The iPhone 3G is coming out on Friday. The 2.0 software and App Store will launch on the same day. There are a lot of cool apps out there, but one area is going largely overlooked: games.

The best looking one I've seen so far has to be Rolando. It reminds me a lot of the old classic, Lemmings, but it's all touch screen. If they get the controls right it's going to be awesome.

Rolando will hopefully be out in the App Store by August for $9.99.


Rolando for iPhone - Teaser trailer from handcircus on Vimeo.

There has probably never been a game that I'm looking as forward to as Spore. Hell, I've been writing that for over 2 years now. It's the new Maxis game from Will Wright, the guy behind Sim City, The Sims, etc. It's scope is massive - from amoeba to Universe creator - but if they can pull it off, it should be one of the greatest games ever.

I tried out the Creature Creator tonight to make my first creature in the game. The tool is extremely simple to learn and use. This gives me great hope for the game itself which will be out this Fall.

There is also an option to upload your creature to the Spore database -- and right to YouTube. Which I did. Watch him dance below.

An Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray player would be very cool, especially given that Microsoft backed the wrong horse (HD DVD) for so long. But is Microsoft really dumb enough to try and announce it an hour before the WWDC event tomorrow?

That's the rumor that CrunchGear is hearing. 1 hour before one of the largest events in Apple's history, Microsoft will announce an Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray drive that will ship before Christmas and be cheaper than the current Xbox 360 Elite.

If true, why on Earth would Microsoft time it that way? They would clearly have to be thinking that such an announcement would dampen the buzz of the 3G iPhone - but it wouldn't, it would just get completely buried under it.

Save it for another day Microsoft. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

Universal has signed a six-year partnership with Hasbro that will make at least four feature films according to Variety. It looks like the movie industry is looking to move beyond the comic and video game industries and into board games.

As much as I somewhat enjoyed 1985's Clue, can you imagine a Monopoly movie? How about Battleship the movie? As Rotten Tomatoes has noted in the past, Candy Land might work as a kids film (Daniel Day Lewis as Lord Licorice perhaps?), but Trivial Pursuit would not.

Hasbro does own the rights to Magic, The Gathering, which may be what Universal is looking for here. With Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the Narnia films being hot tickets, fantasy has gone from a joke in the industry, to a potential blockbuster generator if done correctly.

I'm hoping for a Hungry Hungry Hippos franchise.

While rumors of the Netflix service on the Xbox 360 are nothing new, when MSNBC runs a story in which Microsoft Live exec John Schappert gives the old "stay tuned" rather than "no comment" in response to the rumors, you can consider my interests piqued.

If Netflix were to somehow offer its unlimited streaming package over Xbox Live, as I wrote about a week ago, it could be the ultimate killer app. Just imagine Microsoft, recently harmed by news the PS3 was outselling them AND that their HD-DVD add-on was rendered useless with Toshiba backing out of the format, coming back with a vengeance with a Netflix deal. All of a sudden the device is the hot item again.

Of course that would be contingent on Microsoft securing an exclusive deal with Netflix and keeping it away from the Playstation 3 - who Netflix is also said to be considering a partnership with.

This would also be a huge win for Netflix which is looking better going forward now that we have one high definition format and this move would obviously take care of any digital distribution worries in a hurry.

We should know more tomorrow at the GDC in San Francisco, where none other than John Schappert will be giving the keynote. "Stay tuned".

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that HD-DVDs main backer and parent Toshiba is expect to pull the plug on the format. Though nothing is official yet, "reliable industry sources" are saying this should happen in a matter of weeks.

This move has obviously been expected by me for a while (have I written about anything more often recently?) and was my Prediction #3 in the 2008 list. Though I wrote that I expected it to happen towards the end of the year, I did say that when and if Warner Brothers sided with Blu-ray it would be all but over. That, of course, was the catalyst that started this fall from grace back on January 4th.

Shortly thereafter Paramount was said to be wavering on their deal with HD-DVD - and though they wouldn't officially say they would trigger their opt-out clause, you got the feeling they were almost just waiting until they had sold all their HD-DVDs and had some Blu-rays to unleash. Next several retail chains began announcing they would stop selling the format and soon Blu-ray sales were said to be accounting for over 90% of the market - something which HD-DVD called a fluke.

