The Wii U sells out in its first week: Evidence of a Nintendo comeback?

The latest console from the videogame pioneer is flying off the shelves. But are the kids really still into Mario and Zelda?

Earlier this year, Nintendo posted its first annual loss in three decades, a grim omen for the pathbreaking videogame maker that introduced the world to classic characters like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link. The Japanese company has struggled amidst an industry-wide decline in the sales of consoles and games, a trend partly attributed to the ever-growing popularity of tablets and smartphones. Nintendo’s last breakout success was the Wii, released in 2006, and there have been serious doubts that its successor, the Wii U, could sell as many units. However, since the Wii U went on sale in North America on Nov. 18, Nintendo has completely sold out of all 400,000 consoles shipped to retailers. “As soon as the Wii U hits the shelf, it’s selling out,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, the head of Nintendo’s U.S. operations.

The Wii U’s early success is a surprising indication of “strong demand for the company’s next generation of videogame devices,” says Ian Sherr at The Wall Street Journal. And during the week of Nov. 18, Nintendo also sold 300,000 units of the original Wii, as well as more than 500,000 units of its portable DS and 3DS systems, which could reflect a rebound in consumer demand as the economy continues its long slog of a recovery from the Great Recession. Nintendo says it expects to sell 5.5 million Wii U systems by the end of March 2013, the end of its fiscal year.

However, it’s important to remember that “Nintendo has a very dedicated audience that craves almost anything new the company has to offer, not unlike Apple’s fans,” says Nick Wingfield at The New York Times. “The real test of the Wii U’s durability will come when the product is in better supply and more casual gamers, who don’t dream about Mario and Zelda in their sleep, can more easily buy it.” In addition, rivals Sony and Microsoft are expected to unveil their new consoles sometime in 2013, putting extra pressure on Nintendo. 

And perhaps most importantly, Nintendo has to sell games. The Wii U — which retails for $ 299.99, and $ 349.99 for a more powerful model — is being sold at a loss. Nintendo hopes that users will continue to buy games in the years to come, particularly those that aren’t sold on other systems, such as the latest installments in the “Super Mario Bros.” and “Legend of Zelda” franchises. That’s among the keys to Nintendo’s future profitability.

Sources: The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal

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Turkish PM fumes over steamy Ottoman soap opera

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A hit TV show about the Ottoman Empire‘s longest-reigning Sultan has raised a political storm in Turkey, with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan urging legal action over historical inaccuracies and the opposition accusing him of artistic tyranny.

Erdogan tore into the weekly soap opera “Magnificent Century”, which attracts an audience of up to 150 million people in Turkey as well as parts of the Balkans and Middle East, in response to criticism of his government’s foreign policy.

The lavish television production, which grips audiences with tales of power struggles and palace intrigue, is set during the 16th century reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, when Ottoman rulers held sway over an empire straddling three continents.

Bristling at suggestions that Turkey was meddling too much in its neighbors’ affairs, Erdogan recalled Turkey’s heritage, and said Suleiman had been a proud conqueror rather than the indulgent harem-lover portrayed in the show.

“(Critics) ask why are we dealing with the affairs of Iraq, Syria and Gaza,” Erdogan said at the opening of an airport in western Turkey on Sunday.

“They know our fathers and ancestors through ‘Magnificent Century’, but we don’t know such a Suleiman. He spent 30 years on horseback, not in the palace, not what you see in that series.”

Scenes that showed Suleiman with women in the harem have prompted calls from viewers in the mostly Muslim and largely conservative country for the broadcasting regulator (RTUK) to ban the series. But it tops the viewing charts each week.

Erdogan said the director of the series, which has been on air since January 2011, and the owner of the channel that broadcasts it had been warned, but also said he expected the judiciary to act, without elaborating.

Erdogan’s opponents accused him of authoritarianism.

“The prime minister must be jealous of the series’ popularity. He thinks there’s no need for another sultan when he’s in power,” said Muharrem Ince, the deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

“Erdogan wants to be the only sultan.”

Elected a decade ago with the strongest majority seen in years, Erdogan has overseen a period of unprecedented prosperity in Turkey. But concerns are growing about his increasingly authoritarian rule.

