*Unconfirmed* Wii and PS3 demo kiosk pic?

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This pic is again from the Nintendo of America forums. The person posting could not truly confirm that these are real scans of demo kiosks for the Wii and PS3, he only could say that they are. In these two weeks before September 14th we are bound to see a lot of these kind of things so it will be hard to see which is real and not real. It is interesting none the less.

UPDATE: This picture is now proven REAL by sources at Gonintendo.

New Call of Duty 3 Wii pics

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Someone posted these scanned images from the new Nintendo Power on the Nintendo forums today. The game looks OK and better than the junk that was shown earlier. Still the game sounds like it could be a lot of fun even without the graphics of the other versions.

RUMORS TO END ALL RUMORS-read at your own risk

Someone has e-mailed Kevin (Chief of Gonintendo) what looks like a conference speech Reggie has been working on for Nintendo for Sept. 14th. Read on for what may be the very last RUMOR mill of the Nintendo Wii......the most speculated console in history.

"I noticed Mr. Fils-Aime putting something in the confidential waste bin, and walked over after he had left for a meeting.. the bin was full to the top as usual, and these screwed up pages were just in reach through the lid (without taking it off and spilling papers everywhere). There’s not much I can do to prove my credibility, however I think they may be of interest to you.."

Link to gonintendo

HERE IS MY SUM-UP OF THESE DOCUMENTS:

-Wii launch to be something never done before for a console. Within 2 weeks of Sept. 14th the Wii will be released around the world. Reggie pulls Apple out of his pocket.

-Wii will be released on October 2nd in all 3 continents with 2 colors available-Black and White repectively.

-1.5 million units for United States, 1.5 million units for Japan, and 1 million units for Europe on launch day.

-Wii will cost $175 in the United States, 19,000 yen in Japan and 175 euros in Europe.

-What will you get for the price? The Wii will come packed in with 1 Wii-mote, 1 Nun-chuck, 1 Classic controller, a free copy of Wii Sports, built in Wiiconnect24 service, a voucher of 1,000 coins for downloads on the Virtual Console, built-in Web browser from Opera which includes all the latest standards including AJAX support, a power supply and of course AV cables. Also, for a limited time every package will come with a free remake of the game Duck Hunt on a 512Mb SD card.

-The Wii will have a wide range of accessories at launch as well. For a low price you can buy the DVD add-on for the ability to watch movies. The Wii "gun" will also be available to buy, and a Wheel add-on as well.

-Total of 21 games available to buy on launch day and 35 games by March.

-A brand new KID ICARUS by late March in US and Japan, April in Europe. After so many years he is finally back and ready to spread the love on the Nintendo Wii. Fans have been asking for a sequel and there is no better time to get him back on track, just as Retro has done with Metroid.

-"Disaster Day of Crisis" will be released sometime in January. There is a reason why this title has been held so secret. This title has everything to do with the last secret of the NintendoWii.

-THE LAST SECRET OF THE NINTENDO Wii:

Reggie talks about the Nintendo ON trailer that was released in 2005 and while the video was a fake, the maker was not too far off from the truth. Nintendo has been holding back on this announcment for quite some time because they did not want anyone else to steal the idea. Nintendo has been working on a HEAD MOUNTED DISPLAY (HMD) for 5 years now originally to be released for the Gamecube but turned out to be better suited for the Wii. The first game to use the HMD will be Disaster Day of Crisis, which has been in development for 2 years. The game will offer a level of gameplay and graphics, combined with the Head Mount Display, which will exceed any other game experience because you feel like you are "inside" the game. For example: you will really see the sea approch you in DDOC, this level of immersion has never been achieved in a game console before. This HMD is optional and not required to play Disaster. Many other games will make use of this device.

Nintendo understands that this device could confuse some gamers, so that is why Nintendo has decided to sell it separately. The HMD will retail for $79 in the US and similar for the other territories. The HMD will be available when "Disaster Day of Crisis" is launched (January). The HMD will become available to third party developers by the end of this month (September).

This optional feature is intended with the "Hardcore" gamer in mind, which is another reason for not packaging it with the system.

Reggie concludes that the low price will open the market up to a wider audience more than ever. Its not theNext Generation of gaming, its a New Generation of gaming. Everyone young and old can have fun with the Nintendo Wii.

END.

