In your face, parents all over the world. After pleading with your children to quit rotting their brains with non-stop video game playing, your suggestion of playing a board game instead has backfired on you with the Nintendo edition of Monopoly.

Longtime Monopoly fans will find the traditional streets replaced with Nintendo characters. Mario – easily Nintendo’s most recognizable face – can be found in the place of Boardwalk, the standard game’s most expensive property.

Other features include Nintendo-themed player tokens, a special 60-minute speed play mode, power-ups and invincibility instead of houses and hotels, and a slew of other enhancements and changes that ought to help bridge the gap between Nintendo fans and Monopoly nuts.

Available for $34.99 at ThinkGeek.

Nintendo moved 103,524 DSi LLs during the first 48 hours it was available. Compare that to the 28,000 PSPgos that Japanese gamers bought during the first 24 hours and draw your own conclusions.

Personally, I think the pic that Kotaku used for this story accurately describes the reason behind the DSi LL’s success. Somehow I don’t think that lady bought that red LL for her grandson.

The boys over at PC Watch put their precious DSi LL (or the XL here in the States) under the knife. If controller board pr0n gets you going in the morning, click on over to the Japanese trade publication for the gory pics. You probably don’t need to translate it.

Japan’s biggest gaming magazine, the Famitsu [JP], has given Nintendo’s newest Mario game New Super Mario Bros. the highest honor in the latest issue. All four editors who tested the game gave 10 points out of 10, resulting in a perfect 40/40 score.

New Super Mario Bros. is already the fourth game in 2009 to get a 40/40 rating, even though until 2007 the magazine was well-known for not giving away this score easily. But the perfect rating isn’t that surprising, as the game seems to be really that good and many reviewers outside Japan gave it the thumbs up already.

Here is a time line for all of Famitsu’s 40/40-games so far:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, for Nintendo 64)
2. Soul Calibur (1999, for Dreamcast)
3. Vagrant Story (2000, for PlayStation)
4. The Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker (2003, for GameCube)
5. Nintendogs (2005, for the DS)
6. Final Fantasy XII (2006, for PlayStation 2)
7. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, for the Wii)
8. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008, for PlayStation 3)
9. 428: Fusasareta Shibuya de (2008, for the Wii)
10. Dragon Quest IX (2009, for the DS)
11. Monster Hunter Tri (2009, for the Wii)
12. Bayonetta (2009, for PlayStation 3/XBox 360)
13. New Super Mario Bros.

Nintendo started offering a video distribution service for Japanese Wii owners this May, attracting about 800,000 customers by late September in this country. In the same month, Nintendo promised their free channel will be made available to Non-Japanese Wii owners next year, at the same time announcing they’ll start offering paid content (in Japan) very soon. And since the weekend, we have that fee-based streaming video service [JP] over here.

A lot of the content is still free, but the new service makes it possible to view popular TV programs and some Wii-exclusive content on your console. Wii users can now watch Disney and Pokemon anime, Sesame Street, movies, soccer games and other content. Wii-exclusive content includes a bunch of educational programs.

Nintendo initially managed to gather 15 content providers, for example Warner Entertainment and Disney, that will deliver about 250 different programs by next month. By next year, Wii owners are supposed to be able to choose between a total of 1,000 titles. Prices vary heavily, with titles costing between $0.11 and $11 (10 yen and 1,000 yen).

It’s not yet clear whether Nintendo will offer those paid services outside Japan next year as well.

It must be pretty darn easy being an analyst at one of those fancy Wall Street firms. Take this story, that Nintendo may well launch an on-demand video service for the Wii here in North America next year. Japan’s Nikkei reported the same thing nearly two months ago, but it’s only now that someone at Lazard Capital Markets has officially predicted such a store for the North American market.

Here’s what the analyst said, two months after the Nikkei said the same thing:

We expect Nintendo to continue experimenting with content delivery and eventually to launch a service in the U.S., establishing a family- oriented media hub in the living room, and providing a more competitive option to Xbox Live and PlayStation Home.

