Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

This is just too outlandish to be true. Nintendo, when asked by 1up why they made Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol a Wal-Mart exclusive, responded with something I felt was of note.

“For the new Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol game for Nintendo DS, Nintendo partnered with Wal-Mart because of Wal-Mart’s strong environmental program and social giving campaign. Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol has an environmental theme, and we wanted to make sure that it received exposure among a broad audience of consumers as we continue to get more and more people interested in the world of video games.”

Now I’m trying not to get too worked up over this, but Wal-Mart’s environmental and social footprint has not been short enough of global cataclysm for this to be less than a laughable argument. This is the largest employer in the world, and yet the one that is best known for one type of behavior: abuse. For Nintendo to make this statement that seems to directly contradict Wal-Mart’s reputation shows a lack of research.

The second half of the statement is the fact of the matter, though. All Nintendo wants to do is sell as many copies of the game as possible. They had their experiment where they sold a couple of games online-only, and now they’re trying one huge retailer. If it works well they’ll do it again. As a publicly traded company, we can expect nothing else from them.

Source: 1up via Nintendojo.