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Last week at SAS Global Forum, SAS demonstrated its commitment to bring powerful business analytics to customers wherever they choose to work, including on the desktop, on the Web, and on mobile devices such as the iPhone. In that spirit, SAS today announced plans to port its powerful analytics software to a new platform: the Nintendo® Wii®.

"The Wii represents an opportunity to reach a new generation of end users," said Randy Guard, Senior Marketing Director at SAS. "With this offering in place, our customers will never have to leave the sofa again, except to grab some more Diet Dr. Pepper."

The SAS Business Analytics platform will roll out gradually for use on the Wii, in the form of various new game titles for the ubiquitous gaming system. The first round of titles includes:

• Wii (Goodness of) Fit
• BI Hero - Legends of Reporting
• Animal CrossTabs
• Mario Kart- BI Dashboard edition
• Grand Theft Autoregressive Models

In addition to these easy-to-use titles, SAS will allow SAS programmers to create sophisticated programs by using the Wii remote. "It’s going to be great," said Paul Kent, Vice President of the SAS R&D Platform Technologies group. "To create a DATA step, you raise and lower your arm quickly, while pressing the 'B' button. To create a PROC step, you swing the ol' Wii-mote back and forth, like so, while holding the A button. To create a macro program, you have to do some tricky footwork on the Wii Balance Board – a notion that macro programmers are quite used to."

The first edition will also include several "Mii" characters to serve as avatars in the new offering, including Jim Goodnight, Jim Davis, and Eddie – the guy who delivers M&Ms to the SAS breakrooms.

The SAS platform for the Nintendo Wii is scheduled to ship one year from now: April 1, 2010. Customers who are interested in serving as early adopters can contact SAS to get on a waiting list.