News: Release dates, online connectivity and more. And maybe GoldenEye on the Virtual Console.
MTV.com is becoming the go-to place for game industry executives to reveal new information. Yesterday, it was Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime's turn.
Fils-Aime talked up Nintendo's Wii and remarked that all 600,000 systems that have been shipped to retailers have sold out and around 300,000 Wiimotes have also been sold.
He went to talk about future game releases and revealed that WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Wii Play will be coming in January with Mario Party 8 dropping in March. He also confirmed that Wii Play will come bundled with a Wii Remote. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will follow those titles sometime in the Spring or early Summer and Super Mario Galaxy could come out "any time between the end of March and next Christmas." There was no mention of the highly anticipated Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Reggie also talked about the Wii's online plans and said that Pokщmon Battle Revolution would be the first online title in Japan. He said there is the possibility it could be the first online American title as well. But he also let slip that there are several other unannounced online games in the pipe and that 2007 is the year of online for Nintendo. "For the consumer who is saying, 'Gosh, when is Nintendo going to get on board with online play?' The answer is very early in 2007."
Reggie was also vocal on plans for the Virtual Console: "On every Monday, you can expect between one and five titles... essentially on an ongoing basis." He expanded on this by saying that the Nintendo team was looking into obtaining the rights to feature the classic GoldenEye on the VC. GoldenEye has been a problem as the game was developed by Rare (who is now owned by Microsoft) and the James Bond license is now in the hands of Activision.
Fils-Aime finished the interview by talking about surprises and how Nintendo always has them. He's planning a trip to Japan to talk with Nintendo of Japan executives about the future of the Wii in America. He said to look for a plethora of Wii announcements.
And when those announcements are made, we'll be there.