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Nintendo Businesses Entertainment Games

Revolution Interface, DS Chart-Toppers 41

Posted by Zonk from the that-'n'-certainly-is-big dept.
Joystiq reports on the continued success of the DS in Japan, where the two-screened console is not only outselling the 360, but topping the charts as well. They're also showing off mock-ups of what the Revolution virtual console service might work like. As Doc Brown said, "Please excuse the crudity of this model." The virtual console will allow Revolution owners to buy and play classic Nintendo games. Includes a list of possible launch titles.
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Revolution Interface, DS Chart-Toppers More

Revolution Interface, DS Chart-Toppers

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  • As a note: the mockups were just made (by either Nintendo or the polling company, not Joystiq) to illustrate the poll's point. They are in no way indicative of the final product. The word "look" in the summary should be replaced with "work."

  • Meaningful comparison? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @03:26AM (#14444099)
    "where the two-screened console is not only outselling the 360,"

    Come on, I'm sure even the old Bandai Playdia is still outselling the 360 in Japan. My grandmother can outsell the 360 in Japan. The meaningful comparison is how it's doing compared to the PSP, GCN, PS2, or (dare I say it) the GBA.
    • I have to agree that the PSP is an apt comparison,

      1. Difficult to program for.
      2. Crippled by long loading times (360 crippled by Heat Brick)
      3. Poor games selection.
      4. Strange media format.
      5. Expensive.
      6. Quite traditional in it's approach.

      The 360 really strikes me as a loser, but perhaps some of the upcoming games will change that.

    • Re:Meaningful comparison? (Score:4, Informative)

      by briankoenig ( 853681 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @03:40AM (#14444140)
      Did you read the article? The main text is a sales chart for the week beginning December 26th.

      # FORMAT TITLE
      1 DS Brain Training 2
      2 DS Animal Crossing: Wild World
      3 DS Mario Kart DS
      4 PS2 Kingdom Hearts II
      5 DS DS Training For Adults: Work Your Brain (Brain Training)
      6 PS2 Front Mission 5: Scars of the War
      7 DS Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
      8 DS Gentle Brain Exercises
      9 DS Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop!
      10 DS Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue Rescue Force

      As you can see, the DS is outselling EVERYTHING, not just the Xbox360, but also the PS2, Gamecube, GBA, and PC games. 8 of the Top 10, and all of the Top 3. For those that may say "but that's just game sales" also read the other article about 13 million DS's being sold. Not shipped, not "sent to retailers", SOLD.
      • The Grandparent is right to point out that the 360 is a dumb thing to compare sales to, however. The Hardware numbers for that week:

        DS - 390,181 (Sold Out)
        PSP - 110,741
        PS2 - 78,646
        GBA SP - 15,998
        GC - 12,579
        Xbox 360 - 12,300
        GBM - 11,234
        GBA - 447
        Xbox - 121

        So the DS isn't just outselling the 360 (which the silly blurb finds notable), but outselling it over 31 times.
      • In Japan, "Shipped to retailers" is "sold". The shelves are empty. Somehow I find it's a lot more impressive to run out of Nintendo DS consoles than to sell all 30 of your XBOXen to MTV fanboys.
        • In Japan, "Shipped to retailers" is "sold".

          Bzzzt.

          There are two major counts taken weekly of hardware and software sales. One is done by Media Create, the other by Famitsu. Famitsu's is done the same way NPD does it here, through a survey and statistical sampling. Media Create does it a different way and I'm not sure how, but usually their numbers are lower than Famitsu's and generally considered more accurate, so they may be tracking actual store scans and either not using statistical sampling or just us
      • Well, no shit. The DS costs about 1/3 the price of a 360, has cheaper games, and has been on the market longer. What did you expect to happen? The GP's points are certainly valid.

  • omg (Score:2)

    by myspys ( 204685 )
    this is probably the most worthless article i've read in a long time

    it's a bunch of images, that anyone could have drawn, that shows how the system would most likely work

    anyone could have figured out how it would work

    so.. why is this news and interesting?

    i love slashdot, but this.. ?

