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Nintendo sees next opportunity for Wii success in Latin America, Eastern Europe
"We will continue to sell the Wii," Nintendo America president and CEO Reggie Fils-Aime told investors today in a Q&A followup to the company's big Wii U event in New York City. "In the US, the Wii has sold about 40 million units. We believe that there continues to be an opportunity with the Wii." However, where Fils-Aime sees the most opportunity may not be where you expect. "I'm responsible for Canada, and Latin America as well," he said. "We think there's opportunity in both of those markets, especially Latin America." The Wii is currently offered by Nintendo in North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe, but not Latin America. The Wii ranges from $140 to $250, depending on what it comes with. "You can reach price points, you can reach consumers that, candidly, we won't be able to reach with the Wii U. That's gonna continue to be an opportunity," he said. Fils-Aime and Nintendo also have their eyes on Eastern Europe. "On a global base, certainly there are markets in Eastern Europe. There are a number of other markets where if Wii has an attractive price point, it'll do well." He also stood behind the console continuing to sell in its currently available markets alongside the Wii U after the new console launches this November. "We do believe there's still opportunity for the Wii, and we will continue to sell the Wii side-by-side for some period of time." Unsurprisingly, he didn't say exactly how long Nintendo is planning that support, nor would he say if we should expect a price drop for the aging console, but if we had to guess, we'd say "The Wii will drop in price" and "soon."
'Redemption' appears to be Crytek's canceled PS3, Xbox 360 game
Art director Eric Cochonneau worked at Crytek from 2005 to 2009, during which time he was "responsible for the art direction on an undisclosed AAA title for Xbox 360 and PS3," and not many other games, according to his resume. That in mind, Cochonneau's portfolio shows off a large batch of detailed screenshots and concept art for a canceled PS3 and Xbox 360 game called Redemption.Redemption appears to be a forest-bound, gun-loaded romp featuring scary men and a young girl as a companion character. It's set in eastern Europe, if the cars are anything to judge by. The main character, a surly middle-aged man, has a custom pistol and his enemies have an arsenal of high-powered weaponry.While the characters are all in concept stages, the environments are at "visual benchmark" stages, complete with 3D renders of the game's water particle effects.We've contacted Crytek for more information about Redemption. Check out the entire gallery for yourself at Cochonneau's portfolio.
Estonian Hackers target iTunes users in 'Clickjacking' ring
Wired has an interesting report on a clickjacking scheme that hijacked prominent websites including iTunes and the IRS. The scheme was run by six Estonians and one Russian operating out of Eastern Europe. The team created several fake companies, including a bogus advertising agency, which were paid for each click on an advertisement or a visit to a website. The criminals then setup a network of malware infected computers that hijacked internet links. The malware, called DNSChanger, would modify the DNS settings of infected computers and redirect them to a DNS server controlled by the criminals. This DNS server would then bring infected users to websites that would pay the suspects for each visit. Infected users visiting iTunes, for example, would be directed to www.idownload-store-music.com and the suspects would be paid for each visit. The malware infected 4 million computers worldwide and a half million in the US. The scheme was in operation for almost four years and netted the criminals over US$14 million before they were caught.
Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition gets blinged out with 1GHz processor and gold-plated bod
Searching for the perfect accessory to your gold lamé hot pants, gold tooth and gold pinky ring? Then look no further than the Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition. This hunk of sparkly splendor is basically a Series 40 C3-01 Touch-and-Type feature phone with a fancy 18 carat gold topcoat and an upgraded 1GHz processor. Less impressive on the inside, this gilded ringer is packing a quadband GSM radio, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 2.4-inch QVGA touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera and a microSD card slot. Since it's a made in Finland, it's got Nokia Messaging for email and IM, Nokia Communities for Facebook and Twitter, the new Nokia S40 browser and the Ovi Store, obvi. This ultimate feature phone is available primarily in Eastern Europe and the Middle East for a price of €220 ($320) -- but is there really a price on looking fresh?
Conan will start speaking Russian later this year
Funcom today announced a partnership with huge Russian developer/publisher 1C Company to localize Age of Conan for the Russian-speaking market. All text and voices in the game will be translated to Russian, and 1C will provide customer support and community services to the Russian community. There will also be a Russian server. This is all due in Q4 of this year.The English language version of the game has already been released in Eastern Europe, and it's done pretty well. All the marketing hype quotes in the press release stress that the game will be a massive success when available in the native tongue of the region. We're not going to make any predictions about that, but this is probably good news either way if your native language is Russian and you're already playing the game.
Earthrise newsletter introduces dev team and their influences
Masthead Studios has released the second newsletter for their upcoming sci-fi MMO Earthrise. As with their first newsletter, it's full of hyperlinks to images and audio related to the game, however there are a few new additions this time around. We've read about the game itself in recent months, but until now little has been known about the people behind the scenes who are working to make Earthrise a reality. The newsletter features an introduction to the members of the Earthrise development team at Masthead Studios in the form of a short Q&A for each developer. Each of the devs discusses what brought them to work on the project, their influences, and what they do at Masthead Studios to further the creation of Earthrise. There's also screenshots of a new area on Enterra called The Nest and a hyperlinked recap of Earthrise's media coverage in the last month. But the real focus of the Earthrise newsletters is on the community, and a number of issues are showcased in the latest iteration.
Mythos bids farewell to Bangladesh
Farewell, Bangladesh. The Mythos closed beta was not made for you. And best wishes to Japan. Really, though, the Mythos closed beta was meant for North American audiences, and we have discovered that North America is not where you are. So we must say ciao to China as well. We're about to open up the beta to far more people, and those of you in Eastern Europe and Asia just won't be getting the kind of localized experience we really want to provide. Even though English is your official administrative language, we must say so long, Singapore. We can't have you on American servers when we're shopping Mythos to overseas partners, and thus, we are leaving Lithuania.While the news that Flagship Studios' Mythos is drawing very near to open beta is good news, the reaction on the Mythos forums has been muted disappointment. Some wonder why the non-English speaking countries of Western Europe were allowed to remain in the beta; others wonder if this decision had something to do with the gold farmers who flocked to Mythos as they flock to all MMOs. We prefer to feel that their last listed reason, that they are looking for a publisher in these regions, is the real one, and that there will be news of localized versions of Mythos in the near future.
Knock comrade and enter
Turbine announced today that The Lord of the Rings Online, already available in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, will soon be available in Russia and Eastern Europe. This is something they hinted at in last week's dev chat and will be part of a larger roll out of the game into new territories this year including the previously announced partnership in Korea. LotRO Russia will be handled by Moscow based IT Territory which develops its own games as well as publishes titles from other companies.
Report: next-gen developers turn to outsourcing, immediate future is bleak
A new report published by Screen Digest exposes the growing trend of outsourcing game development to low-cost specialists in Eastern Europe and South Asia. The report estimates that 60% of game developers currently outsource their projects and predicts that these companies will spend $1.1 billion on outsourcing this year, with that figure rising to $2.5 billion by 2010. Outsourcing is typically used for art and animation, but the supply of capable providers is growing thin. According to the study, within the next few years, demand will exceed quality resources, forcing higher costs and fewer games. However, as new media companies gradually enter the market, the games industry will ultimately benefit.
