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George Harrison's solo catalog is available at most streaming services
If you enjoy listening to solo work from members of The Beatles, the library of options just got larger. The solo catalog of guitarist George Harrison hit most music streaming services today. This means that you'll be able to access the musician's tracks on the likes of Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play, Rdio, Spotify, Tidal and others, including albums like Living in the Material World. If you aren't familiar with Harrison's solo music, now's a good time to get acquainted. The newly-posted albums join those of former bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on streaming services, but the music of the group as a whole remains off limits there. To make things easy for you, we've embedded All Things Must Pass on the other side of the break. [Image credit: AP Photo/Brich]
Nintendo says they're making 1.8 million Wiis a month
Hey, if they are, we haven't seen any of them.Store shelves are barren, with only a fine film of dust to rest atop their usually proud selves. Online retailers often respond to requests to purchase a console with nothing more than a "404 - You're boned" or "Ha Ha." All searches for the console have come up fruitless, often leaving one in such a sad state that suicide is not only considered, but seen as a better fate.Well, apparently Nintendo has been manufacturing quite a bit of the beautiful white console that could. George Harrison, who is due to call it quits anytime now, said that the company is pumping out 1.8 million units a month, commenting "We're at a rate now worldwide of about 1.8 million Wiis produced every month, and that's going to sustain itself until we get on top of this." He adds that Nintendo analyzes supply distribution every few weeks, citing that it is an "embarrassment of opportunity."[Via 1UP]
Nintendo's Beth Llewelyn quits
Shake that tree, shake it and watch the Nintendo executives fall out and everything end up like people said it would. The latest person in the Nintendo executive culling is Beth Llewelyn, senior director of corporate communications at Nintendo of America, as she officially resigned today. Not only that, but Golin Harris' Julia Roether, guru of Nintendo's PR company in the States, also peaced-out. That sound you hear is Nintendo's PR department running around without a head. We now wait to hear Perrin Kaplan's exit cue.Although some less-than-charitable things can be said about the way Nintendo's PR was run up to this point, it could simply be the same issues as Sony had to deal with taking orders from Japan. Sony of America was starting to turn things around with Dave Karraker, but then he left after less than a year (we really miss Dave). We now wait and see who the replacements are. Will it be business as usual, or will Nintendo's PR alter dramatically?
George Harrison confirms his Nintendo retirement
It wasn't like we didn't see this one coming, but George Harrison has finally made his retirement from Nintendo official: He'll be leaving his post as Senior VP of Marketing in December, instead of making the move to San Francisco or New York with the rest of the marketing team that's getting kicked out of Redmond. Our guess is he just couldn't stand idly by while Nintendo snuck a fitness regimen into the unsuspecting homes of US citizens. Stand strong, George.[Via Joystiq]
George Harrison officially retires from Nintendo
We told you this would be going down at the end of July, now it seems it's finally happened: George Harrison, head of U.S. marketing for Nintendo, is leaving the company, effective at the end of the year. Harrison confirmed the news with Reuters, saying "I have confirmed to all employees that I will be leaving at the end of December and not making the move to California."Though he stopped short of giving a reason, it was rumored in June that Harrison and other Nintendo VPs would be leaving the company to avoid moving from Washington to Nintendo PR's new homes in San Fransisco and New York. What's still unclear is what Harrison will be doing after he leaves the company, but after heading up marketing for a product that a couple of people have heard of, we doubt he'll have much trouble finding a gig.[Via CVG]
GameDaily says Harrison is retiring
Nintendo's George Harrison could be packing up his things and taking an early retirement, says GameDaily, as the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications apparently left an internal voice message declaring his intentions of never working again. Of course, he could have just meant he was leaving Nintendo to pursue another opportunity in the industry (or outside of it), but we can't possibly imagine anyone ever wanting to leave Nintendo. Seriously, why would he want to do that?Keep your eyes glued to Wii Fanboy for further news on this story as it develops.
