Sales of the Nintendo Wii have been flagging lately, and the number of quality titles coming out for this generation's bestselling system seems to be getting thinner every month. What better to fix everything than Mario? New Super Mario Bros. sold over 19 million copies for the DS, and now the Wii sequel has arrived just in time to give a breath of life into the little white box. We've been quite bullish about this new game after multiplayer hands-on and single-player sessions earlier this year. Now, after playing the final boxed version all weekend, did it live up to our lofty expectations? Our takes are below.
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We've already had some time with the new Xbox Live Dashboard update, but now we have an official release date. The new firmware, which will bring Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm (not available in Asia) to the console, will be available for download this Tuesday, November 17.
In addition to these services, Microsoft will be rolling out Zune Video, which promises instant-on 1080p video streaming as well as 5.1 surround sound.
We should note that Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook will require an Xbox Live Gold membership (US$50/year) and both Twitter and Facebook services require all users to be at least 18 years of age.
If you aren't a member of Xbox Live Gold, a free preview weekend will begin November 20, at 12 p.m. ET and run until November 23, at 12 p.m. ET.
GameSpot on Monday published a report from the Japan-based Nikkei news service saying that a new Nintendo DSi with two larger screens is slated to hit the market as early as this year.
Supposedly, the bump would increase the dual screens' size from 3.25 inches to 4.3 inches. While that sounds like a huge upgrade, there are a few reasons we're just not ready to believe this yet.
First of all, this new redesign would force the production of a brand new casing, something we're not sure Nintendo is ready to spend money on with the DSi still fresh in the market. Second, Siliconera got word from Nintendo PR saying the story is pure speculation.
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While Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the Nintendo DS received critical acclaim across the board, the game didn't necessarily sell as well as it should have. Rockstar Games chose to bring the title over to the PSP, and with it, a complete graphical revamp.
We've had the final version of the game for some time now and here are our thoughts:
If you're expecting bigger and better things from the Wii's successor, you might be let down. Nintendo might be satisfied with what the current Wii is already able to offer. According to TechRadar and Popular Mechanics, the company's creative mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto says, "With both the Wii remote itself and Wii Motion Plus, what we've been able to do is introduce an interface that is both I think appealing and at the right price for a broad audience."
Does the "right price" mean the next Wii will go for a comparable price to what it is now? Miyamoto continued: "And while we don't have any concrete plans for what we'll be doing with hardware in the future, what I can say is that, my guess is that because we found this interface to be so interesting, I think it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient."
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