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27 Playable Wii Games At E3
The Nintendo conference seemed to be the perfect opposite of Sony's conference yesterday. It was polished, the presenters were poised, and the demos conveyed exactly the message they were aiming for. Notable info includes 27 playable Wii titles on the E3 floor, a speaker in the Wii controller, a StarFox title for the DS, and a confirmation of motion sensor in the nunchuck attachment. There will be two versions of Twilight Princess (one for Wii, one for GC) and they'll both be out on Wii launch day. Launch is slated for Q4 of this year. The presenters kept the launch price and date under wraps as the tone of the event was inspiration, not information. The number of playable games available this week confirms their commitment to a launch date this year, and the hilarious tennis game played onstage by the Nintendo honchos and the contest winner made their 'playing = believing' slogan really hit home. More flash than substance, but a solid presentation overall
That rocked hard, but the absence of any SSB details, Virtual Console demo or DS-Wii connectivity was a major letdown. Compared to Sony's CG filled rip-fest. Wii couldn't have asked for more. Nintendo FTW!
Scott Dyer, you luck bastard.
I hate you so much
An important piece left out of the summary but mentioned in some of the articles is that the Wii will launch Q4 of 2006. It looks like shoppers this holiday season will be able to pick from all the next-gen consoles.
Bradley Holt
I like the name "wii" and I'm getting one for my son the day it comes out. Nintendo understands why I got into games to begin with - social interaction with people in the room. Yeah, FPS is fun, but nothing beats clobbering your bros. at Cyberball or NHLPA Hockey (yes, Genesis days, TYVM) and telling them their "face" was just handed to them...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
After nearly falling asleep while watching Sony's conference, Nintendo's was a breath of fresh air. The games they had on show looked great, and looked like they played great. They actually had something significant to show! It was awesome, plain and simple. I think Nintendo's really got the goods this generation. I just wish we could've seen a price.
:)
Also, I'm very happy that there's going to be a Fire Emblem game for Wii
I smell a feature film in the works... The Wiizard?
Low: I think the lack of final price and exact launch date was a bad idea. I know that people were bored during Sony's "stock analysts wet your pants with numbers" opening - but those two details were important. It may be that Nintendo's seeing that Sony's final numbers look like and if they really have a market so they're not competing directly - but who knows.
Highs: Lots of games. Zelda looked awesome, and "Red Steel" is up there on my must try. Even the "Wii Sports" game they showed off towards the end looks interesting - I can see my son and I playing with the baseball game, and my daughter will like the tennis stuff. And golf? Well, that's for my wife so I can get behind her and help her with her strokes.
Low: They kept showing a Mario game (Mario Galaxies or something), but I either missed the details or they didn't talk about it. Where's Mario 128? Where's the Kojima new IP?
High: Showing the new guy playing with the Wii controller. "Easy to use, difficult to master" seems about right. The sweepstakes winner seemed able to play around with it without too many problems - with a few more minutes he would have been better I'm sure.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Great 'Live' blog-style Joystiq coverage here too (IMO better than the Game Daily one). They seemed exceptionally impressed with everything but the eye candy. And by that I mean it sounds like they and everyone else in the audience wanted to be onstage playing. Night and day difference from Sony's conference.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Early coverage seems to show that after Sony's belly flop yesterday, Nintendo hit a perfect 10 today.
... and there are significantly more non-gamers than gamers.
I can't wait to read the reviews tomorrow after everyone has got to play the games!
When Nintendo anounced the virtual console last year, I starting thinking about buying my first console since my SNES (which I still have and play occationally).
Everything they've done since then has shown me they are serious about closing that deal.
Bringing lapsed gamers like me back into the market is just half their plan though, if they can get my mother gaming, or my grandma (that Joy of Painting game might be something she'd really enjoy - if it gets released) then they're going to blow Sony and MS out of the water. I don't even think the so-called "industry experts" have thought about the impact the addtion of lapsed, PC-only, and new gamers will have on the market. Sony may well keep 40-60% of the current market base, but if that market grows, I think it will all go to Nintendo
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seus
1. 3rd party add-ons for the Wii controller. Lets get an idea of what developers are doing and show us that they're serious about supporting the Wii.
