Japanese gaming bible Famitsu is reporting that Nintendo have sold an incredible 4 million copies of New Super Mario Bros Wii in Japan alone.
New Super Mario Bros Wii is now the first Nintendo Wii title to reach the 4 million milestone in less than 12 months in Japan, a feat Nintendo will no doubt be proud of.
Nintendo have announced that they’ve sold an incredible 1.5 million games consoles during the Black Friday sales week in the United States.
The company managed to sell 600,000 Nintendo Wii consoles and 900,000 Nintendo DS consoles. To put this in perspective it means that consumers were buying 9,000 Nintendo consoles every hour during Black Friday week.
Online gaming publication DefaultPrime is stating that EB Games in Canada are currently taking pre-orders for the Nintendo 3DS.
Though there’s still no official US release date for the hand-held, rumours suggest that we should see the console launching in the United States and Europe during March and April 2011.
Charlie Scibetta, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Nintendo of America has confirmed that Nintendo will be attending CES 2011 but has stated that the company won’t be showcasing any new or existing products.
Nintendo of America has booked meeting room space at the 2011 CES but… will not be making any announcements about current or upcoming products during the show…
- Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America
Tim Schafer the legendary developer behind the critically acclaimed Psychonauts and the fairly recent Brutal Legend has expressed a keen interest in creating a game for the Nintendo Wii.
“Most of my all time favourite games are Nintendo games. I have touched Shigeru Miyamoto with my bare hands!!! (He was very soft and pleasant.) Double Fine would love to make something for Nintendo’s fine machine, but it’s not up to us. It’s the publisher’s money, so they get to decide what platform to invest in. In other words, IT’S NOT OUR FAULT! I personally would have loved to make Psychonauts for the Game Cube. (Well, not literally me personally. I would have loved to tell someone else to make it, and I would have loved to watch them do it, and I would have loved yelling, “Faster! Faster!” as they worked.) I really hope we get a chance to make a game for the Wii some day. Why don’t you spam your favorite publisher with mail right now and ask them to send us money to make a Wii game? (And a little extra money for a pool table?)”
- Double Fine’s, Tim Schafer
Epic Mickey producer Warren Spector has expressed his interest in collaborating on a project between Nintendo and Disney.
“Disney has a culture of innovation that goes back 80 years and Nintendo has a culture of innovation. The two companies need to be working together, because their corporate cultures are so similar – and that is instantly apparent in the Nintendo 3DS.”
- Warren Spector
Nintendo have announced that they’re holding a 3DS demo day in Japan called Nintendo World 2011.
The event allows Japanese gamers to go hands-on with the highly anticipated Nintendo 3DS from the 8th to the 10th of January at the Makuhari Messe convention centre.
Nintendo’s Wii Sports Resort has been outselling its Kinect competitor, Kinect Sports, in the United Kingdom.
Whilst there’s been a flurry of hype and excessive sales expectations behind Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral it has so far failed to dethrone the Wii with regards to software sales in the United Kingdom.
TOP 20 ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE (FULL PRICE), WEEK ENDING 20 November 2010
(1) 1.) CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS (ACTIVISION BLIZZARD)
(NEW) 2.) ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD (UBISOFT)
(NEW) 3.) NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT (ELECTRONIC ARTS)
(2) 4.) FIFA 11 (ELECTRONIC ARTS)
(3) 5.) JUST DANCE 2 (UBISOFT)
(12) 6.) WII PARTY (NINTENDO)
(19) 7.) WII SPORTS RESORT (NINTENDO)
(6) 8.) PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE LOST FUTURE (NINTENDO)
(4) 9.) KINECT SPORTS (MICROSOFT)
(8) 10.) NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII (NINTENDO)
Nintendo have announced that they’re releasing green and orange DSi consoles in the United States this Friday.
The super colourful orange and green Nintendo DSi consoles will both come pre-bundled with Mario Party DS and will be available until stocks last for $150.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has openly spoken out about Nintendo’s online efforts during a recent episode of his GameTrailers show, Pach Attack.
“I think everything Nintendo has done online has been bad. I think they have not managed their online presence well at all. I think you can chalk that to the company Nintendo doesn’t think that online is important.”
“I still don’t think they care. We’re in 2010, Microsoft set up Xbox Live in 2003 and Nintendo still isn’t copying them. I think Nintendo is going to have to wait until we get a new box with a hard drive and the ability to build a system and even then I don’t think they’d pull it off.”
“It makes the Wii into more of a mom and sister device except for the super hardcore games. I think people are going to get a second console those Wii households so I think it hurts Nintendo a lot.”
- Analyst, Michael Pachter
