I’d like to try HD at some point. I wonder if I’ll get the opportunity?

The above quote comes from a Twitter update of Masahiro Sakurai’s, the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. franchises. After spending the past while playing the heck out of the just-released Crysis 2, Sakurai has expressed his interest in getting into high definition game development. In a further comment, translated by Andriasang, he added that “he doesn’t feel the relationship between graphics and game enjoyment is one where reducing your effort in one area will necessarily lead to improvements in the other area,” clearly referencing the numerous statements Nintendo have made to explain their omission of HD from the Wii. He did, however, make it clear that it’s extremely difficult to make a game that looks incredible in HD and plays just as well.

Sakurai makes some incredible games. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to see him make something in HD.

Is it possible that Sakurai is really only teasing, and may in fact be working on a Wii 2 game as we impatiently pore over these rumours? Although he is separate from Nintendo, he was one of the very first people to be shown a 3DS and given a development kit for it, way back in 2008 – the result of which was the fantastic-looking Kid Icarus: Uprising. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for Nintendo to have entrusted him with a Wii 2 kit by now, too, especially if we are to believe the current rumours of an E3 2011 reveal for the console followed by a 2012 launch.

Source: Twitter via GoNintendo

Thanks prizzaparty!

Square Enix is planning to open a major new studio in either Montreal or Toronto (yay, Canada!) for the sole purpose of developing games for the next generation of home consoles – including not just the Wii 2, but also the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 (all fan names, of course; no one knows what they’ll really be called). The studio will reportedly house over 100 employees, so it’s definitely no small-time operation. The director of Eidos Montreal (a subsidiary of Square Enix), Stéphane D’Astous, said:

The new consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will require more attention and more staff. We want to prepare ourselves.

Does Square Enix’s investment in starting up this new studio mean that they’ve seen the Wii 2 (or the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720, for that matter), and believe it’s worth having a dedicated team for? I think it’s more than likely that that’s the case, as Nintendo will want to start handing out dev kits soon if they want any games to be ready in time for the rumoured 2012 release. They began to give 3DS kits to select developers back in 2008, about two years before the system’s existence was announced to the public on March 23, 2010, and you can still see how small the launch lineup turned out to be. Square Enix would definitely be one of those “select” companies, so if Nintendo is at that stage by now, I’m almost sure that they’d be among the first to know.

Source: Metro

Interviewed by CNN, Reggie Fils-Aime wanted to make it clear to the world that we shouldn’t expect stereoscopic 3D visuals to be the main attraction of the Wii 2, unlike the 3DS. When asked on the subject, he had the following to say:

Glasses-free is a big deal. We’ve not said publicly what the next thing for us will be in the home console space, but based on what we’ve learned on 3-D, likely, that won’t be it.

Note that Reggie didn’t say that there would be no 3D support; only that it won’t be a key selling point of the system. So, it could still happen. Nintendo is just concerned about bringing out the 3D guns in the living room because 3D TV’s are still a very niche market, and probably will be for a while. As Hideki Konno said in an unrelated discussion about 3D experiments on the GameCube:

It would have required consumers to buy a special LCD screen to attach to the GameCube to actually play. We didn’t think it was worth that investment for consumers, so it never came out.

Source: CNN via Nintendo 3DS Blog

Thanks, SonOfMrPeanut!

In an interview with Gamasutra, Reggie Fils-Aime made a comment that suggests the Wii is open to further price cuts in the future.

The Wii has a long life in front of it. We’re still sitting at $199. There are a variety of marketing tools at our disposal.

If you’re wondering how this implies a future price drop, look carefully at the words, “We’re still sitting at $199.” The Wii – supposedly an outdated console, according to EA – is still holding up well commercially even with an HD Xbox 360 running around at the same price.  What Reggie is really saying here is that when sales really dip down to a critical point, Nintendo won’t mind slashing a few more dollars off the Wii’s price to boost ’em right back up again.

I’d like to use this chance here to compare the Wii to the PlayStation 2. The latter continued to sell even after its successor, the PlayStation 3, came along, at a low price below $100. Considering that Reggie only stated that the Wii has a long life ahead of it, but didn’t say anything about there not being a successor in the cards, I think it’s possible that he may have only wanted to say that Nintendo is planning to milk every last sale out of it, even long after the Wii 2 might become available.

via My Nintendo News

On an unrelated note, I’m leaving for a trip to Europe tomorrow, and will be unable to update the blog until after I’m back on March 27th (incidentally, that’s the day the Nintendo 3DS comes out). If, by some chance, anything big gets announced while I’m away, popping into the forums (which crossed the 1500-post milestone today) is probably your best way of finding out more about it.

Golf was originally one of the Wii's killer apps, but rival platforms are now able to replicate the full experience...in HD.

