Top Selling Nintendo Titles in 2011
Nintendo has revealed all the titles that have sold more than a million units so far in its fiscal year (April-December 2011). Super Mario 3D Land sold over 5 million units and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword sold more than 3 million copies. If Nintendo hadn't revealed its losses, then some would assume that everything is going great financially, even if it isn't. This high number of software sales indicates a profitable Nintendo in the future. Click below the break to see all the titles selling more than one million. The first number indicates the amount sold so far this fiscal year, and the number in parentheses indicates the amount of units sold over the game's lifetime.
Wii U Out Globally By The End of 2012
After Nintendo reported huge losses so far this fiscal year, investors needed something to look forward to. Although before we've only known that the Wii U would be out in between E3 and the end of the year, we didn't know where. Satoru Iwata has stated that the Wii U will be out in all the territories by the end of this year. Iwata also repeated that he plans to return Nintendo to the land of profitability in the next fiscal year.
Nintendo Forecasts Losses for First 9 Months of 2012
The 3DS has been doing well this year. After getting off to a rocky start, the 3DS has sold faster than both the original DS and Wii. This hasn't stopped Nintendo from loosing money. Nintendo lost 623 million dollars in the first nine months of its fiscal year (March-December, 2011). Nintendo attributes this the the incredibly strong value of the yen, and the 3DS price drop, which led Nintendo loose money on each of its systems sold.
Report: Next Xbox releasing in Fall 2013 with an AMD 6000 GPU Featured
Even though this is in no way an official report from Microsoft, it does help to put to rest the rumors of a 2012 release for the next-generation Xbox console. Sources close to IGN have told them that the next Xbox will start shipping to retailers in October or November of 2013. It's also supposedly being built with a mighty fine GPU.
The sources claim that the GPU will come from the AMD 6000 series (released in 2011,) which would be roughly "six times as powerful as current gen" consoles. The AMD 6000s are similiar to the Radeon HD 6670. Based on this, we can assume that the next Xbox will support DirectX11, 1080p HD, multi-display output, and 3D.
For next-gen comparisons sake, this rumored AMD 6000 GPU will make the next-gen Xbox roughly 20% more powerful than the Wii U. So now the question is....what will Sony bring to the next-gen table?
Rumor: Microsoft Getting Rid of Microsoft Points
Since the beginning of Xbox live, Microsoft points have been used as their online currency. Users could purchase 800 Microsoft points for $10 and then use those points to buy games, skins, DLC, etc. Many criticized the system since it is hard to convert 80 Microsoft points to a dollar, and many people had minuscule amounts of Microsoft points they had nothing to do with.
RadianGames' Quadtastic Launch Collection hits Tuesday
I don't know if you've heard of RadianGames or not, but this Tuesday the indie developer is releasing what looks to be an awesome set of games for the low price of $9.99. Now this may be a total meh moment if the name RadianGames doesn't ring a bell. RadianGames is really just a single dude named Luke Schneider who makes relativly popular Xbox Live Indie Games and iOS arcade styled schmups (shoot'em ups).
Nintendo Network coming soon?
Recent pictures around the internet have shown speculations surrounding the mysterious Nintendo Network. Not much was revealed at last year's E3, but according to this box art (seen below) of the upcoming Final Fantasy: TheAtRhythm, the top right hand corner shows a "Nintendo Network" logo.
Perhaps this is their equivalent to Xbox Live or the PSN, because the online capabilities of the 3DS are quite useful and not too ancient looking (much like the Wii's poor excuse of an online service.)
I'm going to assume that this "Nintendo Network" will be revealed at E3, along with all the other speculations and rumors we've heard as of late.
Weekend Interactivities - SOPA Edition
This past Wednesday, GameDwellers took place in an historic protest. A protest for the ages. The largest internet protest in the history of the internet. Along with internet giants such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Destructoid, Google, Minecraft, and hundreds of others, GameDwellers was "blacked out" for 24 hours to express our concern over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA.)
The good news is, we have won....for now, at least. The United States Congress (SOPA) and the United States Senate (PIPA) have both recently openly stated that both bills are currently being reworked to address the public's concerns.
So now that we have at least postponed the fall of our free speech on the internet, let's get back to gaming, shall we? We haven't had a major video game release in a while, so most of our staff are playing some old favorites as well as some of the highlights from 2011. Head past the break to see what we're playing this weekend.
Resident Evil 6 Revealed, Detailed, and Dated Featured
Capcom has released details on the much anticipated Resident Evil 6, which includes a lengthy trailer. It will be released on November 20, 2012 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. A PC release will be soon later (but how soon has not been mentioned.)
The story picks up right where Resident Evil 5 left off, with Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield as the story's protagonists. This is the first time dual male leading protagonists have appeared in the Resident Evil series.
Phantom Breaker Breaks North American Shores
It was around late June that I visited my local Japanese import store. While I was there, they showed me a limited edition of a new fighting game. A loli fighting game in fact. It was called Phantom Breaker. Since I am a huge fan of the Arcana Heart series, this game was definitely up my alley. But my euphoria soon turned to despair. I noticed that it had the Xbox 360 logo on it.
For those of you who aren’t avid import game players, there is something called “region locking,” which I have found to be the bane of my existence. This means that games, movies, or what have you are made for a certain region of the world and will only work on players made for that part of the world. It is well known that handheld consoles have been region-free until those bastards at Nintendo decided to make the 3DS region locked for even god does not know why. So for those of you who are already complaining about how the PS Vita is going to suck, at least the Vita doesn’t have region coding.