The price of early adoption: Nintendo cutting 3DS to $170

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Apart from the dizzy spells, the biggest criticism of Nintendo’s 3DS has been the price. At $250, the handheld game system costs more than some home game consoles, including Nintendo’s own Wii. But the price of the 3DS will be dropping to $170 on Aug. 12, according to an announcement today from the company’s Redmond-based Nintendo… Read More…

Xbox 360 still tromping all over the U.S. console market

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June was a down month for the U.S. video-game industry overall, but not for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 –which turned in its sixth straight month atop the console market, with 507,000 consoles sold, according to NPD Group statistics cited by the company today. Microsoft has seen a boost from the release of the Kinect motion sensor… Read More…

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 rules the U.S. console market, again

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In a down month for video games, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 continued to buck the trend in May, according to new data out this afternoon. Microsoft sold 270,000 Xbox 360s in the U.S. in May, up 39 percent over the same month last year, according to data compiled by the NPD Group market research firm. The Microsoft… Read More…

GeekWire Podcast: Amazon’s strategy, Apple’s iCloud, and Nintendo’s crazy new controller

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we recap a big week in tech news — including Jeff Bezos at the Amazon.com shareholders meeting; Apple’s Steve Jobs at the Cupertino City Council; and Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo at the E3 video-game convention. Then we’re joined by journalist Glenn Fleishman to talk about the latest from Apple, including… Read More…

Sony’s new PS Vita handheld: $249 WiFi, $299 3G, on AT&T

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Sony this evening unveiled the official name for the successor to its PlayStation Portable. Dubbed the PlayStation Vita, the new handheld will launch later this year, with a WiFi version retailing for $249 and the 3G model going for $299. The company made the announcement at the E3 video-game convention in Los Angeles. There were… Read More…

Apple, Xbox set to battle for attention of tech world

onemorethings

It’s hard to remember a week with so many big tech companies staging so many potentially big announcements. It kicks off at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time Monday  morning with Microsoft’s annual Xbox news conference at the E3 video-game convention in Los Angeles. Half an hour later, Steve Jobs & Co. will take the stage for… Read More…

Platform or not, Microsoft’s Xbox business is booming

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Next week is the big E3 video-game convention, and Microsoft’s Xbox team this morning kicked off the competitive jockeying by releasing a new slate of statistics to demonstrate the momentum behind its Xbox 360 console and Xbox Live online service. Xbox Live now has nearly 35 million active members, the company says, and the Xbox 360… Read More…

Nerd Notes: Sony Vaio goes gold, it’s hip to be geek and an alien scares a kid

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Seattle Retro Gaming Expo is going on this weekend at Hotel Deca in the UD.  And don’t even think about missing the Nerdcore and chiptunes concerts at Pink Gorilla Games. How do you take your Sony Vaio S? Brown with a shot of gold? Google gets down with wind power and invests $55 mil in… Read More…

Sony to PlayStation users: We’re back, we’re sorry, now please change your password

kazhirai

Well, at least they got it back online before E3. After more than three weeks of downtime following an online attack, Sony this afternoon announced that it’s starting to restore its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. Users logging back in will be prompted to change their passwords, just one of a series of new security… Read More…

Redbox getting into video games, like for reals this time

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Coming soon to the front stoop of your local 7-Eleven: Master Chief and Mario. Redbox, the movie-rental subsidiary of Bellevue-based Coinstar, is rolling out video games to more than 21,000 locations across the U.S., starting in June. The move actually isn’t a surprise, given that Redbox has been testing game rentals in 5,000 locations for… Read More…

Nerd Notes: Tattooed teeth, the battleshoe and a Borderlands proposal

Battleshoe via Boing Boing

Eric Schmidt interviews Tina Fey at Google HQ. Highlights include Tina telling Eric he would be the kind of guest star that would “keep 30 Rock’s ratings low”. She also mentions that “computers” are among the high tech gadgets she uses. The elusive white iPhone 4 goes on sale tomorrow. If you want your phone to match… Read More…

PlayStation Network outage actually massive theft of personal info

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Sony this afternoon disclosed that an “unauthorized person” hacked into its PlayStation Network online gaming system and obtained personal information about users of the system. The company had previously said that an external intrusion had forced it to shut the system down, causing a high-profile outage over the past week. But today the news got… Read More…

Wii sequel in 2012: Can Nintendo top PS3, Xbox 360?

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In the process of announcing its latest financial results this morning, Nintendo confirmed that it plans to release the successor to its hit Wii game console in 2012, after previewing the new system at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this June. The company, which has its North American HQ in Redmond, gave no further… Read More…

Xbox 360 on top of U.S. console market, again

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Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console sold 430,000 units in the U.S. in March, up 28 percent from the same month a year ago, according to data released today by the NPD Group market research firm. That makes it the top-selling console in the U.S. for nine out of the past 10 months, according to NPD. The… Read More…

Microsoft unveils new Xbox hardware … for game developers

xdksidecar

  Microsoft today announced a new piece of Xbox hardware that could make Xbox 360 games better, in the long run. But don’t look for it in stores. It’s a new version of the Xbox Development Kit (XDK) that outside developers use to create games for the console. Microsoft, competing with Sony’s PlayStation 3 for… Read More…

Xbox 3D? Job listings tip Microsoft’s hand

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Nice catch by PC World this morning, digging up a series of job posts on LinkedIn that show Microsoft staffing up the Xbox team responsible for “next generation console architectures” — which translates into a successor to the Xbox 360, or an evolution of it. What really caught my eye wasn’t the fact that Microsoft… Read More…