After 20 Months, NPD Data Shows Wii Emerges as the No. 1 U.S. Home Console
Equaling its status on a worldwide basis, Wii™ has become the best-selling video game console in the United States. According to independent sales tracking information from the NPD Group, more than 666,000 Wii consoles sold for the month of June, and nearly 10.9 million Wii consoles have been sold in the United States in the 20 months following its November 2006 launch. The system is credited with breaking down the psychological barriers between gamers and non-gamers.
“Wii was created with the goal of expanding the gaming universe through its intuitive motion-sensing controller,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “As we have demonstrated this week during the E3 Media & Business Summit, Wii continues to pioneer new ways for people to interact with their video games and with one another.”
The portable Nintendo DS™ finished as the top-selling U.S. video game system in June, with more than 783,000 units sold. To date, more than 20.8 million Nintendo DS units have been sold in the United States.
The report also shows that six out of the top 10 best-selling games for June are made for Nintendo systems, including Guitar Hero® On Tour (No. 2), Wii Fit™ (No. 4), Wii Play™ (No. 5), Mario Kart® Wii (No. 6), LEGO® Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures for Wii (No. 7) and LEGO® Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures for Nintendo DS (No. 9).
Shigeru Miyamoto only recently made a remark that E3 is no longer a place to introduce new games for the core gamer. Additionally, it has been discovered that the legendary video game mastermind provided a response about making franchises such as Zelda and Mario more accessible. Unfortunately, it looks like those who have been hoping that the next Zelda would ramp up the difficulty won’t find the next Zelda game to be any tougher. If anything, the next Zelda title could be even less hardcore than we’re accustomed to. “Frankly, some of the so-called ‘franchise games’ are quite difficult for nongamers to play, so making accessible games for these players is key. With Zelda, we have to consider how to make it accessible for new gamers to pick up and play and enjoy just as hardcore gamers have. For example, we’ve got the Touch Generations series. Now, we’re not necessarily going to make our “franchise” games in that style, but we’ll take what we know and have learned — the philosophy behind those games — and incorporate it into franchise games. That’s a philosophy that’s very strong at Nintendo.”
Konami is following in the footsteps of Capcom’s Mega Man 9 with a revival of their own. Gradius Rebirth is scheduled to hit WiiWare this summer and is an original entry in the series. Other than that, no further details on the game have been provided.
At Nintendo’s Developer Roundtable conference yesterday, a question was brought up regarding the possibility of combining the newly announced Wii add-on, Wii MotionPlus, to actual Wii controlers in the future. Last night, Shigeru Miyamoto responded and explained that Nintendo is considering integrating Wii MotionPlus with the Wiimote and they are also considering just leaving the add-on as…An add-on.
1. [PS2] Persona 4 (Atlus) – 193,000
2. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) – 30,000 / 2,353,000
3. [NDS] Densetsu no Starfi Taketsu (Nintendo) – 29,000
4. [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) – 25,000 / 1,560,000
5. [NDS] Daigasso Band Brothers (Nintendo) – 23,000 / 190,000
6. [WII] Biohazard Zero (Capcom) – 21,000
7. [NDS] Derby Stallion DS (Enterbrain) – 20,000 / 206,000
8. [NDS] Hanayori Dango: Koi Seyo Onago (Konami) – 20,000
9. [NDS] Gegege no Kitarou: Youkai Daigekisen (Bandai Namco) – 16,000
10. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (Capcom) – 16,000 2,277,000
Nintendo has been holding another event to reiterate the games that they displayed at yesterday’s media briefing. However, an interesting tidbit has come from a Q&A portion of the session. When asked whether Shigeru Miyamoto still has interest in creating a new Pikmin game, he replied with a short but simple response: “We’re making Pikmin.”
Arguably one of the biggest announcements at Nintendo’s media briefing, Animal Crossing: City Folk will be heading to the Wii November 16th. Two special features which have not been asked about (if they are in the game) are DLC and DS to Wii connectivity. Fortunately, Katsuya Eguchi confirmed (and discussed) that both functions will be available in the game.
“Addressing the connectivity between the DS and the Wii, if you have Animal Crossing on DS, we’re assuming you spent lots of time with that character and might be attached to him – his name, outfits, look – so you’ll be able to load that character into the Wii version and use that same character as you did in the DS game. Another thing we can do is use the DS as a means to help people who maybe don’t have Wi-Fi. We’ve talked about Wi-Fi and how neat it is to travel from town to town and interact with friends, but if you don’t have an internet connection you can take your character data and send it to your DS, bring your DS to a friend’s house, and upload your character to play around in his town and interact in the same way you would if you had a direct connection t them in Wi-Fi. The third thing we’ve done is add the ability to download new content as they become available online – which will help expand the universe with new furniture and things like that. Now if you don’t have Wi-Fi, you can take your DS to – at this point it’s still being determined exactly how – but an out of house destination where you can download the new content, and then bring it back to your home town and upload it. That way everyone can stay connected to the Animal Crossing world. When you take your character data over via the DS, you’re not using the DS to do any of the controlling. You can use that mode to explore the other player’s town independently, but you can’t play at the same time. To do that, you’ll need to connect via Wi-Fi and run around with one, or two, or three of your friends as we showed earlier.”
