News Corporation Looks at Potential Acquisitions

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch, second from left, with his sons, Lachlan, left, and James, second from right, and Chase Carey, News Corporation’s president and chief operating officer, in July in Sun Valley, Idaho.

The media conglomerate, which had been on its heels for more than a year because of the phone hacking scandal in Britain, is looking to make acquisitions again. First on the list could be a 49 percent stake in the Yes Network in New York, a purchase that could become the foundation for a new nationwide sports network to compete with ESPN.

News Corporation’s stock has reached highs as the company prepares to transfer its underperforming publishing assets, including newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, into a separate publicly traded entity.

One of the crucial factors in the decision was that the split would allow Rupert Murdoch, the company’s chairman and chief executive, to buy into the businesses he loves without upsetting investors who are more interested in cable and broadcast. Potential targets include The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and more education companies.

“Rupert has his mojo back,” said Todd Juenger, a media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “The stock is up, investors are happy with the company’s recent decisions.”

“He is definitely rubbing his hands together,” a person with knowledge of News Corporation’s deal-making discussions said of Mr. Murdoch.

In the last several weeks, Mr. Murdoch has exuded a satisfaction and sure-footedness that people close to the company said they had not seen since before Mr. Murdoch’s British newspaper unit became embroiled in a phone hacking scandal. That is in part because hacking has been overtaken in the press by an unfolding scandal at the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC, which Mr. Murdoch and his son James have frequently criticized, is accused of canceling a news program’s segment about serial child molesting committed by longtime host Jimmy Savile, and broadcasting false reports of pedophilia about a member of Margaret Thatcher’s administration.

People close to Mr. Murdoch said he considered the BBC scandal karmic justice for months of negative coverage of News Corporation, and he has provided almost daily commentary via Twitter. “BBC getting into deeper mess,” he wrote on Nov. 10. “After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as pedophile.”

And the BBC scandal touches another Murdoch rival — The New York Times, whose parent company’s new chief executive, Mark Thompson, served as director general at the BBC. Mr. Thompson’s replacement at the BBC, George Entwistle, resigned on Nov. 11 after just 54 days on the job. “Look to new CEO to shape up NYT unless recalled to BBC to explain latest scandal,” Mr. Murdoch wrote on Twitter last month.

As News Corporation sank into its hacking scandal last year, it delayed new acquisitions. In September, Britain’s Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, said that British Sky Broadcasting, 39.1 percent owned by News Corporation, was “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast license. The decision removed a cloud of uncertainty at News Corporation’s Manhattan headquarters and cleared the company to revisit deals, analysts said.

“The internal narrative at the company is that the boss is in shopping mode,” said one person close to News Corporation who could not discuss Mr. Murdoch’s thinking publicly.

Dropping its $12 billion bid for the portion of BSkyB that it did not already own gave News Corporation ample cash to complete share buybacks and consider other acquisitions. The company had $9.6 billion in cash at the end of its 2012 fiscal year and in September borrowed another $1 billion.

On a recent earnings call, Chase Carey, News Corporation’s president and chief operating officer, said: “We always seem to be the topic of the day when it comes to a rumor of some transaction.” Still, he added: “There are places where we think we should kick the tires on things.”

Last week News Corporation neared a deal with Yankees Global Enterprises to buy a 49 percent stake in the Yes Network, a regional New York sports network, with a valuation of about $3 billion. A stake in Yes would add to News Corporation’s lineup of regional sports channels and contribute to its reported plans to introduce a national cable sports channel that could take on the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN.

“It’s one of the only businesses where there’s no No. 2,” said Michael Nathanson, a media analyst at Nomura Securities. “In our view, sports is the safest asset in media.”

This month the company paid an estimated $250 million for the portion of ESPN Star Sports that it did not already own. ESPN Star Sports, based in Singapore, operates 17 sports networks in five languages around Asia.

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Gaza Violence Is Unabating as Outsiders Push for a Truce

GAZA CITY — Israeli forces killed at least 11 people, including several children, in a single airstrike that destroyed a home here on Sunday, as Israel pressed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip for a fifth day, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave.

The airstrike, which the Israeli military said was meant to kill a Palestinian militant involved in the recent rocket attacks, was the deadliest operation to date and would no doubt weigh on negotiations for a possible cease-fire. Among the dead were five women and four small children, The Associated Press reported, citing a Palestinian health official.

Two media offices were also hit on Sunday, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned of a “significant” expansion in the onslaught, which has already killed over 50 people, many of them civilians.

Speaking on Sunday from Bangkok, President Obama condemned missile attacks by Palestinian fighters in Gaza and defended Israel’s right to protect itself.

