Hasta La Gadget!

Sick of waiting outside in the cold on the wee hours of Black Friday, only to get trampled on the way in to the store when the doors open? Walmart has a better solution: they’ll open the doors at midnight. Yes, the sales start at the first minute of Black Friday, and the full list is after the break, but to get the really good stuff you’ll have to hang around until 5:00am. That’s when a Magnavox Blu-ray player (presumably the oft-discounted NB500) will go for $69, with $10 in VUDU credits thrown in for good measure. Or, you can get yourself a Nintendo DS Lite for $89, which is a very solid deal. Sure, it doesn’t do 3D, but who says games need depth?

Continue reading Walmart launches Black Friday barrage early, $69 Blu-ray player, $89 DS Lite

Walmart launches Black Friday barrage early, $69 Blu-ray player, $89 DS Lite originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

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.

Permalink Kotaku  |  Gamasutra  | Email this | Comments

The on-going console war will likely be fought on the
peripheral front this holiday season. After all, the Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation
3, and Nintendo Wii have all been around for a number of years, and consumers
are looking for something new out of their systems.

In 2010, we’re looking at a battle between the PlayStation
Move, the Kinect for Xbox 360, and the Wii Motion Plus. It’s still a bit early,
but it seems like all three products will be reasonably well received–or at the
very list, none will likely wind up on a “Worst Peripherals of All Time” list.

The same, obviously, can’t be said for the devices after the
jump. It’s a mix of the misguided, the overhyped, and the flat-out creepy. 

“There is nothing more sad or glorious than generations changing hands,” John Cougar Mellencamp wrote in the liner notes to his classic album, Scarecrow.

And so it goes with the handover from the Gamecube and PS2 to the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360: Gaming systems that we once loved are thrown into the dustbin of history, while strange new devices take center stage.

Here’s one way to look at those market shifts: With an interactive infographic from Tableau Software.

In addition to the console trends, you can watch Nintendo gain market share at Sony’s expense (while Microsoft hangs in there at a steady level).

The data, from NPD Group, is not particularly new, but the visualization is. If you ever wondered what a generational shift in technologies looks like, here you go.

What other tech data would you like to see visualized? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks, Ellie!

See Also:

• Zillow Analysis Reveals Prime Trick-or-Treating Neighborhoods
• Wired.com's iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
• Analyst: We Could Be in the Final 'Console Cycle'
• Microsoft, Sony Trade Volleys as Console Wars Heat Up
• Triumph of the Wii: How Fun Won Out in the Console Wars

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Since the launch of the Wii in late 2006, Nintendo has sold more than 65.3 million Wiimotes in the US alone. That’s more than the population of the United Kingdom, Italy, and South Korea. That number breaks down to around 46,000 Wiimotes sold a day since the console’s release.

That’s a gentle reminder from the folks at Nintendo about just how well its console is doing. The reminder, of course, comes in the wake of new motion controllers from Sony and Microsoft–the Move and Kinect for Xbox 360, respectively.

The numbers themselves are courtesy of NPD. 30.41 of those controllers have been sold bundled with the Wii itself. 18.56 million white Wiimotes, 2.44 million black versions, 467,500 pink versions, and 465,200 blue versions have been sold by themselves. 12.92 million have been sold with copies of Wii Play.

Nintendo has also moved 52.9 million Wii Nunchuks.

A new version of the Wii Remote–the Wii Remote Plus–begins shipping on November 7th. The device has built-in Wii MotionPlus and promises more precise control.