How wrong were they ... (wii)

[muddyfox470]

Whilst moving around in my room today I noticed that I had an old copy of 'Nintendo - The Official Magazine' - don't ask me why I have it - I can't remember buying it and I know how bad the writing style in it is.

But despite the magazine being an offical product of Nintendo I am amazed at how many things they got wrong back in July 2006 (this was just after E3 and when the wii's name was released etc).

Anyway here are some extracts that I got out and I thought they really should have known better (or been better informed):

Broadcom
Information collected by PixArt's MOT sensors (found in the controllers) is sent to the Wii Sensor Bar at ridiculous speed thanks to broadcom's bluetooth technology...

Sensor Bar - Get Noticed!
... It reads all the information being thrown at it by the controllers and sends it down the wire to the Wii console

They should have known that the sensor bar is nothing more than a 'sensored' bar, which has some leds that the controls read for pointing.

Disc Slot
...Nintendo has mentioned that the machine will be able to play standard DVD's but details of this have yet to be confirmed

From various sources it has been announced that Nintendo won't be allowing DVD playback on the console for prospective piracy problems.

Also, and this was most interesting for me, when the games were being announced, they announced 'Wii Sports' (P53) as a possible release date of Spring 2007, so they obviously didn't know it would be bundled with the system.

However they only mention the following games:

• Tennis
• Golf
• Baseball
• 'Airplane'

Now Airplane from the one screen shot they had it seems to be like a go through the hoops sort of game and it looked alright, I don't know whether any multiplayer was planned.
So were the other two games (bowling and boxing) last minute additions? and why was airplane dropped?

"...the remote's movements are mirrored in the on-screen movements of a plane. It's brilliant fun and shows just how PilotWings game on Wii could work..."

Finally (for now) it shows how misinformed they were when they played the game (if they did at all) or whether they were way too excited, talking about Wii Tennis:

"...where every swing, serve, lob and volley you make with he controller is mirrored perfectly by the player on screen..."

Anyway just thought I would share with you this to show how things have changed over a few months...

Cheers Ian

PS. There are some nice screenshots of the games, like wii sports where the people have ears

PPS. When the gamecube was released it shouted out about it's power, and how it could control so many Mario's on a screen - so how come on wii sports the characters could have been aa'd a bit better etc.

[steve threlfall]

This is absolutely outrageous!

[Spud1]

Well..I totally disagree to be honest.

The sensor bar - Nintendo didn't release any official information about what the sensor bar did until much closer to the release date (when the press had actual consoles and could actually look at how it worked)/ It's really the fault of nintendo for calling it a sensor bar - the logical conclusion from that name is that it senses things..so I would also assume that it recieved data from the wiimote.

DVDs - The machine itself CAN play normal DVDs, BUT, in order to keep the costs to an absolute minimum, Nintendo didn't pay for the DVD playback licence, hence it can't play your DVD movies etc etc. It was a decision made because (according to nintendo, the press release about this was on hexus somewhere) most people already have a DVD player these days, so what would be the point of adding another one? Hardware wise it is perfectly capable, it is just missing all the required software, decoders etc to be able to do it. Piracy has nothing to do with it, the ability to play DVD movies isn't related in the slightest. So onm were correct here.

Wii sports being bundled again wasn't confirmed until later, and even now it isn't bundled in every region. The content of the wii sports disc also wouldnt be known until closer to the release date..I would imagine that nintendo actually developed a large number of games that could have made it in to wii sports or wii play (including the aeroplane one) but not every one can be released at once..or possibly there were some bugs in it. I'm not surprised that the aeroplane one is not in wii sports - its hardly a sport is it? It's more likely to appear in 'wii play 2' (if that ever exists, which i expect it will eventually) really..

ONM may be the 'official' nintendo magazine but unfortunately this doesn't mean that they automatically get lots of exclusive information from Nintendo..and even if they did I would bet that they couldn't publish all of it for various reasons. At the end of the day they are just another gaming magazine that happens to have an endorsement from Nintendo - they can only go on the best information they have at the time (which is likely to be very similar to every other gaming mag).

As for wii tennis - well maybe it was like that at the time but Nintendo changed the way the controls worked to make it more instantly accessible yet still great fun. The wii is definitely capable of such controls (just look at baseball) so it could have been an early control method.

The graphics on wii sports? Well yes they could have done, but for a free game it does incredibly well, it does still look pretty, and has left nintendo time to concentrte on making the control systems work very well.

As for why they didnt market this console as being super powerful? Well what would be the point? When the gamecube was released they were really pushing its power as it was a huge jump for Nintendo and it was(is) massivly more powerful than the PS2. This time round the focus is not on graphics or power but the innovative controls and accessibility of the console..different focus requires different marketing

nice post though

[muddyfox470]

No I'm definitely not knocking the graphics as i understand the discussion goin on in the other thread, Im not reakly too bothered though, especially as I have had lots of fun so far

(Just reached pro level on tennis )

I think graphics wise the wii has yet to show it's true ability (especially considering the gamecube demos), not that it necessarily needs to tho

Ian

[whiteshark12]

The airplane game was moved back to wii motor sports, but as we saw, things can change.

oh yeah, check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG201q53b8U

[muddyfox470]

First time I've seen the video of it.

And I really hope it does come out, obviously it probably won't be that long, just for fun, but it looks very nice in all honesty

wii motor sports huh...

Ian

if you dont want to watch the whole video, they show how it works/the control around the 3 minute mark

[Sneaky King]

It seems someone else has already ripped into this post for being fairly wrong...so I won't do the honours of a second time, but yeah:

"From various sources it has been announced that Nintendo won't be allowing DVD playback on the console for prospective piracy problems."

It's all about paying for the licence, baby. They might introduce a Wii that plays DVDs later on.