Nintendo Wii Fanboy

With Kaplan gearing up to ride her horse out into the sunset, she still managed to find time to sit down and chat with Stepehen Totilo from MTV. The discussion centered around the delay for Smash Bros. Brawl, but Kaplan explained that Nintendo is starting to look at the release calendar differently. Instead of cramming all of the games into the last quarter of the year, Nintendo is looking at spreading their release throughout the year.

"Sunday is actually a really good launch day of the week for products. And I think we're actually starting to look at the annual calendar differently. The first two quarters of the year tend to be more quiet. But now we've seen some evidence of sales in that period," she comments. "Other than the holiday quarter, I think the traditional way of viewing it is not necessarily a slam dunk. I think a really good product can be a slam dunk any time of the year."

Personally, we'd like to see a more balanced release schedule throughout the year, so we like this new way of thinking. The holiday season is expensive enough for us, having to purchase presents, so we often have to overlook some titles due to constraints on our cash supply.

[Via Joystiq]

Now, we've been saying for awhile now that the Wii would revolutionize the industry and it has. But, we wouldn't go so far as to say we were bored by it all pre-Wii. We loved the GameCube, we loved the GBA and we still love our DS. We loved the N64. We hardly found ourselves without games to play, that's for sure.

"A major insight that Nintendo had early on was that they saw that gamers were getting bored, even though they didn't know it yet," Kaplan remarked. Robert Matthews, senior director of consumer marketing for Nintendo of America backed her up, stating "Just look at the way people consume entertainment today. The idea that you would spend hours playing videogames is just not real anymore."

While we'd argue that, blogging doesn't leave us with as much time for gaming as we'd like, but we think overall that there will always be a place for lengthy games, jam-packed with feature-rich content and that Nintendo's new proven focus shouldn't try to do away with those.

Do you guys care to toss in your two cents?

Following in the footsteps of George Harrison, Nintendo's top PR person (and the apple of Matt C's eye) Perrin Kaplan has decided to call it quits with Nintendo. She didn't state any reason why she was departing in her correspondence with Reuters, but we're sure she just doesn't want to relocate. Leaving her home of 15 years to follow her job to a new city just probably isn't a life choice she's comfortable with.

Oh well, at least she'll have Matt to help her through the tough times when she departs at the end of the year.

Regardless of what we may have heard, it would seem that Beth Llewelyn (senior director of public relations), Perrin Kaplan (vice president of marketing and corporate affairs) and George Harrison (senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications) haven't decided to take severance pay from the company.

Or, at least, they haven't told Nintendo they plan on leaving, as Pro-G found out when contacting Nintendo on some sort of confirmation regarding this mess. "In terms of the execs you name leaving we have not heard anything regarding that speculation (and it remains speculation) and we aren't commenting further on those rumours at this time," Nintendo commented.

So, what does this all mean? Not much, right now. These top execs could still be leaving Nintendo, but we'll have to wait for official word from Nintendo before this matter is resolved.

[Via Joystiq]

During a recent interview, Perrin Kaplan revealed that those still looking to get their hands on a Wii will probably be forced to wait that much longer. Apparently, Nintendo's production resources just cannot match demand as the company tries to get as many units available on store shelves as possible. Perrin says that there "is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of working on what we are producing and the numbers continue to rise but the product is so very popular that we may see a supply / demand situation last for some time."

Is this excusable though? No, it most certainly is not, considering the console launched five months ago. When does Nintendo stop jerking us around and put their product on shelves? People certainly want the thing, so why not give it to them? Sure, Nintendo is in a prime position to control the supply and demand of their system, but when does it end? And, really, with the incredible resources that Nintendo has, can't they ramp up production or acquire new manufacturing plants?

Perrin adds "We are at absolute maximum production and doing everything we can. The number of units that we have been able to produce has far exceeded our hardware production in the past and the production levels of a lot of our competitors but demand continues to be really high. People are being really diligent about working with retailers to locate one but we are cognisent of the fact that a lot of fans are not able to get their hands on one yet. We are asking them to be patient and to know that we are working on this as fast as we can."

Looks like Perrin may have jumped the gun a bit when she said that the company would not be manufacturing any more GameCubes and we should all just consider the thing to be dead. At least, that's according to Nintendo UK spokesperson who recently told Europgamer "I can confirm that globally, Nintendo is still continuing production of GameCube hardware and GameCube software."

He said, she said ... it makes our head spin.

[via Joystiq]

During an interview with GameDaily.Biz, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplin talked the Wii up and even got to mentioning the GameCube. What's most interesting, however, is her response to the question of whether consumers would see a revision to the Wii hardware, with which she responded "Sure, absolutely. You'll see the ways in which we do that." This, of course, does not come as a surprise, as Nintendo has been notorious for hardware revisions to its products (DS Lite, GBA SP etc), yet might anger Wii owners who had a tough time acquiring the console in its first few months of release should the company reveal a revision too soon. With Nintendo's exemplary record of doing this, however, we're sure such a mistake is beyond their capabilities.

Perrin also goes on to comment on the GameCube, supporting rumors that the company is no longer manufacturing systems or software for it. "Are we producing any more GameCubes? No. But do we have the inventory there for people to still purchase? Yes."