The Wii is a really strange system, no? Nintendo as a whole, too. While Microsoft and Sony welcome and promote violent games like Modern Warfare 2, Nintendo goes out of its way to promote New Super Mario Bros. , a game that’s going to be huge, yes, but is for a totally different audience.

Nintendo’s hasn’t really jumped onboard the online bandwagon, either. There’s no Xbox Live or PSN you can point to, downloadable content is rare (excepting the Virtual Console, which I wouldn’t really consider DLC in the traditional sense of the phrase), and there’s no emphasis on “extra” features, like Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

All well and good, yes, but I have one question: where’s the new Zelda? Surely I’m not the only person who looks at Nintendo systems as Zelda/Mario-to-TV adapters.

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On the other hand, Miyamoto also said that Wii Music was getting an enhanced version. I don’t know what to tell you there, Shigeru. The game is a joke, and all of Nintendo is humoring you. Don’t push it. Just make more Mega Man 9 type games and make sure the next Zelda has time travel in it.

[via 1UP and CVG; image from College Humor]

New Super Mario Bros. Wii hits stores today, and it will probably be on of the biggest games of the year. (Little Tommy and Little Susie shouldn’t be playing Modern Warfare 2!) To celebrate the launch of this latest Mario game, Nintendo invited its fans to the Nintendo World Store in New York yesterday. In addition to being able to buy the game a whole day early, fans could participate in a Mario tournament, get their picture taken in Mario garb, play the older games in the series, and meet Gary and Alison from Nintendo Week.

It was basically madness. I strolled in, along with my younger brother (who desperately wanted to meet the Nintendo Week hosts… it’d be like me wanting to meet Brock Lesnar or Lionel Messi), and found the Nintendo World Store swarming with children. You immediately realized that yeah, for all of the money games like Modern Warfare 2 or Assassin’s Creed II make, Nintendo’s audience is completely different. That’s not exactly breaking news, no.

Unfortunately for the Nintendo faithful, New York was being battered by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, so it was windy, rainy, and gray all day long. That made standing in line to buy the game much more of a hassle, and meant that I was juggling my camera, an extra lens, and an umbrella while trying to avoid running into anybody while taking photos.

The line to buy the game was quite long, stretching about halfway down the block. I waited, like an everyman, and was out there for around 20 minutes. Keep in mind that I find the idea of waiting in line for a video game to be ludicrous, but you sometimes have to make exceptions.

That’s about it. It was a fun little afternoon, only hindered by the fact that it was something like 98-degrees Fahrenheit upstairs (where the tournament took place). I also ran into E-Rock from the Opie and Anthony Show, which was pretty great in its own right.

I’ll have my thoughts on the game itself in the coming days.

Update: The guy on the left in the picture there identified himself in the comments! Check out his page at Hardest Level. Thanks for being a sport.

It already has, in fact. But Apple has come kicking and screaming the whole way. The iPhone, you understand, was not meant to be a gaming device, and in Cupertino, Apple’s intentions are paramount. Apple could never accidentally create a platform for gaming; if it wasn’t meant for gaming (or enterprise, or medical use, or reading e-books, etc.) from the beginning, Apple doesn’t want it happening at all. Because if Apple didn’t intend it, it’s outside of the bounds they set into the platform (regardless of how well it works, much like tethering) — it breaks the mold and, ironically, that’s the last thing Apple wants.

It’s no secret that the Apple ecosystem is a gilded cage. It’s a nice cage, and large, and yes indeed that gilding is very attractive by Jove, but all the doors are shut until Apple opens them. If you think otherwise, you’re probably already scrawling some crude flame in the comment section below. Thank you for your insight. Really, though: Macs are a carefully-tended walled garden of semi-delights (to mix several metaphors), and that’s part of why they’re so good at what they do. Attempts at expanding the garden have been made in fits by Apple, with varying success. Serious music production has never really caught on, nor scientific or medical applications, and any real expansions (personal media, mobile, and video primarily) have been engineered by Apple and not third parties. Why should it be any different for gaming? If Apple doesn’t do it, no one will. And Apple’s not going to do it.

