Nintendo Report

The Yankee Group predicts that despite competition and a higher price for its own console, PlayStation 3 will still lead sales in North America, even if only by a narrow margin. Yankee Group predicts that market share for Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony will be 16%, 40%, and 44%, respectively, by 2011. The study also predicts that fewer consoles will be sold overall due to higher prices; what might the outcome be if the Wii launches for $170, far less than either Microsoft or Sony’s consoles?

The commercial for the upcoming Nintendo DS game starring Tingle, the green map salesman from the Legend of Zelda series, has been posted on the Nintendo of Japan website. Mogitate Tingle no Barairo Rupee Land (Tingle’s Freshly-Picked Rose-Colored Rupee Land) is scheduled for release in Japan on September 2nd. See the commercial.

A new rumor indicates that the Wii may contain voice recognition technology that Nintendo has been developing for years. The technology would be capable not only of interpreting spoken words, but also the tone and volume of them, when recognizing speech. As text recognition software is always complex and flawed, it will be interesting to see if Nintendo can pull it off to further revolutionize the way we play video games.

Nikko Citigroup has predicted that the Wii will cost 19,800 yen at launch in Japan, which is the equivalent of $170 USD at current exchange rates. This is down from Nikko Citigroup’s original prediction of 25,000, which was based on the expectation of higher CPU costs. The official word from Nintendo is that the Wii will cost under $250 in the United States. For more information, see IGN’s report.