Wii becoming a cultural phenomenon

The stratospheric rise of Nintendo’s latest gaming system has been nothing shy of Wii-markable, flattening Sony’s PS3 and charging after Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

The company is thriving in markets around the world. The Wii was the top-selling console system in Canada, the Nintendo DS handheld was the top-selling portable gaming system, and Nintendo held the top four spots for games (Pokemon Diamond Version DS, Pokemon Pearl Version DS, Wii Play, and Super Paper Mario for Wii) for the period of April 8 to May 5, according to the latest Canadian figures released by independent market researchers NPD Group Inc.

Nintendo boasted the same achievements in the United States while in France the 15 top-selling games are all for Nintendo systems.

“We’re ecstatic over the explosive appeal of Wii and Nintendo DS,” said vice president and general manager of Nintendo of Canada Ron Bertram.

At the November 2006 launch of the Wii in Toronto, Bertram anticipated good things for the console and hoped for “a strong second place” showing. The actual success is beyond anyone’s expectations. In less than five months since introduction, the company has sold six million Wii systems globally and nearly 29 million Wii games. The console has taken a step toward becoming a cultural phenomenon.

“Wii is selling out everything we put into the marketplace,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, president and CEO of Nintendo of America, speaking at a conference in Seattle on May 22 to announce sales achievements and upcoming games for the company.

Sony’s PS3, which launched about the same time as the Wii, has sold just 1.84 million units worldwide, while Microsoft has sold more than 10 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide. The 360, launched in November 2005, had a year head-start over the others. Nintendo now expects to have sold 14 million Wiis by the end of its first fiscal year, March 2008, and has ramped up production to meet the demand.

In comparison, about 22 million GameCubes have been sold since its launch in November 2001. Sony’s PS2, which launched in October 2000, has sold more than 106 million units around the world but there is now debate over whether Sony can maintain its dominance over the industry.

The reason for Nintendo’s rise is its approach to new consumers and giving them something different, said Fils-Aime.

With its innovative motion-sensing controller, Wii gamers get as close to the action as possible. Players swing the controller like a baseball bat or golf club, leap around their living rooms to make a backhand return in tennis, jab madly away at the air in a boxing bout, and point it at the screen to aim their weapons. Sitting on the couch and pressing buttons just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The Wii remote controller is also simple to use. It’s based more on gestures than button combinations, so there are very few gadgets on it, making it less intimidating to people who’ve never played games before.

Nintendo has also taken aim at non-gamers with titles that veer away from the shooters and racers that appeal to males aged 18 to 35.

The game plan is based on the book Blue Ocean Strategy, which suggests that with too many companies fighting for the same consumers, no one can truly grow.

Tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, the book’s authors argue, but by creating “blue oceans” of uncontested market space. In terms of video games, those oceans are teeming with females, seniors and 40- to 50-year-old businessmen.

“We’re not just competing with Sony and Microsoft anymore. We’re competing with movies and other leisure activities,” said Fils-Aime.

Facial recognition slipped into Google image search

Google upped its stalker factor this week by adding face recognition abilities to its image search. While currently unofficial and unannounced, users can now search for images that only contain faces by appending a query string onto the end of a search URL. For example, a general image search for “Ars Technica” produces a variety of image results, but when appending “&imgtype=face” to the end of the URL, all new results contain photos of people.

The hidden feature was discovered by Google Blogoscoped, and there is currently no way to indicate that you only want to search for faces through the image search interface. However, both “&imgtype=face” and “&imgtype=news” trigger different search results than what is presented by default—the latter showing only images that are associated with news stories.

The technology appears to be the fruit of Google’s 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, a company that had developed techniques for facial recognition in photos. “Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects,” wrote Picasa product manager Adrian Graham on the Official Google Blog last August.

