Wii sports level playing field

Nintendo says it wants to revolutionise gaming with its Wii console. Gamers can now control the action with a motion sensitive remote control, called the Wiimote - but does the novelty wear off quickly?

Wii sport is included with every Wii console and contains 5 basic sporting activities - tennis, baseball, bowling, boxing and golf.In an age of high-definition gaming with photo-realistic character models and intricately-realised buildings and models, it is a real throwback to put a Wii disk into the machine and see the cute, colourful graphics with crudely drawn figures and a somewhat retro look to the interface.

The Wii's graphical capabilities are nothing like that of its rivals, the Xbox 360 and PS3. palying on an HD TV really shows this up. The different sports are a mixed bag of entertainment - all are fun in their own way but some are clearly more involving than others.

Customers are all-round very plaesed with the Wii's performance. It is worth making sure you have plenty of room in which to play: my wife and I literally came to blows when boxing and I managed to swipe a lamp shade during one frenetic tennis match.

• Format: Nintendo Wii
• Graphics: 6
• Sound: 7
• Gameplay: 8
• Enduring appeal: 6
• Overall: 7

Brain control headset for gamers

Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year. It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer, said US/Australian firm Emotiv. It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively.

The brain is made up of about 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, which emit an electrical impulse when interacting. The headset implements a technology known as non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) to read the neural activity. Emotiv is a neuro-engineering company and they have created a brain computer interface that reads electrical impulses in the brain and translates them into commands that a video game can accept and control the game dynamically.

• Sensors respond to the electrical impulses behind different thoughts; enabling a user's brain to influence gameplay directly.
• Conscious thoughts, facial expressions, and non-conscious emotions can all be detected.
• Gyroscope enables a cursor or camera to be controlled by head movements.
• The headset uses wi-fi to connect to a computer.

The use of Electroencephalography in medical practice dates back almost 100 years but it is only since the 1970s that the procedure has been used to explore brain computer interfaces. It can also read emotions of players and translate those to the virtual world. The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games. For example if you laughed or felt happy after killing a character in a game then your virtual buddy could admonish you for being callous.

The $299 headset has a gyroscope to detect movement and has wireless capabilities to communicate with a USB dongle plugged into a computer. Gamers are able to move objects in the world just by thinking of the action. brain computer interfaces, like the Epoc headset were an important component of the future 3D Internet and the future of virtual communication.

Mobile gaming expected to expode

People are going to be spending millions of pounds to play games on their mobiles by next year, say experts. Mobile gaming is seen by many as the next big thing, as phones become more powerful in terms of screen quality, game graphics etc, and come with colour screens.

It has been a very good year for mobile gaming which has seen a boom in the number of phones bought with the gaming quality in mind, and the amount of games that people are downloading on their phones. this has been helped tremendously by the advances involcing internet connections on mobiles. the mobile gaming market is now a multi billion dollar scene.

This is good news for mobile phone companies, which have become increasingly desperate to find ways of getting more money from their subscribers. They are looking at how to get people to do more with their mobiles. this would require a new thought approach on the part of the phone operators, as they are not used to dealing with large quantaties of data. Games for mobiles are different from those played on a PC or a console like the PlayStation 2. They are designed to appeal to people with a few minutes to kill waiting for a train or bus.

In Japan especially, mobile gaming has already proved immensely popular, where people are happy to pay to download relatively simple games that can be played anywhere. The corporations in Japan have seen this as a sign of a worldwide marketing oppertunity and plan to sieze it with both hands.

These included the development of new technology like Java to create for games for mobiles, as well as the spread of new handsets which were effectively small computers. The gaming industry and handset manufacturers have been urged to realise the potential crossover market for their products.

Microsoft don't plan for blu-ray on Xbox 360

Microsoft has no plans to release a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360 and is instead backing digital delivery, executives of the America based corporation have said. Microsoft stopped production of its HD-DVD player following the decision by Toshiba, the format's creator, to concede victory to rival Blu-ray.

