Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo VP of sales and marketing in America, was the first to appear at the beginning of the conference stating an interesting fact:
“Video games are just as big as home video, just as big as toys, and even bigger than music and video box office put together”
She began to describe how the Nintendo wanted to greater expand and surprise their players with a completely new experience.
After an opening speech about Nintendo’s marketing scheme and some little facts, she went into talking about Mario, and talking about giving Mario a new dimension, a new way to play Mario that was never introduced before. Then it was announced, Mario for the Wii. A rather stunning display was presented with several people appearing on stage playing a multiplayer version of Mario, with a coop maximum of 4 players. It virtually looked the same as many of us remember from The Super Nintendo, integrated with glossier graphics, and slightly new obstacles. There is a single player option still, but it is hinted that playing multiplayer is easier. New power-ups were shown, such as the “propeller suit”, in which you can levitate/fly in the air. At the end of a level, all of the players scored based on their performance in the level, bringing a slight competitive high to anyone involved. Mario is scheduled to launch during the 2009 holidays.
Cammie then started talking about the Wii fit. She talked about ways to make the application of Wii fit easier to daily life. Wii Fit Plus was then introduced. Wii Fit Plus has such applications as total calories burned, yoga, juggling, skateboarding, other exercise games. She said “Brain age, for your backside”. Due to arrive this fall as a combo with a Wii Balance board, and later as a single product.
Reggie Fils-Aime then came to the stage. Stating the history of Wii’s game controlling devices and introduced a new advance in gaming control, an apparent expansion to the Wii controller. It is described as “precision control”. Its basic structure is virtually an older controller for the Wii wrapped within a casing, with a device at the bottom.
The line “off the couch” was mentioned by Reggie in this presentation, further stating that this is also seeking to further revolutionize the otherwise stationary gaming experience today. Such applications as Bow drawing, sword swinging, waterboarding, golfing, canoeing, and ping pong were displayed with this new device. In other words, activities in real life, conveniently substituted and placed within your living room.
Reggie then re-introduced Bill who further described the controller, expanding the controllers functionality, how it detects angle, motion, etc. He then demonstrated a rather comical demonstration with skydiving. This new application is part of the new Wii Sports Resort. Imagine yourself at an island with a wide medley of activities. Bill then displayed a bow application, movement is mimicked as if you were holding an actual bow (without the massive resistance of course) and tried to hit targets, and I must say…his aim sucked! ha! After that demonstration, Bill invited Reggie back out, and the two competed in a basketball shoot-out competition. Rather funny to see them flailing their arms, mimicking the shooting of a basketball, but they wouldn’t jump at all and as you could guess, Bill lost. He even admitted he was embarrassed teehee.
Moving on, Reggie started talking about the same usual Wii games, tennis, golf, etc. A new Final Fantasy and a new Kingdom Hearts games were announced. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story was announced to come out in the West this fall for the DS. A Mario game in which Mario and Luigi are turned micro sized and ingested by Bowser, to battle inside his body.
Cammie came back out and started talking more about the Nintendo DS, and to be completely honest, I started to lose interest, as the DS, in my opinion, seems to not be aging along with the rest of gaming technology. Got to give props to Brain Age though for the non conventional gaming audience. In other words, while they are still games, they aren’t really games that I play, nor are they games that most game enthusiasts browsing this site play (most likely). So all I will mention for this section, are the new games scheduled to release:
Women’s Murder Club: A murder solving game.
Style Savvy.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
A new method for users to develop their own games.
Cammie then said that the Nintendo DS has diversity, but it seems much of their newer games are targeting the rather unconventional gaming audience.
After the discussion of the Nintendo DS, Cammie introduced Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo. Iwata opened with research Nintendo conducted. The research divided people into three groups relating to their current gaming status: Active, Never, Might. Nintendo is actively targeting the “Might” group. Mr. Iwata said “For every two people already playing, there is another one waiting to play”.
Iwata began to talk about what Nintendo must to to satisfy all gaming groups with each game that releases. He said the most common belief among gamers: “Best games are those that require to most skills” and said how he believes that this is untrue. He believes that games must be both challenging and appealing and mentioned that if Nintendo raises the bar on skill requirements, the overall gaming population for that particular game will decrease and if the bar is lowered, it will not satisfy highly skilled players. Virtually, he seeks to create games to satisfy novice players and highly skilled players alike.
The new Wii Vitality Sensor was then introduced. The device your reads pulse and other signals in your body by inserting your index finger into a sensor, much like you’d find at a hospital. In Iwata’s case, he gave an example of how he could see nervous he is on stage with it.
Iwata took his leave and Cammie came back out and discussed a new Mario 3D game, Super Mario Galaxy 2, to appear on the Wii and included a preview.
Reggie appeared again to discuss new releases expected for the Wii:
The Conduit.
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
Dead Space Extraction. - A prequel to how Dead Space happened.
Metroid: Other M. - Team Ninja & Nintendo production.
After showing trailers of each of the above games, Reggie wrapped up his presentation and very briefly summarized Nintendo’s basic principles, and the presentation ended.