Never invented anything? Oh really now... The refrigerator The electric drill The tank The pacemaker Zinc sunblock cream The Hills Hoist clothesline The Black Box flight recorder Plastic spectacle lenses Ultrasound The inflatable escape slide Cask Wine Variable rack and pinion steering The power board/strip The Bionic Ear The Dual Flush Toilet Multi-focal contact lenses WiFi Anti-flu Medication Scramjets Blast Glass *ahem*

The CSIRO wouldn't, but DFAT - the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - most certainly would, as part of their responsibility to protect Australian economic and business interests overseas. So it's quite likely it was all fought by lawyers already on the government payroll.

Filtering the result wouldn't be neutral, it'd be taking a stance in support of the candidate. Being neutral for Google means letting people on all sides of the political spectrum have their say unimpeded. Which is exactly what they're doing by not biasing the search results.

...there really will be a santorum surge this Valentines. ;)

...the first thing I thought of was "Skylanders".
Skylanders uses RFID for its "Portal of Power", not NFC, but NFC is essentially just building on RFID anyway, and is backwards compatible with existing RFID infrastructure and tags. The "Portal of Power" may have been a gimmick, but it was a very profitable gimmick that was popular with the kids. Incorporating that kind of functionality direct into the Wii U controller is a stroke of sheer genius from Nintendo, IMO. RFID tags are cheap. $0.15 for a passive (unpowered) tag, $0.50 for an active tag. It'd be quite inexpensive for developers to incorporate those into their products and merchandise to have them interact with games on the Wii U.

Considering the comparisons made by journalists between the Wii U and "XBox 720" specs are that there's only about a 20% difference in power between the two (about the same difference between PS2 and the original XBox), I'm calling bullshit on your statement.

Nintendo hasn't been opposed to public social interaction and sharing. The entire Pokémon franchise is arguably built on that concept. The reason they've stayed away from direct online interactions has mainly been because of fears over how those services will actually be used. ie. They didn't want parents to hear their kids being exposed to bad language or sexual predators over a Nintendo service. Were those fears of Nintendo justified? Given how many FPS gamers seem to behave, they probably did have some legitimate reason to be concerned there.

Having said that however, it's clear from more recent efforts, such as the direct voice communication inbuilt in Pokémon Black & White, and the communication features included in the last 3DS update, that they're starting to open themselves up there. I'm sure it'll continue to go at a glacial pace that will continue to frustrate "hardcore" gamers, but in terms of selling to the "family" market it actually does make some sense.

How much of the 3DS's poor launch can be explained by a poor economic climate, and how much can be explained by having a relatively poor selection of games on release? The 3DS sales started to go up after the price drop, but they only started their spike when Super Mario Land 3D and Mario Kart 7 came out, a spike which was perfectly timed to disrupt the Vita's launch in Japan. To me, that suggests that the real determining factor behind how strong the Wii U launch will be is what games they have available on release day.

That still doesn't solve the issue of how you're going to get your consoles into those game stores who are now pissed off with you cutting into their margins though.

And you think publishers will care? Case in point. Virtual Console. Locking you used games potentially improves their ability to re-sell you those exact same games at a future date.