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NINTENDO NEWS: POKÉMON HOTTER THAN EVER

April 26, 2007

One of the video game industry's most celebrated franchises is officially hotter than ever. Within just five days of availability, more than 1 million copies of Pokémon® Diamond and Pokémon Pearl for the portable Nintendo DS™ have sold in the United States since Sunday's launch; a faster rate than any previous Pokémon games since the franchise's U.S. introduction, almost a decade ago. To date, more than 155 million copies of Pokémon games have sold worldwide.

Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl are poised to become two of the top-selling games of 2007 in the United States. More than one half million people pre-ordered the games before launch. Additionally, thousands of people attended the kickoff launch event in New York, and demand for the games continues to be off the charts. These latest versions of Pokémon games were introduced in Japan on Sept. 28, 2006, and have already been purchased by more than 5 million video gamers there.

The two games include a number of features that make them particularly attractive to gamers, including:

* More than 100 new Pokémon.
* A 3-D look that makes Pokémon jump off the screen.
* Worldwide wireless battling and trading using Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection.
* Voice chat functions that let players talk wirelessly with their friends.

Later this year, these two titles will also help expand the Pokémon universe for the first time to Wii™, Nintendo's new home video game system. Diamond and Pearl owners will be able to use their DS hardware units as controllers for Pokémon Battle Revolution (launching June 25), the first Pokémon game available for Wii. Players also will be able to export characters to the Wii game.

Source: Nintendo

NINTENDO POSTS RECORD YEAR ON STRONG NINTENDO DS SALES, BREAKTHROUGH RECEPTION FOR WII

April 26, 2007

Nintendo Co., Ltd., today reported final consolidated fiscal year revenues of 966.5 billion yen and operating profits of 226.0 billion yen for the year ending March 31, 2007, an increase of 90 percent and 150 percent, respectively, over the same period one year ago. Both numbers are record highs for the company.

The results are due largely to full-year sales of more than 23 million portable Nintendo DS™ systems globally, along with 123 million Nintendo DS games. Since introduction, the Nintendo DS has now eclipsed lifetime sales of 40 million systems.

In addition, in less than five months since introduction, the company sold 5.84 million of its new Wii™ home video game systems globally, virtually every one snapped up immediately by consumers, along with nearly 29 million Wii games. Wii has taken a step toward becoming a cultural phenomenon, appealing widely to both avid and previously disinterested game-playing audiences.

For the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2007, Nintendo projects sales of 14 million Wii systems and 55 million games worldwide. The company projects sales of 22 million Nintendo DS hardware unit sales and 130 million software units sales. Nintendo forecasts consolidated sales increasing nearly 18 percent to 1.14 trillion yen, and operating profits growing nearly 20 percent to 270 billion yen.

All financial projections are based on an anticipated ratio of 115 yen to the U.S. dollar, and 150 yen to the euro. Using this estimate, recurring and net profits for the year are projected to be flat in anticipation of a foreign currency reevaluation loss.

Source: Nintendo

Shigeru Miyamoto has been nominated for TIME's 100 list of most influential people.

Currently as I write this Miyamoto is in second place behind Stephen Colbert.

SHIGERU MIYAMOTO

AGE: 54
OCCUPATION: Game Designer for Nintendo game systems
NUMBER OF TIME COVERS: 0
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 0

PRO: Most successful game designer, creator of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda, whose new platform, the Wii, is currently the top-selling game console.

CON: His perfectionist tendencies often result in games being significantly delayed and, despite the Wii's gameplay innovation, its graphics are far behind the competition.

Make your voice heard and vote now.

Source: TIME

Looks like another wave of the Pokémon craze is coming our way.

NINTENDO ADVISES POKÉMON FANS: PRE-ORDERS TOP 500,000

April 18, 2007

Pre-orders for the upcoming Pokémon® Diamond and Pokémon® Pearl video games for the portable Nintendo DS™ have topped one half million in the United States, and Nintendo is advising fans to brace themselves for the next wave of Poké-mania. Based on the huge pre-sales for Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, Nintendo expects them to be among the top-selling games for all of 2007.

