In a recent interview with Aol owned Gamedaily, Nintendo of America PR Perrin Kaplan bluntly announced that the company is no longer producing Gamecube units nor will they be producing any more games for the system either.  This comes as no surprise for many reasons.  The Gamecube, although a very good system, fell short of being a very successful system due to a lack of a large number of good third party games. The system did, however have a number of good games. 

What truly makes this common sense is the large success of their new system, Wii, and its complete backwards compatibility with Gamecube software, this makes it an obvious choice knowing that you can be able to play games from the Virtual Console, new Wii games as well as Gamecube games.  A new chapter has begun with Nintendo which means that you must close your previous chapters. 

Long Live Nintendo.

Nintendo Continues Its wrath with the Wii.  Early NPD data shows that the Wii outsold both the PS3 and the Xbox360 in the month of January even though both the PS3 and the Xbox360 were available on shelves and consumers could barely find Wiis with them selling within minutes of stores stocking them.  The question to us now is: “How much further of a win could Nintendo have actually had if the system were even more readily available?” Truly impressive Nintendo, truly impressive.  The numbers stood as follows:

1. Wii – 436,000 units
2. 360 – 294,000 units
3. PS3 – 244,000 units

Mike Griffith, Activision Ceo, recently told press in a financial results conference call, that Activision would be aggressively targeting Nintendo’s platforms in lue of Nintendo’s expected growth. Stating that in fiscal year 2008 they will double their offerings for both the Wii and the DS, including Spider Man, Shrek, Transformers and Guitar Hero. We shall be seeing yet another extremely popular title expand the offerings of the Wii .

Reggie wasn’t lying when he said that he and the team were working hard to bring more Mature games to the Wii , in turn fully diversifying the system..

We already reported to you that Driver was coming to the Wii,

now Rockstar games has announced that a sequel to Manhunt will be appearing on the Wii… This is a good dive for the Wii and , with good sales, could very well lead to an appearance of Grand Theft Auto on the Wii, the line up for 2007 on the Wii is just amazing and yet we continue to receive notice of more and more great games to appear…

NINTENDO AND SOUTHWEST AIRLINES SURPRISE FLIERS WITH FREE GAME SYSTEMS

Select Rapid Rewards Members Get In-Flight Nintendo Entertainment
REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 5, 2007 – Nintendo and Southwest Airlines are giving some of the airline’s most-traveled flyers a surprise gift, and we’re not talking peanuts here. Fifty of Southwest’s Rapid Rewards Members have been mailed a Nintendo DS™ Lite and a copy of Brain Age™: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, marking the first time that Southwest has partnered with an outside company to provide a special treat for Rapid Rewards Members. The gifts are being offered both as a thank you and to help these travelers pass the time during their next trip, which no doubt is coming up soon.

“We are helping our Members welcome the New Year with low fares, frequent flights and, of course, exercise…exercise for their mind while they travel,” said Blair McGrain, Director of Marketing Planning and Customer Loyalty. “We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo to give our Members some FUN in the New Year.”

Selected by Southwest Airlines for their longtime loyalty and accumulated miles, the Rapid Rewards Members who received the Nintendo DS and copy of Brain Age have collectively flown more than 79.2 million miles, spent more than 132,854 hours in the air and represent more than 600 years of membership.

Nintendo DS is the world’s best-selling hand-held video game system, and has sold nearly 7 million in the United States alone. DS has games for kids and adults alike. Brain Age keeps users’ minds active with sudoku puzzles, memory quizzes and fun tests in reading and math. Rapid Rewards Members can write their answers directly onto the touch screen of Nintendo DS and stimulate their brains during their flights (as long as they remember to turn off their portable electronic devices before takeoffs and landings).

“Nintendo DS has long been a favorite of travelers,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “Providing some of Southwest’s premiere travelers with these gifts helps us reach out to new audiences and shows that we make fun games for everyone.”

For eight straight years in a row, Southwest Airlines was honored with first place for Best Award Redemption at InsideFlyer magazine’s 18th annual Freddie Awards. The airline has won this honor each of the eight years that the magazine has awarded it. Along with the Best Award Redemption, Southwest’s other first-place honors include Program of the Year, Best Web site and Best Bonus Promotion. Southwest Airlines serves 63 cities in 32 states with more than 3,200 flights per day.

