How Video Games Help Fuel Space Exploration

Having traveled to other worlds in his game creations such as 'Ultima,' Richard Garriott de Cayeux is now doing the real thing. He flew to the International Space Station in 2008 (on a reported $30 million ticket). And his company, Space Adventures, has organized flights on Soyuz craft for about a dozen other moguls.

At the South by Southwest conference in Austin this week, Garriott de Cayeux explained why he thinks that private companies can make spaceflight radically cheaper and more common. Ideas include having NASA contract with private rocket companies for human spaceflight instead of building all its own craft (which it already does to launch robots such as the Mars Rover Curiosity). Garriott de Cayeux also promotes reusable spacecraft, which he claims offer tenfold to hundredfold cost savings.

Elon Musk of SpaceX, the most successful extraterrestrial entrepreneur so far, is testing reusable technology called Grasshopper. And so is John Carmack, creator of blockbuster video game franchises 'Doom' and 'Quake.' His company, Armadillo Aerospace, is focused on building reusable craft.

TechNewsDaily asked Garriott de Cayeux why game creators are attracted to spaceflight.

'If there was something specific to the games industry, it would have to be from exploring virtual worlds,' he said. 'It would have to be . creating experiences that let people go into the unknown. Noting his many adventures, including into space, to Antarctica and to the bottom of the ocean, he said, 'I find my drive to go explore is identical and very closely linked with my personal drive to create things for people to explore.'

But the images in many games may not be the best thing to motivate future generations of explorers, said astronaut Mae Jemison. In a panel session, she spoke about the 100 Year Starship Project she leads, which aims to kick-start the technologies to make interstellar spaceflight possible within a century.

Many of the most popular video games over the years, including 'Doom' and 'Quake,' are also very violent. 'I'm struck by the fact that we have all the slasher, blood-and-guts, shoot-'em-up movies and stuff like that,' Jemison said. 'It doesn't make you very hopeful for the future.'

Jemison's fellow panelist Jill Tarter of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) said that games could be helpful, 'to the extent that people can . build interactive experiences that aren't always shooting and competitive.'

LeVar Burton of 'Star Trek' fame, also on the panel, told TechNewsDaily that he was excited about the use of biofeedback in games. 'I can certainly imagine games that are . first-person experience, where you really have to be in a calm and imaginative state in order to advance in the gameplay,' he said. 'And I think that's a lot more productive in terms of entrainment than . the first-person shooter.' [See also: Video Games Improve Surgeons' Skills]

Jemison also sees games as a way to study how people interact, which is critical to creating livable conditions for a space mission that will span entire lifetimes. Games, she said, could help to, 'ferret out some information about human behavior.'

Burton agreed: 'Using gameplay to problem-solve - fantastic use of the technology.'

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, sister site to SPACE.com.

• The 10 Most Stunning Video Games
• What to Wear on a 100-Year Starship Voyage
• 9 Things That Are Better Made in Space

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Xbox 360 racks up 26th consecutive month as top console

Does Microsoft (MSFT) even need to launch a new Xbox? Despite Nintendo's (NTDOY) recent release of its next-generation home video game console, the Xbox 360 racked up its twenty-sixth consecutive month as the top-selling console in the world in February. U.S. sales totalled 302,000 units according to The NPD Group's February data, placing the Xbox ahead of Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 4 and both the Wii and Wii U. The Xbox 360 holds an estimated 41% share of the current-generation console market in the U.S.

[More from BGR: Samsung Galaxy S 4 preview: The king is dead, long live the king]


This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wii U could be Nintendo's first flop

Sales of Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii U gaming console continue to falter, according to the latest retail figures. The NPD Group on Thursday released its U.S. video game sales figures for the month of February, which shows that overall sales of new hardware, software and accessories declined 25% year-over-year. Individual hardware sales were hit the hardest, dropping a whopping 36% from February 2012 as consumers wait for the "Xbox 720? and PlayStation 4.

[More from BGR: Samsung Galaxy S 4 preview: The king is dead, long live the king]

All eyes were on Nintendo, however, following the company's disastrous January performance. Wii U sales were estimated to have only reached between 45,000 and 59,000 units during the first month of this year, marking one of the worst months for Nintendo in recent years.

[More from BGR: Apple bull says Galaxy S 4 'NOT a game changer,' will be dominated by iPhone 5S]

Gamesultra reports that February sales were affected negatively by holiday returns when consumers couldn't resell the system at a profit as they could with the original Wii. But in its third month on shelves, sales of the Wii U improved slightly. NPD Group revealed that weekly sales on average increased around 40% in February, which Gamesultra estimates to mean that monthly sales of around 64,000 units.