With four days to go until they arrive, more than 533,000 pre-orders have been taken for Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl. Already these games have more than doubled the pre-sale numbers of Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen, which launched in 2004. Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen went on to sell more than 3.4 million combined in North America.

Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl have consistently ranked among the top-selling video game products on Amazon.com, and there are still four days until launch.

Pokémon became a nationwide hit the instant it arrived in the United States in 1998. Now a new wave of Pokémon excitement is on its way, complete with more than 100 new Pokémon characters, the ability for players to battle wirelessly on Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection and voice-chat abilities, which act like a cell phone but with connection among friends only.

The Official Nintendo Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Player's Guide also will be available at retail on April 22. For more information about the games, visit www.Pokemon-Games.com

Source: Nintendo

Nintendo press release:

NINTENDO APPLAUDS U.S. GOVERNMENT'S STRONG POSITION AGAINST PIRACY IN CHINA

Nintendo Urges: 'Progress Must Be Made'

REDMOND, Wash., April 10, 2007 - Nintendo of America Inc. today announced its strong support of the U.S. Trade Representative seeking formal consultations with China regarding its failure to meet World Trade Organization obligations concerning intellectual property protection and enforcement in China. As part of its uncompromising campaign against international piracy, Nintendo continues to be an outspoken supporter of the U.S. government, given that more than 7.7 million counterfeit video game products from more than 300 Chinese factories and retailers have been seized during the past four years.

Despite aggressive efforts for the past decade, China has built itself to be the leading production site and exporter for counterfeit Nintendo video game products, and has the largest domestic consumption. Despite the millions of counterfeit Nintendo products seized from retailers and manufacturing plants in China through the years, there has only been one criminal prosecution. Numerous factories, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were seized, escaped with only trivial fines or no penalty at all. And often these production sites continue to operate after products are seized. In order to avoid punishment, many counterfeiters are sophisticated and keep stock levels below the criminal thresholds and avoid keeping sales records.

Each year Nintendo participates in the Special 301 process - the annual process by which the U.S. Trade Representative solicits views from the industry and makes judgments about the adequacy of intellectual property laws and enforcement in foreign countries. This year, Nintendo provided evidence to the U.S. Trade Representative regarding piracy in China, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay. The piracy not only affects Nintendo, but also more than 100 other companies who independently create, license, market and sell Nintendo products. In 2006, the estimated loss due to piracy was $762 million.

"Nintendo will continue to work with the U.S. government while aggressively pursuing counterfeit Nintendo products in China," says Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "We're pleased the U.S. government is pushing China to comply with its trade commitments in an effort to protect the lifeblood of the copyright and trademark industries."

Source: Nintendo

NINTENDO AND TELSTRA JOIN FORCES TO BRING FREE WI-FI ACCESS TO NINTENDO DS USERS
THERE'S ALWAYS SOMEONE READY TO PLAY - NOW YOU CAN PLAY IN HUNDREDS OF TELSTRA WIRELESS HOTSPOT DESTINATIONS AUSTRALIA-WIDE

Australia, Melbourne, April 4th 2007 - Nintendo Australia, in conjunction with Telstra, is pleased to announce that Nintendo DS users can now enjoy Wi-Fi service to Nintendo DS at over 1,000 Telstra Wireless Hotspot destinations across Australia. Destinations include McDonald's Restaurants, Starbucks Cafes, airports, hotels and city hotzones throughout Melbourne and Sydney. Through the agreement with Telstra, Nintendo will offer complimentary access to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, the wireless gaming service that millions of Nintendo fans around the globe have been connecting to and playing online.

Click here for a list of available Telstra Wireless Hotspot locations...

"This agreement with Telstra will bring countless people together to play games in a single, simultaneous wireless community," says Rose Lappin, Director of Sales and Marketing, Nintendo Australia. "Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is simple to use. Beginning with free access at participating destinations, we have removed one of the major barriers that have kept people from going online to play games."

Telstra's Director of Internet Products, Craig Turner said Nintendo DS users will enjoy seamless connection to Telstra's Wireless Hotspot network.

"This is an Australian first and is all about providing convenience through innovation, ensuring Nintendo DS users are automatically authenticated onto the Telstra Wireless Hotspot network whenever they enter a coverage zone."

