Weekly News Update with all the week’s Japanese Switch, 3DS, Wii U and Mobile news!
● Nintendo revealed their financial results for the last fiscal year: Nintendo Switch sold 2.74 million, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2.76 million, Pokémon Sun Moon 15.4 million, Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS 2.34 million, Kirby Planet Robobot 1.36 million, Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer 2.3 million, Snipperclips 350,000, Super Bomberman R 500,000 and 1-2-Switch almost at one million.
● President Tatsumi Kimishima announced a New Nintendo 2DS LL that will release on 13 July 2017 priced at ¥16,178 ($145). The colours will be Black × Turquoise and White × Orange. Also announced is a beautiful New Nintendo 2DS LL Dragon Quest Hagure Metal Edition for release on 29 July priced at ¥24,278 ($218) containing console, a boxed copy of Dragon Quest XI: Sugisarishi Toki o Motomete and an exclusive theme).
● Genyo Takeda who played a pivotal part in the success of Nintendo behind both the Punch-Out!! and StarTropics franchises and more importantly the development of the Wii and the N64 Analogue Stick to name but a few, will retire as Representative Director and Technology Fellow on 29 June 2017 and is expected to be replaced by Ko Shiota. Takeda will continue to carry on at Nintendo in a limited capacity as a ‘special advisor’.
● Mario Kart 8 Deluxe released on Nintendo Switch although no sales reports as of yet. Other Switch news saw a surprise eShop release of the board game Ginsei Shogi: Kyoutendo Toufuu Raijin from Silver Star for ¥1,200. TumbleSeed is scheduled for 2 May from Aeiowu for ¥1,600. Nobunaga no Yabou: Taishi was announced by Koei Tecmo for Winter 2017 and Project Mekuru is officially going to be called Battle Sports Mekuru.
● Announced for the 3DS eShop on 10 May are Grandpa Danger DigiCoro Vol.012 from Shogakukan for ¥100, Mini Golf Resort from Teyon Japan for ¥500 and Galaxy Blaster from Cosen for ¥300. The strategy game Daisenryaku Daitoua Koboshi 2nd World War has officially been cancelled. And Rainy Frog will localise the Ratalaika Games retro-styler platformers League of Evil and 0000 later this year on both Switch and 3DS.
● The Wii U saw three more games announced for the eShop this Summer with Cosen localising three more games with the platform adventure game Spheroids, the twin-stick shooter Tachyon Project and the rogue-like dungeon crawler Bit Dungeon+ (the latter of which is also coming to 3DS). Check back on the website tomorrow for more Wii U (and Nintendo Switch!) reveals for Japan.
● President Tatsumi Kimishima revealed that Super Mario Run has almost been download 150 million times, Fire Emblem Heroes is at a lot less downloads but has actually made more money for Nintendo than Super Mario Run! Nintendo still plan to continue releasing two to three smartphone games per year with the Animal Crossing mobile game re-confirmed for this fiscal year.
● Kirby celebrated his 25th birthday! All Nintendo did to celebrate was to discount a few 3DS and Wii U games on the eShop and to sell a 3DS theme (technically it is available for free on My Nintendo too). Nintendo will not be holding a big press-conference at E3 this year (obviously they’ll still be doing their thing). Thanks everybody for following and have a great week ahead!
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