About the whole Japan business: why the bloody hell don't they just include Wii Sports with every Wii, just like they're doing in the rest of the world? :s I'm absolutely baffled by that.

Where is madworld on Xbox?

I guess Disaster Day of Crisis won't be coming to America then. That really sucks. Well, hopefully Fatal Frame 4 can get a publisher and be released in America.

I think there are two reasons for this:

1. By adding Wii Sports to the console they didn't (really) increase the per-unit cost of the system by much at all and it allowed Nintendo the opportunity to sell the console at a higher price which buffered Nintendo from changes in exchange rates.
2. Nintendo had already broken into the broader market in Japan, and the only way to get people interested in the Wii (who were not core gamers) would be to have them play a simple game (like Wii Sports) for themself. They anticipated that the number of gamers who would buy Wii Sports and show it off wasn't that high, so they included it which ensured that people who bought a Wii would own it and (likely) get their family and friends to play it.

 Nintendo does marketing investments... that's what Microsoft did with Take-Two... If they had a console that could easily take a port from the Wii you may have seen him say some thing diffrent.  It's not like they gave them 50 million they simply loaned them 50 million.

 It would probably do better on the 360... I'd but it... it's very interesting

 It's to bad we don't have companies like Workingdesigns anymore... they were one of the best... they brought over all kinds of interesting games.

Haven't Wiis been readily available for a few months now?

In my area, we've had a regular stock of Wiis since a little over a month after the holiday season ended.

heh...nouthing but bad news......I think.

I hate to have to point this out, but there's a reason why companies like Working Designs and Atlus either no longer exist or are rapidly failing: the products they bring out are so niche that the sales don't cover the costs of localizing them (particularly in the case of Working Designs, who took over-localization to such an extreme that they introduced $60 games a good 10 years before it was the norm). While you may have some idealistic point of view that profits don't matter as long as gamers get the games they want, unless you intend to fail, profits are necessary for a business to survive.

But, you say, surely Nintendo can afford to take a small loss and release a few niche titles here that won't make them a profit! While that's true, there's two reasons they will not: one, that goes against their corporate policy entirely, and two, the slippery slope effect caused by such lenience could destroy them in the long run. Nintendo has never worked under the model of pandering to the fans, though they put up an excellent front. They pander to the customer base at large, not just the most vocal ones. And letting a few projects slip in specifically targeting a niche audience and assured to not earn back the cost of making and/or localizing them sets a precedent for such bad business in the future.