Quote:Posted by
Christian Kontul at 11:05:16 PM EST on 10.24.2003.
Nintendo announced today in Japan that it will offer a new peripheral, the Advance Movie, for the Game Boy Advance on November 20.
The device will be able to play movies and music from Smart Media cards. Nintendo has plans to cooperate with several companies to bring content out for the device - when it launches, a set of three movies will be made available for 2,380 (about $22) yen apiece. The Advance Movie player itself will retail for 3,200 ($30) yen, and a combo pack, with the first movie, will sell for 3,800 ($35) yen. This set will be limited to 30,000 units.
More movies will follow through December, and, beginning in April, consumers will be able to download things onto their cards at special internet kiosks. Downloads will run anywhere from 100 yen (91 cents) to 500 ($5) yen, and Smart Media cards can be purchased for only 1,800 ($16) yen.
With a 32 MB Smart Media card, Nintendo claims that almost 25 minutes of video or five hours of music can be stored. This technology can even be used on Game Boy Advance software, as Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories demonstrated during September's Tokyo Game Show.
Nintendo has not announced plans to bring the Advance Movie to North America, but expressed interest while unveiling the product today. We'll follow the situation closely, so check back soon and often.
Source: QUITER
Wow, this is great news as it shows that Nintendo is preparing to match the PSP in every aspect, or so it seems. The PSP is supposed to be able to play movies and music and I bet Nintendo is doing this to test the waters for possible capabilities of their next handheld. I hope that this is a sign that the next Gameboy system will be able to play movies and music in order to better compete with the PSP, and using the SD cards is the perfect thing to do.
Quote:Here are some new images and preview video of Nintendo's Pokemon Colosseum for GameCube, the game is scheduled to release in Japan on November 21, for 5800 yen. A free Memory Card 59 will be bundled with the game.
A 30 hours long RPG mode will be included in the game, you can battle against the main characters from Pokemon Red/Blue, Gold/Silver, and Ruby/Sapphire.
RPG MODE?! WHAT?! How come no one has said anything about this?!
Quote:As previously repoprted, Nintendo has purchased 1.28 million shares of Bandai's (Japan) stock, giving Nintendo aproximately 2.6% ownership of Bandai.
Speculation that this purchase was actually the precursor to a merger or takeover bid has since grown so much that Bandai president, Takeo Takasu, held a press conference to squelch the rumours.
Takasu explained that, Bandai was looking for a third party that could acquire a number of its shares from financial institutions and other companies that bandai had cross-shareholding issues with. Nintendo expressed interest in investing in Bandai and Bandai consented. Nintendo subsequently purchased the 1.28 million shares from the financial institutions and companies, including 260 000 shares from Mattel.
Bandai and Nintendo stocks have both risen today, Bandai up 5.79% to it's highest share price of the year, and Nintendo up .34 %.
Something is definitely going on here, either Nintendo wants some exclusive games or they some bigger plans. You don't just buy 1.38 milllion shares of stock for nothing.
Quote:For the week of October 13-19 in Japan the number one selling game was Made in Wario for GameCube. The GBA versions seems to have spurred it to early sales reaching about 90,900 in total, which is 55 thousand more than the second game that is on PS2. Grand Thefto Auto III for PS2 has sold 21,700 last week and has 226,600 total since its release in Japan.
1. Game Boy Advance SP -- 31,600 / 1,788,600
2. Playstation 2 -- 26,900 / 2,149,000
3. GameCube -- 11,100 / 564,800
4. Game Boy Advance -- 6,300 / 1,080,800
5. Playstation -- 650 / 58,600
6. Xbox -- 440 / 76,700
Quote:Take-Two Interactive, notorious publisher of the Grand Theft Auto series, is expected to complete the $22.7 million buy-out of TDK Mediactive the first week of November. Take-Two reportedly has no plans to change the line-up of games coming out of TDK, only possibly expanding it. TDK, deemed unprofitable by business analysts, lost $8.3 million last fiscal year. This is definitely an interesting business move for Take-Two. Either they are trying to lighten up their public image, or they really enjoy losing money.
I'd say the reason for this move is that Take-Two wants to lighten their image some.
The article is somewhat interesting, but one part in part in particular caught my eye.