2. Give us a glimpse at how the older NES, SNES, Genesis, etc games will be played (the Wii controller flat-out lacks the proper number of buttons).
3. Wheres the multiplayer? Yes there was that tennis multiplayer match near the end but it seems like they didn't talk about it much overall.
4. Three words : Super Smash Bros. Where was it?
5. Less pre-made pre-arranged (gameplay?) videos, more on-stage demonstrations. (We don't want another 'was the Killzone video real time?' debate.)
For those of you at work who want to know what happened without pulling up a (overloaded) video stream, here's a text summary of everything that happened.
I'm thinking the Wii is going to be the best console launch ever. I'm counting at least six "must own" games for me: Mario Galaxies, Twilight Princess, Red Steel, Metroid Prime 3, FF: Crystal Chronicles (assuming SquareEnix puts some decent effort into it, which I expect they will), and Dragon Quest. Plus I'm interested in some of the other things they didn't talk about during the conference, like Sadness. (Don't know if I'll buy it, but I'm interested.)
Conducting the orchestra in real time as the opening was sheer brilliance.
Definitely more compelling to me than the Dreamcast, which in my (highly-debatable, of course) opinion held the previous best launch lineup, at least in the US.
You listen, you notice, you innovate!
While the other two are busy trying to out do each other with hardware oneupmanship Nintendo is bringing us a console that is shock horror, fun to play and has games people want to play.
I don't own a console. I'm an electronics engineer, I spend all day on my ass in front of a computer thinking. When I come home I want to switch off, play a quick 30 mins of computer games that are fun. I DON'T want to play a game that takes hours to get into and that I must devote my life to.
I want a game like chess.... anyone can learn to play in a short while, but it takes ages to master.
Altogether now, Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
The final secret of the Nintendo Wii's innovative controller is a time machine.
That's how their Virtual Console works, too!
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Or the price is low enough that they know Sony (and maybe Microsoft), if they saw it, would burn even more money by lowering their prices before launch. Or they're waiting to see if the price of certain components changes between now and launch.
We can speculate all we want, but the only thing we can say is that it's probably to allow Nintendo as much flexibility in pricing as possible.
...and disclaimer, work for Sony, am the devil incarnate etc.
From the sections of the thing that I saw (Zelda, and Red Thingy the FPS) it looks like the Weemote works fairly well. One of the big worries I had, that it wasn't gonna be precise enough for decent lightgun-style control, wasn't an issue. Some of the gesture-based stuff also looked cool, like Link's shield-block in the Zelda fight.
One of the things I thought might be a problem did crop up in Red Thingy - using the "mouse-look" style of aiming to also rotate the viewpoint. It seemed like the character was fairly slow to turn around, throughout the demo it was all fairly gently turns rather than how I know I play fps games (twitching round corners like a caffeine bomb just went off).
I think a great deal of the success of the new control-style will be how well it maps onto what gamers expect it to do. We've had pads and sticks for a long time, and we've mostly grown accustomed to the quirks of how we map them to solutions - when these fail, like FPS y-axis inversion and left-right camera rotation in 3rd person games (my own personal bugbear), it really kills the enjoyment of the game for some players. If the blend of interaction is right, these things will fly off the shelves.
Game dev and music blog
I drive several cars...
The Mini Cooper is very very fun. Totally unrefined ride, doesn't present itself as well as a more elaborate or expensive sports car, but it's quick, nimble, and fun. Just fun.
The Mitsubishi Endeavor is a generic SUV. It's got leather and a loud stereo. You can do a lot with it, and it serves many purposes. Generic and useful.
The Dodge Viper is neurotic, takes it's design and engineering queues from many sources, but when the stars align and you find a situation to use it nothing is better.
In case you haven't caught on I'm making a very VERY poor attempt at generalizing that these 3 consoles are as far apart as you can get within the same arena of "nextGen Consoles". Mini = Wii. SUV = 360. PS3 = hypothetical viper.
