Reggie Fils-Aime gave a presentation earlier this week at the BMO Capital Markets meeting where he claimed that the Wii accounts for 80% of female “primary players.” Put another way, Nintendo just laid claim to 80% of female console owners (though the stats don’t include PCs or portables). The president of Nintendo of America went [...]

The June NPD numbers are out for console sales and things are grim out there. It’s another nail in the coffin for gaming’s recession resistance as console sales plummeted 38% relative to this time last year. Microsoft was quick on the spin, however, pointing out that the 360 enjoyed modest growth in the face of [...]

It turns out that it’s cheaper to develop games for hardware that’s little more than two Gamecubes taped together (does anyone even remember that slur for the Wii any more?). Seriously though, according to gamesindustry.biz, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata recently said in a conference call that Nintendo is being courted by third parties as they try to develop affordable games in tough economic times. Said Iwata, “Some are reportedly saying that they bet on the wrong horse or that they need to change course.” Nintendo has always been the primary supporter of its own hardware, especially during the N64 and Gamecube generations when third parties flocked en masse to Sony’s consoles.

Although the console has been criticized for a glut of poor-quality bargain bin games, Iwata was optimistic about future support, saying, “Overall, we recognise that our relationships with the software manufacturers are shaping up better than before. So, in the mid-term, we believe that more attractive titles will be launched by them for our platforms.”

A rising tide may lift all boats, but a falling tide won’t sink Nintendo.

With the economy in the tank, it seems that beggars can be choosers. According to gamesindustry.biz, some employers are now filtering out World of Warcraft players from their eligible ranks. The rationale is simple: WoW eats up sleep and mindshare that could otherwise be devoted to the job at hand. So, with such an abundance of desperate employees in the job market, why settle for the ones who aren’t obsessed with the job?

The news bit started down in the message board trenches, so take it with the grain of salt it deserves, but the corporate reasoning has a certain verisimilitude. This, along with the fact that the blog that originally hosted this story has been suspended does raise some questions. However, it is too early at this juncture to rule out accusations of libel or simple excessive traffic as explanations for the blog’s disappearance.

Console sales have long been a painful exercise where the manufacturer takes a monetary hit on every unit sold. They then cross their fingers and hope to make up the difference on first party software titles and licensing fees–not a bad bet considering the low cost of printing and distributing games and the high cost at the point of sale.

The gaming press has long portrayed Nintendo as the exception to this rule, but only just recently has Forbes placed its money at its media mouth and estimated the Wii’s console profit margin at $6. Given that the Wii has a comparable market penetration to Sony’s Playstation 3 and about half that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Nintendo must be sitting pretty on that profit margin.

This news comes at about the same time as a gamesindustry.biz observation that the Wii is the hottest thing on Ebay since the terms of use made it illegal to sell and ship fire. The console is currently asking $100 over its MSRP on the popular auctioneering site. It’s almost as though Nintendo is stepping on its own long tail by starving the American market so close to the holiday sales season.

It looks like Nintendo has no intention of shutting out the used games market after all. Although the Wii Speak peripheral will come with the previously reported activation code, evidently you can get a replacement by contacting consumer service.

This news comes on the heels of impassioned rhetoric from both sides of the used games debate. Developers have contended that used games sales hurt developers by locking them out of the purchasing process, while retailers point out that consumers expect their games to have residual value and store credit can be turned toward new games.

So where do you fall? Is the $5 you save at Gamestop worth cutting out the people who made it in the first place, or does the $60 price tag make you less sympathetic for the developers’ plight?

With the advent of the Xbox 360′s NXE dashboard interface, a bizarre corporate game of telephone resulted in Sony’s intellectual property (films from its subsidiary, Columbia Pictures) being sold on competitor Microsoft’s online service (via NetFlix). In a move that could be uncharitably characterized as a childish tantrum, Sony last week delisted its Columbia Pictures films from the service.

This week, however, Sony has changed its mind and decided to do business again with NetFlix. Although it might be possible to explain away the sudden withdrawal without appealing to financial skullduggery, the sudden and rapid reinstatement of the titles is a bit suspicious.

Microsoft India will be canceling Fallout 3 because local cultural sensitivities are too risky for an India release.

While the company won’t go into specifics about what is offensive in particular, American gamers can look forward to finding out in about a week on 10/28. This news follows a delay announcement from Sony regarding LittleBigPlanet, so that the corporate giant could scrub the game clean of any Qu’ran references.

Perhaps it’s just the gaming glut from the approaching holiday, but content compromises from two high-profile games in two weeks seems a little above the norm for localization casualties. The two games have taken a complementary approach, one modifying its content and releasing, and one preserving the content and canceling. It’s difficult to balance between the right to speech and good business decisions, but if you had to pick between dropping a game or compromising it, what would you do?

Underperforming Live Arcade titles can breathe a collective sigh of relief today because they’ll live to see another day. In response to complaints that it’s just too difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, Microsoft had earlier promised to cull underperforming games from its download service.

Microsoft has conditionally rescinded the threat, releasing that they have developed a list of exclusion criteria and are content with that for now. This announcement comes in advance of an Xbox Dashboard update intended in part to improve the accessibility of Live Arcade. However, uncharitable analysts have no doubt noticed that the company now has a gun to the heads of some of its developers.

Nintendo’s Tokyo press conference revealed quite a bit of news from the usually tight-lipped company, but the DS hardware update, the DSi, has dominated the industry chatter. Unfortunately for Nintendo, not much of it has been positive.

The new device will feature a 0.3 megapixel camera, a bigger screen, the ability to play AAC files, and a new SD slot to load those files up. The SD card will also function as a storage device for a new download service that will bring digital distribution to the handheld. Heck, slap telecommunications in there and it’s a cheap iPhone.

All the new functionality occupies space, though, and the GBA slot has been removed to make room. Fans of Guitar Hero: On Tour and backwards-compatible gaming at large will be disappointed by the loss. The price of entry has risen as well, and the whole package is being promised to Japan at the equivalent of $180, just $70 cheaper than a Wii.

Investors were not impressed by Nintendo’s announcement, and the company’s stock dropped by nearly 9% after the announcement. Adding to these troubles, developer Martyn Brown criticized the SD slot, warning that it would make the device more susceptible to piracy.

The handheld is scheduled to appear sometime in late 2009. With all the criticism flying around, Nintendo will be burdened with either changing the handheld or trying to demonstrate its worth.