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Miyamoto Talks Wii-mote Logic
Mr. Miyamoto, in an interview with Nintendo's .jp site, explains some of the logic behind the Wii-mote. From the Gamespot article: "In the process of contemplating how to make a controller that was not intimidating but still allowed for traditional game play, Miyamoto had this realization: 'There's no need to use both hands.' He added that the idea was to break the existing conventions a little, but not too much. 'If you go too far off the deep end, the product will be eccentric for the sake of being eccentric,' Miyamoto said."
Just so you all know, dramatic amounts of information about the Wii are going to be revealed in the next 24 hours, coinciding with September 14 as the fifth anniversiary of the release of the Gamecube. In about three and a half hours (5 PM pacific time or so) Nintendo of Japan will be holding a press conference, and in about fourteen and a half hours (6 AM pacific time or so) Nintendo of America will be holding another. Nintendo of Europe holds a press conference the next day. While all of this is going on, Nintendo has scheduled a bunch of "secret", by-invite-only parties in America and invited a bunch of bloggers and such, starting at the same time as the American press conference.
Something big is going down. We can expect that during all of this we'll be getting the release date and price of the Wii, and maybe some announcements about games and software.
I'm surprised that we didn't get this information in the original post. Nintendo is holding three press conferences tomorrow - one in Japan, one in the US, and one in Europe. The Japan conference is actually happening today at 8:00 pm EDT when you account for timezones. The US conference is in New York at 9:00 am EDT.
It's expected that Nintendo will release launch specifics, including price and launch date, for the three regions during their respective press conferences. This is big big Nintendo news. Personally I'm hoping for a $199 pricepoint with pack-in Wiimote, nunchuk controller, and Wii Sports.
Check out gaming sites (Kotaku is a good one, or any mainstream one like IGN or Gamespot) for breaking news from Japan tonight - I'm sure they'll be up and reporting the Japanese press conference as it happens. Plus those sites don't pull the sensationalistic "get page impressions at any cost" crap that Joystiq does.