In anticipation of the U.S. launch of Wii Fit™, the new interactive fitness game for the popular Wii™ system, Nintendo of America Inc. has announced pricing details for this groundbreaking release. Available at Nintendo World store starting on May 19, Wii Fit and the innovative Wii Balance Board™ accessory will be bundled and sold together at a suggested retail price of $89.99.
Boasting a dynamic mix of more than 40 yoga, aerobics, strength training and balance activities, Wii Fit provides consumers with a fun, easy and affordable way to incorporate exercise into their daily routines. Using the included wireless Wii Balance Board accessory, every member of the household can step up and stay active, setting individual fitness goals and tracking their progress over time.
Consumers in the New York area who pre-order Wii Fit from the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Plaza will receive a special bonus item. From April 18-20, the first 1,000 consumers who place a $5 deposit for Wii Fit will receive a limited edition Wii Fit T-shirt featuring the image and reproduced autograph of legendary Nintendo video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto.
Source: Nintendo Press Room
Launch titles:
Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2
Zack & Wiki,
FIFA 08
Elebits
Namco Museum Remix
Swing Golf Pangya 2nd Shot
Guitar Hero 3 coming in May
Virtual Console Lineup for April (NES, SNES, N64 for now only):
Antarctic Adventure
Donkey Kong
Kirby’s Adventure
Super Mario Bros.
Gradius III
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
Cybernator
Contra III
Mario Kart 64
Won Bin (Korean actor) helping to promote Wii
Not only did Mario Kart Wii debut at the top of the UK tops, but the title has managed to accomplish a number of other things as well. Mario Kart has become the eight best selling game in the UK and, surprisingly, outsold Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Strikers, Mario Party 8 and Super Paper Mario in the first week of sales.
Either the advertising in the UK has been brought out in full force, or people are clamming for some racetrack kart action!
Castle of Ecclesia was previously rumored to be releasing on the Nintendo DS after the success of two other Castlevania games on the system. No details about the game are known, but it is expected that more information will be released in the coming weeks.
Nintendo DS – 22160000
Playstation 2 – 21220000
It still seems amazing that Nintendo’s handheld has done so well. It exceeded everyone’s expectations and has become a household product. These sales account for the Japanese market only, though it is a respectable achievement.
“I’m going to lump WiiWare in with PSP e-distribution, in that we’re looking for the right content first — a lot of the content we have now isn’t quite right in value or approach or interface for WiiWare.I fully expect us to be doing some WiiWare titles very shortly in the west. I won’t speak for Japan on that particular issue, but there are interesting things happening at some point there, maybe.
WiiWare has some interesting challenges in terms of interface. I shouldn’t say challenges: both challenges and benefits. The controls are different and frankly we’d like to make good use of the Wii Remote. We have a couple of concepts internally that I think would be perfect for Wii, as well as other platforms.
The other part of this is we’re trying to get a better handle on the online services that are going to be available to us on WiiWare. One of our hot buttons here across PC, PS3, and 360 is that we’re trying for feature parity across all platforms. That’s not a trivial task, especially when it comes down to user-created content.
Let’s say at some time we get into clan and guild support, or other aspects of user-created content propagation, that becomes a more interesting challenge on the Wii. Does that mean we couldn’t do WiiWare stuff that doesn’t have feature parity? Yeah, we could do that, but we have a couple of things where we might not have to cut anything. Let’s talk again next year about that.” – Christian Svensson (Vice President of strategic planning & business development)
CALABASAS, Calif. (April XX, 2008) –Emergent Game Technologies announced today that the highly-anticipated psychological thriller Sadness for Wii™ is being built on the Gamebryo game development platform. The first Wii title to be presented entirely in black-and-white is in development by Poland-based game studio Nibris. Taking place prior to World War I, Sadness is a crime noir thriller with richly detailed characters and an engaging storyline.
“Without a doubt, Gamebryo is the most powerful engine available for the Wii. After getting familiar with the engine several months ago we made the decision to choose Gamebryo. Since then, our team has been working on Sadness and we are quite impressed,” said Tomasz Wisniowski, Project Manager of Nibris. “We will have quite a few graphical effects in our game, which some believe are impossible to attain on the Wii. Gamebryo helped make it possible. We are firmly convinced we made the right choice.”
“From the early stages of pre-production with Sadness, Nibris realized that they would need development technology that allowed for an extreme amount of flexibility in the creative process, which is a cornerstone of the Gamebryo framework,” said Geoffrey Selzer, CEO of Emergent. “Sadness is designed to push the bounds of Wii technically and creatively. We are thrilled to be a part of Nibris’ ground-breaking product. We’re really looking forward to playing Sadness on Wii.”
Even though the above image is specifically related to the PS3, it technically applies to all types of video game platforms. According to this graph, games with only trailers released earn the most sales, whereas games that release demos see a noticeable drop. On the other hand, providing the public with neither a trailer or demos sees a significant drop in the number of units sold. In general, gamers appear to cram for demos, which makes this data surprising. Personally, I feel that, although trailers can provide consumers with knowledge about the game in general, demos are the better choice as they can help video game buyers to determine if the demo’s gameplay suits their interests.
Sega Master System – Fantasy Zone
Sega Genesis – Mega Turrican
Danger may not be your middle name, but you’ll find plenty of it in this week’s additions to the Wii™ Shop Channel. Two classic side-scrolling action titles invite players to blast and battle their way to a thrilling climax. In a spaceship or an assault suit, it’ll take all the grit and gusto you can muster to survive these perilous, heart-pumping adventures.
Nintendo adds new games to the Wii Shop Channel at 9 a.m. Pacific time every Monday. Wii™ owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points™ to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week’s new games are:
