Now that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all have their videogame consoles in the market, the transitional phase of the console cycle is in full effect as each vendor has entered the game. What is interesting about this particular generation of gaming manufacturers is that each vendor has clearly differentiated hardware and strategies. Who will win? IDC says none of the three new consoles will dominate the market in the next five years like the PS2 dominated last cycle; however, Nintendo's Wii will outship and outsell the 360 and PS3 in 2007 and 2008.
IDC says Microsoft's Xbox 360 was the best selling current generation console for 2006 because it enjoyed a full year lead in the market. Microsoft is relishing in the PS3's launch slip-ups, where PS3 supply deficits diminished profits. The battle is heating up between the 360 and PS3, as the two gaming manufacturers target the same hardcore/enthusiast gamer to dominate the market.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is the only one of the three manufacturers working to grow its total accessible market for its hardware and software by broadening its audience beyond the traditional market. Nintendo has designed its latest hardware and software to be more inviting and fun, and less intimidating for non-gamers including those who may never self-identify as a gamer. Nintendo also enjoys support from the fan base it has captured with successful first party franchises. IDC believes hardware shipments of Nintendo's Wii will capture a little more than a third of the worldwide market by 2008, rising slightly above Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
This IDC study, Worldwide Videogame Console Hardware and Software Forecast 2006-2011: Ready for a New Game (IDC #205659), provides an analysis of the worldwide videogame console and handheld hardware and software markets. In addition to a high-level overview of market trends and competitive differences, it also provides a forecast by major region (North America, Western Europe, Japan and the rest of the world [ROW]) of hardware and software shipments by platform and hardware and software revenue in aggregate.
Worldwide Videogame Console Hardware and Software Forecast 2006-2011: Ready for a New Game
An underwater robot, shaped like a flattened orange, maneuvered untethered and autonomously within a 115-meter-deep sinkhole during tests this month in Mexico, a prelude to its mission to probe the mysterious nether reaches of the world's deepest sinkhole.
Bill Stone, leader of the NASA-funded Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) mission, said the 2.5-meter-diameter vehicle performed "phenomenally well" during early February tests in the geothermal sinkhole, or cenote, known as La Pilita. Carnegie Mellon University researchers developed the software that guided the DEPTHX craft.
Lenovo has voluntarily recalled certain 9-cell lithium-ion batteries. These batteries were manufactured for use with ThinkPad notebook computers that shipped worldwide between November 2005 and February 2007.
The batteries were sold with new notebook computers or as optional or replacement batteries on the models listed below.
For many people, this time of year brings 'March Madness,' the frenzy of tournaments to determine the best college basketball team in the nation, but for thousands of high school students around the world, the 'madness' involves robots.
The robots are in their shipping crates en route to their local regionals. It's probably the first time in six weeks that teams have had a chance for a breather, but is it just the calm before the storm?
Researchers have taken advantage of the unique coupled semiconducting and piezoelectric properties of zinc oxide nanowires to create a new class of electronic components and devices that could provide the foundation for a broad range of new applications.
So far, the researchers have demonstrated field-effect transistors, diodes, sensors – and current-producing nanogenerators – that operate by bending zinc oxide nanowires and nanobelts. The new components take advantage of the relationship between the mechanical and electronic coupled behavior of piezoelectric nanomaterials, a mechanism the researchers call "nano-piezotronics™."