Breaking News: Nintendo 3DS

Computer Junkies received a letter from Nintendo concerning its new product, the Nintendo 3DS (Name not official). It will have 3D-like quality without the need for 3D glasses, so Nintendo says. The full letter is below.

March 23, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine

Nintendo Co., Ltd.(Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will lauch "Nintendo 3DS"(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

"Nintendo 3DS"(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed "Nintendo DS series", whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS, including the onse for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.

We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

Wii Price Cut

Nintendo is slashing the price of its Wii game console in Japan and the US by 20%, part of a global strategy to spur sales ahead of the crucial Christmas shopping season.

In Japan, the Wii's price will be cut to 220 dollars on October 1, the company has said.

In the US the day before, Nintendo said the console's price will be lowered by 50 dollars on Sunday to 200 dollars. The company gave no details on possible UK cuts.

The reductions follows similar moves by rivals Sony and Microsoft. Console price cuts are customary for the video game industry after the systems have celebrated a birthday or two, because they help lure in mass audiences.

Sony said in August it would cut the price in Japan for its popular PlayStation 3. Microsoft said last month it was cutting the Japanese price for its Xbox 360 game console by 25%.

Nintendo had earlier said it had no plan to slash the price for the Wii. But a company spokesman said it hoped to "spur sales" with cheaper Wii consoles.

"With the price cuts both in Japan and the US, we want to spur sales during the upcoming year-end shopping seasons," he said.

The global recession has made price cuts important, especially as game companies gear up for the Christmas shopping season, when the video game industry makes most of its money. Without the price cuts, it would be difficult to entice budget-conscious shoppers to buy the machines.

The Wii, whose game control senses motions without having to rely solely on buttons and levers, is the top selling console worldwide. Launched in 2006, Nintendo's Wii hit 50 million unit sales worldwide in March 2009 - the fastest sales pace of any video game machine ever.

DIY: Nintendo Wifi USB connector heatsink

So, after I modded my Nintendo Wifi USB connector (Do it HERE) I found that it gets really hot. So I took matter into my own hands and made this "Terrorist-Bomb" heatsink for it.

Nintendo Wifi USB Hack

I found this tutorial on how your nintendo USB wifi connector into a softap (wifi router) and have had great success with it in creating a wifi network for internet connection sharing, printer and file sharing etc.

To do this you need to have this rar file:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S4VLBP9A
or you can get it from here:
RapidShare: Easy Filehosting

Then follow these steps:

1)
Unplug the usb connector and uninstall all the nintendo software then restart.

2)
Plug the usb connector and when asked for the drivers navigate to the where you unrared the downloaded files and inside the Drivers folder you will find modified Buffalo drivers. Install these drivers for the USB Connector. Then install the ASUS software (also in RAR file(eng_2371.zip)). When it prompts you to restart, select No. I have found that there is no need to.

3)
Now in the ASUS EXEs folder of the RAR file, extract the six EXE files in the into the ASUS folder (C:\Program Files\ASUS\WLAN Card Utilities). Make sure you overwrite the existing files.

4)Then run ASUS WLAN Control Center. You will get a dialog asking if you want to use the Windows configuration utility or the ASUS one, select the option that uses ASUS one and disables the Windows one. Then there will be a wizard. Click Cancel to close the wizard.

5)
Now copy the file (C:\Program Files\ASUS\WLAN Card Utilities\Driver\WinXP\AP\rt2500usb.sys) to (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers). Make sure you overwrite the existing file.

6)
Right-click on the ASUS software icon in the System Tray (bottom-right corner of screen) and select Wireless Settings. When the settings dialog opens, on the left select Config, then go to the SoftAP tab, and select Soft AP Mode. Then un-tick the Enable ICS checkbox. Then on the left click Apply. You will get a message box asking if you really want to change to SoftAP mode, click Yes. A message will come up saying something like "add the adapter to the network bridge", just ignore it and click OK. If all has gone well, there will be no error messages. Now close the ASUS Wireless Config utility or it will start conflicting when we manually set ICS.

7) Now go to Control Panel -> Network Connections. Right-click on the Network Adapter you are currently accessing your Internet through (or your internet connection icon) and open the properties for that connection. Go to the Advanced tab, and click "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection". Then click OK. If you get an error message saying the IP address is already in use, disable the Network adapter you are trying to share then try again - be sure to enable it again afterwards. It can take a long time for ICS to be enabled so wait patiently.

8)
Now right-click on the Wireless Network Connection and click Properties. In the middle of the dialog there will be some protocols, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then open the properties for that. Windows would have assigned a static IP address if ICS was successfully enabled, check to make sure this IP address does not conflict with other IP addresses on your network. Also, it should be on a different subnet to the Local Area Connection (for example, my computer's IP address is 192.168.0.2, I assigned the wireless network connection the IP address of 192.168.1.1 - which is on a different subnet). If it is on the same subnet, ICS will not work correctly.

9)*****
With that done, open the ASUS Wireless Config utility again. On the left select Config, in the Basic tab set a SSID. In the encryption tab, select Shared for Network Authentication and WEP for Data Encryption. Now enter a WEP key. Go back to the Basic tab, and at the bottom click on Advanced, change the 54g Mode setting to 802.11b only. Click Apply on the left to save the settings.

10)
Now turn on your wii or ds, go to the Nintendo WFC Settings, and select Manual Setup. Enter the SSID and WEP Key (both of these are case-sensitive) you entered to the ASUS Config utility before. Select No to Auto-obtain IP Address. Now give your wii an IP Address (this must be on the same subnet as the USB connector, I gave my wii the IP address: 192.168.1.2). For subnet mask enter 255.255.255.0. For gateway and primary DNS, enter the IP address of the USB connector. Now try and test connection, and if all has gone well the connection should be successful!

11) Optional 

Now with the ASUS Wireless Config utility, hide your SSID, and use MAC Address filtering to improve the security of your wireless access point.

12)
You now have an Official Nintendo Wifi USB Connector that can connect online with any other devices.

You can now search for an access point on other devices such as laptops, iTouch's and psp's or just enter the ssid and wep(if used) of your access point.

this tutorial was made originally by kcajblue of the afterdawn forums