Invader Phlegm

Looks nice, but I think I'll pass.

Notion Ink's ADAM is much better, anyway, and is currently the "pad" to beat, in the tablet sector.

The fact that no one else, including Apple (correction, especially Apple), is even close to ADAM's feature set, is not only depressing, but also just screams of the "me too", copycat nature of the entire consumer electronics industry.

This time next year there will be a boat load of ADAM clones finally hitting the market, and Notion Ink will likely have moved on to their next big tablet innovation.

@Brother Unit No 4 And still Notion Ink's Adam, poos all over iPad . . . before and after the iPad premier in January.

What Engadget? No love for Notion Ink's Adam? For shame!!!

@CtrlBurn Yeah. Where is the option for holding out for a Tegra 2 tablet like the Notion Ink Adam?!

@custmmade You just keep telling yourself that, if you think it'll make you sleep better at night.

My favorite toy is easily my Xbox 360.

My GF thinks my favorite toy is her box, but frankly I think her box is a bit too high maintenance to play with multiple times daily. And my Xbox never tells me, "no" when I want to turn it on. Outside of the occassional RROD, my Xbox is revving to go, 24/7. Unlike my GF's box, which RRODs at least one week out of every month, and is offline any day she has a "headache".

Yep, my Xbox is certainly the better toy, and I love play with it using my analog sticks, night and day, seemingly to no end.

Price is certainly be an issue for Sony with the wand. One would like to think they would bundle at least a couple of these wands together, for the $50 you mention, but experience on how Sony has dealt with controllers this gen, suggests differently.

A Wii-mote already runs $40, and an additional $25 gets you the Wii MotionPlus which upgrades the Wii-mote to the same one-for-one type control that Sony's wand will deliver when it ships next year. Together, that's $65 for the Nintendo version of Sony's wand, so we can safely say that one Sony wand will likely cost in the same ballpark. So at $50 to $65 for a single wand, Sony may want to take yet another page from the Nintendo handbook, and bundle some cheap mini-game collection with a wand, ala the Wii Play bundle. The package of mini-games will certainly make the price of a single wand that much easier to swallow.

Then with Sony's wand, you still have to buy the Playstation Eye camera, and that is going to set you back another $40.

Interestingly enough, the Playstation Eye + EyePet bundle, is slated to hit retail next spring (in early April) for $60, suggesting that Sony has no plans to subsidize price of the camera. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider Sony is still has a long way to go, digging themselves out of the fiscal hole the PS3 has put them in to date. So unlike Microsoft who is actually making profit on their current-gen console, Sony is not in the best position on the planet to subsidize anything (which partially explains why PSP Go costs more than PSP 3000). So do not be surprised to see $100 Sony wand bundles packed with a single wand, a camera and a disc full of mini-games.

$100 for that package is not a bad value, but the rumor this article is reporting on, is the 3rd rumor (that I have heard so far) to surface from 'reliable' sources close to, or inside Microsoft, pointing out Microsoft's plans to sell Project Natal not only at a loss, but possibly as low as the sub-$50 price level ($49.99). Even without a bundle of mini-games, the technology and paradigm shift that Project Natal represents, is a steal at $50, and places it not only in the enviable position of making both Wii-mote and Sony wand look like dated tech, but at the price ($10 more than a Wii-mote; $50 less than a Sony wand bungle), it's definitely priced at a sweet spot to make anyone interested, seriously consider Project Natal as the option to spend their money on.

What really gets interesting however, is the options of bundling a low cost peripheral like Project Natal, with console hardware. The 360 Arcade SKU currently retails at $199.99 and has done so since September of 2008. Come September 2010 (two months before Natal is speculated to ship), it will be ripe for a $50 price drop. Now bundle that with a $50 Project Natal bundle, and for $199.99 Microsoft may finally have the hardware bundle they have needed all along to finally give Wii a run for it's money. Not saying that they will as there are other factors at play, just observing that if things fall into place like so, the 360 + Project Natal bundle will be retailing for the same price as the Wii. If given the choice of waggle control on a console that does not properly support their HDTVs, or 'next-gen' hands-free motion control on a console that supports HDTV, there is the possibility that Wii may lose it's appeal in the face of such competition.

If Wii sales remain strong, then Nintendo is not likely to lower price. And if the rumors are true of a new Wii model surfacing next spring (in Japan), then not only is a 2010 Wii price drop likely out of the picture, but there is the strong possibility of a Wii price hike to accommodate the introduction of the new model. If it works out like it has to date with each new DS update (DSLite, DSi, and DSi XL), then a newer version of Wii (potentially with an HDD or SSD for digital distribution and TV/movies/music streaming, plus a new Wii-mote with Wii Motion Plus standardized) early next year, could push recently slumping Wii sales, back up into the stratosphere. And then you are looking at Nintendo being in a position where they will not feel the need to reduce the price of Wii at all in 2010 - and rightfully so.

It definitely is looking more and more likely that we will be looking at direct face/off between a $200 Wii vs. a $200 Natal 360. It will certainly prove interesting at that point, to see which way the consumer base will head when posed with the question of brand loyalty to Nintendo, or option for the superior system and superior motion controller from a competing brand . . . both priced at the exact same price point. With rumor suggesting that Microsoft may take yet another page from Nintendo/Apple and market Project Natal in much the same way that Nintendo has been marketing Wii, things should definitely prove interesting next fall. With Microsoft aping Wii's marketing, I wonder just how many consumers will confuse the Natal 360 bundle with being a 2nd gen Wii?

