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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
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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
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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
Pac-Man Vs. Heading to DS via Namco Museum
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Namco, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, Party Games,
OK, OK, so Pac-Man Vs. may not have been Nintendo’s most stunning E3 announcement ever… in fact, it will probably live on in infamy as one of the most disappointing Nintendo surprises ever. That said, it was actually quite a fun party game if you happened to have a Gamecube, GBA, GBA-to-Gamecube link cable, and 3 other controllers.
Well, if you’ve never had a chance to play this gem, there’s good news - as part of the most recent Namco Museum cart for the DS, you’ll be able to enjoy the classic and (thanks to the DS) with nary a wire in sight. Pac-Man Vs. will be included with Namco Museum and for about $19.99, you’ll be able to enjoy the game wire-free (AND, with only one cartridge for up to 4-player gaming), coming this summer.
Click the jump for the full press release…
Click to continue reading Pac-Man Vs. Heading to DS via Namco Museum
Read More | Wired Game | Life
$600 For A Crystal-Coated DS Lite, And It’s Upside-down?!?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Accessories, Hardware, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo, Nintendo DS,
Don’t get me wrong - if I wanted to spend a chunk of change on some bling, a Swarovski-encrusted DS lite might be towards the top of my list. But for $600 bucks, I want to make sure that everyone can properly view the full glory of my gaming obsession. With this mod? - Not so much. See, when I actually play my DS lite, I usually open the screen. And when I do that, well… that means the folks who are staring at my glorious, sparkling handheld are going to be looking at this crystal mosaic of Nintendo awesomeness upside-down.
Come on guys, even Apple figured this out a few years back when they switched the logo orientation on their laptops… if you’re going to make your product an advertisement, you want to make sure that the people who are looking at it can do so without doing a handstand.
Click the jump for more images of these almost-ridiculously-awesome handhelds.
Click to continue reading $600 For A Crystal-Coated DS Lite, And It’s Upside-down?!?
“Exciting Witch Trial” DS Japanese Website Up
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Corporate News, Nintendo DS, Party Games, Politics,
Add some more fuel to the ethics in video games fire… Remember those somewhat subversive DS advertisers in your local mall? The ones that consisted of cute girls wearing shirts proclaiming that “Touching is Good”? Well, the DS has just taken the pervyness to the next level, courtesy of SNK. In a new Japan-only game Doji Doji Majo Saiban (roughly translated as Exciting Witch Trial) you’re encouraged to find out whether or well-endowed nubile girls are witches or not. We’ll let you guess how you find out… or you could click this link(somewhat NSFW) and skip some of the guesswork.
We can only guess that this game is NEVER going to make it stateside… I think several public interest groups’ collective heads would explode. So all you folks interested in the “artistic style” and “dialog” in this game are going to be stuck importing and learning Japanese for now.
Read More | DokiMajo.com
Mario And Sonic Finally Meet
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, SEGA, Sports, Wii,
Nintendo and Sega today announced that two icons of past console wars, Mario and Sonic, will be teaming up for a licensed game set at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Titled Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the new title will be available exclusively on the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS. No official pricing or launch date was set for the titles, but additional details have been revealed in an interview held between Sega and Nintendo representatives and N’Gai Croal at the Level Up blog. While the interview tends to focus a little more on the rivalry between the two companies, a few nuggets of development information can be found. First, while Sega will apparently be handling the development of the game, Shigeru Miyamoto will be overseeing the development process to some degree. Also, Sega’s Sonic Team apparently will not be involved, which may be a good thing given the spectacularly bad reviews that Sonic on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 received. This mascot match-up has been a long time coming; here’s hoping it lives up to the hype.
Nintendo and Sega’s press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Mario And Sonic Finally Meet
Read More | Level Up
NPD: Nintendo DS, Wii Lead Hardware Sales
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360,
February’s NPD data has been released, and things look good for Nintendo. 1up has the details on video game sales for last month, and the Nintendo DS sold 485,000 units, the Wii 335,000. For the rest of the next-generation hardware, Microsoft maintained its sales pace by moving around 228,000 consoles, while the Playstation 3 saw a significant drop to 127,000. The PSP didn’t do much better against the DS, moving 176,000 handhelds.
The only bright spot for Sony would be that in the non-handheld category, the PS2 took second behind the Wii, selling 295,000 units, showing that their now last-generation technology still has plenty of legs at retail. Still, having their PS3 sales drop by nearly half over last month’s sales is a significant change; if new software from Sony can’t change course, the company may have to do something drastic to turn things around.
Microsoft should be pretty happy; while they didn’t lead the pack, the company will surely trumpet their increase in year-over-year sales. That, and having the number one game at retail for the month of February, Crackdown will also help. 1up’s article also further details the rest of the software charts for the month.
Read More | 1up
NPD Numbers Release Soon, Pachter Makes Predictions
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Wii,
NPD’s official video game hardware and software sales numbers for February should be released soon. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan has his predictions ahead of the data, as reported by Gamasutra. His predictions have the Wii leading the PS3 again, with an estimated 350,000 consoles sold verses the PS3’s 200,000. The Playstation 2 should still see strong sales numbers, with marginal declines year over year. The Wii numbers seem to reflect the short month along with Nintendo not meeting customer demand; 350,000 seems like a small number to ship into the channel. Pachter also analyzes software sales, pointing to Crackdown, Guitar Hero 2, and Virtua Fighter 5 among the leaders last month.
Read More | Gamasutra
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