Seems to me instead of arguing which is better (makes about as much sense as arguing if Starbucks makes a better cup of coffee than Burger King makes weird commercials) we should be revelling in the fact these billion dollar companies are competing fo fiercly to create a product we'll buy. Dance, monkeys! Also I will be buying PS3 and Wii. The 360 seems to fade out somewhere...
And no, I don't drive a viper, but I hear they're not slow.
Enter the "off-topic" mod...
Think about it, though: It's perfect from a marketing standpoint. Why have a stupid name like "PlayStation Third Regurgitation" or "Revolution?" With a name like "Wii," people go, "What the Hell? What the Hell is 'Wii?!'" It's almost like viral marketing in that it exploits the mind. People make a lot of noise when they're confused.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Reggie actually said you'd be playing Wii by the fourth quarter. That isn't the same as saying it will launch in the fourth quarter. I wonder if they have a summer surprise up their sleeve... Their biggest launch title is a reworked Gamecube game.
Check them all out at the official Nintendo site: http://wii.nintendo.com/home.html
with all the press info one can chew.
slam-slam,clap. slam-slam, clap. Wii Will Wii Will ROCK YOU! slam-slam,clap. slam-slam, clap.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
1) So when MS announces their 360 price drop they can't factor in the price of the Wii
2) So that they can get more PR later on--maybe counter MS's price drop announcement with their launch price announcement (which will be at least $50 or less than the 360 core pack price)
Read my blog posts on usability.
mentioned by name in the joystiq live blog of the event:
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Wario Ware
Zelda: Twilight Princess
Dragon Quest Swords
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Fire Emblem
Sponge Bob Square Pants
Cars
Super Mario Galaxy
SD Gundamn G Breaker
Tony Hawk Downhill Jam
Sengoku Action
Excite Truck
Elebits
Red Steel
Rayman 4
Super Swing Gold Pangya
Hyper Sonic
Project H.A.M.M.E.R.
Finalfurlong Revolution
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles
Madden 07
WiiSports
Maybe they missed some, there are only 23 there. If not, there are a few more games not mentioned that will be on the floor tomorrow.
I swear PowerPoint is going to be the downfall of higher education in western society.
I propose a new slashdot poll:
Who will win the next generation console wars:
Wii
xBox 360
or PS Thwii
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
"There's really nothing that appeals to a non-Nintendo fan like me contrary to what they are preaching. Playing is believing? No thanks."
So... yer not even going to try it?
"Besides I heard there's some secret in Wii but it turned out it's a speaker in the wiimote, which I don't think will be better utilized by game developers."
Huh? Why not? We've got developers going out of their way to do surround sound on games, but an extra audio stream into the controller would be neglected? Audio's easy. If Nintendo had shown some R2D2'esque holographic projector, well then yeah, I'd believe you.
"As for games, there were nothing that appealed to me in the lineup of 27 Wii games shown today. I don't play games to appreciate the "revolutionary" gameplay of wii, I just would like to play interactive contents."
So why hasn't Red Steel impressed you?
"If you've watched the Sony conference it has Warhawk demo, which looks 100x beautiful and fun."
Okay. A higher-detailed game sequel appealed to you. Nothing wrong with that, but I do wonder if you're unimpressed because you won't let yourself be impressed. Mind you, I cannot cast any stones here. Sony hasn't impressed me, but I haven't stepped forward to try to be impressed. Hehe.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Where the fuck is Duck Hunt?!
Game... blouses.
Check out the E3 video. http://wii.nintendo.com/home.html and click on the Fresh Experiences Tab to see the video they presented. It's awesome!!
http://www.digg.com/gaming/Nintendo_Wii_Classic_Co ntroller_Revealed_
/ photo_classic.jpg
g
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2006/wii/img_con
http://files.nintendev.com/E3/Wii_classic_0501.jp
It might not have been revealed during the press conference, but I imagine we'll hear more about it tomorrow when people can play with it (I assume there will be games that to utilize it from the Virtual Console).
Ummm...there's no hard drive in the Wii. It has 512Mb of flash memory, slots for GC memory cards, and a USB port for other external third-party storage. That's probably why its price point is going to be so low; hard drives are expensive.