Nintendo bundling Wii U with two games and an extra controller for $330 on May 30th
You don’t have a Wii U yet, right? You’re forgiven, and far from unique (in that respect, anyway — you’re a unique snowflake otherwise). Should the eighth entry in the Mario Kart series pique your interest, Nintendo’s got a pretty fantastic bundle arriving at the end of May with a copy of the game, an extra Wii Remote Plus gamepad, and a free download of one of four games. All that stuff comes together in one box for $329.99 — a pretty great deal considering the Wii U system in the box costs $300 by itself!
Head below for a new trailer for Mario Kart 8, as well as more on why Nintendo would offer a brand new game for free alongside its console.
The price isn’t a measure of Nintendo trying to save you dough, but one of a company struggling to make its game console relevant against growing competition from Sony and Microsoft. The PlayStation 4′s sales are already outpacing the Wii U, at 7 million consoles compared to Nintendo’s 5.86 million (as of Dec. 31 2013); Xbox One isn’t far behind at 5 million.
With major third-party publishers like EA and Ubisoft largely abandoning the Wii U, Nintendo’s leaning on first-party software to sell the system. And that’s where this Spring’s Mario Kart 8 comes in, the latest entry in a series going back to the Super Nintendo era. Like Microsoft offering Titanfall bundled in with Xbox One, Nintendo is bundling a major, exclusive release with its console, and taking a hit on profits from game sales in favor of putting more Wii Us in more living rooms. The hope is, in the long run, more consoles in homes means more game / accessory sales (which is where the real money is for Nintendo).
The company also announced this week that it’s going to (once again) skip holding a press conference at E3, instead opting to host a Nintendo Direct video stream.
Gadget Rewind 2005: Xbox 360
The current-gen console wars may be tilting in Sony’s favor with its PlayStation 4, but once upon a very recent time (i.e., the previous console generation), Microsoft had a big early lead. When the company released its Xbox 360 back in 2005, the console had a considerable head start on the competition, beating Sony’s PlayStation 3 launch by a full year. There were, however, intrinsic pitfalls in rushing the 360 out to market so fast; hardware problems Microsoft paid for dearly.
The Xbox 360′s November 2005 launch was highly anticipated, with thousands of gamers (several Engadget editors among them) braving late hours and cold weather to snag one. Unfortunately for those eager gamers, Microsoft’s haste to meet holiday deadlines resulted in limited stock levels, leaving many shoppers empty-handed and disappointed. On top of that, a significant portion of this initial run — about 3 percent, according to Microsoft — was afflicted with the “red ring of death,” a dreaded, scarlet indicator that signaled a defunct, or “bricked” console. That production hiccup meant a good deal of early adopters had to spend those first days on the phone with customer support instead of playing their new 360s. Microsoft eventually responded to the crisis and made an effort to smooth out those issues with extended warranties, software updates and revised production runs.
Early hardware issues aside, the Xbox 360 was regarded by many as a beautiful thing, with a slimmer and more streamlined build than that of its hulking predecessor. Its gamepad even went on to become a high-water mark for controller design, setting a standard that’s been emulated by many third-party companies since. And it’s still the go-to for many PC gamers to this day. The 360′s also credited with popularizing online multiplayer for console gaming with Xbox Live. That service, which debuted on the original Xbox, benefitted tremendously from Microsoft’s earlier dalliance with online gaming and, of course, the 360′s robust install base.
Limited onboard storage capacity, however, certainly discouraged wanton spending on digital games. The Premium Edition of the Xbox 360 came with a 20GB hard drive, making it the preferred option for most consumers. The cheaper Core version didn’t have a hard drive at all, although for $100, gamers could purchase a 20GB add-on HDD. Without it, however, they couldn’t download much content or play last-gen Xbox games. As the years went by, Microsoft released new 360 models with larger-capacity drives to accommodate the growing file size of games and gamers’ appetite for downloads.