Sony, the parent of Blu-ray, meanwhile got some good news about PS3 sales figures (which of course has a Blu-ray player built-in) and that they had a breakthrough in creating cheaper Blu-ray lasers which should drive prices down in 2008. In what I called their "last stand" the HD-DVD group decided to spend $3 million dollars on a Super Bowl ad - essentially trying to trick people into buying their newly very cheap HD-DVD players. Microsoft followed these price cuts by making their Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on next to free.

The final blows came last week when on the same day, Netflix decided to pull their HD-DVD support and Best Buy announced they would promote the Blu-ray format over HD-DVD. The HD-DVD group responded to this with news trying to be positive, but there it was very clear that this war was over.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft, HD-DVD's other main player isn't mentioned as being a part of this decision by Toshiba to pull the plug. Microsoft of course has the HD-DVD external player for the Xbox 360, but their support of the format is much deeper than that (even if they now downplay it).

The New York Times last year also called them "the most prominent technology company supporting HD-DVD". And as The Hollywood Reporter notes, when Paramount sided exclusively with HD-DVD last year, it was Microsoft that was sending out the PR to journalists around the country about the deal. Today saw a very different picture:

Several phone calls to Kevin Collins, Microsoft's normally accessible "HD DVD evangelist," were not returned.

Though Bill Gates all but gave the format a vote of no confidence in an interview at CES (right after the Warner Brothers announcement), he's no longer running the company. Whoever is might want to give Toshiba a call, if for nothing else to see when the service for friends and family is going to take place.

Gaming industry analysts Pacfic Crest Securities have stated that they believe both Microsoft and Nintendo will have new gaming consoles out by 2010 - just 2 years from now. This might seem reasonable, except that they also expect the Playstation 3 to have a 10-year life cycle, meaning Sony wouldn't release a new system until closer to the middle part of that decade?

If the recent trends and estimates pan out for this year it looks like Nintendo's Wii will continue to dominate the market while the Playstation 3 starts selling like crazy and eventually overtakes Microsoft's Xbox 360. If this holds true, it makes sense that Microsoft would want to be the first to market with a new console in a few years, as they have benefited from being the first to the market in this current generation.

Microsoft also happens to have a console which appears to have an awful 16% rate of failure. Not good.

So say Microsoft launches a new Xbox in 2010, it's hard to imagine both Nintendo and Sony not responding with new consoles of their own. Even if Microsoft's new console wasn't that much more "next-gen" than the current iterations, it would be perceived as such simply being newer.

If Sony waited 5 or 6 years after that to launched their next console, the results could be disastrous for them - much more disasterous than launching a $600 console when another competitor (Nintendo) had one for $249.

Who really knows though, by the middle of the next decade mobile gaming could be even bigger than it is now and the consoles might be a secondary business to many of these companies - which would be very bad news for Microsoft seeing as they don't have a mobile game device.

Newsweek has a great, extensive interview with Will Wright creator of SimCity and The Sims about his new opus, Spore. How long has this game been going on? Well it won the 'Best of Show' award at E3 - in 2005...when there still was an E3. But lest you think this is just another interview to placate the masses while we wait - we finally have a release date: September 7, 2008.

And yes, as I've written about before, it will be available on the Mac the same day as the PC - as well as on the Nintendo DS and mobile phones!

Sure, it's a few years later than originally expected (I first wrote a blurb about it almost 2 years ago), but Will Wright goes into detail about the reasons and why it will ultimately be worth it. The game is even more massive than the one originally laid out 3 years ago. It has its 5 stages of development ranging from 2D tide pools, to cities, to galaxies, but it also now has social elements that Will Wright added as he was inspired by social networks online in the later stages of development:

"We took a lot of the dynamics we saw going on the Web--especially social networking sites--and tried use that language to convey to the players how this all works."

In fact as Wright describes it, it seems like there will be many elements of the game that are run like the way they are on the web. He talks of 'Sporecasts' you can subscribe to in game, buddy lists, comments, and even tagging content which apparently drew its inspiration from Flickr.

This thing sounds crazy at this point, a giant life simulation from amoeba to the entire Universe, all wrapped around what will essentially be a social network. And yes, a version for the Wii is in the works as well.

Trademork managed to dig up a patent Apple filed on February 5th to cover both hand-held units and stand alone machines capable of playing videogames. It's interesting and seems to further the growing whispers that Apple wants to get into the videogame realm - in some capacity beyond their rudimentary iPod games.

