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Everybody Loves the Wii
1up is reporting on Ubisoft's enthusiastic adoption of the Wii platform. They'd previously only had two titles announced for the system (Red Steel and a Rayman game), but now claim to have seven different titles in production. From the article: "Ubisoft North America President Laurent Detoc ... praised the Wii several times during the panel, stating that he expects it to have 'a large audience and market.' He also stated that he personally felt that in a time when fewer and fewer games appeal to him, the Wii offers plenty of enjoyment. 'The first time I picked up that sucker I couldn't stop playing it.'" Ars Technica is also reporting that EA is gung-ho about the system. From that article: "EA not only indicated that they are taking the Wii and DS seriously, but the company also hinted that they will follow Nintendo's guidance and release games at or near the $49.99 price point. Nintendo has urged developers and publishers to respect the $49.99 price point, believing that it reflects a value advantage over other consoles. EA did not offer a firm commitment to that pricing, contrary to reports elsewhere."
I just had a really sick idea for a game that would take full advantage of the Wiimote: Nintendo Bukkake 2006!
I'll leave the terrible details to your imagination.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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So we have games for the system. Now the question comes down to price points, marketing, and, oh yeah, features!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Haven't you heard about NintendHos for the DS?
I have freaks! I did something right...
An interesting article, especially since yesterday I read some developers think it's underpowered. http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/free-radical -wii-cant-handle-our-game-190723.php
FTR, I'm looking forward to it.
Take a look at all the kids demanding FFVII on the PS3. The dev teams are doing what they always do: trying to make money. If there's a market for it, they'll do it.
Cynical Idealist
The Wii seems to appeal more to the people who actually game because of the games. The PS3 and XBOX360 seem to appeal to people who game because of the image (however yes, there is some good stuff there, but they are selling an image in addition to the games). Just look at all the new "gamers" who jumped on the Halo bandwagon who tout it as the best fps ever, when PC gamers have been fragging each other for years already with games that are better than Halo.
So yes, everyone who loves gaming loves the Wii (well... almost everyone), because it's bringing us back to our roots with the old school Nintendo stuff. All the people who play because it's the in thing to do right now, well... they probably don't want to look silly flailing around, so they'll go with the other options.
Me... I'll get the Wii first, the XBOX360 soon after it's price drop, and the PS3 when it gets a price drop in a year or two.
I'm looking forward to the Wii and playing around with the games. If the Wiimote turns out to be a decent pointing device, I'm also interested in how it may effect human-computer interaction on other machines.
I foresee the same sort of cutting-edgers (heh, ricers) who are playing with Compiz and XGL, hacking together a way to connect to the Wiimote and then tinkering with some wii-gestures to help interact with the desktop.
o Rotate the wand like a steering wheel to flip between tasks or virtual desktops.
o Point to the taskbar and lift it like a dumbell to trigger your Expose' clone.
o Jab a window to minimize it. Twist the 'knife' in and pull down to close the program.
o Amarok hanging again? Give it a few whacks with your 'club' to kill the process.
Goofy, I know. But if this wiimote takes off, maybe we'll see clones of this type of technology and, in time, see some more fun and intuitive metaphores for HCI.
Just announced - $59.95: The Game and $59.95 II: Pre-Rendered High-Res Logo Animation. Get in line for yours today.
you know that I love the Wii!
Seriously, if you look at the Nintendo Wii game announcement page you see such a wide variety of gaming genres, designed to appeal to people who don't just want sports and FPS games, but also casual gamers, women and girls, and a heck of a lot of cross-releases of games that are normallly only available in Japan and China, but are now available for English (US/UK/EU) players as well.
What's not to love about the Wii?
Plus, it doesn't have that annoying choice of do I get Blu-Ray or HD-DVD so that I can wait until 2008 when I actually end up buying a $300 HDTV set and decide for myself which player I'll get for $100.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"'The first time I picked up that sucker I couldn't stop playing it.'"
;-)
I've always felt that way about my wee also...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Developers whose idea of a better game is bigger pixel counts will surely want to develop for the PS3 or the 360 -- at least until they realize how much more it costs to develop for those systems, that is. That's another aspect to the "GameCube II" angle your link derided.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The Wii doesn't really belong being categorized with either the Gamecube/XBox/PS2 generation of technology or the XBox 360/PS3 generation of technology; it is entirely its own beast. If you look closely at the games that are currently under production what you will notice is that the models are (mostly) free of polygonalization artifacts, and the textures are highly detailed; if I were to make a guess, in textured polygon performance I would expect the Wii is as much of an improvement over the Gamecube as the XBox 360 is over the XBox. At the same time you will notice that the Wii doesn't have any normal mapped surfaces, or any other material effects; basically implies that the Wii doesn't have "Next Generation" shading capabilities.