But this is all getting rather vague. There are more substantial objections to an Apple expansion into gaming than my half-baked theories on their corporate philosophy. I’ll just enumerate them here in list form. I’m using the iPhone as the basis for these, but the points apply to the tablet without serious modification.

Hardware
The iPhone isn’t a gaming machine. It’s a smartphone. This produces limitations which are for some invigorating, and for some troublesome. For instance, you’ll never see a decent platformer on the iPhone. FPSes are awkward. RPGs take up too much space. You’re essentially limited to casual games and things like tilt-to-control racers. There are some notable exceptions; John Carmack loves the platform, for instance, and will probably be making some interesting stuff. The iPhone may be suitable for some games, but it wasn’t built for them, and that makes a difference for Apple.

Battery
Part of the hardware objection, but worth noting on its own, is the fact that battery life would be off-the-charts bad. How long can you really play a high-quality title on the iPhone? An hour maybe, before you’re down to 25% battery? Remember this is also your lifeline to email, the web, and so on. Unlike a DS, you can’t afford to let it run down. A portable game system needs to be as efficient as it can, and the iPhone is already an energy hog. No one wants to be tethered to an outlet to play their favorite handheld. And the thing already explodes when you use it too hard.

Developers
A few developers are putting out real iPhone games, but where is your Valve, your CryTek, your Rockstar? These are the people who make AAA titles that sell millions and make billions. Ubisoft may outsource some company to make a little Assassin’s Creed 2 clone to cash in a bit on the mobile contingent, but it’ll just be a way to sell the real game. They’re not going to spend $50m to develop a truly amazing game for the iPhone. No one will. Hardly anyone does as it is for existing handhelds (Dragon Quest IX notwithstanding). Apple could align itself with developers, but my feeling is they wouldn’t mix well. Apple is pretty much oil to their partners’ water to begin with due to their iWay-or-the-highway (clever, no?) approach to “collaboration,” and I don’t think that the major game studios would take a shine to it either.

Pricing
Do you see people hitting that “purchase” button when a game costs more than $10? Neither do I. Real games cost upwards of $40-50 when they come out. That won’t fly in an App Store or iTunes environment, where the emphasis is on multiple small, easy-to-swallow buys.

Brand
Apple doesn’t do games. They don’t put out games, they don’t make it easy to play games, they don’t encourage developers to make games for their platform. This is the last time Apple and Mac users were excited about games:

Seriously. Ever since the Great Halo Disappointment, nobody has considered Apple’s gaming enthusiasm as being anything other than a lark. Meanwhile, Nintendo is so completely identified with games that one implies the other in almost any context, Microsoft is hard at work building a gaming platform that dovetails with their entire ecosystem, and Sony is actually gathering steam with the PS3, as its lower price leads more people to find that it actually might be the most powerful and versatile system on the market. Apple struck at mobile phone makers when they were at their most complacent and vulnerable; gaming consoles and companies are stronger and more successful than they’ve ever been. It would be an insanely bad time to take a swat at them.

Content
Pop quiz: what game had the most lucrative launch of all time? If you answered Modern Warfare 2, an extremelyviolent and graphic game being accused of turning kids into terrorists, then you are correct! Apple is already choosy when it comes to what appears on its devices, and the kind of ultraviolence that sells games probably isn’t going to fly. Apple isn’t as positively warm and fuzzy as Nintendo usually is, but it would be a pretty major shift to start pushing games like MW2.

