Nintendo has raised its DS shipment forecast to around 20 million units. This is after their net profits rose by more than 48 percent during the first half of this financial year. GamesIndustry.biz reports that profits for the six month period ending September 30, was at 54.35 billion Yen, up from 36.6 billion a year previously. Revenues were up by almost 70 percent, while operating profit more than triple to 67.11 billion Yen.

Nintendo attributed this rise to the global sales of the DS. wow, big surprise. Anyway, 10.9 million units were sold during the first half of the year, up from 3.57 million units during the same period last year.

Because of this growth in sales, Nintendo has increased its forecast by around 3 million. They now proudly say that they ll sell 20 million units by the end of the financial year. The forecast for Wii sales remains at 6 million consoles and 17 million games by the end of the financial year.

Every thing looks bright from Ni...

They say that the Wiimote is supposed to provide us an avenue for new and innovative console gaming experiences. Given how the Wiimote is supposed to work, the "innovative" control scheme makes immediate sense to gamers for games like Red Steel or Wii Sports where your in-game avatar actually waves stuff around. But how about old school styled games; like say Metal Slug? How will the Wiimote work for that?

Yeah we know, we can hear your answers now, we all saw that Wii-experience commercial where a young lady was making Mario jump by flicking the wiimote up and down - a motion a bit foreign to button pressing experts, and could possible take some getting used to. Of course in games like old school Mario, the commands are a bit limited so the "learning time" is a quick.

In SNK Playmore's Metal Slug, you jump around, crouch, swing your gun around, shoot down enemies, throw grenades... you get the picture. So what are the exact "motions" for those actions? Click on play ...

MAZDASPEED3 will now be included in EA's Need for Speed: Carbon car line-up. We won't be surprised, really, as this is all part of EA's campaign with major gaming retailers around the world to boost the NFS: Carbon title sales. EA has in fact joined forces with Channel M, EB Games, and Gamestop to set out a fierce marketing campaign for NFS: Carbon all over North America.

The campaign will include exposing players to Mazda in-games, raffled pre-orders at EB Games and Gamestop where gamers can win a real MAZDASPEED3 car, mall tournaments, parties, and a Las Vegas championship where the winner gets a chance to win his/her own MAZDASPEED3 as well.

The game will be available for retail (and download for mobile) on November 1 onwards in the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC, and mobile.

Curious about the speed and stats of the MAZDASPEED3? This baby is actually one of the quickest and fastest front-wheel drive cars in the world. A lightweight car...

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
If implanting employees with RFID chips violates practical HR policies, and rolling out eagle-eyed drones to monitor defensive behaviors seems a bit too intrusive, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are hoping its smart surveillance system can lend a hand in detecting that pent-up rage. The "computer vision system" can reportedly analyze human movements as they occur, and distinguish between "friendly behaviors such as shaking hands, and aggressive actions like punching, pushing," or launching pocket rockets. The hope is that this creation will make the oh-so-platitudinal jobs of security guards even less demanding by alerting those on duty of violent fits automatically, curing the problem of sleeping through a battle royale in the east parking deck. Developers created the baseline by breaking down CCTV films and "examining the interplay of different clusters of pixels in order to classify interactions between individuals." The aptly-dubbed ...

If you're a Marvel fan, and you've always wanted to pitch in your ideas on how the stories of the X-Men characters should go, then this might just be your chance, as an opportunity to have lunch with the man behind the creation of about half of the Marvel Universe is up for grabs. That, and a Wii, and a copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, all courtesy of the friendly people over at Activision.

So, how do you grab that one-on-one with Stan Lee over coffee and sandwiches? Simple, just head on over to the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance MySpace page, and add them as your friend, and you instantly become qualified to join the contest. Besides this contest though, the MySpace account also contains several movies, a screenshot gallery, lots of wallpapers, as well as free code which you can use to customize your MySpace account with, using the Ultimate Alliance theme.

Better start logging on to your MySpace account because who knows, maybe you'll finally get your chance to sa...

Red Steel is one of Ubisoft's big launch titles for Wii (Americans can expect it November 19; it'll be out early December for the rest of the world), and its multiplayer mode has now been revealed in the form of a trailer. The trailer showed four people ("excellent" acting there, hehe) "playing" Red Steel.

