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Reggie Talks Wii, DS At D.I.C.E.
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Dean Takahashi of Mercury News was able to talk with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Post-holiday, Fils-Aime seems to be confident about Nintendo’s success with both the Wii and the DS, and he discusses everything from sales figures, to those who label the Wii as merely a novelty, and the culture that is surrounding the Wii. According to Reggie, DS sales continue to grow beyond Nintendo’s ability to make more handhelds, “making millions a month, but the demand is above that.” He also believes that the Wii has the staying power to grow beyond the Xbox 360 user base, and that the upcoming release of Wii Play will drive sales further. Given that Nintendo still can’t seem to supply enough Wii consoles for the channel, this seems like a hard thing to judge. Reggie loves the inroads that the Wii has been making into pop culture, such as the Conan O’Brien / Serena Williams Wii Tennis battle. Apparently, online development kits have also made their way to developers at this point as well, so gamers can expect online play in the future. Overall, Reggie’s comments reflect a company that has done phenomenally well over the past holiday; Nintendo’s continued success depends on their ability to execute and stay on target.
Read More 
| Mercury News
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Super Mario World Headlining Virtual Console Monday
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, Wii,
Nintendo’s Virtual Console releases for the week include titles for the Super Nintendo, Genesis, and TurboGrafx-16. Of main interest to gamers will be Nintendo’s Super Mario World, one of the original launch title for the Super NES and a strong entry in the Super Mario platformer franchise. The game, like other SNES titles, sells for 800 points. Also arriving this week is Gain Ground for the Sega Genesis at 800 points and VIGILANTE for the TurboGrafx-16 at 600 points.
Nintendo’s full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Super Mario World Headlining Virtual Console Monday
Show your Wii and Beatles fandom with a “Biitles” shirt
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Portable/Mobile, Wii,
Sometimes an item appears that’s so spectacularly nerdy and off-the-wall that it just HAS to be blogged. This is definitely one of them… if you happen to be a fan of Nintendo and the Beatles, and think it’s a good idea to represent John, Paul, George and Ringo in Mii form, then this is definitely the shirt for you!
If you’re a little more surreptitious about your fandom, you can still enjoy having Mii-ized version of the Beatles on your Wii. Over on the NerdyShirts website, they’ve got their Wii number posted on the description and their “Biitles” are ready to mingle! I might be adding them as friends later this evening… maybe I can even convince them to perform in the background while I’m Wii bowling.
Read More | NerdyShirts.com
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Compete: Wii Interest Led Xbox 360, PS3 This Holiday
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Hardware, Internet, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,
Microsoft’s Andre Vrignaud linked to an interesting study of online next-generation console interest published by online metric provider Complete. The analysis shows relative online interest in the three next-generation consoles as tracked via the Compete toolbar technology. According to the tracking numbers, both the Wii and the PS3 peaked around their launch date, with the Wii running up slightly more user interest. The Xbox 360 hit its popularity peak for the three months from November to January right around Thanksgiving, which would tie in somewhat to a number of promotions run around the Xbox 360 at this time. After the holiday season, all three consoles tail off in online click-through. The Wii still leads, but the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 match nearly exactly. Further, it appears that Playstation 3 searchers are transferring to either the Xbox 360 or the Wii.
Overall, though, it is hard to gauge how accurately this tracks real-world purchasing. First, given that Compete gets its tracking numbers though the number of users that have installed the Compete Toolbar, it is hard to say how accurately this reflects the general Internet public. Secondly, given the difficulty in acquiring either a Playstation 3 or a Wii and both consoles’ lack of availability online, one would have a hard time tying an online visit into a retail conversion. A longer period of observation tied with real-world sales numbers as all consoles become readily available at retail will give a better indication of the correlation between online visits and actual sales numbers.
Read More | Compete via Ozymandias.com
Sim City DS Trailer - Currently for Japan Only?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Simulation, Trailers,
It can’t be long until Nintendo and EA announce that Sim City DS will also be hitting the states… this footage just looks too good, and Nintendo fanboys will be whining A LOT if this doesn’t get ported state-side. Plus Will Wright’s native language is English, so we should get a game with him speaking English… right?!?
