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Video Game Report Card: Games To Avoid
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox 360,
The National Institute on Media and the Family annually releases a Video Game Report Card that rates the industry on violence in video games as well as how well publishers and retailers are policing themselves. ABC News reports on the latest release from the organization. They don’t have the official industry report card listed, but do have a list of recommended games as well as a list of games that are deemed inappropriate for teens and children. It will come as no shock that every game on the “inappropriate” list is rated “M,” including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories for the PSP, Saint’s Row for the Xbox 360, and Mortal Kombat: Unchained. It seems odd to single out those particular games from the list of “M” rated titles; if the industry is doing its job, an “M” designation should at least be a warning flag for parents purchasing game titles for teens and children.
On the flip side, four of the ten “recommended” games are Nintendo exclusive titles, including Mario Hoops 3 on 3, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, and Brain Age for the Nintendo DS, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz for the Wii. Other titles include LocoRoco for the PSP, and the latest Lego Star Wars for multiple platforms. While the list of software titles may help the average parent, more interesting should be the actual report card scores determining how the industry has done in the past year, particularly with the new education and enforcement efforts being made by the ESRB.
Update: The Institute has now published their full report. Overall, the NIMF seems to be stumping for the same issues they have targeted over the years: video game ratings, parental involvement, the impact of violent games on children, and increasing obesity.
Further analysis after the jump.
Click to continue reading Video Game Report Card: Games To Avoid
Read More 
| National Institute On Media And The Family
Gallery: Video Game Report Card: Games To Avoid
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“I’m Not Dead Yet!”: Tomb Raider Legends Ships For Gamecube
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Adventure, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, Release Dates,
It’s been a busy week ladies and gentlemen - Sony’s Playstation 3 will be released in a matter of hours, and the Wii will follow shortly in two days. You’ve got a lot to keep track of - reviews for the new systems, choices on which consoles to pick up. With all that going on, it’s no wonder that you probably didn’t notice that Tomb Raider: Legends shipped today for Nintendo’s Gamecube, DS, and GBA platforms. While the GC iteration follows quite a few months after the PS2 / Xbox 360 iterations, the game received fairly high scores across the board, and might be a great bargain-bin buy for folks looking to get every last hour out of their soon-to-be-obsolete Gamecube. And, with Wii’s backwards compatibility for GC games, you won’t be wasting your money.
Eidos seemed to learn that it pays to support Nintendo when Lego Star Wars sold phenomenally on the GC. Here’s hoping that Eidos decides to support Nintendo in their current console iteration!
Read More | Tomb Raider.com
Gallery: “I’m Not Dead Yet!”: Tomb Raider Legends Ships For Gamecube
The Seattle Times has a lengthy profile of Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime and the turnaround that he is engineering at the company. Part of the profile is focused on the swagger that Fils-Aime seems to be bringing back to the company and its fanboys. Which Nintendo’s presence and influence in the videogame industry had been on the wane, their approach with their new products like the DS and the Wii appears to be turning this around.
Fils-Aime has helped Nintendo become more aggressive in the market, and part of this has been due to Reggie’s attitude and discipline, as detailed in the article. While a good part of the profile is aimed at Nintendo’s attempts to recapture and grow the video game market with the DS and the Wii, there are a number of insights into Fils-Aime’s background that led him to succeed at Nintendo of America. The next year should be an interesting one as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony battle in the next generation of gaming.
Read More | The Seattle Times
Gallery: Reggie Fils-Aime Profiled
Reggie Talks Disruption In Montreal
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime recently talked about the company’s strategies for the Wii and the DS at the Montreal Games Summit. According to Gamasutra, the focus of the talk was Nintendo’s “distruptive” strategy to bring new gamers to the table with their various software offerings on the DS and the Wii. Fils-Aime discussed Nintendo’s successes with the DS, relying on NPD data and demographic information from the Nintendo.com website to bolster his arguments. Sales numbers indicate that without the Nintendo DS, year-over-year sales are down 8%, but including the DS numbers in the mix boosts those figures to an 8% growth. Nintendo is starting to see successes with their marketing strategy to reach the non-traditional gamer. This is extending towards the marketing plan for the Wii; Fils-Aime believes that once Nintendo gets the Wii-mote into a consumer’s hands, “we’ve got a sale.”
Read More | Gamasutra
Gallery: Reggie Talks Disruption In Montreal
Nintendo Shows Off Wii, DS At AARP Event
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo is apparently serious about courting gamers outside of the typical age demographic. The New York Times is reporting that Nintendo had a booth at the AARP’s annual Life@50+ event. While attendees had opportunities to participate in activities and workshops targeted at the 50+ demographic, Nintendo probably stood out from the rest of the exhibitors. While it is unclear whether Nintendo will actually have any traction in this demographic, the company does seem to be actively pursuing untapped markets.
