Nintendo CEO Makes About $2.1 Million a Year

You'd think Satoru Iwata would be making some serious bucks for being the top guy at a company as successful as Nintendo. According to an recent shareholder meeting the president and CEO don’t bring as much bacon home as you would expect. Andriasang interpreted a story out of Japanese site Asahi regarding Nintendo's shareholder meeting. Their report puts Iwata's annual salary at just ¥78 million (about $768,000), with an additional ¥109 million (a little over $1.2 million) in performance-based bonuses, reaching a grand total of ¥187 million (roughly $2.1 million). For comparison, Sony president and CEO Howard Stringer makes a cool ¥816.5 million (more than $9 million) annually. Yoichi Wada takes home ¥240 million ($2.7 million) each year as CEO of Square Enix. Meanwhile, Apple's Steve Jobs only pulls in $1 a year from his position as chairman and CEO of the company.

Microsoft hints at touchless Surface combining camera and transparent OLED

We've always wondered whether Microsoft's multitouch table would actually ever arrive, dreaming of Minority Report hijinx all the while, but after seeing what the company's Applied Sciences Group is currently cooking up -- a touchless telepresence display -- we'd rather drop that antiquated pinch-to-zoom stuff in favor of what might be Surface's next generation. Starting with one of Samsung's prototypetransparent OLED panels, Microsoft dropped a sub-two-inch camera behind the glass, creating a 3D gesture control interface that tracks your every move by literally seeing through the display. Combined with that proprietary wedge-shaped lens we saw earlier this month and some good ol' Johnny Chung Lee headtracking by the man himself, we're looking at one hell of a screen. Don't you dare read another word without seeing the prototype in a trifecta of videos after the break.

Sourced From http://www.engadget.com/

writing by : Sean Hollister

Apple sells 1.7 million iPhone 4

Well I’ll be damn even with antenna problems, screen related issues, and only 600,000 pre- orders Apple managed to sell 1.7 million iPhone 4 in sales this Saturday. Sunday transaction haven’t even been added up yet, I guess its another reason why Apple and Steve Jobs can walk around with that smug look on there faces. The sells number eclipsed the 3GS with only sold about 1 million units its opening weekend. I know Apples competitors aka Google has a ominous feeling larking over there shoulders with the threat of another launch by Apple.

Dead or Alive 3DS Sports Motion-Controlled Breasts Really ?

One of the biggest aspects of the Nintendo's 3DS, that is not talk about much, is the built-in tilt sensor. Until most developers have been silent on the matter or they do not have any plans in the works to utilizes the feature. Team Ninja is the first developer to reported they intend to implement motion controls in Dead or Alive 3DS. Picked up on by Blogger "Silconera" a Japanese investor who spend some hands on time with the 3DS; claims to have spoken with Tecmo representatives about their plans for Nintendo's upcoming handheld. According to a Tecmo employee, players will be able to tilt controls to jiggle female characters' breasts in the 3DS version of Dead or Alive. Shocking right ?, Nope not really Team Ninja games like Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Extreme Beach Volleyball all have utilized motion capabilities for similar effect. Plus bouncy boobs are kind of Team Ninja's calling card.

Mini-e ER1402 for only 299$

Looking the Mini-e Pc up and down you can tell its a space saver, and doesn't it look cute standing upright like in this picture. eMachines latest, um, machine "looks like a computer of the future, or at least a idea of what desktops my look like later on down the road. Tell me it doesn't look like something you would see in BattleStar Galactica or Star Trek. The Mini-e ER1402 measures at 7.1 inches and weighs 9 pounds. While it won't handle the latest installment of Crysis running at full spec of course, but stuff like Hulu, and Youtube you'll be ok. What about the spec on this bad boy?the computer features a 1.7GHz AMD Athlon Neo processor, Windows 7 Home Premium, NVIDIA nForce 9200 graphics, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. There are four USB ports and HDMI output (VGA, too) for connecting to your TV or monitor. A wireless keyboard and mouse are included as well. So picture this baby over-clocked running at about 2.0Ghz with 3GB of Ram; its like I said before you wont be able to run Crysis at full specs but it will run most high ends games at the lowest setting. I say "better playable than not right," and at $299.99 need I say more.

Peripherals

I feel bad for Microsoft and Sony right now accorded to an news report that suggests most gamers are aware of Sony's Move and Microsoft's Kinect peripherals, but few intend on buying them. Despite the core gaming community have a high awareness of the two new peripherals, both failed to break top twenty charts say analysts at EEDAR. The report also said more gamers in total are interested in Kinect than Move, only because more Xbox 360s are in more homes than PlayStation 3s. "When weighed on a relative basis (number of consoles vs. interest in the new controllers), Move and Kinect "showed near equal popularity"EEDAR stressed. The data does not mean the Move and Kinect will have poor sales, but as new game come out the purchase sales will go up. Please note that EEDAR's report is based off of traffic data from IGN.com, which tends to skew "hardcore." Purchase intent may be much higher among the more "casual" gamers once they're aware of the products.

