Archive for April, 2008:
The Great White Wii Shortage
Still having a hard time finding a Wii? Well, get used to it. According to analysts, it will not get any easier thruout the year…with the biggest fear being a shortage at Christmas time.
“Demand still appears to exceed supply, and we believe that shortages could persist through the remainder of the year, including the key holiday period,” commented Lazard Capital Market’s Colin Sebastian.
Additionally, despite increasing production up to 1.5 million per month, some analysts question whether Nintendo’s console will maintain long term interest amongst casual gamers.
Tags: Wii
Wii is Only #3….on PC World’s Top 100 Products of 2007… That is.
Yesterday PC World unveiled their list of the 100 best products of 2007. Coming in a very strong 3rd is the Nintendo Wii. Not only is the Wii dominating the gaming industry, it is dominating the electronics industry itself.
Nintendo beat out a wide variety of products, including the 80GB Apple iPod and the RIM Blackberry 8800. Actually, the only other gaming device to even make the list was Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite.
The only two things to even beat out the Wii were the Google Apps Premier Edition and the Intel Core 2 Duo.
Tags: Wii
April’s Sales Figures are in…Nintendo Wins!
The NPD sales figures were recently released for the video game market for the month of April with the Nintendo DS and the Wii pulling away from Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Nintendo’s April sales of 471,000 units of its handheld Nintendo DS along with 360,000 units of its Wii gaming console combine for over 800,000 units sold!
Even the original Game Boy Advance outsold the Sony PlayStation 3 by selling 84,000 units. Not too shabby for a 10 year old system, aye?
Tags: Wii
Mobiles Could Out-Wii the Wii
In his GDC Mobile session, Using Touch, Sight and Gesture in Mobile Games, developer and academic Paul Coulton showed just a few of the innovative ways mobiles could be used to play new kinds of games.
RFID technology is known as an alternative to cash, and is used in shopping cards around the world. Mobile phones are increasingly being marketed which act as ‘cash’ in themselves. Users simply swipe their mobiles across RFID tags in order to make micro-payments. Coulton demonstrated how game developers could make use of this technology to create fun experiences in the real world. He showed how mobiles were being used in ‘run and chase’ games that merge real world gaming with on-screen gaming.
Potentially more important is the arrival of motion detection technology in handsets such as Nokia’s 5500. He showed simple tilt-ball games as well as more sophisticated driving games, using gesture. He added that mobiles games could be played with the handsets left in a player’s pocket. “The possibilities are endless with this technology. It’s about thinking of new ways to play games, that might be played by very different people than we are used to,” he said. “Wii has had an amazing impact but this technology in mobile phones could ultimately be even more dramatic.”
Tags: Wii
Nyko Getting a Grip on the Wii
Nyko has announced that it will release grips for the Wii Remote and Classic Controller this Spring. The Classic Controller grip will come with a Wii Remote dock and cord-management system, while the Wii Remote grip will replace the Remote’s battery cover with a rubberized grip:
LOS ANGELES — February 23, 2007 — Nyko Technologies(R), a premier peripherals manufacturer, today announced that they will release the Classic Controller Grip and Click Grip for the Wii this Spring.
Tags: Wii
Wii Sales Top Xbox 360 and PS3 for January
Nintendo Company’s Wii outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 during January as consumers bought 436,000 of the gaming consoles.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was the second-most purchased machine with sales of 294,000, followed by PlayStation 3 with 244,000, Credit Suisse analyst Heath Terry said in a report, citing NPD Group Inc. data.
Crunching the numbers:
Tags: Wii
Interactive Porn - Nintendo Enables Enhanced Adult Gaming (Wii Porn and Wiibrator)
As reported by TrendHunter.
Nintendo, the most family friendly of the gaming companies, may be opening the door to interactive porn. Specifically, the launch of the Wii remote has caused a chain reaction of innovation in the market for porn. In addition to adult sites creating Wii friendly navigation, there’s also a Wiibrator, activated by USB and bluetooth.
Ozgur Alaz reported on PSFK, “The last buzz about Wii is that it could begin a new generation of porn industry. “Wii Mote Strap” gives players the ability to give pleasure to computer women in matured themed games.”
Tags: Wii
Sadness Plot
Nibris have revealed more about the plot of their highly anticipated game Sadness, for the Wii.
You play as Maria, a young woman who has just survived a serious train crash, you are left in control of your younger brother Alexander who has been blinded from the crash and is beginning to act quite unusually. The game is rumoured to have 10 different endings and should take about 15 hours to complete.
Nibris have been working with psychologists in order to make the game as scary as possible.
Tags: Wii
Wireless Nunchuk
An unknown source has revealed that Nintendo is working on a wireless version of the nunchuk add-on for the WiiMote. Obviously there would need to be a battery compartment for the nunchuk as well as a receiver for the WiiMote.
This would remove the problem caused by the dangling wire the currently connects the two parts of the controller together and can get in the way playing games like Red Steel or Wii Sports: Boxing.
Nintendo have yet to comment about the new nunchuk.
Tags: Wii
Madden NFL 07 Review
It’s been almost twenty years since EA started making the Madden NFL series, and to be honest not much has changed other than the obvious developments in graphics. The game has always been controlled in roughly the same way with little tweaks to counter the changes in control pads from console to console, but now it seems as though it is time for EA to do something a bit different with their high selling American football series, and luckily there is also a new console that is controlled in a way like none other. In a launch line up otherwise devoid of proper sports titles does this mean that Madden NFL 07 will be the first American football game that is really worthy of being bought, after endless updates that offer very little in terms of new features or innovative gameplay.