I wouldn't have posted this if it was "just another rumor" this is so well documented its scary. If you read the document word for word, it just looks like it was done by Nintendo. I am not saying by any means that this is true though. Nintendo has been mirroring Apples way of doing things and having the release of the Wii as a "disruptor" in itself is a very good idea. If the system comes out on October 2nd like it implies, its going to be one crazy time trying to get a Wii and thats just what Nintendo wants. I really don't know what to think at this point but come September 14th you can be sure that all the rumors will finally be put to rest once and for all. Will this one come true? Who knows. Also since there is absolutely no credibility to this story, what am I supposed to think? Its a big gamble to put too much faith in this.

Tell me what YOU think.

New Red Steel pics, yep the graphics are better

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GC Conference: Mario Strikers and Battalion Wars 2

"Mario Strikers Charged, the Wii sequel to Super Mario Strikes, was shown next, with Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Mario powering up and kicking wild soccer balls across a dry, rocky field. It looked like the goalie controls brought up a pair of hands to block the ball as it sped toward the goal. Someone onstage then challenged one of the audience members to a 1-on-1 game with Mario and Bowser. The same dry, cracked field from the trailer we saw was the live field they were playing on. Huge leaves were blowing overhead, while lightning stuck the field at various times. As we had guessed from the demo trailer, when you make a kick on goal, a pair of gloved goalie hands pop up on-screen and you have to block the incoming balls with the Wii-mote in a mini-game. Depending on your success, you're treated to a cutscene of the action that mimics what happened in the mini-game.

Next they noted that Battalion Wars 2, the Wii sequel to Battalion Wars, was at GC, and although Nintendo didn't show it onstage, it noted it would be playable after the press conference.
It did show an extended Wii trailer which featured a lot of the games, but it's the same trailer we've seen before and didn't show any new gameplay.

That pretty much concluded the press conference. We'll bring you more hands-on reports of the Wii as soon as we have a chance to play some of the games."

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Battalion Wars preview: Link
Mario Strikers preview: Link

So there you have it, no real new Wii news except for Mario Strikers and Battalion Wars. There was a lot of DS coverage but most of the stuff they talked about was already made know at GDC and E3 months before. It would have been nice to get release date info and maybe even a preview of Zelda's new control scheme that was announced just a few days ago. TGS or a special Nintendo only conference for more info? It seemed like Nintendo was holding back a lot on purpose, so we must be close to getting some good solid new info on the Wii. Just a couple of more weeks......

PS3 not in production yet, Wii likely to outsell it this year

Concerning the launch of the PlayStation 3 itself, which is targeted for a worldwide release in mid November, the executive revealed that Sony has not yet begun manufacturing of the next-generation console. However, he did note that “everything's pretty much on track.” and that “...we're internally really getting geared up to go to market with this beautiful console in three months' time, and at this point in time all signs are good to go.”

Digging deeper, and looking at specific quantities that the three separate territories of Japan, North America, and Europe/Australasia can expect to see at launch, Hirai spoke matter of factly, commenting that the company still anticipated shipping 2 million units worldwide by the close of 2006. He noted that while Sony has not come up with a firm allocation yet, he anticipates “less than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory between launch and the end of the year.”

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MY THOUGHTS:

With only 2 million PS3's available worldwide until the end of the year, and only 700,000 in the United States, this looks like its going to be a problem for Sony. Nintendo just announced recently that they upped production of the Wii to 5.5 million consoles available to own by the end of the year.

So, in essence the Wii could outsell the Playstation 3 by almost 4 million consoles even if the PS3 sells out; the Wii would have to sell out itself to accomplish this as well. With the price and launch line-up being so much better for the Wii than PS3, I could see it happening and its not out of the question. Sony is getting itself behind early and it looks like Nintendo is going to take full advantage of this.

Wii to have "dramatically" improved graphics over Gamecube?

During George Harrison's Camp Hyrule Q&A very recently he talked about how Zelda would only use the Wii controller for the Wii version and GC controllers for the GC version.

He went on to answer a question about the graphics of the Wii that I found interesting:

VIDGAMEPLAYA: Hello, Mr. Harrison! I live in an area where most kids play shoot em up games, and buy consoles based on graphics. I was wondering how you might plan to advertise to this group of consumers?

NOA_GEORGE_HARRISON: First, the Wii will be able to deliver dramatically improved graphics over the GameCube. But, if all the player is concerned about is graphics, we may not win them over. Our best chance is to show them the sheer fun of our games.

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So the President himself knows that the Wii is going to look a lot better than Gamecube. These launch games for the Wii must not be a big sign of what it can really do then, because only a few of them look marginally better than Gamecube. I guess we should really think of these as "launch" games then and not 3rd or 4th generation software for the Wii. Its easy for people to see these games and say "thats it?" but this is only the beginning of it all and the controller really is the most important part to get a handle on for the Wii. The graphics will be there, but the control needs to be there now to show that the Wii really will change how we play these games in the future.