NVIDIA thanks Intel for saying GPUs are 'only' 14 times faster than CPUs

Well, we've gone a full month since the last episode of NVIDIA's and Intel's ongoing public feud, but it looks like Intel has now stoked the flames once again (albeit inadvertently) in a paper presented at the recent International Symposium on Computer Architecture. That attempted to debunk the "100X GPU vs. CPU myth," but it also contained the tidbit that GPUs are "only" up to 14 times faster than CPUs in running application kernels, which NVIDIA has more than a happily latched onto. In a blog post, NVIDIA's Andy Keane says that it's a "rare day" when a competitor states that their technology is only14x faster, and that he can't recall another time when he's "seen a company promote competitive benchmarks that are an order of magnitude slower." Of course, he then further goes on to note that Intel's tests were done with NVIDIA's previous generation GeForce GTX 280, and that the codes were simply run out-of-the-box without any optimization -- but, still, he seems more than happy to accept this bit of "recognition." In Intel's defense, however, the overall finding of the paper (linked below) is that the performance gap between a GTX 280 GPU and Core i7 960 processor is actually just 2.5X "on average," which NVIDIA hasn't highlighted for some reason.

Is Final Fantasy 7 That Great ?

Don't get me wrong I don't think Final Fantasy7 is a bad game; I just think it’s a very overrated and over hyped. I know of plenty hardcore fans that claim it’s the greatest Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) of all time. But many people that adore Final Fantasy 7, because it was the first JRPG they ever played. If you played Final Fantasy 4-6 first, you would have realize that they are better games with better character growth systems, better stories, and even though the graphics are not as advanced I think they hold up better overtime. “Where to start?” I know how about the battle system and the story line the most important elements of a JRPG. Final Fantasy 7 failed to add anything meaningful or different to the {ATB} system that wasn’t already used in Final Fantasy 4-6; other than the long ass summon spells. Bahamut Zero and Nights Of The Round yeah do I need to say anymore, and don’t get me started on the use of save points and random battles. Now, the Materia System which essentially gives any character the same ability kind of breaks the system, because there’s no different between the case of characters; unlike Final Fantasy 5 which did a far better of executing the use of this system. The Materia system hides the fact that there is no real progression in the leveling system, because whatever Materia you give to one character doesn’t necessarily mean the character is good, just the Materia is. One the biggest problem with Final Fantasy 7 and other modern JRPG’s is they suffer from is a bad story lines and poor character development. The main character is a sword- wielding, spiky-haired hero, get this he Has Amnesia! Well I’ll be damn imagine that. Go and play a game called Planescape Torment and Memento; I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of stories using amnesia it’s the most overused plot device in JRPGs period. Also what kind of fucking name is Cloud Strife; the name is half Emo have Goth and very lame. Just joking about that previous sentence I really don’t care about the names of the characters.

But most of the characters in the game are clichés like the Mr. T clone Barret; Cid of course who is in ever Final Fantasy game; the bizarre anime character that has no place in the story Cait Sith; Aeris the girl whose magic powers will determine the fate of the world. The list goes on but I will stop to talk about one particular character I that requires a closer look. I am referring to the worst character to ever grace a video game, Yuffie. Webster dictionary defines a (Ninja) “as a member of a feudal Japanese society of mercenary agents, highly trained in martial arts and stealth (ninjutsu), who were hired for covert purposes ranging from espionage to sabotage and assassination”. Why do I hate the adorable, fun loving ninja? First of all, her name is Yuffie. Second, ninjas are neither fun loving nor adorable! Infiltration, carnage, and drinking the blood of their enemies is what makes ninjas happy. Yuffie on the other hand is the stereotypical anime chick that jumps up and down screaming “Ya-ta!”. What’s my point? Yuffie is the only ninja in the history of video games to break the tradition of ninja being awesome in spite of their lame surroundings. Final Fantasy suffers in my opinion the worst character designs ever to grace the series; I would think the story would carry the game right? Not so; the main protagonist has amnesia which is lame. The setting is cool, he lives in a technologically advanced steam punk world or so you think until you leave this highly futuristic city. Too find the entire surrounding world looks like a generic Final Fantasy countryside. It’s like leaving Neo Tokyo and winding up in Tennessee for the rest of the game. Here's a quick run down of the story, so Cloud meets Sephiroth, who is still filled with teen anger towards Shinra his Mom and Dad. To get back at them for being mean, Sephiroth arbitrarily burns down a village and summons a meteor. Aeris decides that she is going to use the power of love and hope to stop him, and gets stabbed in the back. In a scene that is poorly executed, then she dies. Whoops!, I should have put a spoiler alert for that, but you can’t ruin a story that is already bad. Cloud has amnesia so he forgets to cast resurrection. Cloud kills Sephiroth but is too late and Aeris uses her magic to stop the meteor. Oh and I forgot to mention Cloud thinks he some guy name Zack, because when Zack was about to die he told Cloud to live for him. Fin

And that’s why I don’t like Final Fantasy7, but who the hell I’m I to judge. I really didn’t even make any good or compelling points to back my argument; I guess I’m just hating to hate something a lot of people enjoy.