Wii U

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 0 comments

Vigil Games general manager David Adams and technical director Colin Bonstead have provided some commentary about Wii U for Game Informer in an eight minute interview. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the video can be embedded, so you’ll just have to watch the interview for yourself here. However, I’ve transcribed some of the important bits from the video for those who aren’t interested in viewing it…

– David Adams has always loved Nintendo platforms
– Excited to be involved with a new console and launch
– Was also a challenge since the corporate office asked if they could pull it off in time for E3
– Took about a week to get their base libraries up and running on the console without graphics
– Another week and a half to get graphics to a point where you could seen something on the screen and play the game (basically rainbow colors)
– Then worked on getting the features and graphical features in
– Took about 5 weeks in total from when they found out about it
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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 0 comments

Vigil Games has been very pleased with Wii U so far. David Adams, general manager of Vigil, told Game Informer that Nintendo has been supportive towards the studio by providing early access to kits and the company’s development site quickly. Adams believes that Nintendo is dedicated to assisting third-parties by providing them with knowledge to get their content running on the console.

Vigil was able to create a running build of Darksiders II on the console in the span of just five weeks. What’s impressive is that only three developers were working on most of the project. Although it took some time to learn the system’s quirks, Adams said that it became easier to work with the platform as the team gained more experience.

Adams also seems to think that developing for Wii U is easier than what he encountered on the PlayStation 3 and is roughly similar to Xbox 360. He told Game Informer:

“…You can tell the way the software is organized, the way the APRs are writen, that very shortly, it will become a pretty easy platform to develop for. Personally, I don’t really get into the what’s easier and that, but definitely from a pure programmer point of view, it’s definitely a lot easier than say the PS3 was. It’s probably on par with like the 360 as far as just ease of APIs, simplicity of how you interact with the hardware, and that sort of thing.”

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Features, Wii U | 0 comments

When Nintendo’s newest console, the Wii U, was unveiled at this year’s E3, there was no denying that the console was full of new ideas. But actual games? Not so much. Sure, there were a few titles announced by third-party developers, but it’s tough to get excited over ports of games that are already coming to other consoles or anything titled “Killer Freaks From Outer Space.” All the more reason to write a whole article doing nothing but speculate on all the series and genres we’d most like to see represented on the Wii U. If Nintendo aren’t going to announce anything, why not just make stuff up?

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

Reggie on how Nintendo can explain Wii U to those who haven’t played it…

“What we are doing with Wii U is creating an ability for games to leverage two different screens; the big screen in your room, and the smaller handheld screen in front of you. By doing so it opens up all of these different experiences. The experience I use to describe it to someone is to imagine a first person shooter, where instead of constantly having to look at the screen, now I’ve got things happening all around me.

“It’s a great experience. I don’t think it’s going to be a hard sell. I think that communicating to consumers through the magic of the second window, you can have a totally unique experience, with another player still in the room… I don’t think it’s a difficult sell.”

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 0 comments

Here’s what Griptonite Games said when asked about Wii U…

“It would be awesome to work on Wii U, if just to explore new ideas. That handheld screen could open up some great possibilities for a tabletop kind of experience with friends, among others. Nintendo has always been known for its innovation and the Wii U is no exception. We’re not only tempted but itching to develop for it!”

Shinobi Wii U? Ah wait… it’s way too premature to be talking about that. Although I have to admit I’m very curious as to how the 3DS game will turn out…

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 0 comments

At E3 last month, only a few specific third-party games were announced for Wii U. Capcom is one of many publishers that didn’t announce actual support for the console. However, that doesn’t mean that the company won’t be bringing any games to the platform in the future.

On the latest “Ask Capcom” segment, Christian Svensson said that Capcom has been having conversations about how to approach the platform. Although he wouldn’t provide further information, he did admit that Capcom is “close with Nintendo.” In other words, you can probably expect Capcom to show some support for Wii U down the line – at next year’s E3, perhaps.

“Coming to the topic of Wii U, we continue to have conversations about best to tackle that. I have nothing to confirm right now, but we’re close with Nintendo. That’s probably the best way I’d put it. You can draw your own conclusions from there.”

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

id Software’s John Carmack has commented on Wii U a few times now. But perhaps the statements below are the most supportive he’s sounded thus far. Carmack even went as far as to say that “It should be a slam dunk to move over to Tech 5 games” to Wii U.

“Pretty early on we had a pretty negative experience with Nintendo back in the Super Nintendo days. They were a different company then. They were very much about tightening, controlling the sorts of things that they want to have happen on their consoles. But that’s long in the past. The issues in the current time have just been technology missteps, where we’re out of step with them; we were at a clear point where designing for the 360, PS3 and PC made lots of sense. But you couldn’t have one content development project naturally bridge the gap. If anything, I’m much more inclined to want to develop something for Nintendo now because I’ve got a 6-year-old son and we play Wii and DS games all the time. I’d be happy to do something there. It just hasn’t been the right fit for where id Software is with our projects and technologies.

It should be a slam dunk to move over to Tech 5 games on there. We haven’t had that discussion yet as a company, but it seems technically like it’s a valid target, so I’m always happy to go ahead and get a new box in and see what it takes to bring it up and see the pros and cons of the choices they made. I think they probably made a fairly intelligent decision with the Wii U.

I think there may be more good uses of that [Wii U tablet] than [there are for] the current generation with Kinect and Move… there’s clearly a subset of games for which things like that are appropriate for. We’ve been going on with how can we use those types of motion things with Rage and it’s hard to take a game that’s fundamentally designed around a controller and get value out of doing some of those other things, while adding extra touch interfaces there, that seems like something that almost every game could make some use of without it being just like, ‘Oh, we have to do something like this.’ Because if you remember, when the DS came out, there was a lot of talk about how, ‘Isn’t this going to be just a gimmick?’ But really it did turn out to be quite a good interface to build on.”

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 0 comments

The information below comes from Eiji Aonuma. In addition to the quotes below, he said that the Skyward Sword team did not make the Zelda Wii U demo. However, Satoru Takizawa, art director of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, was deeply involved.

“You probably remember that when we introduced the GameCube, we showed a somewhat realistic Zelda demo. And what we actually created was the cel-shaded Wind Waker. So when we show a graphic demo, people think, ‘Oh, this is what the next Zelda will look like,’ but that’s not necessarily the case. I’m on one of the committees that oversaw the general steering and direction. We talked to each other a lot about several elements, one of which was, ‘How exactly will the HD graphics work?’ In doing concepts for that … we used Zelda assets quite often to examine, OK, how real will we make this look?”

One of the features of the Zelda Wii U demo allowed the inventory/weapons to be displayed on the controller. These elements could also be moved to the television. But Aonuma says that he’d like to bring much more to the table when an actual Zelda game for Wii U is made:

“I’d like to do things that are more surprising than that.”

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