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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch is reportedly set for February 6th (updated)
It looks as though it's finally happening. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket may have a launch date, according to Chris G. of NASASpaceflight.com. The rocket will launch no earlier than February 6th, with a window of 1:30 PM ET to 4:30 PM ET. There's a backup window on February 7th, just in case. We've reached out to SpaceX for confirmation.
Dell launching 7-inch Android tablet in 'next few weeks,' 10-incher to follow a few months later
Good news, folks. It's looking like the tablet pool will be enriched with another 7-inch contender, running Android, within only a few weeks. The Wall Street Journal cites Dell's Greater China President Amit Midha as saying that the 7-inch slate we witnessed Michael teasing a few short days ago will be with us "very, very soon." Reiterating earlier promises of a family of tablets, Midha claims there'll be "a whole slew" of new devices emerging from Dell's labs over the next 6 to 12 months, which will include 10-inch, 4-inch and 3-inch form factors. Android is confirmed as the OS on the 7-incher, but Windows will be making an appearance somewhere along the line as well. Plenty to look forward to, then.
CNN Money sees Wii launching as early as September [update 1]
The words of CNN Money's Chris Morris, which suggest a Wii launch in late September or early October, are certainly tantalizing and not entirely unrealistic. Getting the machine onto store shelves and into our loving, embarrassingly weak arms would give Nintendo a healthy lead on the PS3 and Microsoft's glut of holiday titles, not to mention the joy it would grant fans of intergalactic bounty hunters and pointy-eared archers. Morris cites an earlier analyst report by P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research which notes that Nintendo already began manufacturing final retail consoles on 21 June, providing ample time until a prospective September launch.Further evidence comes in the less sturdy form of past release dates of Nintendo consoles, with only the Gamecube missing an October or September release window. Of course, if the Wii launches worldwide immediately, one would expect a strategy similar to that of the DS launch -- that one happened in November as well. While it's not entirely unfeasible, Morris' suggestion is still swathed in speculation. With no details available on manufacturing, Nintendo may have simply started up the production line early (if they did so at all) to avoid launch shortages which plagued the Xbox 360 and are sure to plague Sony's machine.Unfortunately, it looks like the only words we can fully trust right now are the ones from official (and sober) Nintendo men and women.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!][Update 1: Nintendo has (predictably) put the kibosh on this one, with a spokesperson stating, "There's no change in our plan to release the console in the last quarter of this year."]
Rumor: 16 titles at launch
There's a list of Wii launch games traveling through the myriad computers, routers, cables and robotic gnomes that comprise the Internet, though it mostly amounts to a bunch of good guesses as opposed to official confirmations. No doubt obtained from retailers and not publishers, the list suggests that the following games will be available when Nintendo unleashes their Wii: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Wii Sports Red Steel Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam Madden NFL 2007 Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Metal Slug Anthology Trauma Center: Second Opinion Elebits Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Blitz: The League Rayman Raving Rabbids SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab Disney/Pixar's Cars Since most of these games were playable at E3, it's not too much of a stretch to think that they'd fall within the system's launch. However, this could be another case of that mysterious launch window marketing nonsense messing with our calendars and drawing a distinction between games that launch on day one and games that release shortly afterwards. Atlus told us specifically that Trauma Center: Second Opinion was a "launch window" game and if Activision is serious about Tony Hawk, Downhill Jam will be one too (because people, that game still needs a lot of work).
Revolution to launch with 20 titles?
Gamefront.de is reporting that Nintendo's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Elaborate Pie Charts, George Harrison, has stated (via an upcoming issue of Game Informer) that the Revolution will launch later this year with 20 games, a third of which will be Nintendo first-party titles. While that doesn't seem like an unlikely number, there are several reasons to be cautious about this somewhat vacuous information.Nintendo, much like Microsoft, has made a distinction in the past between launch day and launch window, a sneaky marketing move which often renders gamers unsure as to whether or not a game will be available on the day of the console launch or within the first few weeks of the new machine hitting stores. The difference between getting 20 games on launch day and getting 20 within the launch window (however long that is) is a fairly large one.The other point of interest revolves around the Virtual Console. If one considers a selection of Nintendo classics to be launch games (and why shouldn't you when the Xbox 360 launched with a bunch of current-gen ports?), surely the launch tally would be much, much higher than 20. A likely explanation is that Harrison was only referring to brand new Revolution titles (excluding Twilight Princess, of course), in which case 20 is more than enough to make us forget the Gamecube's meager launch selection. And no, Luigi's Mansion 2: Even More Sucking has not been confirmed as a Revolution launch title.[Via GamersReports]
