The Richter Scale^®

It’s been a very busy day, filled with Nintendo and Microsoft gaming news and announcements. As I have an early start tomorrow, let me offer just the highlights and some observations now, and try and get more photos from the day up later in the week or over the weekend.

The “Nintendo media conference”, as it was dubbed, was held at the Kodak Theatre - the same grand theatre in which the Academy Awards take place.

After both a performance of a computer animated orchestra conducted by Shigeru Miyamoto and a video introducing the new name (Wii) for the console formerly known as the Nintendo Revolution, Nintendo’s General Manager, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of marketing Reggie Fils-Aime explained the new name to the audience.

While his explanation was merely a reiteration of what’s on Nintendo’s web site, he did poke fun at the name by thanking all the people who had written to Nintendo in support of the new name - all two of them. He used that as a launching point to explain that innovators are often put upon and criticized.

The highlight of the rest of the Wii presentation, which consisted mainly of video footage of forthcoming games, were several live demonstrations of the Wii Remote (a hand held, tilt-sensitive controller with built-in speaker) and the so-called “numchuk” (after the martial arts weapon, which it resembles visually) - another hand held, tilt sensitive controller with a thumbstick.

Contrary to the awkward game play I witnessed yesterday at the Sony press conference with the two handed 6DOF controller for the PS3, the use of the Nintendo controller pair seemed almost elegant, with Nintendo taking the approach of designing games specifically to take advantage of the new controllers. This contrasts to Sony’s first demo of Warhawk (which admittedly was just a technology demonstration) in which an existing title and user interface was retrofitted to support the tilt sensing in Sony’s controller.

Among the titles demonstrated at the Nintendo event were RedSteel, Wii Sport’s Tennis, and a new Zelda game (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) to be shipped at launch.

And speaking of launch, Nintendo was just as cagey with details as they were last year. No mention of price was made of the Wii - just that it would be “affordable” (and what a relative term that is!) and that it would be in people’s homes in the 4th quarter of 2006 (I presume that’s the calendar quarter they were talking about).

One other item that Nintendo elaborated on was that the Wii console would remain in a standby state even when turned off, and during this standby state would be on-line accessible for doing downloads of content, updates, etc. They called this feature “Wii Connect 24”.

With few exceptions (as outlined above), the Nintendo conference was mostly feel good fluff with little real substance, with the expected cheers from the Nintendo fanboys in the attending “media” at most every turn.

One topic which was conspicuously absent, especially in light of Sony and Microsoft reiterating their support for compatibility with old and new systems alike (more on the Microsoft approach in another blog post), was any detailed mention of Nintendo’s previously stated support for GameCube, GameBoy, and NES games on the Wii. There were a few passing mentions of the “virtual console”, but that was all.

There was also a whole section of the presentation dedicated to the Nintendo DS, new DS titles, and the forthcoming Nintendo DS Lite - none of it was particularly new, however.

That said, Nintendo’s approach to console gaming should be lauded. They have put themselves in a whole different category with both their innovative input devices (it’s really one device with two parts) as well as with games meant to take full advantage of that device. This positioning leaves Sony and Microsoft battling it out as the centerpiece of the living room, with Nintendo taking the high road - not as a direct competitor, but as a different type of entertainment appliance in the living room.

I can certainly see my children (and myself as a result), actively using the Nintendo Wii - specifically because it requires active and physical input when we need to burn some energy, and then switch to the Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 to become inactive couch potatoes intent on creating large swaths of animated destruction with non-calorie-burning flicks of our thumbs on joysticks and the occasional button press or trigger pull.

Both types of gaming have their place, and I predict that it will not be uncommon in future years to see people with both a Nintendo Wii and another more full featured entertainment console (with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD support built in) coexisting in the same living room.