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Black Wii system going to Europe as part of Wii Sports Resort bundle

by JC Fletcher { Oct 20th 2009 at 9:32AM }

Nintendo UK will release the black Wii system on November 6, as part of a limited edition bundle including matching Wii Remote, Nunchuk, and MotionPlus peripherals, and both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. This bundle will be available elsewhere in Europe on November 20.

Along with the black bundle, Nintendo is releasing the black Classic Controller Pro accessory. No price has been announced for any of these items. Nintendo of America has yet to announce any plans to release any of these items -- in fact, it has announced that there are no plans. But, really, it's waiting until every holdout gets impatient and buys a white system.

HSN teaches valuable lesson about Wii accessory safety

by Griffin McElroy { Oct 18th 2009 at 6:30PM }

We were certain -- absolutely certain -- that the epidemic of fractured television screens which cropped up with the release of the Wii had passed. Everyone's heard the horror stories, seen the blackened eyes and witnessed the ruined electronics, we thought. Everyone now knows the methods of avoiding Wiimote accidents during their exuberant Wii Sports bouts, we thought. The Home Shopping Network recently proved the inaccuracy of this observation.

The hilarity unfolds in the video after the jump. While some might grimace at the fate of the poor television featured in the video, remember that they're charging $330 for a Wii and 15 completely unnecessary controller attachments. Call it an accident, if you'd like -- we call it Karma in action.

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Rumor: No Euro Wii price cut, new bundle to include both Wii Sports games, MotionPlus

by Ben Gilbert { Sep 23rd 2009 at 4:27PM }

Just like we saw earlier this year with the PlayStation 3 Slim, the rumor mill is churning at breakneck pace -- though this time around a possible Nintendo Wii price cut rather than a slimmer console. Aside from multiple retailer listings and today's alleged internal Best Buy memo, MCV reports that a "retail source" told it the UK won't be receiving the same price cut that North America and Japan are expected to receive. Instead, the current model will be given the bundle treatment.

GamesIndustry.biz spotted the new bundle on ShopTo.net -- it has since been removed, though an image and a shell of the page still exist -- which includes both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort as well as a MotionPlus attachment, for the same £199.99 ($326.76) the system is priced at now. If it is true, at least UK Wii buyers will be getting a bit more for their pounds. It's not quite the Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. with a Zapper combo of yore, but it'll have to do.

Source -- No Wii price cut for UK [GamesIndustry.biz]
Source -- New UK Wii bundle leaked [MCV]

Police raid home, raid occupant's Wii Sports leaderboards

by David Hinkle { Sep 22nd 2009 at 4:15PM }

Police are good at three things: protecting; serving; and bowling. During a recent raid in conjunction with several Florida agencies, officers came across the occupant's Wii console and, instead of ignoring it and going about their day, decided to turn the little white box on and throw down in some bowling with Wii Sports. What they didn't notice is that the occupant had a secret security camera set up that filmed every strike and gutterball, MSNBC shares. Busted!

Head past the break to watch the video.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

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Wii Sports Resort: The lost games

by JC Fletcher { Sep 4th 2009 at 9:35AM }

In an email interview with Wired, Wii Sports Resort producer Katsuya Eguchi revealed that, beyond the twelve events included in the final game, even more were planned that didn't quite make it in the game.

"We considered fishing and a water slide activity before deciding on the final twelve events," Eguchi said. We're having a hard time imagining a controllable, skill-based water slide game, which may have been one reason it didn't end up in Resort. "As for more unconventional concepts, we created a pretty fun prototype of kendama, a traditional Japanese toy, that just didn't fit the game's theme." So, a toy didn't fit the "resort" theme, but fighting with fake swords was completely appropriate? Working at Nintendo is complicated.

