Includes Wii Fit, Mario & Sonic, Wii Sports and Wii Party

Oct 13, 2011 20:41 GMT  ·  By

Video game hardware developer and publisher Nintendo has announced a number of bundles that will be available in time for the Christmas shopping season, including the Wii home console and a number of high profile video games.

On December 2 gamers will be able to get one of two Wii Fit bundles, one which includes a new black home console, the game and a black dyed Wii Balance Board, and another that only delivers the game and the peripheral.

Earlier, on November 4, players will also be able to get a new bundle that puts together the Wii home console with the Wii Sports and the Wii Party mini-game compilations, which bring more than 80 games that can be played by the whole family using the new House Party modes.

On November 18 Mario and Sonic are teaming up once again in order to launch the bundle that includes a blue Wii console and their new Olympic Games themed video game, which comes complete with events like football, canoeing and show jumping that involved more than one player.

Nintendo is putting the new Wii in all the bundles, which means that gamers will get a more efficient console but one that losses the backward compatibility with the Game Cube video games and accessories.

The bundles are clearly designed to draw in the casual kind of gamer that has made the Wii a big success when it launched and the following years.

Focusing on the family and on games that bring people together means that Nintendo can clearly differentiate it's audience from that of the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony, which tend to be single player oriented or interested in competitive multiplayer.

The Nintendo Wii is expected to post a 25 percent year over year decline in sales when the NPD Group sales numbers for September are released.