Nintendo’s summer blockbuster, ‘Wii Sports Resort’ has broken through its first milestone in the European market. The title has managed to sell over 1 million units in just over a month in the region and comes with the news that the stand-alone Wii MotionPlus peripheral has also managed to sell about 936,000 units.
Two million Wii MotionPlus add-ons in about a month is pretty good going for a peripheral and is good to see as the bigger the pick up of the plastic cube, the more likely we will have continued support for it in upcoming games.
Wii Sports Resort has sold in excess of 3 million worldwide.
It seems Nintendo boss, Mr Iwata, is confident that gamers wil be happy following this coming holiday season and wants to hear gamers say “Holiday 2009 was the best one ever for Nintendo!“
“In September, which people overseas call ‘back-to-school,’ people start to pay more attention to home consoles. If we can convey the appeal of Wii Sports Resort to existing customers then, it will surely contribute to the sales of hardware and generate good momentum toward the holiday season. So we feel that Wii Sports Resort will drive hardware sales mainly in Q3 from October to December.
Last year, we had some internal discussions about the close launch period of Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit but we ended up launching them with the hypothesis that several major title launches in close proximity can produce a synergetic effect. As a result, it went very well. This year we hope to do well again as we will be launching three ten-million class titles consecutively, and would love to hear that ‘Holiday 2009 was the best one ever for Nintendo!’”
One way they can definitely go about succeeding with that is by releasing more than one ‘triple A’ quality title at Xmas. Many Nintendo gamers were unhappy with the lack of choice last year, with Wii Music falling short on depth and fun and Animal Crossing on Wii not really adding anything new since the first game on the N64.
To me it feels like Nintendo are increasingly trying to drag-out the life of their games. For example they are still airing TV commercials for Mario Kart Wii which launched over a year ago! That’s fair enough as it’s still selling well, but the old Nintendo faithful need new games and on a more frequent basis.
Nintendo are happy with sales of the sequel to the highest selling game of all time. Wii Sports Resort has sold more than 500,000 units during it’s first 9 days on sale in North America and has sold about the same in its homeland. Not bad, but not surprising eh?
This is great news for the future of Wii MotionPlus however as the more that are sold, the more the peripheral will be supported in the future.
Nintendo of America have begun their promotion across the states for the release of ‘Wii Sports Resort‘ beginning with turning Times Square in New York into Wuhu Island.
If you live nearby, why not pay a visit to the temporary beach “with more than 50 tons of sand, visitors can drop by for a free mini vacation to play Wii Sports Resort, sip nonalcoholic island beverages and enjoy the island oasis featuring a steel drum band, reflection pool and lounge area.”
This event marks the start of a three week promo push for the game across the country with the following towns and city’s also being visited:
A few days ago we reported that Wii Sports Resort sold 150,000 copies on its first day on sale in Japan, then over 350,000 over the first four days, all were bundled with the MotionPlus peripheral. We also now know that the stand-alone Wii MotionPlus peripheral has sold 290,000 in the same period. The clever among you will have already calculated that there are now over 600,000 WiiMP units in Japan.
Not a bad start at all. Not long now until the rest of us can check it out either as July sees the launch of WiiMP in western territories.
This news might not really come as much of a surprise to you – Wii Sports Resort has sold 353,827 units in its first four days on sale in Japan.The game was released on June 25th and comes bundled with the new Wii MotionPlus peripheral.
It makes the game the third fastest selling game, coming just behind ‘Mario Kart Wii’ and ‘Super Smash Bros Brawl’ which shifted 608,000 and 816,000 units respectively during the same time frame.
The game is out this month in the west and will no doubt have a similar impact on sales here.
If, like us, you’ll be one of the millions of people around the world playing Wii Sports Resort this summer, you might want to see some more of the game in action. Well that’s good as that’s exactly what we have above, more flying footage.
While we hold out hope that Nintendo are hard at work with a follow-up to Pilotwings 64 for the Wii, the likelyhood is that we’ll have to make do with the flying mini-game in Wii Sports Resort, at least for the time being. Let’s hope that there is a way to fly around without the 5 minute time limit as seen on the video as part of the charm of Pilotwings was messing around with no restrictions.
Wii Sports Resort is out next month in the west with the Wii MotionPlus peripheral.
1Up had some time with Wii Sports Resort recently and this video shows the ‘Freefalling In Airsport‘ part of the game being controlled with the wiimote being held like a paper aeroplane.
Looking at this makes us wonder why there isn’t a fully fledged new Pilotwings for the Wii. Maybe Nintendo are working on it!?
According to research company, Nielson, Wii Sports Resort is one of the top three most desired games from E3. A survey conducted after the show found that 45% of people would be “definitely or probably interested” in buying the game upon release next month.
This is probably not surprising and the game will likely go on to sell many millions of copies. It will be interesting to see just how many compared to the two most desired games from the survey which were ‘Halo: ODST’ on Xbox 360 with 53% purchase intent and Sony’s ‘God Of War 3′ with 49%. You can see the full 12 most desired games after the break.
On a seperate note the most talked about game of the show, according to Nielson, was ‘New Super Mario Bros.’ on Wii with “4.6 percent of E3 buzz”. Read more…
We recently posted some videos of the Archery, Swordplay, Golf, Frisbee and Power Cruising from the upcoming Wii Sports Resort and we now have some more showing Cycling, Sky Diving/Airplane, Basketball, Canoeing, Kendo and Wake Boarding.
To me this is looking much more varied than the original Wii Sports and with the accuracy of Wii MotionPlus it is sure to be crowned King of Wii sports games this summer.
Head inside for all the videos or see the originals here.
Yesterdays demo of Wii Sports Resort came clean about the new activities we will making use of our Wii MotionPlus add-ons (you can see them in the video we posted if you haven’t already).
The game is set on Wuhu Island and gamers will partake in many sports and activities such as Archery, Frisbee, Basketball, Cycling, Canoeing, Power Cruising, Table Tennis, Air Sports, Bowling, Swordplay, Golf and Wakeboarding supporting up to 4 players.
Wii Sports Resort will be available July 26th 2009 in North America, with a suggested retail price of $49.99.
