3DS

A certain E3 Expo has swept in to steal the spotlight everywhere, so, of course, we spend the episode breaking down the aftermath of Microsoft's news conference, including an impressive surprise from ESPN. Is the Kinect worth it? Will Nintendo's 3DS be any good? And why are there so many damn shooters? Our guest, gaming/tech expert, E3 veteran, and former Playboy editor Scott Alexander, joins us for some grumpy and impassioned talk.

Next week, Dan will be back from his E3 adventures, hands full of strange pictures and stranger stories. Until then, enjoy the show!

Related links:… Read more

Reading the tea leaves of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo is a bit like handicapping a Steve Jobs keynote. There are some things so reliably leaked or telegraphed they're virtually sure bets, whereas other announcements are so out of left field you'd never see them coming (to say nothing of the occasional highly expected software or hardware news that goes MIA).

Here, in handy bullet point form, are our collective predictions for the most and least likely news to come out of this year's E3 conference. Feel free to print this page, tack it to a wall, … Read more

Although Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello believes 3D gaming "is a truly wonderful thing," he doesn't think that it will make a real impact on the industry until 2011 or 2012.

"I think before you see a revolution, you have to have an army," Riccitiello told Industry Gamers in a recent interview. "And right now, there's like 12 people in America with 3D television sets. And they're not exactly an army."

Riccitiello, who recently had the chance to play a 3D game EA has slated for release in its 2012 fiscal … Read more

Among the list of new iPhone features was the announcement of an included gyroscope in addition to the accelerometer that's already packed inside the device. Steve Jobs sounded pretty confident that this will improve the overall gaming experience on the iPhone. That sounds great on paper, but did it help the Wii when Nintendo debuted Wii MotionPlus a year ago?

Sure, Wii Sports Resort is still the best example of a game that takes advantage of the added precision that MotionPlus offers, but only a handful of titles released since really show major enhancements the extra accuracy is capable … Read more

Details about Nintendo's 3D handheld gaming device have been scarce since it was announced in late March. But the company's president says it will have a feature that lets gamers turn off 3D functionality and play in standard 2D.

CEO Satoru Iwata didn't elaborate on how the option on the 3DS will work, the Associated Press reported Friday, but he did say that health concerns related to "children's eyesight" are a key factor in why the company decided to include 2D functionality in the device.

The 3DS, which will replace the DS, is set … Read more

commentary Although Nintendo has said little about its plans for the Nintendo 3DS, its upcoming 3D-capable portable gaming device, company exec Reggie Fils-Aime recently said in an interview with BusinessWeek that the 3DS isn't just another version of the DS. Instead, the device will replace Nintendo's DS line.

"We have ideas of what we want to bring to the consumer that we can't do with the current DS model," Fils-Aime, who is president of Nintendo of America, told BusinessWeek in the interview. "The Nintendo 3DS for us is our next handheld platform." He … Read more

If you couldn't tell by the hockey picture and the well-placed Sandlot quotation in the title, today's episode of The 404 Podcast celebrates Jeff's 28th birthday! Wilson and I are fully prepared to light up a string of firecrackers for Bakalar, but our third host is less than enthused about his age, so leave a comment and wish him a very happy birthday, will you?

Most of the stories we talk about on The 404 highlight the absurdity of the Internet, but today is different. We're taking a different approach, starting with a feel-good story about a Mom-made iPhone Pillow.

Lynda Harrison began the project when her son, Drew Olanoff of #blamedrewscancer, began chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Disease. Drew says his iPhone kept him alive and connected during treatment, but we'll take a handmade version of the real thing any day, especially since the fluffy model has a LOLCATS button and a side pocket that fits an iPhone. Don't forget to hug your moms, everyone.

OK, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming. A new service called GameCrush offers romantically inept gamers a chance to pay for a play date with an "attractive" girl over a Webcam via Xbox Live and games like MW2, GOW2, GTAIV, and Halo 3.

Sony fans, Nintendo addicts, and desperate nongamers alike can still indulge their inner creep with a second option that lets you set up play dates with simple Flash games like checkers and chess. This NSFW gallery on Kotaku shows a few of the options you can choose for your opponent and gives new meaning to "first-person shooter." Also, I'm pretty sure No. 7 is a straight-up dude.

Twitterers will love the next stories because they show exactly how stupid or useful the service can be, depending on the application. SleepingTime.org adds another dimension to Internet stalking--it lets you track the sleep patterns of any Twitter user based on the time when he or she is least active on Twitter. Watch the segment in the video version of the podcast below to see exactly how well this doesn't work.

On the other hand, Huffington Post founder Jonah Peretti found a way to use Twitter creatively by resurrecting one of our favorite books of yore, Choose Your Own Adventure! Jonah's truncated version of the game takes the words off the page and packages the scenarios into 140 characters that you can play online. If you're too impatient to run through all two of the possibilities, just head over to Jonah's Twitter homepage and see the results for yourself.

Thanks for listening, everyone, and keep sending your e-mails to the404(at)cnet[dot]com; we're going to start reading selected messages on the air in addition to playing voice mails. See? We really DO care! Now where's our 404 pillow?

Sony reportedly believes that Nintendo's foray into the 3D space with its 3DS isn't a very good idea.

Speaking to IGN in an interview, Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller said that he's not quite sold on the 3DS and wonders if it will enjoy the kind of broad market appeal some of Nintendo's previous portables have, due to Nintendo's perceived young audience.

"Having been in the portable space for quite awhile, I think it's an interesting move but one I'd like to see where they go from a demographic standpoint,&… Read more

Let's time travel, shall we? The year: 1995. "Braveheart" was a popular movie. Bill Clinton was still in his first term. The end of the millennium was still five years away. Game Boy inventor Gunpei Yokoi readies the release of a product that becomes his albatross, a portable game system that many have never even seen in person. Its name: Virtual Boy.

An attempt to create a brand-new form of portable 3D gaming (sound familiar?), Virtual Boy achieved its 3D effects via an extremely large and heavy set of red plastic goggles that formed the game system. … Read more