It didn’t take long for Microsoft to garner gamers’ loyalty with the Xbox 360. In its first three years on the market, the 360 effectively surpassed the original Xbox’s lifetime sales with over 30 million units sold. That number then rose to 80 million units by 2008 and got another boost with the Kinect’s release in 2010. Thanks to that monstrous install base, new games continue to arrive for the console to this day; games that are also seeing simultaneous release on next-gen consoles.
Microsoft may be passing the torch to its shiny and new Xbox One, but regardless, sales numbers for the 360 remain strong. In March of this year, over 100,000 units were sold. In fact, the Xbox 360′s been handily beating Nintendo’s struggling Wii U for 25 months straight. Not bad for a nearly 9-year-old console, eh?
Did you own an Xbox 360? Add it to your Engadget profile as a device you had (or still have) and join the discussion to reminisce or share photos of your device with other like-minded gadget fans.
Daily Roundup: Getting to know Xbox’s Phil Spencer, Nintendo’s rarest game and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Google will protect your phone by looking for sketchy apps you’ve already installed
Google has been alerting users when downloading apps of questionable origin for some time. But now the company’s taking its security a step further by checking up on your apps after you’ve already installed them.
Getting to know Microsoft’s new Xbox lead, Phil Spencer
There’s a new sheriff in Xbox town, and his name is Phil Spencer. While most of us know him as the E3 guy who speaks about games during Microsoft’s keynote, Spencer is a longtime Redmond employee who worked his way up from the bottom.
Facebook is trying to save you from embarrassing posts
In an effort to keep you on top of your privacy settings, Facebook’s giving its existing controls more visibility. By rolling out a new “Privacy Checkup” box in the near future, the company hopes people will become more aware of their sharing habits.
Play Nintendo’s rarest game on your Wii U
Back in the 90s, Nintendo released 90 copies of a three-part, competitive play cartridge called Nintendo World Championships. In the spirit of nostalgia, the company’s adding said game into its next iteration of NES Remix for the Wii U.
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Filed under: Misc
How would you change Nintendo’s Wii U?
The Wii was, undoubtedly, the success story of the previous console generation, encouraging millions of novice gamers to wave their arms around like a crazy person. The Wii U’s big gimmick, touchscreen gaming, made plenty of sense, considering the quantity of mobile and DS users out there, but it never seemed to take off in the same way. Launching well ahead of the Xbone and PS4, the general opinion of our reviewer was that it simply wasn’t ready for the big time, and sales seem to have backed that up. A year has passed now, so it’s high time that we asked you what Nintendo should have done differently? Sign up at the forums and talk us some change.
Source: Engadget Product Forums
Nintendo to add more NES remixes, GameBoy Advance titles to Wii U this Spring
Unless you still own a GameCube GameBoy Player, it’s probably been awhile since you’ve seen a GameBoy Advance title up on the big screen. Come April, that could change: Nintendo announced today that the Wii U eShop will start carrying GBA classics this Spring, starting with Metroid Fusion, Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 (both of which were 3DS Ambassador bonuses, by the way) and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Naturally, Japan’s getting a similar pen of classic releases, but its library of pending GBA games includes Mario Advance 2, Wario Ware, Golden Sun, F-Zero and Advance Wars — Japanese gamers were also teased with a price-point: ¥650 a pop (about $6.35).
If that’s not enough nostalgic news to tide you over, Nintendo did have /one/ more thing to announce. Remember when Nintendo cherry-picked specific moments from a ton of classic NES games and released them in a mini-game bundle a few months back? It’s at it again: NES Remix 2 is everything the original downloadable title was, but to a collection of NES classic picked from later in the original Nintendo’s life cycle. This means there will be remixed and scripted challenges from games like Punch-Out!!!, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid. The new Remix also includes a “new” full-game titled Super Luigi Bros. — essentially a mirrored version of the NES classic with Mario’s younger brother in the starring role. When was the “Year of Luigi” supposed to end again?
