Nintendo Wii Finder

Sales of Nintendo Wii increased 28 percent in Japan. The Wii was ranked at 3rd position in the video game industry. Samba De Amigo from the SEGA Dreamcast is coming back soon by Sept 23 on the Wii. It will be the first downloadable game via the Wiis. Sega of America Inc. said that it will release House of the Dead: Overkill on Wii in 2009. Amazon is taking preorders for the game. A Wii finder found out that sale of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith increased this week at Amazon. com. Nintendo also released a new Wii Ware and titles this week which makes huge sale for the company and good profit for sites like Amazon and eBay. Sale of Nintendo DS is more than Sony’s PSP. The Nintendo DS was ranked 1st in the video game industry.

If Nintendo has such plans coming up then how can competitors stay quiet? Sony this week said that it will retail a new 160 GB PS3 bundle in Nov. this will have games for $499. A Wii finder reported that Sony’s Blu-ray dominated on PS3 and was ranked at top 10 in Amazon for $399.  This 80 GB SKU showed good sales as soon as it was launched on Amazon.

A Wii finder says that sales of Xbox 360 have declined this week. All over it was ranked No. 6 in the video game industry. All the sales were due to Amazon.com. However people are preordering for Microsoft’s Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts weekly on Amazon.  The Tales of Vesperia was among the top 15 sales at Amazon in Japan. The title was ranked No. 10.

Nintendo has got a huge international market. It’s quite popular in North America, Europe and Japan. However, Nintendo is not going to stop with just this. It plans to expand its game popularity to Latin America. Nintendo is already popular in the South America region.

According to President Reggie Fils-Aime, the kind of sales they saw in that region was actually and surprisingly more than what they experienced in the United States. With a market potential that could be about $2 billion, Nintendo is hot on catching big profits here. The marketing campaign to get Latin America hooked onto to Nintendo software, begins during the Christmas season. The campaign is targeted at non-core gamers, so that they can be pulled into playing out their software.

Here the big news!!! Those who created the ‘de Blob’ are now giving out something that is even more awesome and interesting, entitled ‘Swords & Soldiers’. ‘Swords & Soldiers’ is the ultimate combat game to be played in real time. It requires you to strategize you game actions in real time. The game will hit WiiWare during the latter part of this year.

The game has three different factions. Each of these factions has one common goal, which is ‘Trying to win the powers of the gods’. You can play with it in single player campaign mode or in splitscreen multiplayer mode. The game includes many other game modes, giving you a choice of variety play.

 The CESA Development Conference is scheduled to take place next month in Tokyo. The conference will feature presentations from Shigeru Miyamoto and Keji Inafune. Both of them will emphasize and focus on their area of interest.
 
Miyamoto will discuss about the development process of Wii music, the philosophy related to game production, and universal design. Capcom producer Keji Inafune topics are still to be finalized, but he is expected to talk about producing the boldly retro-minded Mega Man 9. We all are expecting some new developments in the market after this much-awaited conference.

On 4th August, Hudson announced the release of a Virtual Console game was listed on its site’s Ys Book I & II entry. Now, Hudson is all set to present two more Virtual Console games in near future.
 
The two games are titled Star Paroider and Break In that are to be presented by Nintendo. Break In is a pool game with new added features. Whereas Star Paroider is expected to be a goofy game. The release dates for both these game is scheduled to be 11th August. Hudson has always released its games as per the date mentioned, so be ready to play these games from Monday onwards!

Hey Guys! Did you know that this Friday light gun game Wild West Guns did its worldwide debut in the European Wii Shop? The game consists of Zapper compatibility and that too with six levels and four-player support system. You can also experience many mildly offensive stereotypes.

Another game, Defend Your Castle has also finally arrived in the stores and seems a worth to have a look. A better idea of these two new arrivals can be made through the Wii points awarded to them. Wild West Guns scored 1000 Wii points whereas; Defend Your Castle got 500 Wii points.  

In a recent interview, Microsoft representative John Schappert termed the new Avatars system for the Xbox 360 a part of the online strategy of Microsoft. Previously, it was rumored that these Avatars are just a rip off of Nintendo’s Miis. Schappert further claims that Miis didn’t influence Avatars at all.

The Microsoft representative stated to MCV that they have full regards and respect for the work done by Nintendo and Miyamoto-san and also enjoy playing by them. Although, the statement made by Schappert was almost predictable since it would have been a rare incident, if he had accepted that Miis really influenced Avatars.

Are you waiting for the third part of the famous video game series Pikmin? Your wait ends here as it is rumored that a UK based retailer, Play.com, has announced that it will be launching Pikmin 3 on March 27th 2009. So it’s only less than an year when the game will be at your doorsteps! Pikmin video game series have previously been popular for its two video games titled, Pikmin and Pikmin 2. Initially, the game series was developed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto. The announcement about Pikmin 3 was made at the 2008 E3 Tradeshow in July.

If the rumored date of Pikmin 3 release is to be believed, we may ponder over certain thoughts like isn’t 27th March 2009 a very unlikely date to present any new product in the market? Moreover, the day of the release i.e., Friday coincides with the day when games are usually launched in Euroland. The one certain and positive aspect of this specific date is to give assurance to the audiences that Pikmin 3 will be surely launched on the same date. As of today, there are hardly any developers that may write down a specific date of game launch with so much surety.

E3 has been considerably labeled as a disappointment and a disaster. It also has been a failure in bringing any major development. The famous Wedbush Morgan analyst and man Michael Pachter, have recently stated that the time has arrived to look forward towards the Dodo, the Quagga, and decent sonic games rather than limiting yourself to E3. While referring to the investors, he further adds in his note titled, ‘Entertainment Software: E3 2008 Review: The Bad, The Great, and The Boring’ that E3 have brought with itself an era that will only be remembered for its ill fate and extinction.

Michael believes that the time has come for E3 to come to an end and take on new things to regain success in future. Like Pachter, many other major figures in the industry have criticized E3 before and have unanimously raised their voice against it. According to Pachter, E3 should be pulled back by early June in order to maintain the consistent standards of the industry. Though, on Nintendo’s part, Pachter considered Big N’s presentation to be suitable. He also thought out about the complaints that other core gamers made against the event.  

E3 complaints have now become a never ending story. It was once again a day of complaints for E3. Alain Corre of Ubisoft complained of size and location of E3, which according to him should be bigger. The Bigger, the better, he says. In the party CEO of Electronics Arts, John Riccitiello commented on E3 stating very clearly that he hates E3. A much more was expected from E3 which it failed to prove. This year is going to be a bad one for E3 it seems!

Adding fuel to the fire, Ubisoft’s Laurent Detoc too commented on the performance of E3. According to him, E3 is terrible this year, before the E3 had the world with it. Now E3 is like a pipe-fitter showing in the basement. The poor performance which pulled just 5000 media representatives this year against 60000 last year, has arouse a debate whether E3 should be a world show or a media event. Now with EA and Ubisoft they have tried to put resources on a better display to pull a massive crowd on the floor. Now to see the results we have to wait and watch.