consoles

The U.S. Copyright Office published its new set of rules on whether people can jailbreak smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles today; it also outlined the guidelines on DVD copying.

Overwhelmingly, its conclusions were that besides smartphones, all of the above remain illegal.

Every three years the Copyright Office takes requests from digital rights proponents and opponents to re-examine the laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that dictate whether people can unlock or jailbreak their varied devices. Today, in a lengthy document (PDF), the government listed all of the changes it made.

The key developments are that people cannot … Read more

In the past week, CNET has reviewed three separate media devices, each costing $300, and one of them was a television. And guess what: the TV wasn't terrible.

The three products were the TCL L40FHDP60 ($309), the 3M Streaming Projector ($299), and the Apple iPod Touch ($299). Seeing them all together got me thinking: which one of these would I actually buy if I had the money? Is there something else I'd rather do with my $300?

Until we find out whether the Apple iPad Mini exists, I cast the net out a bit farther and two other … Read more

Nintendo Chief Executive Satoru Iwata recently sat down with a handful of engineers to discuss what went into his company's Wii U. And before long, the discussion turned into a teardown.

Dubbed "Wii U: The Console," the discussion centers on the technologies that make the Wii U tick. And chief among those technologies might just be the device's multicore CPU. According to Nintendo, this is the first time it has used a multicore CPU, though the company stopped short of saying how many cores are actually in use.

The Wii U is based on a multichip … Read more

Gaming is helping men close the gender gap on how much time is spent in front of televisions.

According to new data from Nielsen, the average American woman between the ages of 18 and 34 spends 4 hours and 11 minutes watching television each day. The average man of the same age spends 37 minutes less time watching television, tallying 3 hours and 34 minutes per day.

However, when it comes to using consoles for everything from gaming to watching video, men spend 48 minutes with the hardware, more than doubling the average woman's 22 minutes of daily usage.… Read more

Consumers bought 193,000 Xbox 360 consoles last month, making it the best-selling console for the 20th month in a row, according to Microsoft.

The company cites numbers from research firm The NPD Group. The units sold make up 48 percent of the U.S. market for current generation console sales. The research firm also found that consumers spent $196 million on the Xbox 360 platform, including hardware, software, and accessories.

"Consumers spent more on Xbox 360 products in August than they spent on the other two current-generation consoles combined," according to a blog post from Microsoft's … Read more

The upcoming Wikipad tablet, first spotted back in January at CES, now has an official release date and price. The 10.1-inch Android handheld gaming system will be available for $499 on October 31. Starting September 7, the system will be available to preorder through game retailer GameStop, although the Wikipad is expected to be available through other retailers as well.

Wikipad is part of a growing trend of independently developed game consoles outside of the major Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft axis.… Read more

We still don't officially know when the Wii U arrives or how much it costs, but a substantial rumor emerged today concerning Video Product Distributors -- a wholesale media distribution company that works with companies such as Amazon and Newegg -- supposedly listing on its intranet three Wii U bundles along with a November 11 release date.

Video Product Distributors and Nintendo did not immediately reply to CNET's request for comment.

The purported Wii U bundles, with prices of $249, $299, and $349, came with no real description whatsoever on VPD's site. Instead, the listings contained ambiguous … Read more

GameStop is entering the end of an era.

The company told The Verge in an interview published recently that the PlayStation 2 is starting to be removed from store shelves to make room for the hardware that will be launching in the coming years.

"The PS2 is a unique one -- we still generate a whole lot of profit off PS2 sales, but we're going to keep PS2 where PS2 does sell, and we won't put it in stores where we see really lapsed sales," Mike Dzura, GameStop's senior vice president of store operations, told … Read more

Yesterday was your last chance to get in on the Kickstarter fundraising for Boxer8's Ouya. After 30 days and more than 63,000 backers, the Android-powered home gaming console pulled in a total of $8,596,475 ($99 of those from your correspondent).

As my colleague Michelle Starr reports from Australia, you can now visit the Ouya Web site to place a preorder for the console. The price is now $109, and it's due to ship in March 2013.

Regardless of your thoughts on Ouya's merits, the little console that seems like it maybe could has captured … Read more