They don’t want to
Don’t you think that if Apple had any inclination to make the iPhone or Mac into a gaming platform, they’d have at least shown a little of that by now? Where’s the gamepad accessory for the iPhone? Why isn’t Apple courting the big developers to get some titles on Macs? There’s no indication that Apple is interested in games except as a class of apps to take a cut on. Almost all game development so far has been driven by the “there’s gold in them thar iPhones” mentality.

They don’t need to
This readership more than any other should be aware of Apple’s solvency in this worldwide financial crisis; indeed they have thrived mightily. The iPhone shows continual growth, they gain a tenth of a point of OS market share every month or two, and they’re making money hand over fist via iTunes and the App Store. Why the devil would they want to get into gaming, a market that would expose all the company’s weaknesses, bring their best hardware to its knees, and complicate their entire strategy — one which is working perfectly? I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t like to rock the boat, but they don’t do it when they stand a good chance of being thrown in the drink.

All that said, Apple does have an increasing presence in gaming. It owes this in no small part to Nintendo, which has popularized casual and mobile gaming to a huge extent with the Wii and DS. The iPhone may take a bite out of the more casual games coming out for the DS, but beyond that I don’t see a major effect. And as long as it’s enough for Apple to make a few bills, they’re not going to try too hard to change that.

The good news is that Mario and Metroid are on schedule for 2010 releases. Is this the year I buy a Wii? I don’t know, with these crazy 360 deals and the PS3 Slim out there, it’s still a real toss-up for me.

Plus, I’m very, very poor.

Does anyone seriously think that Nintendo is not building a high-def capable system? You can’t even buy a SD TV larger than 20 inches anymore. Reggie probably told the truth when he said “there is no Wii HD” as it’s probably not named Wii HD, but there has to be some sort of high-def gaming system in the works. If there isn’t, Nintendo is in trouble.

Nintendo made the right decision to make the original Wii not powerful enough to run HD graphics and therefore less expensive. It became an instant success because of not only the novel motion controller and easy-to-like bundled game, but also the relatively low starting price of $250 when compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3. If Nintendo had built a more powerful system, one of those points would have given way and events might have been a tad different.

Plus, back when the Wii came out, HDTVs were still a luxury. They were only available in larger sizes and a higher prices. Now tube TVs are all but gone and increasingly small LCDs are reaching 720p resolutions. By next year, 1080p will probably be the standard resolution for 32-inch or larger screens and every TV will be at least 720p; Nintendo will need to put out a system accordingly.

Of course this next-generation system will employ a motion control scheme. It’s not like Nintendo is going to take a step backwards. This system might not be called the Wii HD, but it’ll follow the Wii philosophy and be high-definition.

Even if Nintendo outs a system next year that’s as powerful and cheap as a nettop today, it will be able to handle at least 720p graphics with a good graphics driver. Nintendo has proved that gameplay and accessibility are more important in the marketplace than graphics, but as time passes and more households upgrade to high definition, it’s becoming the standard, and Nintendo will have to work within those parameters.

Reggie would never tell us a lie. He’s not like that. However, you can bet that Nintendo is working on a low-cost, but also high-def capable, Wii successor as we speak.

To be fair, we have seen these stylii before. In 2007, Nintendo offered them as a bribe reward for registering the Phantom Hourglass, and filling out a short survey. And, we don’t know for certain that we won’t see this offered in North America. It hasn’t been mentioned as a pre-order item yet, but who knows. I do know I wouldn’t mind having one. Spirit Tracks will be available in Japan on December 7th.

Cumulative Year To Date Sales Worldwide

Total Worldwide sales to date for the Wii are sitting just under 55 million consoles sold, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 are at 32.7M and 25.7M, respectively. The year-to-date worldwide sales are a bit different, with the Wii outselling both its competitors at 11M, and the PS3 and 360 at 6.6M and 5.9M. Where the sales figures get interesting are when we compare the number of pre-price-cut console sales, with that of sales post-price-cut.

