The Nintendo Wii has gotten a lot of both criticism and praise for attracting a new brand of gamer. This casual crowd is quickly becoming the face of the Wii, and has by far gotten the most attention. This leads people to believe that the Wii is geared towards the sixty-five and older crowd. However, while at the Ziff Davis Electronic Gaming Summit, Nintendo of America's own Cammie Dunaway dropped some facts on whom exactly is playing the Wii.According to Cammie Dunaway, "Seventy-nine percent of Wii gamers are male, most older than 18....and more than half game for five or more hours a week." Assuming 5 hours a week is hardcore, Dunaway made the claim that the Wii is overwhelmingly played by the hardcore. The perception of the Wii's appeal to the baby boomers is not completely incorrect, though. Cammie Dunaway also mentioned that forty-five percent of other household Wii players are females over the age of twenty-five.Despite the Wii's perception, if Cammie Dunaway's numbers are even the least bit true, the Nintendo Wii may just be a bit more hardcore than you think.
The Wii has always been somewhat lacking in the first-person shooter realm, but titles like Metroid Prime 3 and Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 were able to shine that much more because of it. Now it looks like they may have to step out of the limelight. The Conduit, an upcoming entry from experienced Wii developer High Voltage Software, recently got a new trailer, which shows more of the game's subject matter and technology.The game's sci-fi theme revolves around an alien invasion; certainly nothing new for shooters, but the game takes place in Washington D.C. and seems to have a unique government-work feel to it. Two primary characters mentioned in the trailer include Mr. Ford and Mr. Adams, codenames likely derived from the U.S. presidents' names. The trailer shows a number of different alien types, environments, and weapons, including the usual handguns, machine guns, and sniper rifles as well as some original creations.The Conduit looks to have a control scheme similar to other Wii shooters, in which you use the pointer function of the Remote to move the aiming reticule around onscreen without moving in place like you would with a mouse. The game looks to offer an alternate aiming scheme like Metroid Prime 3's "expert" setting, which many PC-shooter veterans preferred, but the default aiming looks functional.As for the game's visuals, High Voltage has claimed that it wants to "make a Wii game that looks like a 360 title," and to that end they've developed their Quantum3 engine. Some of the models look good and the framerate is solid, but the animation looks a bit off, and in some spots the visuals look more like a PS2 or Dreamcast game, lacking the sort of lighting and shader effects to which we've grown accustomed since those days. The engine promises these capabilities, and it is visible in some parts of the trailer, but other parts seem flat by comparison. The game isn't even confirmed for this year, though, so they've got time to polish it.What's got people most excited is the hint at multiplayer at the very end, when a voice says "Deathmatch is confirmed." Multiplayer is the biggest reason why Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 is so well-liked among the Wii community, and a new game with similar mechanics in a different setting would surely be a welcome change of pace. We'll have more coverage of the game as it progresses.
Always seeking to impress doubters and skeptics, Cammie Dunaway is at it again; Throwing around numbers as Nintendo's PR department reviews its figures. This time, Dunaway is claiming that the Nintendo Wii has sold around 50 million games during the first year and a half of its release. This is not including any games purchased through the virtual console. When comparing this to previous consoles, take Sony's PS2, the Wii trounces it by a whopping 8 million. The PS2, the closest sales numbers to the Wii, sold 42 million units in the same time span, leaving Cammie Dunaway to say this:"While we appreciate the impact the Playstation 2 had on sales and the industry, perhaps we are even more impactful."
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels, in development by Krome Studios exclusively for the Wii, delivers fun-filled Lightsaber battles for the entire family while it immerses players in the characters, locations, and epic duels from the all-new Star Wars feature film. Built from the ground-up for the Wii, Lightsaber Duels features an intuitive motion-controlled combat system that puts the lightsaber weapon in your hand for non-stop fun. * Fight the most memorable duels from The Clone Wars feature film. * Wield your Wii Remote like a Lightsaber and experience first-hand the unique weapon of the Jedi knights with intuitive controls, so no matter what your gaming experience you can become a Lightsaber master. * Play with your friends as your favorite Clone Wars hero or villain -- from familiar characters like Anakin Skywalker and General Grievous to new faces like Ahsoka Tano and Asajj Ventress -- each with a unique fighting style and set of skills. * Exploit your interactive surroundings to defeat your opponent: slice down pillars and Force throw them against your foe. * Duel your way through significant Clone Wars locations, such as Tatooine and Teth.
July 14, 2008 - Players wondering if we'd ever see a true 1:1 experience on Wii need to wonder no more, as Nintendo announced today a new plug-in peripheral for the Wii remote, currently called Wii MotionPlus. Details are sparse so far, but Nintendo revealed the first snippets of information in a press release this morning. The following statement is -- in its entirety -- Nintendo's announcement of MotionPlus for Wii:"Nintendo's upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player's arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play. The Wii MotionPlus accessory reconfirms Nintendo's commitment to making games intuitive and accessible for everyone. Nintendo will reveal more details about the Wii MotionPlus accessory and other topics Tuesday morning at its E3 media briefing."What we don't know, however, is how exactly MotionPlus will work with nunchuk controls, as the peripheral would need some sort of pass-through in order to give 1:1 motion to titles requiring analog control. The first shot above shows a small plug in the bottom of the attachment, which looks to be covering just such port, but we'll wait on Nintendo to give the final confirmation. Will we see first-person shooters that can make use of this technology? Will LucasArts find a way to adapt the upcoming Clone Wars game to include true 1:1 lightsaber technology, or could Nintendo beat them to it with a pack-in Link's Sword Fighting game (or news of a new Zelda Wii) to showcase MotionPlus? Will some sort of future "Wii-mote 2.0" automatically include MotionPlus, removing the need for an additional add-on peripheral? We'll have to wait and see how exactly the new technology works, and all signs point to Nintendo's keynote just 24 hours from now.
Wii captures first place in console warPS3 and Xbox fighting over crumbsBy Aharon Etengoff: Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 9:38 AMClick here to find out more!THE NINTENDO WII is currently the top-selling video game console in the US, while the DS has been rated the best selling hand-held US video game system for the month of July.But Peter Moore, who headed Microsoft's Xbox division until joining Electronic Arts a year ago, has even higher expectations for the family-oriented console.Moore told the Financial Times that Nintendo’s Wii will take up half of all home console sales in this generation, leaving the PS3 and Xbox 360 to fight over the remaining crumbs."It looks to me as if the Wii is going to have at least half the installed base of the overall industry and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are going to fight over the balance, based on the run-rates we're seeing," he said.The latest statistics seem to confirm Moore's statement that Sony and Microsoft are locked into battle for second place. While the Wii maintains a comfortable lead, the PS3 outsold the 360 by nearly two-to-one in June.Michael Pachter, a video games analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, predicted that PS3 sales would accelerate even further if Sony slashed its prices."It's highly likely that when the PS3 gets below $200, it will sell as well as the PS2."However, Kaz Hirai, President and Group CEO at Sony told the FT that he wanted to exceed PS2 sales."It's not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers. I've seen that movie already. I want to try to see if we can exceed the PS2 numbers after nine years, otherwise why are we in this business?"
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata just announced that the company plan on re-releasing a number of GameCube games...on the Wii. They'll form the "Play On Wii Selection"
