GDC: WiiWare and Wii Fit Launching this May

[blackdelsol94]

GDC: WiiWare and Wii Fit Launching this May
Nintendo has finally provided official launch dates for their upcoming Wii Fit (with balance board) and the downloadable games service WiiWare.
Posted by James Brightman on Wednesday, February 20, 2008


During the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Nintendo announced that it's much talked about WiiWare service will finally kickoff on May 12. "Through WiiWare, Nintendo hopes to offer developers a virtual laboratory that serves as a breeding ground for new games, which encourages great ideas that creators always wanted to develop," the company said. "The combination of low development barriers and unique game experiences found only on Wii should enable developers to try new ideas with lower risk in a quicker, more creative and affordable way."

Although an exact list of games was not provided, early WiiWare games will include Square Enix's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Frontier's "enchanting platform adventure" LostWinds and a new episodic game series from Telltale (the folks behind Sam & Max).

As for Wii Fit, which has been a great success in Japan (over 1.4 million units sold), Nintendo will bring the title to North America on May 19. Nintendo said that third-party publishers are already working on new games and applications for the included Wii Balance Board. Wii Fit will also provide its own Wii Fit Channel that enables users to check in each day to track their fitness progress through weight and BMI.

"We are excited to participate in the Game Developers Conference this year
to share with developers and consumers alike our upcoming unique services and products," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "We are hopeful that they will appreciate our offerings of WiiWare, Wii Fit and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which represent a trio that will continue to attract new players to the world of video games."

[Danman1116]

This, Smash Brothers and Mariokart ftw! Can't wait for these games

[blackdelsol94]

Some of the games launching with Wii Ware look straight up awesome. Final Fantasy game from Square Enix:




GDC 2008: My Life as a King Interview
Square Enix fills us in on developing for WiiWare.
by Daemon Hatfield

February 25, 2008 - When Nintendo announced WiiWare, the downloadable games service for its latest console, President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime said, "Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit." So it was surprising when we learned that one of the launch titles for the platform would be a new role-playing game from monolith developer Square Enix. The name of the game is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

The FFCC series has been serving Nintendo systems since the company and Square Enix made nice in 2004 after a long separation. With a full-sized Crystal Chronicles game already set for retail Wii release sometime this year (Crystal Bearers), FF fans are going to have their hands full trying to waggle through all these adventures.

[blackdelsol94]

Another sweet WiiWare launch game = LostWinds:

IGN: LostWinds Preview






If you guys hear about any other WiiWare games that sound cool, post 'em up!

[blackdelsol94]

First LostWinds video, looks awesome:

IGN Video: LostWinds Nintendo Wii Trailer - First Look: LostWinds

[vtecivic10]

Originally Posted by blackdelsol94

First LostWinds video, looks awesome:

IGN Video: LostWinds Nintendo Wii Trailer - First Look: LostWinds

seems cool in a very different kind of way

[blackdelsol94]

Originally Posted by vtecivic10

seems cool in a very different kind of way

Yeah it looks very refreshing, I'm looking forward to playing it!

[blackdelsol94]

New LostWinds Screenshots:

[blackdelsol94]

IGN LostWinds Hands-on:
One of America's WiiWare launch games is better than every Japanese WiiWare title put together.
by Matt Casamassina

Link: IGN: LostWinds Preview

[blackdelsol94]

Hands-on My Life as a King
Crystal Chronicles goes kingdom sim.
by Bozon

Link: IGN: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King Preview

[AznImports602]

Lost winds looks cool!

[blackdelsol94]

Developing LostWinds
Frontier's David Braben speaks intimately about one of our most anticipated WiiWare games.
by Matt Casamassina

April 16, 2008 - David Braben is an industry legend whose first work, Elite, was created more than two decades ago and remains a fan favorite today. Currently, the programming guru spends his time as head of UK-based company Frontier, which is working on an ambitious story-driven game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But the 160-person studio has also been underway with a stunning WiiWare game, LostWinds, which we had the chance to play at Nintendo's Media Summit in San Francisco last week. We loved it and it's quickly become one of our most anticipated projects. We caught up with Braben from the event, where he was kind enough to answer some of our questions about LostWinds and about Wii development.

LostWinds was born from an idea by Steve Burgess, one of the designers working for Frontier. The company uses a message forum for its employees to post game ideas that can be viewed by others. "A lot of games company people are bursting with ideas and it's great to be able to put ideas down or slag off other ideas, and so that was the process is about," explained Braben. "LostWinds is the first game that came out of that process. You know, imagine if you could blow a character around..."

The team creating the game was tiny. About 12 people at its peak. And the development cycle for the game was much shorter than it might be for a regular title.

We've repeatedly pointed out that LostWinds looks and plays much better than many full-blown Wii games released to retail. Could the title have therefore shipped in physical form? We think so. But Frontier decided to try its hand at WiiWare instead. "To be honest, it was a great opportunity for us. One issue in going with retail games is that there's a huge infrastructure process, much bigger budgets and the time scale for development is much longer," said Braben. "With LostWinds going to WiiWare, we could just fund it ourselves -- really simple decision. I think it would also work as a retail game, but I'm very proud to deliver it as a WiiWare game -- there's a lot of gameplay there and a lot of lovely things to do."

The Frontier head believes WiiWare is a complementary companion to retail. "I don't see WiiWare as a lesser service, but a different way of getting games," he said. "It's important that people don't see it like that."

There's no denying the limitations of the service, though -- specifically a Nintendo-imposed 43-megabyte file size constraint. "Whenever you do games development, you're working within constraints. Way back with Elite, the whole game had to fit into 22k. If you had asked me, 'Would you like think 43MBs is restrictive?' I'd have laughed," Braben explained. "So that's the point. There will always be limits. They will just higher and different. Putting it another way, we're not restricted by the limits of discs, streaming, and that sort of thing."

What about LostWinds' length? It's a WiiWare game -- does that mean it's shorter than your average retail title? Said Braben: "The trouble with any play through time is that it's always difficult to estimate. I know some of the puzzle mechanics and it takes about three hours to get through. Plus a bit of 'Oh, how do I solve this one?' too. But I think three hours is a reasonable estimate, which I'm proud of; that's a lot of gameplay if you think in terms of what you get and how long it takes, for example, to compete Call of Duty 4 -- it doesn't take much more than about four hours [laughs]."

And price? "Well, the final call on price is down to Nintendo, but we're pitching around the 1,000 point mark," he added.

Finally, does Frontier see LostWinds as the beginning of a franchise? It would certainly seem so. "I think it would be a terrible mistake not to continue the franchise. We don't see it as episodic content because somehow that has an aura of cheapening it somehow, do you know what I mean? But I absolutely think we will want to revisit this in some shape or form -- either as another WiiWare game or as a retail game, or whatever," said Braben. "We want to do some sort of sequel because we these games you get very hooked on the mechanics and you say, 'Oh, we can do this' and 'Oh, we can do that,' and the danger is that you can feature creep infinitely and you never release a game. It's amazing, actually. There are a load more we've got -- don't worry, it's not like we're not sure where we can go."