Nintendo might be planning to sell the Wii for $99 sometime later this year. The rumour comes from a Kmart employee who managed to take a snap of the revised pricing for the console from the company’s database. It would make sense for Nintendo to announce a price drop for Wii during E3 as the company shifts its focus onto Wii U, which is due for release later this year. We should know for certain in just a couple of weeks.
Tip: Ray B
Nintendo of America is adding two great games to the Nintendo Selects value collection for the Wii console on June 10 with Mario Power Tennis and Pikmin 2, a Nintendo GameCube classic making its U.S. debut on Wii. Nintendo Selects games are available at a suggested retail price of $19.99.
Separately, two of the best-selling Wii games of all time will be getting new prices: Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Donkey Kong Country Returns each will be available at a suggested retail price of $29.99. The value pricing provides shoppers with a great way to expand their game collections with some of the hottest Wii games around.
Mario Party 9 has successfully managed to climb to the top of the Japanese software charts this week selling a more-than respectable 144,585 units. If you look at the entire top ten you’ll immediately notice that eight of the ten game are on Nintendo platforms. With regards to hardware the Nintendo 3DS is once again the best-selling format, easily beating Sony’s PlayStation 3. Here’s the software and hardware charts:
Project Zero 2 Wii producer Keisuke Kikuchi, claims that while Project Zero 2 is a remake of a PlayStation 2 game, it now feels like a brand new game. Kikuchi says that it’s this is down to the dramatic changes that the development team at Tecmo Koei have implemented.
“I feel that to all intents and purposes, it’s a new game! The objective viewpoint that Nintendo brought to the project meant that we ended up reworking a lot of different elements of the game from first principles.”
“We’ve made significant changes to the battle system, and we have added new episodes and several endings. We’ve also brought the graphics up to date, and packed it full of features that put it right at the cutting edge of horror games.”
XSEED has confirmed that it’s looking to release a limited edition version of The Last Story when the game makes its debut in North America in July. Presumably the limited edition version of The Last Story will be similar to the version that was released in Europe back in February. The limited edition version of The Last Story contains a copy of the game, a steel book-case, a soundtrack, and an art book.
Fans of the Legend of Zelda series should enjoy what the game has to offer – which is plenty of action based combat and a few brain teasing puzzles, but the overall package is nowhere near as polished or as innovative as any of the acclaimed games within the Zelda franchise. The storyline however is the games coup de grace as it’s something that gradually emerges as you progress through the game, leaving you wanting more – which it does to a successful effect.
Pandora’s Tower is a dark and brooding fairy tale, with its Brother Grimm inspired storyline, and a traditionally noble hero devoted to rescuing the one person who he would ultimately give his life for. It’s just a shame that I found the game became increasingly monotonous. It’s because you know that once you have successfully defeated the Master in the tower you move onto the next tower, and rinse and repeat. Pandora’s Tower is an essential purchase for those that are still attached to the now rather ageing Wii, but for those who aren’t there’s better entertainment to be found elsewhere.
7/10
A new report provided by analyst firm PiperJaffray states that Xenoblade Chronicles was the third best-selling game in the United States during April. EA and Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 was the number one selling game which was followed by Activision’s Prototype 2 and Nintendo published Xenoblade Chronicles.
US retail emporium K-Mart is selling the fantastic The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the ridiculously cheap price of $19.99. Gamers will be able to purchase the game at the discounted price from the 6th May until May 12th.
Nintendo has revealed that it plans to dazzle hardcore Nintendo fans with the Wii U rather than the mass market. Iwata explained that the company has learned lessons with the Wii and won’t be focussing all their efforts on trying to win over casual gamers with Wii U. Iwata admitted that Nintendo had struggled to get core gamers to take the Wi platform seriously, but they plan to amend this with Wii U when it launches later this year.
“The Wii was able to reach a large number of new consumers who had never played games before by bringing hands-on experiences with its Wii Sports and Wii Fit,” he explained.
“However, we could not adequately create the situation that such new consumers played games frequently or for long, consistent periods. As a result, we could not sustain a good level of profit.
“Moreover, regrettably, what we prioritised in order to reach out to the new audience was a bit too far from what we prioritised for those who play games as their hobby. Consequently, we presume some people felt that the Wii was not a game system for them or they were not willing to play with the Wii even though some compelling games had been released.”
“Once consumers have a notion that ‘this system is not for us’, we have learned that it is extremely difficult to change their perceptions later,” said Iwata.
“Therefore, in promoting the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, we have announced that we would like ‘width’ and ‘depth’ to coexist.
“With the Nintendo DS and the Wii, the approach of ‘width’ was well accepted by many people; however, what we did in terms of ‘depth’ was not satisfactory for some consumers. This time, we would like consumers to be satisfied in both aspects.
“In order to do so, we started to work on the ‘depth’ aspect first, and the current and existing software you can see for the Nintendo 3DS is based on that idea. In the future, the approach will evolve,” he continued.
“Our approach for the Wii U is basically the same. By doing so continuously, we are expecting that the number of game users per household will increase and as the gaming population increases, we believe we can create a sustainable video game market.”
Disney’s Epic Mickey producer Warren Spector firmly believes that the original Epic Mickey game is the best looking title on Wii. Spector is also adamant that the game sounds better than any Wii game ever created. He did however promise that Epic Mickey: The Power of Two will be a natural improvement over the original, which received mixed reviews from numerous quarters.
”As obnoxious as it sounds, I still think the first Mickey game was the best looking Wii game ever that anyone’s ever made so sue me. I love the way the game looks. I’m not saying anyone else has to agree, it’s just my opinion.
“I also think it sounds better than any Wii game ever [laughing] but you can always do better. We’re going to. When people see the 2D levels, the 2D side-scrolling levels in the new game I think they’re going to see that the team has taken those to a whole new level.”
“We’ve already talked about camera and voice [in Epic Mickey: The Power of Two] – of course we’re going to do better this time around – we built a studio and team, a world, a code base, a game engine, we established our relationships with everyone at Nintendo and Disney with the first game.
“This time around we know what the world is, we know who the characters are, we know what the gameplay is. What are paint and thinner for? We didn’t even know that when we started the first game. So I would hope that everything will be better this time around.”