As Ars Technica points out, Apple has attempted - at least somewhat - to go in the videogame direction in the past with the Pippin in the 1990s. But that was an attempt made in the Steve Jobs-exile days of Apple, with Jobs spearheading such a project, it's certainly enough to get fanboys in a tizzy.

While the obvious initial thought may be to turn the Apple TV into a gaming console, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple's real intentions weren't so straight-forward. Apple's current crop of games sold in the iTunes store only work on "traditional" iPods - they don't take advantage of the iPod Touch or the iPhone's Multi-Touch capabilities. Clearly Apple is going to take their games in this direction eventually, but the fact that they haven't done it yet seems to indicate they are working on something fairly large for it.

Back in December patents revealed Apple working on more advanced Multi-Touch capabilities specifically aimed at gaming on handheld devices. This had me all excited with dreams of the iPhone turning into a type of Nintendo DS machine. But actually it could be much more - the DS only utilizes old-school touch-screen technology, not Multi-Touch, this could add a whole new element to gaming similar to how the Wiimote has revolutionized home console gaming.

Speaking of Nintendo, Apple teaming up with the now #1 console maker has long been a fanboys dream. Something about the two companies seems to inspire rabid dedication among their fans - and the two together would probably lead to mass hysteria. Imagine Nintendo selling their old classic games via the iTunes store. Imagine a Virtual Console channel on the Apple TV similar to the one on the Wii. Sure this is wishful thinking, but if Apple is serious about breaking into the videogame world, it's something they should maybe consider.

Whatever Apple is planning in the gaming realm, I'd love to see some games - beyond the Internet-based ones - on my iPhone soon. They love to tout that if you carry around an iPod and a cellphone, why not just carry around one with the iPhone? Well how about if you carry around an iPod, a cellphone, and portable gaming system? It'd be a great selling point to add that capability to the iPhone while they work on the more advanced gaming stuff.

The first Steve Spielberg/Electronic Arts game has been revealed as 'Boom Blox' coming out for the Nintendo Wii this May. The question now is: what on Earth did Steve Spielberg have to do with this game being made?

Here's the description we get from CNET:

It will have more than 300 levels, "a cast of over thirty wacky characters" and seems to be built around letting players take on "Blox-laying chickens or...baseball-throwing monkeys" or cartoonlike grim reapers in tiki, medieval, frontier, or haunted themed settings.

Hmm, okay. I was thinking something more along the lines of Mass Effect or BioShock but created by Spielberg, but perhaps that was just me being too narrow minded. After all, the Wii hasn't exactly proven itself to be the platform of choice for those types of titles yet, and certainly a wacky, cartoon-like grim reaper fest in tiki land could be more up the console's alley.

I guess I just have a hard time placing what exactly Spielberg, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, would bring to such a project. I don't think he's going to animate it, he won't be coding it, perhaps it has some cutscenes he directed? Or maybe he just came up with the idea?

The other Spielberg/EA game sounds much more like something he'd be involved in:

The second game, code-named LMNO--also sequential letters, hmmm--is for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 and the magazine pegged it as "North by Northwest meets E.T.--if E.T. were female, grown up and, um, hot."

Ah yes, that is more along the lines of what I was thinking.

These titles will be nothing if not interesting. If they're actually good could we start seeing more crossover from the filmmaking world to the videogame one rather than the other way around?

You can keep believing that HD-DVD isn't dying if you want to, but you need look no further than how quickly HD-DVD price-cuts are coming down the pipeline than to know things are getting pretty desperate. The latest one is yet another price cut for the HD-DVD add-on to the Xbox 360.

The new $50 price-cut brings the drive down to a nice $129 (still with the 5 free HD-DVDs), but as Engadget noted yesterday, Amazon was willing to even go further and discount the drive down to $79 - with 6 free HD-DVDs and free shipping - it not surprisingly sold out very quickly. Or maybe I should say 'surprisingly', because who would want to buy it now knowing that HD-DVD is dying? Sure it's a great deal for the movies that are out there on HD-DVD right now, but in the not-too-distant future there will be no more new releases on the format.

When you consider that 5 HD-DVD discs are probably going to run you about $125-$150 - you're basically getting this drive for free, or with the Engadget deal, they are paying you a substantial amount of money to take it. Still think HD-DVD is safe?