Now the one thing I really know about this is that the advanced shaders (that may be absent on the Wii) are really only that important if you're trying to produce a photo-realistic game; in most Cell-Shaded or (old school) cartoonie graphics you're better off with better texture performance than any shader performance. The question is whether the only important graphics to produce are photorealistic?
Metroid Prime 3 ?
Twilight Princess ?
Madden 07 - looks at least as good as the X-box version, and will support progressive scan & 16:9 mode.
These games look great so far, and there's a few months to go before launch.
Remember back when it was still called the Revolution and relegated to be the interesting-but-not-that-cool little cousin of the XBox360/PS3? It really is amazing how the news reports, and developer/previewer feedback have done a 180! (Take that 360). I recall Nintendo constantly stating with their chill/laid back attitude that they were staying out of the console wars and aiming for a fun, friendly product for everyone, rather than just testosterone filled fan boys. Don't get me wrong, I wish I could get all three consoles, but with the great price point and developer support, not to mention the cool Wiimote, Nintendo has really changed my attitude towards them.
The reality is that Nintendo's in an excellent position. They have a solid cash cow in the portable market and if the Wii was a total flop, it wouldn't kill them. Even if the Wii sucked they could reasonably plan to keep the market share they currently have with the Game Cube. This gives them the freedom to get a little bit experimental with the Wii and take a risk and this is why the Wii looks like it might be a winner. The Wii offers a unique experience and is cheap enough that owning one in addition to a PS3 or 360 isn't unreasonable.
For similar reasons, Microsoft is in a good position because they have piles of cash and big time cash cows in office software and operating systems. They can afford to lose a lot of money on the 360, so, once again, they aren't under a lot of pressure. Their approach is less risky though just evolving the platform a bit and more closely integrating the Live system into the unit.
Sony on the other hand is in a terrible position because the PS3 is basically the hopes and dreams of the entire company right now. They've been struggling for a while now, losing market share to cheap competitors in other realms of electronics. They are trying to use the PS3 to tie a lot of things together, a new high def video format, a new hardware platform, etc. If the PS3 flops, Sony is in a world of hurt. Even if it's moderately successful they may still be hurting depending on how much they lose per unit and how easily they can make those losses up on the back end.
Sony may pull things off but they are doubly cursed by high expectations and an almost desperate need for this to work out.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In my opinion, quality has always been the strong point of any Nintendo console, because of their solid first party games. The excitement with the Wii is that we can now look for more third party games to be developed than ever before. Sure, a lot of them might be crap, but there will be great games in those haystacks. Which means more great games total for the system. It is really a win-win.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
How many games for the EA Kings under the mountains?
Or are they Mortal Combat men doomed to spew out mostly sports and FPS games we could get on any console, admittedly with cool Wii wand effects that make them much more fun to play?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Cute graphics doesn't appeal to me, nor does choppy PC framerate."
Wow you must have a shit video card! Or do you really think 2 7900GTX cards in SLI provide crappy framerates? The PC is hands down the best platform for simulation games.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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That's super duper cool. Guess what? It's the same for the DS/PSP match, the DS graphics are at a much lower level.
And you know what? No one cares, because the DS actually has fun games as in games that are actually games and not crappy PS2 ports, and by seeing the Raving Rabbids trailers I'm pretty sure that Rayman 4: Raving Rabbids will fucking rule.
Along with all the 1st party titles (Super Mario Galaxy, Legend of Zelda, SSB, ...)
Remember, Sam&Max Hit the Road was already ugly when it was released, and it's one of the games quite a few people are still in love with.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
My Friend Is Working On A Wii Game
(Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Multiple Wii/Nintendo Related posts.
One of my friends is currently working on a Wii game. I remember him being really excited about the system earlier this year and he was eager to get off the 360 game he was on and move on to something that is going to be fun and sell. What is strange is now that he has been doing Wii stuff for a while I asked him about a month ago how things were going and was he loving the Wii. His response was "eh..." Sounds like from his experience the Wii controller gets old pretty quickly. It doesn't even sound like he is planning on buying the system, or at least not this year.
