Everybody Loves the Wii

1up is reporting on Ubisoft's enthusiastic adoption of the Wii platform. They'd previously only had two titles announced for the system (Red Steel and a Rayman game), but now claim to have seven different titles in production. From the article: "Ubisoft North America President Laurent Detoc ... praised the Wii several times during the panel, stating that he expects it to have 'a large audience and market.' He also stated that he personally felt that in a time when fewer and fewer games appeal to him, the Wii offers plenty of enjoyment. 'The first time I picked up that sucker I couldn't stop playing it.'" Ars Technica is also reporting that EA is gung-ho about the system. From that article: "EA not only indicated that they are taking the Wii and DS seriously, but the company also hinted that they will follow Nintendo's guidance and release games at or near the $49.99 price point. Nintendo has urged developers and publishers to respect the $49.99 price point, believing that it reflects a value advantage over other consoles. EA did not offer a firm commitment to that pricing, contrary to reports elsewhere."

Lotsa games... now what?

[andrewman327]

From TFA: "On the same panel, Midway President David Zucker stated that his company has six titles in development for the Wii."

So we have games for the system. Now the question comes down to price points, marketing, and, oh yeah, features!

Re:Lotsa games... now what?

[anjin-san 3]

Price points have already been confirmed to be reasonable: no more than $250 for the console, no more than $50 for the games.

Marketing is already taken care of. Go to any gaming forum (or just check previos slashdot threads) and witness the general excitement and anticipation for the Wii. This kind of attitude will trickle down to the average gaming public.

Features. Gee, it only plays games from every Nintendo console, the Genesis, and the TurboGrafx and it has free online play. Would you like it to cook breakfast for you or something?

Maybe not everybody

[Emmo213]

An interesting article, especially since yesterday I read some developers think it's underpowered. http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/free-radical -wii-cant-handle-our-game-190723.php [kotaku.com] FTR, I'm looking forward to it.

Wiimote: But does it run on Linux?

[yakhan451]

I'm looking forward to the Wii and playing around with the games. If the Wiimote turns out to be a decent pointing device, I'm also interested in how it may effect human-computer interaction on other machines.

I foresee the same sort of cutting-edgers (heh, ricers) who are playing with Compiz and XGL, hacking together a way to connect to the Wiimote and then tinkering with some wii-gestures to help interact with the desktop.

o Rotate the wand like a steering wheel to flip between tasks or virtual desktops.
o Point to the taskbar and lift it like a dumbell to trigger your Expose' clone.
o Jab a window to minimize it. Twist the 'knife' in and pull down to close the program.
o Amarok hanging again? Give it a few whacks with your 'club' to kill the process.

Goofy, I know. But if this wiimote takes off, maybe we'll see clones of this type of technology and, in time, see some more fun and intuitive metaphores for HCI.

Re:Feedback Loop

[sehryan]

In my opinion, quality has always been the strong point of any Nintendo console, because of their solid first party games. The excitement with the Wii is that we can now look for more third party games to be developed than ever before. Sure, a lot of them might be crap, but there will be great games in those haystacks. Which means more great games total for the system. It is really a win-win.

Let's get this out of the way

[Metroid72]

My Friend Is Working On A Wii Game
(Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Multiple Wii/Nintendo Related posts.
One of my friends is currently working on a Wii game. I remember him being really excited about the system earlier this year and he was eager to get off the 360 game he was on and move on to something that is going to be fun and sell. What is strange is now that he has been doing Wii stuff for a while I asked him about a month ago how things were going and was he loving the Wii. His response was "eh..." Sounds like from his experience the Wii controller gets old pretty quickly. It doesn't even sound like he is planning on buying the system, or at least not this year.

OK, now let's move on to relevant comments about this discussion

-1, Emotional

[weasello]

Is it sad that I got this huge wave of ... I don't know the feeling ... Pride? Overwhelming joy? It kind of feels like the feeling I got when a girl first said they liked me on IRC.

The overwhelming (almost literally.. *sniffle*) support for the Wii has really bolstered my hopes for Nintendo and I'm sure they'll do much better this time around. Watching companies cast aside their previous habits and adopt full-on support for the Wii is incredible.

And I picture it visually in my head - Ubi has 2 games in development, and everyone in the office goes down and checks out a beta. They all enjoy it so much and they all want in on the project. BAM, 7 more games in development.

For this fanboi, it puts a real big smile on my face.

Can you afford to alienate Nintendo?

[xenocide2]

Free Radical notwithstanding, can anyone afford not to say the Wii is radically different, entertaining and perfect? Obviously there's the risk of missing out on the next greatest platform, and maybe there it is flawless. But I have no way of telling who's afraid to expose the emporer and who's discussing the honest truth. And aside from EA stating they didn't like the Wii some time ago (and have since retracted, wisely), I don't see how this qualifies as news anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is less news than it is "good publicity," and I'd much rather hear about the former than the latter.

Re:If gameplay is your thing..

[SirSlud]

You being a 3D engine programmer, you're not making games, you're making an engine. So surprise surprise, you'd love to work with more powerful hardware. I don't see how that makes Wii a disgrace, since all its guilty of is not costing 600$ to have its design focused on the aspect of the hardware that would let you play with more powerful hardware.

I'm a game programmer. I work in production, and I love making games on current gen systems because its always fun to figure out how to push the hardware to its limits to get the things you want in the game. How to cheat or fake certain things to get the graphics or the gameplay you want, whereas just programming it in the 'true' way would just give you 10 fps.

At any rate, since we both work on games and both are influenced by the flavour of the hardware and how that affects what we get to work with, I don't think we're exactly the most objective people on the matter. And it certainly doesn't make the Wii a 'disgrace', it just shifts the fun around on your team to others who might be dying of boredom by refactoring input APIs for what is essentially the same controller they were working on 6 years ago.

And you can still have fun on the Wii, its still a significant upgrade from all the current-gen systems.