  • DS is the new PS2 in Japan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @03:58AM (#14444203)
    The DS is doing amazingly well in Japan. I got mine outside of Osaka in early December and boy am I glad - there are places selling used machines for $200 American dollars. Kids are using their New Year's money to snap up the machines (If I weren't so convinced that Nintendo will soon have a handle on production again, I'd buy a load of the machines in the U.S. and bring them over).

    The only machine that has the shelf space in nearly all the consumer oriented video game stores (as opposed to the holes in the wall in Den Den Town which cater to more hardcore gamers) is the PS2. The DS is well on its way to being a ubiqutious platform just like the PS2.

    There are shelves for the PSP, but the games are crap and there's not nearly as much advertising, compared to the brochures, banners, and boxes for Nintendogs, Brain Training, Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing.

    The place to be is the DS.

    • The DS is doing amazingly well in Japan. I got mine outside of Osaka in early December and boy am I glad - there are places selling used machines for $200 American dollars. Kids are using their New Year's money to snap up the machines (If I weren't so convinced that Nintendo will soon have a handle on production again, I'd buy a load of the machines in the U.S. and bring them over).

      For comparison I got my DS (blue) shortly after they came out for aprox. $150 US in Okayama, Japan. I also had the option of g

  • You're playing it on the Revolution, you don't care what the original console was. More likely the list will be sorted by title, with (NES), (SNES), etc after.
    • I thought it was a good idea. If you can only scroll up/down and not jump to 'F', shorter lists are a good idea.
      Showing all as default and have the opportunity to "arrange by name/console/year/etc" could work too.
    • My guess is that they will cost different by console. In that case, you might care which console it was originally made for. What I am hoping they will change is how many games are listed per page. Three is ridiculously low. I'm sure they'll have more than that. But it seems too many sites I've been to are still too small. The best let you adjust how many you want per page.
  • I bought a DS last week after reading numerous posts here and there about how great it was, and i'm not disappointed. Games are great, the system is great.
    And this comes from someone who had totally given up gaming since 4 years or so, basically because of the lack of any innovation since the days of "modern gaming" (the first generation of accelerated 3D games). And i think it's way better than say, the Gamecube, because the gamecube imho lacks good games and it feels like nintendo is pushing its franchi

  • Yet another DS and PS comparasion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) <(johnwh) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @08:23AM (#14445066) Homepage
    The userbase of the DS and PSP in the U.S. are roughly even at this time, although Nintendo's had a good holiday season with multiple great games while the PSP only really had GTA.

    But in Japan, the DS is smoking the PSP. In sales each month it comes in ahead of the PS2. And during several reporting periods, the DS has outsold all other consoles combined. And in the last reporting period (link only accurate to my statements temporarily, and may change soon in fact, the period I'm talking about is the week from Dec 26-Jan 1) eight of the ten top software titles on the list are DS games. The top-rated PS2 game, at #4, is Kingdom Hearts II, a very eagerly-awaited game in a nation that loves RPGs. #3 and #2, respectively, are Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing! #1 and #5 are in the Brain Training series that has yet to make it to the U.S., but are supposed to be coming soon. [m-create.com]

    But why is this important to us U.S. players? For these reasons:

    1. It proves the DS is no Virtual Boy. It's here to stay.
    2. It is vindication for the DS' unorthodox design elements. The DS' success in Japan is so tremendous by this point that it can only be called an unqualified success, even if the rest of the world had never bought a single DS.
    3. Most importantly, Japan is the first market for many video game systems. There is a feedback loop here: if a system is popular, it attracts many developers, which make the system even more popular, etcetera. But the market here is the one in which many of those developers live and work, and that's gotta have a strong influence. That's one of the reasons why relatively few Japanese publishers developed for the original X-box.
    • "Most importantly, Japan is the first market for many video game systems."

