The long-awaited Nintendo Co's Wii game consoles are expected to arrive at local stores before Lunar New Year, a dealer source said yesterday.
"The latest game consoles will be available no later than February before the long Lunar New Year holiday," a dealer source, on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times yesterday.
The company is one of the resellers which will place orders with Hakuyu Ltd (
But Hakuyu declined to confirm the debut date, saying that it is still talking to the Kyoto-based Nintendo to finalize details for the first shipment.
"We are not sure on the launch date, pricings or specifications of Wiis for the Taiwanese market," a spokesperson said.
With rival Xbox 360 and Play Station 3 (PS3) consoles already on sale here, eager fans are already getting their hands on a number of imported Wiis from Japan, the Chinese-language DigiTimes reported yesterday.
A check on Yahoo-Kimo Inc and Ruten.com -- the nation's top two auction sites -- revealed that Wii machines were posted for sale, with some prices reaching NT$13,900 (US$428).
This is nearly double the Wii's official price tag of US$250.
The Wii, which made its US debut on Nov. 19, sold a total of 476,000 units
in the market last month, New York-based NPD Group Inc said last Friday.
Introduced in the US two days earlier than Wii, the PS3 has generated sales
of 197,000 units, falling short of Sony's target of 400,000 units.
While the PS3 sells for as much as US$600, more than twice the cost of the
Wii, it is attracting customers with its graphics, online gaming features
and Blu-ray DVD player.
The Wii is primarily luring buyers with a motion-sensor that enables them to
play virtual tennis and golf.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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