Although sales increased, the Wii U continues to fall behind previous-generation consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.


This article was originally published on BGR.com

What's Going On with Nintendo's Wii U?

Last night, as part of its time-honored monthly ritual, retail-tracker NPD Group released its estimates of February's video game hardware and software sales. As usual, the company excluded specific console numbers. NPD backpedaled from showing us this data a few years ago, I've always assumed, because of pressure from the various players to frame their numbers in the best possible light. Recall all the years the Wii decimated the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in monthly units sold, or more recently, the unbroken stretch Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been lapping everyone: blogs and message boards flock to make hay of this stuff, and "systems wars" wonks then complete the feedback loop.

These days you have to dig to find anything really construable as bad news about a specific company in NPD's figures, with its analysts doing their best to give each player an attaboy. At worst, you'll find bits of overall industry gloom - inescapable, really, since the recession finally caught up to the industry (albeit belatedly, and after years of unprecedented growth).

And so this month's look back at February was another barrel of disappointment from a retail standpoint, with year-on-year declines in hardware sales (-36%), software (-27%) and accessories (-3%) for an overall 25% decline.

But wait, what about digital? NPD says that if you add $90 million for used game sales and rentals, plus digital sales (full games, add-ons, microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and social network games) of $319 million, the total consumer spend for February would be just under $1.2 billion. NPD's tracking of these newer markets has been incremental as it works with industry players to reveal this stuff, so you can't really compare February 2013 with February 2012's total consumer spend of $1.09 billion, but - assuming online transactions have only increased over the past 12 months - it seems reasonable to wonder, as we've been for years now, whether the downturn (if indeed it still is a downturn) is less than it seems. After all, NPD says its "new physical retail sales" figures only account for about 50% of total consumer spend at this point.

Where's Nintendo's Wii U in all this? We know Nintendo's new console didn't do so hot in January, moving just 57,000 units (well, unless you buy this theory involving holiday speculators, though it'd be only marginally better news numbers-wise). Putting a positive spin on Nintendo's February numbers, NPD noted they increased 40% (on an average per week basis) over January, meaning Nintendo probably moved around 64,000 units (note that January was a five-week month). That's still a paucity compared to the Wii's extremely strong post-launch sales, and a fraction what Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 have been selling in their waning days.

Speaking of, Microsoft says it sold 302,000 units in February and that this marks the Xbox 360's "26th consecutive month as the number-one selling console in the U.S." (NPD says it's actually the 19th straight month - I don't have the numbers in front of me so I don't know who's correct.)

When I spoke with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto last week, I didn't bug him about Wii U sales - not because I couldn't have, but because Miyamoto's a designer, not a bean counter. And yet we'd be foolish to ignore the criticality of sales when it comes to questions like "Will X company develop Y game(s) for system Z?" You can't ignore the bottom line. If a system fails to catch fire, well, I know a lot of people who loved Sega's Dreamcast. Love and wonderful ideas alone won't see you through.

Does that mean it's time for a Wii U price cut? It's the conventional wisdom when a console's in trouble (or seems to be) - like Nintendo's 3DS, which surged from the gate, then stumbled for months before Nintendo's price cut put it back on track. After all, the Wii U's target demographic isn't the 300,000+ that bought Xbox 360s last month - the same group, I suspect, fond of bashing the system for not raising the computational bar as Sony's forthcoming PlayStation 4 appears to be. In any case, $350 is asking a lot from that other, ostensibly broader demographic - the one that paid just $250 years ago for the Wii with Wii Sports, and that can nowadays pick up a Wii for as little as $130 (or significantly less still used).

Buying a game console early in its lifecycle is an investment, a sign of good faith, an indication that you believe in a company's vision as well as its ability to deliver the kinds of games you want to play. But you have to move systems to stir developers. For all the Wii U's promise - and I still see plenty - I can't imagine the water cooler conversations at third-party game developers are exactly uplifting just now.

Review: 'Lego City' builds fun for Wii U

Over the past eight years, those cute little Lego people - minifigs, as they're known - have virtually traveled to Middle-earth, Hogwarts, Gotham City and a galaxy far, far away in video games developed by TT Games. The minifigs are finally coming home in their latest adventure, an open-world action game created exclusively for Nintendo's Wii U.

'Lego City Undercover' forgoes the wizardry and intergalactic wonder of big-budget franchises for something much more simple: a good old-fashioned police romp set in sprawling Lego City, a diverse metropolis where cars are made out of colorful plastic bricks and residents have interchangeable heads.