Wii Sports Resort lands in one million US homes

by David Hinkle { Aug 25th 2009 at 12:30PM }

Nintendo's tropical minigame getaway, Wii Sports Resort, has managed to entice one million gamers in the US, the publisher has announced. Debuting July 26, it didn't take the game long to reach that number (it sold 508,000 in July), and we're sure that we'll be writing another post like this one in a month or so when the game reaches two million in sales. Anyone taking bets?

Papercraft recreates Wii Sports Resort's Wuhu Island

by David Hinkle { Aug 21st 2009 at 6:15PM }

You know, we often wonder why we don't have a large, flammable recreation of Wii Sports Resort's Wuhu Island sitting on our desk, but then we remember most of our work is done while being chained to a laptop in some random dungeon in Philadelphia. While we may be starved for sunlight (not to mention just plain starving), seeing things like this piece of papercraft gives us hope. Hope that we can make cheap pieces of art when we're finally so malnourished that we can slip out of our shackles.

Hit up the gallery below for more Nintendo-inspired papercraft, including this awesome Wolf Link.

Gallery: Awesome Nintendo papercraft

Nintendo: No plans for Wii Sports Resort bundle

by JC Fletcher { Aug 12th 2009 at 12:40PM }

Having released a new (and popular) Wii Sports, it seems fairly obvious that Nintendo would start bundling that with Wii hardware, right? Well, Nintendo rarely does the obvious. In an interview with Toronto Thumbs, Nintendo of Canada's Matt Ryan dismissed the idea of a new bundle in the near future.

"The long-term plan is difficult to say, but I can tell you that there are no plans to make Wii Sports Resort what is packed in with the Wii purchase," Ryan said, adding "What is in the Wii box will remain the same." In case you couldn't pick up the subtext, he reiterated "Wii Sports Resort will not replace Wii Sports."

Why not? Ryan described Resort as "more full-on software that you're used to purchasing at retail at that price point," while the original Wii Sports is "designed to show off what the Wii Remote can do." Although Japanese consumers have had no issues with buying separate copies of Wii Sports.

Normally, we'd just assume that there is a plan for a bundle, but Nintendo doesn't want to talk about it -- except that there haven't been official bundles for Wii Fit or Mario Kart Wii. Like we said, Nintendo avoids the obvious.

Gallery: Wii Sports Resort

Wii Sports approaches 50 million copies sold

by JC Fletcher { Jul 31st 2009 at 3:45PM }

In a supplement to Nintendo's earnings statement yesterday, the company released some sales numbers for top-selling games in the last quarter. Four Nintendo products sold over one million copies between April and July, only one of which was a new release anywhere in the world during that time.

Pokemon Platinum on DS, which came out in North America in March, right before the quarter started, moved 1.91 million copies in Q1, for a life-to-date total of 5.66 million worldwide.

It was an even better quarter for the Wii's evergreens. Wii Fit sold an additional 3.6 million copies, bringing its LTD to 21.82. Mario Kart Wii sold 2 million, making its total 17.39 million. And Wii Sports sold an additional 1.91 million copies, bringing its total sales number to a ridiculous 47.62 million, including copies sold in hardware bundles.

And that's why there's a sequel.

Source (PDF)

Review: Wii Sports Resort

by David Hinkle { Jul 22nd 2009 at 1:00PM }

Upon my initial skydive into Wii Sports Resort, I expected the game wouldn't wow me much. I'd seen it during various stages of its life and played it many times. Now that I had the final product, I expected it would hold little in the way of surprise.

But as I started unlocking games and playing more, I found myself losing track of time. Many of us know that a great game can just suck you in and you can easily lose hours mining it for all of its glorious, fun riches. Wii Sports Resort was no different for me.

Gallery: Wii Sports Resort

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This Week on the Nintendo Channel: Wii Sports Resort challenges

by David Hinkle { Jul 20th 2009 at 1:30PM }

Nintendo is doing the obvious thing on the Nintendo Channel this week: advertising its games! One game, to be exact -- Wii Sports Resort has taken over the channel in a series of vignettes featuring professionals participating in their respective field in-game. The video above shows a Hollywood stuntman dueling Nintendo's guinea pig in the new sword-fighting minigame, and another features some world class canoeists throwing down in their sport.