Read More | New York Times
Gallery: Nintendo Shows Off Wii, DS At AARP Event
DS-Xtreme Nintendo DS Flash Cart Reviewed
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo DS,
Maxconsole.net has taken an in-depth look at the DS-Xtreme flash cartridge for the Nintendo DS. The cartridge manufacturer claims that this is the first all-in-one solution for the Nintendo DS for homebrew development, movie and music playback, and game backups in a package that fits within the DS cartridge slot. Other implementations have either required users to have some kind of PassMe device, or would use a combination of the DS and the GBA slots on the DS to function. Many devices have required game patching to allow cartridge backups to run. The DS-Xtreme offers plug-and-play functionality with 4 gigabits of RAM (512 megabytes) in a small form-factor. Maxconsole’s review finds that the DS-X claims are generally true, and only really dings this solution for the inability to expand the internal memory, the slightly high price and the lack of a manual. Overall, this offering appears to be a homebrew developer’s dream come true.
Read More | Maxconsole
Gallery: DS-Xtreme Nintendo DS Flash Cart Reviewed
Glitches Slip Into Pokemon Diamond, Pearl
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo DS, Role Playing Games,
Nintendo of Japan has announced that Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl for the Nintendo DS have a “rare” bug that causes the came to malfunction in certain situations and possibly cause the loss of save date, according to GameSpot. A couple of workarounds have been posted to the official Japanese Pokemon website, and apparently, patches will be issued through Nintendo DS Download stations in Japan.
This glitch should be fixed by the time the game hits American shores, but this is the latest in a series of issues that have been found in Nintendo DS games. First, Amaze Entertainment, developers for Lego Star Wars 2 for the Nintendo DS admitted that the first batch of the game released had significant bugs, and later batches have slipstreamed in fixes. Then, it was revealed that Bubble Bobble Revolution had a huge bug that prevented users from finishing the game. Luckily, a series of horrible reviews for the game probably prevented many gamers from purchasing that title. Now, one of Nintendo’s highest profile titles has issues. It is hard to draw conclusions based on issues found in three separate development teams and publishers, but there does seem to be an overall rise in issues making their way to consumers across all platforms.
Read More | GameSpot
Gallery: Glitches Slip Into Pokemon Diamond, Pearl
Another Special Edition DS Lite
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Hardware, Nintendo DS,
Japan gets another limited edition Nintendo DS in November, this time the bundle is a special edition pink DS tied with the release of Love and Berry for the console. The limited edition console will hit stores on November 22, and will likely sell out that day. The bundle will sell for 23,730 Yen ($200 US). The arcade game Oshare Majo: Love and Berry and its related collectible cards have been popular in Japan, but the games have not really penetrated the US market. Still, this is one more limited edition Nintendo DS that will drive more sales in Japan, while the US hasn’t yet seen anything beyond the new DS colors.
Read More | Game Watch Japan
Gallery: Another Special Edition DS Lite
Bubble Bobble Broken on DS
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo DS, Screenshots,
**Warning: Extreme Shaky-cam video above**
Go Nintendo has discovered some bad news for all of those gamers out there that bought Bubble Bobble Revolution for the DS. No, it’s not JUST that it’s a terrible game (IGN gave it a 3.5 out of 10, though they noted that the core gameplay is still there). The next big piece of bad news is that the all copies of the game have a huge, game-destroying bug. The bug? When you get to level 30, you should expect to see a boss to battle that will let you progress further in the game. Trouble is, the boss never appears - not ever. So until you decide to reset your DS and/or throw the cartridge out the window, you’ll be stuck. IGN notes that there is a cheat code to skip this level and progress further in the game, but really guys - couldn’t your playtesters at least make it through the full game once? See the shaky-cam video above showing a player sitting around in level 30 and just waiting…..
Read More | Go Nintendo
Gallery: Bubble Bobble Broken on DS
Analysts Talk Latest NPD Data
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360,
The latest NPD data showed strong September sales growth; 38% over 2005. Nintendo and the DS showed strong growth, and the “next generation” transition doesn’t seem to have hurt the industry as much as expected. But hidden in the NPD data are some interesting points that various analysts have started to dissect. GameDaily reports on analysis from Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities, and Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel. Pachter sees the PS2 growth as a good sign, with software sales up 12 percent compared to last year. But the original Xbox has been fading fast. As one looks at the numbers, it appears that the Xbox 360 is completely cannibalizing the original Xbox user base. The Xbox 360 seems to be pushing better than expected software sales, a good thing for Microsoft.
Still, things don’t appear to be completely rosy in the Xbox 360 camp. Jeetil Patel feels like the Xbox 360 is underperforming. Tracking the Xbox 360 versus the original Xbox’s sales path seems to indicate that the Xbox 360 has moved fewer net units than the original Xbox at this point in the console life cycle; the lack of units during Microsoft’s holiday launch last year really set the company back. In addition, NPD data has the total Xbox 360 sell through at approximately 2.7 million units. Japan adds only a fraction to that number, with well under 200,000 units sold through in that territory. An optimistic projection for the Xbox 360 in the rest of the world might match the US total. At this point, it is starting to look like Microsoft’s projections of a 10 million unit head start by the time the Playstation 3 launches was extremely aggressive. With probably just over six million Xbox 360 consoles moved worldwide to date, Microsoft would have to nearly double their worldwide sales in October and November to match their goals before Sony’s November launch of the Playstation 3.
Read More | GameDaily BIZ
Gallery: Analysts Talk Latest NPD Data
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