As undercover officer Chase McCain, players must seamlessly switch between multiple disguises with different abilities to hunt down Lego City lawbreakers. For example, when dressed as a farmer, McCain can water plants that blossom into vines that can be climbed. If he's imitating a burglar, his crowbar can crack open doors. There's even an astronaut suit.

The game's zany writing and voice acting alternate between corny and hilarious. ('I'll come back and give you my insurance details later!' McCain yells after smashing into other cars.) While youngsters might enjoy 'Lego City' the most, there's plenty here for adults who grew up with 'Grand Theft Auto,' including sendups of 'Goodfellas' and 'The Shawshank Redemption.'

McCain can get behind the wheel of more than 100 vehicles: cars, trucks, boats and helicopters. He can also ride horses, pigs and, at one point, a dinosaur. Outside of the story missions that take McCain inside such Lego City locales as the museum and prison, there are enough side pursuits for even the most obsessive gamers, from capturing aliens to painting bricks.

There are also lots and lots of bricks to pick up.

Just like the 'Lego' games that have come before 'Lego City,' there are millions of studs spread across the world that can be traded in for customizable characters and vehicles. 'Lego City' adds superbricks to the mix. These collectibles can be cashed in to craft superbuilds like helipads and stunt ramps.

'Lego City' employs the touch screen of the Wii U GamePad as a police scanner and communicator. It's mostly used to pinpoint locations on the interactive map, but it can also do stuff like spot bad guys through walls, listen in on conversations and snap photos of crimes. It's a neat touch but ultimately feels gimmicky and not integral to the overall experience.

The game's biggest flaw is its mind-numbingly long loading screens that feature nothing more than a spinning police badge and some funky wah-chickah-wah-wah background music. It was a blockheaded decision not to extend the game's charms with some title cards, images or anything - ANYTHING! - other than just a rotating graphic.

Despite that annoyance and a complete lack of any multiplayer mode, there's still a load of fun to be had with 'Lego City.' It's a must-own for Wii U owners and Lego fans. The developers at TT Games have created a fantastical toy world that proves there's really no place like home. Three stars out of four.

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Online:

http://legocityu.nintendo.com/

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang

U.S. jury finds Nintendo liable for patent infringement

By Bernard Vaughan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal jury in New York on Wednesday found that video game company Nintendo Co infringed an inventor's 3-D display technology patent with its handheld 3DS videogame system.

The jury awarded the inventor, Seijiro Tomita, $30.2 million in compensatory damages.

The patent relates to technology that Tomita developed for providing 3-D images without the need for 3-D glasses.

In opening arguments last month, Tomita's attorney, Joe Diamante, told the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Nintendo used technology that Tomita developed for its 3DS. Tomita is a former longtime Sony Corp employee.

But Scott Lindvall, a defense attorney for the Super Mario Bros franchise creator, argued that the 3DS doesn't use key aspects of Tomita's patent.

Lindvall also said a 2003 meeting with Nintendo officials that Tomita cited in his argument was merely one of several the company held with vendors selling 3-D display technology.

Tomita, 58, sued Nintendo and its U.S. unit in 2011 for patent infringement. Tomita was not present in the courtroom on Wednesday.

'We are thankful to the jurors for their diligence and hard work,' Diamante said in an e-mail after the verdict. 'It has been a honor to represent Mr. Tomita and to protect his invention.'

Lindvall declined to comment following the verdict. Nintendo officials were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Richard Chang)

Microsoft's next Xbox predicted to dominate next-gen consoles

Microsoft (MSFT) is the only major vendor that hasn't yet announced any details surrounding its new console, but some industry watchers are already convinced that the new Xbox will dominate the next generation of video game consoles. Among them is Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who believes Microsoft is set to win the next console generation - and his reasoning has little to do with video games.

[More from BGR: Google's most exciting mobile service is coming to the iPhone before most Android phones]

In a South by Southwest presentation covered by Forbes, Pachter said that features like Skype integration and TV service integration will secure the next Xbox's position as the winner of the next-generation console war. The current Xbox 360 features a number of great home entertainment features, but Microsoft's "Xbox 720" is expected to push entertainment to the next level with Kinect 2 integration, DVR features and possibly even set-top box functionality.

[More from BGR: Galaxy S IV reportedly won't have eye-scrolling technology or an eight-core processor in the U.S.]

Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 4 may improve over time, but the analyst believes Microsoft's early edge will be maintained for the lifetime of this console generation - and that could be quite a long time, as Patcher believes the Wii U, PlayStation 4 and next-gen Xbox could represent the last generation of home video game consoles.




This article was originally published on BGR.com