And it’ll use the balance board. Ooh, interesting.

Microsoft’s EA’s Peter Moore, president of the company’s sports division, revealed that the new Freestyle label (geared towards more casual-friendly gaming experiences) will play host to the as-yet-unnamed title, which will apparently give players quite a different type of workout from Nintendo’s smash hit.

“We…need to make sure we’re delivering something that’s truly exercise” said Moore, describing Wii Fit as “eastern fitness”. “It senses weight and balance, like Tai-Chi,” he explained. “It’s more about holistic fitness. I don’t think the board is going to take a pounding. We need to look more at western fitness in which I can actually be moving and start to sweat a little bit, and that’s what we’re working on right now”.

Wii Fit does its job admirably, but a more strenuous (yet hopefully still fun) programme wouldn’t go amiss. And let’s face it, if anyone can market such a title to the new gamer audience that are lapping up Nintendo’s effort, it’s EA. 

Eurogamer

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Just a quick heads-up about a superb interview with Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents/Gitaroo Man supremo Keiichi Yano, over at CrispyGamer.

Find out - among other things - which he prefers out of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, what iNiS stands for, and - most importantly - what he’s got planned for the future. It certainly looks like we’ll be seeing something Wii-related at E3, but sadly he’s unable to say what just now. From other comments in the interview, it’s not Ouendan Wii, though another answer doesn’t exactly rule out something vaguely similar to Gitaroo Man. Which would, of course, be awesome.

Read it here. Really, do. It’s a great interview.

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Wii Fit - not just toning bodies, but changing attitudes. It’s a regular miracle-worker.

That’s according to its creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, anyway. In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Shigsy reiterated his desire to “expand the gaming population” and that Wii Fit would do just that. No arguments here. Though we’re not so sure about his later comment.

“As more and more people of different ages start playing — even if it’s just games like Wii Fit —- their understanding of what video games are and the fact that they’re even playing games is going to better their understanding of what gamers are” he claims, adding ”in a sense what we’re doing by increasing the gaming population is strengthening their right to continue to game. I hope they’ll keep that in mind.”

Hmmm. Not so sure about that one. There’s quite a few people I know who are buying a Wii for Wii Fit and nothing else. Sure, they’ll probably have a go on Wii Sports, but to be perfectly honest, I can’t see my sister sitting down for a couple of hours on Metroid or Trauma Center. The bit which concerns me most is the thought that this “increased right to game” will lead to more and more parents, wives and girlfriends hogging the telly to continue playing Wii Fit while we’re waiting to have another go on Excite Truck.

Still, Miyamoto can rectify all this by announcing at E3 that Pikmin 3, which has secretly been in development for a year, will be released in Europe before Christmas.  

MTV (via Kotaku)

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Another week, another developer declaring their love for the Wii in an offhand-ish way. Pandemic, creators of Mercenaries 2, have come out on record as saying they “love the platform”. That doesn’t mean, however, that we’ll be getting any of that Mercenaries love. Lazy Wii ports aren’t for them.

“If and when we start working on [Wii] we’re not going to make the mistake of just trying to port things over to it. We’re going to do something from the ground up that really makes sense for that platform and that audience,” said Pandemic president Josh Resnick, promising everything and nothing at once.

That’s all well and good, but like we said, he’s not the first one to declare a non-committal affair with Nintendo’s console. Until we get more news, an announcement like this is a bit like 50 Cent bigging up the people of Milton Keynes in his UK tour, y’know what we’re sayin’?

Source: Next-Gen

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We hate to accuse Nintendo of selling snake oil round these parts, but we’ve just learned that the ‘Fit’ part of Wii Fit is all a big fat lie. With emphasis on the word ‘fat’.

During an aggrandising promotional interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, mop-topped banjo-strummer Shigeru Miyamoto broke the news like the morbidly obese break deckchairs: “I forgot to mention something earlier: I don’t think Wii Fit’s purpose is to make you fit; what it’s actually aiming to do is make you aware of your body.”

You “forgot to mention”, did you? Thanks for letting us know. This is verily the most mildly disappointing news since the time we learned that crab sticks don’t actually contain any crab.

Of course, we knew for sure the game (or lifestyle product, if you will) wasn’t going to make us slim and buff. Nevertheless, its very name may mislead those hoping for a cheap fix, before realising that wobbling about on a plastic board is about as useless doing press-ups face-first into a plate of chocolate eclairs (probably).

Source: The Escapist

Related posts: “My Weight Loss Coach” coming to Nintendo DS , Opinion: Nintendo Wii is not a cure for obesity

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Nooooooooo! Just when we thought it was really happening, Nintendo have irrefutably shot down the prospect of an Animal Crossing MMO. It’s just not worth the time and hassle, they reckon. Don’t expect any kind of avatar-based equivalent to PlayStation Home, either. Your Miis are going to remain firmly rooted in their little prison of a Plaza.

Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata made his reasoning pretty clear:

“The first question I would ask is whether the service is fun if you’re 5 or 95, if you’re tech-savvy and if you’re computer illiterate. If that’s not a hurdle we can get past, it’s not something Nintendo is going to pursue.”

But wait! There’s more!

“…In that respect, the virtual-world services out there now still aren’t at a place where we’d like to join in – and certainly not to the point that we’d want to jump into competition with everybody else. We’d rather focus on doing things that nobody else would do… even if we were to make a virtual-world-like product, we’d be sure to make it something that nobody would call it a product similar to another company’s offering.”

Blimey. Dunno about you, but that’s what I’d call a negative response. Perhaps Iwata has a point. Aside from the obvious success stories like World of Warcraft and Second Life, the smaller MMOs are getting shitcanned left, right and centre. The most recent casualty was Marvel Comics’ MMO collaboration with Microsoft.

That said, Nintendo is foolish to turn a blind eye to the possibilities. Animal Crossing or Pokemon would be perfect for reaching out to a wider demographic. Someone should picket the offices of the Big N, if only to make them reconsider.

Via Eurogamer

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Bit of an understatement there, Gordon! In an interview with Eamonn Holmes on BBC Radio 5 Live, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown attempts to show his soft, cuddly side by owning up to a Wii habit.

Well, not so much as a habit but a casual admission that these new-fangled games consoles actually exist and can be fun.

“The Wii is very popular,” he said. “I have played a game of tennis, but I didn’t succeed… It didn’t leave me out of puff, but that was probably because I beaten pretty early on by my son and he’s only four.”

We’ll have to take this one with a large pinch of salt. The last time Gordon Brown tried to get “down” with “da kids” he was telling all and sundry he liked listening to the Arctic Monkeys on his iPod.

Still, it’s a refreshing change of tone from previous statements about video games. In an interview with The Sun earlier this year, he said: “I am very worried about video and computer games. No one wants censorship or an interfering State, but the industry has some responsibility to society and needs to exercise that.”

Via CVG

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Here are WiiWii Towers we’re duty-bound to record every public utterance of Shigeru Miyamoto. Not just that, but we like to interpret them with the zeal of a religious fanatic.

Even if it’s something like “Um, I think it’s time I got a haircut”, rest assured we’ll be covering the story in depth, complete with suggestions for a new style, diagrams, and a discussion about the implications for future instalments of Super Mario. He is the God of Gaming, after all.

Fortunately, Miyamoto’s latest interview for the 1000th issue of Famitsu contains some interesting tidbits. Nothing in the way of real news, mind, but a few crumbs of trivia to tide over the faithful. Not unless you count the inevitable sequel to Super Mario Galaxy as news…

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It is with cap in hand that we humbly apologise to Michael Pachter for calling him an ass.

Although we stand by the point we were making - that Wii Sports shouldn’t be unbundled from the Wii - we were wrong on two counts.

Firstly, the tone of our post was needlessly insulting to Mr Pachter. He’s actually a very nice man and undeserving of our ridicule.

Secondly, it was not a prediction he had made, but merely a statement of a possible course of action. If Nintendo wanted to maintain their price advantage over their rivals without too much of a cost to themselves, then it is conceivable that they could unbundle Wii Sports.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, we can move on to the meaty part of this post, a brief interview with Mr. Pachter to further clarify his position. It’s an interesting set of comments, we’re sure you’ll agree.

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David Jaffe’s opened his big mouth again. In an interview with website Gamasutra, the outspoken developer, brazenly voiced his indifference towards Super Mario Galaxy, stating it wasn’t as good as Ratchet and Clank. That’s right, not as good.

“I didn’t get the huge big deal over it; I thought it was a really good Mario game, but I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, it’s Mario 64!” I’m totally in the minority in that,” he said.

Jaffe is the man behind the excellent PS2 game God of War as well as recent PlayStation 3 Network game Calling All Cars. He’s been involved with Sony for the majority of his career, and is currently working on a sequel to his previous hit series, Twisted Metal. He’s also been known for his controversial outbursts, becoming something of a clause célèbre in the videogame world. Now if we were being conspiracy theorists, we’d think this knocking of Nintendo’s star game was some kind of professional fanboy snub or crude Sony marketing campaign. Sadly, the reality is probably that he didn’t like Galaxy. Hey, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Ratchet’s got cool guns it and looks gorgeous in HD. You can’t say that Mario has the same, can you?

Besides, if he’d really wanted to be controversial he’d have said that Sunshine’s better than Galaxy.

Source: Go Nintendo

Related posts: Miyamoto sez: “What’s a Ratchet and Clank?”, Ratchet and Clank responsible for Super Mario Galaxy? Hmm

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