Shipping this Fall for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS is Lucas Arts’ latest installment in the Star Wars Battlefront series, Elite Squadron. Players can now engage in battle on foot and then take to the skies to continue the fight with every shot fired affecting the outcome of each battle on every front.
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Nobody wants to read “businessy” news on a Friday afternoon on CrunchGear, so let’s keep this one short: Nintendo only had an okay year last year; this year, it expects sales to be flat. It chalks that up to a decline in the software tie-in ration for new DS and Wii consoles. That is, the sheen of Wii Sports has worn off, and people are no longer compelled to buy the four game per Wii (2 per DS) that they had
Earlier today at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata made it abundantly clear that his company is doing just fine despite the global recession.
Sony has fired a peremptory strike against the Nintendo DSi, launching tomorrow. In a harshly worded letter they wrote:
If Nintendo is really committed to reaching a broader, more diverse audience of gamers beyond the “kids” market that they’ve always engaged, there isn’t much new with the DSi to support that. Significant gamer demographic groups are being ignored, and there continues to be limited opportunities for games from external publishers to do well on the DSi. Compare that with the PSP platform, where we have many blockbuster franchises from our publishing partners launching this year, representing a wide variety of genres and targeting diverse demographics. Games such as Rock Band Unplugged from MTV Games, Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft, Dissidia Final Fantasy from Square Enix, and Hannah Montana from Disney demonstrate the commitment that publishers have to the PSP. From our own first-party studios, we’re launching unique versions of LittleBigPlanet and MotorStorm, and we’re also planning a steady stream of downloadable games — both new titles and PSone classics — to add to the content that PSP owners can already purchase wirelessly through PlayStation Store.
WHOMP!
The DS is the favored accessory all over Japan, and like every other game or electronic device there, some people find themselves playing it until they nearly die. What it is about that island nation that makes people do this, I don’t care to guess, but the fact is some people need an electronic mom to flip the switch when it’s clear they’ve been playing too much. The Health Control Game Timer (Japanese) is designed to do just that, so if you’ve found yourself bent like a tree and light-headed after a marathon Advance Wars session, this may be in order.
Has Nintendo finally exhausted all the momentum out of the Wii and DS? DeutcheBank seems to think so, which earlier today downgraded its rating of the Japanese super-happy-fun company to “sell.” The logic is pretty simple: odds are this is as good as it gets for Nintendo, so investors would do well to cash out now, and collect whatever profit it is they’ve accrued over the past few years.
The frequent criticisms of the Wii are, unfortunately, very apt today. The accusations of fluff games and kids games find their targets easily here, yet Nintendo seems optimistic as ever.
With the sole exception of Punch-Out (itself the subject of other criticisms - franchise milking), the highlights of the 2009 lineup are looking mighty unexciting.
Let’s see here… Personal Trainer: Walking. O be still my heart!
Another day, another lawsuit. This time, a Texas company called Wall Wireless has accused several companies, including Nintendo, Sony and Nokia, of infringing on one of its patents pertaining to wireless communication. None of the accused companies have responded to the complaint just yet.
The next-gen Nintendo DSi is already for sale in Japan and American gamers should get access to it within the coming months. It seems that The DS Lite Onyx might be the first of the current generation to get that axe. This comes from an internal GameStop newsletter and begs the question if other models will soon join this model.
Folks may have been renting Xbox 360 titles like mad last year, but that didn’t do much for console sales. The NPD group announced sales figures for the Wii and DS earlier today and the numbers are astonishing.
Nintendo’s printing factory continues unabated! More than 500,000 DSi’s were sold last month in Japan, its first month of availability (the DSi won’t come out in North America or Europe till the first half of 2009), which suggests that gamers there are still enamored with the device.
The exact number of DSi’s sold was 535,379, from November 1 to November 30.
Add in the number of DS’s sold, including the DS Lite and original DS—note that the DSi doesn’t play GameBoy Advance games—and the total climbs to 24.2 million units.
While we’re on the subject of Nintendo DS, any of you play Chrono Trigger yet? It’s good, duh, but good enough to buy it again?
