SAN FRANCISCO — Nintendo’s Wii console might not sell as well this year as it did in 2009, executive vice president Cammie Dunaway said Thursday.

Speaking to Wired.com during the company’s media summit at the W hotel in San Francisco, Dunaway said that at this point in the lifecycle of Nintendo’s home console, sales might not continue to climb. “It’s natural that at this point in the lifecycle, going in to our fifth year, that we’re probably not going to sell ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — High-quality Wii games from third parties may be few and far between, but Guilty Party could buck that trend.

Guilty Party, unveiled Wednesday at a Nintendo media briefing, is best thought of as a more complex version of the murder-mystery board game Clue. It’s the first collaboration between Stubbs the Zombie creator Wideload Games and its new corporate overlords at Disney. From all appearances, it’s a match made in heaven: Wideload’s penchant for comedy and family-friendly party games ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — I’m more excited about Super Mario Galaxy 2 than about any other game at Nintendo’s summit. And why shouldn’t I be?

Available in the U.S. this May, Galaxy 2 is the sequel to one of the best games of the past few years. Super Mario Galaxy perfected the 3-D Mario game, with gravity-based gameplay mechanics that spawned tons of unique level designs and surprising styles of play. Galaxy 2 exists because the development team just didn’t stop coming ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — The big star of Nintendo’s press summit is the long-awaited Metroid: Other M.

Nintendo’s science fiction adventure game series is one of the company’s most consistently excellent franchises. Often imitated and never duplicated, it melds fast shooting action with deep exploration that requires you to think and consider your environment.

Metroid: Other M, developed by Ninja Gaiden maker Team Ninja in collaboration with Nintendo, is the next-gen Metroid that everybody figured would happen, before the unexpected debut of the ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Oh, if ever a game were summarized by its title, it would be FlingSmash.

If you play one game from Nintendo this summer, make it Super Mario Galaxy 2; if you play two, the other would be Metroid: Other M. If you play three… Sin and Punishment. But, okay, if you really do need four Wii games in the next four months, then you may consider FlingSmash. Set for release this summer, it’s a MotionPlus-exclusive action game in ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Super Mario Galaxy 2 will bring a wild new world and an old-school videogame feel to Wii on May 23, Nintendo said at its press event here Wednesday.

In the game’s new Spin-Dig Galaxy, players can drill through to the other side of the planet to fight a globe-hopping boss, said Nintendo’s Nate Bihldorff, who promised that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will feature new kinds of platforming and puzzle-solving challenges.

Metroid: Other M, another highly anticipated game, will be ..read the full article

Monster Hunter 3: Tri is one of Capcom’s biggest titles this year and releases on April 6, 2010 in North America (April 30 in Europe).

The publisher is expecting big sales with this latest game in the popular series, and it’s easy to see why from the impressive trailer below, which is almost entirely made up of gameplay footage.

Despite the underpowered nature of the Wii in relation to the Xbox 360 and PS3, Capcom has still managed to pump ..read the full article

Shortages of Nintendo hardware following a record-breaking Christmas helped cause January 2010 videogame sales to drop, say analysts.

The NPD Group reported the U.S. videogame industry sales for January on Thursday. Sales of $1.17 billion were down 13 percent versus January 2009, it said.

“We attribute a portion of the large decline to lackluster sales of Nintendo hardware, which we think were caused by supply shortages,” said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter in a note to investors on Friday. “Nintendo’s monthly ..read the full article

Blaster Master Overdrive is the latest in a line of downloadable revivals of classic games that tweak the originals’ formula with upgraded gameplay.

Like fellow WiiWare games Contra ReBirth and Adventure Island: The Beginning, the new Blaster Master Overdrive, released Monday for WiiWare, isn’t a port of a classic game with a new coat of paint, but a “reimagining.”

Blaster Master, originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, was praised for its seamless integration of both side-scrolling platforming gameplay (in ..read the full article

A survey of 800 videogame developers showed that support for iPhone games is growing, while dedication to the Wii is dropping off.

The Game Developer magazine study released Friday showed major growth in the mobile space, due partly to Apple’s iPhone. 25 percent of all game developers said they were creating content for mobile phones — that’s nearly double last year’s number. Nearly 75 percent of mobile devs supported iPhone, doubling the numbers who stood up to be counted as developers ..read the full article

Nintendo will publish the latest game from the creators of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey on Wii, it said Friday.

The Last Story, which Nintendo calls a “full-scaled RPG,” will be released for Wii this year. It is the next creation of Mistwalker, the role-playing game development studio started in 2004 by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. More information on the game will be available in March, according to the official site.

(Yeah, yeah, I know — it’s not the final fantasy, ..read the full article

It should come as little surprise that last week’s release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was accompanied by a branded Wii fighting stick. It should also come as little surprise that Mad Catz’s Arcade Fightstick is pretty darn good.

Serious fighting game players know they can’t survive with a standard game pad. I am not a serious fighting game player, as well you already know, but I understand the sentiment. Fightsticks that mimic the authentic arcade experience can get pretty expensive and ..read the full article

Monster Hunter 3 will come bundled with Nintendo's Classic Controller Pro.Images courtesy Capcom

Monster Hunter Tri will be bundled with the Classic Controller Pro when it is released in April, Capcom said Monday.

As with the Wii game’s release in Japan last year, consumers will be able to buy it alone for $50 or upgrade to the controller bundle for $60. A black version of the controller will be included with Monster Hunter; black and white controllers will be available separately ..read the full article

Check out the first screenshots from Focus Home Interactive’s upcoming ‘TrackMania Wii’. This racing game will pack more than 200 tracks, a variety of multiplayer modes including online and the ability for players to create and share custom tracks. The game itself will hit Nintendo Wii in the second quarter of 2010. More pictures after the break.

[Joystiq]

For your reading pleasure this long weekend, here are some more tidbits from the NPD Group’s report of December sales data, plus Game|Life’s analysis.

First off, if you haven’t already, go back and read the December 2009 U.S. sales data, which includes hardware sales plus the top 10 games. Then go read Sony’s, Microsoft’s, and Nintendo’s individual spins on the numbers, taking each with several grains of salt.

Then check out games 11-20, released (without absolute sales numbers) by NPD on Friday ..read the full article

Here’s what the big three hardware makers had to say following the release of the U.S. sales report for December 2009.

This Christmas saw Nintendo ride roughshod over the competition, breaking sales records with both Wii and DS. But Sony and Microsoft both had healthy sales in December, and it seems everybody has something to crow about.

I’ll write more analysis tomorrow, but for now, let the spin begin.

First up is Sony, which actually sent this email prior to the release of ..read the full article

Nintendo dominated U.S. videogame sales in December 2009 with record-breaking sales of Nintendo DS and Wii, the NPD Group said Thursday.

Prior to this month, the most units of a single game machine sold in a single month was the DS’ record of 3.04 million in December 2008. Nintendo shattered that record twice this month, moving 3.81 million Wii and 3.31 million DS.

In software sales, Nintendo had four games that sold over one million copies each and one that drew extremely ..read the full article

Yesterday, my copy of Mad Dog McCree: Gunslinger Pack arrived in the mail. I played it for an hour or so, knowing that this would probably be the first and last time that I put the game into my Wii.

Sober, I mean.

I have a good deal of sadly misplaced nostalgic affection for Mad Dog McCree, a clunky, silly Western shooter using live-action video that debuted as an arcade game in 1990. It was one of the first really hot games ..read the full article