Nintendo to Launch New Game Console in March 2017

Japan's Nintendo said on Wednesday it expects operating profit to rise 36.9 per cent in the year through March 2017, as the videogame maker plans to release more smartphone games as well as its next-generation game console.

Nintendo estimates operating profit to grow to 45 billion yen ($404.9 million) from 32.9 billion yen a year prior, when earnings were roughly in line with a forecast announced in February.

Nintendo last year said it would enter the rapidly growing mobile gaming segment after years of resisting investor calls for the move, with consumers starting to shift from dedicated consoles to simple and often free-to-download smartphone games.

Its first mobile title launched in March, Miitomo, was more of a social networking application, leaving investors and fans awaiting games based on bestselling franchises such as Super Mario Bros.

The company has promised four more smartphone games this business year. At an earnings briefing on Wednesday, President Tatsumi Kimishima said it will release two "by this autumn".

To boost its struggling game console business, Kimishima also said Nintendo would release its next console globally in March 2017. The company has disclosed few details of the console beyond its codename, NX.

Sales of its current Wii U console have lagged those of Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360.

Nintendo forecasts Wii U sales at 800,000 units this business year, from 3.26 million units in the previous year.

Kimishima said the company could cease production of the Wii U by March 2018.

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

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