I predict a Blu-ray add-on for the 360 before the year is through.

At this rate I may have to change my 2008 Predictions to 'First-Half of 2008 Predictions' as many of them look like they are well on their way to coming true just one month into the year. The latest one is #4 on the list:

4) The Nintendo Wii will continue its dominance in videogame wars but Sony's PS3 will outsell Microsoft's Xbox 360 for the year
The Wii seems to be an unstoppable train at this point - and just imagine what will happen if they can drop the price below $200 this year (assuming they can finally meet demand). Sony meanwhile finally has a reasonable price and may soon get games that people, you know, actually want to play. Plus if Blu-ray is looking stronger that will really help (see #3).

To me this seemed like a fairly easy one to predict - and now EA has joined me in doing so. They believe that the PS3 will sell between 9.5 and 11.5 million units this year compared with just 6 to 8 million for the Xbox 360. How about the Wii? They're projecting 12 to 14 million units - putting all three exactly in line with my prediction.

Even though the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 in 2007, this one seemed obvious to me. People weren't buying the PS3 in 2007 simply because it was way too expensive ($600) for most of the year. As soon as Sony cut the price, the units started flying off the shelves (shocking, I know). That said, Sony still also has no real dominant system-selling games for the PS3, but Metal Gear Solid 4 should change that (if it ever comes out).

Oh yeah, and there's the whole Blu-ray thing...

More thoughts:

• As Blu-ray Starts Dominating, Sony Readies New PS3?
  
• Blu-ray 2.0 Is Coming, Buy a PS3 and You're Already On Board
• War Over? Warner Brothers Sides With Blu-ray
• The $399 PS3 With Free Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray, Is Sony Finally Starting To Get It?
• Why Apple Is Smart and Sony Is Dumb (Price Cuts)
• PS3 Price Cut Is Temporary - Sony Is Laughably Stupid
• Who Would Have Guess, a PS3 Price-Cut
• Will Sony Finally Cut the PS3 Price?
• Sony Unofficially Admits Their Stupidity By Killing Off the 20 GB PS3
• PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Elite - It's All About Perception

All indications are that Blu-ray is now quickly destroying HD-DVD. HD-DVD of course won't admit as much, but the outcome has looked inevitable for weeks now, and consumers appear to be making it clear that they want this format war over. Sony may be preparing the actual final death blow right now - a new 160 GB Playstation 3.

Reports last week were that Sony was oddly discontinuing its high-end 80 GB PS3, leaving only the 40 GB one on the market. But Opposable Thumbs has a supposedly very reliable informant that claims Sony is killing off the 80 gig PS3 so that they can introduce a new high-end model at the same $499 price point that will feature either a 120 or 160 GB hard drive and the new Dual-Shock 3 controller. Sony would continue to sell the 40 GB PS3 for $399.

This would appear to make a lot of sense. The PS3 has supposedly been making some inroads against its main competitor, the Xbox 360, and this new unit would not only keep that trend going, it would likely bolster Blu-ray sales even further.

It might have been nice for Sony to take this proactive approach 13 months ago when I suggested it - rather than fall to 3rd place in a war they were once completely and utterly dominating in, but hey, Blu-ray rolled their way so not all ended up being lost apparently. Once Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD is over, PS3 vs. Xbox 360 could turn ugly. Wars beget wars.

More thoughts:

• Blu-ray 2.0 Is Coming, Buy a PS3 and You're Already On Board
• War Over? Warner Brothers Sides With Blu-ray
• Price Cut Helps PS3? Shocking.
• The $399 PS3 With Free Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray, Is Sony Finally Starting To Get It?
• Why Apple Is Smart and Sony Is Dumb (Price Cuts)
• PS3 Price Cut Is Temporary - Sony Is Laughably Stupid
• Who Would Have Guess, a PS3 Price-Cut
• Will Sony Finally Cut the PS3 Price?
• Sony Unofficially Admits Their Stupidity By Killing Off the 20 GB PS3
• PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Elite - It's All About Perception

Even when it began looking bleak for the HD-DVD format months ago, many were quick to point out that it was still the more mature format in terms of digital extras (such as Internet-based special features). HD-DVD themselves have been pointing this out in advertisements on certain DVDs for months now. So when Warner Brothers sided with Blu-ray it looked to some that the weaker format may somehow win again (just as VHS beat Betamax in the 1980s); but now it looks like Blu-ray is finally getting close to offering the same functionality as the HD-DVD players with its 2.0 spec, and though the public may be largely clueless still as to what that means, it could very well be the final proverbial nail in the coffin for HD-DVD.

