Nintendo UK is to dedicate more marketing spend to Wii games in 2007 than it has ever forked out on a console’s first party software in a single year.

MCV understands that the domestic campaign for the recently released Mario Strikers Charged Football cost more than £1 million – and promotions for Mario Party 8 and the Wii version of Big Brain Academy will both exceed this figure.

The firm could not confirm the figures, but Wii product manager Rob Lowe told MCV: “As both Mario Party and Big Brain Academy are being aimed towards very broad audiences, we need substantial mass-market campaigns to back them up.

“These campaigns are of equal size to that of Mario Strikers initially – but will run for longer, with a second burst at Christmas.

“We are looking at much longer sales curves on these titles that will hopefully sell at a high rate for many weeks. Therefore we need to prolong the campaigns over months rather than weeks, along with a second sustained period of media coverage around the Christmas season.

“This goes against the traditional way to market video games, but we aren’t going after the traditional audience – hence the large investment.”