Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Gamasutra has posted an interesting piece that deals with a topic close to (most of) our hearts: the frequency of Wii Shop releases in North America. Its findings seem to support the popular view that Nintendo has slowed down when it comes to digital releases these last few months; as the above graph demonstrates, only 47 items (ten of which are WiiWare titles) have been placed on the Wii Shop during the first five months of this year. That compares with the 81 items (all Virtual Console releases) that appeared in the last six months of 2007.

Before you get too angrified about this, know Nintendo is not alone in its recent relaxed approach to digital distribution. Gamasutra also profiled Xbox Live Arcade and the PSN Store and discovered similar results -- only whereas Nintendo is padding out its downloadable releases with more WiiWare releases, XBLA is filling more space with Xbox Originals (while lowering the number of XBLA titles), and the PSN Store is carrying more PSP titles (as it reduces the number of PS1 and PS3 games that also appear on the service).

So what's going on? Well, it beats us. As Gamasutra points out, digital releases are ideal for filling an empty spring/summer schedule, so you'd think Nintendo and its rivals would be stocking up on their digital wares at this time of year -- but apparently not! Hit the "Source" link below for more informative and colorful graphs.

Consumer research bods Nielsen recently set out to answer mind-poppingly important questions such as: just how long did an average play session on the Wii last for somebody in North America between the ages of 10 and 26? The results suggest that we should all be paying a little more attention to our poor, neglected Wiis.

While Nintendo's platform enjoys a decent share of gamers' overall gaming time, the rest of Nielsen's statistics paint a damning picture. The Wii lags behind the Xbox 360 and PS3 in both the "average number of sessions a day" and "average usage days per month" (disgraceful commitment there from the over-26 demographic) sections.

The average Wii session also doesn't last as long as those on its two rivals, though no wonder with all of those required installations and ridiculously protracted cut-scenes, amirite? What's that? We're just being sore losers? Fine. Whatever.

You may have wondered this yourself, questioning why as you waited forever to load games to and from the SD card. And, while the dream of being able to just enjoy these Virtual Console games from your 2 or 4 gig SD card sounds like a very plausible one, the truth is very different.

See, the data access speeds for the SD card are extremely slow, apparently. That's why it takes awhile (in the case of the TG16 CD-ROM and NeoGeo, forever) to load the data onto and from there. So, if you tried to play a game directly from the card, it would be an atrocious affair. Shame, really, because the chore of copying and erasing all of this data can be a real pain.

Of course, this is all unconfirmed at this point, considering the "news" comes from a random post on an internet forum. So, if you have a grain or two of salt lying around, be sure to take this tidbit with them.

[Via Go Nintendo and Nintendo Everything]

So, for once, video game analysts were right and, once again, Wii Fanboy claims bragging rights around the office; this means that PS3 Fanboy and Xbox 360 Fanboy have to do the dishes for the entire month. Awesome.

NPD data shows the Wii as the clear console sales winner for the second straight month with 335,000 units sold. The only system able to top the Wii was its cute little sibling, the DS Lite, selling a whopping 485,000 units; Nintendo claimed 54% of all hardware sales last month. As proud as are, we can't help but wonder how many would have been sold with a decent supply chain. It was cool for awhile, but the fact that Nintendo can't produce enough units five months after release is getting a bit disturbing. Get it in gear!

[Thanks, Terrance!]