News

Japanese gaming news site Quiter has some of the first Final Fantasy XII art and screenshots I've yet seen. We appear to have good renders of the male and female leads, some early screenshots, and a cluttered scan of the logo.

If you can't hack navigating through the pics in Japanese (it shouldn't be hard), an English-language mirror is available at RPGFan..

I'm filling in for the news staff at the moment, most of whom are having intermittent troubles getting to the site as described in my news post of a few days back. That said, here's my commentary: unless they stop using Tetsuya Nomura as the lead character designer, they're going to turn a lot of people off. Aren't we all getting just a bit sick of seeing the same character designs since FF7? Thank goodness Amano came in to do FF9 and 11.

According to Bloomberg.com, Nintendo has two new consoles lined up for market release during 2003 and 2004.

The first release, Nintendo's iQue system, a console designed specifically to facilitate Nintendo's introduction into the Chinese gaming market, will be released in Shanghai this month. The controller-size iQue is designed primarily with portability and minimal power consumption in mind; games for the system, which will include popular N64 releases like Zelda 64: Ocarina of Time, come in the form of 64MB Flash memory cards. Upon release, iQue will also come packaged with a library of games and demos.
Nintendo has discussed, but not officially announced, release of the iQue outside of China.

The second release will supposedly target Nintendo's current markets, starting with sales in Japan during 2004 and eventual release in America and Europe. However, specifics about the console have yet to be released. Nintendo hopes to make up for a reported $26.6 million loss during mid 2003, blamed on low GameCube sales and the rising strength of the Japanese Yen currency, and also hopes to increase market share against competitors Sony and Microsoft.

***

That iQue controller looks as large and as uncomfortable to use as the X-Box controller to me... However, since Nintendo essentially packed an entire N64 unit into that size, they're certainly more warranted. As for the second system, I can't say whether or not I'm excited yet, as nothing has been released about it.
However, Nintendo's attempt at establishing a Chinese gaming market and its push for increased revenue even while performing well against its competitors sound to me as if Nintendo is intent on establishing -- and dominating -- a global market.

In the past few days, we have had problems with some people accessing the site. When trying to use the site, the cavesofnarshe.com domain will load improperly or not at all.

If this happens to you between Tuesday and Thursday, please email me (rangers51 at cavesofnarshe.com) and describe exactly what happens when you try to access the site. Also include your ISP if you know it. FuitadNet staff and I are researching what is causing the problem and how we can work around it.

This is happening with all sites on our server, so don't worry that CoN is broken. Thanks for your help.

Nintendo of America has announced that the US market share of the GameCube has almost doubled according to NPD TRST data since the price of the console was dropped from 149 dollars US to 99 dollars thirty five days ago.

This is remarkable in its own right, but even more so with the current state of the US economy. The system does have an 80 dollar price advantage against the Playstation 2 and X Box. Nintendo of America is banking the market share continuing to grow with the upcoming holiday season, the release Mario Kart: Double Dash and the upcoming Zelda compilation that will be bundled free with new GameCubes starting November 17th. (Those who already own the GameCube can also get it while supplies last by purchasing two of the following: Mario Kart: Double Dash, Mario Party 5, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, or 1080: Avalanche

Source: Games_Are_Fun

/****/

I figured Nintendo would move more units with the price cut, but it still is surprising. I'd love to pick one up once the Zelda compilation comes out. I'll just wait to play Hikaroo's though.

Shinichi Okamato, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, recently released a timetable for mass production of the Playstation 3 microprocessor in late 2005.
Assuming production remains on schedule, projected release dates for the Playstation 3 may be as early as Christmas 2005.

The PS3 microprocessor, nicknamed "Cell" (and also more recently nicknamed as "Grid"), will supposedly surpass speed of current console technology 200-fold, and is fabled to have some 1000 times the processing power of Sony's current console on the market, the Playstation 2, or some 125 times the processing power of Intel's new Itanium 2 processors.
Several companies are assisting Sony in Cell's design, including IBM and Toshiba, and an estimated $400 million will be collectively invested into its development.

To explain this intense research and development, Sony has stated that they intend for the Playstation 3 to reach far beyond use as merely a video gaming system: Mr. Okamoto announced in early March 2003 that the PS3 would be a "nexus of home entertainment."
Manufacture of Cell would not only blow away Sony's major gaming competitors, Microsoft and Nintendo, but could even place Sony as a direct competitor to Intel for cutting-edge processing technology.

More information may be obtained at:
BBC News
Playstation Reporter
Impact Sites 2000
GameBiz

***

As some of what I read online seems a little far-fetched, I tried to remain as conservative as possible, and to cross-reference with as many authoritative sources as I could find.
It all sounds simply astounding -- a potential leap forward in computing technology, assuming it can work as well in reality as it does in theory...

If you can see this post, congratulations! Your ISP has been clever enough to sort out its DNS records and point you to our new home on FuitadNET hosting.

We're now primarily using the cavesofnarshe.com URL rather than the OPGaming.com subdomain we used previously. We'd like to thank Rubicant and OPGaming for their gracious offer of hosting, which we have used largely without incident since early 2002, and HostRocket, who host that domain.