GameDaily: Nintendo's George Harrison announces retirement
Hot on the heels that the Big N is looking for someone to fill a top marketing position, GameDaily BIZ is reporting that George Harrison, a senior Nintendo VP, will be retiring from the company, though he will help transition the sales and marketing team from Redmond to New York.According to "an industry source at a major publisher," Harrison, the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications for Nintendo, distributed a voice message at the company revealing his "early retirement." At this point, GameDaily is unsure if that means a retirement just from the House of Mario, or from games all together. Some of you may remember that Harrison's departure (along with Kaplan's and Beth Llewelyn's) was rumored by Game Informer in June. We wish the departing Harrison all the best.
Nintendo of America's George Harrison to retire
Though nothing's quite official yet, it looks like Nintendo of America's George Harrison is about to step down from his position as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications, according to an industry source, and as rumored last month. This could have something to do with NoA's move to Redwood City and New York, or just be coincidence, but either way it sounds like George is sticking around to help with the sales and marketing transition, and then bidding the big N adieu. The guy has been around since 1992, right after the launch of the SNES, and while he's never carried the kind of profile as the Regginator of late, it's hard not to notice the guy, walking around with a name like that. In related news, apparently Nintendo is advertising for job openings that sound eerily similar to Perrin Kaplan and Beth Llewelyn's, who had also been rumored to leave during the HQ shuffle.
Harrison: Hardware revision 'not out of the question'
Nintendo's SVP of Marketing and Corporate Communications, George Harrison, conducted an interview with GameDaily during E3 where he spoke on a number of subjects (seriously, this interview is long). What we were interested in hearing from the interview, however, was talk of a Wii revision to the hardware in the works. George, in expert fashion, manages to provide an "answer" to the question without really answering it.George doesn't completely dash our hopes of a bigger, badder Wii, though (we'd like more space to save our VC games, please!), stating "whenever we feel like it's time or have an upgrade, we'll do it, whether it's an improved screen for the handheld or slimmed down like the DS Lite – those types of things. So it's not out of the question on Wii, but we're not even to our second holiday yet, so it's kind of premature to talk about any revisions to the hardware itself." So, by that logic, we'll see a new Wii in 2009?
Game Boy name may be over and possible WiiWare in 2007
Nintendo marketing exec. George Harrison says the Game Boy name may be put to rest. The DS has been been successful enough that the company no longer needs to depend on the Game Boy brand name for future products. We always did wonder what happened to the next Game Boy.Harrison tells GameDaily.biz, "It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark." And so a name synonymous with many gamer's childhoods is buried. Oh well, it's not like the DS name has hurt Nintendo's bottom line.Curiously, Harrison also said Nintendo's WiiWare could be out in 2007. Actually the quote is kinda in reverse order. Harrison says, "It may not take until 2008. I've seen a couple of ideas that have already been generated even before we went public [with WiiWare]. Whether those are going to be ready or not, I don't really know." So, it pretty much hinges if the developers get their stuff in order. Only the next six months will tell who gets their WiiWare out first -- the quality of those games is a whole other issue.
Nintendo: We haven't heard of anyone leaving
Regardless of what we may have heard, it would seem that Beth Llewelyn (senior director of public relations), Perrin Kaplan (vice president of marketing and corporate affairs) and George Harrison (senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications) haven't decided to take severance pay from the company. Or, at least, they haven't told Nintendo they plan on leaving, as Pro-G found out when contacting Nintendo on some sort of confirmation regarding this mess. "In terms of the execs you name leaving we have not heard anything regarding that speculation (and it remains speculation) and we aren't commenting further on those rumours at this time," Nintendo commented. So, what does this all mean? Not much, right now. These top execs could still be leaving Nintendo, but we'll have to wait for official word from Nintendo before this matter is resolved.[Via Joystiq]
Has Sony failed to understand the casual gamer?
