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Nintendo Sue Five Companies to Court

The king of game console, Nintendo, is angry with some companies that importing and selling a device that can enable someone to use and play illegal game program in Nintendo DS.

As quoted from Reuters, Nintendo felt that they have suffered financial loss because of it, and decided to drag this five companies, which their name didn’t mentioned to the court of law.

Seems like Nintendo’s determination is not only a bluff, because the legal suit against those five companies has been registered into Tokyo District Court. The suit has been registered by Nintendo along with 54 other Japanese software companies.

Sony Reveals How To Crush Wii and XBox 360

Along with the raising intensity of game consoles competition, Sony has built a strategy to crush its tough competitors. Sony is planning to rent and sell films and TV shows via internet for its game console, PS3. Not just that, Sony will also doubled the console’s hardrive capacity.

After having the lead for a decade, which started from mid 90s, the newest version of Sony’s game console, PS3, is far behind of its rivals, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft XBox 360. Sony will need a hard work to reach the top once again.

At E3 Expo, Sony announced its video distribution service in their Playstation online network, which enable user to hire or buy films and TV shows. This action is done to anticipate XBox Life which has the same feature.

This latest feature by Sony will enable users to watch film or TV Show from their Playstation Portable (PSP). Another new campaign, Sony is also planning to launch a game console with 80GB capacity with a price of USD399, which means the same price as PS3 with 40GB capacity. Sony targetted around 15 million units of PSP will be sold until 31 March 2009, while Nintendo has targetted the sale of 25 million unit of Wii console, and 28 million units of DS portable game.

XBox Price Drops, Wii and Playstation Will Follow?

Microsoft finally cut-off their main console price, XBox 360. As predicted before, this computer business giant has cut off the Xbox 360 Pro with 20GB hardisk, from US$349 to only US$299.

Along with the announcement, Microsoft also introduce Xbox new model with 60GB hardisk, which will be sold in Canada and United States early August. The price of this model will be US$ 349. The spreading news about the price cut-off has been around gamers long before Microsoft officially announced the news, just before the E3 game exhibition show in Los Angeles.

However, this reduced price of Xbox has not triggered any similar reaction from Xbox rivals, Wii and Playstation. Nintendo Wii with the price of US$ 249 is still popular around gamers and no indication that they will reduce the price at this moment.

This has been the same issue with Sony as Playstation 3 producer. Sony wants its console business to be more profitable thus the price cut-off seems unlikely to happen. This has also been confirmed by Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s chief financial officer.

Gates Sued Over An Overheated XBox

In 2006, a teenager named Kayla Lazo had a fire in her house that caused her defected. The Microsoft Xbox console game was  thought to be the cause of this incident because of overheating.

William Tining as the family lawyer in this case gave an ultimatum to Microsoft. The point is that Microsoft has to pay a compensation of US$ 25million.  If this is not approved, then Bill Gates as the owner of Microsoft will be taken to court according to law so that he will be responsible by witnessing in the court, and explaining about the safety standards of his products.

A few years ago, Microsoft did pull back millions of Xbox units regarding with the possibility overheating to happen. Kayla Lazo is said to be one of the korban where her house in Texas burnt down by fire from the Xbox.

Lazo experienced a serious burnt injury, even have to lose one of her feet. Microsoft said that they are sorry for Lazo’s condition, but they refused to pay because there wasn’t any strong evidence to prove.