Lusipurr.com – Presenting the Sundry Opinions of Lusipurr and Friends

Happy New Year, faithful readers of Lusipurr.com! I apologize for my absence, so to appease the raging masses, allow me to give you exactly what you expect out of a quality Lusipurr News post:

REJOICE!

There, now that we have established my credibility once more, let us move forward!

Nintendo Dominates This Week’s News

We will begin by taking a look back at the very distant past that is 2010. Enterbrain released their yearly sales reports comparing global gaming system sales, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that Nintendo was top dog. The Nintendo DS outsold the PSP by over 70,000 units last year alone, with its total number of units sold since release nearly double that of the PSP. This domination was not limited only to handhelds, as the Nintendo Wii also outsold the PS3 by 200,000 units and absolutely decimated the XBox 360 by selling over a million more systems. They also raked in the dough with game sales; though they did not hold the honor of creating the first and second best selling games of 2010 (Pokemon B&W and Monster Hunter Portable respectively) they did still produce five of the other top ten games of the year, those being New Super Mario Bros., Wii Party, Friend Collection, and Wii Fit Plus. While this does paint a picture that casual gamers are reigning king, this comes at a cost: casual gamers spend their money casually and it shows. Not just Nintendo, but the industry as a whole lost money, with hardware seeing a 19% drop while software only fell 2.5% in sales. This raises a lot of very curious questions about how the casual gaming phenomenon will continue to affect the market and the gaming community as a whole.

The future! Now plug it in to recharge.

Following the Sales Trends

So we know now that the DS and the Wii were the biggest selling systems of 2010. However, like any good over-demanding Asian parent, Nintendo looked at the Wii and cried, “Why you no good rike your brother?! He sell many more unit than you! You bring your famiry great dishonor! I am disappoint!” That’s why, when looking at the list of releases intended for the Wii, you will notice it is the unfavored child, with the DS, specifically its 3D rebirth, getting significantly more. With only twenty-one titles, the Wii is going to be relying on its five console exclusives: Centipede, The Conduit, Zelda Skyward Sword, Mario Sports Mix, and Wicked Monster Blast. The 3DS has well over ninety titles from more than twenty publishers, almost all of them contributing a version of their landmark titles like Final Fantasy or Resident Evil. Despite speculation to the contrary, Nintendo recently clarified that the North American launch of the 3DS is still slated for March 2011.

But with any new baby in the family, there comes some shit-filled diapers. The biggest concern raised at the Nintendo World event in Tokyo is that of battery life: as predicted, it is abysmal. It only takes about 3.5 hours to charge, not typically a big deal…..except you have to charge it for 3.5 hours after playing for 3.5 hours. And that is if you play with the lowest screen brightness setting, higher settings will drain it even faster. Of course, this information must be taken with a two grains of salt. First, the numbers seem low as simply numbers on a page, but are comparatively similar to the battery life of a DSi. Second, this is three months prior to release, it has only been tested under a specific set of conditions, not the many various conditions that everyday gamers will put the device through.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 at 11:00 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.