Google is apparently taking that technology to heart by experimenting with facial recognition online. Even cooler (or creepier, as the case may be), one day Google’s image search may be able to find faces of specific people based on image analysis/recognition alone instead of relying on the text associated with that image to identify the person in the photo. We can probably expect more search parameters to be added to the search in the future, too, such as different types of animals, different clothing items, and more. Until then, we’re stuck experimenting with different search terms in hopes of discovering one that the public doesn’t know about yet.

15 Things We Wish Someone Would Invent

Teleporter
The problem: Everyone wants to get where they’re going, faster, with less time in airplanes and security lines.

The solution: Make like Spock and beam yourself there.

Ten-year odds: Vanishingly small. Yes, scientists have managed to teleport information using the principles of quantum physics. These techniques could one day transform communications, but they won’t transport a human.

A Go-Anywhere Phone
The problem: Dropped calls. Lack of network coverage. Incompatible systems from country to country.

The solution: A phone that works everywhere.

Ten-year odds: Very high. If you have the bucks, you can already use satellite phones pretty much anywhere you can see the sky–but good luck in the London tube or downtown Manhattan. The closest thing currently in existence is probably Thuraya’s combination satellite/GMS mobile phone, which rolls over from one system to the other depending on your location. But so far, its service doesn’t extend to the Americas, East Asia or Australia.

Electronic Paper
The problem: Paper, paper, everywhere–but you can’t download the news (or search the Web) on it.

The solution: Electronic paper as light, readable and flexible as regular paper, but with the capabilities of a computer.

Ten-year odds: Fair. Companies including Xerox, E-Ink, Philips, and Apple are rumored to be working on it. Then again, companies have supposedly been “working on it” for more than decade now.

A Household Chores Robot
The problem: No one wants to clean house.

The solution: Robots.

Ten-year odds: High. There’s already the Roomba, iRobot’s automatic vacuum cleaner. So how hard can it be to invent one that also makes the bed, does the dishes and scrubs the toilet?

The Universal Gadget
The problem: Too many gadgets to juggle.

The solution: One that does it all.

Ten-year odds: Very high. Apple’s new iPhone, for one, promises to roll a music and video player, e-mailer, telephone, Web browser and camera into one.

Smart Head Implants
The problem: Our brains may be creative, but they lack the power and speed of computers.

The solution: Implant chips in your brain.

Ten-year odds: Very low. Scientists have implanted chips in rat brains, but we are very far from “jacking into the net” like the cyber-punks of science fiction.

Deutsche Telekom backs VoIP firm

Deutsche Telekom is backing the internet telephone company Jajah, becoming the first major phone company to support such technology.

Jajah provides voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services, which allow people to make calls over the internet at a fraction of the usual prices.

Deutsche Telekom is investing in Jajah through its investment arm T-Online Venture Fund.

Intel’s investment arm made a similar investment earlier this month.

T-Online Venture Fund chairman Andreas Kindt said in a company statement: “By investing in companies like Jajah, we will be able to continue to bring users around the world the innovative solutions they are looking for.”

Threat to revenues
VoIP technology allows users to make calls either via their computers or using mobile phones if they are in an area with a wireless broadband network.

As a result, most traditional telephone companies and mobile operators see it as a threat to their revenues.

Last week, Deutsche Telekom’s mobile arm launched a smartphone in the US called the Wing, which allows users to make VoIP calls in areas with wireless internet.

Deutsche Telekom says it has now started embedding Jajah into its web properties and that it expects to offer its calling services to consumers and businesses in the future.

Another big VoIP player, Skype, was bought by the online auction site eBay in a $2.6bn (£1.4bn) deal in September 2005.

Deutsche Telekom’s move comes at a time when the firm is facing a decline in demand for its traditional fixed-line telephone services.

Earlier this month, it reported a 58% fall in three-month profits, after more than half a million customers left its fixed-line business to join cheaper rivals.

Eye of the Tiger on Piano

Anyone a fan of the song “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor? This guy does a great version on the piano…