WiiNintendo

New Super Mario Bros. to have sequel! (RUMOR)
PC Magazine Article

PS3 and Wii Size Comparisons

Project Hacker Commercial

The Science Channel on Brain Age

Finally, the front flap of the Wii is exposed, and there is a SYNC button!

DS Lite Rumble Packaging

(all Nintendo Trademarks)

WiiCan
- WiiClub
- WiiCommunication
- WiiDiary
- WiiHappy
- WiiHealth
- WiiHome
- WiiKids
- WiiMap
- WiiOnline
- WiiSenior
- WiiWords
- WWWii

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest DS, Trailer

+ View More

I was never a particular fan of DS Demos. They never really fully showed of the DS Stylus controls potential.

I want to start by saying I don’t think this would happen. I could totally frame this as a “I heard from a dude who was sitting in between a Nintendo employee and a snake on a motherfckin’ plane” … but I wouldn’t do that to you people. I respect you, you know, as a woman.

That said, I don’t see why Nintendo couldn’t capitalize on Opera DS to distribute downloadable demos. Technology wise, it seems like a slam dunk. The reason, I imagine, Opera DS won’t support flash is that nobody wanted to write the third party application to support it. The way plugins work with a browser is pretty simple, albeit a little clumsy. If the browser tries to fetch a reference to a media type it doesn’t understand, it looks for a plugin to handle it instead.

While it’s understandable that Adobe didn’t want to put in the effort for a DS Flash player, it’s less understandable why Nintendo couldn’t write a DS demo player. Click a link, Opera DS denotes the filetype as being a demo and kicks it off to the same code which Nintendo uses to download a demo from a wifi station. Now when you’re sitting at home reading about a new game, you just browse to Nintendo’s site and give it a try. Like downloading a demo from Xbox Live … anywhere you have internet access.
Source 

Source

About Zelda Twilight Princess
They don’t know if it will be in two SKU in Europe, or just one with both the GCN and the Wii versions. They’re studying right now the cost for the final user and the viability of these options in our continent to make the right choice.About Wii launch
Nothing really new, but says that it may be in the street just ten days after Japan (v.g., last week of October in Japan and first half of November in Europe). Anyway, it will be in the stores before the Christmas campaign (commonly, it starts the 15th November in Spain), and we will not suffer the same delay we had with N64 and GCN.About Virtual Console and online pay
They don’t really think europeans pay so easily online with their credit cards, so they will try to sell in stores pre-pay cards to make it easier for everyone as an alternative. Games in VC may be between 5-10 euros (just direct change from 5-10 US dollars).

Band Bros (Daigasoo! Band Brothers, Jam with the Band): an edition for every country
Nintendo Spain submitted to Japan this idea: Sell an special edition of Band Brothers in every european country. For example, in Spain there would be Estopa (popular music group) songs. They are really interested in that choice for the game because it can give them really high revenues, but they haven’t had any response from NCL yet.

DS Cooking and English Training in Europe, maybe this year
DS Cooking (cook action/simulation game from Nintendo, similar to Cooking Mama) will be distributed in Europe. Also English Training (also in UK? Anyway, I will buy it to improve my English… I’m sorry for my mistakes!). Both can arrive to Europe this year.

Zelda Phantom Hourglass: Maybe this year too
They’re not sure, but they would love to make a DS/Wii campaign with Zelda as main theme, but they’re afraid the game will finally arrive to Europe in 2007.

Bad GCN numbers
Less than 300.000 GCN units sold in Spain in all its lifespan (maybe 275k-280k, they don’t have exact numbers). They think they failed with this console, and feel sad about it.

About Baten Kaitos 2
Nothing new yet, they’re still thinking if they will be sell it in Europe (I hope so!)

Do not expect nothing too big about Electroplankton
They don’t think that this game (or no-game, whatever) can sell a lot, but they think that what is really important is that gamers can choose if they want it or not, and just go into a store and buy it. It’s important for them to give the biggest catalogue possible.