"Telstra is delighted to be working with Nintendo as it demonstrates the flexibility of our network and its ability to support the increasing array of Wi-Fi enabled consumer devices. It also introduces a completely new consumer audience to Australia's largest wireless hotspot network that until recently has predominantly attracted corporate users." Mr Turner said.

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection creates a welcome, inviting community where gamers of all kinds can log on wirelessly and begin playing favourite games like Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Metroid Prime Hunters, Starfox Command, Club House Games, Tenchu Dark Secret and Activision's Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. More new titles will continued to be added to the range of games that can be played via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

When a user brings a Nintendo DS unit and a Wi-Fi-enabled game into a Telstra Wireless Hotspot destination, the user simply launches the game in Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection mode. No setup is required.

From home, if the user already has a Wi-Fi network, the Nintendo DS unit will connect directly to it with minimal setup procedures. Those who have a high-speed Internet connection such as cable or DSL, but no wireless network, can use the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector, which will plug into the USB port of a PC running Windows XP to create a wireless access point to connect a DS to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Detailed information about Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, as well as a list of participating Telstra hotspots, will be available soon at www.NintendoWiFi.com.au .

Current downloadable demos incude Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, Big Brain Academy, Clubhouse Games, Mario vs Donkey Komg 2: March of the Mini's, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Elite Beat Agents.

Source: Nintendo Australia

Shigeru Miyamoto spoke to Newsweek about third party developers and how they often find it difficult to compete against Nintendo's own in-house developed games.

Miyamoto:

I can see how it may seem like that's the case. People have said the same thing in Japan in terms of the sales of the third party games. Obviously one thing that Nintendo does, and we continue to try to do, is to create new interfaces. That's going to give third party developers the opportunity to come up with new ideas, and we think that there's going to be a great number of opportunities for people to do that with Wii. And with those new ideas, there's going to be the chance to really break out.

We're already seeing examples of this in Japan with Nintendo DS. One good example--it's obviously a very different style of interactive game--is a piece of kanji assessment software. You write kanji on the touchscreen, and it tests how much kanji you know. It was a very small developer that made this game, and they only spent a few months on it; I don't even think they spent even a year. I don't know the exact numbers, but that alone has sold nearly 600,000 copies, or somewhere thereabouts. So we're already seeing chances like this for people who have unique ideas that can only be achieved on that particular platform having great success.

Partially, I think that once third parties are able to look at these examples, take their great technical know-how, and combine that with some ideas that they have about how to achieve new ideas that can only be achieved on that particular piece of hardware, then I think they're going to have the chance to really see some great success. But ultimately, it depends not so much on trying to add new elements to existing games; it really depends on the posture of the creators and the managers of those third parties to encourage them to take some risks and come up with some new and unique ideas.

Sega put together a unique interface with the DS using a card reader for a product that they've been selling for some time in the game centers. It's called Love and Berry. There are these little dolls, and there's these cards for the dolls, and you pass them through the card reader to interact with them on the DS. This was a very unique system that they developed, and they've sold over a million copies of that. Then of course there's Dragon Quest Monsters, put out by Square Enix, which in Japan--it's a very simple touch screen-based RPG--I think that as well has sold over a million copies. So we're already seeing a lot of examples of Japanese third party developers who are coming up with unique ideas that really take advantage of the unique features of the hardware and turning those ideas into very successful products. Tamagotchi is another one.

If there's only one piece of advice that I could give to the managers of third party companies, it would be that a lot of times it seems that when they're putting games out on Nintendo hardware, those games are being developed by their third-string team or their fourth-string team. Maybe that's because they see those products as being unique projects or somewhat smaller-scale projects. But when Nintendo puts out a title that is designed to really support and sell its hardware, that title is always developed by one of our number one teams. And so I think that when it comes to the question of trying to compete with our software, I would really like to see the parties try to do that with their number one teams rather than with the third- or fourth-string teams. [Laughs.]

Source: Newsweek

Recent Nielsen/NetRatings market research show Nintendo.com is enjoying the most traffic growth on the Internet among the three console manufacturers:

Compared to traffic in February 2006, Nintendo's site saw an increase of 91% in February 2007, with 1.6 million unique visitors.

Source: IGN