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Wii Businesses Nintendo

Nintendo Confirms Mario, Smash Bros. Coming This Year 63

Posted by Zonk from the everything-looks-wiilee-good dept.
Some excellent news for Nintendo fans: two of the 'big three' games are coming out this year. At an event held in Washington state Reggie Fils-Aime was able to confirm that Smash Bros. and Super Mario Galaxy will be released before the end of the year. Excellent to hear such news, of course ... but other people had different priorities. For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2008. Other than that, the company was all good news in general: "Typically, about half of home consoles in Japan are placed in the living room -- with Wii that figure is 75%. In France, 15 of the top 15 games recently were Nintendo. In the US, Fils-Aime says they are seeing 'early signs of significant market change.' The number of female purchasers of hardware are up 42%. The number of people over age of 30 purchasing Nintendo DS is up 127%. Tighten that age range to people over 35, and the number is up 212%. 40% of Wii owners have connected to the internet. 3.3 million plus Virtual Console downloads." Game|Life has hands-on impressions of Brain Age 2 and Mario Strikers Charged , two of the new games shown off at the event.
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Nintendo Confirms Mario, Smash Bros. Coming This Year More

Nintendo Confirms Mario, Smash Bros. Coming This Year

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  • Metroid Prime 3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Friday May 25, 2007 @10:32AM (#19269703) Homepage Journal
    Here's the original text of the summary before Zonk changed it:

    For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2007.

    Oh noes! Not 2007! I don't think I can wait that long! Wait, 2007?

    Oh! Zonk changed it...

    For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2008.

    Oh noes! Not 2008! That's even longer!

    Wait, the article he links to says...

    Thus far, Nintendo hasn't announced an official release date for Metroid Prime 3, so we're thinking that it's going to slip into 2007, particularly because the company doesn't want to release too many franchise games during the Wii's 2006 launch.

    Poor confused Zonk. Business Week republished a GameDaily preview of Metroid Prime 3 from 2006. so the date stamp on Business week says 2007, even thought the real date stamp is November 07, 2006 [gamedaily.com]. (In late 2006, the MP3 date was pushed to March of 2007 before being pushed again in Feburary.) As amusing as it is, that wasn't a very nice prank by BW.

    The real release dates can be found over here [gonintendo.com]. Here are a few of interest:

    • July 30 - Mario Strikers Charged Nintendo
    • Aug. 20 - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
    • September - Battalion Wars 2


    Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl are both listed as a "To Be Determined" date in 2007. The expectation is that they will be fall or holiday releases. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, the official Super Smash Bros. website is up here:

    http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/index.html [smashbros.com]

    (Yes, there was a Slashdot story on that.)
  • Metroid Prime has been unofficially officially dated for August 20.

    http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15752 5 [neogaf.com]

    But the article actually says

    "so we're thinking that it's going to slip into 2007, particularly because the company doesn't want to release too many franchise games during the Wii's 2006 launch."

    Which is, um, an interesting way of putting things for a current article.

  • My killer app (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Friday May 25, 2007 @10:43AM (#19269879)
    For me, the killer app for the wii will definitely be smash brothers, so I find it very discouraging that they won't even give a release date.

    Right now the wii suffers from a lack of good games, especially games that are sequels to earlier blockbusters. Paper mario was good, but it wasn't the level of smash brothers, any super mario brothers or metroid. The Wii's sale numbers are spectacular, but it's still not getting the respect it deserves. Nintendo needs to put out a few serious, long titles exclusively for the Wii and shut the critics up.
    • I can't wait for Wii Mario Kart, I don't know if its been announced or when its coming, but it is the sole reason I got a Wii. The only game I really ever play on my Wii is Mario Kart Double Dash (from 2003).

  • For European Slashdot readers... (Score:5, Informative)

    by iapetus ( 24050 ) on Friday May 25, 2007 @10:52AM (#19269999) Homepage
    ...simply add 2-3 years onto each release date for your local version.

    Why is it that the console manufacturer that most needs to provide region-free games is the last to do so?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Applekid ( 993327 )
      How is this Offtopic? Europeans keep getting shafted when it comes to release dates, so "Mario, Smash Bros. Coming This Year" isn't true for them.

      Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all seem to consider Europe as a minor, nagging detail with delayed releases and arbitrary price increases. Seems to me the market might need a major European console player to step up and call their region their #1 priority before the other three will stop dragging their feet.

      Full disclosure: I'm in the US. I care because, well, I do

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by BosstonesOwn ( 794949 )
        It was explained to me by some one I know who is a developer inside the MS XBOX division.

        They do so because in Europe there is such a huge sector of languages. The games are usually rushed to market anyway and the time it takes them to translate every portion of text is very time consuming. Also the majority of games are written in English , Chinese , or Japanese. Not many in other languages.

        He also went on to say that if they were to produce the volume of discs needed to fill that demand for a global launc

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          Yet it works for PC games and they even come with translated voices, quite unlike Nintendo's games.
          • If a PC game has a bug, the publisher generally (at best) issues a patch within 6 months.

            If a console game has a bug, guess what? Either it doesn't get fixed, or there's a recall. The stakes are just a bit higher when trying to localize a game to a dozen or more different languages and there's no way to fix any bugs you introduced in the process.

            --Jeremy
        • Ahem Nintendo never has voice overs which means, the games just have to bundle correct language resources, heck even the alpabets are not too far away, the kyrillic and roman alphabet are basically the same with different letters. The translation costs are rather minimal for Nintendo games, all they need is one translator per language and one proofreader!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ant P. ( 974313 )
        The UK and Australia get shafted hardest of all. Not only do they get the same 0.5-3 year "translation delay" as other countries, they don't even get the courtesy of a proper translation 99% of the time. The only games I can remember having correct English were the ones made by Rare. In fact, I think their N64 games were the ones that finally ended the industry practice of doing shitty borders+slowdown conversions.
      • Philips already tried it with the CDi. It failed miserably.
    • Mario Strikers Charged is released today here.

      It must be because it's soccer (almost), but still.
      That reminds me i have to go buy it!
      • mario strikers is an exception due to being soccer. fact is we were just getting elebits and there still is no release date for super paper mario. i assume it will be the christmas seller and the other games will be for christmas 2010

  • need consoles before games (Score:3, Funny)

    by easyEmu ( 977903 ) on Friday May 25, 2007 @11:16AM (#19270347) Journal
    Awesome! Now, if only Nintendo could supply my city with a single Wii console, that would help in terms of selling games...
  • I did RTFA, but it doesn't say whether they mean "This year, in time to cure your summertime boredom" or "This year, in time for Christmas". Cause Christmas seems like F-O-R-E-V-E-R.

  • The Wii has three games which have sold a million copies or more: Twlight Princess, Wii Play and Wii Sports. All Nintendo games. The Wii is still early in its product life, so it can be expected that not many games will have passed the million mark yet. The problem is that too much focus is on the first party Nintendo games. If third party publishers lack the hype necessary to sell their games, they will not bring exclusive games to the Wii. The Wii will merely get awful ports like Far Cry http://www.g [gamespot.com]

    • Re:Wii needs strong third party games too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rycross ( 836649 ) on Friday May 25, 2007 @12:07PM (#19271199)

      Nintendo has to be willing to share the spotlight with it's third party developers.

      I don't see any evidence that Nintendo is unwilling to share the spotlight. Instead, it seems like third party developers just like to shovel crap games onto Nintendo systems. If they made good games, then they'd get acclaim. Look at Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube for example.

    • 1. Super Paper Mario has sold over a million copies [vgchartz.com] as has Wario Ware Smooth Moves, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Red Steel. (source [vgchartz.com]) Two of those are third party titles.

      2. Nintendo is perfectly willing to share the spotlight. It's the third parties that bet on the PS3 and XBox. Up until recently they've been decrying the Wii as "two gamecubes duct taped together" or "gamecube 1.5". They kind of screwed themselves over.

      3. One Word: NiGHTS

      4. Three Words: Guitar Hero III

      5. 26 Words: Geometry Wars: Galaxies, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Tomb Raider: Anniversary :-P
      • Geometry Wars: Galaxies

        Wii is getting Geometry Wars?! *Google search confirms* Sweet! I played Geometry Wars on an xbox 360 display unit, and damn did a psychedelic Smash TV almost make me want an xbox...
    • What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?

