I think Jay-Z said it best. Mo’ Money. Mo’ Problems. Didn’t Jay-Z say that? I don’t keep up with you kids. From Nextgen:

Nintendo sold 981,000 Wii units in the US during November according to the NPD Group, but according to James Lin, senior analyst at the MDB Capital Group in Santa Monica, Calif., “they could easily sell double what they’re selling.” Along with other industry analysts and retailers, Lin believes Nintendo could be set to lose out on more than $1billion this holiday, not including missed revenue opportunities from associated software sales that won’t materialize.

Man. That sucks for Nintendo. They could be taking over the world, but because they can’t make enough systems (wink, wink) they won’t make nearly as much money as they could be. So sad! Hang on. Where’s my tissue? For all you people looking for a Wii, head to Bestbuy and grab the one I won’t be buying. Its waiting on you.

[via NextGen]

Jayslacks.

Ok, “numbered,” may be an exaggeration of sorts. GameStop isn’t going to close in the next few months, or even years, but I think a trend is growing that will put an end to most of the B&M stores. “What trend could he be speaking of,” you whisper? Downloadable games.

IGN broke the news on how Nintendo has already made 33 million dollars from it’s online content store. Nintendo sells these games at little cost to themselves and doesn’t have to rely on second parties taking a cut. And, while some companies…*cough*Sony *cough*…might need GameStop and other retailers for hardware sales–to the point where GameStop can threaten to stop carrying the system if they release a big downloadable game, i.e. Warhawk–Nintendo hardware sells so well they could just tell a retailer to go fuck themselves and another would quickly step in.

As the cast of 1upYours and N’Gai Croal were saying, companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft want nothing more than to end the selling of used games; one sure way to do so is to stop selling physical copies of titles. If Nintendo keeps up the pace they are setting, and continues to do so with their next console, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the next Mario game be a DLC title exclusively. Once that precedent is set, watch out–it’s going down.

Chufmoney

Jayslacks says that he likes my NPD posts, and who I am I to deny him? Here we are, after the would-be megaton last week that we’d never get NPD numbers again EVAR. It’s a good thing too, because this month’s numbers continue to be interesting. These numbers are taken from 1UP and the confirmed sales numbers thread on NeoGAF. Say what you like about NeoGAF, but when it comes to NPD numbers, they have it immediately and accurately, and often with more in depth sales data then other sites provide. Anyway, enough meandering. Let’s get down to business. Here’s a quick warning: the post that follows, is long. Really long.
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And by bitches, I mean goombas. That’s right, like many of you, I picked up Super Mario Galaxy today. Aegies will be sad when he learns that I failed to edit or put up a podcast–of which we have two new ones recorded–but I just got too caught up with the Mario. That, and it was a pretty epic evening of traveling and what not–just installing the update that came with the game took almost ten minutes.

Down to business…SMG is a great game. I have only played through the first galaxy, but I can already tell that the game is solid; it’s beautiful, it has mechanics to it that keep it fresh, and the music–sweet jesus, the music–is awesome. More than anything else, the score has been the thing that makes me want to keep playing.

The Wii remote mechanics are fun–though I do tire of waggling my wrist about. Really though, this game shows what a game that is truly designed for the Wii–to take advantage of all its pros, and hide its cons–can be like. The controls take advantage of both the movement and pointer sensors of the Wii remote, and somehow manage to never feel intrusive.

Ultimately though, just from my early impressions of the game, I already feel safe in saying that if you hated Mario 64, you might hate this game, too. The game isn’t the same, but it still relies on a lot of the same things that made that game fun (what else would you expect from Nintendo?).

I’ll have to play more of the game to find out if it makes it into my top releases of the year, but I can already tell that I could never argue with anyone who said it was in theirs.

Chufmoney