GamesBloggo - Your source on game news! January 2009

The Japanese company has announced plans for huge market investiments of the Nintendo brand and its characters in South America. Their intention is to take part on the growing gaming industry on the continent and expand their Wii product market, especially in the sport and fitness areas.

The new advertising campaign should start around Christmas, and it’ll be aimed mostly at casual players. Nintendo decided to put their trust in Latin America’s aggressive market in order to balance the United State’s economic decline.

“The economy possibilities in the Latin America makes it an extremely important market for video-games”, says Reggie Fils-Aime, CEO of Nintendo of America. “The growth Nintendo has witnessed on the region in the past few years is a lot more consistent than the American one”.

The Latin American gaming market has a net value of 2 billion dollars, while the international gaming market spins around 57 billion dollars (Source: DFC Intelligence).

A new Super Mario game to follow the great success of Super Mario Galaxy. That’s what Shigeru Miyamoto reveals in an interview to the English newspaper Telegraph. Adding to the Wii platform, there should be also a Nintendo DS version of the new game.

“Making these ‘traditional’ games is what I am best at. Because games of that nature take upwards of two or three years to make, we always have to keep the teams working on those projects going. At any given time, the team could be five to ten people, or it could be 50-plus. People are always switching in and out of those teams”, says Miyamoto. “They are all working on more Mario, Zelda and Pikmin projects,” he said. “And they all work in close proximity to me, so I can keep a good eye on them.”