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™, Nintendo DS™, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube™ systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.2 billion video games and more than 387 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario™, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda™ and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.

WII-KLY UPDATE: THREE NEW CLASSIC GAMES ANNOUNCED FOR WII SHOP CHANNEL

Feb. 5, 2007

Today Nintendo adds three new classic games to the popular Wii™ video game system’s Wii Shop Channel. The games go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Nintendo adds new games to the channel 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:

Super Mario World™ (Super NES®, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points): During a vacation in Dinosaur Land, Princess Toadstool gets kidnapped and a spell is cast on the inhabitants of the island. When they stumble upon Yoshi™, a young dinosaur, Mario™ and Luigi learn that Bowser is responsible for the terrible misdeeds. Now, all Yoshis are trapped in magical eggs that Bowser has hidden throughout seven castles. Many hidden paths aid Mario in making his way to Bowser’s castle, completing 74 areas and finding all 96 exits. Discover items, including a feather that gives Mario a cape that allows him to fly, or a flower that shoots fireballs in layers upon layers of 2-D scrolling landscapes. Players can even ride Yoshi and swallow their enemies.

VIGILANTE™ (TurboGrafx-16, 1 player, 600 Wii Points): Brave the streets of New York City in this side-scrolling beat-’em-up game. Thugs kidnap the beloved Madonna, and it’s up to players to become vigilantes. Players fight their way into enemy territory to get her back. Enemies attack with weapons like iron pipes, chains, guns and motorcycles. To fight back, players can punch, kick or use the “nunchaku” item that appears in the stage. Players must use each of the attacks effectively to defeat their enemies. To clear a stage, defeat the boss that waits at the end. Players fight their way through exciting stages that include the City Streets, Junkyard, Brooklyn Bridge and the Backstreets.

Gain Ground™ (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points): It’s the 31st century, and science and technology have progressed to the point that the human race is approaching perfection: no war, no poverty and no conflict. With nothing to worry about, the human race seems destined to live forever in harmony. But what if Earth came under attack? By this point in time, people did not know how to cope with problems or conflicts, and had completely lost their survival instincts. In response to this, the United Earth Government created the Gain Ground system, a war simulator that would help humans rediscover their lost instincts. After several terrible malfunctions, the creators became prisoners in their own creation. Now it’s up to players and two courageous comrades to go into the Gain Ground system, rescue their fellow humans and destroy the system. Players battle through different periods in history as they revive their survival instincts, while trying to live.

in a recent quarterly earnings conference , THQ announced that they have 11 games in the pipeline for the Wii leading into fiscal quarter 2008.. leading off with a WWE wrestling title, a sequel to Cars, and numerous others from their Nickoloden, Pixar and WWE licenses.. THQ told the press that it believes that the WII is the videogame demographic…more to come soon….

    What makes it even better is that with the smart business move to focus on the gameplay in their system the Wii has become a fan favorite.  Fan favorites bring in more publishers.  It is much easier to make your money back on a system that has a large install base than on one that doesn’t, which is why the PS2 was so popular and kept receiving exclusives.  Further more, Nintendo has created a system that costs publishers nearly half of the cost of the other systems to create stellar games..  So you have lots of already finished stellar first party games, plus new stellar games, then the quickly growing third-party support and you have a winner that fans continue to buy , which in turn sells more systems.. Then not to mention the virtual console, which in itself will sell games as more and more of the Big N’s and Sega’s classic masterpieces hit the service.  A drought is not very likely for the Nintendo Wii. 

Nintendo’s Wii continues to prove its popularity.  And what happens to a system that proves its popularity? It receives more support from publishers.  As more and more publishers bring more and more games to the Wii the plot thickens.  In a recent press release, Konami announced a new chapter in the Dance Dance Revolution series that will cater to the Wii called Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party.  This game will go even further by having a “workout” mode.. and will utilize the original dance setup as well as both Wii Remote and Nunchuk.. a workout indeed will insue… more to come in the coming days..