Tagged: sony

Nintendo needs new franchises for rebound

It’s not the first time I doubted Nintendo. Recent sales have plummeted for the Japanese video game maker. Year on year sales show increases for Microsoft and Sony but Nintendo is seeing a -30% shift. Especially worrisome trends are that the handheld sales are decreasing for both Sony and Nintendo. Apple must be gaining a lot of market share as Nintendo has never had negative year on year handheld sales figures since the first DS was introduced.

Even the diehard Nintendo fans admit, there just haven’t been anything ‘new’ from Nintendo for a while now. The X and Y generation have gotten older and as they mature the need for more mature rated games are a must! Not saying Mario needs to start slaying some vampires but a new franchise would not hurt.

For pete’s sakes, just release Nintendo 3DS already and stop the bleed! If you have some Nintendo stocks, now may be the time to diversify.

bitmob.com

vgchartz.com

No more floppy disks

Honestly I didn’t know anybody who still uses a floppy disk. But Sony, one of the major floppy makers is killing the division in Japan come March 11, 2011. Apparently outside of Japan it already ceased shipping, besides India that is.

mainichi.jp

Apple iMac refresh soon, with Blu-ray?

Couple of rumors floating around the web. One is regarding iTunes’ support for Blu-ray. The other is the new iMac refresh.

There will be two major features for the new iMac. Apple of course will never tell you what they are. But they sort of revealed it for the fanboys with this quote:

One of those features is said to have long been on the wish-lists of many Mac users while the other is expected to cater to the semi-professional audio/video crowd.

This is very vague. But the number 1 thing on every Mac users’ wish-list has got to be Blu-ray support. While the other may be a faster FireWire? Who knows! Both features may have to do with Blu-ray. Native playback for the average joe and encoding for the semi-pros.

I would actually call this rumor to be accomplish-able! Fanboys rejoice. Because licensing cost for the blue format just became much easier. Sony, Philips and Panasonic issued a joint statement regarding a new licensing structure for hard media. Now you can pay 1 fee to license all 3 major formats. I can see Apple and others jumping on this, very quickly.

I do wish Apple would reconsider the position of iTunes though. It is becoming a jack of all trades yet Apple still names it i-’TUNES’. Last I checked besides music iTunes also does the syncing to your iPhone, managing your iPhone apps, rent and buy HD movies, create ringtones, download audio and video Podcasts. Really, it should be renamed iMedia…or something similar.

I would like to see the iPhone sync to be handled by iSync. After all that’s what iSync was designed to do! iTunes can be renamed to something like iMedia and handle all of your media library. Or repurpose iTunes to be a single function under an umbrella of iMedia.

Well Steve, here’s a freebie! The way I’d like to see it happen is this:

  • Main library organizer: iMedia
  • Photos: iPhoto
  • Music: iTunes
  • Movies: iMovie
  • Playback and encoding: QuickTime

Sort of reminds you of Windows Media Player doesn’t it? Well I think Microsoft got it right! They just need native support for DVD and Blu-ray. It’s a pity Windows 7 doesn’t have native Blu-ray support.