LostWinds blows away WiiWare rivals in Europe

Nintendo of Europe has revealed that Frontier Developments' LostWinds is the current most-downloaded title from WiiWare in Europe - followed by Gameloft's TV Show King and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King from Square Enix.

European marketing boss Laurent Fischer revealed the early top-sellers during an exclusive interview with GamesIndustry.biz, where he talked up the potential of the firm's new games download service.

He said: "We're not communicating on precise figures - this is confidential - but LostWinds has the highest download level in Europe. And then you have the other titles which come close by, like TV Show King and of course Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles."

WiiWare, which launched in Europe on May 20th, is Nintendo's response to Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service, and Sony's PlayStation Network, and Fischer said initial activity had been "encouraging".

"The thing we thought was a trend is that you have a very constant flow of downloads," he explained. "All the titles in the line-up enjoy sales regularly, which is one of the key advantages of this platform. It's the fact that the games are there and anyone can take them at any time."

Fischer further confirmed that the trajectory of the European launch had mirrored that of the US and Japan, where the service launched earlier this year.

"If you relate the sales to the installed base size, which is a good measurement in that area, you see that we definitely have very similar trends everywhere, so that's very encouraging," he added. "And we're looking forward to having more proposals from other developers around the world to see the new gaming concepts we're been hoping for."

LostWinds, from British development veteran David Braben's Frontier Developments, is a platform adventure that makes innovative use of the Wii controller. Critics have lavished praise on the game, with Eurogamer.net scoring it nine out of ten, stating: "It absolutely shames most full-price releases."

Frontier's title costs 1,000 Wii points (roughly GBP 7 / EUR 10).

"LostWinds uses the Wii controller in a very special manner and is a unique approach to the way you play games," said Fischer.

"At the same time you see also that some other games – one which is interesting is TV Show King, which goes into the idea of party games that enable everyone to gather around the Wii and smile, and it is also very successful.

"Both games come from European developers and they are addressing two different needs in terms of what you want to get from a game. From that point of view we believe that it's the very encouraging sign from what we're going to get from WiiWare."