“There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Mr. Obama said in his first public comments since the violence broke out. “We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

The president also said that efforts were under way to address Israel’s security concerns and end the violence. “We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours,” Mr. Obama said.

Even as the diplomacy intensified on Sunday, the attacks continued in Gaza and Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu made his warning as militants in Gaza aimed at least one rocket at Tel Aviv, a day after Israeli forces broadened the attack beyond military targets, bombing centers of government infrastructure in Gaza, including the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister.

“We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations, and the Israel Defense Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu told his cabinet at its routine Sunday meeting, referring directly to the of thousands of reservists who have been called up and the massing of armor on the Gaza border that many analysts have interpreted as preparations for a possible invasion.

“I appreciate the rapid and impressive mobilization of the reservists who have come from all over the country and turned out for the mission at hand,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Reservist and conscript soldiers are ready for any order they might receive.”

His remarks were reported shortly after a battery of Israel’s Iron Dome defense shield, hastily deployed near Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to the threat of longer-range rockets, intercepted at least one aimed at the city on Sunday, Israeli officials said. It was the latest of several salvos that have illustrated Hamas’s ability to extend the reach of its rocket attacks.

Since Wednesday, when the escalation of the conflict began, Iron Dome has knocked 245 rockets out of the sky, the military said Saturday, while 500 have struck Israel.

The American-financed system is designed to intercept only rockets streaking toward towns and cities and to ignore those likely to strike open ground. But on Sunday a rocket fired from Gaza plowed through the roof of an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. There were no immediate reports of casualties there.

In Gaza City, the crash of explosions pierced the quiet several times throughout the early morning.

Before the latest deadly strike involving civilians on Sunday, Hamas health officials had said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 53. One of the latest victims was a 52-year-old woman whose house in the eastern part of Gaza City was bombed around lunchtime.

A few hours earlier, a Hamas militant was killed and seven people were wounded in an attack on the Beach Refugee Camp, where Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, has a home. Those killed on Sunday included three children ages 1 through 5, the health officials said.

In Israel, 3 civilians have died and 63 have been injured. Four soldiers were wounded on Saturday.

The onslaught continued despite talks in Cairo that President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt said Saturday night could soon result in a cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu said he would consider a comprehensive cease-fire if the launchings from Gaza stopped.

The attack on Mr. Haniya’s office, one of several on government installations, came a day after he hosted his Egyptian counterpart in the same building, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world.

Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram reported from Gaza City. Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner, Carol Sutherland and Iritz Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem; Tyler Hicks from Gaza, Peter Baker from Bangkok, Alan Cowell from London, Michael Schwirtz from New York and David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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Wii U: New console launches in a sea of gadgets

NEW YORK (AP) — In the six years since the last major video game system launched, Apple unveiled the iPhone and the iPad, “Angry Birds” invaded smartphones and Facebook reached a billion users. In the process, scores of video game consoles were left to languish in living rooms alongside dusty VCRs and disc players.

On Sunday, Nintendo Co. is launching the Wii U, a game machine designed to appeal both to the original Wii’s casual audience and the hardcore gamers who skip work to be among the first to play the latest “Call of Duty” release. Just like the Wii U’s predecessor, the Wii, which has sold nearly 100 million units worldwide since 2006, the new console’s intended audience “truly is 5 to 95,” says Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, the Japanese company’s U.S. arm.

But the Wii U arrives in a new world. Video game console sales have been falling, largely because it’s been so long since a new system has launched. Most people who wanted an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or a Wii already have one. Another reason: People in the broad 5-to-95 age range have shifted their attention to games on Facebook, tablet computers and mobile phones.

U.S. video game sales last month, including hardware, software and accessories, totaled $ 755.5 million, according to the research firm NPD Group. In October 2007, the figure stood at $ 1.1 billion.

The Wii U is likely to do well during the holiday shopping season, analysts believe —so well that shoppers may see shortages. But the surge could peter out in 2013. The Wii U is not expected to be the juggernaut that the Wii was in its heyday, according to research firm IHS iSuppli. The Wii outsold its competitors, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, in its first four years on sale, logging some 79 million units by the end of 2010. By comparison, IHS expects the Wii U to sell 56.7 million in its first four years.

In the age of a million gadgets and lean wallets, the storied game company faces a new challenge: convincing people that they need a new video game system rather than, say, a new iPad.

The Wii U, which starts at $ 300, isn’t lacking in appeal. It allows for “asymmetrical game play,” meaning two people playing the same game can have entirely different experiences depending on whether they use a new tablet-like controller called the GamePad or the traditional Wii remote. The GamePad can also be used to play games without using a TV set, as you would on a regular tablet. And it serves as a fancy remote controller to navigate a TV-watching feature called TVii, which will be available in December.

Nintendo, known for iconic game characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda, is expected to sell the consoles quickly in the weeks leading up to the holidays. After all, it’s been six long years and sons, daughters, brothers and sisters are demanding presents. GameStop Corp., the world’s No. 1 video game retailer, said last week that advance orders sold out and it has nearly 500,000 people on its Wii U waitlist.

Even so, it’s a “very, very crowded space in consumer electronics” this holiday season, notes Ben Bajarin, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies who covers gaming.

Apple‘s duo of iPads, the full-size model and a smaller version called the Mini, will be competing for shoppers’ attention. Not to be outdone, Amazon.com Inc. has launched a trove of Kindle tablets and e-readers in time for the holidays. These range from the Paperwhite, a touch-screen e-reader, to the Kindle Fire HD, which features a color screen and can work with a cellular data plan. Then there are the new laptops and cheaper, thinner “ultrabooks” featuring Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system —not to mention smartphones from Apple Inc., Samsung and other manufacturers.

“Nintendo has to be a cut above the noise here,” Bajarin says.

The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in years, but in some ways Nintendo is merely catching up with the HD trend. Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. began selling their own powerful, high-definition consoles six and seven years ago, respectively. Both Sony and Microsoft are expected to unveil new game consoles in 2013.

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian thinks the question is not how well the Wii U will do during the holidays, but how it will fare three and six months later.

Gaming has changed significantly in the past six years, especially when it comes to the type of mass-audience experiences that serve as Nintendo‘s bread and butter. Zynga Inc., the online game company behind Facebook games such as “FarmVille” and “Texas HoldEm Poker,” was founded in 2007. The first “Angry Birds” game, that addictive, quirky distraction that has players flinging cartoon birds at structures hiding smug green pigs launched in late 2009. The first iPad, of course, came out in 2010 —three years after the first iPhone.

Fils-Aime acknowledges that Nintendo competes in the broad entertainment landscape, “minute-by-minute,” for consumers’ time.

“That’s true today and that was true 20 years ago,” he says, adding that Nintendo‘s challenge is communicating to people “what is so fun and appealing about the new system.”

Analysts expect Wii U sales to be brisk over the holidays. Nintendo‘s loyal —some would say, fanatical— fan base has been placing advance orders and will likely keep the systems flying off store shelves well into next year. The classic Mario and Zelda games are a huge part of the appeal, since they can’t be played on any gaming system but Nintendo‘s.

Research firm IHS iSuppli estimates that by the end of the year, people will have snapped up 3.5 million Wii U consoles worldwide, compared with 3.1 million Wii units in the same period through the end of 2006.

After the Wii went on sale, shortages persisted for months. Stores were met with long lines of shoppers trying to get their hands on a Wii as late as July 2007, more than seven months after the system’s launch.

Though supply constraints are expected this time around, Fils-Aime says Nintendo will have more hardware available in the Americas than it had for the Wii’s initial months on the market. The company says it will also replenish retailers more frequently than it did six years ago.

An initial sell-out doesn’t mean the Wii U will be successful over the long term, IHS notes, citing its estimate that the Wii U won’t match the Wii’s sales over time.

Bajarin believes it’s going to take “a little bit of time” for the Wii U’s dual-screen gaming concept to sink in with people. If it proves popular, Nintendo could see even more competition at its hands.

“Technologically, it’s not a leap of the imagination to see Apple, Google, Microsoft do something like this,” he says.

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Follow Barbara Ortutay on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay

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Schaub rallies Texans past Jaguars, 43-37

HOUSTON (AP) — Tied in overtime with one of the NFL's worst teams, the Houston Texans turned to their superstar to pull out the victory.

Andre Johnson caught a screen pass from Matt Schaub and ran 48 yards for the winning touchdown as the Texans rallied to beat Jacksonville 43-37 on Sunday.

Schaub threw a career-high five touchdown passes, completed a franchise-record 43 passes and finished with 527 yards in the air, second most in NFL history. Warren Moon also threw for 527 yards for the Houston Oilers in December 1990 against Kansas City.

Norm Van Brocklin holds the record with 554 for the Rams in 1951.

Schaub completed his final 16 passes in regulation time to rally the Texans.

Johnson caught 14 passes for 273 yards, both career highs; the yardage was a team record. The Texans (9-1) won an overtime game for the first time at Reliant Stadium.

Chad Henne threw a career-high four touchdown passes in relief of injured Blaine Gabbert for the Jaguars (1-9). First-round pick Justin Blackmon finally had his breakout game, making seven catches for 236 yards. It was the first time in NFL history opposing players each had more than 200 yards receiving in the same game.

Blackmon caught Henne's pass at midfield, shrugged off two defenders for a stunning 81-yard touchdown with 12:33 left in regulation to put Jacksonville up 34-20.

Schaub then threw two touchdown passes to tight end Garrett Graham in the final 5:39 to force overtime.

Shayne Graham and Josh Scobee kicked field goals in overtime and, for a while, it looked like NFL would have its second tie in two weeks. San Francisco and St. Louis finished 24-24 last week.

Henne threw incomplete on fourth-and-10 from the Houston 47, and the Texans regained possession with 2:30 left in OT. Schaub flipped a screen pass to Johnson, who sprinted untouched down the right sideline for the winning score.

The Texans improved to 2-7 in overtime in their history, while the Jaguars dropped to 0-3 in OT this season.

Gabbert left in the first quarter with a bruised right elbow. Henne looked much more effective against the Texans.

Playing for only the fourth time this season, Henne barely beat a Houston blitz with a throw to Blackmon for a 63-yard gain, then found tight end Marcedes Lewis in the end zone late in the opening period. The Texans hadn't allowed a touchdown since their 43-13 win over Baltimore on Oct. 21.

The Jaguars had 238 yards in the first half, just 26 yards shy of their average output this season.

Henne started the second half with a 39-yard throw to Blackmon, then found Blackmon again to convert a third down to the Houston 30. Scobee kicked a 40-yard field goal to put Jacksonville up again, 20-17.

Arian Foster fumbled and Schaub threw an interception as the Texans looked like they might get embarrassed at home after beating Chicago at rainy Soldier Field last week.

Schaub was flawless in leading the Texans back, though, and Houston had a chance to escape in regulation, but Graham badly hooked a 47-yard field-goal attempt at the end.

The Texans finished with 640 total yards.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Ashlyn Blocker, the Girl Who Feels No Pain

Jeff Riedel for The New York Times

Ashlyn Blocker, who feels no pain, at home in Patterson, GA.

The girl who feels no pain was in the kitchen, stirring ramen noodles, when the spoon slipped from her hand and dropped into the pot of boiling water. It was a school night; the TV was on in the living room, and her mother was folding clothes on the couch. Without thinking, Ashlyn Blocker reached her right hand in to retrieve the spoon, then took her hand out of the water and stood looking at it under the oven light. She walked a few steps to the sink and ran cold water over all her faded white scars, then called to her mother, “I just put my fingers in!” Her mother, Tara Blocker, dropped the clothes and rushed to her daughter’s side. “Oh, my lord!” she said — after 13 years, that same old fear — and then she got some ice and gently pressed it against her daughter’s hand, relieved that the burn wasn’t worse.

Tara Blocker

When Ashlyn was 2, her mother had to wrap her hands to keep her from biting them.

“I showed her how to get another utensil and fish the spoon out,” Tara said with a weary laugh when she recounted the story to me two months later. “Another thing,” she said, “she’s starting to use flat irons for her hair, and those things get superhot.”

Tara was sitting on the couch in a T-shirt printed with the words “Camp Painless But Hopeful.” Ashlyn was curled on the living-room carpet crocheting a purse from one of the skeins of yarn she keeps piled in her room. Her 10-year-old sister, Tristen, was in the leather recliner, asleep on top of their father, John Blocker, who stretched out there after work and was slowly falling asleep, too. The house smelled of the homemade macaroni and cheese they were going to have for dinner. A South Georgia rainstorm drummed the gutters, and lightning illuminated the batting cage and the pool in the backyard.

Without lifting her eyes from the crochet hooks in her hands, Ashlyn spoke up to add one detail to her mother’s story. “I was just thinking, What did I just do?” she said.

Over six days with the Blockers, I watched Ashlyn behave like any 13-year-old girl, brushing her hair, dancing around and jumping on her bed. I also saw her run without regard for her body through the house as her parents pleaded with her to stop. And she played an intense game of air hockey with her sister, slamming the puck on the table as hard and fast as she could. When she made an egg sandwich on the skillet, she pressed her hands onto the bread as Tara had taught her, to make sure it was cool before she put it into her mouth. She can feel warmth and coolness, but not the more extreme temperatures that would cause anyone else to recoil in pain.

