Wondering who's to fill in Perrin Kaplan's former post as Marketing VP for Nintendo of America? The company has announced that they have chosen Denise Kaigler as Kaplan's replacement. Read up on her background as well as another new Nintendo appointee in the full article.

Engine Software has announced that it will be releasing a new downloadable title for Nintendo's WiiWare service. The Dutch developers have also stated that WiiWare will be launching in March 2008, echoing statements made by former NoA VP of Sales and Marketing Perrin Kaplan. More in the full article.

It's an undeniable fact that Halo 3 by Bungie Studios for the Xbox 360 is a an overwhelming success. Now, is there a chance that the widely popular game will be ported over to Nintendo's popular console?

When asked if Nintendo is willing to let Bungie develop a Wii game, Nintendo's outgoing marketing vice president Perrin Kaplan only has this to say: "We don't have any plans to reach out to them at this juncture. No, Nintendo’s got it’s hands full."

Well, that could be the end of the idea of a Halo game in the Wii. But there's still a remote possibility, however, though Kaplan said that it's hard to say if Nintendo really needs a Bungie title in the Wii library.

As for the much-awaited (and much-delayed) September surprise from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, Kaplan gave a big hint: Fils-Aime never indicated which year the September surprise will be announced.

Will it be next year's September, then? Sounds like a long wait, but you can count on us to keep you informed as soon as we get more information.

After receiving the "Marketer of the Year" award from Advertising Age, Nintendo of America's vice president for marketing and corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan said that Nintendo noticed that gamers were already getting bored with their games, "even though they didn't know it yet."

Nintendo of America's senior director of consumer marketing, Robert Matthews agreed, saying that gamers are now no longer playing games for longer stretches of time, just like they did before. "Just look at the way people consume entertainment today. The idea that you would spend hours playing videogames is just not real anymore," Matthews said.

As for Nintendo's marketing campaign, Nintendo of America's executive George Harrison revealed that they did not use more resources in reaching out to non-gamers, and depended on the media to pick up on the more interesting tidbits about Nintendo consoles and disseminate them to the market.

So far, Nintendo is doing a good job in reaching out to both gamers and non-gamers alike. Proof? The fact that the Wii won a T3 award due to its unisex appeal.

Nintendo's Vice President of Sales and Marketing Perrin Kaplan was recently interviewed by Wired Magazine where she spoke about the delay of the highly anticipated Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the impending U.S. launch of WiiWare.

If you could recall, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was originally slated to be out by this holiday season but was pushed back to February 10 next year. Kaplan refused to call this a delay but instead referred to the move as "a Smash Bros. Perfection Program."

While she said she wasn't at liberty to disclose the exact changes being done to the game, she did mention that the developers are working on refining the game and making it better than any of the previous Super Smash Bros. video games.

Kaplan also discussed the specifics behind the U.S. Wii Ware launch which she said will probably be around March next year, the same time when the Japanese service goes live. She added that Nintendo still isn't sure about what games U.S. consumers will be able to download at launch but most of the titles being developed are "global." This means we might be seeing some of the Japanese Wii Ware games come U.S. launch.

Nintendo seems pretty confident that both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and WiiWare will live up to the expectations of their consumers. Let's wait and see how this turns out.

It's official, folks - Nintendo of America's Marketing VP Perrin Kaplan is leaving. Following months of speculation caused by a job offering for her current post, Kaplan has just announced that she will be packing her bags by the end of the year. "I finally will be leaving Nintendo at the end of the year," said Kaplan. "Until then, I am focused on getting a great transition team in place and handling all of my normal responsibilities as well."

This news comes in less than a month after NoA's Senior VP George Harrison and corporate communications director Beth Llewelyn also confirmed their own resignations. Harrison and Kaplan have been in Nintendo's service for 15 years, with Llewelyn serving for 12. All three high-profile employees are reportedly among the 60% employees that were affected when NoA announced its intent to move its Redmond office to either New York or San Francisco. And much like Llewelyn and Harrison, we imagine that Kaplan will indeed be missed.