Quote: 10. DVDs
The DVD was the most eagerly adopted electronic consumer gizmo in history, but I’d feel bad if I failed to complain about the evil of these things. First and worst, DVDs are unbearably frail. Any benefit one gets from “clearer pictures”—on what HDTV superscreen, exactly?—is quickly removed by the catastrophic effects of a single thumbprint or scratch. Plus, just like CDs, DVDs as physical objects will prove to warp and delaminate.
Most loathsome of all is the fiendish spam hard-burned into DVDs, which forces one to suffer through the commercials gratefully evaded by videotape fast-forwards. The Content Scrambling System copy protection scheme doesn’t work, and the payoff for pirating DVDs is massive, because unlike tapes, digital data don’t degrade with reproduction. So DVDs have the downside of piracy and organized crime, without the upside of free, simple distribution. Someday they will stand starkly revealed for what they really are: collateral damage to consumers in the entertainment industry’s miserable, endless war of attrition with digital media.
This guy obviously doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. First of all DVDs are no where near that fragile and they are actually a lot more durable than VHS tapes. Also, although pirating is prevalent, companies are making MILLIONS on DVD sales.
Anyway, I just thought people might want to read this article.
Quote:EDMONTON (CP) -- A company owned by Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan has bought the financially struggling Edmonton Trappers of the Pacific Coast League and will move the triple-A club to Texas after the 2004 season.
The sale, announced Thursday, leaves only one triple-A baseball team still in business in Canada, the Ottawa Lynx.
The Canadian Football League's Edmonton Eskimos, which bought the Trappers in 1999, have sold the team for $10.4 million US to Round Rock Baseball Inc., of which Ryan, one of the greatest pitchers in Major League history, is majority owner.
The team is expected to play out the 2004 season in Edmonton and continue its affiliation with the National League's Montreal Expos before moving to Round Rock, Texas, next fall.
"When you are faced with something that is inevitable and you are given an offer that would be more than we would get if we were in a force situation where it got nasty, then you take it," Eskimos chairman John Butler told a news conference.
The Trappers have played in Edmonton since 1981 and won their fourth PCL championship in 2002.
It's the third western Canadian triple-A club to head south for financial reasons in recent years. The PCL's Vancouver Canadians moved to Sacramento, Calif., after winning the 1999 triple-A World Series, and the Calgary Cannons went to Albuquerque, N.M., following their 2002 season.
Eskimos president Hugh Campbell said the owners had been under pressure to sell the team for the last two years.
"This was a very difficult decision for us," Campbell said. "We originally purchased the Trappers to keep them in Edmonton. However, the PCL has changed significantly.
"The Calgary Cannons' move to Albuquerque was the major factor that triggered the push by PCL members for the Eskimos to sell the Trappers franchise. Scheduling, air and cross-border travel and the Canadian dollar were also factors in the PCL not wanting to have a Canadian team in the league."
The Trappers remain popular in the sports-crazy Alberta capital, recording an average attendance of 5,443 at their games this season, the second highest total of any minor-league team in the country.
By contrast, the country's remaining triple-A club, Ottawa of the International League, only managed 2,417 a game this year, making their lovely 10,332-seat stadium look bare. Lynx owner Ray Pecor has said he doesn't want to move the team but finances may force the issue.
In Edmonton, however, location ultimately turned out to be the franchise-killer.
PCL president Branch Rickey praised the Trappers as a "model franchise" with exceptional fan support and called Telus Field "one of the finest ball parks in the PCL." But he said the distances between Edmonton and the other PCL cities along with the growing complications of crossing the border have became too much of a hassle.
"With smaller airplanes and some of the other elements of how the airlines are reconfiguring, our travel is more challenging for us every day," Rickey said.
The Eskimos plan to begin talks immediately with the City of Edmonton regarding the future of Telus Field, the beautiful river valley park that has been home to the Trappers.
Campbell said the Eskimos will use the profit from the sale to pay off the baseball team's debts and replenish the football club's stabilization fund, which was utilized to buy the Trappers.
The Round Rock Express is a double-A team playing in the Texas League. Its president and chief executive is Reid Ryan, son of Nolan Ryan. The plan is to renovate the Dell Diamond in Round Rock next year before moving the Trappers in. The Express would then move to Corpus Christi, Texas.
That sucks, I love watching Trapper's games, and they are an awesome team. :(
