Nintendo started selling Wii U consoles at a loss when the system launched late last year. Unfortunately for the company, nothing has changed. A Nintendo representative has confirmed that Wii U is still being sold at a loss. That’s one of a few reasons as to why Nintendo is likely tentative to bring about a price drop.
One more tidbit from today’s Nintendo Direct to go over. In Japan, Wii Fit U is slated for October 31. The title will be out in December overseas.
Ubisoft announced today that it will develop and publish games based on Hasbro brands. Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Battleship, and Cranium are among the IPs Ubisoft will bring to current-gen and next-gen consoles.
Hasbro senior vice president and general manager of digital gaming and corporate development Mark Blecher said:
“We look forward to collaborating with Ubisoft to offer consumers innovative new ways to experience their favorite gaming brands. Ubisoft’s leadership and expertise in the console gaming space will help support Hasbro’s strategy of bringing consumers engaging play experiences with our brands across multiple platforms.”
Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft, added:
“Hasbro makes games that we all know and love, and we’re thrilled to be able to work with them to create video game experiences based on some of their most popular brands.”
Source: Ubisoft PR
Bit Boy!! Arcade will be available towards the end of September, it has been confirmed. European pricing will be set at €7.99. A price for North America hasn’t been confirmed just yet.
Zelda: Wind Waker HD will offer a number of improvements to the original GameCube title. As revealed by Eiji Aonuma through a Miiverse message, the ship will now always be full of wind, which allows players to move in any direction without using the Wind Waker to change the wind’s direction. This is in addition to the Swift Sail for faster travel.
Wind Waker HD will also include a “nautical chart” – displayed on the GamePad – during sailing segments. Aonuma noted how it “works like a car nav”, making it “much easier to travel to the small islands and salvage points scattered around the great sea.”
You can find Aonuma’s full message below:
Hello, members of the Zelda Community! This is Eiji Aonuma of Nintendo. It’s great to be posting here again.
In the Nintendo Direct video that aired today, we announced new information on the soon to be released The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about things that we weren’t able to include in the announcement.
Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against HackYourConsole.com, it was announced today. This is yet another step in the company’s battle against piracy.
HackYourConsole sells unauthorized Nintendo titles as well as devices/services that circumvent security implemented in Wii and DS systems. The person in charge of the site additionally modifies Wii consoles to allow the play of illegal software for a certain fee.
HackYourConsole also intended to distribute 3DS Gateway cards (which act similarly to R4 devices) to more easily pave the way for illegally downloaded games. Nintendo noted in its announcement, “Game copying devices, such as the R4, severely undermine the sales of video games created by thousands of developers.”
You can find the full press release below.
