»

[Vic Viper]

Many sat in anticipation for today's press conference, well it happened. Details within.


Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, held a press conference today in Japan in order to discuss future plans for Nintendo. Within the news conference Iwata announced that Nintendo is planning on releasing a new game product which will give gamers a "fresh surprise". Nintendo is calling the new product "unconventional".

"We are preparing a new product which will give a fresh surprise to consumers," stated Satoru Iwata. "I want to release a very different product, and by next spring we'll be ready to announce the details."

Expect the announcement to come at E3 2004.

Nintendo also announced a program that will reward gamers with demo discs of upcoming games and limited edition controllers. The program is called Nintendo Club and will be available to gamers in Japan and North America. The club will reward consumers with "reward points" for buying certain products. The points can be used to purchase other product. Nintendo also plans on rewarding gamers with prizes for feedback on Nintendo products. "We'll begin the new program in Japan and the United States by the end of this year. We aim to have 300,000 - 500,000 users sign up for the program in the first year," said Iwata.

Finally two new GameCube games were announced, Donkey Kong GCN and WarioWare, Inc.GCN. Donkey Kong GCN is being jointly developed with Namco and promises to be released this year in Japan. WarioWare, Inc. will also be released in 2003. Iwata also pointed out that Nintendo will expand upon it's relationships with developers but has no plans for any major acquisitions.

On a side note, a new Zelda was reaffirmed to be released in 2004.

gamerfeed

[MakgSnake]

Solid News..... I like that. I wonder that new announcment would be. Although I did hear that ... to go against Sony's PSP...Nintendo is all ready to release a new HandHeld system in the market next year. Thats what I hear......I wonder if thats what the big news be......... something similar playing MP3, Mpeg, Avi files and movies....and ofcouse Nintendo Games. We'll wait and see.

[Vicious_2003]

Nintendo is haulting producion on the Gamecube untill autumn becuase they havent been selling well and they have tons of them in thier warehouses. Alot of people think that could tie into thier upcoming "Big announcements" I dont want to speculate on what that all means but it doesent look good for Nintendo

[tha16thletter]

Nintendo is a proud company, they won't give up completely until they have to... but when developers see that they haulted production, they're going to get discouraged. I'd be much happier if Nintendo made only games for all consoles.

[kupoartist]

they're Tempoarily Halting Production not because they don't think they can sell more, just because they were too optimistic with their recent manufacturing orders, leaving them with a Surplus.... So either the Developers will have already been discouraged, or nothing much will happen. When the Gamecube "dies", I don't think that the other consoles will be far behind anyway.... It doesn't look like any one console is going to enjoy the domination that the PSOne had towards the end of the last decade.

Makg, I'd agree. If Nintendo have any sense, they're putting all their weight behind a PSP Challenger - Nowadays the Handheld Market is their Ace, and they will not want to loose it (and the GBA is looking dated, and has had a decent innings anyway.)

One interesting point: will developers choose Sony, because Sony is probably the best Console Developer, or will they choose Nintendo, because they're the best Handheld Developer? - A Tough question for companies like Square-Enix for Certain...

[Vicious_2003]

they're Tempoarily Halting Production not because they don't think they can sell more, just because they were too optimistic with their recent manufacturing orders

Well yah thats what i said only re worded to make Nintendo look better . They made more than they could sell, they failed to reach the marks set for themselves because thier competitors put out better machines thats all. And lets face it. the gamecubes sales are dismall at best, check the figures. There almost doing as bad in the U.S as X Box is in Japan (ok an exageration i know, but still) . Im not trying to rag on nintendo but these are the facts as I know them. I love Nintendo personally I just think they screwed up in a big way with the Cube. No hard drive, no online, not that many quality games that dont include a friggin little cartoon character, crappy controller (My opinion) ,NOT worth buying (Ditto). I think Nintendo will survive to produce another console and I hope theyve learned from there mistakes