Good news for Nintendo Fans: EA supporting Wii with at least six titles

Good news on the wire today if you're a Nintendo fan. It appears Electronic Arts has six Wii titles in development, with others to be announced in the future. Currently announced titles include Madden NFL 07, Need for Speed Carbon, a new Harry Potter game, a Tiger Woods PGA tour game, SSX, and The Godfather.

This is actually a pretty significant announcement for Nintendo. Although I'm not one of those people who believe EA is a kingmaker, having this level of support is certainly better than having only the two titles announced at E3 earlier this year. It also shows a strong level of industry support for the direction Nintendo has taken with lower-cost hardware and their unique control scheme.

I'm actually a big fan of the Wii (although I'll add my voice to the chorus and state they should have stuck with Revolution for a name). My time with it at E3 showed a lot of potential for new game ideas and new ways to play. My biggest fear with the Wii is that the ~1/4 second latency inherent in the controller may prove to be too distracting for some types of games (such as first-person shooters), but we'll have to wait to reserve judgement until they ship final hardware, libraries, and of course, games.

That said, kudos to EA for stepping up and supporting one of the more original attempts to invigorate the game industry in recent history!

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | live it!

Posted: Jul 13 2006, 11:44 AM by Ozymandias | 8 comments

Filed under: Nintendo, Wii

Comments

Enzo304 said:

I'm interested in the Wii, but won't get one until I've had a chance to play one. And by that, I don't mean standing at a kiosk in a Wal-mart. I'll find someone who has one and then try it. If I like it, and it really won't be that much money.... I might get it before the PS3.

Tempting.

As for EA, all I'd want out of those games would be Madden '07 and NFS:C.

# July 13, 2006 2:08 PM

Ozymandias said:

You actually make a really good point about the price. I think there are folks who say they'll get the "Wii60", since the cost of a Wii and an Xbox 360 will be right around or just under the price of a PS3.

The tough road for Sony to hoe is going to be one of cost reduction. The name of the game is to ship console units, and to really get up in volume you need to drop the price. And right now the PS3 is heavily burdened with a lot of expensive hardware that just doesn't cost reduce very easily. That means it will be harder for Sony to lower their price and remain competitive in future years at the same rate as their competitors. That, or the price is dropped and they eat the difference.

Put it another way, first console of this generation to hit the $99 price point will either be Nintendo Wii or Microsoft's Xbox 360. It won't be the Playstation 3.

# July 13, 2006 2:43 PM

brasilcaps said:

I'm looking forward to what Nintendo has to offer, but I'm still pessimistic about the controller. A lot of people clamoring about how innovative it is and what not, but I still see it as a gimmick. Sure it might be fun for the first 10-20 minutes to do the whole motion thing, but I think the novelty wears off pretty quickly after that. Nintendo always say that they want the games to be simpler for the masses, but it also needs to have depth also.

Example, Wii Sports, especially the tennis game. Can you put spins on the ball? Can you direct the ball with pin-point(or close to it) accuracy? These two things can add more depth to that game and without it, it could just turn into a snooze fest, because after the hilarious 10-20 minutes of watching your friends looking ridiculous, the game will turn into a glorified Pong. Glorified Pong is cool, only if it turns out like Rockstar's Table Tennis.

Also, I know gameplay is everything, but graphics matters too. When I was flanked by the rebels in GRAW, and I see dust fly off the wall from the bullets... man, don't tell me that doesn't get to you. Not only graphics, I'm talking about A.I and sound, these things really matters. Example, COD3, you've seen the screenshots, it's not that great, but what if the AI is dumb and the sound is less than stellar. It won't be the same war as the one you're experiencing in the 360 or PS3. No matter how much you can aim with a remote.

I hope developers will not just fall on the trap of, "look you can do this if you flick the controller," and think that's innovation in their part. And just because you can move around the controller, doesn't mean it's innovative *cough*Sony*cough*

# July 13, 2006 8:54 PM

DM2 said:

I'll be pre ordering a Wii, it's shaping up to be a great console and as the DS has proved Nintendo produce some of the most intresing and fun games at the moment.

It's going to be a lot more relavent to me with a couple of younger children than a console costing £400+ with games rumoured to be even more expensive than the 360's!

# July 14, 2006 1:29 AM

CMelissinos said:

Actually, WRT price reduction, Sony actually does better here than both Nintendo and Microsoft. Why? 2 reasons:

1) They own the chip and ASIC fabrication facilities

2) They own the DVD/BR-DVD pressing facilities

In the current/slightly last generation of systems, this is where Sony could beat their competitors to the punch. One of the biggest cost issues around the original XBox was not the fixed cost of the hard drive per se but, rather, the inability to lower costs through chip consolidation. There was no way to get Intel and nVidia to work together to incorporate components and, as a result, their costs remained relatively fixed which meant that every price reduction at retail absorbed any cost reductions they were able to get from the manufacturer of the individual components. The good news is that Microsoft was able to keep their loss per unit flat. Bad news is that they never made any money on the hardware. Zilch.

WRT pressing disks, this is where Sony had a huge advantage in the last 2 generations and will continue into the 3rd. The ability to re-prioritize product in the fabrication chain is hard to compete against unless you own your own facilities as well. However, with more content moving online for distribution, we will see just how much of an advantage their pressing facilities remain over the long haul.

-Chris

P.S. Andre, good to find your blog here :)

# July 14, 2006 11:57 AM

Ozymandias said:

Hi Chris. :)

Good points on some advantages Sony has on cost-reduction over time. I'll say that those were definitely well-learned lessons last generation and I don't think they'll be as advantageous to Sony this time around - at least around chip manufacturing. Blu-ray is a different discussion, but that's why it's such a "bet the company" strategy for Sony.

# July 17, 2006 10:27 AM