Not only that, but playing the puny, watered downed audio inherent to MP3s and AACs.

@ Nin

That's the thing. Nintendo is not bringing out Wii 2 next year. Wii 2 would be an entire new system, that may or may not be B/C with the current machine.

What Nintendo is likely bringing out in 2010 (and again on my part, this is supposition, but supposition based on watching Nintendo's recent track record), is an updated version of the same old Wii that is already out. So say they add maybe a small HDD for streaming online content (movies, TV, music, etc.) from a Nintendo-branded online media store/service (like Nintendo is doing in Japan), and finally the ability to play games that render in 720p.

It's not an entirely new system with an entirely new development ecosystem (say like jumping from PS2 to PS3), but the exact same system, with a few new features added to the core experience (jumping from DS to DSL to DSi to DSi XL). And for the record, this is exactly the same thing Apple has been doing with iPhone since they brought it out. And this is exactly the same thing Nintendo has been doing with the DS since they brought it out. Same hardware; new features. And almost everyone who owned one of the older units, runs out and buys up the newer versions in record numbers as soon as they hit the market.

There is already a well established precedent that not only is this Nintendo's next move (they just have not announced it yet), but also that Nintendo will be wildly successful at doing it. True, having insider information on such a thing would be nice, but you know sometimes how you can really know a person or a thing, sometimes better than they know themselves. And you can anticipate what they are going to do next, simply because you have come to know them so well? Well, this is one of those occasions. Even without insider information, knowing that Nintendo has a new revision to Wii lined up for release to the masses in 2010, is almost like knowing that the sun is going to rise on a cloudy day. You do not have to actually see the sun rise, because all the clouds are in the way, but when the sun does rise, all the indications that is has risen (the cloudy sky just got brighter) are there all the same.

Here is the problem with that though, it would be a case of too little, too late.

Nintendo has spent the past two years on Wii, ignoring the core gaming demo. Even if today's low numbers were to spur Nintendo into a flurry of making games that appeal to core gamers, you are still looking at another 18 to 24 months of game development, before we'd see fruition of those new efforts. So we would be talking about halfway into 2011, before a slew of core gamer-centric titles would hit the system.

Meanwhile, with absense of core games from the system for such and extended period of time, the system has become so associated with the casual gaming demo, that no one even buys any of the core games which are beginning to surface on the system. So core games like Dead Space: Extraction, No More Heroes, MadWorld, etc. that developers were willing to take a risk and bring out on the Wii, simply are not selling. It's a story very similar to GTA: China Town Wars on the DS, franchising that otherwise would sell millions of copies, are barely making it to the 100,000 unit sold mark. So if it's a core game and does not have Mario or Sonic or Metroid in the name of the title, then it simply is not selling squat on Wii. And that is now, after two years of abandonment for the core game by Nintendo. Waiting another 18 to 24 months for Nintendo to look at today's dismal numbers, and then attempt to turn that around by finally introducing a slew of core-centric games, is just too long down the pipe to do any good for the system. So they'll put out another Mario and Zelda and Metroid, and those games will sell phenomenally, but nothing else on the system will . . . especially now that the casual demographic who are only averaging two or three games/year per person in the first place, is finally tapering off as they reach their saturation point.

More than likely Nintendo is not going to even bother improving it software lineup on Wii for the remainder of this generation. We all know Nintendo makes money on the hardware and is more than happy to just continue making profit from hardware as their main source of profit, so Nintendo is likely to pull a page from Apple's play book, and just introduce a new Wii next year - likely the oft rumored Wii HD, and start the cycle of casual gamers buying up loads of hardware all over again. Nintendo does not strike me as a game company too concerned about satisfying it's long term, core demographic, so outside of the next Mario and Zelda titles (Mario HD and Zelda HD), support for core games aimed at the core demographic following the launch of Wii HD, is going to be pretty much what it is now - non-existent. And the numbers (Nintendo's profitability) support that thesis. Notice how as hardware sells numbers drop, so does Nintendo's profits? While old Nintendo's (NES - GCN) profits were significantly tied to the success of software sells on their platform, new Nintendo (Wii/DS) profits are tied to the success of their hardware. So hardware sells good, and profits are good for Nintendo; hardware sells bad, profits are bad for Nintendo. So the obvious next move for the company is a new version of Wii hardware, they can trick the casual gaming crowd to buy into, most likely launching in Japan next spring, and Nintendo profits will go back up through the roof, if they can successfully lure the same people who already own a Wii, to buy a new Wii again next year.

Apple computers does this all the time, and is highly successful at it - just look at the iPhone 3G and 3GS. A considerable number of punters lining up to get one, already owned an older model of iPhone. And even with DS, Nintendo has proven resilient in this manner. Most punters who lined up for DSL and DSi, owned an older version of the DS, and simply were suckered into buying a newer version of the same hardware with minimal upgrades over the existing version.

So no, don't expect to see Nintendo make a turnaround on their software commitment to the core gamer anytime ever this generation - or maybe ever again, for that matter. So long as they are making profit on the hardware, and can keep casual punters re-buying the same hardware over and over and over again, Nintendo is in the enviable position that they never have to invest deep pockets ever again in developing the engaging type of software that typically appeals to the core gaming mindset. It is a sad, sad reality, but sadly, it is reality all the same.