TOTAL SOFTWARE BY LABEL (units)

Nintendo - 14.1%
EA Games - 10.1%
Sega - 9.6%
THQ - 4.9%
Activision - 4.5%
Ubisoft - 4.2%
Microsoft - 3.5%
Capcom - 3.4%
EA Sports - 3.4%
Games For Everyone - 2.7%

TOTAL SOFTWARE BY LABEL (value)

Nintendo - 12.7%
EA Games - 11.7%
Sega - 10.7%
Microsoft - 7.0%
Activision - 5.3%
Capcom - 4.9%
EA Sports - 4.2%
THQ - 3.9%
Ubisoft - 3.9%
Norton - 3.1%

More Details HERE 

March 13, 2008 - Two new Pokémon® adventures for Nintendo DS™ are on the way, and Nintendo plans to reward fans for ordering early with guides to help them navigate the games. Starting March 16, fans who place an order for either Pokémon® Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time or Pokémon® Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness will receive a free, limited-edition Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers Guide*. The guide contains an exclusive collection of tips, interviews and an original manga by Ken Sugimori, main art director of Pokémon video games.

In these two new games, players journey through time and darkness as actual Pokémon as they attempt to find out why they’ve been turned into a Pokémon. Their epic quest leads them through countless, randomly generated dungeons, encountering more than 490 Pokémon. Players also have the option to send rescue alerts to their friends via e-mail or mobile text message when they are connected to Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection. These two new Dungeon games give Pokémon fans another excuse to upgrade to Nintendo DS, which also plays all their favorite Game Boy® Advance games in single-player mode.

Pokémon games remain as popular as ever. Last year’s release of Pokémon® Diamond Version and Pokémon® Pearl Version for Nintendo DS sold a combined 4.33 million copies to date in the United States alone.

For more information about Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, please visit Pokemon-Games.com.

Nintendo Press Release

Multiplayer: After the Wii Wheel was announced, how did you decide to pursue making it work for “Speed Racer”? Did you approach Nintendo or did they approach you?Nachbaur: We approached Nintendo. We asked them for a prototype of the wheel and they supplied us with one. We then began to rework our controls to adapt them so that the Wii Wheel worked well.

Multiplayer: How did Nintendo help with adapting the Wii Wheel for the game?

Nachbaur: They provided us with sample Wii Wheels.

Multiplayer: Was there any difficulty in adapting the controls for the Wii Wheel? Did it dramatically alter what you had been doing prior to the Wii Wheel integration?

Continue Reading HERE

Cover
Mario Kart Wii

News
Fatal Frame: The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (Wii, Tecmo/Nintendo)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness (DS, Nintendo)
New International Track & Field (DS, Konami)
Death Jr.: Root of Evil (Wii, Eidos)
Bleach: Dark Souls (DS, Sega)
Bangai-O (DS, Treasure)
SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 (Wii, SNK)
Facebreaker (Wii, EA)
FFCC: My Life As a King (WiiWare, Square Enix)
LostWinds (WiiWare, Frontier)
WiiFit (Wii, Nintendo)

Wii Channels (WiiWare/VC coverage)
Major League Eating (WiiWare)
1080 Snowboarding
Adventures of Lolo 2
Columns III: Revenge of Columns
Lords of Thunder
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Harvest Moon
Operation Wolf

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Come one, come all to a Guitar Hero III jam session for the record books. In celebration of the release of the inaugural Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 on March 11th, Guinness World Records will sponsor a record-setting Guitar Hero event in New York City that will witness the world’s #1 Guitar Hero player establish the record for Single Player High Score. Chris Chike, aka “iamchris4life,” will mesmerize crowds with his flying fingers as he attempts to establish a mind-blowing new high score. Other Guinness World Records that will be attempted include: Six Person Team High Score and Longest Multi-Player Marathon. Also on hand for the record-breaking display and interviews will be Guitar Hero creator, Kai Huang and members of the popular gaming clan, the Frag Dolls. This event is open to the public and if anyone would like the opportunity to challenge Chris Chike for the single player high score, please RSVP by 1:00pm on March 11th. Space is limited and entries will be accepted on a first come, first served basis.

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Iwata - For the last part of this series, I would like to interview the five development staff members involved in the sound, design and planning of Wii Fit. Please start by introducing yourselves.