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Pediatric journal boasts about benefits of exergaming

by Griffin McElroy { Jul 19th 2009 at 5:30PM }

Kids-focused health journal Pediatrics recently published a study that would shock those who decry the health benefits of exergames. The study, which was performed by researchers from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, measured young people's energy expenditure while at rest, while playing Dance Dance Revolution at two different skill levels, while walking and running on a treadmill and while boxing and bowling on Wii Sports. That sounds like more physical exertion than we go through in a year.

Some of the comparisons between these activities yielded somewhat unsurprising results -- playing the video games burned three times the calories the kids spent at rest, of course. However, the researchers also found that playing these games was a comparable activity to "moderate to intense walking," despite the fact that Wii Sports requires little lower-body movement. It seems that for the first time in recent memory, we've got science on our side. Hooray!

[Via Kotaku]

Nintendo turns Game Crazy stores into Wii Sports Resorts

by JC Fletcher { Jul 16th 2009 at 11:45AM }

If you're looking to try out Wii Sports Resort just a bit early, check out your local Game Crazy next weekend. The retailer will host a sneak preview event for the MotionPlus minigame collection on Saturday, July 25, just one day before the North American launch of the game. From 10am to 8pm that day, Game Crazy visitors will get to try out Resort, and also enter to win one of two $1,500 gift cards "toward a real-life resort vacation."

The following day, Game Crazy will offer an extra 20 percent on games traded in toward the purchase of Resort, which suggests that they do expect people to buy some and not just play it in the store all day Saturday.

Gallery: Wii Sports Resort

Wii Sports Resort's E3 2008 demo completed in three months

by JC Fletcher { Jul 7th 2009 at 8:00PM }

When we first saw Wii Sports Resort last year, all Nintendo had available were three of the game's events: swordplay, power cruising, and Disc Dog. It turns out that those three (quite polished) events are pretty much all that existed at the time. In the latest Iwata Asks interview, the Wii Sports Resort team reveals that they didn't have anything but the idea of maybe doing another sequel until three months before E3 2008. Above, you can see what had been done: a MotionPlus test involving a virtual toy.

As usual, the Iwata Asks interview is full of surprisingly forthright discussion about the inner workings of Nintendo, including the team (and Shigeru Miyamoto) expressing its elation about a MotionPlus delay that allowed for more work on Resort, everyone's relative confusion at Miyamoto's "Wuhu Island" franchise idea, and, best of all, Miyamoto's deceptive methods of team motivation.

At one point, Miyamoto announced in an interview that golf would be in Wii Sports Resort, and that the MotionPlus would allow backswing to control the strength of the swing, instead of just speed -- and the team had to rush to actually put golf in the game afterward. Later, he describes how he faked a directive from Satoru Iwata to add an extra game mode. And apparently a programmer couldn't demonstrate the archery feature for Miyamoto because he was too nervous to aim the bow properly.

Shigeru Miyamoto sounds like kind of a jerk, actually.

Wii Sports Resort sells over 350k copies in four days

by Griffin McElroy { Jun 30th 2009 at 2:45PM }

Well of course it did. The original Wii Sports currently resides in like, four out of every five households on the planet -- why wouldn't the Japanese gaming populous spring to consumer action when the MotionPlus-bundled follow-up landed on store shelves?

Within the first four days of its release, Wii Sports Resort moved 353,827 copies, making it the third-fastest selling Wii title ever -- Mario Kart Wii sold 608,000 copies in a similar time period, while Super Smash Bros. Brawl moved 816,000 copies. Whether the frisbee-throwing, sword-dueling, jetski-riding simulator can come close to the 45 million mark set by its bundled forefather remains to be seen.

[Via Kotaku]