The katana-geeks here were disappointed that it only showed the firearms side of the gameplay (as you know, Red Steel features both sword-fighting and shooting). But it's a good video.

Red Steel was one of the first games for the Wii to be heavily marketed, and a lot of news was released: at the time, we were impressed by the immersive nature of the controls - if you twist your controller, your weapon twists as well - and this trailer shows that.

We didn't see any AI here, so we're not sure if you can have multiplayer mode with bots thrown in (for added fun), because bots would be nice if you're a noob and still trying to get the hang of the Wiimote (it is ...

If you're into gaming and vampires, you've probably played at least one Castlevaniagame. Yeah, we're guessing you were squealing with glee when familiar faces showed up, like the ever-famous vampire honcho himself, Dracula.

Well, the 1986 game from Konami has gone a long way from the good old NES to the DS. Will it, by chance, trace its way to next-gen consoles in the near future? Wired recently had an interview with no less than the Castlevania man himself, Koji Igarashi (read: the man in charge of Castlevania), and maybe we can get a hint or two regarding Castlevania's future.

For starters, let's take a look at what he has to say about it:

We'll have to just watch what's going on for a few months, or maybe a year. I'm currently wondering which is the right next-gen platform for Castlevania.
So, we might see a next-gen Castlevania, after all. Of course, details regarding the specific console are still pretty dim, but it's glad to know that they're consi...

Okay folks, it's polarization time. Since we hang around, drinking beers and monkeying with gadgets all day and spontaneously erupt into typeage from time to time, it's our job to keep our fingers on the pulse of what's sizzlin' and what's fizzlin'.
While you're working away at your worthwhile jobs, we'll continue sorting out the coolness from the lukewarm for you. Of course, the following list is full of half-baked opinions, but they're probably right. Read along, get angry or applaud, but here it is, in honor of Picasso's birthday yesterday (10/25/06): The Old In/Out.
Fizzlin' Sizzlin'
iPod Zune
Core 2 Quad Core
Plasma LCD
Factory-Installed GPS Portable GPS
KRZR iPhone
HD DVD Blu-ray
Physical Media BitTorrent
WiFi EV-DO Rev A
PS3 Wii
Bikini Boobkini
Forty more, after the jump!


Prints LED Picture Frames
Firefox 2 IE7
Exploding Liquids Exploding Batteries...

Nintendo's success just keeps on growing like, well, like mushrooms and Goombas and pizza dough! Mario and Luigi would be so proud to know that Nintendo reports a 72 growth in fiscal second-quarter profit on DS sales and the latest Super Mario title. Here's an idiot's guide to the Bloomberg report:
Nintendo sold more DS units than they expected.They made a ton more money than they expected.
They're going to try to sell even more DS units.They're upgrading their financial targets.
In other words, they're not going to sit on their Goombas and enjoy the ride. They're going to keep pushing:
Increased targets. They're going to try to ship 20 million DS units this year. Before, their goal was 17 million. They can do it: they ship 100,000 units per week, and Bloomberg reports that these are still getting sold out in Tokyo.Wii. As you all know, until March 31, Nintendo's trying to move out 6 million Wii units and 17 million games.Year-end target. Nintendo's fiscal year ends Ma...

As many of you know, the Wii is having a world tour. It's hit Japan (naturally) and Australia. There were rumors that either the Australia or UK tour would be cancelled, but things look fine and beautiful. So, for our UK readers across the Atlantic (er, the "pond", as you so endearingly call it), here are the details of the Nintendo Wii tour. It looks like the Wii is hitting all the major population centers and then some.

For those in counties the Wii tour has ignored, you better start planning your itinerary. Christmas is coming, so why not give yourself and early treat and have some Wii-related fun?

Speaking of "Wii-related fun", you should plan how you're going to explain the "Wii" to all the older people who think you're being vulgar. "Mother, I want a Wii" and "Mother, the Wii's on the tele" still sound a bit off.

Finally, that hot-tempered Irish nun from my Catholic School is going to kill me if I don't mention that this "UK tour" involves more than the...