Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced during his GDC keynote address that a new Wii firmware update will allow gamers to run Virtual Console games straight from their SD cards, sidestepping the need for the company to release an external hard drive.
The new Wii System Menu 4.0 will allow gamers to save and load games directly from SD cards, which at 32GB can hold up to 240 games.
During the same speech, Iwata noted that the Wii had finally passes the 50 million units sold mark, making it the fastest console to hit the milestone.
Additionally, Iwata added that the DSi has sold over 2 million units since its release last year in Japan.
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Harmonix has assured gamers that although it was promised in September and delayed, downloadable content (DLC) for the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will be coming soon.
“The downloadable content is in the final testing stages and Harmonix is working as fast as possible to deliver the 20 free bonus songs for Rock Band 2, plus an additional 30 songs from the Rock Band DLC Catalog to fans as early in 2009 as possible,” notes the company. “As soon as we can announce a firm date, you can be sure the Rock Band community will be the first to know.”
20 free bonus tracks will be identical to those in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, but the company has not yet leaked what the other 30 tracks will be.
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Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company is not likely to cut the price of its ever popular Wii and DS gaming systems in the foreseeable future.
“Our earnings projection for the year is not based on hardware price cuts, and I don’t think we are going to need them,” said Iwata.
Despite supply shortages on huge demand for both systems, Nintendo revealed its fourth quarter earnings this week which showed the company has sold 18.6 million Wii consoles over the last 12 months, putting worldwide sales since launch at almost 25 million. The company also added that total sales were up 73 percent year on year “while operating income was up 115.6 percent and profit up 47.7 percent.”
Nintendo added that it hopes to sell 25 million consoles worldwide for the upcoming fiscal year. To meet growing demand, the company will also be ramping up production from 1.8 to 2.4 million consoles every month. Maybe this year there will be Wiis on the retail shelves next to all those PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s.
