According to the daily Japanese Nikkei paper, it appears Pioneer is on the verge of completely exiting the TV market.
Back in March the company said it would halt Plasma production to focus on LCD production. “We have judged that maintaining the cost competitiveness of plasma display panels, or PDPs, at projected sales volumes will be difficult going forward,” Pioneer said at the time.
Despite the great commercial success of its Kuro plasma line, the company has been losing money for a few quarters now on TV sales. If the report holds true, then Pioneer will cut their losses and move completely out of the market, instead joining forces with Sharp to make a stronger move into the DVD and Blu-ray standalone business.
Pioneer declined comment on the report but did note that they have been “actively evaluating” the company’s TV business since at least last March when it decided to cut out PDP production.
Result for: commercial success
According to a new report from What They Play, Nintendo is intent on making a “true” next-gen console but is going to ride the commercial success of the Wii for as long as possible.
Citing insider sources, the report says the upgraded Wii will keep current motion-based gameplay but will add processing and graphics power that can drive HD support. The new console would also include a hard drive, acknowledging the main problem gamers have had with the Wii.
The console will also have backwards-compatibility for Wii games and should also be compatible with Virtual Console games.
The report also says the console would include a new GPU from AMD and a new CPU from IBM, both of which will include provisions to play Wii software without the need for emulation.
When is the expected launch? 2011.
