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Miyamoto Talks Wii
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Accessories, Corporate News, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Shigeru Miyamoto talked about the Nintendo Wii with Famitsu magazine, and IGN has a summary and translation of some of his comments. The main thing that IGN picked up on was that the number of buttons on the Wii controller might not be finalized, with Miyamoto reportedly saying, “We’re still debating on the area of how many buttons to use.” This might have been misread in context, however, and may have just been talking generally about the development process for the Wii. He also talked some about the goals for the new console; he wants it to be technology “that you’ll want to turn on every day…like a television.” Certainly, with the DS, Nintendo has been successful at picking up the more casual gamers, but Miyamoto hopes to capture this feeling with the Wii as well. Most telling was Miyamoto’s comments after hearing about the results of the Famitsu game console poll, and is really an indication of how in-grained their “blue ocean” strategy of going after typically non-gamer oriented markets is. Miyamoto’s response, “Was there a selection for ‘I don’t want any of them’? I’d like to know this, because we’re fighting this ‘I don’t want any of them’ selection” really shows the dedication that Nintendo is pushing towards the non-gamer, or perhaps the gamer that has gotten tired of the direction the industry is heading.
Read More 
| IGN
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Edge UK Talks To Satoru Iwata
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Nintendo, Wii,
Edge UK magazine is publishing a series of interviews with the three heads of the competing console manufacturers, Satoru Iwata, Phil Harrison, and Peter Moore, and the first subject featured is Satoru Iwata, head of Nintendo. The focus, of course, is on the Wii, both its unusual control method and name. On
the Wii controller, even experienced Nintendo employees had problems, with Iwata stating:
“I think it’s an unusual feeling for players once they begin using two different controllers with two hands. For example, even inside Nintendo, those who had been working on the Zelda and Super Mario products, some of them are saying now that we have to change completely the way we play the game.”
He also commented on Sony’s inclusion of motion sensing technology, saying it “was something we expected, actually. Because this is not the first time this has happened…we really don’t think that other companies having a similar approach and technology will affect the advantage the our controllers bring to the Wii.” They discuss briefly the plans for the virtual console, and Iwata stated that the design for the Wii is basically complete, with small tweaks being made to the hardware and components. The unusual name also had to be a topic, but Iwata believes there should be no problems with the name, and hopes “that someday in the future [people] will like it.”
Read More | Next Generation
Interview With Matt Lee, Xbox 360 Game Technology Group Developer
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,
Ars Technica has a fairly in depth interview with one of the developers from Microsoft’s Game Technology Group, Matt Lee. In his words, his job “is to help game developers make better Xbox 360 games.” There are a ton of technical details in the interview, ranging from improvements in the Altivec units on the PowerPC cores, CPU multithreading issues, and procedural world generation.
Somewhat interesting are the perspectives on the video game market; as a developer, the marketshare statements might not hold a lot of weight. Bandied about is the 10 million unit head start, as if that were fact at this point. With the PS2 outselling the Xbox 360 in May, and an average of 250,000 Xbox 360 units sold by month, if Xbox 360 sales remain the same for the rest of the year, that targets an additional 1.5 to 2 million Xbox 360s in the United States; Europe might add a similar number, and Japan’s sales will be negligable. Add to this the fact that Wii and the Playstation 3 ship in November, and Sony’s marketing machine will be intense. So 10 million sounds good, but is probably as optimistic as Microsoft’s original holiday projections for the Xbox 360. Saying that “Both the Japanese and US markets are reaching saturation at this point” may have some weight in that there aren’t a lot of ways to incrementally add new gamers, but the existing core gamer demographic is still a battle to be fought every generation. Add to this the strong drives that Nintendo is making with its “Blue Ocean Strategy” in all three territories seems to indicate the opposite; that there are new opportunities, just not in the standard game development genres.
