Key Points:

- Wii is really popular and is sold out a lot (even at NOA Company store)

- Wii Remote is cheap to make
Accelerometer: $2.50
Basic Memory Chip: $0.25
Audio Amplifier: $0.50
Data Converter: $0.50
Rumble Pack: $2.50
Bluetooth Chip: $2.00
Audio Translator: $2.00
Plastic Casing: Unknown
Wrist Strap: Unkown

- $50 profit per Wii

- $5 Million to develop Wii game vs $20 Million for PS3 game

-Ubisoft says Nintendo is best console maker to work with

- EA says Nintendo is a pioneer

- Wii’s success has done little to convince Microsoft execs that they’rs on the wrong course (Peter Moore: “I love the experience, the price point and Nintendo content of the Wii, but Microsoft provides experiences that Nintendo cannot provide”)

- CEO of SCE America says give credit to Nintendo but points out that Sony have a innovative controller as well, technology doesnt go backwards and the Wii is a re purposed gamecube

- Sony views the world through the eyes of an engineer while Nintendo takes its cues from the outside world (eg. Pikmin from Miyamoto’s garden)

FUTURE
- Nintendo could stick with the current tech for a few years and then introduce a Wii 2.0 with PS3 tech but cheap

- cut $50 of Wii price to compete with future price cuts for MS and Sony

- relationship between Mac/PC - iTune - iPod could be like Wii - DS

- needs more stock, did not expect Wii to be so popular….currently making 1M a month but want 1.5M - 2M but its difficult

QUOTES
We were losing to the TV remote. So we thought what kind of controller can we create that wont make people afraid to touch it? - Miyamoto

We are not competing against Sony or Microsoft. We are battling the indifference of people who have no interest in video games - Iwata

My name is Reggie. I’m about kickin’ ass, I’m about takin’ names, and we’re about makin’ games” - you know who

This is an excerpt from the interview with Reggie Fils-Aime by GamePro

GamePro: Where would you say the Wii stands now? Did it meet your expectations or exceed them?

Fils-Aime: I’ll be honest with you — I’m blown away. We knew we would sell every piece of hardware put into the market, but we did not expect all the buzz and the advocacy…especially from non-gamers. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to or read about who played Wii Sports during the holidays and were suddenly surrounded by relatives who wanted to give it a shot. Everyone, from kids up to grandma and grandpa.

We knew Wii was a system for the masses, and yes, we were confident that was going to happen-but this fast? Personally, I’m just blown away.

GP: When was “the moment” that you knew the Wii was going to live up to everything — and more — Nintendo had hoped?

Fils-Aime: I think most people began to understand on the show floor at E3 last year, waiting in those lines, or just looking at them, anxious to see what the Wii fuss was all about.

But for me personally, it really “clicked” a couple days before, when we were rehearsing for our media briefing. You see, I had played an early version several months before, but when Mr. Iwata, Mr. Miyamoto, George [Harrison, VP of NoA] and I got up there on stage and fired up that game of Wii Tennis…well, not only was I having a blast, but I could see the faces of the handful of crew looking on from the audience. They were psyched. I was psyched! That was the moment I suspected we were in for even more than we expected.

Full Interview

Nintendo has announced that it has formed a development partnership with Korean studio Nexon for a forthcoming but as yet unspecified Wii title.

According to Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata in a recent statement made to the Korean press “We plan to actively support Korean game software developers who have great expertise in developing online games and support their advances into foreign markets…”

Iwata-san also went on to talk about the impending Korean Wii and DS Lite launches, but the big news, at least as far as we’re concerned, is the mention of online expertise and that bit about ‘advances into foreign markets’. And let’s not overlook the fact that Nexon is the outfit responsible for the online racer Crazyracing Kartrider (no, us neither) and the 2D cutesy-pie but insanely popular MMORPG Maple Story – a game that’s been sapping the spare time and bank accounts of our Far Eastern gaming cousins since 2002.

Full Article 

More About: Wii, MMORPG

Nintendo is planning to promote the health benefits of its Wii games console, according to executives.

The move could open new markets for the Japanese manufacturer, which has seen its products criticised for allegedly causing injury and damage from overenthusiastic use.

Nintendo has even been accused of being responsible for a type of repetitive strain injury dubbed ‘Nintendonitis’ by doctors.

The company hopes that making the Wii the centre of a healthcare programme will attract new users and encourage them to use the console every day.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told journalists at Tokyo’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club that the new health-focused games would be more likely to attract older players and women.

Full Article 

More About: Nintendo, health benefits, Wii

A New rumor from Game Informer, states that the next Zelda Wii has already been under development for about a year (this sort of contradicts what the Iwata Asks interviews have been saying). The bottom line from the rumor is expect the next Zelda for Nintendo Wii sooner rather than later.

source

More About: Zelda Wii, Nintendo, Wii

December 7, 2006 - The Wii is less than three weeks old, but it’s already reached a major sales landmark. Kyodo News reports that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, during a speech given in Tokyo on the 7th, revealed that the system has crossed the one million mark in worldwide sales.