The trailer found in the link is the latest advertisement for the Japanese version of the game, and shows of the variety of ways in which the touch-screen is used. This is looking to be a fabulous fit for the DS. The touch screen is of course used to design buildings and layout roads, but you’ll see in the trailer that you can also use the stylus to do things like fight off alien invaders and giant apes that attack from time to time. Hopefully we’ll hear some news from EA soon about a US release…
Read More | GameBrink.com
Wii Modchips Materialize
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo, Wii,
A couple of modchips for the Nintendo Wii have surfaced on the web lately; the first would be the Wiinja chip, a bare chip mod. The second is a little more interesting, promising more in its featureset. Maxconsole reports that the CycloWiz mod solution for the Wii may be arriving as early as this week. The developers at Teamcyclops promise support for Wii backups, Gamecube Backups, and Gamecube homebrew games in an easy to install quicksolder package. The chip itself doesn’t seem to have a method to update it, and it doesn’t currently support Wii import gaming. Overall, though, the chip is an interesting start if hack does what it promises.
Read More | Maxconsole
Mario Kart Leads Virtual Console Monday
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, SEGA, Wii,
This Monday’s Virtual Console releases are lead by Nintendo’s classic cart racer, Mario Kart 64 for 1,000 Wii Points, but three other titles have hit was well, including Contra III: The Alien Wars for the Super Nintendo and two Genesis titles, Bonanza Bros. and Comix Zone at 800 points each. Comix Zone has hit a ton of platform in various Sega Genesis collections; Bonanza Bros. has only been in a few. Mario Kart is probably the shining gem in this round of releases, though.
Nintendo’s full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Mario Kart Leads Virtual Console Monday
Telltale Hiring for Wii Game Programmers
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Adventure, Nintendo, Rumors, Wii,
A while back, bloggers at some of the bigger Nintendo blogs (including GoNintendo and NintendoWiiFanboy) heard that Telltale Games was interested in creating or porting an adventure game for the Wii, and they made sure that Nintendo knew about this via a hearty internet buzz campaign.
After all the submissions, Nintendo took the hint, leading to a very excited post from the Telltale bloggers: “News flash, Friday afternoon: They took notice! We got a phone call from Nintendo this afternoon. We’ll take it from here - please don’t email them anymore!”
Well, it appears that Telltale and Nintendo must have worked something out, because Telltale is now posting a full-time job opening for a Wii game programmer to bring their 3D engine over to the Wii’s architecture. I can’t ever imagine what that could mean… I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with porting Sam and Max to the Wii.
See the full job posting, after the jump…
Click to continue reading Telltale Hiring for Wii Game Programmers
Read More | TelltaleGames.com
Early this morning, Nintendo updated North American Wii systems with the Wii News Channel. The News Channel, as previously announced, features content from the Associated Press and will download news while the Wii is in standby, or the user is browsing the News Channel. Users can get the News Channel through a System Update. The update also adds the News Channel to the Parental Controls of the system. The update was fairly quick, but the initial loading of articles was somewhat slow. Future updates were speedier, though.
Users can browse the News Channel by category. Current categories include National, International, Business, Sports, Technology, Arts/Entertainment, and Science/Health. The News Channel offers a standard column format of articles to browse, as well as a slide show that moves users across a virtual globe as news in varying regions is displayed. Users can also use globe navigation to browse news by region, similarly to the Weather Channel.
The UI for the channel is mostly well done. All of the articles can be set at varying levels of zoom for enhanced readability, including the article listings, the actual news articles, and the slideshow and globe views. However, it still feels like there is room for improvement. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to specific keywords to get those news articles downloaded for browsing. It would also be nice if the region settings carried over from the Weather Channel to offer a customized regional news channel, and the globe UI isn’t as easy to access as it should be. Overall, though, this seems like a good start, and seems much more informative than the counterpart weather channel.
Nintendo Flys High On Wii, DS Sales
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo today reported its nine-month financials for the fiscal year; sales for the nine month period are up 73%, with a profit increase of 43%, according to an Associated Press report. Gross sales grew from 412 billion yen to 713 billion yen ($5.9 billion) for this year; profit grew to 132 billion yen ($1.1 billion) from 92.2 billion the previous year. Nintendo sold 3.19 million Wii consoles worldwide, and said that they shipped 4 million, leaving roughly 800,000 units in distribution channels. The company’s decision to avoid costly air freight probably hindered their distribution efforts. Nintendo also estimated that the Wii strap recall would cost the company approximately 1 billion yen, about $8 million. Nintendo also announced that they had sold 18.9 million DS handhelds worldwide, and in a related press release Nintendo of America announced that they have shipped 10 million handhelds in “the Americas.”
Read More | BusinessWeek
