I’m excited about the Nintendo Wii, despite the silly name. Especially since Sony has delayed the release of the PS3 in Australia til March next year (which is probably when I would’ve bought it anyway if it had stuck with the November schedule, what with saving up $1000 and letting bugs be ironed out first).

The release dates and prices for both the US and Japan were officially released today. Here’s the lowdown:

America

• US$250
• November 19th, 2006
• 25 titles on release day

Japan

• 25,000 yen
• December 12th, 2006 (yes, America gets Wii before Japan!)
• 16 titles on release day

Good grief but America seems to have grabbed Nintendo’s sympathies. Perhaps they just felt sorry for them, what with PS3 taking so long to come out and costing so much. Nevermind the Xbox 360 piece-o-crap.

In other Wii news, the official website wii.com is live but only with Japanese information at the moment.

Links:
Kotaku (and again and again)

I…think I’ll let this one speak for itself.

Just yesterday IGN Revolution launched with technical details on Nintendo’s next-generation console, codenamed Revolution. And today more development sources have come forward with both clarification and even more tech specs. The latest news begins to paint a clearer picture of Nintendo’s aim with its next platform.

We cannot stress this enough: Revolution is not being positioned as a competitor to either Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Nintendo has instead chosen to design a console that will be very affordable for consumers. For that very reason, say developers in the know, the Big N has opted out of filling the system with a massive supply of expensive RAM.

Read the full article here!

Source: IGN

IGN have posted a screener movie of the very cool Nintendo Revolution teaser. If your first glance at the pad didn’t convince you, you will have to admit that you smiled more than once while watching this video, thinking about the games these people were playing and how you actually wanted to play them too…Watch the video here (Quicktime movie)
(Be patient, the file weighs 16MB.)

(By the way, there are plenty more cool Japanese ads in the Japanese Commercials section.)

(Shameless self-promo: get your cheap domain names at Z-Names.com)

IGN has been fortunate enough to experience the new controller hands-on at a special session of Nintendo executives, yesterday in Tokyo. And it’s been revealed to be the most unique pointing device I’ve ever seen in a video game, at least.

What kind of gameplay the new controller will yield, particularly among gamers as set in their ways as some of us are, is yet to be seen.

For months, years even, we’ve been hearing Nintendo reiterate that it does not want to be part of the same battle that Sony and Microsoft are deeply entrenched in. However, with a system like GameCube, the comparisons are inevitable. With Revolution and its one-of-a-kind approach to the controller, drawing these parallels just became a lot more difficult. This was an important message from Nintendo in our meeting. It wants to explore uncharted waters, be a blue ocean company, and not find itself sailing the bloody waters where the competition resides.

I wonder if you can turn it sideways and use it like a NES controller.

Read the article!

It’s in the Nikkei so it’s news: first Sony Dips Into the Red, then Nintendo Logs Two-Digit Decline in Sales and Income.

Regarding Sony’s results for the 1Q of 2005, in short they are in the red, apparently because they didn’t sell enough TVs and MemorySticks. The good news is that the game segment is up 64% compared to last year, but they are still losing even more money than last year in that department too. Sony says this is due to an increase in the advertisement and R&D expenses.

Nintendo’s 2005 Q1 is not that good either, actually it dropped 14% compared to the figures last year. Sales of the Nintendo DS exceeded 1.38 million units during this period, but it’s still much lower than the 5.27 million units of the first four months. But they are still hopeful, and apparently Nintendogs is selling well. Sales of the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube dropped 60% too. Nintendo says they are not too worried because the Holiday season should balance it all nicely.

Buy more!!

1UP.com has this cool feature on videogames emulators by Nich Maragos, titled “Afterlife“, which is an interesting read if you’re into video games.

What looks like a game system, plays like a game system, and yet isn’t a game system? The answer is an emulator, which is a means to make one piece of consumer electronics behave like another. Whether they’re hardware add-ons or clever pieces of coding, emulators have been a part of videogames almost as long as the medium itself — but they’re decidedly the black sheep of the gaming family, for a variety of legal and ethical reasons. (More…)

(Always via Waxy)

Joystiq talks about an article in Famitsu magazine about how downloading classic Nintendo games onto your Revolution will not be free. Is that surprising? I mean, what did they expect? Sure it would be “nice”, but it would also be VERY strange.

Anyway, they report that Nintendo “explicitly stated the fact, but added that some games might be available for free download as a bonus for purchasing a Revolution title or through special promotions.” Yeah? Universal has also explicitely stated that from now on they will not give away music for free even if it is 10 years old, and I called Porsche and they confirmed me that I cannot have a free 1953 light grey model either. Where did that rumor came from anyway?

Sock Master has published a game console controller family tree (in other words, a visual history of console joysticks and gamepads) with family relations, pictures, and comments.
If you remember your first Atari or if your first console was a PS2, anyway you should go get inspired…

Via Waxy

Everyone was waiting on Nintendo’s answer to the Xbox 360 and the PS3. The wait is over: Joystiq just covered live the Nintendo Revolution E3 presentation, and 1up.com has nice big pics and a few insights too.