Zelda Cube kept out of shops

Nintendo will limit sales of the Cube Twilight Princess to its online store in Japan, the platform holder said today at a conference in Japan. Japan Japan Japan.

On the plus side, reports from the retail briefing did give us some more idea of the situation regarding accessory pricing and Virtual Console game availability.

On the latter point, next spring Virtual Console will start to play host to "Compact Software", Wii games delivered online at lower prices than their boxed counterparts - something Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has hinted at in the past.

Nintendo also said that by the end of the year 30 classic games would be available across the Nintendo platforms - NES, SNES and N64 - with 30 more from the Megadrive and PC Engine stables.

The pricing for the latter has yet to be established, but ought to be in line with the Nintendo-format retro titles, which will cost 800 Wii points for NES, 1000 for SNES and 2000 for N64. You can read about how points translate to pounds elsewhere.

The company added that in addition to composite, s-video, component and Japanese-only D-terminal audio/visual cables, punters would be able to buy a 512MB SD memory card for 3800 yen (GBP 17 / EUR 25) when the console launches in the Far East on 2nd December, with network adapters for online play and downloads going for 2800 yen (GBP 12 / EUR 18). Nintendo Wii will work with the DS' USB Internet dongle though, for those who have that.

Other details to come out of the conference include news of a special "Health Pack" for Wii - with Shigeru Miyamoto claiming he'd like to get the family exercising together - and a new DS recipe collection game, due out on 7th December with Wi-Fi Connection support, for which the company is also planning a magnet stand, allowing you to slap your handheld on the surface of the fridge when you're not pouring over recipes. Bizarre.

Look out for pictures of that on the Internet. And boss, don't look out for references to it on our December expense sheets. [Whistles]