Who would have known Princess Peach was such a tease?

From the CGTalk forum, as seen on Kotaku

A recurring theme throughout the conference was high level Nintendo executives demoing and “having a lot of fun” with the peripherals.  Which I suppose is cool though I do not feel that it was meant for us hardcore gamers.  Or perhaps Nintendo is now truly redefining ‘core gamer’ in terms of their success with the new demographic.  Anyway, The conference opened with the Shaun White snowboarding game using the Wii Balance Board.   Ok, I can see potential with that: I’m glad the bathroom scale is being used for other applications as skateboard and snowboarding really does make sense.   We even saw Cammie Dunaway, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, partake in some half-pipe snowboarding.  Admittedly, this is pretty cool, but it’s a no brainer: we knew applications like this were on the way.

Next came the confirmation of Animal Crossing for the Wii. Dubbed “City Folk”, it looks exactly like previous Animal Crossing games.   Hooray.  Boring.  What’s different this time?   Well for one, it’s very online oriented allowing Wii owners to visit other cities (presumably powered by Friend Codes), as well as talk in chat rooms with the Wii Speak microphone peripheral.  This microphone allows the Animal Crossing chat room denizens to communicate with each other.  Hey, voicechat…on a Wii game!  I’m glad Nintendo is taking steps to modernize itself with the online world, but yeah…I’m not really feeling this at all.  BUT IT HAS FOUR PLAYER COOPERATIVE FISHING.  Yeah..

Wii Motion Plus was next on the list, to be packaged with Wii Sports Resort which according to Ms. Dunaway is “Literally a day at the beach”.   A dog-catching-frisbee demo featuring the 1:1 motion sensing was shown on stage. This was followed by a sword duel (on a beach?) between Reggie and Cammie where supposedly they both hand each others asses to each other to the cheers of the audience.  Sounded like a great tech demo for the peripheral, but obviously very shallow since it’s meant to showcase the new hardware.  Another point I failed to pick up on intially was touched on the most recent episode of 1up Yours that by releasing such a peripheral, Nintendo is falling into the same trap that Microsoft stumbled into with the multiple SKUs of Xbox 360s: they would effectively be splitting up the market to those consumers that have the peripheral and those that don’t.   I remember the sad days of me lacking a N64 RAM addon pack where I couldn’t play Perfect Dark or Majora’s Mask on my home console. Except, this has the potential to be even worse since this directly affects game play and not just graphics.   Or maybe not considering the WMP is being packaged with Wii Sports Resort similar to the super-duper-mega-multiplatinum Wii Play (AKA, the controller packaged with a game).

At the heart of the conference Nintendo reintroduced Wii Music, which was a neat tech demo when the Wii was introduced at E3 two years ago.  Back then it seemed to be a simple orchestra conducting game.  That has evolved into something different, perhaps an attempt to cash in on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero music game genre.   The catch is that they aren’t requiring plastic instrument controllers like the aforementioned titles but instead you’re holding the Wiimote in different configurations and waggling/pressing buttons to emulate a sound.  So instead of looking retarded with plastic instruments, you can look retarded playing make believe violins with Wiimote and Nunchuk air gesturing instead!  This was demonstrated by folks at Nintendo (I forget who, I think their Treehouse localization team) playing a jam session rendition of a tune from F-Zero and Super Mario Brothers.  The folks at 1up Yours described it as “A horrible Caribbean band on crack.”  In tune, but horrible.  This seems like another piece of software for the casual crowd…this really almost sounds like a toddler’s game.  Killer app for the hardcore gamer, this is not.  Ugh.

There was a quick mention of the Mario and Zelda teams working on a new project.  That’s more along the lines of what I wanted to hear.  And Rockstar is working on Grand Theft Auto DS: China Town Wars.  Whoa…really?  Old GTA top-down style with text?  Interesting, but I’m still underwhelmed.

So Nintendo.  Where was that core gamer game you promised would be announced at E3 a couple weeks ago?  This conference was a snooze fest.  Three major games.  None of them for me.

From following up on the numerous liveblogs on the major gaming sites, the day started with a subtle and conspicuously timed announcement from Nintendo on their new motion controller, Wii Motion Plus.  Wii Motion Plus is a Wiimote attachment that greatly expands the motion detection on the input device.  Currently, the Wiimote is used primarily to detect shifts in direction.  For example, whether or not the wiimote shifts in one direction, tilts, or in other words moved along a two dimensional plane.  Wii Motion Plus presumably is an addon that adds the third dimension to the Wiimote, giving it (as the boards have stated) 1:1 movement in space.  The best example I can think of is golf swings.  The golf minigame in Wii Sports, although pretty average, was for the most part just a speed detector in how fast the accelerometer moves in one direction.  My best guess is that the Wii Motion Plus will be used for software like an enhanced Wii Sports to track swing followthrough or something else that is very dependent on location of accessories in space.

