Gamenikki

This was posted on the news, but let us reiterate just for the sake of catching up.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today announced a delay of nearly six months on the release of the PlayStation 3 outside of Japan and the United States.

While those two territories are still on schedule for their 11/11 and 11/17 launches, respectively, they'll share in the misery too, as Sony also reduced delivery forecasts through the end of 2006 by half, from 4 million units to an expected 2 million units by year's end.

The International Herald Tribune further reports specific allocation breakdowns, indicating that just 100,000 units will be made available at the Japanese launch on 11/11/06, while 400,000 units will be made available to North America on 11/17.

Sony reconfirmed, however, their commitment to shipping 6 million PlayStation 3 units by the end of March '07.

Ah, typical for this year of bad news for Sony, it doesn't yield to the launch numbers. Unfortunately, it continues on a downward spiral if I've ever seen one. Not only is Sony slashing the launch estimates to a -quarter- of previous expectations, but they're axing an entire continent! Something quite extraordinary! While Sony is busy telling Eurogamers "they don't matter", Nintendo's busy working to pick up the slack. Last we understood, Nintendo planned to ship 4 million consoles world wide by the end of the calender year with 2 million of those 4 for the "world wide" launch. While I don't necessarily anticipate the launch to take place in all territories at exactly the same time, I think Nintendo is in a position to, quite possibly, pull off the first majorly successful world wide launch of a home console.

That aside, Nintendo has previously bumped up expectations for shipping for the launch after the runaway success of E3 2006. We can probably expect somewhere in the region of 600-900 thousand launch units in the United States, as well as Japan. I wouldn't pin Europe for much higher than 500 thousand, but 500 thousand on day 1 is a lot more than "wait 6 months". Granted, Europe is Sony's strongest market if history is to be believed, so it's understandable the delay in this region over others (where competition is perhaps viewed less lightly). Whether or not this will prove to be an acceptable policy (in light of a possible total delay?) will come to truth sooner or later.

E3's here and it's about time. What does that mean? It means I went by the Grand Canyon, past the Rockies - and while it's beautiful and all - I finally made my way to the Wii. Is it everything I could dream of?

In a word, yes. The Wii controller is absolutely amazing in regards to sensitivity. With a little time and care, a developer could make so many different ideas fully realized in this world. The smooth, god-like controls of Metroid Prime 3 immersed me in a way I've never felt before. The only similar feeling is a PC and it's still nothing like that feeling I was getting while blasting space pirates and grappling their shields away from them while double jumping in the air and - okay, I'm getting a little too excited. Bottom line: Wii is coming and you will too soon see with your own hands.

This isn't even to mention the virtual console addition - which, barring any yet foreseen situations - has no slowdown and appears to function at full potential. Mario 64 looks and plays exactly as it should - the only complaint is the strange placement of the Z button on the "classic" controller (it's not even pointed out in the control view for Mario 64 when it plays. . ). You have to reach all the way around the R button in order to do long jumps, which are essential at a constant for any serious Mario 64 player.

Strangely, Sony announces a gimmicky-rip-off and an unaffordable pricing scale, they continue to alienate consumers by offering an "idiot pack" for 500 dollars. This pack lacks HDMi which, as I understand it, would not allow for the play of Blu-Ray movies. So not only do you receive a smaller hard drive, but a machine that's not even fully capable. It's the baby no one wants to buy, but will be forced to when the "premium" pack sells through. This isn't to mention the furthered Ps3/PSP connectivity.

These are just manuevers I simply can't understand, especially after openly negative comments in regards to such decisions on Nintendo's part.

This year my trip to E3 is long and perilous - rather than the traditional method of jumping on a 747 and taking a five hour flight across the United States from Florida to California, I've decided to make a road trip out of the event. This leads to me, my girlfriend, and two good pals bickering in the car for about 12 hours a day and a whole lot of a fun.

Now we rest in the cradle of middle-America, Colorado. After feasting on Sonic and a relaxing evening, we plan to head west to cross the massive mountainous terrain and continue on to the desert wastelands before even laying foot on California.

It's a long, beautiful trip to that Wii. Gathering third party support makes for interesting clouds of foreboding. What Nintendo holds for us I'd like to know, and apparently I'm willing to drive thousands of miles to make it so. So let's get to that showing!

Another day, another game-based movie released to theaters. This time Hollywood has chosen to aggravate the Konami-founded series of Silent Hill. Generally, these movies make me cringe with the very thought of them. This time? Not so much. In a shock twist of fate, Silent Hill is actually very good.

Despite being told immediately beforehand by a friend at Best Buy not to watch the movie, we loaded up and did so. With no real pre-existing notions aside from "everything in the movie sucks", we were pleasantly surprised.

Damn, it's great! The aural experience is above and beyond any video game movie I've ever seen. Truly, the music composition half-way makes the movie. But of course, let's not forget the absolutely fantastic cinematography. Some of these camera angles once the movie begins are really wonderful: they feel as though it's a game. Sometimes it even feels visually as though it's a game. It's great.

The special effects are also very well done. It creates a very sickening atmosphere. I wouldn't say it's a scary movie at all, but definitely a journey worth applying for. Come on, go see it!

As a side note, I'll be updating this blog more frequently to give you a bit of insight as to who I am and where I come from. ;-)

-James

Another strong week for the Nintendo DS - again, showing no sign of slowdown anytime soon, at least in software. With the new Lite DS on the way, large hardware numbers can be anticipated.

Hardware sales, hardware sales..always an exciting time of the week.

Where, at first glance, it appears Nintendo's deafening stomp across Japan's charts has been halted, one must take in to account that the Japanese stock for Nintendo DS has been emptied out. It'll be interesting to see how fast stock is able to be replenished, there's a shining moment for Sony's PSP.

Source: MediaCreate

With online play and several new modes, the newest Tetris title looks to be one of the best yet. Online and portable Tetris gives me the shudders just thinking of the time I placed in to the 1989 GameBoy version in purely single player! March couldn't come sooner!

Looks like a wonderful year for the Nintendo DS, exceeding many expectations. Of primary interest to me is the note that the handheld market was responsible for the 47% increase in the market, which in recent years has been concerned with shrinkage.

Source: MagicBox

Not much to say beyond the obvious here. Similar to last week, Nintendo DS software dominates the charts. It's questionable as to whether or not Nintendo's new strategy of reaching out to "non-gamers" (which AC, Brain Training, and so forth appear to appeal to) is actually working, or the Japanese market is leaning toward a handheld trend.

Regardless, the sheer amount of potential million sellers (not to mention current) for the Nintendo DS is astounding.

The final week of December further indicates the dominance of the Nintendo DS in Japan with hardware sales topping both the hardware (though down from the previous week's numbers of nearly 600,000 units) and software charts. This may be understandable due to a recent release from Nintendo stating that the DS is actually sold out for a short period of time.

This week we also observe the X Box 360 sales rising just a little bit - likely due to the recent Famitsu review touting Dead or Alive 4's score at 39/40. Whether or not these sales continue are questionable, though very unlikely.

Source: Media Create