Hundreds of politicians, academics and journalists are in jail on charges of plotting against the government, while more than 300 army officers were given prison terms in September for conspiring to topple him not long after he swept to power.

Turkey has been increasingly assertive in regional politics, most notably over the crisis in neighboring Syria, where it has led calls for international action and scrambled war planes in a warning to Damascus not to violate its territory.

“I think the prime minister’s aim here is to change the agenda. I can’t think of any other reason to discuss an imaginary television series when there are so many problems in a country,” Nebahat Cehre, who played Suleiman’s mother during the first two seasons, told Turkey’s Birgun newspaper.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Jon Hemming)

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Global Update: Investing in Eyeglasses for Poor Would Boost International Economy

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Eliminating the worldwide shortage of eyeglasses could cost up to $28 billion, but would add more than $200 billion to the global economy, according to a study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The $28 billion would cover the cost of training 65,000 optometrists and equipping clinics where they could prescribe eyeglasses, which can now be mass-produced for as little as $2 a pair. The study was done by scientists from Australia and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The authors assumed that 703 million people worldwide have uncorrected nearsightedness or farsightedness severe enough to impair their work, and that 80 percent of them could be helped with off-the-rack glasses, which would need to be replaced every five years.

The biggest productivity savings from better vision would not be in very poor regions like Africa but in moderately poor countries where more people have factory jobs or trades like driving or running a sewing machine.

Without the equivalent of reading glasses, “lots of skilled crafts become very difficult after age 40 or 45,” said Kevin Frick, a Johns Hopkins health policy economist and study co-author. “You don’t want to be swinging a hammer if you can’t see the nail.”

If millions of schoolchildren who need glasses got them, the return on investment could be even greater, he said, but that would be in the future and was not calculated in this study.

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Jeffrey Zucker Expected to Be Next President of CNN

In the days to come, when Time Warner appoints a new leader of CNN Worldwide for the first time in a decade, he or she will face an identity crisis unlike any other in corporate America.

Though CNN over all is on track to have its most profitable year ever, its flagship channel in the United States is seemingly rudderless, run by layers of producers and executives — many with competing visions. The channel’s low prime-time ratings are the stuff of punch lines and a journalism school case study in the damage wrought by the digital age.

Then again, the channel also has tremendous potential, an enviably popular Web site and countless people rooting for it to succeed.

Throughout a four-month search process for the person to succeed Jim Walton, the departing president, attention has centered on Jeffrey Zucker, the former chief executive of NBCUniversal, who was replaced when Comcast took over the company last year. Mr. Zucker currently produces Katie Couric’s daytime talk show.

Several news executives close to Mr. Zucker said this week that they believed he had been chosen to run CNN and expected the appointment to be announced soon. People close to the Time Warner chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, also identified Mr. Zucker. A Time Warner spokesman declined to comment.

In considering candidates to run one of the world’s best-known, but beleaguered, news organizations, Mr. Bewkes and his deputy Phil Kent have also been considering their own legacies. They are cautious about not undermining CNN’s journalistic heart and soul, even as they strive to resuscitate the channel’s prime-time lineup, according to people who have met with them about the search. That means the channel’s programming will remain nonpartisan in nature.

“They want someone who has programming and management and cable expertise; someone who can be credible to the staff and to the business community,” said one of these people. “They know that this is a pretty tall order.”

Mr. Zucker could check off all those boxes. As a young NBC News producer, he helped start what became a 16-year winning streak for the “Today” show. He had mixed results as he moved up the rungs of NBC, but he can point to cable programming successes even as the NBC broadcast network struggled. He did not respond to requests for comment, and people with knowledge of the search insisted on anonymity to preserve friendships and business relationships.

But many others in and around CNN spoke on the record about the challenges ahead. Getting the top-heavy 4,000-person company — spread among New York, Washington, Atlanta and bureaus around the world — to row in the same direction will be one of the toughest tasks, many said.

The company’s many channels and sites net roughly $600 million in annual profits, through advertising revenue and subscriber fees. But the channel is leaving ad dollars on the table, as one executive put it, because its prime-time ratings are lagging, and it’s putting future fee increases at risk by appearing irrelevant in the eyes of some cable subscribers.

