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Nintendo Acquires Monolith Soft From Bandai
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Namco, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Role Playing Games, Wii,
It looks like Nintendo is moving to grow support for more traditional Japanese RPGs – while having the new Dragon Quest XI appear on the DS is a pretty big coup, and Square has been supporting Nintendo with Final Fantasy remakes and side stories, it would be nice to see more diversity on Nintendo’s platforms. It was announced today and reported by IGN that the company has moved to acquire an 80% stake in Monolith Soft, developers of the popular Xenosaga and Baiten Kaitos. Bandai Namco will still hold a 16% stake in the company. This move would effectively seem to make the company an exclusive developer for the Wii and DS, but no new game announcements were made at the time of the news release.
Read More 
| IGN
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Nintendo Has Record Year on DS, Wii Sales
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo just announced their financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007, and the numbers are huge. Revenues are up 90% to 996.5 billion yen, over $8 billion US. Profits are also up, nearly 150% to 226 billion yen, nearly $2 billion in profit.
Nintendo moved over 23 million DS handhelds, just an insane number, along with 5.84 million Wii consoles. The Wii number seems to be short of Nintendo’s projections of 6 million units—this would seem to point to a genuine supply constraint on Nintendo’s part. Some analysts had suspected that Nintendo was holding back shipments of the Wii because Nintendo had “made their numbers” but Nintendo’s results would seem to indicate that this was not the case.
Nintendo’s projections have them selling 14 million Wii consoles in the upcoming fiscal year, and 22 million DS handhelds. 22 million would seem to be a conservative estimate, given their strong sales from the previous year. 14 million Wii consoles moved, though, would seem to indicate a fairly decent ramp up in Wii production in order to meet their targets. Overall, though, the console that both Sony and Microsoft dismissed seems to be poised to challenge for the lead in worldwide sales.
Nintendo’s full press release continues below
Click to continue reading Nintendo Has Record Year on DS, Wii Sales
Nintendo of Europe issued a warning today, reminding Wii gamers against the dangers of using mod chips in their consoles. Nintendo’s terse warning reminds users that opening the console will void their warranty, potentially damage the console, and are considered illegal in many parts of the world. We’ve seen Nintendo go after resellers of “backup” devices before as well as developers of the flash memory cartridges for their handhelds. This warning, though, goes to end users – possibly the proliferation of chips for the Wii is driving this, or there may be gamers that are trying to get Wii consoles fixed after a US Super Paper Mario bricked their PAL console. At any rate, these warnings will fall on deaf ears in the modding community and will only make more users aware of the technology.
Read More | Nintendo Europe
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Nintendo To Have Booth At Tokyo Game Show
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Role Playing Games, Square Enix,
Website Kotaku is indicating that in contrast to past shows, Nintendo will be exhibiting at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show. Typically the company has maintained its own separate shows, preferring to have an exclusive arena to advertise their upcoming software and hardware. This year, though, will apparently bring Nintendo to the show floor; according to Kotaku, the company is committing to this presence largely due to Square Enix showing off Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS. This huge event, apparently, is enough to overcome Nintendo’s general avoidance of the show; having Nintendo and the latest Dragon Quest at the show may mean mayhem for show attendees.
Read More | Kotaku
March NPD Data Hits, DS, PS2, Wii Lead Sales
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox 360,
The NPD sales data for March has been released, and Gamasutra is reporting on the sales numbers. Overall, the sales data pretty much seemed to follow expectations. The Nintendo DS again showed strong sales, moving over 500,000 units in March. Sunday’s release of the latest in the Pokemon series might have the potential to even spike this further in April and May. The PSP sold 180,000; this month’s price drop would seem to ensure an increase for April. Of the non-portable consoles, the PS2 continues to have legs, moving 280,000 consoles and outselling all of the current generation platforms. This was probably helped a bit by the release of God of War II, which sold over 833,000 units.
Within current generation platforms, rankings stayed the same. The ever-supply-constrained Wii moved 259,000 consoles; Nintendo has promised more supply, but this may not happen for a few months. The Xbox 360 continued to hold on, with 199,000 units sold, and Sony’s sales numbers held relatively steady at 130,000 units.
Read More | Gamasutra
Pokemon Preorders Top 500,000
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Role Playing Games, Wireless,
Coming this Sunday April 22, Pokemania will officially hit the US again. The fourth generation Pokemon game, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl is set to be unleashed on the gaming public, nearly nine years after the first North American release. While initially considered a fad, a generation of gamers has literally grown up with the Pokemon franchise. Today Nintendo revealed that the two games have received over 533,000 pre-orders, twice those of the previous release. Early feedback seems to indicate that the games balance the tried-and-true battle gameplay of the originals with appropriately updated graphics and strong Wi-Fi support. Expect this title to easily hit one million sold, and continue to drive the DS juggernaut in the US.
