I was at today’s Nintendo Press Conference at the E3 Expo with my buddy Jonathan London from Geekscape and our web show Heads Up. The company reiterated it’s desire to expand the console market by designing “new kinds of games for new kinds of gamers”.
That means stuff like Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion, an interactive James Patterson novel and Style Savvy for the DSi, and the ability to upload photos from the DS to Facebook. And while these announcements may have put the room at E3 asleep, there’s no doubt Nintendo knows what they’re doing. They’ve blown the doors off the untraditional gamer market with WiiFit, the best selling game in America, with 15 million balance boards sold.
Their strategy continues with the Wii MotionPlus, an accessory that offers motion-controlled precision when combined with specially designed games, like the upcoming Wii Sports Resort -- thet type of game you can lose hours of your life to traipsing around the virtual island, from the archery course to the basketball court. President and CEO Reggie Fils-Aime demonstrated the MotionPlus with Senior Manager Bill Trinen in a game of hoops — spending a solid 5 minutes trash talking each other awlwardly.
For me the most curious item today was the Wii Vitality Sensor, which attaches to your finger and senses your pulse “and other signals being transmitted” from your body. I wonder exactly what applications Nintendo has in mind for this device. Nintendo President Saturo Iwato says “we will achieve greater relaxation with video games”… perhaps with Wii TranscendentalMeditation? While they didn’t show any footage of the device or discuss in depth it’s possible applications, it’s clear that Nintendo wishes to continue to remove traditional ideas of video games in order turn those “Maybe Gamers” into “Gamers”.
For the “Gamers” in attendance, Mario fans especially, there was some totally rad news. New Super Mario Bros Wii is the first multiplayer Mario game and hits shelves this Holiday season. The development team demo’d the game, showing how you can pick up and carry other players and don propeller suits that look kinda like MegaMan.
For DYI game developers, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again lets you create levels and share them with friends, and WarioWare DYI gives you the power to create micro games.
The news that stole the show was the unveiling of two huge titles for next year: Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M for Wii. The new Metroid looks excellent and promises to “delve deeper into the back story of famed deep-space bounty hunter Samus Aran”. Both games are scheduled for a 2010 release. Below is the teaser we saw for Metroid!
Check out Jonathan London’s coverage at Geekscape!
[...] Imagen: NarWilliams. [...]