      Further, the DS actually has great third party titles, especially considering that most of their most famous games (brain age, phoenix wright, trauma center, etc) are third party. I think that developers have avoided developing for the gamecube and the wii for a few reasons:
      1. Nintendo has a tendency to put out the highest quality and best selling games, creating stiff competition.
      2. The hardware isn't as good as
      • What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?

        Well, Nintendo themselves has said that they failed to properly court 3rd party developers for the N64, did only a little better with the Gamecube, and were dedicated to fixing the problem with the Wii. I'm not sure exactly what that all entails, but Big N seems to think they failed to do something.

        Though these days from most of the complaints I hear, the main thing Nintendo fails to do is ceasing to make good g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )
        ### What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?

        How about online support right from launch? PS3 had it XBox360 had it, Wii is *still* lacking it. How about hardware that is actually fast enough to handle third party games? The Oblivions, Assassins Creeds, Bioshocks and such are multiplatform games, the Wii however is just to slow to handle them. I mean Mark Rain from Epic Games told Microsoft to include 512MB RAM instead of 256MB and Microsoft did that, Nin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 7Prime ( 871679 )
          Well, there are two reasons for that...

          First off, small style arcade games belong, more, on handhelds, so Nintendo wants to lead developers in the direction of the DS for those titles, which makes perfect sense to me. Also, they HAVE announced it, it's called the Virtual Console. It has been putting out older games (which are the bulk of the 360 and PS3s arcade libraries, anyway) since launch, and will have room for new arcade-style games here fairly shortly.

          Honestly, I think Nintendo is currently doing the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by toolie ( 22684 )
        What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?

        Nintendo fails to use the same old control system, which means developers actually have to think about games rather than just doing a crappy port.

        Nintendo fails to support the latest and greatest formats that not even close to everybody has so people can be impressed with the shiny graphics, thus forcing developers to think about games as opposed to graphics.

        Nintendo fails to put out crappy first party shovelware

  • Metroid Prime 3 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Shabadage ( 1037824 )
    Yeah, nice linking to an old article there.

    Anyway, once Prime comes out, I'm fairly certain it's control scheme will becomce the defacto standard for FPS WII games. It's be nice to play an FPS (Ok, Ok, so MP3 is technically an FPA) on the Wii with a decent control scheme; this bounding box crap just isn't cutting it.

    Also, I think that half the reason they haven't shown anyone anything about Prime 3 in the last 6 months or so is because they're doing a graphical overhaul. If there's one thing that Nint

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 7Prime ( 871679 )
      Unfortunately, MP3 *IS* bounding-box crap. I'm sure it'll be a great game, but it's just a small evolutionary step from Medal of Honor, Red Steele and the like. This pisses me off. There are many more kinds of methods for controlling FPSs on the Wii, things like using the motion sensor in the nuncuck to "steer" your character, freeing up the Wiimote to do only aiming and firing. Unfortunately, developers are insistant that bounding-box is the be-all-and-end-all control scheme, without realizing that it's on
    • The last time they showed MP3 (I think it was Leipzig) it was still using the bounding-box, but accounts said they got it feeling much better than Red Steel/MoH/CoD/etc... Of course, it's almost been a year, and they could have changed since then. They said it wouldn't ship until it's perfect, and the controls are part of that.
  • that this http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/wiihelm.shtml [thinkgeek.com] will immensely improve MP3.

  • So? (Score:1, Troll)

    by crhylove ( 205956 )
    None of this really matters. There is only one thing that matters:

    When is Mario Kart coming out? And will it not totally suck like the Game Cube version did?

    In this house we only play one Nintendo game, and it's Mario Kart 64. Emulated, because the new versions suck so bad.
    • have you played Mario Kart DS? Because without a doubt, it's the best version ever released. Also is contains tracks from every previous game, which is cool in a retro kind of way.
  • How come we haven't seen this title yet? This would be HUGE. Smash Bros DS over Wifi? Heck yeah. At least give us Street Fighter II or Marvel vs. Capcom...

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