While just about everyone now agrees that Blu-ray is going to win the format war, a lot has been written about it not making sense to buy a player yet as they won't work with the future "BD-Live" Blu-ray discs (those that match the bonus content functionality of HD-DVD). But it appears now that technically the Blu-ray player that most people own - the Playstation 3 (which accounts for 3 million of the 3.5 million Blu-ray players sold) - will be upgradable to the Blu-ray 2.0 spec when it becomes available. Now as soon as regular Blu-ray players start shipping with this 2.0 compatibility (for those who still don't feel comfortable or understand buying a videogame system as their main movie player), there should be nothing to stop the Blu-ray format going forward.

While I've really liked my Xbox 360, with news that the Playstation 3 will be upgradeable to the Blu-ray 2.0 spec, I have almost no doubt that I will be trading in the 360 for a PS3 at some point this year - Microsoft simply backed the wrong format and I'd prefer not to have a half-dozen different set-top boxes on my home entertainment stand. In the future history may show that the PS3 was in fact saved by Blu-ray, rather than it being the other way around as many had initially thought.

More thoughts:

• The Console Wars Have Spread to HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray
• Where Are All the Back-Catalog HD-DVD and Blu-ray Discs?
• HD-DVD and Blu-ray To Peacefully Co-exist by 2012? I Say No Way.
• Bill Gates All But Gives HD-DVD A Vote Of No Confidence
  

In what will no doubt be lost under all of the Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote hype, EA today announced that the new Will Wright game Spore will see a simultaneous release on both the Mac and PC. This is a huge step forward for Mac gaming which usually involves waiting around for months for someone to port a PC game to the Mac.

When Apple switched over to Intel chips a lot of people assumed it would be a lot easier for game developers to make Mac games at the same time as PC games just as they make Xbox 360 games at the same time as PS3 games - but that hasn't happened so far. This is something I hear quite often as to why people don't want to switch to Macs - "they suck for gaming". With the Intel chips and powerful graphics cards now common, I'm not so sure it's that they suck - it's just that developers have sucked at making them. With this Spore announcement, that could be changing.

While the videogame market is absolutely exploding right now, sometimes it's easy to feel that there is actually very little innovation actually taking place. Better graphics, longer plots, more guns - I much prefer taking the Nintendo Wii approach by thinking outside the box, but that can be hard to do in the computer gaming market - which is why there are very few games I've been as excited about as Will Wright's (creator of Sim City and The Sims) Spore. But being a Mac user I assumed I would have to wait months to play it on my preferred platform, so I am very excited for this announcement.

Here's to hoping this simultaneous release starts a trend.

Here's some shocking news, Microsoft is apparently trying to make a motion-sensing Xbox 360 controller. Lest you think they're actually doing their own innovation, they've apparently even contacted Gyration, the company that previously built the Wiimote prototype for Nintendo.

Sony of course has already jumped on the motion-sensing controller bandwagon as well - which I find humorous considering both them and Microsoft clearly thought very little of Nintendo a mere 18 months ago and likely thought their 'gimmicky' Wii system would be the end of the company.

Instead there is a new king in the videogame console realm. They got their by innovation not by copying others innovations. Maybe Mircosoft and Sony should takes note of that and try to create something new.

We've already known how successful Apple was on the Amazon best-selling lists over the holidays, but this statistic is crazy: Amazon sold 17 Nintendo Wiis per second that the console was actually available!

Just imagine if they would have had an ample supply how much Nintendo would have trounced both Sony and Microsoft - meaning more than they already did (the Wii was the #5 seller in Video Games, the PS3 the #14, and the Xbox 360 all the way down at #24).

The Wii was obviously one of the huge successes of 2007 - one which I foresaw and had a gut feeling about ever since I first saw the Wii back in May of '06. It's a classic example of the idea that while it pays to keep doing what works (the PS3 and the Xbox 360), it can potentially pay a lot more to take a risk and innovate (the Wii). I hope more companies will take that idea to heart in 2008 and follow the examples of Nintendo and Apple.

Now the question for many is, did the Wii rainchecks sell out as well?

