And yet another reason to migrate to Japan surfaces. We learn that Nintendo Japan has just announced that for a limited time, people who purchase 5000 Wii Points card will also get a free classic controller with it. In Japan, the 5000 Wii Points card will cost 5000 or the equivalent of around US 42.50. The classic controller, on the other hand, has a 1800 or US 15 value.

Now, ain't that sweet?

In any case, it is still unknown whether this promo will also be offered in other countries as the prices of both the Wii cards and the controller have not yet even been announced in some countries such as Australia and only prices in Japan have been announced at the latest Nintendo Conference.

Nintendo’s Wii console has fallen short in a recent poll conducted by Famitsu, following events at the Tokyo Games Show last month. Surpassed by Sony’s PS3 console, who’s showing dominated much of the popular event, this one of the first examples the innovative machine failing to top consumer interest (the Wii previously lead similar polls, beating [...]

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Oh, hello Canadians, didn't see you there. How are you? Good? Great, we're glad to hear. How's that Swiss Miss treating you? Oh yeah, we love marshmallows in ours as well. Oh, you're getting ready to go sit in the cold, long lines outside your local GameStop/EB so you can pre-order yourself a Wii? Sorry, but you're going to have to wait until Monday. I know, I know, life is truly not fair.

So while you're performing your weird, almost satanic Canadian rituals cursing all of the United States of America's citizens, down on your knees, head raised to the heavens, loudly crying out that you, and you alone, will in fact destroy everything they hold sacred, at least you can feel good about, well ... about something. Sorry, we're a bit taxed from our lack of sleep in having to get up early to pre-order our Wii.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

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In light of our "PS3 Christmas dry spell" piece, we now have something else to think about. If this year's holidays seems like a tight season for the PS3, what would next year be like? In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot hit it home by stating how important 2007's Christmas season will be. It'll be so important, in fact, that it could establish by January 2008 who wins the next-gen console war.

"For sure, Nintendo and Microsoft will play a bigger role than in the last cycle," he says. What makes this so? Well, we're thinking that the previous war of the consoles was somewhat pwned by the PS2 (contestible). Now, the 360 is gaining ground (also contestible), especially since it's gotten a year's early start. And of course, the Wii is getting lots of hype too (likewise contestible).

Of course these are arguable, but moving on... When asked about whether the delayed Europe launch for the PS3 would make things hard for Sony, Guillemot r...

What we've got here is one of two things: a rumor/hoax or a leak of the real thing. Either which way, there is no official statement from Nintendo about the confirmation of these screens. And whether it's official or not, we're still glad that NintendojoFR posted them up for the whole of the "intarwebs" to see.

While the other interface pics that we've already seen are of the Wii Channels, these ones we've got today are for the system settings menu. The gel buttons, the blue bars, the clean look... It coincides with much of the Wii Channels' interface screens. You've got menu screens for Wiimote settings (to calibrate it?), WiiConnect24, Calendar, Sound, Language, Memory and more.

See the screens for yourself (click the thumbs to enlarge). Looks legit, huh? We hope so too.

   
  

Nintendo and AiLive Inc. have recently announced the availability of LiveMove, an Artificial Intelligence product, that allows the Wiimote to learn.

They proudly claim that instead of complicated programming, developers now only need to take a few minutes to train the Wii Remote by examples. They say that LiveMove allows developers to just focus on creative work without the burden of having coding as a requirement.

A quick look at AiLive's official site tells us a few more things about LiveMove. It boasts that LiveMove can recognize player motion from the Wii controller at run-time and can differentiate any set of movements you can think off. The site also boasts that developers can create a recognizer for any particular movement in just mere minutes.

The tool is so precise that it can differentiate between 40 different motions on 8 Wii remotes or Nunchuks simultaneously. What's more is that it does all that using less than 5 of the Wii CPU. Also, and this i...

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Comment of the Day: Sun:2, Wii Sensor Bar:1
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the average wii owner probably hasn't seen sunlight in a long while anyway."--The Brain

Here's a bit of warm and fuzzy, good news-y stuff for you guys today. After helping brighten the lives of sick children in Australia some time ago, this time they're helping out kids in Los Angeles. Nintendo of America, longtime manufacturers of "Fun Centers" for the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, is donating the 5,000th Fun Center to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

The Fun Center includes a Sharp Aquos liquid crystal flat-screen monitor, a DVD player, and a Nintendo GameCube system.

Fun Centers, by the way, were developed more than a decade ago as a tool hospitals can use to help curb the anxiety and weariness that hospitalized children face during extended stays. As "Patch" Adams has shown, it's not all about plugs and needles, sometimes it's about caring. To date, more than 1,000 hospitals throughout North America have received one or more Fun Center units since Nintendo started the program.

If you were stuck in a smelly room in weird hospital ro...

We doubt it's necessary to pre-order a Wii now that there's going to be two million Wii units available on launch day, but if you live in Sweaty Crack, North Dakota, where there's only going to be five units, we suppose it's good to reserve one.
GameStop and EB Games stores will begin accepting limited pre-orders for the Nintendo Wii console on Friday, October 13, on a first come, first served basis. Due to extremely limited supplu, we expect to reach our limit very quickly, most likely in minutes. We will not accept additional pre-orders at that time. To avoid an unnecessary trip we strongly recommend you call your local store to determine availability. A $50 reservation deposit is required, which can be funded with cash, credit or trade. As we cannot control production and shipping issues by the manufacturer, a reservation deposit does not guarantee receipt of a system available to purchase at launch. Reservations/Purchases are limited to 1 p...

Let's face it, one of the oldest hobbies of the human race is gossiping. Everybody always has something to say about a person, an event and an inanimate object. We were wired that way and of course, there are social factors that push us to talk and spread rumors. So with that, it isn't surprising that US magazine EGM revealed the current backfence talks about the next-gen consoles.

Let's start with the Wii rumors first. A backfence talk that entered the EGM November issue is the question on where Virtua Cop, a first person shooter spin-off, will come out. Speculations pointed that it will be on the Wii, but according to the grapevine, it will most likely come out for the PS3. Another rumor is that games such as Road Rash and Desert Strike are heading to the next-gen consoles.

These next two are pretty juicy. Apparently, rumor has it that Electronic Arts is already working on a Wii-specific version of The Sims. Hmm, we wonder how the Wiimote would be used during k...