Big news in the Japanese hardware charts this week - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 not only shifted more units than Sony’s HD rival, but also managed to outsell Wii, and by quite some margin to boot.
For the week ending 22nd February, the 360 topped home console sales with 21,013, more than four thousand ahead of Wii on 16,900. Meanwhile, Sony is snapping hard on Nintendo’s heels with 15,967 PS3s sold for the week (these figures taken from CVG.com).
The software charts make the reason for the 360 spike obvious - Square-Enix role-player Star Ocean: The Last Hope, sold a whopping 162,000 copies, easily beating last week’s chart topper, Mario and Luigi RPG 3, into second place, the latter suffering a large drop in sales to 62,000 units on its second week of release.
The other big success was the PSP, with poptastic starlet-grooming franchise Idolmaster greedily hogging three chart positions, with the Perfect Sun, Missing Moon and Wandering Star variations snaffling third, fourth and fifth place respectively. Shining Force Feather kept the DS’s end up, taking sixth spot with 30,000 copies sold.
No surprise that the return of one of gaming’s best-known franchises toppled Wii Fit from the all-formats chart, with the magisterial Street Fighter IV dragon-punching its way to the summit. Nintendo’s phenomenally successful non-game only dropped to second spot, despite fierce competition from the nerd-tastic Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II on PC. Mario Kart, Wii Play and Layton all suffered small drops, while Mystery Case Files: Millionheir plummeted from third spot to number 26 - presumably stock shortages costing it dear.
There was better news for House of the Dead: Overkill, which hung onto the number 15 position in the all-formats chart, rising one place to ninth in the single-format rundown - presumably strong word of mouth helped its second week sales - let’s hope it hangs in there for a while longer to prove that hardcore content can sell on Wii.
Elsewhere, Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City enjoyed a small resurgence in the lower reaches of the forty, but besides that, it was a fairly slow week for Nintendo news.
Or, to give it its full, correct, slightly clumsy title, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. It’s been confirmed today, and there’s a teaser trailer above, which I’m sure you’ve already spotted.
As you might think from the inclusion of snowboarding, the Wii balance board will be supported, though unfortunately there’s no online play on the home console version. The press release doesn’t make it explicit, but Wi-Fi could be possible on the DS game.
It’s being developed by Sega Japan, under the watchful eye of Shigeru Miyamoto (I imagine Shigsy just saying “yeah, ’s alright” every couple of months when he’s shown a new build; I’m not convinced he’s that heavily involved) and the game will feature new faces to the series - yes! - to be revealed later in the year - boo!
Again, the initial announcement is shy on event revelations, simply naming alpine skiing and speed skating as among the disciplines. Once again, more events will be drip-fed to us greedy info-gobblers throughout the course of the year.
And that’s about it, really - I quite liked Mario & Sonic as a waggle-riffic multiplayer timewaster, and hopefully the sequel, with its balance board shenanigans, will be even better. It’ll sell millions, of course and after Sega’s recent losses, it needs a banker like this one.
Oh dear. Early reports are suggesting that gorgeous adventure Another Code: R has sold very poorly in Japan. The talky adventure sold a paltry 10,000 copies according to data from Famitsu. Meanwhile, Wii’s fortunes seem to have taken a turn for the worse, too - the console struggling to 21,000 units in the week ending 8th February, outselling PS3 by just 5,000 units.
It seems that home consoles in general are struggling, but Wii has always bucked that particular trend and it must be worrying for Nintendo to see that PS3 is starting to catch up. You could argue that Nintendo hasn’t released any brand new first-party titles since the disappointing Animal Crossing - the Wii de Asobu range barely having any noticeable effect on hardware sales - but it’s sad to see games like Another Code: R perform so poorly. Perhaps that kind of adventure is better suited to DS, but whichever way you slice it, 10,000 sales for a new first-party title is pretty bad.
My import copy of Another Code: R arrives tomorrow, and I’ll bring you some brief impressions of the game’s early stages shortly afterwards. In the meantime just keep your fingers crossed that this doesn’t affect its chances of reaching Europe, though surely the localisation effort is at the stage where it wouldn’t make sense to abandon the project.
According to a ’secret source’ of Eurogamer’s, yes. Seems everyone’s got snow on the brain at the moment, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out why this particular rematch is happening - the sporting waggle-fest being GAME’s third biggest-selling title in the UK during 2008, with the game shifting more than five million units in total during its first three months on sale alone.
For my money, this could potentially be a much better game than the already decent original, with several winter sports seemingly well-suited to the Wii controllers, particularly if there are any balance board-compatible events. Wii Fit proved how well snowboarding and skiing could work, and I can picture Sonic zipping down a tilt-based bobsleigh run, or even hurtling downhill on the luge. And pointer-controlled shooting would be just fine for the biathlon.
The Winter Olympics are never quite as popular as the ‘proper’ summer ones, so there’s a chance that the potential audience for this is lower than for the first, but those casual gamers who lapped up the first game are more likely to purchase a game if they know what they’re getting, so this will still likely pull in big numbers for Sega again. And if that helps fund a Yakuza 3 localisation (yes, I realise that’s not a Wii or DS game, but c’mon - it’s Yakuza) that can only be a good thing.
Sega isn’t commenting at the moment - it’s early days for a Winter Olympics game, let’s face it - but I’d expect to hear confirmation around E3 time if not before. Watch this space.
Famitsu’s sales figures for the entirety of last year have been unveiled - and while it’s good news for Nintendo in a lot of ways (the DS having 47 titles in the top 100 and nine of the top ten coming on Nintendo consoles), the big N will undoubtedly be a little disappointed that it hasn’t managed to top the charts.
