Japan

Wii VC Sales in Decline, But Not by Much

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Nintendo of Japan recently held a press conference where they detailed a whole mess of… crap. One of the bigger chunks of news to come out of the conference was the sales figures for the Wii’s Virtual Console service.

In the first two months of the service’s life, 1.5 million games were downloaded. In the last three, only 1.8 million were downloaded. If we extrapolate this info, we can see that the VC’s sales are starting to decline. It’s not by a huge amount, but it is enough to warrant a dissection on the situation.

So why did it start to decline? Well, we have a few reasons why. First, the lucky gamers that had a Wii in the first two months were most likely hardcore gamers, and would gladly pay for a Nintendo game that they had already purchased nine times before, including myself. →  All this can be yours, if the read is right.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 4.27.07

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Ken Kuraragi finally falls on his sword
I have called for Ken’s resignation many times, but like a president bombarded by calls to fire a cronie, end a war, step down, or learn to read Kutaragi has ignored me entirely. That is until yesterday. Ken has finally listened to my sharp criticism and based a life altering decision on it…or has he?

“And God said unto me, ‘Make thy console large, make it powerful, but above all else hold unto this truth: Make thy console expensive.'”

The Japanese, unlike Americans, have a thing they like to call sushi. This raw fish (California rolls don’t count, hippy) is symbolic of another concept we Americans lack – honor. For you see, in ancient Japan the sushi roller guy was thought to be the embodiment of the fisherman’s god, Zeus. →  All the lonely gamers, where do they all come from?

PS3 Gets Boatload of PS1 Titles…in Japan

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Through their newest 1.70 firmware update for the PS3, Sony has bestowed upon the Japanese buying public a cornucopia (25 to be exact) of PS1 titles for purchase through the Playstation Store. This will also mark the very first time that PS1 titles are playable on the PS3. Before today, they were only playable on the PSP, which makes absolutely no sense.
Blocky characters in 1080p: totally worth $600.

And sadly, not all of the titles that are being released tomorrow are playable on the PS3. You can check out the complete list at PSPFanboy.

Now, although this is only for Japan, it does seem that Sony is at least somewhat trying to do what Nintendo has been doing with their Virtual Console Mondays. Nintendo has been on the ball ever since the service started a week after the Wii’s launch, and after seeing how much profit they stand to gain from doing nothing releasing their old wares, Sony has decided it’s their turn to milk their customers of their hard-earned money. →  Words are the towns and cities of letters.

Square Enix announces FF remakes for PSP

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Recently, Square Enix (hereafter referred to as Squeenix) announced and released (in Japan) remade versions of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 for PSP. Unlike their previous remakes of the two games for PSX and GBA, these games would be sold separately at $35 apiece, but with still more features and extras. Although it remains yet to be seen whether they will fix the atrocious leveling system in Final Fantasy 2 that carried over to the “Origins” remake, I have some doubts as to whether these remakes will be good enough on their own to merit buying the same game for the third (fourth?) time, even for the hardcore fan.

The question now is whether Squeenix is stepping over a line in remaking the same two games for the third time in two console generations. →  We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we play.

Xbox 360 loses a few exclusives / PS3 gains Chopin

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Namco’s Chopin themed RPG Trusty Bell and SCi’s almost biblical Kain & Lynch, both once 360 exclusives, are now coming to the PS3 as well. Sony naysayers (me) are now faced with acknowledging neither console is safe from losing exclusive titles. Third party publishers seem unsatisfied with their platform choices. The 360 failed to dominate the market during its year lead and is currently being outsold by the GBA in Japan and the PS3 is catching on slower than most anticipated, likely due to it being positioned as a meal at a fine restaurant in the back of a Mercedes that is for everyone. Publishers could go to Nintendo, but then their triple A games look like shit and are stuck on one platform, whereas a game developed on either of the other two could be easily ported. →  Read me now, believe me later.

Virtual Console Previews/Reviews – Week of April 16th

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Wii Virtual Console:
Glass Joe, you were so misunderstood.

Punch Out!! (NES): Not Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, but I actually liked this one better anyway. Quite possibly my favorite NES game of all time. At 500 points, this is a complete no-brainer. Go get this … now. Japan has had this on the VC for about a month and a half now, I wonder what the hold up was? We have it now so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Virtua Fighter 2 (Sega Genesis): The reason I purchased the infamous 32X for the Genesis was for Virtua Fighter 3D and it was well worth the money (at the time). This, sadly, is not the 32X version but the pseudo-3D version for the Genesis. Still fun, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it. →  Zone of the Readers: The 2nd Reader

Shenmue 3 would rock your Wii

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Shenmue failed for a number of reasons. I’d argue it was too awesome for normal people, but others insist it was slow-going, chock full of stupid “That day it rained…” plot, and ultimately boring. The Shenmue games also cost huge amounts of money to develop – many reports approximated a cost of $20 million (Wikipedia simultaneously claims $20 and $70 million) and the first game in the series was supposedly entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most expensive game that had been yet been produced.

Sega would presumably allow development of Shenmue 3 if it weren’t such a huge risk. A costly game that sells poorly is never an attractive prospect to accountants. Deciding the MMO format may make them a profit, Sega has dashed hopes of Shenmue 3. →  Read Read Revolution: Disney Channel Edition

Console Predictions from a Gamer

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After what felt like three bajillion years (which seemed to be filled with pointless bickering), all three systems are finally out on the market, waiting for whomever wants to jump into the next-generation console war. The last few months have been a very telling period for gaming, with the PS3 not performing as well as some would hope, and Nintendo’s new console coming completely out of nowhere with some amazing numbers, especially considering it’s coming off the heels of possibly the worst performing Nintendo console ever, the GameCube. With that in mind, we can get into the nitty gritty: the future. What’s in store for each player in the console war? We can’t say for sure exactly, but we can have fun predicting.

Xbox 360: In a startling revelation that I’ve found while roaming this clogged series of tubes, many people who were on the fence about the 360 went straight for it the moment the PS3 stumbled coming out of the gate last November. →  Do a barrel read!

Wii Shortages Will Continue

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Next-Gen has reported through an interview with Nintendo of America’s Perrin Kaplan that it may be awhile before the Wii Shortage of ’07 ends. Perrin stated that they are at maximum capacity right now in terms of manufacturing the system, but the demand for the system is still at a fever-pitch, making it very hard to keep an amble supply on store shelves. The Internet community has known about this situation for some time now, but it’s surprising to see that even Nintendo themselves can’t predict when the shortage will come to an end.

But let’s think about this for a second. Even though the Wii is doing gangbusters right now, you can’t call it a complete success when the demand for it far exceeds supply. It isn’t good to have virtually no stock of your product on store shelves when everyone and their grandma wants one. →  You’re tearing me apart lamers!

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 4.8.07

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Resident Evil games coming to Wii
Capcom loves to remake and rerelease Resident Evils. Resident Evil 1 was released first on the PS1, then the Saturn, and PC, then the director’s cut came out on the PS1. This was followed by the remake for Gamecube and the slightly modified Deadly Silence version for the DS. Somewhere in there a mobile phone game was released, but at least Capcom had the sense to scrap a GBC version. Some PS1 games don’t look good on an NES — who knew?

Good news for people who have only played this game eight times — the Umbrella Chronicles game coming to the Wii looks very much like a recreation of the first game (with some of the second thrown in to placate whiners like me). →  God of War: Readnarok