GameDaily reports that Sony has had a lot of success with the PSP Slim in Japan, with sales of over a million units since its launch in September of this year. That's more units sold than the original PSP did in its several-year-long lifespan. "Titles such as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Monster Hunter in particular have helped boost Sony's portable in Japan. Sony is maintaining a sales forecast of 10 million units worldwide by the end of its fiscal year next March. The portable sector is still dominated by the Nintendo DS, however. Nintendo is aiming to sell 28 million units of its handheld by the end of its fiscal year."

The little heard-of television adapter for the DS went on sale in Japan yesterday, retailing for ¥6,800 ($62.70). "The design is different from the prototype shown in 2004, as it features a simple aerial cartridge which plugs in the back of the handheld, and no base unit. The top screen is used for the TV picture, while the bottom screen can be used to do things such as change channels and take notes." The company has no current plans to bring the TV adapter to the US, or anywhere else.

Next Generation has up a feature on the rising fortunes of Sony's PSP. Overlooked for quite some time now as the DS dominates the headlines, the article argues that the handheld console still has a lot to offer ... and people are starting to notice. "Sony has always commanded strong third-party support for its systems since the success of the original PlayStation, and [senior PSP marketing manager John Koller] believes that PSP developers are similarly finding ways to get creative and present fun titles. 'Upcoming launches such as God of War: Chains of Olympus from a first-party perspective, and Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron from LucasArts, are certainly good examples of fantastic franchises made unique on the PSP,' he says. 'It's clear that consumers do not want the same game on their PSP that they play on console.'"

Of all the titles in the Legend of Zelda series, some of the most-respected have been for handheld consoles. Link's Awakening, the Oracle duo, and Minish Cap all manage to combine on-the-road gaming with a certain purity of Zelda-ness. Link's most recent adventure on the small screen, Phantom Hourglass, generally continues this tradition and introduces a number of new elements to the property. Unique controls, a true sequel, and cel-shaded graphics all make Hourglass stand out from 'traditional' Zelda games, and together the whole hangs together fairly well. Read on for my impressions of this pint-sized return to Hyrule.

Though there are no official announcements at the moment, Next Generation is reporting on two interesting possibilities for the future of Nintendo products. In a report filed yesterday, the site hints that Nintendo may be considering a MMOG version of Animal Crossing , to be released on the Wii console. Also exciting: the possibility of a Flash Card for the DS that would allow classic Nintendo games to be (legally) played on their handheld console. "The uncontrollable homebrew and piracy communities that use the DS rely on similar devices ... this should, in the long term, allow Nintendo to exercise some control over at least the former through the simple step of offering a path to publisher-supported content. Compared to the slightly vague WiiWare proposition, this has the possibility to revolutionise homebrew development - at least in terms of distribution and the possibility of mainstream success - but how far the notoriously controlling Japanese giant will allow that community the creative freedom it requires to flourish will only be seen in practice."

Mistwalker studios, the studio headed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, has announced they are hard at work on two RPGs for the Nintendo DS. One is a portable version of their just-released-for-360 title Blue Dragon, while a second title called AWAY: Tsuresarareta Hitobito has few details attached at this point. "Little is known about the title outside of the fact that it's being developed by Artoon. They are notable for having Naoto Oshima--character designer for Sonic and Dr. Robotnik--on board. The only hint about the game is the subtitle, 'Tsuresarareta Hitobito,' which means 'kidnapped people'--strange considering the release date of January 31, 2008 is quickly approaching." Great news for RPG-loving DS owners, who can add these titles to the stack with Dragon Quest IX . It's also an interesting example of a primarily Microsoft studio creating content for a Nintendo console, which coincides with rumours of Viva Pinata for the Wii currently in the works.

Just on the heels of the good news for PSP Slim sales numbers comes an analysis by a Japanese business firm essentially saying that the PSP's competitor, the DS, is single-handedly driving the Japanese gaming market. "The DS, which Enterbrain says sold 3.478 million units (including both DS and DS Lite) in the fiscal first half, outsold Sony's PSP, at 1.07 million units, about three to one. Enterbrain added that console sales, encompassing Wii and PlayStation 3, also bolstered the market, which expanded by 33.5 percent to ¥138.3 billion ($1.2 billion), while software sales were also up 12.8 percent to ¥154.5 billion ($1.34 billion). Reuters cited the same Enterbrain report when it noted that in April through September, Wii outsold the PlayStation 3 by more than four to one in Japan, with 1.6 Wii units sold versus 385,492 PS3s."