Capcom’s portable phenomenon Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G - undoubtedly partly responsible for the PSP’s continued success in Japan - nabbed the number one slot, with nearly two-and-a-half million copies sold. Pokemon Platinum (pictured above) was runner-up with Wii Fit in third and Mario Kart Wii in fourth, both selling over two million units.
Brawl is fifth, and the surprise smash of the year, Rhythm Tengoku Gold, is a triumphant sixth. The rest of the top ten can be seen below, but if you want the full list (interesting fact: Brain Training was only the 94th best-seller in Japan last year) then you’ll want to click here.
01. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (Capcom) 2,452,111
02. [NDS] Pokemon Platinum (Pokemon) 2,187,337
03. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 2,149,131 / 2,967,297
04. [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) 2,003,315
05. [WII] Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Nintendo) 1,747,113
06. [NDS] Rhythm Heaven (Nintendo) 1,350,671
07. [NDS] Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (Square Enix) 1,176,082
08. [WII] Animal Crossing: City Folk (Nintendo) 895,302
09. [NDS] Kirby Super Star Ultra (Nintendo) 855,427
10. [WII] Wii Sports (Nintendo) 841,736 / 3,306,470
Industry predict-a-tron Michael Pachter is getting his rough estimates in early this month. Speaking to VG247.com ahead of his ‘official’ sales estimates in a week’s time, he suggested that Nintendo would be celebrating another incredible month for Wii, with sales up 100%, making for a staggering 3 million consoles sold during the month of December.
By comparison, Pachter surmised that the Xbox 360 sold less than half that amount, at around 1.2-1.3 million consoles, with Sony’s PS3 limping home with a comparatively measly but not-all-that-bad-when-you-think-about-it 700,000. Crikey.
Once again, gaming laughs in the face of impending economic doom. But here’s another prediction: 2009’s likely to be a bit trickier - even for Nintendo.
In other not-really-related news (but it’s too small to have its own story, and I needed a pic for this piece that wasn’t just a shot of Pachter), Another Code R’s release has been delayed by a couple of weeks in Japan, according to this here post on Nintendo of Japan’s site. You can have that one for nowt, folks.
Back in 1987 a publisher named Rainbow Arts released a game for home computers which bore more than a slight resemblance to Super Mario Bros. The Great Giana Sisters (do you see what they did there?) was obviously an attempt to introduce computer users to the traditionally console-based platforming genre, but owing to its similarity to Super Mario Bros., Nintendo’s legal arm got involved and Rainbow Arts was forced to withdraw the game from shops. This actually helped it to achieve something of a cult status, and original copies of the game are still highly sought after by collectors.
Over twenty years on, and in a somewhat ironic twist, a Nintendo console is set to play host to a remake of The Great Giana Sisters, with publisher DTP releasing a brand new version in June of next year. This new version will feature 80 levels, and retain the simple gameplay of the original while adding a few DS-exclusive features (the press release mentions both microphone and stylus use). It seems strange that Nintendo is allowing this - perhaps it’s become a bit more relaxed over the years, or DTP is hoping to shunt the game out on the quiet in the hope that no-one notices while they make a quick buck - but if you’re after a bit of old-school platforming action, then this might just do the trick. If it ever gets released, that is.
No real surprise there, then. Except for the fact that Nintendo hasn’t had any really major software releases, and it’s still pulling in figures of 600,000 - that’s twice the 360’s estimated total of 300,000, and more than three times PS3’s paltry sum of 175,000 consoles shifted. It’ll be interesting to see whether the recent price-cuts and the spate of quality upcoming software can make the HD consoles challenge a little harder over the winter months, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high if I was Microsoft, and particularly Sony, which seems to be increasingly fighting a losing battle in the US.
It’s really quite astonishing - Nintendo started this generation firmly in third place. It released a console that can’t compete with its rivals from a purely technical standpoint. It took a massive gamble with Wii, and it’s clearly paid off. The novelty factor hasn’t worn off, the viral nature of Wii’s success doesn’t seem to be just a flash in the pan, either. And even the increased uptake of HD televisions has barely had an effect on sales.
The 360 now has value on its side, but I wonder if the console’s reliability (or lack thereof - my debug model went and died on me today, right at the end of Fable II) is affecting its chances in a bigger way than Microsoft realises. The coming months will tell its own story, but for now at least, Nintendo remains firmly on top. Expect official figures very soon, but Pachter’s not going to be too far off the mark.
While Geometry Wars made a very welcome transition from Microsoft’s download service to Wii - the terrific Galaxies expanding the initial 2D shooter into something more fully-formed and beautifully controlled - it may well have sparked a trend for more casual titles to make the leap to a more appropriate haven. In this case, the faintly underwhelming Geon: Emotions will be arriving in February courtesy of Pinnacle Software and original developer Strawdog Studios.
I first played Geon on the same day I had a hands-on preview of Kane & Lynch, and while there was little to choose between them, that probably says more about the quality of the latter than anything about the former. It’s a reasonable diversion - ideal for a cheap download, but I’m doubtful there’s enough in there to warrant a £30-plus asking price. Perhaps Pinnacle will see sense and launch it at twenty quid, which would probably still feel a bit steep.
In its defence, Geonwill now contain 16 new ‘Duel’ mode grids, new offensive and defensive manoeuvres, a better tutorial, four player split-screen play and some motion-controlled ‘jumpbash’ moves. And it looks remarkably faithful to its hi-def inspiration, with its colourful arenas likely to appeal to Wii’s substantial casual gamer audience. Hopefully, these tweaks can make an average game more interesting and accessible - whether that’s enough to warrant bumping up to a boxed release remains to be seen.
 
 
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