Morning DLC: Video Games News And Rumors 10/21/13
By Nick Tylwalk
"The original Wii has officially ceased production in Japan, Nintendo has confirmed.At the start of October, a message on the Wii product page on Nintendo’s official Japanese website read “manufacturing is scheduled to end soon”. Now that message has changed to simply “manufacturing has ended”, confirming that once the remaining Wii consoles out in the wild sell out, there’ll be no more on the way.The last official sales total for the Wii was released by Nintendo in June 2013, in which it confirmed the console had sold 100.04 million units worldwide."
"German game developer Crytek caused a stir in the gaming press when the lead producer on its forthcoming multiplayer shooter “Warface” justified the game’s cartoonishly sexualized portrayals of female characters, saying it was what players wanted to see. This is the latest example of a common trend of treating female video game characters differently than their male counterparts — relegating women to derogatory supporting roles, giving them inhumanly exaggerated bodily proportions, and generally casting them as little more than sexual objects.The common defense marshaled in favor of such inequitable treatment is to say, “It’s just a game.” That may be true, but a research paper published this summer in the journal “Computers in Human Behavior” suggests that a virtual gender imbalance could have real-world consequences."
"There are some businesses that just won’t stay put.One of them: Chris Juhl’s Games on the Go Palm Beach, a mobile video arcade.Games on the Go Palm Beach is a bright red RV filled with about a dozen video game stations, from an old-school “Pac-Man” arcade machine to a large touch screen to play “Fruit Ninja,” a popular game also played on smartphones and tablets.It cruises around town taking the games to birthday parties, fundraisers, schools, corporate and community events. Games on the Go Palm Beach officially launched in September. It celebrated a ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday."