‘Mario Wonder’ Latest Mushroom Power-up for Nintendo Switch 

An employee wearing a face mask stands next to a screen displaying characters from the Nintendo video game Super Mario at a store for Japanese games giant Nintendo in Tokyo on February 3, 2022. (AFP)
An employee wearing a face mask stands next to a screen displaying characters from the Nintendo video game Super Mario at a store for Japanese games giant Nintendo in Tokyo on February 3, 2022. (AFP)
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‘Mario Wonder’ Latest Mushroom Power-up for Nintendo Switch 

An employee wearing a face mask stands next to a screen displaying characters from the Nintendo video game Super Mario at a store for Japanese games giant Nintendo in Tokyo on February 3, 2022. (AFP)
An employee wearing a face mask stands next to a screen displaying characters from the Nintendo video game Super Mario at a store for Japanese games giant Nintendo in Tokyo on February 3, 2022. (AFP)

Nintendo made a pitch for the ongoing match fitness of its aging Switch console on Wednesday, as the Kyoto-based gaming company continues to churn out hits even as the market debates the timing of a successor device.

The Japanese firm said it sold 4.3 million copies of "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" - the first entirely new instalment in the almost 40-year-old side-scrolling series in a decade - within two weeks of its Oct. 20 launch.

That is the best performance of any "Super Mario" title, Nintendo said, as it takes advantage of the Switch install base of more than 130 million units and interest generated by a barnstorming animated movie featuring the moustachioed plumber.

"The Switch will enter its eighth year from March 2024 but we will continue to develop new titles without being bound by previous platform lifecycles," Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told a strategy briefing.

The comments come a day after Nintendo reported it sold 6.84 million Switch units in the first six months of the financial year that started in April, a slight increase on the same period a year earlier.

Sales of first-party Switch games were the strongest of any year over that period other than 2020, Nintendo said, boosted by bumper titles such "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom".

Nintendo also announced on Wednesday "Super Mario" creator Shigeru Miyamoto is developing a live action adaptation of the "Zelda" franchise.

Games slated for release next year include "Mario vs. Donkey Kong" and "Luigi's Mansion 2 HD".

The timing of a successor to the hybrid home/portable Switch device will depend on the strength of Nintendo's hardware and software sales, wrote Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal in a client note, flagging March and October as possible launch windows.

"The stronger the sales, the later the launch of Switch 2," he wrote.



SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI
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SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

The Center of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have introduced the MiniGPT-Med model.

The large multi-modal language model is designed to help doctors quickly and accurately diagnose medical radiology using artificial intelligence techniques.

Dr. Ahmed Alsinan, the Artificial Intelligence Advisor at the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and head of the scientific team at SDAIA, explained that the MiniGPT-Med model is capable of performing various tasks such as generating medical reports, answering medical visual questions, describing diseases, locating diseases, identifying diseases, and documenting medical descriptions based on entered medical images.

The model was trained on different medical images, including X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs.

The MiniGPT-Med model, derived from large-scale language models, is specifically tailored for medical applications and demonstrates significant versatility across different imaging methods, including X-rays, CT scans, and MRI. This enhances its utility in medical diagnosis.

Dr. Alsinan highlighted that the MiniGPT-Med model was developed collaboratively by artificial intelligence specialists from SDAIA and KAUST.

The model exhibits advanced performance in generating medical reports, achieving 19% higher efficiency than previous models. It serves as a general interface for radiology diagnosis, enhancing diagnostic efficiency across various medical imaging applications.