Lee also takes some time to discuss the PS3 architecture. Given that he probably doesn’t have a Sony NDA signed or a development kit, he’s probably working off much of the same information as the general public. There might be some insight he has talking with developers experienced on both platforms, so the commentary is interesting from that light. Porting from PS3 to Xbox 360 and vice-versa will be difficult, Lee predicts, but that’s hardly a revelation; the original PS2 and Xbox consoles saw some spectacularly bad cross-platform ports in their day, most notoriously with some of Midway’s releases. The Xbox 360’s unified memory architecture may be somewhat of an advantage, but its hard to tell at this point. It is, however, interesting to get a technical review through Microsoft-colored glasses.
Read More | ArsTechnica
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Gamasutra Podcast On Next Generation Development
Posted by George Hatzidimitriou Categories: Culture, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,
Gamasutra has updated their weekly podcast with the first in a two part roundtable discussion focusing on the various challenges developers are facing with next generation console development on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.
Featured are:
- Brian Eddy of Midway Games (Stranglehold / Xbox 360, PS3)
- Nicolas Eypert of Ubisoft Paris (Red Steel, Wii)
- Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks (Oblivion, Fallout 3 / Xbox 360)
- Bryan Intihar (Previews Editor of EGM)
- Aubrey Pullman of Microsoft Game Studios (Forza Motorsport 2 / Xbox 360)
- Evan Wells of Naughty Dog (Unnamed Next-Gen Title / PS3)
Thankfully, the discussion stays away from overtly technical talk, instead opting to focus on staffing, budget and management issues. The panelists all seem to agree that due to limited budgets and an ever increasing amount of required development time, developers must choose more carefully which areas of graphics,physics and AI to specialize in rather than striving for all around perfection. Other topics include middleware, specialization of staff, the definition of “next gen” and what is undoubtedly every one’s biggest concern, realistic trees in video gaming.
Read More | Gamasutra
Resolving HDTV Lag In Games
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360,
The Xbox 360 has sought to usher in the era of high definition gaming, and many gamers have purchased HDTV sets to go along with their new Xbox 360s. However, while HDTV offers spectacular pictures at stunning resolutions, there are some issues, the most vexxing of which is HDTV lag. IGN.com tries to dissect the problem, and offer up some solutions to the issue. There are basically two areas where HDTV lag can occur: first, when resolutions other than the native resolution of the television are used, the TV will have to alter the signal to display correctly on the set. This will sometimes require scaling the image up or down in resolution, and may also require converting the signal from an interlaced signal to progressive, or vice-versa, depending on the television type. This conversion takes a finite amount of time, and depending on the television, will either be so quick as to be unnoticeable in gaming, or can be long enough to affect the ability to play games at all.
The second issue occurs when there are additional filtering options offered by the TV. One of the more common is Samsung’s DNIe, but most of the high end HDTV manufacturers will have their own proprietary signal filter that will attempt to improve the picture seen by the user. This process again takes time. Usually it doesn’t take that long for signal processing to occur, but combined with the time taken to scale the image in the previous examples, this can again cripple gaming.
IGN proposes a few solutions to this problem. First, if the gamer hasn’t bought an HDTV set, try to test the set first with some timing intensive games in the store first. Obviously, it will be difficult to bring your dance pad in to work through some 10 foot Dance Dance Revolution tracks, but fighting games are notoriously twitch sensitive.
If you already have a set, try and set your HDTV to as close to native resolution as possible. With some consoles, this will be next to impossible. The Gamecube supports 480P resolution on some games, but most will be 480i. The Playstation 2 will have even fewer 480p games. Most original Xbox games are also 480p, but some will support 720p and higher resolutions. The Xbox 360 should offer native support for most resolutions, including 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Relying on the Xbox 360’s internal scaler should help resolve the issue in most circumstances.
They also recommend turning off any image enhancement filters on the TV. Some sets offer a “game” mode that passes the signal through without any additional filtering, and this may help as well. Finally, if none of these help, it may be necessary to purchase hardware that has a faster scaling engine than the one in the television set. IGN has a couple of recommendations, including the Micomsoft XRGB boxes that are usually available from import stores like Lik-Sang or NCSX.
