My Nintendo News

Legendary games designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, has told journalists for the Official Nintendo Magazine that development of the next iteration of the Pikmin franchise is ‘well under way’ at Nintendo HQ.

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Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed Nintendo’s ambitious plans to get the Nintendo DS into junior schools in Japan with the help of  educational software.

“That is maybe the area where I am devoting myself [the] most,” Japanese video game guru Shigeru Miyamoto told The Associated Press in an interview.

Speaking through a translator, Miyamoto said that Nintendo’s DS console was already being used in Japanese museums, galleries and aquariums, and that his company was beginning to roll out the Nintendo DS system “in junior high and elementary schools in Japan starting in the new school year.”

- Shigeru Miyamoto

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Sony have just released a comedic marketing video for its forthcoming PlayStation Move motion controller.

The Sony video attempts to mock the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s forthcoming controller-free Project Natal. Whilst the PlayStation Move product has drawn heavy scepticism from gamers, the video is still an entertaining watch.

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Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime has spoken some choice words about PlayStation Move thus far.

This time Reggie goes one step further and claims that consumers will be content enough with their Nintendo Wii’s and therefore won’t bother dropping $400 on a PlayStation 3 with the PlayStation Move accessory.

“So I’m a consumer and I’m having a great experience with my Wii. And we know that’s the case – we look at the software that’s being purchased. Consumers love the Wii. What’s going to motivate them to spend minimally $300 for a new [PS3] system, plus minimally $100 for the Move motion bundle?

“So [as a consumer] now I’m into this for $400 and I still have to spend money on software. What’s going to motivate me to do that?”

- Reggie Fils-Aime

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Internet sleuths have detected that Nintendo have just issued a patent for something called the ‘Power Wii’.

Whilst this registered trademark could mean a plethora of different things including a new software title or a new marketing campaign, it is also entirely plausible that it could be a trademark for a new and improved Wii console.

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Level 5, the developers behind the highly successful Professor Layton franchise have stated on microblogging service Twitter that their next undisclosed project ‘will be extremely anticipated’.

“Once this is announced it will become an extremely anticipated title,

- Akihiro Hino, Level 5 CEO via Twitter

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Snippets of information regarding Nintendo’s highly anticipated follow-up to the Nintendo DS were floating around this years Games Developer Conference.

Whilst none of this information should be taken as gospel, it has been confirmed that specific game developers have received DS2 development kits from Nintendo.

• The new system features a dual screen, typical and characteristic of the original DS unit. However, the main difference is that the gap between the two screens are almost negligible, to the point that the user can use it as one big screen. It is also said to feature bigger and higher resolution.
• DS2 will feature an accelerometer.
• The dev kit is designed to be similar in power to the GameCube. As you may have already heard, the new DS is rumored to have an Nvidia Tegra chip.
• An E3 2010 announcement and a late 2010 release is possible.

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Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime has told online gaming publication IGN that he’s ‘blushing’ over Sony’s forthcoming motion controller which is officially named PlayStation Move.

“If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then I’m blushing I’m so flattered.”

“You know, I didn’t see the announcement. I did spend some time at the booth and saw some of what they were demonstrating and I think the question isn’t how will we react — I think the question is, so what is it that’s going to be compelling to the consumer in what they’re doing?

“From our standpoint, motion control is core to what we do. We believe that we’ve brought a range of different experiences that utilize the motion controller and we pride ourselves on being innovators in the space and we’re going to continue to innovate. I think the key question is, how will they respond when we continue to innovate if this is their best effort?”

- Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime,

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PlayStation Move Trailer

Yoshio Sakamoto, one of the creators behind the popular Nintendo platformer Kid Icarus, has told online gaming publication Kotaku that he would happily make Kid Icarus for Wii providing it makes use of the Wii’s strengths.

“I don’t know personally about any project underway regarding Kid Icarus, but if so many of those people are interested in it and really want to see it on the Wii they should really speak up.”

“If we can find some sort of way to bring it to the Wii, a way to make the game for the Wii that makes sense, we would happily do so. But just keep in mind it may not be me making the game.”

- Yoshio Sakamoto, Kid Icarus creator

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Will Wright, the successful games developer behind the renowned Sims franchise has spoken openly about the Wii’s place in the video game market and publishers difficulties on the platform at GDC 10.

“I think the Wii is a very unique platform, and that’s kind of its core value. That’s why it’s been so successful – because it’s pretty clearly different than the Xbox or the PlayStation. I think the Wii provides very fun experiences for the most part, but it’s kind of a different level of experience; it’s not like these 40-hour involved RPG games as much as it is like these fun toys to pick up and start playing in five minutes. And it’s really fun with a group of people sitting around… It really is more into what I would call the toy market, because most of the Wii games I’ve enjoyed felt more like toys than like games.”

Wright continued, talking about the now clearly longer console cycle the industry is in: “But in a broader sense, I think that whole model [has changed]. We’ve gotten very predictable in terms of when the next console generation is coming along – it was usually on a 4-year cycle and then it was in a transition cycle… but that’s been shattered. I don’t think this will necessarily be the last console generation we’ll see, but I don’t think it’s going to be this clockwork-like, predictable business that it had been. I think the fact that people are struggling on the Wii in a business sense isn’t necessarily indicative of the Wii. What we’ll be seeing going forward is that the console businesses will each have a very specifically defined niche. And Nintendo is just about the only manufacturer that invests in much as software as they do in hardware – or probably even more in software than hardware actually. So it’s always been a very unique platform in that sense because the biggest competitor as soon as you go into that market is always going to be Nintendo.”

We followed up by asking Wright about developers or publishers feeling somewhat limited in making Wii games if they can’t build core experiences on the console. He responded, “I think it’s the direction that Nintendo chose to go down. I think if you have a hardcore gamer that’s 22 years old and he wants to play a first-person shooter, he’s going to go buy an Xbox to play Halo. Microsoft has done a great job of covering that market. So Nintendo said, ‘Ok, we’re not going to go head-to-head with that.’ So Nintendo decided to lean younger and they took the industry in a really interesting direction, where we have games appearing on the Wii that people never would have dreamed of five years ago. And that broadened the market in really interesting ways. I think it’s kind of cool that they decided to go off and find a different sandbox to play in; I think it’s been very good for the industry.”

- Will Wright, game designer and co-founder of  EA Maxis

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