Nintendo News | Japanese Retail Meeting Info Detailed

By Adam Riley 31.05.2006 4

Yesterday we ran this short story on New Super Mario Bros. and the sales of the DS Lite.

However, now more details have been revealed from the meeting that Nintendo had with retailers over in Japan. The numbers shown in the original story are now thought to actually be shipment figures, as opposed to actual sales numbers, although Media Create's hardware numbers show that the Nintendo DS Lite is not far off completely selling through that whole shipment of 950,000 units. As for New Super Mario Bros., the original shipment had been set at 800,000 units, but clearly Nintendo upped that figure due to the heavy demand for the excellent 2D platform title. Official sales numbers for the game will be revealed later tonight, with any luck.

It was also noted that Tetris DS has shipped 800,000 units, and whilst sales are currently at the half million mark, it will likely be another million seller in due time, just like English Training managed recently. Other than sale numbers, though, Nintendo highlighted some of the key titles for the DS this summer and beyond, mixing in a few sales projections.

  • Project Hacker (NDS, 13th July, 4,800 Yen): Not to be confused with Hotel Dusk: Room 215 by Another Code developer Cing, this hacking title is being worked on by Red Entertainment (of Sakura Taisen fame), with Nintendo acting as the producer. Unlike Hotel Dusk, this was not actually shown at this year's E3, although its Western style theme almost assures its translation. It is classed as an adventure game with a heavy focus on the Internet and hacking. The game includes testing players with many hacking puzzles where you have to jump onto the Internet in order to collect required information, hack people's or system passwords, amend computer programmes, and so on.

  • Talking Cooking Navi (NDS Touch! Generations, 20th July, 3,800 Yen): Nintendo is hoping that this will be the next big DS game, following the great success found with nintendogs, Brain Training and the English language pack. However, the company is conservatively estimating sales of just 200,000 units. It is basically an interactive cookbook. It talks back to you and will respond accordingly to your orders/requests, such as 'Turn the page!' The pacakage is set to include over 200 recipes that have all been provided by a famous cooking school. The 'Navi' part of the title apparently does NOT apply to that little fairy from the Zelda series, but relates to how you can input the ingredients you have at home and the title lists the recipes you can use with them. A western release could eventually come, but it all depends on sales strength as it would be a large task to translate for different markets. Although a sponsorship deal with Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver here in the UK would work a treat.

  • Tamagotchi no Petit Petit Omisecchi Gohiikini (NDS, 27th July, 5,040 Yen): The first Tamagotchi DS title, Corner Shop, managed to be a slow burner and creep up to sales of around 1.1 million units. Now Bandai is back with its sequel, although this time it is only projecting sales of about 400,000 for some reason.

  • Mario Basketball 3-on-3 (NDS, 27th July, 4,800 Yen): As many of you know by now, this is actually being developed by Square Enix, and not even at Nintendo's request. The developer, famous for its heavyweight RPGs, approached Nintendo with the idea and has now even confirmed that it will be including hidden characters from its world famous Final Fantasy series. The game is reportedly very simple to pick up, with the touch controls simply being 'tap-tap-tap' to dribble, with a quick slide of the stylus to shoot to ball. This looks to be shaping up to be a better experience than Mario, Luigi and Peach being tacked on to EA's NBA Street V3...

  • bit Generations titles (GBA, seven titles released across 13th & 27th July, 2,000 Yen each): Now re-named as the Digiluxe series here in the West, these small arty 'games' are set to appeal to those who love the cool, stylish design of the Game Boy micro. They are to be released in two batches and each come in slick little square boxes, looking extremely appealing on the shelf, perfect for collectors who lapped up the special Famicom Mini games. They will all also prove to be pieces of 'interactive art' for gaming otaku's GBA systems, with the exception of Sound Voyager, which focuses on the audio side only. According to reports, DigiDrive is by Q Games (the team working on Starfox Command for the DS), while some others are said to be the handy work of Skip (GiFTPiA and Chibi Robo) and Cornelius.

  • Trion Cube (NDS, 3rd August, 3,990 Yen): The brains behind Namco's Mr Driller games has returned with this feel-good chaining puzzle game. Jonnyram of NeoGAF reports that the gameplay is somewhat similar to Lumines on the PSP, with blocks dropping down and players having to quickly arrange them into similar colours that can add to, making one huge area that will eventually disappear. More details can be found on the game's Official site, here.

  • Common Sense Training for Adults (NDS Touch! Generations, October, ~3,800 Yen): As Cubed3 reported yesterday, it has been confirmed that Nintendo will be testing peoples' common sense with over 2,000 related questions. For those of you lucky enough to speak some Japanese, here is a link to some example questions: http://www.josikiryoku.com/online_test/test.cgi

  • Love & Berry DS Collection (NDS, End of 2006, price unknown): Also revealed yesterday, Sega is about to capitalise on another arcade masterpiece, just as it did with Beetle Mushi King on the GBA last year. Coming at the end of 2006, Sega is to bundle a card reader with the game so that player's can interact between the DS title an the arcade version. No details have been revealed, such as if Nintendo or Sega will be doing the card readers, but with such a strong fanbase for the series, this can hardly fail to be a success whatever the case!

    Stick with Cubed3 for further updates...

  • Comment on this article

    You can comment as a guest or join the Cubed3 community below: Sign Up for Free Account Login

    Preview PostPreview Post Your Name:
    Validate your comment
      Enter the letters in the image to validate your comment.
    Submit Post

    Comments

    Mario 3on3 looks like its gonna be a good game and it has FF characters so you know its gonna sell!!!

    I see all these people insulting the Nintendo corporation because of the lack of mature content. Yet there is something about Nintendo (at least their games) that strikes a certain unadulterated feeling of joy!!!  Pokemon Y - 1048-9263-5562

    :O FF characters! Wooo! Hope to see Cloud and Squal in thereSmilie

    ( Edited on 31.05.2006 12:15 by Blade2t3 )

    XBL Gamertag: James2t3

    Blade2t3 said:
    :O FF characters! Wooo! Hope to see Cloud and Squal in thereSmilie( Edited on 31.05.2006 12:15 by Blade2t3 )

    Im sorry but i dont wanna go offtopic but talkin about Cloud do you thinkn he might appear on SSBB! Its a posibility Smilie think about it!! S-E and Nintey are liking eachother right now!!Smilie so we might see someone!! Smilie

    I see all these people insulting the Nintendo corporation because of the lack of mature content. Yet there is something about Nintendo (at least their games) that strikes a certain unadulterated feeling of joy!!!  Pokemon Y - 1048-9263-5562

    Oh man I can't wait for Mario Basketball 3-on-3!!! The graphics look sweet and it looks fun as hell!

    Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

    If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
    Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
    Site Feed
    Who's Online?
    Insanoflex

    There are 1 members online at the moment.