Posts with tag UK
Posted Mar 31st 2008 5:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: News
if you ever keep
an eye on sales data in the far-off lands of
Not Japan, then perhaps you know that the world loves the DS. It's just a great handheld system, no further explanation necessary. In
the UK, the portable gaming system is selling as if it were the year-end holidays in the country, causing a bit of a strain on Nintendo's supply of handhelds to the region.
"What we sold last week on DS is what previously would have been sold in November – so hopefully retail will understand that it is presenting stock challenges for us," explains Nintendo's marketing director Dawn Paine. Yet the problem of keeping product out there on shelves is a problem for Nintendo at the moment, they couldn't be happier with the continued success. "But three years down the road from launch, the fact that our hardware sales are increasing is very pleasing." The one place you're still not allowed to have one, however, is
prison.
Any of our UK readers notice the shops lacking DSes on their shelves?
[Via Go Nintendo]
Posted Mar 29th 2008 4:00PM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: Another Week in ...
Featuring charts from across the region, Another Week in Europe documents the buying habits and quirky tastes of a whole continent of DS lovers.
The usual proliferation of
training games and
Mario & Sonic aside, there's been little in the way of interesting new DS releases in this week's charts. And by "little," we mean "
nothing." Indeed, Ubisoft's
Imagine: Babies is actually the highest new DS entrant in the UK (30th), Ireland (10th), and France (11th). Deflating, much?
Furthermore, with only
Bunnyz,
Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts,
George of the Jungle,
Hurry Up Hedgehog,
Neves,
Teenage Zombies and
Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship 2008 to come next week, we're not anticipating much change. People, we're hitting the mid-year drought -- for heaven's sake, give us a release date for
Professor Layton already, Nintendo. Hit the break for the full chart lowdown.
Continue reading Another Week in Europe
Posted Mar 22nd 2008 12:00PM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: Another Week in ...
Featuring charts from across the region, Another Week in Europe documents the buying habits and quirky tastes of a whole continent of Wii lovers.
Germany, we salute you! This week's chart from the land of the brätwurst will make
excellent reading for Nintendo of Europe. Not only is
Super Mario Galaxy showing it has legs by making an appearance in the top ten, but the top nine --
NINE! -- spots are occupied by DS titles. The presence of
New Super Mario Bros.,
Mario Kart DS, and
Animal Crossing Wild World speaks volumes for the
proud German people. With all of this in mind, a picture of one of Germany's favorite icons seemed like the only appropriate image for this week's edition of Another Week in Europe. Plus, we totally love
Knight Rider.
Elsewhere, there's a significant DS presence in the UK, Irish, and Dutch charts, while
Baby Pals could only crawl to a humbling 25th spot in Britain. Suddenly, everything seems
right with the world. Full charts (minus the Spanish one, which failed to materialize this week) await you after the break.
Continue reading Another Week in Europe
Posted Mar 16th 2008 4:00PM by Eric Caoili
Filed under: Promotional Consideration
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
We applaud any video game ad that eschews the common official-art-and-screenshots approach, a template that's been in place for as long as we can remember. This week's piece abandons those conventions, marketing EA's
SimCity DS port and its city-management features in a much more creative fashion. Expand you commercial zoning, lower industrial taxes, and join us past the break!
Continue reading Promotional Consideration: City planning
Posted Mar 12th 2008 11:15AM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: Another Week in ...
Featuring charts from across the region, Another Week in Europe documents the buying habits and quirky tastes of a whole continent of DS lovers.
Imagine if Nintendo's
Brain Training titles really
did boost human intelligence. By now, Europe would be an entire continent of
freakish, towering intellects, probably on the verge of world domination or something. Indeed, most of the region is
still buying
Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, almost two years after it launched. Quite bizarrely, it's even outselling its own sequel in the majority of regions.
Apart from Nintendo's bonce-honing über-hit (notice how I casually throw my
mad German skillz around the place), there's the usual suspects here, with
Mario & Sonic,
Cooking Mama 2,
Professor Kageyama's Maths Training, and --
yaaay! --
New Super Mario Bros. all making a splash. That is, except in Sweden and Denmark, where apparently there's some kind of DS shortage. What?
While you dwell on the revelation that the DS doesn't rule every single corner of the world, go past the break for more European charts than you can shake a croissant at. Oh, and mentally prepare yourselves for next week. Why? Two words:
Baby Pals. Eek!
Continue reading Another Week in Europe
Posted Jan 30th 2008 6:00PM by Alisha Karabinus
Filed under: News, Sales
A list of the top fifty best-selling games in the UK last year has surfaced, and the DS snagged six of the spots, though you may be somewhat surprised by what made it. Of course, considering that there are a lot more
regular folks than there are "hardcore gamers" (and even the hardest of the hard like a little break now and again), you may not be
that surprised after all.
The original brain game,
Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, took the number two spot as the second best-selling title overall, and the sequel,
More Brain Training, slid in at number five. Considering that
Big Brain Academy turned up at number 37 (along with its console cousin at number 24), there must be a lot of healthy and exercised brains trundling around Dear Old Blighty these days. The other games that turned up were
New Super Mario Bros., at number 13,
Cooking Mama just above it in twelfth place, and way down near the bottom,
Pokémon Diamond turned up at number 44. Perhaps our friends in the UK have already caught them all.
