According to Kay, today's man of 20-something/30-something is lulled into a 'child-man'-state by pop-culture, she blames video-games for this. "Thanks to the emergence of pop culture such as television and gaming today's mid-20-something male "lingers happily, in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance," argues the article."

Both Microsoft and Sony have made press announcements regarding their latest generation of consoles. The PS3 will get a bigger hard-drive and the Xbox 360 will get a price-cut - read more.

Rumor has it that Sony wants to reposition its PS2 on the market by making some sort of Wii-like system out of it by fitting the system with a new Wii-like motion sensitive controller. All this is supposed to be happening by Christmas 2007.

Wii logoToday the Nintendo Wii was supposed to show up in European stores. Nintendo is aiming to sell at least 4.000.000 Wii consoles world wide before the end of the year. Nintendo claims everything is moving according to plans, but according to Dutch stores the multinational needs to get their act together.

I've revisited quite a few of the emulators I discussed earlier in my Retrogaming and Beyond on Mac OS X - article on various intel macintoshes ranging from a +- 1.4Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics to a +- 2.8Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics. Just to see if those new Mac's are up to the challenge (two Powerbooks, a macmini core solo and mini core duo, an acertosh and asustosh)

Nintendo Wii Controller and AttachmentIn a surprise move, Nintendo announced that the official price of the Wii in the US will be $249.99, which is actually $50 or more than many were predicting. "There is one price, one configuration and one color -- the same white Nintendo uses in its Nintendo DS." It is also expected to ship November 19th worldwide.

This will no doubt be dissapointing to some (to put it mildly), as the low end Microsoft Xbox 360 is priced at $299.99 and may drop a bit lower by November (the low end PS3 is expected to be $399.99). We'll see as events unfold and do a more complete value comparison once all three systems are actually released, but Nintendo superficially at least is not really offering superior value over the competition with what the Wii comes with and what a second controller set and games cost.

"The Wiimote has a MSRP of $39.99 and the nunchuk has an MSRP of $19.99 -- they are sold separately."

"Wii points [similar to Microsoft points] will be used to purchase Virtual Console titles. 100 Wii Points equals a dollar, NES titles cost 500 points ($5), SNES titles 800 points ($8) and Nintendo 64 titles cost 1000 points ($10)."

"Citing a series of quotes from developers supporting the Wii, Fils-Aime points out that 30 titles will be available in the launch-window, with about half of them available on day one. They will, as reported, retail for $49.99 (ten bucks less than [most third party] Xbox 360 titles)."

Details here and here.

Odyssey2For those of us that love playing old classic consoles, but have moved on to newer monitors and TV's with video inputs, this site is for you: http://www.vikingvideogames.com. They offer modification services for most older consoles (in addition to other services). A few people on a ColecoVision forum I frequent have upgraded their CV consoles and say the work and results are very good.