Read More | Reuters
It’s Official: Neo Geo Games Heading to Wii
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Nintendo, Retro, Virtual Console, Wii,
IGN.com announced today, via an interview with SNK Playmore USA President Ben Herman, that indeed, SNK is planning on bringing many of the classic titles for the ill-fated but well-powered Neo Geo console to the Wii’s VC service.
While the interview is scant on details (Herman dodges most of the real questions, like price, release dates, and number of titles), there are some interesting tidbits. For one, Herman says that he expects the VC titles to retail at “just a little above the Super NES price point”. Given that SNES titles are $8.00, and N-64 titles are $10.00, I think it’s a safe bet that thetitles will thus rest somewhere in the $9.00 range. He also notes that SNK has “120 different titles” to choose from. Finally, he discusses the possibility of bringing SNK compilations over to the Wii in disc form and notes that future compilations WILL be utilizing the classic controller (one of the only reasons I didn’t pick up Metal Slug Anthology was its awkward control schemes).
I think I may squeak with delight when I see King of Fighters in a VC update… for now we’ll just have to hold our breath and hope that SNK brings the best of the best to the Wii, hopefully in a timely fashion!
Read More | Wii.Ign.com
Punch Out!!, Virtua Fighter 2, Bonk’s Revenge Hit Virtual Console
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Internet, Nintendo, Retro, Virtual Console, Wii,
Are you ready to rumble??!? Seriously, are you ready to punch, kick and headbutt your way to victory? Well, for the strong amongst you, Nintendo brings you this week’s Wii Virtual Console titles, which includes Punch Out!! (NES), Virtua Fighter 2 (Genesis), and Bonk’s Revenge (TG-16), for the punchers, kickers, and headbutters, respectively.
Both Punch Out!! and Bonk’s Revenge bring back fond childhood memories (yes, I was one of THOSE kids that owned a TG-16), so I’ll probably pick them up, but it’ll be interesting to see how these titles have aged. What about the rest of you out in the ether? Anything catch your eye this week? Or are there titles you’ve been waiting for forever that STILL haven’t made it to the ol’ VC?
Read More | Wii.Nintendo.com
Wii Internet Channel Finally Ready
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Nintendo, Wii,
Those Wii owners with WiiConnect24 enabled probably woke to find their Wii slots glowing blue, their consoles fresh with a notification from Nintendo that the final version of the Wii Internet Channel was now ready. For those without the WiiConnect24 service enabled, the full browser is just a system update and a visit to the Wii Shop channel away. Those that have been playing with the Beta version will notice a few new things about the final version. A better manual zoom option has been added, for somewhat better navigation and readability. Users can now toggle or disable the toolbar that has haunted the bottom of the screen, so videos can take up more of the screen and the Flash-based gaming experience should be improved. Along those lines, general performance of the browser seems to be improved; some of the YouTube videos that used to give the browser problems seem to stream and zoom a lot more smoothly now. The browser still isn’t perfect – a lot of the rich media experiences on the web still aren’t supported, but for free this is an excellent option. The browser won’t be free forever, though – after June 30th the price jumps to 500 Wii Points. At $5.00, this is still a decent bargain for an alternative browsing option to a PC.
Nintendo’s full press release continues below.
Click to continue reading Wii Internet Channel Finally Ready
Circuit City: “Get Paper Mario Today or Get $20”
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hot Deals, Internet, Nintendo, Release Dates, Wii,
I’ll be very interested to see if Circuit City actually plans on honoring this bargain (and will probably make the trip to my local Circuit City myself!). In their weekly circular, they note the release date (today) of Super Paper Mario with the accompanying text:
guaranteed (3) in store 2pm or get a $20 gift card**
Where, with a little additional sleuthing we see that (3) means “Offer valid this week only for select video game New Releases on the advertised release day from 2pm until close of business. In-store only” and ** means “Gift card good for future purchases only. Terms and conditions are applied to gift cards”
Doesn’t sound like a bait and switch to us! So if we’ve got this right, as soon as Circuit City sells out of Super Paper Mario today, anyone who expresses interest in the title can get $20 toward a future purchase? Not bad… not bad at all. Hopefully this title will sell as well as its expected to and we’ll all be $20 richer at the end of the day. If not, I at least plan on picking up a copy… I imagine it’ll be a win-win situation for a lot of other Wii owners out there.
Read More | Circuit City Weekly Ad via Joystiq.com
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