Posted Jan 30th 2008 4:00PM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: News
Attention female readers of DS Fanboy! You know how you're
ALWAYS thinking about nothing else but pink things, cooking, and raising
cute ickle babies? Well, Nintendo is, like,
TOTALLY on your wavelength! The company has just teamed up with publisher Future to launch gaming magazine
Girl Gamer in the UK, and it won't cost you a penny, meaning you can save for those divine shoes that you just
have to have or you'll die.
The 32-page magazine is being given away with the latest copies of
Bliss and
Mizz, two of the UK's most popular girl's titles, and is yet further evidence that Nintendo is
completely in touch with
female gamers. Just look at the cover: pink things?
Check! Cooking?
Check! Babies?
Check!
[Via press release]
Posted Jan 9th 2008 5:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: News
Sales data for the year have come in regarding the UK and Nintendo's brain-empowering software on the DS ranked pretty darn high on the list. Both
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training and
More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima were on the list, with the first title only being beaten by
FIFA 08. You folks in the UK really love your
soccer football, eh?
The full list is as follows:
- FIFA 08 (EA)
- Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo)
- Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (Konami)
- More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima (Nintendo)
- Halo 3 (Microsoft)
- The Simpsons Game (EA)
- Wii Play (Nintendo)
- Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft)
- WWE Smackdown VS Raw 2008 (THQ)
[Via Joystiq]
Posted Jan 6th 2008 8:00PM by Eric Caoili
Filed under: Promotional Consideration
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
The following DS Lite ads were taken from a series of Nintendo-sponsored station identification pieces (idents) aired over a year ago on Channel 4. For those of you unfamiliar with idents, they're short spots, often themed, stuck in between television shows to help "brand" the channel. In the case of this set, the
UK public-service TV station bookended its comedy programs with Japanese theatre-styled advertisements for the DS's features and games.
They're some of the most creative commercials we've seen for the handheld, so don't skip this post!
Continue reading Promotional Consideration: Dual screen theatre
Posted Jan 3rd 2008 10:36PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: News
Nicole Kidman's
endorsement of Nintendo's software for the DS has one doctor in particular crying "humbug."
Dr. Jason Braithwaite, a cognitive neuroscientist (maybe after playing enough
Brain Age, we'll figure out what that is exactly), seems to be of the mind that using the non-game
exhibits "no conclusive evidence showing that the continued use of these devices is linked to any measurable and general improvements in cognition." This all stems from him seeing one of Kidman's adverts, where she states "I have quickly found that training my brain [with Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training computer game] is a great way to keep my mind feeling young"
"Practice at any task should lead to some form of improvement for that specific task," he adds. But, we wonder if that applies here. Sure, individual tasks in repetition will undoubtedly cause one to improve at completing them, but the exercises in Nintendo's title are varied and the whole goal of the game isn't to sit there for hours on end, practicing individual exercises. The daily training, along with the sudoku, and other items that make up the whole package come together to bring forth the improvement felt by the user. These are small sections of the user's day devoted to the working the brain, when the time could otherwise be used to waste brain power by watching TV or, if it were us and we were afforded spare time in our day, sleep.
Posted Jan 2nd 2008 1:30PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: Interviews
General Manager for the UK, David Yarnton, recently sat down to discuss Nintendo and the UK. The interview had a mixture of light and fluffy, with some actual tough questions sprinkled throughout. The main question as to when UK gamers will receive the same respect and consideration as the rest of the gaming world did not arise, though.
Yarnton explains that Nintendo doesn't have another handheld in the works, though discussion hasn't been dying down. He also goes on to state that the focus on the DS in 2008 will be to improve on the amount of titles they have in their Touch Generations! lineup of games.
What would you in the UK like to see Nintendo focus on in the upcoming year? You know, aside from the whole "giving us games in a timely fashion" thing ...
Posted Dec 27th 2007 3:00PM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: Sales
If you answered both of those questions with "Yes, oh god,
YES!!" then we have just two things to say to you:
- Calm down, dear, it's only a game, albeit a very fine one.
- As part of its January sales, Amazon is currently offering Brits The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass for the wallet-pleasing price of £19.99.
Admittedly, this post is addressed to a fairly small portion of the DS Fanboy audience -- UK residents who have yet to pick up Link's
excellent DS debut -- but we've learned that such good value shouldn't be ignored when it does pop up. And don't forget that that's not the only place us British folk can find
bargains right now. Get spending that Christmas money, folks!
Posted Dec 24th 2007 5:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: Sales
UK gamers, you've got a heck of a sale going on. Select titles from online retailer Play.com have gotten their prices slashed, with free shipping on all titles purchased. Any games purchased won't get there before Christmas, sadly, but you will get one heck of a sweet deal. Perhaps you've shopped for everyone else and now it's time to treat yourself?
As far as good games you can get on the cheap,
Drawn to Life (£12.99),
Custom Robo (£14.99) and
Jam Sessions (£17.99) are a few of the titles that are up for grabs. Not only that, but newer games like
Call of Duty 4 (£17.99) are even getting in on the price cut action.
Posted Dec 20th 2007 4:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: Features
Well, not all of it. This is more about the highlights, the
big news of the year. The kind of stuff that we should look back to and highlight as being memorable in 2007. It's been one hell of a year; a roller coaster ride of hits and misses. So, grab your admission ticket, buckle yourself in and join us for this look back at the news of 2007.
Continue reading All of the news DS Fanboy saw fit to print in 2007
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