Right before the launch of the iPhone it was rumored that Nintendo and Apple were discussing the possibility of bringing some Nintendo games to the device - obviously nothing came of that rumor. Today Apple began selling a modified version of the Sega classic Sonic the Hedgehog via the iTunes store but like their other iPod games - it will not work on the iPhone. This coupled with the rumor that Apple will have some new game-related announcements at MacWorld lead me to wonder if certain larger games - like say classics made by Nintendo - aren't destined to come to the iPhone.

Now some of you will immediately scream that Nintendo would never do this because it would eat into their our handheld sales for systems such as the Nintendo DS. However when you consider that there are already plenty of game emulators out there for cracked iPhones - and when the SDK for the iPhone becomes available in a couple of months, they should be even more readily available, Nintendo would seem kind of foolish not to capitalize on the games people will already be playing for free.

I'm not talking about porting their brand new Nintendo DS games over to the iPhone, but rather the old classics like Super Mario Brothers. These are games that have already proven they can have a second life thanks to systems such as the Wii's Virtual Console. People have no problem paying $5 for a copy of Super Mario Brothers to play on the Wii - do you think they've have any problem doing the same on an iPhone or iPod? Coincidentally that is also the price set for Sonic the Hedgehog in the iTunes store.

Pure speculation, but an attractive option for both parties I think.

Hype is definitely building for MacWorld as we're less than a month away now. While hype of course builds for every Apple event, the most recent rumors are of particular interest to me because it entails 3 of the things I want most from Apple:

1. Multi-Touch on the Slim MacBook
2. iTunes Movie Rentals on the AppleTV
3. iPhone and iPod Touch Mutli-Touch Games

I've been writing on the Slim MacBook (aka 'MacBook Nano') rumor for a while now and pretty much each time I mention my dream that such a device will include Multi-Touch technology in its keypad. Well today we have analyst Gene Munster writing in his MacWorld Preview notes:

Finally, there are reports that the new portable may include a unique touchpad, possibly using the same multitouch technology used in the iPhone and iPod touch

I know its just an analyst (who are often wrong), but the mere mention sends shivers of excitement.

Next up is iTunes Movie Rentals - which there have been several indications are coming - bought directly from the AppleTV (instead of streaming from your computer). This is important I believe for some of the less tech savvy users out there (even though it is very simple to stream from iTunes to an AppleTV). If you can sit down and buy a movie rental from iTunes right from your couch, that is huge for both Apple and its AppleTV device (it would also fulfill one of my 8 steps for Apple to fix the AppleTV).

And finally word is that there could be some Multi-Touch inspired games making their way to the iPhone and iPod Touch. As a huge fan of the Nintendo DS, this excites me with the possibilities.

While the first batch would probably be simple puzzle games, I continue to hold out hope that one day a certain next-gen console leader may team up with Apple to bring some classic Nintendo games to the iPhone...

Regardless of what side of the 'Nintendo dropped the ball on Wii manufacturing' vs. 'Demand is way too high for Nintendo to ever meet' debate, it is amazing how much the Wii is selling. A little over a year ago I very much struggled with the notion of going on eBay and paying a premium for a game system that I assumed would be widely available after the holidays - I ended up doing it, paying $330 to have my Wii the first week of December. It's looking more and more like one of the better decisions I ever made.

The Wii is of course still sold out nation-wide and crazier yet is that the eBay prices for his holiday season seem to be even higher than they were after its launch last year. I doubt very much you can find one for $330 now - try more like four, five, six, or I've even seen seven hundred dollars!

Nintendo, pretty much admitting the fact that there is not much they can do at this point, has started offering IOUs to customers at GameStops across the country. These "rainchecks" will guarantee that the customer will get their Wii by the end of January. That actually seems like a pretty risky guarantee seeing that one year after its consoles launch the company somehow cannot produce nearly enough units to meet demand - are they ramping up production even more now for this guarantee? If so, why didn't they do that say, 3 months ago? After all, estimates now are that because of these shortages, Nintendo is leaving $1.3 billion on the table and no doubt driving some customers to their competitors products which you can - you know - actually buy.

Or maybe they're just assuming that demand will drop after the holidays, much like I did last year. If that's the case, look for Nintendo to run out of these IOUs just like they've run out of Wiis.

[CC photo by flickr user elpansa]