Atari is designing a new game based on the TV show Project Runway for the Nintendo Wii. The game is expected to be released next year. Players will design fashion, outfit models, and use the Wii Balance Board controller for doing the catwalk. Project Runway is currently in its 6th season on the Lifetime channel. The show is hosted by Heidi Klum (pictured below).
Over the weekend, Nintendo launched Wii Fit Plus. This video game will most likely become one of the best selling games during the holiday season as its predecessor was at the top of the gaming charts for a long period. The game will be available for purchase in 2 ways:
1. Game + balance board
2. Just the game for users who bought the original game plus the board
The Wii Fit Plus has 20 new games which includes Segway and skateboarding. Workouts can be made from between 5 minutes and 1 hour. The game+balance board combo sells for $99.99 and the game itself costs $19.99. The Wii Fit Plus can also read data from the original game on the Wii. The original Wii Fit sold well over 8 million copies since the game launched in May 2008.
Nintendo is getting ready to launch the DSi in 3 new colors in Europe. The new colors are red, blue, and turquoise. In the U.S., Nintendo launched the DSi in pink and white earlier this month. Facebook photo uploading will come preloaded with the new colored devices. The devices will also have the Flipnote Studio application.
Lakeland, Florida, a city with one of the coolest driveways, has something to be embarrassed about today. During a drug raid, the Lakeland police decided to play the Wii for 9 hours at the dealer’s house.
A video of the cops playing the Nintendo Wii was taken by a surveillance camera that was not noticed during the raid. The policemen were addicted to the Bowling game on Wii Sports. About 16 policemen were on the scene when the incident took place.
After playing that long, the police actually started getting to be really good. Work hard, play hard.
Earlier this week it was rumored that Nintendo was slashing the price of the Wii. It turns out the rumor is true. Over the last 3 years the console was selling for $249.99 and now it will be selling for $199.99. The $199.99 price includes a controller, Wii Sports game, a Nunchuk controller, and wireless sensor bar.
“Since the launch of Wii our goal has been to expand the gaming population and get more consumers into this industry that we love. While we have sold more Wiis (21 million-plus in the U.S.; and more than 50 million worldwide) than any home console after 34 months — and over 100 million DS (systems) — we think there is still significant opportunity to get more consumers into gaming. Just here in the U.S. we think that opportunity is minimally 50 million consumers in U.S., by continuing to offer more and more value,” stated Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime in an interview with USATODAY.com.
For those of you that spent $250 recently on the console, some retailers are willing to accommodate the difference.
In Japan, Nintendo has released a black Wii but Americans were not given the same option. However Nintendo is willing to meet us halfway by allowing us to have white Wiis have black Wiimotes. The black Wiimotes and nunchucks will be available this holiday season. Nintendo will also have a pink and white DSi added to the line-up on September 13.
Nintendo is seeing tremendous success with the sales of Wii Sports Resort. The game has sold about 1 million copies in the first month of release. Wii Sports Resort is the sequel to the game that comes with the Nintendo Wii. The game started selling on July 26th.
The game comes with a Wii MotionPlus controller and has games such as Frisbee, kayaking, ping-pong, waverunning, sword-fighting, etc. Nintendo has also sold about 2 million Wii MotionPlus controllers which comes bundled with EA’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf game.
Considering that the game is selling for about $46 in retail stores and on Amazon.com, that gives Nintendo close to about $46 million in revenue just for one game in a month minus all of the overhead costs.
Nintendo has patented an inflatable soft pillow controller. The controller is supposed to let gamers ride on horses and other potential sitting games. When riding on a horse in a game, the controllers would be held like nunchucks that would simulate the act of holding reins.
Facebook photo upload support has been added to the Nintendo DSi. The feature was actually added on August 3rd. The feature was added after a system update. Facebook integration was added in the camera/photo gallery module. Your Facebook account can be set up by selecting the icon next to the Star, Shamrock, and Heart.
Tapping the Facebook icon causes a pop-up to appear. There is a Facebook login page that appears in the pop-up. Once you enter the information the first time, it remains auto-filled after that. After selecting a photo, you confirm that you want to upload it. After uploading the photo, it appears in an album called “Photos from Nintendo DSi” on Facebook.
Amit Chowdhry | July 30, 2009 | 264 views | Comments Categorized under Nintendo
At the end of this quarter, Nintendo reported a sales drop of 40% and a fall in profit of 60.6%. The main reason for the sales and profits drop is because of less demand of the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo also blamed currency fluctuations and because less blockbuster games being released around this time.
Net profit for the quarter dropped to ¥42.3 billion ($445.4 million) from ¥107.3 billion in the same period a year earlier. About 2.23 million Wii consoles were sold in the quarter. In the same period a year earlier, Nintendo sold 5.17 million consoles.
“There were fewer blockbuster software titles that briskly drove hardware sales this quarter versus the same period a year ago when titles like ‘Mario Kart Wii’ and ‘Wii Fit’ were launched in overseas markets,” stated Nintendo. The company is forecasting sales of 26 million Wii consoles in the fiscal year through March 2010.
Shared Memory Graphics LLC is a small firm based in Newport Beach, California that designs microprocessors. The company has two patents that describe how microprocessors have the ability to fine-tune the graphics by balancing a flow of data from different sources. Now they are using these patents to file an infringement lawsuit against Apple over the iPod and iPod Touch, Nintendo over the Wii controller, and Sony for their PSP and PS2 consoles.
The patents originally belonged to Alliance Semiconductor Corporation. Alliance started in 1985 and had 144 employees with millions in revenue at one point, but eventually became a holding company in 2005. Alliance ended up selling the patents to Shared Memory. The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court in Arkansas and Shared Memory is demanding monteray damages.
Electronic Arts Sports is now shipping Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 with the Wii MotionPlus. That makes Nintendo the first to ship an advanced motion controller over the other two big console companies. Nintendo comes out as being first to market in the War Of The Motion Controllers as expected. In terms of who will sell the most motion controllers, we won’t find out until Sony’s PlayStation Motion and Microsoft’s Project Natal is released and sits on shelves for a while.
The Tiger Woods game and the Wii MotionPlus is selling as a bundle for $59. The game alone costs $49.99 and the MotionPlus alone costs $19.99.
The Nintendo DSi has a built in digital camera, but the resolution isn’t that great and there isn’t much of a zoom either. The digital camera is 0.3 megapixels. Nyko invented a solution to enhance the zoom camera on the DSi. Nyko’s Zoom Case is a plastic cover that slips over the DSi. An 8X-optical-zoom lens is screwed to the camera. After attaching the external lens, the camera can take 640×460 pixel images. Although there is no final price announced for the Zoom Case, it is rumored that the cost is between $20 and $40.
ColorWare is a company that takes game consoles and dazzles them up with wild custom paint jobs. Above is one of ColorWare’s latest creations: a DSi painted in all sorts strange color combinations. The price of the above model is $374. Another option is to send in your own DSi and have it colored your own favorite colors for $174.
If you’re bored of the generic colors that the Wii and the DSi comes in, Nintendo is getting ready to provide additional options. More specifically, there will be a black-colored Wii and a red-colored DSi shipping from Japan soon.
The black Wii is code-named KURO Wii and it has been a rumor for about two years. The black Wii will cost about ¥25,000 ($255) and the red DSi will cost ¥18,900 ($192). The two new colors for the consoles will be available in Japan on August 1st.
The black Wii will have similar colored Wiimotes, nunchucks, and classic controllers. Availability in the U.S. is still yet to be determined.