In an interview with IndustryGamers, Frank Gibeau of EA Games dropped a huge hint that Nintendo is hard at work on the Wii 2. There’s no way to know whether EA is truly in the know about the console this blog is dedicated to, or whether Gibeau is just speculating; but considering that Nintendo began to privately hand out Nintendo 3DS dev kits to third-parties around 2008, I certainly wouldn’t discount the possibility of the man knowing something we don’t.

When you look at Nintendo, for a while there, it was all about the Wii being the biggest entertainment platform ever and capturing the mass market, and it faded away. Now, they’re coming back with a second act. I think they know that. They’re very self-aware as an organization and a very powerful brand.

His words do carry lots of truth – Nintendo is a company that is famous for always knowing exactly what it’s doing, and the strength of their brand and first-party franchises like Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and Metroid is practically unmatched in the gaming world. So I’m not surprised at the “news” that Nintendo’s cooking something special up to reclaim the throne of attention they enjoyed for almost four consecutive years after the Wii’s launch.

Curiously enough, Gibeau also went on to call the Wii a “legacy” console, and remarked on how its sales are slowly starting to give out to its HD brethren.

They understand the dynamics and the fact that HD consoles is a booming part of business right now. Legacy platforms like PS2 and the Wii have dropped off significantly. They’re not stupid. They’re going to figure something out. They’re going to come back at it.

True again. While the Wii is still selling relatively well, it’s definitely no longer the crazy phenomenon it was a couple of years ago. Particularly with Kinect and Move on the market, offering what some refer to as a premium “Wii HD” experience on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s market share in the home console market will undoubtedly begin to level off.

Seeing how they came out of seemingly nowhere with the 3DS, complete with a barrage of in-development titles for it from numerous studios, again, I’d expect them to be planning a fantastic comeback in the home console space as well.

Lastly, we get some thoughts on Nintendo’s stance towards third parties.

[Wii] is a tough market for a third party. When I look at a development dollar in terms of which teams do I invest in, and what platforms to go at, they’re not very competitive when you look at HD consoles, or free-to-play bets, or things like tablets and handsets. It’s something they need to think seriously about with their next gen – how serious is a third party development community for them on their next platform and their next bet? They can get to a certain level of success with their own IPs and their own internal development, but if they don’t have that developer ecosystem where it’s frankly easy to make money on the platform, they’re going to see there are too many opportunities in the world right now to go build games on other platforms in a very successful high quality, highly profitable way. They need to take note of that.

I’ll use the example of the 3DS again: Nintendo has already taken note of their relative ignorance towards third parties, giving them early access to dev kits and working together with them closely to prove that first-party games aren’t all that can thrive on Nintendo platforms. I think the perfect example of this may be the first North American 3DS trailer, which focuses majorly on Capcom’s Super Street Fighter IV 3D. Nintendo has a habit of always adapting what they do with their handheld to their next console, so I think a new focus on third-parties is definitely in for the Wii 2.

Eric Nofsinger, chief creative officer of the acclaimed studio High Voltage Software, spoke to Eurogamer about what he wants to see from the Wii’s successor. To sum it up, he’s very happy with the Wii the way it is now, and thinks that HD and a little bump in RAM would make it complete.

From a development standpoint and from a games perspective, really there’s not much that it would need. The primary things that would really help out the system is more memory, of course – you always want more memory on whatever system you’re working on – and HD output.

Having a fixed output resolution of 480p, even in widescreen, it’s hard, because you make these assets and you know they look really great. Even if you show the same type of graphics but put it on a higher resolution output, it just immediately looks better on most modern televisions in the home.

If they could just have a higher output resolution and more memory, really the system could do a lot. You also want a faster processor. Multi-core would be great. But even if they just did only those two things we’d be very excited about it as a developer. They’d be hard pressed not to do those two things.

In case you don’t know about them, High Voltage Software is a developer best known for their efforts to prove the Wii as a serious machine capable of delivering serious first-person shooters in the form of The Conduit. The Conduit is famous for stretching the Wii’s limited graphical capabilities to their breaking point, putting out graphics that could easily pass for an Xbox 360 running in standard definition. While I haven’t played any of their games myself, I’ve heard many great things about how they look and handle. The Conduit 2, the original game’s sequel, is slated to come out on April 19th, and is thought by some to be one of the Wii’s last major releases. You can see a trailer of it below to get an idea of just how talented these guys are.

Source: Eurogamer via My Nintendo News

There’s no way you haven’t heard about the massive earthquake in Japan at this point, which caused an untold amount of damage and set off a tsunami that hit not only Japan, but Hawaii and the West Coast as well (though no major damage has been reported in the latter two areas).

As Wii 2 Blog is a flavour of Nintendo fan site, chances are that you’re wondering how Iwata and co. are doing up there amidst all the shaking and flooding. They eventually released the following statement, which (thankfully) confirms that the disaster didn’t hit them as hard as it could have, and implies that 3DS shipments won’t be affected.

