Nintendo had a roundtable in New York yesterday, to speak about Wii Fit, which will be releasing on May 19 in the United States.

The man himself, Shigeru Miyamoto, introduced the game to the press at the roundtable, and after doing a couple of yoga stretches, he discussed the status of the game in Japan and the success he thinks Wii Fit will have in the US. The game has already sold more than 2 million copies in Japan, but Miyamoto wasn’t too optimistic about the US enjoying the game as much, as the two countries have many cultural differences.

According to a Crave blogger on CNET:

“Miyamoto noted that on average, American families are apart more often than those in Japan. A lot of families have parents who have separated or divorced, so it’s tougher to predict the role family will play in the American response to Wii Fit.”

In addition to sales talk, Miyamoto also flirted with the idea that there may be interaction with the Nintendo DS. This left press to believe that there could be a DS calorie counter or fitness tracker.

After being asked what he would be working on next, Miyamoto told the crowd that he will be working on the Wii a bit more. He also showed a desire to make another Pikmin title.

Sources close to Take Two as well as several industry analysts expect Grand Theft Auto IV to make $400 million in its first week, selling 6 million copies when it releases April 29, according to Variety.

If these predictions are correct it will be the biggest one week video game launch ever, surpassing Halo 3’s $300 million in the first week. GTA IV might even beat movie records, with the the highest being $404 million worldwide, made by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End in the first six days. If GTA IV’s launch does end up being the biggest entertainment launch of all time, at least we’ll know that gamers have better taste than movie goers when it comes to breaking records.

However, Halo 3 was an Xbox 360 exclusive, while GTA IV is on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, so it does have a significantly larger base of customers to draw money from. Still, $400 million is an impressive figure, and and at $60 a piece it works out to be over 6.67 million copies (even higher than the previously mentioned prediction). By my informal estimates, that works out to be amassiveshitload of virtual hookers killed per day and an even higher number of virtual cars stolen. While I don’t have industry analysts or important anonymous sources to back this up, I’m going to go ahead and say that GTA IV will break all records for crimes committed in-game in a week, and probably the record for amount of cumulative enjoyment from one game crammed into a single week too.

Well, who would have guessed that the Wii would still be in short supply after all this time? I wouldn’t have thought so, that’s for sure. If you asked me a year and a half ago, I would have put my money on any of the other systems being in short supply. Nevertheless, here we are with the Wii reportedly in low supply for the next six months.

During its investor’s phone call GameStop COO Dan Dematteo was asked by investors if he saw an end to the post holiday shortages that affected the 360 (were those true?), DS (who doesn’t own one?), and Wii (is Nintendo causing these?). He chose to focus on the Wii since it seems that it is the only system that still might be in shortage, saying that supply “won’t meet demand for the next 2 quarters.” That’s a bit of time, huh? I can’t believe Nintendo would be intentionally doing this still, even though I never believed they were in the first place.

Dematteo also commented on the other systems, saying that the 360 and DS were in good supply while the PSP was getting a bit hard to find. As for the PS3, he said they have plenty of those for all the people out there wanting to pick one up when GTA IV releases… which is also coming out for the 360. I guess it could still spur sales.

GameStop CFO David Carlson also had a word to say about some price cuts coming for both the PS3 and 360. The company is predicting a $50 price cut for each system within the next year. With the positive response the 360 had in Europe after their recent price cut, this can’t be that far from the truth. At least for the 360; do you think that Sony can lose even more money on every system they sell?

Nintendo has just sent word that their epic Wii fighter, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, sold 874,000 copies on launch day (March 9th) and 1.4 million units total since then in the United States alone. Apparently, this averages out to around 120 copies being sold per minute as of March 16th and it’s the fastest selling game in Nintendo’s history.

Of course this is to be expected, because it’s a really f*cking great game. This just goes to show that Nintendo should be focusing on creating more hardcore games like Brawl, instead of turning the Wii into an exercise machine. Still, I do have a strange feeling that Wii Fit is going to sell a ridiculous amount of units. I hope I’m wrong.

Full press release after the jump.

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I’m aware that this is old news by now. So, why hasn’t it been posted about yet on MEGATONik? Because after I read about it yesterday… I fainted.

Really, just think about it: a game featuring an Italian plumber and his brother competing in Olympic events against a blue hedgehog and his “whore a franchise into the ground” friends has sold five million copies between the Wii and DS versions.

Isn’t that just completely ridiculous? Never before has our “WHY??” tag felt more appropriate to me.