Read More | IGN Gear
More Wii Rumors: Wii Camera Under the “Secret Slot”?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Rumors, Wii,
NintendoGossip is reporting on an image found in some promotional E3 materials that shows the Wii with its “Secret Slot” open (i.e., the flap beneath the blue-lit drive). The image looks a bit iffy - the plastic shown under the secret slot doesn’t appear to match very well with the rest of the console, which is very odd for a company that has placed so much emphasis on design recently. Still, it’s interesting to speculate on what can be seen - there’s a fairly obvious port for memory cards, but also a round port or lens located towards the top of the secret slot. NintendoGossip and Kotaku are suggesting that perhaps this could be the rumored Wii-camera that allows you to “put your face in the game” as Miyamoto suggested.
We’ll file this one firmly in the “rumors that probably won’t come true but would be nice if they did” bin for now. Hopefully after their competitors announce their final specs Nintendo can finally give away the last of the secrets they’ve been keeping on the Wii.
Read More 
| NintendoGossip.com via Kotaku.com
A Look At The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess For Wii
Posted by Denise Shively Categories: Action, Adventure, Nintendo, Nintendo Gamecube, Wii,
Among the multitude of news bits about the upcoming Nintendo Wii, gamers can’t stop talking about the launch titles that will go along with this console. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess offers fans a new spin on the traditional Zelda series, but leaves many wondering whether the game will work with the Wii’s newfangled controllers or format? Fortunately, the consensus is that long time fans and newbies alike will not be disappointed by this upcoming installment in the Zelda series.
Click to continue reading A Look At The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess For Wii
New Raid Over The River Screenshots
Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Portable/Mobile, Screenshots, Wii,
Nibris has released new screenshots for their Nintendo DS title called Raid over the River. The game is a top down shooter which has 3 different time periods including medieval, World War II, and the near future. Depending on the time period you are playing in the choices of fighters change. The fighter choices range from dragons to futuristic planes. The game is due out for the DS in 2006. Nibris is a small game studio based in Europe who are also working on Sadness, a horror game, for Nintendo’s Wii.
Read More | Nibris
Iwata Talks Release Date, Virtual Console, Pokemon Wii
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Fighting, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Retro, Role Playing Games, Wii,
In probably the biggest Nintendo update since E3, Nintendo’s President Satoru Iwata announced some major new details about the Wii and the games available for it. Quickly summarized, the main points of interest are:
- The Wii launch date will be revealed in September
- Unsurprisingly, Nintendo won’t lose much on Wii hardware sales. They hope to have 6 million units ready by April ‘07
- Game pricing for the Virtual Console is suggested to be around $5 and $10 a game (implying this won’t be subscription-based)
- The Wii will be able to recognize touch-screen input, meaning the DS can be used as a controller in some instances
- DS sales are expected to be around 2 million / month for the coming year, with production to meet this level of demand
- Pokemon for the Wii will be released and available in Winter ‘06
It’s good to see more concrete details filtering in. Also, announcing Pokemon during this conference instead of during E3 may have been a great strategic decision, as Nintendo appears to be trying to shed its “kiddy” image with titles like Project H.A.M.M.E.R. and Disaster: Day of Crisis that were announced at E3.
Read More | Famitsu (Japanese) via Spong.com (English summary)
Katsuya Eguchi Talks Animal Crossing Wii, Hints at Guitar Hero Wii
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Adventure, Nintendo, Rumors, Wii,
Nintendo exec Katsuya Eguchi, talking with Kikizo, recently dropped some more interesting Wii tidbits. Specifically, he discussed some functionality that Nintendo is thinking about for their next iteration of Animal Crossing on the Wii, including using e-mail or cell phone based text messages to send letters to people in the Wii Animal Crossing world. But that’s not all - Eguchi also talked a bit about the addition of Wii peripherals and dropped this interesting note:
“Of course, if software calls for a light gun, we’ll make a light gun. If the software requires a guitar, then maybe we’ll make a guitar. Our number one priority is always to provide the ultimate gameplay experience, so if the game requires a peripheral, then we’ll supply a peripheral.”
Sounds like perhaps Nintendo and RedOctane have been talking, no? Just recently, an interview with some RedOctane execs, posted right here the company expressed a great deal of excitement about the Wii controller and mentioned using it for drumming, guitar, or (if the Wii mic is a reality) karaoke games.
Read More | Kikizo
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