nintendo wii

Over the past week, I’ve done something I’ve never done before: played a new video game before it’s released to the general public on a console, rather than a PC.

And part of me hopes I never have to do it again.

Earlier this week, Nintendo published a press release announcing that France has joined with several other nations in banning what it terms 'game copiers' (pdf and embedded below), by which it means mod chips.

This news really comes as no surprise as console manufacturers have done a pretty good job of convincing politicians around the globe that such console modding devices have no legitimate use outside piracy.

Opera’s brand might not be as well-known as Google Chrome or Firefox, but that’s never stopped the Norwegian browser maker from doggedly pursuing the leaders of the pack.

And there are two areas where Opera has firmly established itself as a force to be reckoned with: featurephones and consumer electronics.

No, it isn’t the crazy rockstar cousin of the Nintendo Wii: WiGig is a wireless communications standard (802.11ad) created by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, a consortium of hardware and software companies that want to make use of the unlicensed 60GHz frequency range.  Beyond offering speeds of up to 7 gigabits per second — the fastest 802.11n networks, operating in the 5GHz band, only achieve a few hundred megabits — WiGig will also unify data, display, and audio networks, and eventually offer the direct extension of USB and PCIe data buses.

Nintendo has announced that its new Wii U console will have neither Blu-Ray nor DVD playback, citing that customers already have devices to play movies.