It was just recently when we learned about the marketing promotion being employed by Nintendo of America (NoA) concerning the shiny white console Wii and the NASCAR race held at Dover International Speedway.

Judging from Perrin Kaplan's recent statements, it looks like this will culminate into a Wii NASCAR video game in the future. First and foremost, the VP for Marketing and Corporate Affairs mentioned that sponsoring a car at NASCAR gave NoA the chance to further showcase the Wii in front of a wide and varied audience.

When asked whether this will translate into a Wii video game, Kaplan shared, "I hope so. It seems like a good fit." Perrin Kaplan was pressed about the matter and then she explained:

Wii and Nintendo DS are the most popular video game systems in the country, and NASCAR is one of the most popular sports. So you have to believe that there's a lot of crossover. But we haven't done any surveys specifically targeting NASCAR fans.

In a staggering contrast with the commercial success of Wii and DS consoles, it seems that Nintendo of America (NoA) is having some problems on the corporate level. All of these began when the company announced its decision to move its headquarters either in San Francisco from Redmond.

A couple of months ago, we learned that NoA is looking for someone to replace VP Perrin Kaplan. Then a suspicious retirement leak for Harrison circulated around the Internet. Well, it turned out that the leak is not at all suspicious because George Harrison has just confirmed that he is indeed leaving the Nintendo family behind.

"I have confirmed to all employees that I will be leaving at the end of December and not making the move to California," Harrison told Reuters via phone. The VP first joined Nintendo back in 1992 as Director of Advertising and Promotions.

And we are sure, that he will be missed by Nintendo and its fans.

Will it make you happy if we tell you that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will have some sort of online feature? It should be remembered that Perrin Kaplan mentioned a few days ago that they will be revealing more secrets and surprises as we get closer and closer to the August 27 release date.

Well, this isn't exactly an official announcement but one player who had played the demo at a local Gamestop noticed that bonus tokens are awarded whenever you accomplished certain in-game tasks.

These tokens or achievements, furthermore, can be sent out to friends which they will trade for green tokens in return. The player who discovered the feature explained:

Red tokens are given as you scan a certain number of enemies/items. Blue tokens are given for scanning lore and accomplishing side tasks. Green I believe are when friends give you vouchers, more on that later. Gold tokens are given for beating bosses on various difficulties.

You use the tokens to unlock hidden content in the extras menu. The final type of token is the "friend voucher". Basically these are given for accomplishing some type of cool accomplishment in the game... I was interested in this since there was a "Friend Roster" option and a "Configure Wii Connect 24" option on the menu.

Some other players commented that the said token feature was actually seen in the one hour-long video clip that we posted earlier this week.

With the arrival of Wii Firmware 3.0 came the surprise preview channel for upcoming FPS Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. This then gave rise to speculations that this is just a test run for Nintendo, meaning more channels will be added in the future and the possibility of downloadable demos despite problems with storage space.

VP of Marketing and Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan recently had a talk about IGN regarding the seemingly lack of hype for Metroid Prime 3. Kaplan explained that Nintendo wanted fans to discover the surprises for themselves and that's why no official announcement was made for the preview channel.

"All that Wii owners have to do is update their Wii systems to Version 3 and voila, you find a cool treat for all Metroid Prime fans. Finding it that way, frankly, might add a bit of intrigue for those who aren't as familiar with the franchise," explained the Vice President Kaplan.

The official added that before the release on August 27, fans can expect to see more marketing strategies from Nintendo of America (NoA) for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. This is what Perrin Kaplan had to say and pay key attention to the second to the last statement:

We still have a lot of our more traditional marketing efforts planned. People will see it all shortly, from ads to many of the usual tactics we use to support our key products. Plus: a few more surprises like the Metroid Prime 3 Preview. And no, I'm still not going to spoil the fun and tell you about it ahead of time!