One problem dates back to CNN’s creation in 1980: when there is a lack of news, there is a lack of viewers. Kiran Chetry, a CNN morning anchor from 2007 to 2011, said her time there was like being on a news treadmill: “We were running, sweating, doing the work, but never getting anywhere ratings-wise,” she said. This stemmed, she said, from uncertainty about “what we were, who our audience was and how we best served them.”

As Fox News and, later, MSNBC put on confrontational political programs with partisan points of view, CNN sold itself as proudly nonpartisan, but fell from first to second to third place in the cable news wars along the way. This should have been an “up” year for the channel, thanks to the presidential election; but through mid-November the channel had drawn 412,000 viewers at any given time, down 16 percent from the previous 12 months.

Bill Carter contributed reporting.

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Congress returns as 'fiscal cliff' talks slow

WASHINGTON – Congress returned in a lame duck session with no signs of quick compromise to prevent a tax hike for most Americans early next year.

Talks between the White House and Republican leaders in the House continued behind closed doors. Current tax rates expire Dec. 31.

Emboldened by his re-election, President Obama took his case for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the public on Monday. He warned that the threat of higher taxes on middle-class Americans could dampen the Christmas shopping season.

"The President has called on Congress to take action and stop holding the middle class and our economy hostage over a disagreement on tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 per year," the White House said in a statement.

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The White House got a boost from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said the wealthy – himself included – should pay more. Noting the nation’s growing gap in income disparity, Buffett dismissed the Republican argument that tax hikes would hamper investments.

“In recent years, my gang has been leaving the middle class in the dust,” Buffett said. “So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased.”

Key Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner, have signaled they are willing to put new tax revenues on the table, creating the outlines of a possible deal. Several Republican lawmakers used the Sunday talk shows to distance themselves from their party’s anti-tax pledge, publicly breaking with conservative stalwart Grover Norquist, although they insisted any agreement must include spending cuts.

A so-called grand bargain of tax hikes and spending cuts has eluded Washington in the past, but both political parties are wary of rattling the financial markets and sparking a crisis in consumer spending. Wall Street has signaled a bold deficit-reduction plan is needed to prevent a credit downgrade.

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No talks between the president and congressional leaders have been scheduled. The parties had agreed to meet this week to put the framework of a two-part deal on the table.

If Republicans continue to fight higher tax rates for the wealthy, Boehner will face pressure to propose an alternative way to raise new revenue – either by closing individual loopholes or capping deductions in a way that produces new money.

“Congressional and White House staff continue to work to find common ground that is consistent with the ‘balanced approach’ the White House says it wants – with significant spending cuts, and without job-killing small business tax hikes,” said a senior House leadership aide.

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Actor: CBS comedy ‘Two and a Half Men’ is ‘filth’

NEW YORK (AP) — The teenage actor who plays the half in the hit CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men” says it’s “filth” and through a video posted by a Christian church has urged viewers not to watch it.

Nineteen-year-old Angus T. Jones has been on the show since he was 10 but says he doesn’t want to be on it. He says, “Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth.”

The video was posted by the Forerunner Christian Church in California, where Jones says he went to meet his spiritual needs.

Show producer Warner Bros. Television has no comment. CBS hasn’t responded to a request for comment left Monday.

The show stars Jon Cryer as Jones’ uptight dad and originally featured Charlie Sheen as his hedonistic philandering uncle, but Sheen was replaced by Ashton Kutcher.

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

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DealBook: Lehman Estate to Sell Archstone for $6.5 Billion

The deal that helped sink Lehman Brothers is now playing an important role in paying off the failed investment bank’s creditors.

The Lehman estate agreed on Monday to sell Archstone, the sprawling apartment complex company, to Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities for about $6.5 billion in cash and stock.

Under the terms of the deal, the Lehman estate will receive $2.685 billion in cash, as well as shares in Equity Residential and AvalonBay worth about $3.8 billion. The two apartment companies will also assume Archstone’s roughly $9.5 billion in debt.

By selling Archstone, the Lehman estate will dispose of its biggest asset, as it continues its efforts to wind itself down and pay off the firm’s legions of creditors. And it will signal the latest twist for a property that has played an important role in Lehman’s demise.