America accounted for more than 50% of the sales, the news service reports. In the eight days following the 11/19 launch, Nintendo managed to sell 600,000 systems in the American market. In Japan, Nintendo sold 400,000 systems on the 12/2 launch day.

Iwata took a slight jab at the competition during his speech, stating, “We aren’t planning on competing with the PS3, but we’d like it to be said that in the end, Nintendo sold more.”

source

Here is an article on Daily Game believes that Nintendo will save the videogame industry. You can check some here:

So what happens as we get older and stop playing games, and our children aren’t as interested in videogames as we were at their age? We grew up with Pong, Centipede and Pac-Man. We graduated to Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and Paperboy. Games grew up with us, so it’s to be expected that the average age of a gamer increased along with the age of the industry. But with few mainstream games now appropriate for a younger audience, what happens when the industry wakes up and notices its bread-and-butter generation is too old to play games, and that the next generation, the only one that can keep the industry going, has been ignored for so long that it’s not playing games either?

That’s where Nintendo comes in. Like a knight in shining armor, Nintendo is going against the grain in this Xbox 360/PS3/Wii console war, and it could very well save the videogame industry in the process. Miyamoto-san isn’t afraid to work on games that appeal to kids, and he seems to actually prefer it to the dark games favored by id Software and Epic Games. Iwata-san isn’t against trying something completely new, even somewhat wacky, with a control mechanic that will get people’s attention and stir creativity. And Reggie-san (sorry, it just fits) isn’t afraid to defy conventional wisdom and shun horsepower for the promise of an inexpensive system that working families can afford.

The Nintendo Wii will launch in Europe on December 8 at an estimated retail price of 249 Euros acording to Satoru Iwata, Global President of Nintend.

The Wii will include one wireless Wii Remote (39 Euros), one Nunchuk (19 Euros), and Wii Sports. The console’s launch will also be accompanied by the the Classic Controller (19 Euros).

More About: Nintendo Wii, Wii, wireless Wii Remote, Wii Sports

According to a report from Next-Gen, the music composer for the Dragon Quest series mentioned something very interesting about Dragon Quest IX Wii:

“[Series producer] Yuji Horii is really busy at the moment on Dragon Quest IX, and I’m really looking forward to what kind of game he’s making this time, as a gamer.”

What is interesting is that according to Next-Gen, Yuji Horii was one of the first game designers who was approached by President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata with the new Wii-mote and Horii had a chance to be contribute to the video that was shown at TGS-2005.

More About: Dragon Quest IX Wii, Yuji Horii, Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, Wii

Iwata Talks About the Story Of The Nintendo Wii Project

In early 2004, we began discussing in earnest what to do with the controller for our new console. Around that time, the DS concept had recently come together. One common objective that we’ve had with both the DS and Wii is this idea of, “What can we do to expand the audience beyond people who normally play videogames?” Just to give you an example of how we’ve approached this, think about hardcore gamers-they have a console in their home.

Does everyone who lives in that household use the console? My guess is, the answer is no. Our driving concept behind Wii is to make it something that everyone in the household can relate to and interact with.

One question we had was why people are willing to pick up a TV remote control and interact with that, but at the same time they’re not able to pick up a videogame controller.

The funny thing was, at that time, even though we’d been discussing the TV remote, we never thought to translate that into our controller design. So for a while we were unable to escape our fixed perception that a videogame controller is something that you grip with both hands. We drew a lot of concept sketches and put together a lot of prototype controllers at this time. And there were a lot of ideas there that people would look at and never equate with being a videogame controller!

We spent close to a year going through this prototyping process, going through tons of concepts.

One of Nintendo’s biggest strengths is that we have both hardware and software developers in one building, and they’re continually cooperating in their efforts.

The hardware developers can come up with an idea, propose it to the software side, and say, “What do you think you can do with this?” They’re able to quickly put together a very simple gamelike mechanic related to that idea, then quickly evaluate it to see if it has that gameplay hook that they’re looking for.

In early 2005, a young leader on the controller development team proposed the idea of this one-handed controller.

Shortly before that, we had already developed this direct-pointing-device technology, and we were thinking of using that to point to objects onscreen and to hit things. Most people on the team said, “You can’t play a standard game with that…what are we going to do about the [downloadable classic] Virtual Console games?” So there were some doubts about the design…but then Mr. Miyamoto said, “Why don’t we give it a shot, and make it work by making the remote small and compact, but with an expansion port for other functions?” By creating a shell of a classic-style controller, you can have all the functionality for standard games.

So we were able to put together a prototype, implement it in a gameplay demo, and we found out that this kind of control actually makes first-person shooters really fun with the aiming and pointing…but what do you do with movement?

That’s when we took advantage of the expansion port for the nunchaku configuration [where you plug in a second device connected by a cord]-that setup was proposed by the NCL [Nintendo Co., Ltd., Nintendo’s name in Japan] producer of the Metroid Prime series.

source: EGM Issue 204 June 2006

More About: Iwata, Story, Nintendo Wii