[Via CVG]

Somone forgot to tell Capcom that third party titles aren’t selling well on the Wii. We just got word that Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles has shipped 1 million units worldwide in a little over three months time. This makes the second million seller for Capcom on the Wii, the first being the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, which is by far one of the best ports the Wii has recieved. Capcom also brought us the cult hit Zack and Wiki for the Wii so it looks like they’re doing pretty well on the Big N’s system. Guess it does pay off to actually think about the games you bring out for the Wii, even if they are simply ports.

It’s heartening to see a third party doing well on the Wii even if it’s with the same franchise. Hopefully, we’ll start getting more and more press releases like this from third party Wii developers. It would be especially awesome if they were about WiiWare games.

It seems that everyone and their mother (a statement usually reserved for the Wii) is rushing to download the demo for Devil May Cry 4 off of XBox Live. It has now been downloaded over 1 million times and doesn’t show signs of slowing down according to a press release we received from Capcom. This makes the demo one of the fastest to reach that number in the history of LIVE with an average of 25,000 downloads a day since it went live on Jan. 24. That be a lot of downloading.

In case you’re worried all these people downloading the demo aren’t buying the game, Capcom also informs us that the game is selling like some sort of cake that is hot,  with plenty of retailers calling in reorders within days of the game’s release. It looks like Dante’s still got ‘it’ or maybe it’s that dreamy new guy, Nero. Well because, you know, they look so different and all.

Good or bad, it seems that our beloved hobby has finally become mainstream. Michael Gallagher, President and CEO of the ESA, said in front of a packed audience at the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit on the 8th of February in Las Vegas, “In little more than a generation since Pong, our industry has arrived.”

“Videogames are an integral part of the way Americans work, live and play. As such, our industry has become a powerhouse”, says Mr. Gallagher. What is really insane is that he is utterly correct. The gaming industry has grown to the point where it has begun to affect the United States’ GDP postively.

“It may be an exaggeration today to say that everyone is a gamer, but the way things are going, it’s not much of an exaggeration tomorrow,” he said, referring to the segment of the market that we have been conditioned to see as ‘casual gamers’. He continues, “We have maintained the loyalty and support of our base, but extended to new demographics to an extent hardly imaginable a few years ago,” alluding on the segment of the market that ranges from middle age parents jamming to Guitar Hero or the old fogies bowling a perfect 300 in Wii Sports Bowling.

He continues on and on for what feels like an eternity, touching on all aspects of gaming including fitness games and the ESRB, for those of you so inclined to read the whole post, I’ve included a link below.

[Via GamesIndustry]

So far, THQ, developer of such series as Saints Row and Destroy All Humans, has had a good fiscal year. This is in thanks to the somewhat surprising success of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 and MX vs. ATV, but not so much in part to Stuntman: Ignition, Ratatouille, and Conan. In response to the negative performance of the latter games, THQ has lightened its schedule accordingly.

THQ has made the executive decision to cancel the PS3 version of Frontlines: Fuel of War and the PS2 game Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed. In addition they announced their decision “not to pursue its Juiced and Stuntman intellectual properties.”

Personally, I’m not too bummed about any of this. This move should just give THQ the ability to get the true Destroy All Humans sequel and Saints Row 2 out sooner. Is anyone here really going to miss the Stuntman or Juiced series?

IGN is reporting via Famitsu that Enterbrain, the publisher of Famitsu, has released numbers that have the Wii selling 5,019,337 units in Japan from its launch on December 2, 2006 to January 20, 2008. Clearly the system is beyond popular in its home country (as well as the rest of the world) as it only took 60 weeks to reach this mark. This makes the Wii the second fastest selling system ever, beating out the PS2 which took sixty-six weeks to sell as many. What is number one, you ask, already knowing the answer? It is of course everyone’s favorite money printing machine the DS which only took fifty-six weeks to reach the 5 million mark.

The Wii has 4 games over the one million mark. The best selling Wii game so far is Wii Sports with, according to the latest numbers issued by Enterbrain, 2,663,938 units. Trailing behind it are Wii Play (2,139,084 units), Mario Party 8 (1,153,648) and the hard-to-find Wii Fit (1,113,626). While it is great that the system is selling so well I wish there were more non-casual games above that one million mark. What would be even greater was if there was an actual third party game selling that well on the Wii. As it stands all these numbers prove, especially with Super Mario Galaxy in fifth at 843,961, is that more serious games and third party games don’t stand a chance. Yet another reason for everyone to go out and buy No More Heroes today. I’ve already got my copy.