More important was Nintendo’s announcement of this controller a day before the Microsoft and Sony press conferences, both of which were rumored to announce some sort of motion controller.  While this is a very clear attempt to knock the wind out of the sails of those rumor boats, I find it extra conspicuous that Microsoft didn’t have a motion controller of any sort at this conference.  Hmm.

Microsoft’s press conference was filled with a whole lot of unexpected announcements.  It began with demos of Fallout 3 and Resident Evil 5, two multiplatform titles we knew about.  Much more interesting was Peter Molyneux announcing that Fable 2 is finished and is coming this October.  What’s this about the Fable 3 looking unfinished from the gaming press?  October is awfully close.  Gears of War 2 was announced for this November officially too buuuut we already knew it was coming out this fall.  From the liveblogs, it did not seem like Microsoft focused on Gears of War 2 as much as we all expected them to.

The new XBox Live interface was officially unveiled at the conference as well.  The Mii clone/avatar portion of that interface was leaked weeks ago.  And they most definitely look like Miis.  I suppose it’s a good idea to make XBLive more personable but ultimately Live already controls the online user experience with chatrooms/voicecomm/etc. and Miis aren’t that big of a deal.

What is a big deal is the announcement of Portal:Still Alive for XBLA, which are brand new Portal levels.   No mention of whether or not it includes the original game.  Didn’t Valve announce a few months ago that Microsoft declined Portal on XBLA because of size limitations?  No brainer here, Portal was only the most talked about game of 2007.  Especially good deal for Valve and the Portal kids: the game deserves it.

In probably the smartest announcement of the conference, Microsoft announced a partnership with Netflix to allow Netflix subscribers to watch movies and TV programming over live.  For no additional cost.  Although it was long rumored that something like this was coming along, this is a good idea: the XBox 360 is a perfect trojan horse for media of all kinds.

Closing up the conference was the introduction of Yoichi Wada, head of Square Enix.  First we got more of what we already knew that Square was working on for XBox: Star Ocean, Last Remnant, and Infinite Undiscovery (what does this name even mean?!).   But then the megaton came.

Final Fantasy XIII.  For XBox 360.

The NeoGAF forums are still exploding from this announcement.  FFXIII was at one point a PS3 exclusive.  Coming to XB360.  Megaton.

Or is it?

Let’s break this down a little bit.  XBox has little market presence in Japan and Europe outside of the UK.  The XB360 exclusive titles of Lost Odyssey and Ninja Gaiden 2 were two titles that were aimed at getting a bit more market share in Japan with little success (PS3 install base still outnumbers XB360 install base by about 3 to 1 as of May/June).  Final Fantasy XII is a much more japan-friendly title than either of those two titles.  Will it make the bump in Japan that they think it will?  Probably not, an asston of PS3s and MGS4s just sold and the install base gap is getting wider.

How about in the U.S., the XBox stronghold? First and foremost, FFXIII going multiplatform is a stab in the heart of those who bought PS3s just to play it.  Additionally, it is a strong statement to consumers who will be asking themselves why they would buy an expensive PS3 to play a game they could play on the cheaper XB360.   At the same time, will a traditionally Playstation branded RPG sell on the XBox?  A japanese RPG on a system dominated by shooters, bald space marines, and other live multiplayer experiences?  I’m very hesitant to say yes, but I think the attach rate of the FFXIII on PS3 will be stronger as was the case with Grand Theft Auto 4.

In any case, to quote Shane Bettenhausen on the 1up Liveblog, “Shit just got real.”  This is indeed a megaton.  I cannot wait to see how Sony and Nintendo are going to react.

Edit:  Apparently here’s how the Final Fantasy thing is going to work out.  Exclusive in Japan for PS3.  Then x number of months to localize it to North America and Europe on PS3, not to be released until they finish porting it to XBox.  So, working to XBox’s strengths.

Edit 2: Where the hell is Alan Wake?

The original Megaman franchise will be returning to consoles, according to several scanned images from the upcoming issue of Nintendo Power via the folks at the NeoGAF forums.

From the forums, the supposed roster for the robot masters include Magma Man, Galaxy Man, Jewel Man, Tornado Man, Concrete Man, Hornet Man, Plug Man, and Splash Woman(!), covering all the traditional weather environments as well as including a robot mistress for the first time in the series.

While it’s definitely true that the Mega Man series has perennially jumped the sharkman (the phenomena of the early games in new Megaman series starting out well and then degenerating into crap),  what makes this case extra special is that Capcom is seemingly returning to its 8-bit roots for this game and styling it to match the old NES era sprite graphics.

The Blue Bomber has always held a special place in my heart as the first third party NES game I have ever played.  Mega Man 2 and 3 are some of my all-time favorites on the console and just the mention of this incredible news brings back memories of early morning gaming sessions as a nine year old throwing metal blades at those stupid bats in the Woodman stage.  Props to Capcom: this is a good move!

How about Mega Man 2 and 3 to the Virtual Console to accompany 9, eh? EH!

Mega Man 9 – CONFIRMED for WiiWare! Time to clean out yo fridge!
OMG: Retro-Styled Mega Man 9 on WiiWare