The New York Times has an article up this week talking about Nokia's third attempt to get their N-Gage brand into the minds of gamers. This time it's a service, not a device, and the company is betting that branding mobile games will be a better tactic than their previous attempts. "The Ideo and Nokia executives concluded that users mainly want to play against their friends and, at the very least, they want to know the skill level of their opponents. As a result, the new N-Gage permits users to see what games their friends have on their phones and whether they are online. They can also see how many points a person has earned in the game, as well as how much time they devote to solitary play versus group play. The researchers also asked players what their greatest frustrations were. High on the list was buying a game that turned out to be disappointing. In the new N-Gage service, customers will be able to sample games free before buying them. The selection will lean toward the casual side of gaming, with soccer and fishing titles and the popular puzzle game Bejeweled, among others. Nokia has not yet discussed prices."

GameDaily reports that the PlayStation Portable has an interesting restriction: its full processor power cannot be utilized at the same time as its WiFi functionality. Therefore, games that are played online cannot make use of the chip's 333mhz processor speed. The original finding from Beyond 3D was confirmed to GameDaily by Sony. Dave Karraker, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications: "The recent firmware upgrade (3.50) that removed the restriction on the PSP's CPU speed enables developers to utilize speeds either lower or higher than the default 222MHz, up to the full 333MHz clock speed. The article is correct that increased CPU speed cannot be used with the PSP's wireless feature." Though speculation is that this is a power-saving decision, there has been no official announcement as to the root cause.

GameDaily is reporting on commentary from Nintendo of America's George Harrison, who essentially says the company will no longer be using the Game Boy brand. While at one point the DS was the 'third pillar' along with the Game Boy and the GameCube/Wii, the handheld has in recent years more than proven its worth. "This year in our marketing you really won't see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark. It was a big risk for us to actually pass on it and call the new product the Nintendo DS, but it was part of Mr. Iwata's philosophy that if we're going to make a radical difference and try to reach a new audience, then we have to change the name ... We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry."

fistfullast33l writes "PSPFanboy, a Joystiq blog, has a great closeup of the new PSP redesign. Photos show the old PSP and the new PSP side by side. Modifications include adding more RAM (up to 64MB), extended battery life, a new UMD loading door, removal of the IR port (Sony really hates infrared), and a redesigned headphone jack to support video output. Sony confirmed that you will be able to play movies and games through the video out, but the games can only be viewable via component, not composite cables. Also, 0okm has some nice pictures of the new PSP internals as well as a manual snapshot showing button layout (the wireless switch was moved) and TV out information." Gamasutra has the news that the slim-line is due out on September 20th in Japan.

Although Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Mario Galaxy were both touched on at the Nintendo press conference ... it didn't really seem like enough. Thankfully, there are plenty of hands-on writeups to satisfy interested parties. Wired's Game|Life has almost nothing but praise for Metroid. Specifically, Chris Kohler singles out the FPS controls as proving the concept for him on the system. 1up is equally pleased with Mario. They cite its unconventional nature as initially offputting, but ultimately one of the things they enjoyed most about the game. "We simply love the way the game feels. Many gamers are of the opinion that Super Mario Sunshine strayed too far from the fundamentals of the series by focusing so heavily on the water cannon/jet pack, but Galaxy puts the emphasis right back on jumping and stomping foes. The controls are tight and the graphics are crisp, if not exactly a dead ringer for top-of-the-line Xbox 360 visuals. And tiny references to games past are everywhere, from the usual coins, to Goombas of unusual size, to "?" blocks that appear as crystalline squares that can be kicked around the levels as weapons or stomped on to yield rewards."

PlayStation Portable senior marketing manager John Koller spoke with the Pocket Gamer site about the much-maligned UMD format. The disc used in the PSP for both games and movies, few stores carry UMD movies any more. Just the same, says Koller, Sony supports it 100%. From the interview: "'UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form factor to portability,' he says. The same can easily be said of the UMD's cartridge counterpart on Nintendo DS. However, ease of UMD manufacturing is seen as a winning benefit. 'Duplication of UMDs is much easier, cheaper than cartridges,' Koller adds. 'We've really optimized time and cost by going with a disc-based format.' On the topic of UMD weaknesses, Koller is candid: 'There's no question the biggest weakness is related to porting games from other platforms. Publishers are concerned about the size of UMD because they can't cram a DVD game on to it.'"

