Not that it comes as much of a surprise, but Nintendo’s growing market value doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of letting up, with the company now crossing the 10 trillion yen mark (or roughly $85 billion). That magic number now makes Nintendo Japan’s third biggest company (up from fifth place just a few months ago), with only Toyota and Mitsubishi edging it out for first and second place, respectively. As Reuters points out, the new value is nearly triple what the company was worth before it launched the Wii late last year (although the DS no doubt had a fair bit to do with that as well), and a fivefold increase over what it was worth two years ago.

[Via TG Daily]
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from engadget

From techeblog:
This nifty Battling Palmsize Havoc Helicopter from ThinkGeek “come in [a] set of two and let[s] you and a friend duke it out “laser tag” style for office air rights.” Video after the break.

Take to the air from the palm of your hand then use the shoulder buttons on the remote to fire at your opponent copter. A hit causes the shot copter to spin out of control and crash. Luckily these Battling copters are tough enough to keep coming back for more aerial dogfights

Now that the PSP Slim is in the wild, we know you’re aching to see what it’s like up close, and Joystiq and PSP Fanboy have got you covered with an in-depth three-part series that should answer virtually every question you might have — and them some — about Sony’s littlest console. Check it out!

Read — Part 1: Firmware, Video-out, button response
Read — Part 2: Load times, size comparisons, pricing
Read — Part 3: Cables, cases, battery charging, battery life

from engadget

Confessions up front: we’re pretty hot for any device that sports some sort of console emulator, so when faced with GamePark Holding’s GP2X, which currently boasts of SNES, NES, Genesis, MAME and quite a few other gems, it’s a little difficult to rein in the enthusiasm. That said, the new F-200 could use just a little bit of slimming — you have to really mean it if you’re going to carry this thing around instead of your PSP or DS. Otherwise we found the unit to be quite comfortable to hold and use, responsive enough in the OS department, and completely packed to the gills with features. Video playback is sluggish, but games loaded and performed quite well. We weren’t able to test the F-200′s new touchscreen, which is the only upgrade of the device over the existing F-100, but apparently it will be implemented as a mouse controller for developers to do whatever they want with the Linux device. And trust us, they will.

Gallery: Hands-on with GamePark’s GP2X F-200

    

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from engadget

We’re big fans of both alt-power and silly toys, so Tamiya’s latest kitcar, the Loopwing, pushes all our geek buttons. The build-it-yourself kit car comes with its own windmill, and five minutes of charging in a five mile wind powers the three-wheeled racer for three and a half minutes. We have fond memories of building a Tamiya RC10 kit when we were kids — hopefully the $30 Loopwing will inspire kids to think about windpower the same way our kit inspired us to think about taking apart everything we owned.

[Via TokyoMango]
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from enfgadget

We got to check out Sony’s new PSP, and what can we say? It’s certainly a bit thinner and lighter, but it’s not really blowing our minds without any significant hardware changes. Still, we want one. Go figure.

Gallery: Sony’s thinner, lighter PSP hands-on

    

From engadget

It’s not quite the PSP 2 some might’ve hoped for, but Sony is giving its handheld console a serious refresh in the form of a slimmer, lighter and faster “updated” PSP. The new unit still includes the 4.3-inch LCD and UMD, but is 33 percent lighter, 19 percent slimmer, has sped up game load times and improved battery life. The only real “new” features is a video output capability to allow you to play your PSP games on a big screen TV. You can score one in September in the original Piano Black, a new Ice Silver color, and a Star Wars Battlefront special edition. The latter two PSPs come in $199 bundles with related games and a 1GB Memory Stick in the case of Ice Silver. More pics after the break.

Update: Also worth noting is the fact that this new model “is equipped with enhanced feature to temporarily store game data from UMD, reducing load time during game play.” No complaints about that!

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