Wired.com’s Game|Life has an interesting report from DICE about Nintendo’s intentions to support independent gaming on both Wii and DSi.
Nintendo’s director of project development, Tom Prata, accepted that Nintendo could potentially have issues in that department - particularly on Wii given its lack of storage space - but it’s evident that the big N is seeing how well games like Flower and Noby Noby Boy are working on rival hardware and wants a piece of that critically-acclaimed pie.
Nintendo, of course, has its own figurehead for indie gaming on Wii, and 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler was introduced to talk about World of Goo. Nintendo would be wise to throw a bit of money to keep the two-man devteam working on titles for its consoles, though it’s heartening to see it taking steps in this direction - especially as it recently seems to have focused on commercial success over genuine gaming innovation. Though that would be to ignore some of the smaller-scale, more experimental titles like Skip’s Art Style series, which runs across both Nintendo’s download services - for my money one of the most exciting developments in Nintendo gaming since the Wii’s launch.
The rise and rise of digital distribution, and the subsequent growth of indie gaming may well have caught Nintendo on the hop, but it’s certainly taking steps in the right direction. Let’s just hope that fridge-clearing solution comes along sooner rather than later.
Defying the credit crunch once more, Nintendo has spent 12.8 billion yen on a site near to its headquarters. It plans to use the site for research and development of new software and hardware, with its existing R&D department likely to merge with the new place.
Many people have questioned Nintendo’s reluctance to expand further given how much money it has been making of late, and it finally seems that it’s spending a bit on making more games. How much of this new facility and its staff will be allocated to creating Wii’s successor isn’t known, but I’d wager that that is going to be highest on Nintendo’s agenda, as it attempts to figure out how exactly to follow two of its most successful consoles ever, while revolutionising gaming and simultaneously remaining accessible to its expanded audience. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.
Alternatively, perhaps Nintendo has decided it doesn’t really need third-party support, and is just going to release more Wii and DS games to sate its loyal fans, who’ve been vocally complaining about its directional shift over the past few years.
Whatever it’s used for, the likely outcome is ‘more games’, and should that mean a worthy follow-up to Super Mario Galaxy, then I’ll be more than happy.
Quite possibly. PSU is reporting that the latest edition of US mag Game Informer carries a piece suggesting that “RockStar North is alreadyworking on the next instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which should be ready for release this holiday season.”
And this isn’t just downloadable content, no sirree.”We’re not talking about new DLC or a collection of previously available DLC, we’re talking about a full retail game,” says the mag. “We expect this title to follow the suit of previous GTAs and use a subtitle such as GTA: San Andreas etc. Tokyo might be a possible setting for the game,” it adds.
Now GTA IV was by all accounts a mammoth undertaking, and given that the team behind GTA IV will undoubtedly have its hands full with the Xbox 360-exclusive DLC, that the release would come very close to the launch of the second episode late in 2009, not to mention the fact that it would seem impossible to craft an entirely new HD GTA in that sort of timescale - possible on last-gen consoles, maybe, but not these days - and you’ve got a host of problems that point to it not appearing on PS3 on 360. Which can only mean one thing: GTA on Wii.
Think about it - Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has mentioned how he’d love to see a GTA on the Wii. The console’s success has turned the heads of quite a few publishers who are now all racing to produce more high-quality games for the console after dismissing its early sales as a fad. Then you have the head of 2K Games - which owns Rockstar - mouthing off about the dearth of top-notch Wii titles. Put that all together with the reduced development period required for a Wii title compared to its hi-def rivals, along with faint whispers that the game has been in production for quite some time already - and, of course, the appearance in March of a GTA on the DS (a case of testing the waters, perhaps?) - and you’ve got a strong chance that GTA is indeed coming to the Wii.
Even the suggested setting makes a lot of sense - IV performed very well in the Japanese sales charts recently, and a GTA set in Tokyo would be a definite tilt towards the eastern market. Any game with ‘Grand’, ‘Theft’ and ‘Auto’ on the box is likely to be hungrily gobbled up by western audiences regardless of its setting, so Tokyo would seem a very good fit on the most popular piece of home console hardware out there. It potentially raises Rockstar’s profile in the east, and is an almost surefire smash hit in the west.
I’m sure if quizzed about this, Rockstar would pull a Nintendo and declare it to be nothing more than ‘rumour and speculation’. But don’t be too surprised if E3 brings us a big reveal of the first 3D GTA on a Nintendo console.
Okay, as I told you all way back in March classic PC adventure Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is coming to DS. What I didn’t know then, however, was that there’s also going to be a Wii version. Published by Ubisoft, it’s to be known as a ‘director’s cut’, which will expand on the original with some new puzzles and some story tweaks to show events leading up to the start of the game, as well as how it fits in with the rest of the series.
Excitingly, this new version will also feature character art from Dave Gibbons, creator of comic book masterpiece Watchmen - facial expressions will be animated as characters converse, affording the dialogue a little more dynamism and emotion.