A DS developer, who shall remain nameless, has encountered an issue that seems odd to them. A game they are developing on works flawlessly on their DS test hardware, but crashes regularly on DSi hardware. B-but, Nintendo said “All DS titles are compatible with DSi, with the exception of those that require use of the GBA slot”! Yes, and they’re sticking to that. Unfortunately, that means no support for the poor buggers (or debuggers, I suppose) who are trying to suss out the problem with the new gear.
If a problem popped up so quickly on the radar, it doesn’t seem so unlikely that the DSi may have trouble with extant cartridges; I’m sure they designed it for compatibility, but who knows what effect the minor architecture changes and firmware tweaks have had. I’m skeptical of the DSi’s benefits anyhow, and Lites are about to drop to ridiculous prices, so I’d say buy one of those instead. Or better yet, a Super Nintendo.
[via Kotaku]
Square Enix’s upcoming Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time employs quite a little gimmick: simultaneous Wii and DS play. That is, while you’re playing the DS version, you can pal up with your friend who’s playing the Wii version. This strange mestiçagem works by essentially “porting” the DS version to the Wii, which then translates the DS top-bottom alignment into a Wii left-right alignment.
How’s that for DS/Wii connectivity? The next thing we know, cats and dogs will be living together in perfect harmony.
More and more info is trickling out relating to Nintendo of America’s plans for the just-announced DSi. One of the bigger nuggets of information to come out of Wired’s interview with NOA’s Cammie Dunway (you may remember her from the company’s so-so E3 press conference) is that, as it stands right now, the DS Lite and DSi will “coexist.” That is to say NOA doesn’t have any plans to kill the DS Lite as soon as the DSi is released.
She says:
Right now we’re still working through what the strategy’s going to be here. But we think that there’s huge untapped potential for the DS Lite…. So I think there’s opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time.
Right, well how many people actualy thought Nintendo was going to kill the DS Lite right away? The same thing happened toward the end of the GameBoy Advance’s life: the DS shows up, both “coexist” for a little while, and before you know it your SP is collecting dust.
September was a monumental month for Microsoft in Japan. The Xbox 360 console sold 53,547 units to Sony’s 33,071 units sold. But Nintendo’s Wii sales practically doubled that of the 360 with 109,548 units sold. The boost in sales for the 360 had a lot to do with the recent price cut and the launch of Square Enix’s Infinite Undiscovery, says Reuters.
The now outdated DS sold 234,477 units to PSP’s 109,274 units, but that has a lot to do with the fact that the new PSP-3000 is slated for an October 16th launch in Japan. But then again Nintendo’s new DSi is coming out November 1st, so I’m sure sales of the current gen DS will drop this month.
I’ve ganked ‘em straight from the source just so you don’t have to guess which button it is that takes you to the good stuff. The new DS stuff looks fun, of course, but the Wii lineup is looking hot as hell. Punch-Out looks filthy, space exploration game looks awesome, whatever Tales game that is looks phantastic, and I’m sorry but I may have to buy a Wii solely on the strength of Harvest Moon. I love me some Harvest Moon. Click below for the Wiideo.
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Another report from a Japanese source shows, well, a pair of screens. What matters is that these screens seem to be about DS-sized, and after this weekend’s “new DS” rumor and Nintendo’s non-refutation, there’s a good chance that these may actually be the real thing. Notice that the bottom screen has a different type of ribbon coming out of it. So, to summarize, these screens could be
We’ll keep you updated. [via GoNintendo]
I don’t know, Scoob. Seems kind of fishy to me! But after seeing Wii Music, I’m beginning to think that all this time at the top has left Nintendo a little, shall we say, oxygen-deprived. The rumor comes from a scanned Nikkei newspaper article over at the NeoGAF forums. If anyone reads Japanese, feel free to confirm what it says by checking the images after the link, but click through for the highlights and what we think of it.
Update: Our man in Japan says the camera, music, price and timing are almost certainly true, though the SD and screen size may not be. Ridiculous!
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