Seriously dude, you've been posting in every friggen thread and even dredged up old ones numerous times a day! I know what you're up to, I'm onto it. Look at your post count! You're just trying to get to 10,000!!
Quote:Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has given an extensive talk on the state of the industry to the Japan Economic Foundation - including evidence from sales figures which he claims prove that online gaming is not yet an important factor.
Iwata presented sales figures for a PS2 online golf title which failed to match the sales of its offline predecessor (Sony's own Minna no Golf / Everybody's Golf titles, released in the west as Hot Shots Golf) as "proof that customers do not want online games."
According to highlights of his presentation which have been posted online, Iwata told the foundation that "most customers do not wish to pay the extra money for connection to the Internet, and for some customers, connection procedures to the Internet are still not easy."
Alone out of the three major platform holders in the current generation of hardware, Nintendo has been reluctant to commit to online gaming; the company launched a modem and broadband adapter for the console in order to support online titles from other companies, but has not developed any such titles of its own.
With both Sony and Microsoft's future console plans featuring online as a core component, it's still not clear how Nintendo will incorporate connectivity into its next-generation "Revolution" console - if at all.
However, the company has been much more positive about the potential of wireless connectivity for its handheld devices, launching a successful wireless adapter for the Game Boy Advance and integrating both Bluetooth and 802.11b Wireless LAN technologies into the forthcoming Nintendo DS handheld.
Elsewhere in his address to the foundation, Iwata also covered the perception of Nintendo as a company which targets its products largely at the kids market. "Game software should neither be exclusively be targeted at children nor adults," he said. "Instead, we will develop software which anyone can instantly understand."
However, he did acknowledge the growing trend within the industry for creating mature games, adding simply that "at the same time, production of software readily acceptable to adults is worth studying."
Speaking about Nintendo's relationships with third-party companies, Iwata hinted that more development deals with Western developers could be in the pipeline. "We intend to expand tie-ups not only with Japanese companies but also with foreign companies," he said. "We are now holding negotiations with major Western game developers and will be able to conclude a deal by the end of the year if things go smoothly."
He also touched briefly on the subject of Nintendo's ongoing relationship with Bandai - and this time strayed from his usual script on the subject by not directly denying the possibility of a takeover or merger, saying only that "a closer relationship would be beneficial for both sides and it will be nice if the two companies can work together in doing something interesting."
People might not want online golf, but that doesn't mean they don't want online Smash Brother or Mario Party!
Quote:Acclaim has released its financial report for its fiscal year ending on March 31st, and the numbers aren't good: In the past year, the company has lost $56.4 million. (Then again, they lost $84.4 million the year before, so it's not that bad...) These massive losses don't bode well for the credit line, and if Acclaim doesn't find a new source of money to help counterbalance these debts, they'll have to file for bankruptcy.
To add insult to injury, Acclaim has lost two if its biggest remaining franchises, mostly because of failure to pay royalty fees. The Major Leauge Baseball Player's Association has dropped All Star Baseball from its list of licenses, meaning Acclaim can't use the names or likenesses of MLB players in its game, effectively making ASB worthless. More embarassing, however, is that Acclaim no longer holds the rights to Turok. The first-person shooter that made a name for the publisher (in both a good and bad way) was taken away from them last month from Classic Media, creators of the franchise.
These latest two franchises lost can be added to the list of big-name games taken away from them. The first to go, of course, was the then-named WWF series of games to THQ, and recently Criterion's Burnout series to EA. With virtually no licensed or familiar game properties left in their lineup, Acclaim's future is very bleak, if they even have a future left.
Just to put into perspective how bad it is for Acclaim, their stock price on the NASDAQ is currently around $0.25 a share, which is well below the $1.00 minimum stock price the index requires its listees to hold.
It's always a bad thing when a company goes under.
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</td></tr></tbody> </table> <!-- TextStart --> By DON BABWIN, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - Bill Cosby (news) went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere."
He also had harsh words for struggling black men, telling them: "Stop beating up your women because you can't find a job."
Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black community's "dirty laundry."
"Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other n------ as they're walking up and down the street," Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference.
"They think they're hip," the entertainer said. "They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."
In his remarks in May at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby denounced some blacks' grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars "are not political prisoners."
"I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.
"For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."
Cosby lamented that the racial slurs once used by those who lynched blacks are now a favorite expression of black children. And he blamed parents.
"When you put on a record and that record is yelling `n----- this and n----- that' and you've got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that," he said.
He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives.
"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."
Cosby appeared Thursday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson (news - web sites), founder and president of the education fund, who defended the entertainer's statements.
"Bill is saying let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that."
Cosby also said many young people are failing to honor the sacrifices made by those who struggled and died during the civil rights movement.
"Dogs, water hoses that tear the bark off trees, Emmett Till," he said, naming the black youth who was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. "And you're going to tell me you're going to drop out of school? You're going to tell me you're going to steal from a store?"
![[Image: thumb.cx10107011840.cosby_rainbow_cx101.jpg]](http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040701/thumb.cx10107011840.cosby_rainbow_cx101.jpg)