It is though that in the next two to three years physical media will give way to downloads. Microsoft therfore refuse to house the Blu-Ray fromat, as they believe it will lose its value as illegal downloading grows stronger and stronger. "We have always said online is the way to go," said Microsoft's head in the UK. He denied that Microsoft had abandoned customers who had purchased the HD-DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 consoles. The add-on was not a part of the console, it was an optional application and the customers had the choice as to whether or not it was worth purchasing.

They were always planning to take the digital route, and move into the online world of online distrbution of content outside the gaming faction. More than 300,000 HD-DVD add-on drives are believed to have been sold to Xbox gamers. Microsoft believe that offering a Blu-ray player to Xbox 360 gamers would not be the best use of resources for the firm. "We think it's better to focus our efforts and resources on developing services in the digital domain."

Increasing numbers of people are consuming more and more hi-definition and standard-definition content online. Microsoft has been criticised for the variety of downloads on its online video service in the UK. The firm have said that they will continue to add new content and, due to this expansion, new partners.

US slowdown does not affect video games

US sales of video game consoles and software have grown 57% over the past year, completely ignoring the economic downturn of the last ten months. Costumers snapped up consoles, games and gaming accessories worth $1.7bn during March march alone, this up from jus under the billion pound mark set the revious year.

Nintedo were the most sucessful, selling 720,000 units. micrsoft shifted 262,000 Xbox 360 consoles coming in ahead, somewhat suprisingly, Sony's PlayStation 3 console, wich found just 257,000 costumers. These figures would never suggest that Americas ecominc structure is in a stae of distress.

Nintendo also lead the way in terms of games sales, with the release of Super SmashBros Brawl, which sold 2.7 million copies. Executives also claimed this was the reasdon for the huge numer on consoles they sold. I second place was Xbox 360's version of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, with 752,000 sales.

These statistics do not seem to worry Sony, who maintain that their realtively new console's sales have doubled in the past year. the also feel that new games such as Gran Turismo 5 and Metal Gear Solid 4 would help to sustain momentum.

New technology aids 'street kids' learning

Beuno Aires' 'Street Children' are learning new skills and advancing in their education, due to thier love of computer games. The Centre for Media Studies concluded that gaming helps the children improve their reading on screen and their ability to resolve conflicts. The programme is proving to be key in the development of strategies to overcome obstacles and reach goals for these depreived children, even providing them with the skills and confidence needed for them to get back into mainstream society.

8 in 10 of the children living and working on the streets are regular gamers, in cyber cafes and arcades. "We found that kids from the streets learn playing with video games," said sociologist Tatiana Merlo Flores. The children learn from each other through an empowering social inclusion process.

• 80% are regular game players
• 95% of boys go to cyber cafés and arcades almost daily
• Girls prefer home console games
• 66% prefer non violent games

They plan to make use of this potential as a true alternative learning tool, and for that they need to appeal to the games software industry with this fresh new idea. In that moment, when they are all online, they are all friends and they play in the same level. Although they don't know it the kids broke the digital divide.

One such child, Julio, a 15-year-old teenager who works on the streets and dreams of managing a cyber café, has first-hand experience of the current episode. he says that he is friends with the people that work in the cities offices and has spent over a year playing along side this group of people.

Tatiana Merlo Flores puts much importances on the fact that games provide street children with the challenge and the encouragement that they do not always get on a regular basis at school. they regularly leave their belongings to go with their peers to the arcades, and some spend as much as half thier wages on the games that they play. professionals say that if we work with these revolutionary children, we can promote this new way of learning which would please kids the world over.

Microsoft cut Xbox 360 European Prices

Microsoft has cut the price of its Xbox 360 video game console in Europe. The console will drop to €270, a price cut of 80 euros. this is the same in Britain where the model is dropping 40 pounds to £159.99. The price drops mean that the console is now cheaper than both of its top competitors - the Nintendo Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3).

Sony's top console, the PS3, currently sells at reatil price £299.99 and has a hard drive of only 40GB. This compared to the Xbox 360 Elite which, with a 120Gb hard drive, sells at £259.99. the Wii is currently on the market at £180 pounds, but the games may not attract older gamers.

Microsoft's reaoning behind the price drop is that the price of the entry level machine had historically been "the price point where a console's audience begins to expand". Despite having been launched earlier and enjoying alot of success, the Xbox 360 has been losing ground to both of its competitors recently.