Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Ah, here's something else to place in the next time capsule we bury at the bottom of the Wii Fanboy garden, along with our copy of Cruis'n (we feel future generations should understand the horror). Research company Screen Digest broke out the pencil crayons and came up with the graph above, forecasting exactly how the now-gen console race will look come 2011. And while things don't look, erm, massively promising for Microsoft and the Xbox 360, Screen Digest has the PlayStation 3 almost neck and neck with the Wii by year-end 2011.

Naturally, we'd advise taking this with a rather large dose of salt, because this industry has proven time and time again to be an unpredictable beast. After all, would such a graph have been published one year before the Wii first came to market?

[Via CVG]

It should come as no surprise to any of our readers that the Wii is selling pretty well, hindered almost solely by its own production problems. Today, Nintendo confirmed any suspicions in announcing its Q1 sales figures -- 3.43 million Wiis sold since the beginning of April, bringing the running worldwide total to 9.27 million. In light of the greater than expected success, it also upped its forecast for the entire year's Wii sales, now predicting to sell upwards of 16.5 million Wiis by April 2008. What do you think? Can it be done?

And what do you get when you remove those pesky production constraints? The company also confirmed nearly twice as many Nintendo DS' sold in the same period (nearly 7 million), and it now thinks it can sell another 19 million this year. Between the two systems and the confirmed million sales of both Super Paper Mario and Mario Party 8 (and a couple little guys named Diamond and Pearl), Nintendo verified it's reaping windfall profits on the order of $666 million in just three months, an increase of 416% over last year. Some out there may think the company's recent success isn't going to last, but Nintendo certainly believes otherwise.

Nintendo's stock has been going up like ... like, um ... like Apple's stock! But not even the bookies could predict such a dominating performance (sorry, I just couldn't resist that link ... go Gators!), and as such, Nintendo has had to once again raises its profits forecast thanks to extremely strong game sales for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii. How much, you ask? One billion dollars. That's USD, folks.

We also have a gem of a quote from one Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo: "Nintendo is going like gangbusters, and the Wii consoles are selling like hotcakes." Gangbusters, huh? According to UrbanDictionary.com, a gangbuster is: "a sexual advance made by someone in an attempt to turn on another person." Hot, Edwin. Very hot.

What started as a rumor has been confirmed to be true: Madden 07 for the Wii uses the Forecast Channel to determine weather for games. That's pretty awesome, if you ask us, as we're from Philly and are very much into sports. Adding another dynamic such as this to the experience can only improve our love for the title as it destroys ceilings and shoots off into the stratosphere.

It's all pretty easy, asking that you only set the game to read from the system client and upon starting the game, you'll see your current default city's weather in-game. Cool for us, as weather in Philly ranges, but if you're in some place such as Seattle, well it could get kind of boring after you've played your 8th or so game in a row with rain. Obviously, if your team plays in a dome, this doesn't apply ...

[Thanks Brandon!]

[Update: Looks like we were all fooled! This indeed is not the case and it turns out the person who confirmed this was just lucky the first go around and found it to not consistently work. We apologize for the error.]

Need to know how it is out there? Just check your Wii. The Forecast channel is now live and active for all your weather-announcing needs. Now you totally have a good reason to stay inside and throw down with some Elebits. "Look! There's a 12% chance of rain -- the Wii told me. How could I brave the outdoors?" We understand.

That's not the only update excitement this week for your Wii channels, either -- this Friday, the free trial version of the Opera browser will be available for download. Next June, it'll cost five bucks, but for now, you can check out all the YTMNDs and special photos you want, from the comfort of your Wii. Ain't the Internet grand?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

The new interface of the Nintendo Wii is organized into "channels", each containing different services and functions. The English version of wii.com gives a nice summary of the initial channels. Here's what they do:

• The Disc channel is simply for playing games based off of optical media, i.e. Wii or Gamecube discs. Nothing fancy here.
• The Mii channel allows a player to create his or her own digital avatar. These avatars will most likely be your online "identity", but will also appear in certain software, such as Wii Sports.
• The Photo channel is a channel that allows you to view and share digital photos and movies from an external source. The Wii also contains an iPhoto-like functionality, allowing you to touch up, alter, and distort your photos to your heart's content.
• The Forecast channel will give you a look at local weather. You can also zoom out in a very Google Earth-esque fashion, and view data for pretty much anywhere in the world.
• The News channel is for, well, news. Various topics will be broken down into topical categories for your viewing pleasure. Remember, this and the weather service are free of charge.
• The Wii Shop channel is, as expected, the online marketplace for the Wii. You'll mainly be in here buying games for the Virtual Console, but you can also purchase Opera's web browser and whatever else Nintendo decides to charge. Hopefully, extra multiplayer maps and the like will remain free, but we suppose that's up to the publisher.
• The Virtual Console channels are the channels that allow you to play games from any of the various systems supported: NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, and the TurboGrafx-16.
  
• The Internet channel allows one to surf the internet. However, this is not free; an Opera browser must be purchased for a currently unknown price. However, the browser supports Adobe Flash, AJAX software, and essentially every feature a major browser should; it's a nice step up from the DS version.
• The Message Board channel allows users to post messages on various boards, and send messages or photos directly to PCs or cell phones. This is also the service through which games will be updated and patched.

And there you have it! Looks like we're gonna be doing some hardcore channel surfing when the Wii hits the streets.