Source

Sega quote: Not a lot of third-party developers are even producing Nintendo Wii games. Uh oh…

On the Nintendo Wii platform, we’ve got another Sonic game, completely different and built just for the controller and the new system. That’ll be shipping probably in March as well. And Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz will be a launch title also on the Nintendo Wii. So we’re bringing our frontline brands as well as some new IP. You’ll be seeing some new IP that kind of rounds out our efforts on the two new platforms. The 360 we continue to support; we’re shipping in June Chromehounds, which is a massively Xbox Live oriented game, a mech game. And we have lots of plans to be players on all three [consoles]. We’re not necessarily picking one or the other; we have the capacity and scale to support all three.

Read More 

+ View More

Japanese now have gotten more strict since the Grand Theft Auto incident. 

The Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA), the Japanese equivalent of the ESRB, has released the results of a survey regarding the effectiveness of its recently revised rating system for video games that was put into place on May 31.

The report, as translated by popular consumer website GameSpot, surveyed 681 retailers, and found that 95.1 percent do verify age for Z-rated game purchases, which include games are not suitable for players under the age of 18 and are Japanese government-regulated.

In addition, the report indicated that 85.3 percent of those retailers surveyed noted that they also separate Z-rated games from other games by placing them in a separate part of the store. The report also indicated that 91.2 percent of the survey participants said that they “understood” or “more or less understood” the rating system.

Although historically there has been little controversy in Japan regarding in-game violence and other disputed content, concerns have been raised in the current generation, mostly spurred by controversy centering around Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series.

The first two PlayStation 2 games in the series were released by Capcom in Japan and became minor hits, selling especially well for Western-developed material, although the sale of Grand Theft Auto III was banned from being sold to anyone under the age of eighteen in two separate Japanese prefectures.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9912

Stock has been lower lately on Nintendo.

According to Japanese reports, shareholders have voted against a Nintendo board recommendation for the first time in the company’s history - although over plans to alter how dividends are paid, rather than for any market-related reasons.

The board of the Kyoto-headquartered game giant had suggested a proposal that would have allowed its members to decide the timing and size of dividends without the approval of shareholders, as well as changes to the company’s corporate charter. Investors were apparently concerned that the changes could lead to lower dividends, despite the fact that Nintendo’s dividend yield is 2 percent, compared to a Tokyo Stock Exchange average of 1.15 percent.

“The proposed change was intended to give Nintendo’s board a bit more autonomy, so that dividends can be paid out quickly without waiting for approval at a general shareholders’ meeting,” a Nintendo spokesman is quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency. “But apparently we could not win enough understanding from shareholders.”

As a result, shares in Nintendo rose only 0.5 percent to ¥19,070 yesterday afternoon, below the Nikkei average of a 1.58 percent gain.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9903

Anybody from Star Trek just plain rules, so I’ll have to bow down to the graces of Captain James T. Kirk! 

- Star Trek icon William Shatner will host the inaugural Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts (CAEAA 2006), which will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 14, 2006. The event will honor Canadian achievements in three separate areas of the Electronic and Animated Arts industry: talent development (New Media and Animation Art Schools), animation, and video game development. “We wanted Mr. Shatner as our host from the beginning and I cannot tell you how excited we are to learn today that he has accepted the role,� said Holly Carinci, CAEAA producer.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9915

Of course, this is based on PC gamers, not console gamers, but it is surprising, however. 

Casual gamers spend more time playing than previously thought, according to a new study by the Macrovision Network.

According to the worldwide survey, over one-third of those who would be considered “casual� gamers have nine or more two-hour gaming sessions each week. This contradicts previous thoughts that casual gamers generally spend fifteen minutes at a time gaming.

Over 50 percent of the gamers studied fell between the ages of 35-60, and 71 percent of all respondents were female. Puzzle games were the most popular, followed by card games, with strategy and action behind.

70 percent of those surveyed purchased a game after playing it for free first on the Internet, and 67 percent of the respondents read game reviews. 46 percent felt that their purchases were influenced by reviews.

http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1151607219

Oh geez, maybe we will see the 54K Mario Canned Food Statue in a few months!

Why build an oversized statue of the world’s most famous video game star? Why not?

Nintendo of Canada and Canstruction, a charity organization that uses design and architecture to fight hunger, are working together to build a 10-foot-tall statue of Mario made entirely of canned food. The statue will be displayed in Dundas Square in Toronto, using approximately 4000 cans of what Mario himself would probably choose for his construction– tomato sauce.

After an appropriate period of admiration, Mario will be disassembled and the tomato sauce will be donated to charity.

http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1151636848