Before Sony cut the price of the PS3, the Xbox 360 sold 4.53M units worldwide YTD, compared to Sony’s 4.12M YTD. Since then, the PS3 has outsold the 360 by 1.1M units (thanks to the PS3 Slim, most likely). What’s even more interesting, as you can see in the graph below, is that Sony’s biggest surge in sales happened two full weeks after Sony’s price reduction – right after the price reduction in the Xbox 360. The Wii also benefited from their small decrease in price as their sales went from hovering around 175K a week to over 350K the week after the price drop, to now what is nearly 400k a week. So why the marked difference in effectiveness between the three, and why did sales increase for the PS3 only after Xbox’s announcement?

Weekly Sales Worldwide (Sep-Oct)

The answer to the first part of the question is quite simple. The Nintendo Wii has outsold the other two consoles since its debut. It appeals to a broader user base, and the recent price break made it that much more accessible to those who don’t have a console. More importantly, its broad user base is different than that of the 360 and PS3’s. Although the Nintendo Wii is not as advanced as the other two consoles, (on a specs basis) its motion sensor technology coupled with the success of titles such as Wii Fit brand the Wii as not only a video game console, but a fitness and lifestyle enhancer. This difference, along with the decrease in price, is why the Wii is again outselling both of its competitors.

The difference in the effectiveness of price-cuts for the PS3 and the 360 is a bit more complicated. These devices, for the most part, appeal to the same demographic: those who buy a console primarily as a gaming platform. However, the biggest difference between the two consoles is that the PS3 features a Blu-Ray player. It seems that the PS3’s price cut, making it the same price as the 360 Elite, caused consumers to flock to the system which will let them play their precious Blu-ray discs.

The surge in sales for the PS3 didn’t happen until after the Xbox’s price announcement for a simple reason: Microsoft had been saying that a price drop was imminent and consumers were waiting to compare the two deals. Unfortunately for Microsoft, by gradually phasing out the traditional Xbox Pro model and only leaving their bare-bones Arcade model (it doesn’t have a built-in harddrive) and their higher priced Elite, the PS3 became a more enticing deal for many consumers. Had Microsoft cut the price of their Elite to below that of the PS3, or better yet, priced the Xbox 360 Pro at $199 (the price of the Arcade SKU) instead of phasing it out, then they might have seen the same growth in sales that the PS3 has, and could possibly have taken some sales away from the Nintendo Wii.

While all three makers have seen a higher demand for consoles since the price drops, the PS3 is the clear-cut winner thus far. They have surpassed the 360 in worldwide YTD sales, and if they have a strong end of the year, could possibly take the number two spot in YTD sales in the US, where they have historically struggled.

Sales numbers and graphs were collected from VGChartz. For more information on how they gathered their sales figures, click here.

I played the last Zelda game on the Wii, and just couldn’t get into it. The controls felt a little odd to me, and I just couldn’t get into the game. That may change in the next game however, since in a recent interview Miyamoto said that they new Zelda game will use the MotionPlus accessory, making the sword fights more realistic and less like you are pointing at the screen.

At this point, that’s all we really know. The poster released at E3 really didn’t give us any major clues about the future of the franchise, and Nintendo ain’t talking yet. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Amazon Kindle the first device to launch with built-in wireless (that is, cellular data) access? You know, you pay for the device, and then you don’t have to pay monthly wireless access because it’s already included in the cost of the device? It’s pretty neat, I think I can say without too much grief, and is a model that’s been copied by other e-book readers. Now it looks like Nintendo is considering such a model for future versions of the Nintendo DS (and not necessarily the XL, mind you). Exciting!

So Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, said at a recent briefing that he’s “interested” in the business model (wireless access that’s built into the cost of the device) because it’s new, and, well, it could help expand the popularity of DSi Ware. Right now, to access DSi Ware you need to be connected to Wi-Fi, which sorta limits its availability. What if you’re sitting on a park bench on a warm spring day and want to download Something? You can’t!

