Clamoring for more guitar legends in Guitar Hero? Well, Ted "Motor City Madman" Nugent has just confirmed during a podcast interview that he will be involved in a future installment of the Guitar Hero franchise.

The eighth iteration of the Nintendo Voice Chat has just been released. The show discussed quite a number of games such as Electronic Arts' Boom Blox and Sega's Iron Man for the DS (also available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, and Playstation Portable) as well as a few of the storage issues on the Wii. To find out more, check out the full article.

Download: Nintendo Voice Chat Ep.8

Except for his appearance on the Wii's Virtual Console, Pit of Kid Icarus spent a very long vacation time away from the video game spotlight until his sudden and welcome appearance on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But will he be a solo act again any time soon? According to a recent IGN podcast, the answer is "absolutely." More info in the full article.

After Frank Provo's decision to leave the GameSpot ship comes another quite saddening news: Alex Navarro, the GameSpot reviewer famous for his podcasts, also decided to hand in his resignation from the gaming site. Details in the full article.

In an interesting podcast, analysts Van Baker and Billy Pidgeon gave a different spin on the Wii shortage issue this holiday season: that there's a big possibility that Nintendo is playing up the shortage to keep their Wiis flying off the shelves. It's a surprising theory, but for these two analysts, it does make a lot of sense.

Those who are closely following the console sales trends know that Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime said that Nintendo wouldn't be able to keep up with the console demand this holiday season, that people will experience a sad Wii shortage on that time of the year when sales matter the most. Of course, if some people found out that a certain supply is about to run out, they will buy one for themselves out of instinct should they harbor any interest in that item.

Technology industry analyst Baker did say that a little push by hyping up the shortage issue really doesn't hurt, since people are "likely to go out and spend their money now".

It's going to be a risky venture, however. "In the console business, there's very low tolerance for hardware issues, for failure. So it's got to work," said Pidgeon, a program manager for IDC.

You've got to hand it to those indie developers, they always have something up their sleeve to give us more bang for our buck with the gadgets that we have. A free application called Dot.Tunes does that and more.

It basically extends the serviceability of your iTunes library so that you can stream it on the net and play it right off your PC. What the application actually does is turn your iTunes library into an SQL database and sends it from your PC to the web using an Ajax front-end and multi-layered security system.

While the basic service of the application is free, plug-ins to stream your iTunes through your Wii's, PS3's or PSP's browser are also available at US$ 10 a pop. Also, there's another plug-in available that gives you a custom interface for your iPhone which extends the amount of music you can fit in it for US$ 20.

DotTunes, an Australian-based company, encourages people to open up their iTunes library to friends through the use of their products. They had this to say regarding the matter:

Why pay to podcast or for internet radio streams, when you can publish your own radio shows, TV programs or music mixes directly to your loyal fans? Dot.Tunes is not some lightweight iTunes utility. It's a fully developed web server application that supports mp3, AAC, aiff, .wav, mpeg, mp4, and .mov files, allowing you to share your iTunes library contents with your friends in other cities, your classmates across the dorm or the coworkers scattered throughout the building.

Top on the Wii opinion track is Advanced Media Network's speculation that third party developers and publishers have been purposely creating poor game ports for the Nintendo's new-gen console. According to them, it appears that third parties ship poorly developed games because those publishers and developers are still under the mindframe that the Wii could never become a system worth their time.

 

Activision's Spider-Man 3 for the Wii was particularly trampled on by Casey, the opinionated AMN podcaster. The title is backed by a license from a blockbuster movie, yet did not even deliver a game up to par with the system's capabilities. In fact, because some reviews over the Internet just blew off the game adaptation of the movie, it appears that the title didn't deliver on any system at all.

There are so many games that fit this profile, but Spider-Man 3 was claimed as the "flagship" of them all, because of its pre-launch reputation and its eventual post-launch review nosedive. In contrast, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have been providing enough time and support for their own Wii games, and it reflects in some of their titles, such as The Godfather: Blackhand Edition and Madden 2007.

And to top it off, when a third party game goes really bad, developers either point the blame on Nintendo for making a shabby system or point toward the gamers and franchise fans, saying that they didn't support the title well enough. What they do neglect to mention, however, is that they only put lower priority level development teams on Wii titles, eventually hindering the game from coming out as polished as a high priority game.

You can listen to the Podcast through the "Read" link below. If you've got something else to add, you can mention it through the comments below.

 

For those allergic to hype, steer clear. Honestly speaking though, hype - or demand and anticipation for a game - is the reason why rumors about a said game persist. In this case it's Soul Calibur. While we've already reported on the rumor that a version of the franchise is supposedly going to be made for the PSP, this time, the rumor's for Ninty fans.

A lot of folks have noted that in IGN's Wii-k in Review podcast (for 05/04/07), Matt Casamassina said that there used to be a fighting franchise that came to the GameCube, and what's nice is that it's now coming to the Wii. The thing is now, it'll be a "crazy ass adventure game."

Wii news blog, Go Nintendo, speculates that the game could be Soul Calibur.

Well, a number of Soul Calibur fans here at QJ would like to add that Go Nintendo's speculation only makes sense. It can be recalled that, in the previous Soul Calibur online survey that Namco Bandai conducted, there were a lot of questions regarding the Wii. Moreover, a shift in game genre isn't farfetched, since the Chronicles of the Sword game mode in Soul Calibur III did work in its own weird way.

Our take on this rumor? Likely. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

In a podcast interview with Game Theory, Perrin Kaplan, VP of Marketing for Nintendo America, mentioned that Nintendo is currently doing their best to meet the seeming insatiable demand for the Wii. Nintendo has already maxed out their production capacity to meet their six million quota just this past March.

Given that they have already shipped out about 4.5 million units of Wiis in North America and Europe, they are hopeful to meet the startling demand of the console. It's just that, as Kaplan stated in the interview, Wii consumers will have to wait as Nintendo could be seeing "a supply-demand situation last for some time."

Nintendo has already met their six million quota ahead of schedule and is quickly catching up with early-bird Xbox 360, but customers who still haven't found a unit to embody their pre-order made weeks ago may have to wait a little bit longer. But perhaps you're one of many who've been wondering why Nintendo hasn't bought up more Wii manufacturing capacity.

Whether the folks at Nintendo are excusing themselves through hindsight, we do know that Nintendo was just hoping to restore fan faith in the company's work against the effects of "gamer drift." When the Wii came out, it was a console designed to combat the detrimental effects on today's gaming community by the drift, but ended up scooping amazing numbers of non-gamers everywhere.

Nintendo wasn't expecting the huge demand spike for the console. But now that some people have noticed that it can sit beside an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and still not warrant a choice between a next-gen console or a new-gen console, they're probably beginning to see and estimate just by how much their short-sightedness pulled them way off target. Kaplan further commented:

People are being really diligent about working with retailers to locate one but we are cognisant of the fact that a lot of fans are not able to get their hands on one yet. We are asking them to be patient and to know that we are working on this as fast as we can.

When an object such as the Wiimote causes untold destruction at the flick of a wrist, it leaves one wondering: Is there some sort of ulterior motive to the device? And with this video we picked up on "Ask a Ninja," it seems that our deepest fears have been confirmed. Right there alongside Santa being a ninja.

In their latest podcast, Ninja reiterated on "TechNINlogy," - be modern tech is lethal "In the right hands." Among the list that Ninja enumerated, one stands out for Nintendo fans - more so those with dead HDTVs at home. Enjoy the video, and join in speculating if Ninja was the one commissioned to design this equally dark device. The segment's at 3:20 of the video.