It will fade!

Nintendo will need better casual games to continue their console war

As most of you have no doubt read, Nintendo President Satoru Iawta is concerned that the Wii is in an unhealthy state, and that it is urgent for Nintendo to recover sales momentum. This statement, coupled with recent numbers confirming this sales drop, has left many to point the finger at Nintendo’s Blue Ocean Strategy, which disrupted the video game market by bringing a wider audience into ...

Nintendo is doing very well, thank you

That’s in billions, folks — more than all profitable public publishers combined. It won’t soothe your hardcore-loving, first-party heart, however. Via Edge

Counterpoint: Boom Blox didn’t fail nothin’

I’m reading a really good book right now, called Predictably Irrational. The first chapter is about how we humans tend to assign “anchors” to things, like price, and how we start to base future decisions off of our first impressions, even if at second glance those decisions start to look pretty stupid (I should probably dust off my copy of Strunk and White, too, after re-reading ...

Wii U.S. sales surpass Xbox 360 (VGChartz)

No surprise here. According to the semi-reliable VGChartz, Wii surpassed the Xbox 360 in the U.S. as of June 1, 2008. Nice job Nintendo.

The Wii Fit Balance Board is a console

“I have an idea for an Infendo post you should do…” — Sean Malstrom And so began this simple post on an extraordinary idea. Perhaps a bit crazy too, but then again all disruptive technologies are labeled as such before they’re accepted en masse. The idea? That the Balance Board packaged with Wii Fit isn’t an accessory at all. It’s a console, just the like ...

Commonplace criticisms of Wii, Nintendo begin to fade

Remember that damning New York Times piece about Wii, low attach rates and how the system is anathema to “hardcore gamers?” It’s been pretty much summarily attacked all week long as an example of poor reporting (believe me, I can relate), but this article from Ars Technica–and a response from VGChartz, from which the NYT compiled its data–pretty much smothered the art...

Wii version of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 shows Konami gets it

As is too often the case today, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PES 2008) was released late on the Wii after PS3 and Xbox 360 versions were already well out the door. Sounds familiar, right Harmonix? However, unlike the gimped, no frills version of Rock Band that’s headed to the Wii in June, PES 2008 was held back by Konami to give the game the extra attention it needed to fully make use of the W...

Nintendo ramps up Wii Fit marketing, shifts industry yet again

Wii Fit is big in Japan (1.5 million sold in three months) and arguably will be as big if not bigger in the US when it goes live in a month or so (more people, more people who subscribe to new “weight loss” gimmicks, Wii’s existing momentum among people outside the now incorrectly described “core” or “traditional gamer”). But, just in case, Nintendo is all...

Customers still lining up for Wii shipments

Last week, while the Infendo offices bubbled with giddy Brawl-induced enthusiasm and my colleagues took some brutal smash attacks from the regulars, I was taking a week-long break in sunny San Jose. Finding a launch-week copy in California was almost impossible, so as soon as I landed in Pittsburgh late last night, I committed to a very important goal. There would be no phone calls, no unpacking. ...

Wii console sales boosted by casual, hardcore titles in Japan

Thanks to the one-two punch of titles like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the quirky Wii Fit balance board, Nintendo has widened its lead in Japan over Sony’s PlayStation 3. According to an article from Reuters today, Nintendo’s Wii game console outsold the PlayStation 3 nearly 4-to-1 in Japan in February despite Sony’s console beginning to narrow the gap last autumn. In addition to...

Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s 500k Final Smash of Japan

Has Super Smash Bros. Brawl smashed, clobbered and otherwise surpassed sales expectations in Japan? Seems so, according to some Final Smash-level rumors pouring out of the Far East this morning: Cubed3 has a translation of a Japanese blog post referencing a purportedly leaked Famitsu sales report that says the highly-anticipated game sold 500,000 copies, or 80 percent of available stock, on its fi...

Should the original Nintendo Seal of Quality return?

Today Gamasutra asked a bunch of analysts if Nintendo should revisit the 1980s, when the Nintendo Seal of Quality actually meant something, and then apply that mindset to the Wii. Apparently, there’s a dearth of low-quality, sub par efforts on the Wii right now, and it’s officially time to completely forget the DS’s early track record and again start declaring to the hilltops tha...