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Etrian Mystery Dungeon plots odyssey to Americas in 2015
The Etrian Odyssey and Mystery Dungeon crossover is confirmed for the Americas, with Atlus publishing in spring 2015. Titled Etrian Mystery Dungeon, the 3DS mesh of RPG questing and roguelike dungeons is due on retail shelves and the eShop with a $40 price tag. Along with today's announcement, Atlus revealed some details on what to expect from its latest marriage of series. Etrian Odyssey fans can level up heroes through familiar skill trees and "up to 10 classes" that include Landsknecht and Runemaster, before taking on dungeons in four-man parties. Meanwhile, Mystery Dungeon aficionados will be accustomed to the series' randomly generated, loot-stuffed dungeon crawl. As for the perspective, the roguelike wins out on that count; Etrian Mystery Dungeon goes with Spike Chunsoft's top-down, third-person perspective rather than Etrian Odyssey's traditional first-person view.
Diablo 3 players in the U.S. region can now use the Real-Money Auction House
The Real-Money Auction House is now accessible to the Americas via Battle.net balance or approved payment services for some currencies. The U.S. dollar, Australian dollar, and the Mexican peso are all supported, with the EU region and more currency from the Americas to be implemented soon. The long-delayed RMAH will now allow players to purchase and sell in-game items using their region's currency. Your home game region will affect which RMAH you will have access to, so if you have created characters to play outside the country registered to your Battle.net account, you will not be able to use the RMAH for those characters. Only equipment such as armor and weapons is available on the RMAH at this time. Commodities will be added at a later date. In some cases, items may be held for processing. Most items purchased will be available immediately, however. Using the Battle.net Balance for your Real-Money Auction House transactions requires that you have an authenticator or mobile authenticator on your account. Furthermore, if you choose to use PayPal (not available in all regions), you must use the Battle.net SMS Protection feature. To access the RMAH, go to your Campaign Screen in Diablo III and select Auction House. Then press the button that shows your region's currency. You can toggle back and forth between the gold AH and the Real-Money one. The entire announcement from Blizzard is after the break.
Sharp nearing 1 million big-screen TV sales in North America, expanding global market
Sharp Corporation claims they may top 1 million big-screen televisions (60 inches or above) sold in North America alone by March of next year, and expects growth the next fiscal year. With a stronger hold on the Japanese market then its competitors, the company is expanding overseas to bolster competition and avoid Asia's current market forecast -- a projected $6 billion decline in LCD sales by 2015. According to Kozo Takahashi, head of the American operations division, big-screen purchases in the United States are set to triple this upcoming year despite a declining trend in the North American market. While audio visual equipment accounts for more than half of Sharp's revenue, the company sees the need to market its other products more aggressively in the Americas to remain globally competitive.
JVC merging US business lines
Nary a day goes by without belt-tightening news, and now JVC is finding ways to cinch things up. Fresh off its strong CES rollout that covered the bases with LCD TVs, Blu-ray players, camcorders and HTIBs, JVC Americas is undergoing some restructuring. In all, four JVC companies are being merged in the US -- the JVC Company we're most familiar with that sells consumer A/V gear, JVC Mobile (car products), JVC Professional and JVC Service and Engineering. That's a lot of streamlining, and sadly, we don't expect any resulting "redundancies" will be long for trimming once the official April 1 merge date hits.
Analyst: U.S. Galaxy sales a 'borderline failure'
var digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/nintendo_wii/Analyst_U_S_Super_Mario_Galaxy_sales_a_borderline_failure'; Having already suffered from lower-than-expected sales in Japan, we thought Super Mario Galaxy fared better in the U.S., where it shifted 500,000 copies in its first week. Indeed, Nintendo was happy to crow about the records the game set, pointing out that Galaxy was the best-selling Mario title ever in its first week, as well as the strongest one-week debut of any Wii game to date.But look, here comes RealMoney.com columnist Michael Comeau to spoil the party. Despite describing the game as "the best $50 I've spent this year on a videogame," Comeau argues that more should have been expected from Galaxy in raw commercial terms, and then compares it (unwisely, in our humble opinion) to the opening week sales of Halo 3.