      Except the DS was first launched in North America, followed by a Japanese launch a little later. And that was only the first time hardware was sold in North America first. Nintendo has been making a habit of selling certain games in North America first, even if they were written in Japan and require translation/localization first (e. g. the Metroid GBA games).

      Japan isn't the gaming Mecca it used to be as far as Nintendo is concerned
      • Except the DS was first launched in North America, followed by a Japanese launch a little later.

        I didn't mean first in a chronological sense, but in the sense that it is considered most important by many system manufacturers, and a lot of emphasis is put on it. Yes, the North American market is important too, more important in some ways, but it is less in others, and anyway most systems are designed in Japan, and a disproportionate number of the people who make software are Japanese.
    • The userbase of the DS and PSP in the U.S. are roughly even at this time

      Really? The numbers I've seen say the DS is leading. While current numbers are hard to come by, this [spong.com] claims that the DS is leading 13M:7M worldwide and since at least 2M PSPs have been sold in Japan and at least 1M in Europe (using very conservative numbers, most likely at least 50% more) that doesn't leave the 5M it'd need to match the DS in the US.
      • Their rough equality in the U.S. is not something I have hard numbers for, and was just something floating around. Hard numbers for the DS are easy to come by because of Nintendo's recent press release, but Sony usually releases figures for "units shipped," which is a lot less useful.

        Where did you get your figures? I'd be very happy to be proven wrong on this point....
  • lets hope that is not the real thing because that is ugly, and hurts my eyes
  • Am I the only one to notice this? I thought this was Slashdot!

    ...success of the DS in Japan, where the two-screened console...

    Since when did the DS get classified as a "console"? Last I checked, this term is reserved for those game systems that sit by your TV. What kind of crack comparison is that?! Comparing a hand-held to a console...

    How dod all the trolls miss that one?
    • Last I checked, this term is reserved for those game systems that sit by your TV.

      Actually no, you've never checked, because there is nothing relating to "games" anywhere in the definition of console. Computer consoles have existed long before Nintendo or even Atari had an electronic product.

      The definition, btw: "The portion of a computer or peripheral that houses the apparatus used to operate the machine manually and provides a means of communication between the computer operator and the central processing

  • That joystiq article SUCKS. Out of all of the sites that have this information theirs is the only one that didn't post the numbers.

    Try this link instead.

    http://www.revo-europe.com/news.php?nid=8699 [revo-europe.com]

  • I wonder if this nintendo thing is true emulation.
    Judging by the list of games under "SNES", it looks like they seem to be supporting quite a number of the special chips (like the DSP1, FX chip and SA-1).
    I wonder what they are going to do about gun games like Super Scope 6 and Duck Hunt, maybe there is something in that wierd revolution controler that will be used for this without actually being a gun per se.

    Also notable is the ommissions from the list.
    Why Donkey Kong Country and DKC2 but not DKC3?
    Which gam

    • Why Donkey Kong Country and DKC2 but not DKC3?

      Two answers, and they both relate to Microsoft:

      • Early emulators need to be "hacked" to get individual games to run, which is why the Xbox 360's backward compatibility list was so short at launch. (As an emulator matures, it can run eh-vee-ting without hacks; see Nintendulator.)
      • Rare owns a share of the copyright and trademark in the Donkey Kong Country series, and Rare is now owned by the maker of Xbox 360, which will compete with the Revolution. Perhaps N
      • Re the first comment, there are games listed that are more complex than DKC3.
        Also, SNES emulation is not exactly rocket science (especially for Nintendo who would probobly have all sorts of information in their archives including scematics, design documents, source code for various games etc etc)
  • One intersting add-on for the GameCube is the GameBoy Player. If you don't know, it's an adapter that lets the Cube play GBA games. There was a previous adapter that let you play GBC Pokemon games on the N64. I sense a trend.

    But how, you might ask, can you emulate the touch-screen DS on a TV? How about with the Revolution's TV-Remote controller? Think about it: if you have a widescreen TV, you could put the two DS screens side-by-side (might make Sonic Rush a bit strange) and use the pointing control

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