Nintendo Reveals WiiWare
LevelUp has the dirt on WiiWare, the now officially dated (May 12th!) downloadable game channel for the Wii. N’Gai’s also got an interview with Frontier’s David Braben, who provides some details about his upcoming game for the service, LostWinds:
The main character is a guy called Toku, a young boy who’s discovered this wind spirit that’s trapped in a stone. You control both Toku using the device called the nunchuck. He’s actually quite vulnerable, in terms of where he can go–also there are things in the world that are threatening–but you also control the wind spirit that he’s able to release which is called Enril. And the wind spirit is controlled by the Wiimote.
By moving the Wiimote around, in different shapes, you can create gentle breezes of wind or strong gusts, or even by twisting it around, little sort of water sticks. The game overall is designed to be a really sort of graceful, beautiful experience where you’re using these essentially two separate characters in combination, and that brings us all sorts of possibilities in the way the game works, which makes it feel very fresh.
That actually sounds very cool.
From the Nintendo press release, their vision of WiiWare:
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 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. Meanwhile Wii owners can download a multitude of cool new games from different genres, including some that are unprecedented, which can be purchased from home at a dynamic price range.
Though it lacks the democratized aspects that Micorosft claims their XNA Creators Content will have, WiiWare still sounds very cool. I think I’d spend a lot more time with the Wii if it had an ever-growing library of modern casual games, specifically designed to compliment its unique hardware.
N’Gai also pushed Nintendo on the subject of demos for the new services’ games. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.