Sorry about the pic; I’m just used to articles about large sums of money being about Nintendo, but it seems like they aren’t the only ones with enough cash to pull a Scrooge McDuck. Turns out this little thing called Guitar Hero is also printing money, though I’ve been looking all over my GH3 guitar and can’t find the handy slot the bills come out of like on the DS. The NPD group, in their all knowing wisdom, is reporting that the Guitar Hero franchise has made over 1 billion dollars and this doesn’t include downloadable songs. Of course what’s a few million dollars here or there, really? Looks like Activision’s purchase of the franchise from Red Octane for 100 million dollars was a wise investment.

Does anyone else read 1 billion dollars with a Dr. Evil voice in their head?

Get ready for some incredibly big numbers because I’m about to unload 2007 videogame sales on you and they are really massive. According to the NPD group overall videogame sales (console software, hardware and accessories, etc., etc.) were nearly $18 billion for 2007. This would be an increase of 43 percent over 2006 and is also commonly referred to as a shit-ton of money. Someone better be pulling a Scrooge McDuck money vault swim right now or it’s all going to waste if you ask me.

Breaking the numbers down, software sales totaled $8.64 billion for the year, an increase of 34 percent over 2006 with Halo 3 and Wii Play being the top selling games of the year with 4.8 million and 4.21 million units sold respectively. Looks like a free controller can do a lot for a game. Hardware wise it’s no surprise that the Wii and the DS dominated the market selling 8.5 million and 6.29 million units sold, respectively. Xbox 360 followed, selling 4.62 million, PS2 sold 3.97 million, PSP sold 3.82 million, and PS3 sold the least, with 2.56 million sold during the year. Of course with a year like this even coming in last isn’t that bad as the PS3 has been seeing a steady resurgence and sales are up for everyone.

Thanks mostly to the Wii and its plethora of peripherals (say that three times fast) peripheral sales were up 52 percent with sales reaching 2.26 billion dollars. The Wii Remote and nunchuck were the top sellers despite the release of this. Hit the jump for a list of the top selling games and some quotes from everyone’s favorite quote givers, analysts.

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While it may have been proven that most gamers don’t care about gaming’s right of free speech this doesn’t mean that our President shouldn’t. This is why, as a registered Democrat, Hilary Clinton has just lost my vote in the primary. She recently responded, late, to Common Sense Media’s survey on how the presidential candidates would deal with gaming rights. All her fellow democrats that responded said they would be fine with letting the industry regulate itself as they thought it was doing a good job and parental education was the place to focus their attention. Clinton, on the other hand, had this to say:

When I am president, I will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content.

Of course this shouldn’t come as a surprise as Clinton already introduced a bill that would regulate game sales two years ago which was oh-so benignly titled the Family Entertainment Protection Act. This is something to strongly consider when choosing who you vote for as changes like this will effect everyone, not just gamers. For the full run down on responses, which every gamer should read before voting, go here.

The numbers have come in from Ubisoft, and it’s official.  Assassin’s Creed is the “fastest-selling new video game IP in US history”. Despite many of the mediocre reviews and glitches in the game (such as the broken legged horse), Assassin’s Creed has sold over 2.5 million copies globally. Ubisoft is now expecting to sell 5 million copies of the game before the company’s fiscal year ends in March 2008. According to Ubisoft the title has “greatly outstripped” its expected sales (no kidding?).

 [Via Joystiq]

In a press release yesterday Nintendo revealed that the Nintendo DS has sold at a rate of one every five seconds for the year of 2007. Through Nov. 30 more than 6 million Nintendo DS systems sold in the United States according to internal Nintendo of America Inc. sales numbers. These numbers are enough for Nintendo to project that once again the DS will be the top-selling system of the year despite the fact that two new launch systems have been selling strongly all year long. The casual market is clearly eating this up and the DS also has plenty of games for the hardcore, so I’m not terribly suprised. It also helped that the DS became the record holder for number of systems sold over Thanksgiving week. The previous record was 600,000, held by the GBA. The DS beat this by a whopping 50,000 systems, selling a total of 650,000 for the week.

Massive props to Nintendo for dominating the world with it’s quirky hand held which is showing no signs of slowing down. But before this becomes nothing more than a Nintendo love fest I do have a question. If the DS is selling so fast why are there not shortages for it like there are for the Wii. Nintendo is capable of pumping out enough DS systems to keep the shelves stocked, why not Wiis? I’m sure there is some perfectly good reason for this that is escaping my mind at the moment. Does anybody know?

Do you know what is scary? In the time it took you to read this Nintendo sold 6-10 more DS systems.