You’ll be able to rejoin likeable hero George Stobbart in March of next year, when Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director’s Cut hits both Wii and DS. Get it on your pre-order list immediately - it’s going to be brilliant. Remember: you heard it here first.
Incredible. Unprecedented. Unbe-flippin-lievable. Roll out all the superlatives you like, they can’t come close to describing Wii’s staggering performance this November, the console shifting a whopping 600,000 units more than even the lofty predictions of Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter.
Wii more than doubled the still-impressive sales of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which reached a very respectable figure of 836,000, while Sony slunk home with its tail between its legs, with PS3 lagging way behind on 378,000. Sub-400k in November? Ouch.
In the handheld market, DS showed its clear dominance over its widescreen rival, with over 1.5 million flip-top portables flying off the shelves, dwarfing PSP’s total of 421,000.
I promised myself I wouldn’t get too excited about Jungle Beat’s impending Wii return on the Wii de Asobu (Let’s Play On Wii) label, but the above trailer has got my heart aflutter once more. There’s definitely some new stuff in there (around the seven or eight second mark I spotted a couple of sequences which I didn’t recognise) and it seems the controls will be pretty sensible, if still not quite as effectively primal and physical as the bongo controls in the GameCube original.
The end of the ad confirms which games we’re set to see soon - Pikmin 1 AND 2 will be making their way onto Wii, while Mario Tennis, Chibi-Robo and the two previous Metroid games are also appearing in the range. At 3800 they’re priced a fair bit lower than your average Wii title (which tend to range between 5800 and 6800 yen in Japan). Let’s hope they retail for around £19.99 or less when us Europeans get our hands on these new old titles.
Right, then. I finally got round to uploading some videos of my Wii Music compositions. Above is version one of John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ which I recorded a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I did another, very different take -with one instrument remaining the same - just to compare and contrast, and to show how you can change the feel of a song by the way it’s performed. See below.
To some people this is still going to seem like a load of old rubbish, but hopefully one or two of you will be inspired to pick up Wii Music after seeing just what you can do when you put your mind to it. Not for nothing is it in my top five games of the year…
If you were wondering why we’d not yet seen sight nor light of the excellent Art Style WiiWare titles in Europe yet, now you have your answer: Nintendo of Europe was setting up a dedicated minisite to promote Skip’s superb downloadable series. Click here to have a gander.
After some disastrous delays during GameCube’s life, NoE’s stock has certainly risen for me in recent times. Europe got Wii Fit and Mario Kart before the US and Disaster: Day of Crisis is increasingly looking like it won’t ever reach our American brethren. While it’s a shame people have had to wait for the Art Style titles the fact that NoE has gone to the effort of promoting awareness of the games shows it has faith in the series.
Indeed, an interview with Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe suggests that “the more requests we have for new Art Style games, the sooner those games will become a reality.” Good news - get emailing, readers. For extra impact, put the subject matter down as “Art Style COLORIS please, Nintendo”. If not for yourself, then do it for me.
First game of the three is newcomer CUBELLO, which will hit WiiWare on 21st November for 600 points, with ROTOHEX and ORBIENT to follow at a later time. I’m expecting one every two weeks, which would be the ideal way to drip-feed the games, really.
Okay, I’ve already rated World of Goo. But this WiiWare game - set to hit Europe in the early part of next year, in disk form but with an extra level - deserves every bit of promotion it can get.
Which is apt, as so does indie games show Consolevania, now in its fourth series, and featuring two of Scotland’s finest games writers in Rab Florence and Ryan McLeod. Season Four offers a wealth of bite-sized nuggets of gaming reviews, features and comedy skits, and you could do a lot worse than venturing over to the official site to check out some more (non-Nintendo-related) from the guys.
Be warned, though: it’s perhaps not something to have on with kiddies in earshot, as there are a few wee swears littered throughout.
“Nintendo to reveal Wii HD tomorrow?” asks Eurogamer. “Doubt it,” answers Chris Schilling, though I’m well prepared to be proven wrong (and indeed have been, on numerous occasions. In fact, why believe me? Go with Eurogamer’s guess. They probably know something I don’t, after all).
Anyway, this is the story on What They Play, which has veteran games journo John Davison waxing lyrical about Nintendo’s next console, how it’s already been shown to publishers and developers, and Nintendo’s spent loads of money on R+D in the last year so it must be true.
But be still, my cynical tongue. Assuming this is all true, Wii HD will arrive in 2011, it’ll be more about “what the consumer will hold in their hands” than the console itself, and will be all about the digital distribution, baby. Which means much larger storage space. So, knowing Nintendo, that’s 2GB of Flash memory, tee hee.
If true, it will apparently mark a step forwards that’s roughly akin to “Game Boy to Game Boy Advance”. Oh, and backwards compatibility is confirmed. Which, to me, says one thing: Super Mario Galaxy in HD. I’m salivating like a dog chained up outside a butchers as I type this.
 
 
 
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