NINTENDO Wii U LAUNCHING Q2 2012

In a recent interview with Forbes, Nintendo of America’s president and chief operating officer Reggie Fils-Aime was asked how his company will market the new Nintendo Wii U console — given that the existing Wii will still be on the market. Fils-Aime responded by noting that the console will not launch until after April 1st of next year — a date we hadn’t heard yet — and that, historically, Nintendo has sold multiple devices side by side. Fils-Aime pointed to the launch of the Nintendo DS alongside the Gameboy Advance, and also said that the Wii was on the market at the same time as the Game Cube. He also discussed cross-platform play, which could allow users to play against one another using different Nintendo machines “We have one key developer with a very strong relationship to Nintendo, the same developer who created Smash Brothers, that is envisioning a Smash Brothers experience that will be cross platform between Wii U and 3DS,” Fils-Aime said. Nintendo took the wraps off of the highly anticipated Wii U during the E3 tradeshow early last month, but has yet to announce a price for the console.

NINTENDO CAUGHT USING PS3/XBOX 360 FOOTAGE IN E3 KEYNOTE

Nintendo's E3 2011 keynote yesterday gave the world its first official look at the all-new Wii U hardware plus (we thought) a glimpse at the graphical capabilities of its next console. As it turns out, the impressive list of upcoming games for the 2012-bound console was just that, a list, with the visuals we saw on screen coming from PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of said titles.

Nintendo of America chief Reggie Fils-Aime has confirmed that to be the case in an interview with GameTrailers, where he also points out that the eventual Wii U games will look at least as good as their PS3 / 360 counterparts. Which is why, in his eyes, it's okay to show us those games being played on the competition's (current-gen) hardware. He does remind us that the Wii U will be delivering graphics at a 1080p resolution, and points to the garden tech demo that also graced E3 as an indicator of what can be done with Nintendo's next console.

NINTENDO SELLS NEARLY 400,000 3DS'S IN FIRST WEEK IN US

In an interview with USA Today, Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, confirmed that Nintendo sold nearly 400,000 of its 3DS units in the week following its March 27th launch. That’s the same figure Nintendo sold in Japan on its first day of availability when it launched there in February. “We are very satisfied with this start and we look forward to the momentum that we will build on the Nintendo 3DS with the launch of the E-Shop, the launch of the 3-D trailers for Hollywood movies, and the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in mid-June, as well as the launch of Netflix later on in the summer,” Fils-Aime said.

Nintendo sold more than 460,000 units of its previous-generation DS portable gaming consoles, and 290,000 Wii consoles during the month of March.