Yes, we posted about this before, but as the giant boulder that is the holiday season ominously thunders towards us, we may as well say it again: GameStop will probably have some major Wii shortages in the near future.
Chief financial officer David Carlson admitted in a conference call that the hardware "may be well out of stock by the holiday season," echoing another executive's recent claim that the 'Stop's inventory would be empty by the first week of December. He added that both Wii Fit and Guitar Hero: World Tour were "in very, very short supply" and "out of stock in many cases" respectively.
Obviously, plenty of other places sell Wiis, but if a major name like GameStop is running out of the things, you can bet they won't be alone. Unless you want to end up like Johnny and Orlando up there, get your skates on.
Gallery: Can't find Wii Fit? Try these alternatives!
Paul Henry Smith is one smart dude. He has created the Fauxharmonic Orchestra, a simulation of a real orchestra, brought to you by the Wiimote, Balance Board, and his brain. We're not classical buffs by any means, but what we're hearing (and seeing) is pretty impressive. We have on criticism, though. It looks like Paul is wearing his shoes in the video. Dude, you're going to scuff your very expensive peripheral!
Otherwise, kudos, Paul, on a job well done.
Gallery: Peripherals that paved the way for the Balance Board
Chris Kohler attended the launch event of some Warcraft game at a San Francisco branch of GameStop last night, and ended up discussing the state of Wii availability this holiday season with a company executive.
To the relief of parents up and down the land, the suit echoed GameStop's assurances from September, revealing that there should be enough Nin-Tend-O Magic Motion Boxes to go round until the first week of December. As Kohler points out, that date means GameStop has enough consoles to last beyond Black Friday, a small miracle. That's still not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than the last two years. Alas, the executive called Wii Fit a "different story"; maybe it's time to check out some alternatives.
The new followup to We Ski may improve on the reality of the snowboarding and/or skiing experience. Aside from the obviously reduced costs associated with playing a Wii game versus taking a vacation, and the sharply reduced likelihood of serious falling-off-a-mountain-related injury, Family Ski: World Ski and Snowboard allows you to play a game of snowboard tag under the supervision of a guy in a dinosaur suit. We're glad to see the silly suits return.
Speaking of silliness, the new course in World Ski and Snowboard also features a gigantic donut to jump through. Also there are normal races and half-pipes and such, if you're interested in stuff like that.
Popular Science is smitten with the Balance Board and Wii Fit. In their top 100 inventions of 2008 feature, they feature the bundle and talk about the components that comprise the Balance Board. Personally, we've always been big fans of the whole package, aside from the price of the thing, so we're glad to see it get some exposure in an interesting magazine.
We know that when Wii Fit first released, many of you were eager to snatch up the bundle or, at least tried to. For those of you that did score a bundle, are you keeping up with the exercises? How long did it take you to give up on the routine of using Wii Fit on a regular basis? Or did you merely pick it up for the Balance Board? And, in that case, what game are you waiting for that uses the Balance Board?
Wii peripherals have proven a profitable business for Nintendo, and a new member, the WiiSpeak microphone, will join this rapidly growing family later this month. In our experience, these accessories mostly enhance the games they support, and that's great and all, but it has been a while since we actually perched on our Balance Boards, or waved our Wii Wheel about to Mario Kart Wii, or Zappered zombies. When was the last time you played a Wii title with something other than a naked Wiimote and Nunchuk, and what was the game?
Gallery: Peripherals that paved the way for the Balance Board
The question has been on everybody's lips since Cammie Dunaway shed her shoes and opened Nintendo's E3 press conference with Shaun White Snowboarding: can the Balance Board provide a notable leap forward for the snowboarding genre? IGN has a comparison of the PS3/360 and Wii versions of Ubisoft's snowboarding title, but if you're too lazy to read, the short answer is: no.
At least, not in Shaun White Snowboarding. While IGN concedes using the Balance Board is "great fun carving down the slopes and doing spins off jumps," it ultimately "feels like a severely pared back snowboarding experience." In fact, Shaun White on Wii didn't impress IGN much at all, tying only one category (visuals/presentation) and losing the other four. Disappointing, because we know the Balance Board has tons of potential for this kind of thing.
The latest Men's Fitness magazine had an interesting story about fitness and gaming (something we call "exergaming"). Apparently, EA is working on their own Wii Fit knock-off (remember, we heard about this months ago?), complete with their own peripheral. The article states that the new game will fall under the "All-Play" brand, which is the family-friendly label they use for the Wii. This new peripheral will somehow allow players to attach the Wiimote to their body, measuring how instense they run, squat and do a variety of other exercises, says EA's executive producer Dave McCarthy.
We're not subscribers to Men's Fitness, to be honest, so we don't have the article to confirm any of this, so we're marking it as a rumor. If anybody wants to send us a pic or a scan, please, feel free. We'll be sure to update the post here.
We love the idea of Arc System Works' Okiraku WiiWare game series. Rather than selling yet another sports minigame collection, Arc is selling them a la carte as $5 downloads. With that tiny commitment, even the decision about buying this casual entertainment is a casual one. And if Family Table Tennis is any indication, the games are likely not to be terrible.
"Casual" may not necessarily mean "simple": the next Okiraku game to come out, Okiraku Putter Golf, allows you to use the Balance Board to fine-tune your golfer's stance, in addition to using motion controls for swinging. That sounds insanely complicated!
Reggie recently sat down with the LA Times to discuss the Wii and the upcoming holiday shopping season. He says that about 3 in 10 stores will be carrying the Wii Fit bundle. For those of you still trying to track down the fitness package, those aren't the best odds.
As for production of Wii consoles, Reggie says that Nintendo is churning out 2.4 million units a month. Compared to 1.6 million last year, Nintendo is really trying their best to satisfy the demand consumers have for the console. Whether they actually will or not, we'll just have to wait and see.
Have you taken part in any non-Wii Fit-related Wii wobbling? What did you think of the experience? Do you look forward to any future Board-compatible games?
Studio Zan is lining up a November release in Japan for Overturn, a new vehicular combat game that sees manga characters (who look oddly out of place next to the game's 3D arenas) take control of hulking great robots.
Overturn has yet to be priced or confirmed for a western release, but a Game Watch preview reveals that it will come with a Story mode, local multiplayer, WiFi play for upto four players, Balance Board compatibility, and full online leaderboards. Nice. Oh, and it reminds us of Robot Wars.
The Incredible Maze is based on a simple, solid game concept: the wooden "labyrinth" toy. You know the one: you turn dials to tilt a wooden maze so that a ball rolls to the destination point without falling into strategically-placed holes. This concept is the basis for Super Monkey Ball, Kororinpa, and even (sort of) Mercury Meltdown Revolution. The Wii Remote, which can be physically tilted to control gameplay, seems like a natural for this sort of thing.
It's harder than it looks to implement good tilt control on the Wii, however. And The Incredible Maze's tilt controls take what would otherwise be a pretty benign game and ruin it.