Lehman bought Archstone in 2007, paying more than $22 billion at the height of the housing boom. That leveraged buyout piled even more debt onto an already overburdened firm, significantly contributing to its demise in the fall of 2008.

Since then, however, Archstone has become regarded as one of the crown jewels in the Lehman estate’s pile of assets. And as the estate has sold off a number of its other properties, including the asset manager Neuberger Berman and other real estate holdings, the apartment company was held out as the best opportunity for a major payday.

Such was the Lehman estate’s zealousness that it bought out its partners in Archstone, Bank of America and Barclays, earlier this year, spending a total of $2.88 billion. The goal then was to prevent the firms from selling their holdings to Equity Residential too cheaply.

The stock component of the transaction announced on Monday will give make the Lehman estate the single biggest investor in Equity Residential, with a 9.8 percent stake, and in AvalonBay, with a 13.2 percent stake.

The purchase price represents a roughly 17 percent premium to what the Lehman estate had valued the apartment complex operator.

“The sale of Archstone to Equity Residential and AvalonBay is a very positive outcome for our creditors,” Owen Thomas, the chairman of Lehman’s board of directors, said in a statement.

Equity Residential, which is run by the billionaire Samuel Zell, will own about 60 percent of Archstone’s assets and liabilities. AvalonBay will own the remainder.

Lehman was advised by Gleacher & Company, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Equity Residential received advice from Morgan Stanley and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Morrison & Foerster. AvalonBay was advised by Greenhill & Company and the law firm Goodwin Procter.

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Graham, King depart from Norquist's anti-tax pledge

Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist explains his anti-tax pledge.

By Morgan Little

November 25, 2012, 12:24 p.m.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday joined the ranks of Republican lawmakers stepping away from Grover Norquist’s famous anti-tax pledge, offering to cut his support for the pledge – with a catch.

“I will violate the pledge for the good of the country only if Democrats will do entitlement reform,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that “the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid being Greece.”

Graham specified that although he agrees with Norquist's stand against raising tax rates and not raising taxes for wealthy Americans, he disagrees with him on deduction caps and buying down debt.

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Graham was accompanied by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who said that “the world has changed,” and sticking to the pledge was a non-starter.

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“If I were in Congress in 1941, I would have signed a declaration of war against Japan. I’m not going to attack Japan today,” he said, asserting that pledges should apply only to the era in which they are signed.

Nonetheless, King remained confident that House Speaker John A. Boehner would do “everything he can to avoid raising tax rates” during negotiations with Democrats.

Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” has been a calling card for Republicans, and a sticking point for Democrats, since its inception in 1986. It calls for the signer to oppose “any and all efforts” to increase tax rates, and to oppose the reduction or elimination of deductions or credits, unless those reductions are met with tax-rate cutbacks.

Graham and King joined Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who said Wednesday that “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge.”

Chambliss, speaking with Georgia television station WMAZ-TV Channel 13, said he’s ready to “let the political consequences take care of themselves,” setting the stage for Graham and King’s remarks Sunday.

Norquist responded to Chambliss, stating that “his promise is to the people of Georgia."

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Norquist also brought attention to a letter Chambliss signed in 2011, promising not to vote for tax increases.

“If he plans to vote for higher taxes to pay for Obama-sized government, he should address the people of Georgia and let them know that he plans to break his promise to them,” Norquist said in a statement, the principles of which also apply to Graham's and King’s comments.

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Nokia imaging chief to quit

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s long-time imaging chief Damian Dinning has decided to leave the loss-making cellphone maker at the end of this month, the company said in a statement.

The strong imaging capabilities of the new Lumia smartphone models are a key sales argument for the former market leader, which has been burning through cash while losing share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Stephen Elop has replaced most of the top management since he joined in late 2010 and Dinnig is the latest of several executives to leave.

Dinning did not want to move to Finland as part of the phonemakers’ effort to concentrate operations and will join Jaguar Land Rover to head innovations in the field of connected cars, he said on Nokia’s imaging fan site PureViewclub.com.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki, editing by William Hardy)

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