold like gangbusters for long enough that we’re wary it’ll ever get cheap, but a trusted source tells us a price cut is indeed headed our way — and that the Nintendo Wii will cost just $150 starting May 15th. The timing would make some sense, given how Nintendo’s profits have tanked for a while due to flagging hardware sales, and just last month Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime hinted that the Wii’s price might be a potential variable to change that in an interview with Gamasutra. Still, we’re not fully convinced that Nintendo would announce a price cut then, rather than, say, at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in June, and it’s not like the company to let this sort of announcement leak out. Still, if you find a shiny new copy of Mario Kart Wii in a $150 console bundle this time next month, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Nintendo cutting Wii price to $150 on May 15th? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have spotted a lot more of the Nintendo 3DS Station’s around Tokyo lately. An in-store sampling terminal with a screen showing ads and information about Nintendo products, consumers who have their own DS can also use the console’s built-in wifi connectivity to receive sample demo games or updated game content for free.

The demo can be directly sent to your console and downloaded through the interface menu. It is stored inside your console but since it is not on a cartridge can only be played until you turn off the DS.

There was also a further service called “Touch! Try! DS!”, offering over 150 samples that you could play on your console using the unit’s wifi without downloading (i.e. by staying within the appropriate distance of the connection).

It is also possible to purchase new games for the DS using the Station terminal. After buying a prepaid Nintendo Points Card (or buying one through the online store using a credit card or through your mobile phone) you can input the card number, and then have the game data transmitted to your console.

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Last week’s Switched On discussed how some next wave notions from a decade ago were trying to reinvent themselves. Here’s one more. Surging smartphone vendor HTC is seeking to bring back an input method that many wrote off long ago with its forthcoming Flyer tablet and EVO View 4G comrade-in-arms: the stylus.

A fixture of early Palm and Psion PDAs, Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile handsets, slim, compact styli were once the most popular thing to slip down a well since Timmy. Then, users would poke the cheap, simple sticks at similarly inexpensive resistive touchscreens. After the debut of tablet PCs, though, more companies started to use active digitizer systems like the one inside the Flyer. Active pens offer more precision, which can help with tasks such as handwriting recognition, and support “hovering” above a screen, the functional equivalent of a mouseover. On the other hand, they are also thicker, more expensive, and need to be charged. (Update: as some have pointed out in comments, Wacom’s tablets generate tiny electromagnetic fields that power active digitization, and don’t require the pen to store electricity itself.) And, of course, just like passive styli, active pens take up space and can be misplaced.

The 2004 debut of the Nintendo DS — the ancestor of the just-released 3DS — marked the beginning of what has become the last mass-market consumer electronics product series to integrate stylus input. The rising popularity of capacitive touch screens and multitouch have replaced styli with fingers as the main user interface elements. Instead of using a precise point for tasks such as placing an insertion point in text, we now expand the text dynamically to accommodate our oily instruments. On-screen buttons have also grown, as have the screens themselves, all in the name of losing a contrivance.

Continue reading Switched On: Pen again

Switched On: Pen again originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When a new console launches you expect it to hit the ground with a big “thwomp” that knocks the competition aside. Nintendo’s 3DS, however, has had something of a softer landing. It released in Japan on February 26th and had been positioned high and proud at the top of the sales charts. However, it’s already been usurped by the humble PSP, which according to Media Create sold 58,075 units in the week of March 28th to April 3rd. The 3DS, meanwhile, sold 42,979. This is in large part thanks to PSP dating sim Amagami, an old PS2 game that’s just been re-released for the portable. It seems nostalgia trumps 3D wizardry again, and with the PSP getting cheaper in Europe this week, the competition is even getting tougher.

3DS outsold by PSP in Japan, gets dumped for a dating sim originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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