Tara and John weren’t completely comfortable leaving Ashlyn alone in the kitchen, but it was something they felt they had to do, a concession to her growing independence. They made a point of telling stories about how responsible she is, but every one came with a companion anecdote that was painful to hear. There was the time she burned the flesh off the palms of her hands when she was 2. John was using a pressure-washer in the driveway and left its motor running; in the moments that they took their eyes off her, Ashlyn walked over and put her hands on the muffler. When she lifted them up the skin was seared away. There was the one about the fire ants that swarmed her in the backyard, biting her over a hundred times while she looked at them and yelled: “Bugs! Bugs!” There was the time she broke her ankle and ran around on it for two days before her parents realized something was wrong. They told these stories as casually as they talked about Tristen’s softball games or their son Dereck’s golf skills, but it was clear they were still struggling after all these years with how to keep Ashlyn safe.

A couple of nights after telling me the story about putting her hand in the boiling water, Ashlyn sat in the kitchen, playing with the headband that held back her long brown hair. We had all been drawing on napkins and playing checkers and listening to Ashlyn and Tristen sing “Call Me Maybe,” when all of a sudden Tara gasped and lifted the hair away from her daughter’s ears. She was bleeding beneath it. The headband had been cutting into her skin entire time we were sitting there.

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Israel Steps Up Aerial Strikes in Gaza

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A man injured by bombing in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday that also killed one person. More Photos »

GAZA CITY — Israel broadened its assault on the Gaza Strip on Saturday from mostly military targets to centers of government infrastructure, obliterating the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister with a barrage of five bombs.

The attack came a day after the prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, hosted his Egyptian counterpart in that very building, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world. That stature was underscored Saturday by a visit to Gaza from the Tunisian foreign minister and the rapid convergence in Cairo of two Hamas allies, the prime minister of Turkey and the crown prince of Qatar, for talks with the Egyptian president and the chairman of Hamas on a possible cease-fire.

But the violent conflict showed no sign of abating as it finished its fourth day. Gaza militants again fired long-range missiles at the population center of Tel Aviv, among nearly 60 that soared into Israel on Saturday, injuring five civilians in an apartment building in Ashdod, in southern Israel, and four soldiers in an unidentified location.

Israel said it hit more than 200 targets overnight and continued with afternoon strikes on a Hamas commander’s home in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun and on a motorcycle-riding militant in the southern border town of Rafah. Israel has also made preparations for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas health officials said 45 Palestinians had been killed and 385 wounded since Wednesday’s escalation in the cross-border battle; 3 Israelis have died and 63 civilians have been injured.

“Everybody is afraid of what’s next,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University in Cairo, predicting that the rockets fired at Tel Aviv and, on Friday, at Jerusalem, would provoke a rerun of Israel’s ground invasion four years ago.

Mr. Abusada and Efraim Halevy, a former head of Israel’s intelligence service, both said there is no clear endgame to the conflict, since Israel neither wants to re-engage in Gaza nor to eliminate Hamas and leave the territory to the chaos of more militant factions. “Ultimately,” Mr. Halevy said, “both sides want Hamas to remain in control, strange as it sounds.”

But Mr. Abusada cautioned that “there is no military solution to the Gaza problem,” saying: “There has to be a political settlement at the end of this. Without that, this conflict is just going to go on and on.”

In Cairo, a senior official of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with President Mohamed Morsi, said he was working furiously on Saturday to secure a cease-fire. Mr. Morsi met with the Turkish premiere, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while Egypt’s foreign minister huddled with the Qatari prince and its intelligence chief sat with Khaled Meshaal, the chief of Hamas’s political wing, Egyptian media reported.

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 but is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, wants to turn its Rafah crossing with Egypt into an open, free-trade zone, and for Israel to withdraw from the 1,000-foot buffer it patrols on Gaza’s northern and eastern borders. The Brotherhood official said that the Israeli side of the talks remained “the sticking point,” though he would not be specific about the issues.

Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Asia that the president had spoken daily with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel since the crisis began, as well as to Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Morsi.

“They have the ability to play a constructive role in engaging Hamas and encouraging a process of de-escalation,” Mr. Rhodes said of the Turkish and Egyptian leaders. Describing rocket fire coming from Gaza as “the precipitating factor for the conflict,” he added, “We believe Israel has a right to defend itself and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard.”

But the Tunisian foreign minister, standing outside Al Shifa Hospital here, told reporters that Israel “has to respect the international law to stop the aggression against the Palestinian people.”

Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, spoke Saturday with the leaders of Germany, Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic, according to a statement from his office.

Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza City and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from the Gaza Strip, Carol Sutherland and Iritz Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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Nintendo seeks to shake up gaming again with Wii U

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It can scan zombies, replace a TV remote, open a window into virtual worlds and shoot ninja stars across a living room. It’s the Wii U GamePad, the 10-by-5-inch touchscreen controller for the successor to the Wii out Sunday, and if you ask the brains behind the “Super Mario Bros.” about it, they say it’s going to change the way video games are made and played.

