So I've been wary of this for a bit, but now I'm a little concerned on behalf of my cute little Wii, which looked like the horse that would smoke the others in the next-gen Preakness.
And then you have your darkest fears confirmed by something like this press release. Wow. I mean, really, wow. You almost have to work hard to have that big of a vapid gap in release schedule...
...so good thing everyone still seems to love Wii Sports. No one loves it more than this little guy though:
Well this was unexpected. A few days back, if you looked at Amazon's best sellers, you'd note that not only was the PS3 doing poorly, but it was getting spanked by the SNES?!? Man, Nintendo still has a yen-printing machine this many years out? Yikes.
On a heavier note, CVG does a fantastic job of asking the question I've been asking myself after my eyeballs go dry from 4-hour stints of playing Zelda on my Wii (40 hours in and still not finished!): is the novelty of the Wii wearing thin? And more importantly.... WHERE ARE THE GAMES? After I beat Zelda, I'm going to finish Wario and Elebits in about 3 hours each, and then what? Call of Duty? Done. Red Steel? Almost as crappy as Farcry. So.... um, Nintendo? Games please?
Now that the DS Lite has hit Korea, they've wasted no time in making some amazing skins available for the handheld. These are really beautiful, and if you're headed to Seoul I'll pay you back...
In other news around Southeast Asia: ever wonder where game company names come from? Well, JC Barnett has all your answers right here. Back to Korea, where despite years of shunning the Japanese-manufactured console market (for obvious reasons), there is a slow movement to embrace console gaming on the peninsula. Accordingly, given how tech-savvy the S. Koreans are, the big three game shops are gearing up for a new kind of war in the S. Korean gaming market.
Finally, despite the fact that it's typically a disturbingly peaceful place, Japan's crime news continues to be punctuated with exceptionally shocking and tragic murders, including this one describing how a man and his mother were murdered by a youth who was trying to obtain money to support his arcade gaming habit. Contrast this to the USA, where we have murders and gun violence galore, but despite the best efforts of many out-of-touch firebrands it's not always possible to link the violence to videogames. This was the case with the tragic Salt Lake shooting rampage, where the teen was found to have owned no console or computer games, and not to have played them much at all. Despite the fact that Jackass Thompson earlier speculated that the shooter played GTA...
Two little nuggets today. First off, I was thrilled to read that the most-anticipated Spore, if it ever emerges from Vaporware status, is coming to the Nintendo DS! And interesting aside on the DS - they're actually being back-imported into Japan to meet the demand, since they're region free and all that. They don't just eat all the fish and buy all their own DS Lites, now they're importing ours too! Man. That's consumerism with a purpose!
Oh happy happy day!!! Big ups to folks for actually listening in on those investor shareholder phone calls, since one revealed that Activision is bringing Guitar Hero to the Wii! Imagine what the motion sensing will allow for - cool Ax tricks and lord knows what else.
Yikes. It's like someone popped the lid on the Wii hacking party, and now people can't get enough. There's now a second Wii modchip en route, this one being of the "quicksolder" variety (no wires). The chip developer's website is quite sparse with details for now, but I'm frankly amazed at this second release.
So the first Wii mod chip was announced, and is purportedly on its way to resellers. While several reputablesites are listed as confirming its authenticity, I have be skeptical of the official YouTube video:
There's a tape in the VCR. So.....
Regardless, it's going to be a different game this time around. While the Dreamcast was split wide open courtesy of M$oft WinCE, and the PS, PS2 and Xbox were all successfully modded, none of them bore the same invaluable security device as the current "Next Gen" consoles:
The internet. My Wii connects to the net nightly, gets mail, checks for firmware upgrades, etc. Given what happened with the PSP once Sony caught on to homebrew apps running on their portable, I think that it's safe to say the modding community may have a more difficult challenge this time around. Similar to what Xbox modders faced when trying to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live, any next-gen console has the capability to download mod-checkers, execute them, and report back to the mothership, if the firmware is so coded. Provided Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft know what weakness the mod chips exploit, there should be a way to detect them and block their functionality, if not bricking a console altogether. Like the Dino Crisis startup scan on the PSOne, but constantly evolving.
In a way, it might end up being similar to viruses vs. anti-virus software. The irony being that the roles will be reversed - the gamer who mods their console is going to be fighting the software, not the virus!
Two little nuggets today. First off, I was thrilled to read that the most-anticipated Spore, if it ever emerges from Vaporware status, is 
