NEWS General Updates

Nintendo shares down 20% «©NCSX» One day after Nintendo cut its profit forecast for the year, shares of the videogame manufacturer and publisher are down over 20% in morning trading on the Nikkei. Nintendo shares dipped to a low of 11,100 yen which represented a loss of 400 billion yen or US$5.10 billion in market capitalization.    The last time Nintendo shares visited the 11K yen level was in 2004 which was before the company dominated the portable game market with the Nintendo DS. In recent years, Nintendo also enjoyed a brief but profitable stint with the top selling game console in the Nintendo Wii which saw shortages and high demand between the years 2006 – 2007. Update: Nintendo shares closed the Friday session closed down 12.2% at 12,290 yen (US$158.44).

Nintendo 3DS cut from $249 to $169 (originally posted on July 28, 2011) «©NCSX» Nintendo debuted the Nintendo 3DS in North America on March 27, 2011 to much fanfare but a mere four months later, the price of the 3D-capable handheld is being slashed from US$249 to US$169. If you’re one of the 830,000 early adopters who bought a 3DS on launch day and in the past few months, don’t feel too bad. Nintendo is consoling owners of the 3DS with a choice of 20 free games that may be downloaded from the Nintendo eShop. The generous move is called the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Program and the company’s statement reads as follows: Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES Virtual Console games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and The Legend of Zelda, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost. By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.    The new price of US$169 for the Nintendo 3DS takes effect on August 12, 2011. Nintendo recently reported a 25.5 billion yen (US$328 million) net loss and 37.70 billion yen ($485 million) pre-tax operating loss in its quarterly report for the April to June 2011 period. The company also slashed its annual profit forecast from 175 billion yen (US$2.25 billion) to 35 billion yen (US$450 million). Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told reporters, “we feel the price change and several prominent software releases by the end of the year will definitely change the situation.” Nintendo expects to meet its target of selling 16 million 3DS systems by March 31, 2012 which is the end of its fiscal year.

Special silica cleans radioactive seawater «©NCSX» Proving that necessity is the mother of invention, researchers in Japan have developed a form of silica that is capable of sucking strontium and radioiodine out of irradiated seawater. Officials have been working to clean the millions of gallons of seawater that was used to cool the Fukushima nuclear plant and the new form of silica will help their efforts. What makes the silica special are the pockmarks on the surface of the material which are only 2 to 20 nanometers in diameter. The holes are coated with a special compound which chemically binds to strontium or radioiodine and removes them from the water.    The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) stated that one gram of the silica can absorb 20 milligrams of radioiodine or 13 milligrams of strontium. In addition to binding to radioactive material, the silica is also capable of removing chlorine, magnesium, and calcium from water for additional uses in industry. Sherif El Safty of the NIMS said, “If factory-made, you can create tons of this material a day, and even at the laboratory level it costs just 60-70 yen per gram to make. It is extremely effective for decontamination.”