“You can’t manufacture buzz,” said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. “You can’t manufacture word of mouth. All we can do is to provide the product and the games to foster some sparks that hopefully enable that to happen. We think we have that with Wii U.”

Much like the iPad, the curvaceous GamePad features a touchscreen that can be manipulated with the simple tap or swipe of a finger, but it’s surrounded by the kinds of buttons, bumpers, thumbsticks and triggers that are traditionally found on a modern-day game controller. There’s also a camera, stylus, microphone, headphone jack and speakers.

While the Wii U can employ its predecessor’s motion-control remotes with a sensor bar that similarly detects them in front of the TV, the console’s focus on two-screen experiences makes it feel more like a high-definition, living-room rendition of the Nintendo DS and 3DS, the Japanese gaming giant’s dual-screen hand-held devices, than the original Wii.

“It’s a second screen like a tablet or a cellphone, but it’s different,” said Mark Bolas, professor of interactive media at the University of Southern California. “In addition to providing more information, the GamePad is also a second viewpoint into a virtual world. Nintendo is letting you turn away from the TV screen to see what’s happening with the GamePad.”

The touchscreen controller can also serve as a makeshift TV remote control and online video aggregator for services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. (Nintendo cheekily calls it TVii and announced Friday that it won’t be available until December.) Some games have the ability to flip-flop between the TV screen and the GamePad screen, allowing for non-gaming use of the TV.

There are limitations to the GamePad: it won’t work after it’s been moved 25 feet away from the Wii U console; it lasts about three to five hours after charging; and while its touchscreen is intuitive as those that have come before it, the GamePad is not quite as simple to use as the Wii controllers that had everyone bowling in their living rooms.

“Is the GamePad more complex than the Wii Remote was six years ago? Certainly,” said Fils-Aime. “On the other hand, I believe consumers will easily grasp the GamePad and what we’re trying to do with the varied experiences we’ll have not only at launch but over the next number of years in this system’s life.”

The abilities of the GamePad are most notably showcased by Nintendo Co. in the amusement park-themed mini-game collection “Nintendo Land,” which comes with the deluxe edition of the console. “Nintendo Land” turns the GamePad into several different tools, such as the dashboard of a spaceship or the ultimate advantage in a game of hide-and-seek.

In other titles, the controller mostly eliminates the need to pause the action to study a map in order to figure out where to go next or scour an inventory for just the right weapon. That can all be achieved simultaneously on the GamePad screen, which is best illustrated among the launch titles in Ubisoft’s survival action game “ZombiU.”

The GamePad acts as a high-tech scanner in “ZombiU” that can analyze a player’s surroundings in a version of London overrun by zombies. It pumps up the terror by drawing players’ attention away from the horrors lurking around them.

Will gamers who’ve grown up with their eyes glued to the TV and hands gripped on a controller adapt to glimpsing at another screen? The Wii U edition of “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” for example, invites players to customize their arsenal on the fly on the GamePad, as well as engage in multiplayer matches without needing to split the TV in half.

Nintendo expects 50 games will be available for the Wii U by March 2013. There will be 23 games released alongside the console when it debuts Sunday, including the platformer “New Super Mario Bros. U,” karaoke game “Sing Party,” an “armored edition” of “Batman: Arkham City” and the Mickey Mouse adventure “Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.”

“New consoles come along and nobody exploits their full capabilities for the first two to three years,” said Warren Spector, creative director at “Epic Mickey 2″ developer Junction Point Studios. “It’s only after you’ve had two or three projects that you fully understand what the hardware is capable of doing. We’re going to be experimenting with it more.”

Fils-Aime said he’s already envisioning ways that developers will innovate with future games. He pointed to some of the console’s features that aren’t on display in the launch line-up, such as the ability to play with two GamePads at once or utilize the console’s near-field communication technology to interact with other gadgets in the room.

“I think that developers and consumers are ready for new experiences,” said Fils-Aime. “More than anything else, I think that’s what is driving excitement for Wii U. They’ve experienced what this generation has to offer. They’re ready for something new.”

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Online:

http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Lacy scores 3 TDs, No. 4 Bama rolls over WCU 49-0

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — AJ McCarron, Eddie Lacy and Alabama settled this one in the opening minutes instead of waiting for a tense finale.

Lacy rushed for three first-half touchdowns and McCarron set the fourth-ranked Crimson Tide's single-season record for passing TDs in a decidedly drama-free 49-0 victory over Western Carolina on Saturday.