In a recent interview with GI.biz, Nintendo VP of marketing, George Harrison, said that Sony and Microsoft have both attempted to woo the casual gamer but both failed due to a lack of understanding of the casual gamer. Specifically, Harrison mentioned the Sixaxis as Sony's failure:"We can already see some of the things they've tried. For last year's E3, at the last minute, Sony rushed out their Sixaxis controller as an effort to respond to the Wii remote. We saw Microsoft roll out Viva Piñata as their killer app for the Pokemon set. And neither of those worked really well.It's true that Nintendo knows how to dominate a certain kind of casual gamer market, but it seems a bit disingenuous to be writing off the Sixaxis as a failed attempt to capture Nintendo's market share. Sony has never particularly positioned that motion-sensitivity of the Sixaxis as a lure to the casual gamer. They've marketed it as a feature that adds to existing games and allows you to do things you've never done before (see LAIR and Warhawk). It's true that they have utilized the motion sensitivity aspect of the controller to create more easily accessible games like Blast Factor, flOw and Super Rub-a-Dub, but unlike Nintendo, thats that's clearly not their whole focus.
Nintendo refutes Gamestop, states Wii shortages are unintentional
Well, obviously. George Harrison, Nintendo's senior VP of marketing and corporate communications, has rubbished a claim that Nintendo is intentionally constricting Wii supplies in order to bolster their next fiscal year, beginning April 1. This comes in response to Gamestop's chief operating officer, Dan DeMatteo, who opined yesterday that Nintendo had "intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year." "No, that's not at all the case," says Harrison in a phone call to Next Generation. The Nintendo executive goes on to explain that it's simply a matter of competition amongst Wii territories, with Japan and Europe being just as desperate for stock. "People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when." Of course, whether or not said decisions are "best" for consumers or for Nintendo's financial records is up for debate. The argument against managed scarcity has always been that making more consoles means making more money (duh!), though this critically underestimates the value of "buzz" and the strange culture that has formed around supposedly scarce items. Already, there's an impression among many that the European PS3 launch was a "failure", simply because the system failed to sell out and attain a level of unattainability. Increasing supply may net Nintendo more profits in the short run, but what sort of gain can you associate with being in the headlines? The Wii has already snagged two headlines in the last two days because it's notably in short supply, not because it's readily available and doing well.Managed scarcity does also not mean drying up the supply completely. Nintendo can sell a boatload of Wii's while still stopping short of satisfying demand and losing that hard-to-find status. If the company does decide to open the floodgates next month, they'll have lost nothing -- and the NPD sales results will show as much. Until then, just keep on asking for that Wii, implies Harrison. "Every retailer would want to have more [Wiis]. I think [DeMatteo's comments] may have been GameStop's way of trying to request more."
Nintendo's Harrison denies Wii hoarding accusation
George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing, apparently didn't appreciate the accusation from Gamestop COO Dan DeMatteo that Nintendo was strategically waiting until the start of the new fiscal year to ship out more Wiis. He countered with something that seems a lot less corporate cloak-and-dagger, and a lot more common sense: Nintendo is, in fact, selling a whole lot of Wiis in three regions, and that is why there's a perceived shortage.Harrison went on to speculate that DeMatteo's comments were an attempt to get some of the Wii supply diverted to Gamestop. You'd think he would have learned a lesson about such speculating from the very thing he's responding to, but perhaps we're expecting too much.[Via Game|Life]
Nintendo plays numbers game, wins!
Nintendo certainly struck the jackpot with their little dual-screened device, didn't they? With 21 million DS units having been sold worldwide, you can bet that the Japanese giant is enjoying every last penny spilling forth from the one-armed consumer. In the celebratory press release, Nintendo points out that what they've accomplished in under two years easily trumps the 1 million iPods Apple shifted in 19 months. Apparently, that equates to 23 DS systems sold per minute ever since the November 2004 launch.As you may vengefully recall, we accused Nintendo of having suspiciously puffy sleeves in our last game of marketing poker. You'll be happy to learn then that there are no such shenanigans here and that the numbers check out based on a 24-hour business day. We suspect that if the day were any longer, Nintendo would make such a huge amount of money that they'd be taken into a back room, sternly questioned by Joe Pesci and ... this casino allegory is going nowhere.
