Both bundles will be available only in North America and will have specifications depending on the country. The bundle destined to the United States will provide the 3G model of the Vita linked to AT&T at a price of $350. In Canada, where there is no 3G provider, the Wi-Fi model will be available at a lower price o $300.

Pre-orders have started. For instance, Amazon lists the plain editions.

An eventual larger bundle might help giving an answer to concerns related to saving games on the Vita. Games that do not save to the own storage card of the title will need a memory card to be able to run and therefore the number of games a user can play without needing to buy a card later is limited.

According to a full-year forecast ending in March next year reveals a net loss reaching ¥20 billion, which means $264 million. This is the second revision in a period of six months and both of them indicate a downward trend. The latest prediction is twice that of July, at ¥35 billion loss. Since the beginning of reported consolidated earnings in 1981, this year is the first indicating an annual loss. Nintendo does not post quarterly results because its accounting is based on Japanese standards.

At the same time, users are encountering more distractions for their free time, said Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s President, with games for smartphones, where the iPod touch, iPhone, and Android as big contributors. In its home country, the Nintendo Wii is outdated and lacks HD gaming already offered by its competitors the Xbox 360 and PS3. Microsoft and Sony have implemented their own models of body movement interfaces and controllers with the Kinect and PlayStation Move, negating the main advantage Nintendo had.

The announcements were part of a Nintendo pre-recorded press conference where it also stressed the addition of capabilities of 3D movie recording for the console. Up to ten minutes of 3D video recording will soon be available for Nintendo’s users, as well as stop motion, rapid-fire shots and new time-lapse intervals.

The company also mentioned the forthcoming Mario Kart version for the 3DS. This game is expected to run at an impressive frequency of sixty frames per second in 3D mode. It will also be capable of managing up to eight-player multi-player online events in the race.

A free copy of Halo: Reach is being given out in order to preview program members and is similar to testing the same format and see how it functions. Like many PC builders and console makers, Microsoft too has used different optical drives. It may be enthusiastic to see games loading much slower on older drives. As the partition is situated on the inside of the hard disc, it would make some drives to slow down.

Microsoft certainly does not reject anti-piracy measures, but it might have a system which is not so much dependent on the disc.

The company has not made any comment yet, but the new method is expected to lead to games that require fewer discs or are able to improve the quality of elements like textures, video or other content on existing game DVDs.

The application uses the official mod API of the game, which allows users hooking software and hardware into the game in order to expand control beyond the main screen. The core of the entire setup is completed with a Saitek X-52 Pro joystick, a matching throttle controller and a Vizio TV.

Despite of some features being still limited, a few days ago it was showing what was called “basically real-time video”. In the future, caution lights are to be brought into the iPad application. It is now in private testing and will depend on how fast it moves along. As a rough estimate, the finished version would be ready in late April. A controlled beta testing as well as a public launch in the App Store is likely to come too.

A GPS sensor is also mentioned, as well as an MP3 player and a camera for the cellular phone. Motorola has filed the detailed application a week ago, but it applied for the trademark in November, specifying a device dedicated to monitoring fitness.

“Stadia” is the plural form for “stadium” and could indicate a wide range of devices. It is still unknown whether the device will use some kind of wireless streaming or an HDMI output.

Downloading the game means transferring 318MB of data, which gives an indication of the complexity and depth of the code. It also shows how mature the iOS gaming platform has become.

Infinity Blade is taking place in a 3D fully rendered castle. It uses swipe and touch gestures to carry out a combat with swords. The game is classified in the Action-RPG genre and keeps players interested by acquiring experience, earning more powerful weapons and building stats.

The game sells for $6 on the App store of the iTunes and is also compatible with other Apple devices, such as the 3rd and 4th iPod touch generations, the iPad, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.

Although the company did never confirm a PlayStation phone, it has given some clues about adding cellular access to the PSP. After unsuccessfully trying to position its 2004 handheld against Apple’s iPod, it had no reply to the iPhone with gaming. The rumored PlayStation phone is expected to be a fast Android-based slider provided with PSP Go controls instead of having a keyboard and will have its own PlayStation store.

Besides the phone strategy, Sony vaguely brought into discussion a tablet that would be now in works. It is however unclear whether it would move towards Sony Ericsson or would more match the VAIO line. A dual-screen tablet is a possibility, with elements borrowed from the Toshiba Libretto W100 or Microsoft Courier.

Publicly, the company has manifested caution about tablets and claimed it had not started to consider this option more seriously until the iPad launched and established a market.

The current design is practically unchanged on its inside from the original released in 2004 and uses a 333MHz MIPS processor and only 64MB of RAM. To reach Xbox 360 performance with this configuration may be almost impossible, since Microsoft uses a triple-core 3.2GHz processor as well as dedicated NVIDIA graphics. NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 is the fastest mobile chip known so far and although trailing well behind it is much faster.

Sony is supposed to maintain its focusing on flash storage instead of using UMD. Since an optical disc would not seem to be part of the new design, the PSP2 would be limited to memory sticks and downloads, but the design is considered to still be subject to debate. Some recent phones and other types of devices use a form of SD card instead of Sony’s card format, which is less used.

A bigger screen or a higher resolution, touchscreen or touchpad elements and dual analog sticks have all been mentioned, although Sony is still settling on the form factor. The launch would not be scheduled earlier than 2011 and Android may be used, according to leaks of PlayStation phones that have already surfaced.

Sony is pressured to revive its handheld gaming devices no matter what its strategy is exactly. It has constantly undersold compared to the DS of Nintendo and had to cut prices. Although Sony tried to dismiss iPods and iPhones for gaming, it had to acknowledge that Apple’s strategy has seriously undermined its PSP business.

While Apple’s hardware has been constantly updated year after year, Sony only rarely improved its platform. However, Apple’s game prices are considered just a fraction of what Sony charges. Apple’s devices are perceived as more useful as multi-role devices while the PSP falls apart beyond gaming.

One hundred popular titles will be available for the launch of the store, which is optimized for quick downloads. Concerns of customers about forswearing physical media will be lessen by the possibility of re-downloading purchased games as many times as necessary and when required.

The PC Games on Demand Marketplace for Windows will launch on the 15th of November and can be accessed through http://www.gamesforwindows.com.