Alabama (10-1) rebounded from a loss to No. 9 Texas A&M by building a 42-0 halftime lead against the Catamounts (1-10), a Football Championship Subdivision team with two wins in as many seasons. It was the Tide's third shutout this year.

"I was pleased with the way our guys competed in the game," Alabama coach Nick Saban said. "We went out there and tried to play to a standard and executed fairly well. Western Carolina, those guys played hard and they were a little bit outmanned, and our guys played the way we want them to play.

"Everything is ahead of us as a team."

Alabama still left Bryant-Denny Stadium needing a couple of upsets to make a return trip to the national title game.

McCarron completed all six of his attempts for 133 yards and his 21st touchdown before exiting midway through the second quarter. Lacy ran for 99 yards on 10 carries with two 7-yard touchdowns and a 3-yarder. Neither played after halftime.

"It's not about them, it's about what you do, so we had to go out there and take care of business and not worry about everybody else," McCarron said.

Cornerback Deion Belue returned a fumble 57 yards in the final seconds before halftime.

The 42 points were the most Alabama had scored in the first half since producing the same amount against Georgia State on Nov. 18, 2010.

Still hoping for a shot at a second straight national title, the Tide can secure a spot in the Southeastern Conference championship game against No. 5 Georgia with a victory over rival Auburn.

This one was a welcome respite for Alabama after games against No. 8 LSU and the Aggies went down to the final minute. It followed three straight against opponents ranked in the top 15 at the time of the game, including Mississippi State.

"You're coming off a loss; it's easy to get distracted," Belue said. "We handled that real well, just coming in and staying focused on what we need to do."

Alabama outgained the Catamounts 463-163 in total yards and outrushed them 300-70. The Catamounts have lost all 14 meetings against SEC teams and haven't beaten a Division I (FCS or FBS) opponent since topping The Citadel on Oct. 2, 2010.

"There's a reason this place is where it's at, at the top," Western Carolina first-year coach Mark Speir said. "Excellent football team that we could not stop, obviously. Defensively, they pretty much had their way. They knocked us off the ball."

Alabama reached 10 wins for the fifth season in a row, the longest such streak since the 1971-75 teams.

McCarron, who threw his first two interceptions of the season last week, broke the single-season mark set by Greg McElroy in 2010. He hit Christion Jones on a 29-yard touchdown with 8:15 left in the second quarter to cap a 99-yard drive and then became a spectator.

The junior also moved past McElroy into third place on the Tide career list with 40 touchdown passes, behind Brodie Croyle (41) and John Parker Wilson (47).

T.J. Yeldon ran for 55 yards and a touchdown on seven carries before leaving with a sprained foot. Saban said he could have returned.

Backup quarterback Blake Sims was only 2 of 6 for 27 yards in his most significant action but also rushed for 70 yards, including a 5-yard touchdown.

Wide receiver Kevin Norwood was held out of the game for an unspecified injury and backup tailback Kenyan Drake was suspended for violating team rules.

Even Alabama's mistakes turned into Tide points. Western Carolina fumbled it right back after Jones lost the ball on a punt return, and Belue scooped it up for another score with 14 seconds left before halftime.

Alabama also drew a roughing penalty on the punt, prompting Saban to make a furious leap into the air on the sideline even with the huge lead.

Western Carolina backup quarterback Eddie Sullivan set up the Catamounts' best scoring chance before Alabama made a fourth-down stop from the 14 late in the third quarter.

"We should have gone for the field goal and got some points," Speir said. "That's stupid. That's my fault."

Sullivan rushed for 28 yards and was 4 of 12 for 63 yards after replacing freshman Troy Mitchell.

The Tide didn't punt until the fourth quarter. Plus, a bunch of reserves got into the game.

"We were trying to get as many guys in the game as we possibly could," Saban said.

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Well: Meatless Main Dishes for a Holiday Table

Most vegetarian diners are happy to fill their plates with delicious sides and salads, but if you want to make them feel special, consider one of these main course vegetarian dishes from Martha Rose Shulman. All of them are inspired by Greek cooking, which has a rich tradition of vegetarian meals.

I know that Greek food is not exactly what comes to mind when you hear the word “Thanksgiving,” yet why not consider this cuisine if you’re searching for a meatless main dish that will please a crowd? It’s certainly a better idea, in my mind, than Tofurky and all of the other overprocessed attempts at making a vegan turkey. If you want to serve something that will be somewhat reminiscent of a turkey, make the stuffed acorn squashes in this week’s selection, and once they’re out of the oven, stick some feathers in the “rump,” as I did for the first vegetarian Thanksgiving I ever cooked: I stuffed and baked a huge crookneck squash, then decorated it with turkey feathers. The filling wasn’t nearly as good as the one you’ll get this week, but the creation was fun.

