February US sales figures

The latest sales NPD sales figures for the US have been released and as usual it is great news for Nintendo all round.

Hardware

• Wii 753 000
• Nintendo DS 588 000
• Xbox 360 391 000
• PlayStation 3 276 000
• PSP 199 000
• PlayStation 2 131 000

The Crystal Bearers lives!

Square Enix has released a new trailer of the mysterious title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers and it is looking amazing.

This is the best glimpse of gameplay footage we have seen so far and it appears to lean more towards a 3D action game than the original Crystal Chronicles.

Details still remain scarce, but what is presented is really promising.

This could really be the game that encourages other third party developers to really put some effort into producing titles for the Wii that are aimed at hardcore, adult gamers.

I don’t know about that hideous music though, hopefully that is just someone’s idea of a bad joke.

Nintendo to fail in Russia?

The Nintendo Wii and DS will not be as successful in Russia as they have been in the rest of Europe because they are not multimedia devices capable of playing movies as well as games according to one of Russia’s leading video game publishers.

Gameindustry.biz recently posted an interview with Inna Bukatina, head of international licensing and acquisition at Russian developer/publisher GFI, who said Nintendo would find it more difficult to succeed in Russia because of the lack of extra features in the Wii and DS consoles.

“Well, firstly people in Russia prefer products that are more universal, that can be used for a number of different purposes,” Inna said.

“For example, a PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable can be used for games, or films, and so on.”

Inna went on to say that even though in other parts of Europe older people are playing Nintendo games, in Russia the population’s unfamiliarity with technology would hold Nintendo back.

“The gaming society in Russia is pretty young,” she said.

“In Russia they (older people) don’t know what to do with it – they never owned a computer, and probably never worked with a device that’s more technical than a telephone.”

Read on for my take on this story…