On May 3, Nintendo of America announced that it will launch the previously unavailable Black Wii in the U.S. on May 9. From this date, Wii Sports Resort and a Wii MotionPlus are going to be added to the Wii hardware package sold there, in addition to the Wii Sports software.

This is the same Black Wii hardware package configuration that Nintendo of Europe launched at the end of last year.

Wii has become the pioneer in motion control play style. Wii MotionPlus has realized further precision in motion controls for the best-seller Wii Sports Resort. By enabling more people to enjoy and experience Wii Sports Resort, we’d like to further promote the motion control play style in the future as well.

In the U.S., the existing package for the white Wii shall be also changed to include the same elements.

The white Wii sales package will also be changed from May 10 in Europe.

As a result, all the Wii hardware packages sold in the U.S. and in Europe shall include a Wii MotionPlus.

Nintendo is currently developing the new Legend of Zelda software for Wii, and the software is currently planned to be used with the Wii MotionPlus.

From the end of this month to the next month, we will launch Super Mario Galaxy 2 in Japan,the U.S. and in Europe successively.

The original Super Mario Galaxy became a hit title, with sales by the end of March 2010 reaching 8.84 million including 1.01 million in Japan and 7.83 million overseas. Particularly in the U.S., the original game has been selling for a very long time. According to the NPD Group in the U.S., the life-to-date sales exceed 4 million units.

For this Super Mario Galaxy 2, the same Tokyo EAD team that developed the original took the prequel as the foundation and spent two years and half solely creating, elaborating and fine-tuning the entertaining play elements and tricks. This is through and through an action game, which may be appreciated as the must-have 3D Mario game.

In the U.S., 3D games like Super Mario Galaxy have been highly accepted, just like the 2D Mario games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii were. In Japan, however, the sales of 3D Mario software have not been as good as 2D Mario games.

As we see it, one reason why a number of people who love 2D Mario do not want to play 3D Mario appears to be because they are afraid to be lost in the 3D world by not knowing the exact directions, while they feel that they can play with 2D Mario with no such issues. One of the development themes of the original Super Mario Galaxy was to create a 3D world where people may not be easily lost, and the spherical shape was adopted as the game play theme for this reason. However, when we look at the Japanese sales, I do not think that we were able to effectively tackle this challenge with the original.

With this as a reason, we have decided to include with the software a DVD called “Super Mario Galaxy 2 for beginners” for the Japanese and European markets,

The DVD will include a footage that show people who are not accustomed to 3D Mario games how to enjoy playing with Mario in the 3D world. This is a visual manual for first-timers for 3D Mario.

Some may feel this is unusual because Wii does not have a DVD playback capability, but given the wide penetration of DVD players at home, we have concluded that it is most useful for the players if they can confirm the contents even while they are playing with Wii and decided to provide the footage in DVD format.

Also, we are including the Super Play footage that can be enjoyed by Mario game fans.

I’d like to show you a part of this video today.

At our Financial Briefing in late January this year, I discussed several new Wii titles. At that time, I was mainly talking about the ones for avid game fans. So, today, I’d like to share with you one software, like Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and New Super Mario Bros. Wii of last year, which can have the broader appeal to a variety of different types of our customers.

It’s called, “Wii Party”.

As you know, “Wii something” are the titles that we use only with software that Nintendo has developed exclusively for Wii with the aim to make them marquee titles for Wii. We are developing this game with the aim to make it a marquee party game for Wii.

The developers are spending significant time for this title so that they can include elements that are must-haves in a party game as well as making sure that adequate volume of game play are available. We are developing it with the intent that every Wii player will be able to find a game that can be enjoyed. In a game play mode called “Living Party”, there are unique game play only available with the Wii Remote.

In this software, Miis are used as the players’ characters. According to our own survey, we know that more than 160 million Miis have been created by our customers in Japan, the U.S. and six countries in Europe alone, In Japan, thanks to the popularity of the Tomodachi Collection software, an increasing number of Japanese are taking to their Miis. In a sense, it is a natural move for your Miis and your friends’ and family members’ Miis to show up in a Wii party games.

Nintendo has not launched a marquee party game since Mario Party 8, launched in summer 2007. However, since Wii is usually being played by several people at once and the global sales of Mario Party have reached 7.6 million units, a party title has great potential.

This is one of the titles which, we hope, will play an important role for this fiscal year.

Also at the last Financial Briefing, I briefly mentioned that the new Pokémon titles were in the making. The official title names were announced as “Pokémon Black Version” and “Pokémon White Version”.

These brand new titles in the main Pokémon series are strategically positioned as our major Nintendo DS titles and will be launched in Japan in fall this year.