OK, now let's move on to relevant comments about this discussion
Yeah! Just like they did with the DS as opposed to the PSP! DS has lower quality graphics and the games are therefore crapola!
Oh wait...
Look dude, Nintendo is not hurting anything and especially not "gaming as we know it" (not the one I know and care about anyway), if anything they're trying to go back to the roots: fun games with an original style/gameplay/.... As in... not genericCarRace241384, myAmericanFootball5486311 or badlyRealizedFirstPlayerShooterWithAmazingerGraphi cs.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Is it sad that I got this huge wave of ... I don't know the feeling ... Pride? Overwhelming joy? It kind of feels like the feeling I got when a girl first said they liked me on IRC.
The overwhelming (almost literally.. *sniffle*) support for the Wii has really bolstered my hopes for Nintendo and I'm sure they'll do much better this time around. Watching companies cast aside their previous habits and adopt full-on support for the Wii is incredible.
And I picture it visually in my head - Ubi has 2 games in development, and everyone in the office goes down and checks out a beta. They all enjoy it so much and they all want in on the project. BAM, 7 more games in development.
For this fanboi, it puts a real big smile on my face.
Free Radical notwithstanding, can anyone afford not to say the Wii is radically different, entertaining and perfect? Obviously there's the risk of missing out on the next greatest platform, and maybe there it is flawless. But I have no way of telling who's afraid to expose the emporer and who's discussing the honest truth. And aside from EA stating they didn't like the Wii some time ago (and have since retracted, wisely), I don't see how this qualifies as news anymore.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is less news than it is "good publicity," and I'd much rather hear about the former than the latter.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I go into a games shop or look at gamespot and see nothing I really want to play, perhaps HL2:Ep1 but I am not bothered enough to buy it. Oblivion and Call Of Duty 2 both appeal to me, but my PC wont play those games and I am just not going to update. Give me something original that doesn't drink my wallet for graphics cards, lets hope the Wii provides that answer, the controller may be a gimick but hopefuly it may stimulate some fresh gaming experiences.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
You being a 3D engine programmer, you're not making games, you're making an engine. So surprise surprise, you'd love to work with more powerful hardware. I don't see how that makes Wii a disgrace, since all its guilty of is not costing 600$ to have its design focused on the aspect of the hardware that would let you play with more powerful hardware.
I'm a game programmer. I work in production, and I love making games on current gen systems because its always fun to figure out how to push the hardware to its limits to get the things you want in the game. How to cheat or fake certain things to get the graphics or the gameplay you want, whereas just programming it in the 'true' way would just give you 10 fps.
At any rate, since we both work on games and both are influenced by the flavour of the hardware and how that affects what we get to work with, I don't think we're exactly the most objective people on the matter. And it certainly doesn't make the Wii a 'disgrace', it just shifts the fun around on your team to others who might be dying of boredom by refactoring input APIs for what is essentially the same controller they were working on 6 years ago.
And you can still have fun on the Wii, its still a significant upgrade from all the current-gen systems.
"Old man yells at systemd"
From what I understand, the infrared is going to give the "pointer/mouse" capability (communicating with the locator bar that you set up under the TV), with bluetooth handling everything else (buttons, gyroscope, accelerometer, etc).
Where did you get that info from? According to the wiki article: "The controller communicates wirelessly with the console via short-range Bluetooth radio, with which it is possible to operate up to 4 controllers as far as 10 meters (approx. 33 ft.) from the console."
Of course, it's quite possible that maybe the locator bar emits infrared, which the Wii Remote then uses for localization, and then transmits that information back to the console via Bluetooth.
Haha. There's a reason why Steve Jobs (don't remember what the Nintendo honcho is called, so we'll stick to Steve) is a billionaire while you are not.
;)
Wanna know?
Steve Jobs is interested in people in addition to technology. He realizes that he needs technology to make products that people like - because most people don't care about ghz and gb: They care about doing the task (whatever that is) efficiently in terms of time consumption. We are lazy so we don't like stuff to be more complicated than they have to.
What you dismiss as gimmicky, people unlike yourself would label as useful or ingenious.
Secondarily, they prefer not being embarassed of having a butt-ugly computer in their home when their in-laws or potential girlfriend visits
Likewise, Nintendo attempts to make engaging games rather than technology showcases.
Stop the brainwash