Here are five new vegetarian recipes for your Thanksgiving table — or any time.

Giant Beans With Spinach, Tomatoes and Feta: This delicious, dill-infused dish is inspired by a northern Greek recipe from Diane Kochilas’s wonderful new cookbook, “The Country Cooking of Greece.”

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Northern Greek Mushroom and Onion Pie: Meaty portobello mushrooms make this a very substantial dish.

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Roasted Eggplant and Chickpeas With Cinnamon-Tinged Tomato Sauce and Feta: This fragrant and comforting dish can easily be modified for vegans.

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Coiled Greek Winter Squash Pie: The extra time this beautiful vegetable pie takes to assemble is worth it for a holiday dinner.

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Baked Acorn Squash Stuffed With Wild Rice and Kale Risotto: Serve one squash to each person at your Thanksgiving meal: They’ll be like miniature vegetarian (or vegan) turkeys.

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Privatizing Greece, Slowly but Not Surely

Eirini Vourloumis for The International Herald Tribune

Potential privatization hit a wall at Katakolo, a seaside town where Christos Konstantopoulos paused near abandoned beachfront homes. More Photos »

THE government inspectors set out from Athens for what they thought was a pristine patch of coastline on the Ionian Sea. Their mission was to determine how much money that sun-kissed shore, owned by the Greek government, might sell for under a sweeping privatization program demanded by the nation’s restive creditors.

What the inspectors found was 7,000 homes — none of which were supposed to be there. They had been thrown up without ever having been recorded in a land registry.

“If the government wanted to privatize here, they would have to bulldoze everything,” says Makis Paraskevopoulos, the local mayor. “And that’s never going to happen.”

Athens agreed. It scratched the town, Katakolo, off a list of potential properties to sell. But as Greece redoubles its efforts to raise billions to cut its debt and stoke its economy, the situation in Katakolo illustrates the daunting hurdles ahead.

In the three years since the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — the so-called troika of lenders — first required Greece to sell state assets, a mere 1.6 billion euros have been raised. Last Tuesday, European leaders said Greece needed an additional 15 billion euros in aid through 2014 to meet debt-reduction targets — partly because Athens has failed to make money on privatization.

Now, the troika may consider cutting an already lowered target for Greece to raise 19 billion euros by 2015 to about 10 billion euros as investors worry that Greece may have to leave the euro. The troika is requiring that Greece must still raise 50 billion through privatizations by 2022.

The I.M.F. estimates that those funds, should they materialize, will trim only up to 1 percent from Greece’s debt, which is expected to rise to a staggering 189 percent of the nation’s economic output in 2013, from 175 percent this year.

But with Greece’s economy headed into its sixth year of recession, and unemployment at 25 percent, the nation’s immediate goal is to lure any investment it can through long-term leases on state properties to create jobs and get money flowing into depleted public coffers.

“This could put the economy back in motion,” says Andreas Taprantzis, the executive director of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, a new agency set up to hasten privatization. If investors develop land, restructure highways or build business parks, the activity would “help employment, which is a major issue for Greece,” he says.

Indeed, privatization is one of the last hopes here for luring foreign cash.

Efforts stumbled anew last summer, when the government fell and two chaotic elections were held, amplifying fears of what is known in financial circles as a “Grexit” — a Greek exit from the euro. Investor confidence fell so low that a recent survey by the BDO consulting firm found that Greece was considered more risky for investment than Syria.

Yet as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras took steps last week to secure an additional 31.5 billion euros of bailout money from creditors, the thinking is that if one major asset can be sold now, investors will feel better about spending their money on Greece.

OFFICIALS are trotting out Greece’s most tempting offer: OPAP, the highly profitable gambling company in which the government has a major stake. Its gambling agencies abound around Athens and in Greek villages. Last week, as the government went on a road show to China to drum up investor interest, eight bids landed, including one from a Chinese concern.

Still, Mr. Taprantzis’s agency faces a daunting task. The idea of the country selling off its crown jewels touches a raw nerve here. Many Greeks say the government is buckling to decrees from the troika. Citizen protests have flared over nearly every state asset up for offer, including ones that have long bled cash — even if shedding them would help Greece’s finances.

Others say the government is so desperate that prime assets will be sold too cheaply. In the case of OPAP, Greeks grumble about the government’s logic in selling one of the few things that brings a steady stream of money to the treasury.

Given the culture of clientelism that pervades business dealings in Greece, others are concerned that properties will wind up in the hands of powerful Greek oligarchs who, these critics worry, may be waiting for an opportunity to get them at a cut-rate price.

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.

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