Minegishi - I’m Toru Minegishi from the Sound Group at EAD’s Software Development Department. I was primarily involved in the background music for Wii Fit. Previously, I was involved in the sound development for the Animal Crossing and Zelda series, and with Twilight Princess1 I worked as main composer2.

Miyagawa - I’m Yohei Miyagawa, also from the Software Development Department. I’m a sound programmer, and for Wii Fit I was in charge of programming the sound effects. My last project was Twilight Princess, for which I mainly produced the sound effects.

Full interview here

This was taken from an interview with Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Brothers Brawl:

IGN: Brawl seems like the perfect game to introduce a Wii headset for voice chat. Why have you avoided this?

Masahiro Sakurai: Well, when I first started making Smash Bros. Brawl, I thought it would be wonderful if online battles between friends had voice chat and potentially keyboard based chat as well. But there are all sorts of rules and regulations regarding communication on the Wii platform and so it was apparent to me that it just wouldn’t come together, we weren’t going to be able to do it, so we decided to cancel that feature. I’m very sorry about that. But if you’re really desperate for it, you could set up Skype by your game station and go at it with a friend if you like.

IGN: We have to ask because there are so many rumors about this. Are there any hidden characters to come? Can you unlock more hidden fighters by way of WiiConnect24 or will you offer new downloadable content — new fighters, for example. — using the service?

Masahiro Sakurai: No. There are no characters that can be unlocked via connecting to WiiConnect24 or interacting in that fashion. And I may be mistaken here, but the Wii doesn’t have a hard drive — it’s a disc-based system — so I don’t think we’ll be doing that, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

IGN: Have you done everything you can do with the Smash Bros. franchise now? In other words, can Wii owners look forward to a Brawl sequel in the future?

Masahiro Sakurai: Well, the series has already had three iterations so I cannot say with one-hundred percent confidence that there won’t be any additional Smash Bros. games ever. But, at the same time I’d really like to note that I feel like with Brawl there are already so many modes and so much to do that it’s really hard to exhaust what you can do with this game. I’m really against the idea of merely creating a sequel that would add modes or increase the number of characters in the roster — all the sort of things that just simply fatten up the game. I’d like to avoid just doing that if a sequel ever came out.

IGN: We think one of the obvious next steps for Smash Bros. is a Nintendo DS game. The fighter seems perfectly suited to the handheld. What’re your thoughts about such a project?

Masahiro Sakurai: Seeing the success that Brawl has had with the Wii remote being playing sideways, I don’t think that there are control limitations that keep it from being ported to the DS. But I personally have no plans to do this myself. If, in the future, such a thing was to be planned, it would be up to Nintendo to decide how and when and in what way they would like to create that sort of game.

This is just part of the interview. You can check more at the link.

Link

IGN: We think one of the obvious next steps for Smash Bros. is a Nintendo DS game. The fighter seems perfectly suited to the handheld. What’re your thoughts about such a project?

Masahiro Sakurai: Seeing the success that Brawl has had with the Wii remote being playing sideways, I don’t think that there are control limitations that keep it from being ported to the DS. But I personally have no plans to do this myself. If, in the future, such a thing was to be planned, it would be up to Nintendo to decide how and when and in what way they would like to create that sort of game.

This is the burning question on a lot of people’s minds: “When is Smash Bros. coming to the DS? or a future Nintendo portable?” I hope that question is answered sooner rather than later, much sooner.

Full interview here

IGN: What specific Wii functionality will creators have access to when making a Wii Ware game? Can they save to SD? Can they do online? Wii Connect 24? Is it like a smaller (but full) Wii product, or is it standalone?

Prata: The Wii Ware developers will have access to the same functionality as they would a regular Wii disc game. The specifics you mentioned such as SD and online, Wii Connect 24, and episodic content is all there. They key point I want to stress though is that it isn’t required. Sometimes you make a game and it’s best expressed as a single player game or multiplayer game, and the advantage here is that we’re leaving it to the creators to focus their resources on the areas that best express their ideas. We won’t force their hand into functions or features that may or may not add value to the consumer.

I’m hoping for big things from Wii Ware this summer.  I want lots of cool, unique games that really take advantage of what the Wii has to offer.  What games are you looking forward to on Wii Ware, or new types of games you would like to see for the service?

Full interview here