Source: Nintendo Direct (1), (2)
Tell-all explores the Wii U’s development problems
It’s no secret that some game developers dislike the Wii U — performance issues, limited internet features and relatively slow console sales have made it tough for companies to justify support. But have you ever wondered what, exactly, went wrong? Wonder no more, as an anonymous developer has just shared many of the gritty details with Eurogamer. The insider claims that the sluggish CPU has been a concern since the beginning, and that the programming tools (not to mention feedback from Japan) have been sub-par. Nintendo’s inexperience with online services is also very clear. The company created chaos for Wii U developers with network code that only arrived at the last minute, and a key team hadn’t even tried PlayStation Network or Xbox Live before the Wii U’s launch. Price cuts and high-quality first-party games have helped Nintendo since then, but the source suggests that the firm can only do so much to court third-party developers entranced by more powerful hardware.
Source: Eurogamer
Hackers reverse engineer Wii U GamePad to stream from PC
Thought using the Wii U GamePad as a simple PC controller was a neat trick? Try this on for size: a small team of hackers has figured out how to stream PC games to the tablet-esque controller natively, circumventing its host console. The hack was shown this week at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress, where the group revealed how it reverse engineered the GamePad controller. After weaving a complex tale of dumped firmware, decoded video and buggy streams, the team showed a simple drawing app streaming from a laptop to the Wii U GamePad. Impressive? Sure, but the crowd didn’t erupt into applause until they booted up a Gamecube emulated session of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
Despite some crashes, the demo appeared to be fairly playable — though the team warns that the available code is aimed primarily at developers. The group eventually plans to build user-friendly tools for Windows and OSX, as well as an Android port designed to allow users to substitute the Wii U GamePad with their own tablets, streaming from the console to the slate of their choice. It’s not quite ready to replace your NVIDIA Shield, but the project is brimming with potential. Check out the presentation’s slides at the source link below, or read on for a video of the hack in action (the fun starts about 47 minutes in).
Via: NeoGaf
Source: Libdrc, Slides (Google Drive), 30C3
Nintendo Network stutters under holiday traffic, Pokemon Bank and Transporter delayed
Unwrap a Wii U this holiday season? Apparently, you weren’t the only one: the company’s Nintendo Network seems to be stumbling over increased traffic. “Players are having trouble setting up Nintendo Network IDs and downloading content in the Nintendo eShop on both Wii U and Nintendo 3DS,” Nintendo writes on its US support page. “We truly regret the inconvenience, and wish to reassure everyone that providing a solution is our top priority.”
The network issues are sure to be a thorn in the side of new users pursuing the Wii U’s requisite updates, not to mention current owners hoping to check out this week’s eShop sales. Folks planning to pick up Pokemon Bank and Poke Teleport (a pair of programs designed to allow players to save, store and transfer their pocket monsters between new and old versions of the games) will have to wait too — both apps have been delayed until the network issues can be resolved. With any luck, that won’t take too long, but if you care to nip at Nintendo’s heels you’ll find the company’s official announcement at the source links below.
Source: Nintendo (1), (2), (3)
What about the Wii U?
Everyone’s in a tizzy about the “new” console generation, conveniently forgetting that, market-wise, it was already here a year ago with the release of Nintendo’s Wii U. It isn’t as advanced technologically as the new Sony’s PlayStation and Micros…
Nintendo Wii U review
Well it’s about time. Ever since the current generation of consoles has been sat in our living rooms, annual gaming expo E3 has been bereft of any serious hardware announcements. Or at least one that hasn’t been either a handheld or peripheral. E3 2010 was dominated by Microsoft and Sony as they locked into a bizarre battle over who could best imitate the hugely successful Nintendo Wii, which this year has left Nintendo with only one choice: innovate yet again and jump ahead of the pack. The result is Nintendo’s Wii U.
Something for everyone
Nintendo says that this new machine is a revolutionary console and controller duo designed to be “something for everyone,” which in our opinion simply means packing the motion-control aspects of the Wii while also bringing what’s expected (a full compliment of controls and joysticks, for example) for core game styles like shooters and sports titles. With that mission statement in mind, you’d expect things to be graphically up to muster. They are. HD is a welcome (if late) addition, for one
via Nintendo Wii U review: Hands-on first impressions review | T3.com.
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