“Well I think we certainly can be a contender for Game of the Year. Obviously we can’t compete with them graphically. I mean the Wii just doesn’t have that kind of horse power. Let me put it this way, as a game designer myself I thoroughly believe that a game can be fun even if it’s just stick figures, or dots across the board. Gameplay-wise that’s where I think we have our shot at competing against big titles like that. Because we really take advantage of the Wii’s motion control system, which we’ve maintained throughout this development is just begging for a First Person Shooter game. Somebody to get it done right. We’ve gotten tons of feedback from our great fans talking about how when they actually get their hands on it, it’s easy to pick up, it’s intuitive, it feels like you are actually in the game, that you are actually, lining up shots, and things like that. You aren’t just thumbing joysticks around. So gameplay wise, I’d say we’re definitely a contender because The Conduit is fun, it’s easy to use, it’s customizable moreso than those other titles. So that if you are a hardcore gamer, kick that difficulty up, remap your control scheme, customize however you personally need it to be to make The Conduit fun and exciting for you.” – Rob Nicholls, High Voltage Software
The Conduit will definitely be facing some tough competition for the Game of the Year. Like Mr. Nicholls said, the game won’t really be able to be placed in the same category as far as graphics go (though the game looks very impressive on the Wii). However, if the gameplay is solid The Conduit certainly has a chance of becoming the best – if not one of the most entertaining – game of the year.
First day sales data in Japan for various games have been released.
Sengoku Basara: Battle Heroes (PSP) – 46,000 (50%)
Oboro Muramasa (Wii) – 16,000 (50%)
Suggoi! Arcana Heart 2 (PS2) – 8,000 (40%)
Zaidanhoujin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Kounin: Kanken DS3 Deluxe (DS) – 2,000 (5%)
Ken to Mahou to Gakuen Mono., PSP the Best (PSP) – 500 (10%)
This is the last bit of news, coming once again from Reggie…
“And you know what, we’ve said, the teams are in development. Those big first-party Nintendo fan games are coming. Here’s what I would say to the fans. From our perspective, there will be the Zelda games. We highlighted one today. There will be the Mario games. [Donkey Kong mentioned] Those are all great franchises. [Kid Icarus mentioned] We’d love to bring them all to life. That’s all a sense of priorities. [On Mario for WiiWare] When we’re going to work on a Mario title, we’re going to bring it to Wii, or DS…The point is, we want truly, truly innovative content to be first launched on WiiWare and that’s awfully tough to do with a Mario title.”
This comes once again from Reggie, on the latest episode of GameTrailers TV…
“We haven’t announced a launch date, maybe we’ll do that at E3 [The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks]. You know, everyone wants to know what we’re going to announce at E3 and my answer is, come to E3 and you’ll see…From Nintendo’s perspective, we always go into E3 with a very high bar wanting to satisfy not only the core fans but also ourselves. We’re hoping to do a much better job this year. You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Towards the end of the show, Reggie also added in this comment:
“And all of your fans will love it [E3]. We can guarantee that.”
Nintendo’s President and COO of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime was recently asked about what worries him in terms of the competition. Fils-Aime commented on both the PS3 and 360, saying that the Sony has some challenges with the PS3 and that Nintendo looks to see what can be done to be better than Xbox Live.
“What worries me, if I would focus in on Microsoft, we’ve always looked at what they’ve been able to do from an Xbox Live standpoint and we constantly want to say, ‘What can we do to be better than Xbox Live?’…It’s a little hard [to say something nice about the PS3]…They’ve got some great games that they’ve been able to bring out, they’ve been able to get some fantastic content. But, you know, you look at the results and clearly they’ve got some challenges.”
Turn to about 1:15 to see the new multiplayer footage…