1up has the news that Bioware (makers of classic RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights) is collaborating with Sega to make a Sonic the Hedgehog roleplaying game for the Nintendo DS. "Sega's latest effort clearly illustrates the company's increasing interest in (and reliance on) Western content developers and Western audiences ... Now all we need to do is sit back and wait for the patented Bioware mid-game reveal which unmasks Tails once and for all as the evil Dr. Robotnik. Who needs Mass Effect? When the angst-ridden backstory of Knuckles the Echidna is your muse, the world is your spiky-headed oyster." For the record? I need Mass Effect. Now.

An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Pocket Gamer, Zeno Colaço, vice president of publisher and developer relations at SCEE made some revealing comments about his thoughts on the DS and the future of the PSP. 'Some of the DS games have been fantastic. Where in hindsight we've been short is one or two killer apps that would have been able to drive PSP forward'. Despite being so frank on the merits of the competition, Colaço was still tight lipped on the subject of a PSP redesign, stating: 'The technology behind PSP is still top-end and so that doesn't need to be addressed'."

marcellizot writes "PSP owners might want to sit down for this one: Sony has just signed a four-year deal with BT to turn the PSP into a phone. The partnership will add wireless broadband communication functions, including high quality video calls, voice calls and messaging. The partnership will initially integrate the PSP with BT Broadband's video and voice softphone VoIP software, meaning that calls will be free, with the customer only having to pay for the BT broadband subscription. This means that initially the service will only enable the PSP to communicate with products that run the softphone software. BT has already confirmed however that in the months following the service's debut, additional features will be launched to enable calls and messages to PCs, fixed lines and mobiles."

C|Net passes on the words of Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who lambasts Sony for failing to live up to the opportunity the PSP presented. Though the handheld has certainly been doing better of late, it's hard not to point out that the PlayStation Portable's sales numbers flag in the face of the DS's incredible popularity. McQuivey also makes a point of stating how well the system could have done at taking a slice of Apple's death-grip on the downloadable media market. "'The thing is, Sony could have been all this,' McQuivey said. 'The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies.' Instead, the mobile-video play of one of the world's largest electronics companies is straggling behind Apple, has shaken the confidence of supporters--especially in Hollywood--and added to the woes of CEO Howard Stringer."

marcellizot writes "It has taken a while for handheld consoles to crawl from the primordial 8-bit slime to today's apex predator polygon juggling brutes. To illustrate just how much things have advanced over the last 20 years, Pocket Gamer has pulled together a few facts and figures in pretty chart form. Pitting the vital statistics of the critical handhelds of today and yesteryear against one another, there are some interesting facts to be gleaned from this infotainment extravaganza."

GreenTea writes "Some of the latest mobile phones in Japan come with motion sensors that let users detect motion or play action games like those on the Nintendo Wii console. The D904i from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, contains a tiny motion sensor that detects shaking and tilting, company spokesman Nobuyuki Hatanaka said. 'The software supports three main types of motion: shake, rock and roll. Shake can be used for actions such as rolling dice and shuffling MP3 decks. Rock interprets right, left, up and down gestures to generate traditional cursor-style user input commands. Roll offers joystick control by responding to tilting motions used in navigating games, maps or Web pages.'"

The wait for 'catch-em-all' folks in the US is over; Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are out today. Joystiq and Kotaku have coverage of yesterday's launch party at the Nintendo Store. "There was a station set up to play the card game, manned by adults who were there to teach the game to kids. Finally there was a station where Junichi Masuda, the game director, and Shigeru Ohmori, the game design lead, signed autographs for those old enough to know who they are. It may have been meant to push Pokémon merchandise (the guys at the card station handed out thin packs of cards to every kid who came by) but it also meant there was something for everyone." 1up and Gamespot, meanwhile, are offering up reviews of the game. Both hand it the respectable score of 8.5, saying that it's still a great game experience but dinging the developers for not moving the series forward in any innovative directions.