We appreciate the concern shown in the aftermath of the recent disaster in Japan. We can confirm that at this time it appears that no one from Nintendo in Japan was injured and there was no apparent structural damage to our company headquarters in Kyoto. Business operations, including future product shipments, have not been affected. Our thoughts and best wishes are with everyone who has friends and family members who may have been affected by the earthquake or tsunami.

(source)

Nintendo’s offices are located in Kyoto and Tokyo, which are located towards a more southern area of Japan, out of the way of the truly destructive tsunami. While the 8.9 earthquake must’ve been a horrifying experience there, Japan has some incredibly rigorous building codes which ensured that structural damage there was kept to a minimum (hence explaining why Nintendo isn’t in any immediate trouble).

However, things are looking much grimmer up north. This isn’t a world news blog, so I’m not going to go too far into details here (there’s lots of good reports on all the damage like this one all over the Internet, anyway), but suffice it to say that a 30-foot ocean wave traveling 10 kilometres inland isn’t something that just blows over and disappears like, I don’t know, a Pachter quote. Not to mention that there’s a death toll approaching 10,000 at the time of this post’s writing, and that there are three nuclear power plants at the potential risk of meltdowns.

Hit the jump for some video footage and donation instructions. Continue reading…

You might remember my frustration a couple of weeks ago, at Michael Pachter being the only analyst we ever hear any Wii 2 theories from. Well, the unthinkable happened. A different analyst has finally spoken up.

In an interview with NowGamer, Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research pointed out that there is a good chance we’ll see the Wii’s successor hit the market before the Xbox 360’s.

Nintendo Wii’s successor is likely to launch before the next Xbox.  While Nintendo’s next console could be a 2012 release, 2013 is more likely, and I’m not expecting a next generation Xbox before Q4 2014.

He’s basing this assumption on the recent advert Microsoft put up on LinkedIn, which asks for new employees to work on the Xbox 360’s successor. Pidgeon’s rationale is that if Microsoft is only just beginning work on the Xbox 720 now, it’ll be a few years before they’ll have anything to show; while Nintendo is rumoured to have been working on the Wii 2 since at least 2006.

Here’s Pidgeon’s full comment:

As for a next generation Xbox, recruiting talent to create and build the hardware has to take place years before a development kit is available, and developers would need a least a year to eighteen months lead time to market release to create games for the launch window.

You’re probably familiar with the Game Developers Conference by now – Satoru Iwata held a speech there a few days ago (if you haven’t seen it yet, go watch it right now!) – but you might’ve missed this little tidbit of news that came out of another keynote by an important Nintendo figure.

Hideki Konno, one of the key minds behind the Mario games as well as the Nintendo 3DS, showed off a tech demo of Mario Kart Wii running in 3D on a special autostereoscopic display not unlike the 3DS’s. He controlled the depth of the 3D effect (a headlining ability in the 3DS) using the Nunchuk, and ran the demo on a standard Wii (not a special souped-up version or anything).

Two nuggets of information can be gleamed from this short demonstration:

1. The Wii is capable of displaying glassesless 3D content.
2. Nintendo is, at the very least, looking into how they could bring 3D to their home consoles.

I’ll stress again that what Konno showed was a simple tech demo, and is by no means a guarantee that we’ll be seeing a 3D Nintendo home console anytime soon. The demo required a proprietary display that could regulate the strength of its 3D effect, and I’m not sure when we’re going to start seeing those, considering current with-glasses 3D TV’s are already having a hard time catching on.

Still, with theories that the Wii will still be around for a long time to come, the situation in the market for 3D TV’s may be very different by the time the Wii 2 rolls around. Personally, I’m happy that Nintendo is giving the idea some honest thought, even if we aren’t likely to see it implemented in the (near) future.

Source: Destructoid

Tomorrow’s looking to be a big day for Nintendo fans. As you probably already know, Satoru Iwata will present a speech at the Game Developers Conference 2011 – commonly abbreviated simply as GDC. There is almost no doubt that the 3DS will play a major role in the presentation, but many fans (yours truly included) hope to see a teaser of some kind about Nintendo’s next move in the home console market. After all, the Wii – then known as “Revolution” – was first officially announced at GDC 2005.

The news today is that you’ll be able to watch a live stream of Iwata’s presentation, which I’m sure will be well worth your time, straight through Nintendo’s own, dedicated minisite for it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to cover it live, as I’ll be in class long before it even starts; but I’m sure you’d rather hear any announcement directly from Iwata’s mouth rather than my written words, anyway.

Presumably, Nintendo will probably record the speech and leave it up on the site to be viewed later by those of us unlucky enough to miss it live, if their E3 2010 presentation is anything to go by (which you can still watch on their website). If that doesn’t happen, I’m sure there’ll be more than enough recordings to go around on Youtube to check out if the live show is at a bad time for you.

If you want to read a little further into Iwata’s presentation, check out GDC’s official teaser page.