You can imagine other scenarios, I’m sure.

Iwata did express concern that Nintendo would have to be careful with such a model because Nintendo is, in his words, an “amusement company.” It’s not Apple in the sense that it can’t charge $LOTS for its products.

Such a move would also give this theoretical new DS an edge over the PSP Go, which you’ll recall only ships with 802.11b access. That’s a bad move on Sony’s part, yes.

Keep in mind that Iwata could have just been thinking out loud, and that none of this will ever see the light of day. So there’s that.

via Gamasutra

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said recently that his company would be testing out demo downloads of certain WiiWare titles this month. It’s unclear if this test program will only be for Wii owners in Japan or if those of us here in the U.S. would be able to participate as well.

Apparently the program “will cover just a few titles,” according to IGN.

Nintendo is apparently looking to attract more potential WiiWare customers and this program is an attempt to gauge whether or not offering game demos will ultimately result in increased purchases. As one of those potential customers myself, I’d like to add that I can’t believe it’s taken this long. Just make demos for all WiiWare games available already, eh?

Nintendo to Offer WiiWare Demos [IGN]

I think we’ve learned something today: not to buy stuff off the TV. QVC was selling, last night, a Nintendo Wii, Go Play Circus Star Games, and a bunch of accessories (golf club, tennis racket, etc.) QVC wanted $362.97 for the bundle, but if you look at the retail price for all this, it comes out to $239.97. Yes, that’s a $140 premium. For what?

To be fair, QVC later slashed the price of the little bundle to $318.20, which is still a hot $80 more than retail.

Never mind the fact that QVC is selling the bundle for that price, the real question is: who’s dumb enough to pay hand over fist for the bundle? And who still buys stuff from these channels?

Outrage!

Question: Are standard DS & DSi games going to look pixelated and stretched on the DSi XL’s 4.2-inch screen? Idk. But the screen is huge when compared to the standard DSi. Check out the Japanese TV debut after the jump.

[via Kotaku]

It hasn’t been the best couple of months for Nintendo. Profits were down for the six months leading up to September, which the company blames on the strong yen and the Wii’s price cut. Net sales, too, were down, some 34.5 percent. Fair enough, and those reasons are likely to explain Nintendo’s situation, but is there something else going on? I know Pat Buchanan, the older gentlemen that he is, always uses the phrase “the chickens have come home to roost,” and I think it’s applicable here. Perhaps Nintendo’s strategy of selling the Wii to the “casual” crowd (housewives and the like, to simplify this) has finally run out of gas?

How many games were released for the Wii that appeal to the more hardcore among us? I’m thinking back to all the games I’ve played this year—Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Race Driver: Grid, Forza Motorsport 3, and maybe one or two others that I’m forgetting—and none of them were available for the Wii. Now, I consider myself a hardcore gamer only in the sense that I’m not going to play something like Mario Party or some sing-along game; I’m not hanging out on NeoGaf debating the merits of Xbox Live vs PSN. So that’s where I’m coming from.

The point? I would say that there have been next to no games released for the Wii that interested me, a gamer who’d rather sit there and try to 100 percent Resident Evil 5 (well, Resident Evil 4… Resident Evil: 5 had too many things that annoyed me) than lose five pounds playing Wii Fit. I’m a gamer, not someone looking to have a fun evening with my grandkids.

I think that’s what it comes down to: Nintendo has made, if I may, mad money over the past few years by positioning the Wii as an entertainment device for the whole family. That’s all well and good, but when Single Professional Woman buys a Wii so she can host a Wii Sports party once a month, what are the odds that she’s going to keep buying game after game?

That’s not to say Nintendo is doomed, of course. I played the New Super Mario Brothers Wii a few weeks ago, and I can honestly say, “Now there’s a game that’ll appeal to the ‘hardcore’ among us.”

But what do I care? I’m most concerned with leveling my warlock in WoW.

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