Long queue for a Wii

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Every time I see a headline about Nintendo's new console something puerile in me takes over; sorry but there it is.  

While I'm on the subject of consoles, having seen so much about it I went to see Casino Royale at the weekend. Past Bond films have been over-the-top, and this one was underplayed,  and was the better for it.Daniel Craig - and the people who selected him - must feel such a sense of vindication. My only annoyance with the film was the product placement. Virgin's boss Richard Branson was shown going through an airport X-Ray, before the film we had an excellent version of Sony's Bravia TV-Ad (no music, real explosions). If that ad had been running earlier in the year I would probably have bought a Sony. The came an advert for the Sony Viao laptop (Bond sends email from one in the film). All the cars in the film are Ford-owned marques - Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo as well as Ford, all the electronics are Sony - not just the Viao but Sony phones, and a Sony digital camera. One of the clips before the film shows 007 breaking into M's home, but not even he can get his hands on a Playstation 3.

Meanwhile Scoble explains why Bill Gates gave this great quote about Xbox 360 to CNet:

CNet: There's obviously one other big product for the holidays in terms of things that you guys make--XBox 360. You did get the year's head start this time. There still seems to be pretty strong critical acclaim and demand for PlayStation 3 . How do you see that?
Gates: I wouldn't change positions with them in a million years. I mean, we know what it's like to be a year late. We feel great about the position that we're in. And, of course, they're going to sell a lot in Japan.

You know, Sony can make 80,000 bricks, and people would buy them. So the real competition--you're going to see the impact of our innovation and all the momentum we have in Christmas 2007. This Christmas, the story is: XBox 360 is going to sell super-well, and they'll sell the rounding error amounts they can make.

I came back from Barcelona to a message from an old friend asking me if I can get Gears of War. The 360 does have innovation, but Sony's sales figures being small enough to be "rounding error" Ouch!

 

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