Wii Rally

Can’t be at E3? Well neither can I, So I’ve got the next best thing Internet video.

OK here Wii go.

First up for the Nintendo media briefing is a 2 minute video of some news stories and user videos which have used the Wii as a focal point. Nintendo begins by tooting their own horn….obviously.

After the short video a gigantic man in a beige suit [Reggie Fils-Aime, NoA President] walks to the middle of the stage and says “Hi I’m Reggie and I am Happy!”

The first segment of Reggie’s speech is about all the stuff that only venture capitalists and investors care about. You know stuff like expanding demographics, sales figures, and market share info….BORING!

Now some interesting stuff. Reggie states that by the holiday shopping season there should be over 160 Wii titles available in North America and over 430 DS titles for the same territory.

After a second video similar to the first Reggie introduces to the world the first offspring of the Wii Remote and nunchuck. The Wii Zapper a housing for your Wii Remote and nunchuck making it look like a small SMG. Reggie goes on to talk about 3 new games that are being designed around the new housing, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Sega’s Ghost Squad a popular arcade light gun game, and the newest addition to the Medal of Honour series will also be centered around the Wii Zapper which will retail for about 19.99 USD. Reggie also mentions plans for a 1st party title that will come packed with a zapper later this year.

(more…)

For the Second Time

Nintendo and Gamespy have announced a new addition to their ongoing partnership today. According to a press release Nintendo will be working closely with Gamespy to provide a more enriched online experience for the Nintendo Wii. Which doesn’t surprise me anyway due to the fact that the Wii seems to be light years behind the online capabilities of it’s current console brethren. This could mean an end to the annoying friend codes Nintendo seems to like so much.

As previously reported the first game to use this new functionality will be Pokémon: Battle Revolution which launches here in North America on June 25th. Pokémon: BR will also be first game to support some type of Wii-DS connectivity.

Aside from the fact that GameSpy is owned by the evil media empire known as NewsCorp. (Damn you Murdoc!) This is reletivly good news for Wii gamers the world over who will soon be able to play with each other with ease. Wait! That doesn’t sound right.

Well the Christmas shopping rush is long over and the numbers have been crunched. NPD group is reporting that the Xbox360 sold the most units over the holiday buying season. Nevertheless Nintendo had a record breaking Christmas as well. Due to the over whelming popularity of their newest gaming device combined with the overall strength of the DS and sprinkled with a fair amount of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Key results from the press release.

* Consumers purchased every Wii console available at retail—more than a million in just the 44 days between U.S. launch and year end.
* With sales of another 1.6 million systems in December alone, Nintendo DS achieved full year sell-through of 5.3 million.
* The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was purchased by an extraordinary 86 percent of Wii buyers, or more than 900,000 games for that system alone. Coupled with the companion version released in December for Nintendo GameCube™, the two versions of the newest Zelda title totaled approximately 1.5 million unit sales in less than seven weeks, which would represent one of the five best-selling games for the entire year.
* Wii owners also purchased an average of three additional games from a wide library of choices, in addition to the Wii Sports title packed in with every hardware system.
* Two Nintendo DS titles, New Super Mario Bros.® and Brain Age™: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, also were top-10 sellers for the year.
* Throughout the November/December holiday shopping period, Nintendo accounted for more than half of all video game hardware systems sold in America.

Due to these results and the continuing strength of the Wii and DS Nintendo has even gone as far as to increase their earnings projection for March 31st 2007. Which must make Nintendo stock holders very very happy.

Source: Nintendo via GamesPress

When you think of Time Magazine you don’t exactly think of hard hitting games journalism, but they are one publication with an enormous amount of credibility. Well Time magazine has released their series of “Top Ten Lists” for the year and a couple of Nintendo Wii games made the “Top Ten Games of 2006“ list. That’s right Wii Sports took top honours and the number 1 spot, while Zelda: Twilight Princess took the number 4 spot. Not too shabby for a console that only launched in November here in North America and even later to the rest of the world. My guess is that Wii Sports was given the honour due to its intuitive and fun controls and mass appeal. My mom even played it and told me she loved the Wii Bowling.

Zelda: Twilight Princess is also poised to win many “game of the year” awards. In fact voting is going on for the 2006 1UP Awards as we speak on massive gaming site 1up.com. You can head on over to check out all the nominees and vote for your favourite.

On a side note another Nintendo game made Time’s list, New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS took the number 3 spot ahead of Zelda. Here’s to hoping that big N and all the other Wii developers out there have lots of fun surprises in store for us Wii games all throughout 2007 and well in to the future.

Source: Time.com