Nintendo Will Ship 4 Million Wii Consoles In 2006

Nintendo has announced it's plan to ship 4 million units before years end. Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo America, is telling consumers to buy early because retail feedback is already indicating that the consoles won't sit on shelves for long.

Perhaps the biggest news from Nintendo this week is that the company announced it would make 62 titles available for the Wii by the end of the year. A full 32 of those titles are new; others are conversions from the Nintendo GameCube. Among the titles will be the highly anticipated "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess," plus "Madden NFL '07," "Need for Speed: Carbon," "Call of Duty 3," "Marvel Ultimate Alliance," "Rampage: Total Destruction," and "Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam," among others.

The Wii launch on November 19 will come just two days after the planned launch of the PlayStation 3. The Wii is set to retail for $249.99.

This will be the first new console I will get just because of what it can do for the money. I know it is just a half step up from the gamecube in terms of performance, but the other features is what I like. The ability to play old school games from NES, SNES, Sega, etc. systems is very attractive to gamers like my wife who have great difficulty grasping the concept of 3 dimensional space. She likes her classic games like Pac Man and the orginal NES Mario games.

Also I have always felt that Nintendo offered exceptional game play and control over the other systems. The XBOX360 would be my second choice but I will wait for generation 2 of that and for the price to come down. I may eventually get PS3, but the price needs to come down a lot for that to happen. I refuse to pay $500 for a game system.