New Red Steel screens

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This game keeps looking better every time we see something new on it. Out of all the games coming out for the Wii, this one has been under the most heat from everyone who wants to make sure Ubisoft gets the graphics and control right for release.

Pics of black Wiimote and Dev kits

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Can you say: "Reserve the black Wii?" I like the original color scheme a lot but the black just looks that much better to me. Those dev kits don't look like Gamecubes anymore either. They should be the final kits by now.

Metroid Prime 3 controls all fixed?

Game on posted this and I'm still waiting for a link to the magazine this is from, but after reading this (if true) it seems that we have nothing to worry about with MP3's controls. We will be able to look all around the screen without having to worry about an invisible square that we have to stay in if we want to aim. Now it will be like a PC FPS but only better because the game will make use of both Wii controllers in ways the PC can't do. Can't wait to try it out.

Awesome new Rayman pics

I vote best graphics on Wii so far, with Mario Galaxy being a close second. Just my opinion of course, but man the game looks great.

Gamecube had great graphics why complain about the Wii? LOOK and wake up

Over the past month or year, people on videogame forums and on the internet in general have been complaining about the Wii and its so-called low power that is considered weak when compared to the other next-gen systems. They seem to think that the games will just look like crap when compared to the PS3 and Xbox360. Let me ask you now to go back and play some of the best looking Gamecube games like Starfox Adventures, Resident Evil 4, Rouge Squadron 2 and Rebel Strike and tell me that you are not impressed by what that system can/could do.

During E3 a lot of people said the graphics on the Wii were no good because a lot of games looked like Gamecube. Does that mean that the games actually looked bad though? Not at all. People are just never satisfied with what they see. Even our beloved Joystiq is starting to say little comments in their posts on Wii games and how they don't look good compared to the other systems. What good does that do? Should we have to keep reminding ourselves that the Wii will look good? How stupid is that, when we know it will be 2-3 times as powerful as Gamecube? I don't know about you but a game that looks 2-3 times better than Resident Evil 4 is a pretty damn awesome looking game. Did we see any of that at E3? No. This is only the beginning of the Wii's life and developers are focusing on what is REALLY important and thats how well each game plays with the new revolutionary controller.

These games coming out for Wii are going to be awesome and we haven't even seen (as ATI has said) the "tip of the iceberg" yet on what the system is actually capable of in the graphics department. Nintendo has spent millions researching ways to make better graphics with less specs and less power consumption. We are going to see a system that maybe looks only a little better than Gamecube at first but once developers get some time with the real final dev kits(not just a couple of freaking months) we will start to see a bigger leap from Gamecube. Really though why make such a huge fuss over it anyway? Once you get your hands on that controller you won't be thinking about all this graphics speculation. Nintendo makes addicting and fun games, and their systems have never come up short in the graphics department. The Wii will have it all: great games, revolutionary control, and great graphics for a low price. Not good enough for you? Get over it.

Stop the graphics threads
Stop complaining
Stop worrying

Enough is enough

Developers jumping on the Wii bandwagon

"In general, however, it appears that extremely positive reaction to Nintendo's Wii at E3, alongside the realization that many "hardcore" game consumers will buy the console in addition to either an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 has meant notably increased publisher support for the platform in recent weeks."

-Ubisoft has confirmed 7 titles are now in development for Wii.
"The first time I picked up that sucker (the Wiimote) I couldn’t stop playing it.” - Ubisoft North America President Laurent Detoc

-Midway has confirmed Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Rampage: Total Distruction

-Midway also has 4 additional games for Wii in development for 2007 to go along with the others mentioned.

-Atari has said that it will focus on Wii and Xbox360 titles for this year and leave any plans for development on PS3 for 2007.

Great news for the Wii, did E3 have anything to do with this? Uh, ya think? Lets hope that this will be a domino effect and other developers will hope on like bee's to honey.

Ubisoft link, Midway link, Atari link


On a side note the "leaked" specs for the Wii have been proved false. Doesn't anyone remember MoSys? They are providing the 1T-SRAM for the Wii. The "leaked" specs said that the Wii would be using 64megabytes of GDDR3 (MEM2) . That should tell you right there that the specs were fake. Nice try Maxconsole. Anyone else sick of all the specs talk?

Maxconsole "leaked" specs, Link to MoSys press release