Nintendo at E3 -- With The Wiire

By The Wiire Staff / July 15, 2008

Welcome to The Wiire's official E3 news post! We're writing this now as the Nintendo press conference begins. Be sure to check back to this topic while catching up on yesterday's megaton Wii MotionPlus. The Wiire staff will be keeping timed updates and each update kept short. Everything will be detailed at another time. Enjoy the news! 12:05: Nintendo's press conference is about to begin. 12:10: Executive Vice President of Marketing comes out. Talking about her kids playing Nintendo games and how cool she is. Broke her wrist while snowboarding. Leads into Shaun White Snowboarding for Wii. Uses the Balance Board. 12:12: Shaun White praises the Balance Board for its accuracy. Instructing VP of Marketing as she plays the game. Game is exclusively for Wii, available by year's end. 12:14: Satoru Iwata takes the stage. Talking about what's really changed since he became global president of Nintendo, how the market has expanded with Nintendo's Brain Age games, Mario games for the DS, and Nintendogs. 12:17: Both Mario and Zelda teams are hard at work to bring new titles to Nintendo systems. It is a challenge to develop games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. The market was very hard to expand. 12:20: Iwata speaks about sky-rocketing sales and a new form of social interaction Nintendo brought about with the Wii and DS and their respective games. Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit mentioned exlusively. 12:21: Iwata speaks about fresh ideas after Wii and DS. "There is danger in standing still." says Iwata. Believes players should have many ways to be engaged, and enriched, and enthused. Nintendo always challenges itself to be pioneers, says Iwata. 12:23: Montage playing that showcases why Nintendo developers work on games and each one emphasizing social networking. 12:23: Animal Crossing: City Folk announced for Wii in 2008. The game is being detailed now. Made to be highly interactive. Many places to visit, things to buy, things to sell. There is even a beauty salon. Mii interaction confirmed. You can write letters to other places and send them to other towns or Wii message boards or personal computers. 12:26: Wii Speak announced. Communicative microphone that lets you talk with other rooms around the world. 12:30: Reggie Fils-Aime takes the stage. Nintendo far from being pleased. Pleased with marketplace momentum. Life time sales for Wii hardware in May reached 10 million systems sold, 20 million for the DS. More than 5 billion+ dollars in retail. Nintendo wants to keep expanding to the millions of newcomers and millions of hardcore fans. Nintendo expects worldwide DS sales to grow to 100 million systems by next March.  DS is 2 out of every 3 handhelds sold in America. 12:35: Pokemon games last year 600,000 copies sold in 6 weeks. 180,000,000 Pokemon games sold altogether. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and Pokemon pushed the DS 29% forward. The DS is ahead right now. Females targeted this previous May. Showing off how Wii's historic starting sales are only growing. Wii is looking to be best-selling console. Wii software is the same, sales advantages after Wii's first year continues to grow. 12:40: Third party partners are finding success on Wii. 19 third party games exceed 400,000+ units sold, from 11 different publishers. Reggie discussing possibilities of Wii games. Wii library growing faster than any other console. Impossible to announce all the dozens of games coming out. So, they will show three games instead. Star Wars: The Clones Wars announced. Head to head lightsaber duels. Coming Holiday 2008. Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party announced. Balance Board usage confirmed. Coming Fall 2008. Call of Duty: World at War announced. Co-op mode revealed. Wii Zapper used to showcase gameplay. "Coming soon." 12:45: Female players continuously buy DS systems. DS appeal is universal. Apparent with 3rd party hits. Guitar Hero: On Tour sold 300,000 copies in just its first week. Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades on its way on the DS. Song sharing announced. Friends will be able to share songs and play them, etc. Microphone will add more to Guitar Hero games. Will Wright's Spore Creatures on DS showcased. Creature creator revealed. You can share your creatures with friends and appear in-game. Pokemon Rangers coming in November. Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars coming to DS this winter. Set in modern-day Liberty City, new characters, new controls. 12:50: Nintendo DS to be used as an airport guide. At Safeco Field in Seattle, DS is used to check the box scores for other baseballs. DS used to order sushi rolls and compete with other people in the ballpark in terms of trivia. Cooking Navi, an English version, will arrive this November. 12:55: Wii MotionPlus being detailed by Reggie. Renders every slight shift of your arm into gameplay. Software will be needed to show this off. Wii Sports Resort announced, literally a day at the beach. Each copy comes with a Wii Remote Jacket and a Wii MotionPlus peripheral. The game is being showed off now. Frisbee mode being shown off. All you have to do is flick your wrist. Water skiing shown off by Reggie. Bill Trinen showing off a sword mode and you can do pretty much anything. You can even duel against other people. Reggie just kicked the VP of Marketing's ass...and she came back with a vengeance. 1:00: Reggie talking about how other developers are contemplating 1:1 motion control. Wii Sports Resort launches next Spring globally. Finally, Wii Music is showcased using the Wii Remote, Nunchuk, and Balance Board to play a set of drums. Shigeru Miyamoto is revealed to be playing the Flute by holding up the Wii Remote to his face like a flute and pressing buttons. The drums are still being played by the other person from before. Co-op mode? Miyamoto says: Wii Music was being developed with Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit. Music plays an important role in a family. Most past music games require you to press buttons to match rhythm. Wii Music has been designed to so anyone can enjoy playing music. There is no need to follow notes to play songs. All you have to do is hold the Wii Remote like you would and move around like you would be when playing an instrument. Also, some buttons will be used but not for following notes. Over 50 different instruments can be played in the game. Guitars, violins, percussion instruments, pianos, etc. Drums mode will include lessons so people can pick it up in just a few weeks. 1:05: Miyamoto confirms the orchestra mode he played two years aog at E3. Instead of the game judging how good your performance was, it will save videos of them and you can play them back and send them to friends. Four players can play at once. Miyamoto, Bill Trinen, and three other people perform  the Super Mario Bros. theme. 1:10: --Conference Over--

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