Hey, you reading this! You a Japanese developer? If so, we need a word! Firstly: wow, thanks for reading us -- that's awesome. Secondly, and with the niceties over: you know what your problem is? You're too soft! At least that's what Platinum Games' Atsushi Inaba reckons.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Inaba suggested that Japanese developers spend too much time concentrating on established franchises, and not enough on amazing, creative new ideas -- ideas such as MadWorld, which is what Inaba is presently working on. If anything, argues the Okami creator, it is Western developers who are now producing the most innovative videogames.
"We don't feel that we're at the top of the industry, but we know that we have to catch up to where Western developers are," he concludes. Is he right, readers?
Mobile game developer Gamelion has been given the big white tick of approval from Nintendo. According to Gamesindustry.biz, they will be branching out from numbered keypads and making the Wii a mane focus. Lions? Mane? Forget it.
After a bit of hunting and gathering, it appears Gamelion is behind many big names in the mobile market, including the FIFA series, Puzzle Bobble and Namco Bandai projects. The team will expand horizons with "new and innovative titles" on both WiiWare and the DS, and you'll be seeing the first project coming to WiiWare in early 2009. Best of luck to the team -- the more chances for awesome games, the better!
Posted Jul 8th 2008 12:30PM by Phil Larsen Filed under: News
Says industry veteran (and longtime D&D nerd) Ian Livingstone. He's speaking from the Eidos camp, and isn't happy about the UK government's approach to building a sustainable development industry.
In an interiew with Develop, he stated that "The Government should address the issues of skills and costs for the UK to remain competitive." Basically, it's costing way too many quid to train the young'uns up in the ways of development, and the rising costs of tea and crumpets aren't helping none too much either.
While cheaper labor markets are blitzing the competition, the UK is slowing down and becoming more expensive. It's up to the developers themselves to manage their own projects and create strong IPs, but according to Livingstone, "The Government needs to invest in this valuable Creative Industries asset or suffer the consequences."
Publishers go to where the action is, picking up the best games at the best prices, and they are shying away from the UK in this regard. Canada is apparently leading the way for the bargain basement publisher deal, and "it is up to Government to make it attractive for them to operate in the UK." No financially viable investments for publishers + no new talent = industry in trouble. Make link go now for the full interview with Livingstone.
The 64DD, much like the Neo Geo or the entire Game & Watch range, will probably always have a sort of magical allure to people like us; indeed, we were seconds away from selling our grandmothers when a complete 64DD collection recently appeared on eBay. Now, the above item has been listed on the auction site: a development kit for Nintendo's obsolete N64 add-on.
Although we know that the original system sold 15,000 units, we have no idea how many of these were produced, but considering only nine 64DD games were ever released, it can't be that many! Heck, if we had any idea whatsoever how to use this, we could buy it and make the tenth 64DD title! Imagine the possibilities!
Posted Jun 24th 2008 2:45PM by Phil Larsen Filed under: News
New blood, new hope for awesome games! The creative team at Chimera has taken up the challenge of becoming an official developer for the Wii and DS. So far, the biggest credit to the name of this Munich-based group is Windchaser, a PC strategy game with more than one critical recommendation. Head over to the official site to check out a few screenies and company details.
The more the merrier, so any team willing to try their hand at success in the world of Nintendo is alright by us. Managing Director Hendrik Lesser is pretty confident of Chimera's abilities, saying "the creative potential of the team is enormous and the possibilities are endless." Hey, even a Wii port of Windchaser wouldn't be a bad place to start. Good luck, and may all your games be supercalafreakinawesome!
Since they announced WiiWare, Nintendo has presented the service as the most "open" of the console game download stores. At the WiiWare GDC keynote, Nintendo's Takashi Aoyama ended his presentation with an email address and an invitation for developers big and small to get in contact with NOA and get started. However, Xiotex Studios' experience paints a different picture, one of restricted access to WiiWare development and space, and a lack of willingness to allow new developers on the console.
According to the company's blog, they applied for WiiWare developer status and were rejected. They've posted the rejection letter, which states that the company "looks for relevant game development experience" in addition to staffing and business criteria. The Xiotex blogger, Byron, points out not only that he had basically been courted by Nintendo at a WiiWare event earlier this year, but that he had specific experience developing GameCube and Wii titles.
There's probably more to this, since tiny new companies like Nnooo have successfully released games on WiiWare. Maybe he doesn't have the facilities required for secure storage of a dev kit? At the very least, this development makes WiiWare seem a bit more geared to established developers than previously thought.
It's a good thing developers actually man up to their commitments. Speaking to IGN, Nintendo's senior director of project development, Tom Prata, made the announcement that around 100 games are currently in development for WiiWare. With a fewsolidtitles already in the homes of Wii gamers around the world, the law of averages ensures we've got to expect a real gem or two in the forthcoming pile.
Prata also answers several general questions regarding WiiWare, and affirmed the quality and potential of downloadable content in comparison to standard games on Optical Disc. Developers have every resource available to them for ensuring a WiiWare game includes Wi-Fi, WiiConnect24 and multiplayer functionality. That's fantastic, because we don't want any of this "done the first few levels, let's ship it and and grab a burger" nonsense.
According to Time's latest interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, there may have been some genuine upending of tea tables during the making of Wii Fit, as opposed to the metaphorical kind that Shiggy prefers.
Chatting to the publication to promote the game, Miyamoto confessed that the he and his team felt "a lot of nervousness" while developing the title, and that the lofty expectations of other people caused some stress. The article also mentions that the game's development "nearly led his 15-person development team to quit in frustration," though we've no idea whether that's Time slightly embellishing a story, or what Miyamoto actually said.
All this talk of feeling stressed, Shiggy, and yet our letters offering slow, sensual shoulder rubs still go unanswered. He can't complain.
GarageGames has announced a new version of the Torque development engine for Wii, with added 2D drag-and-drop game creation functionality. Torque 1.5 features elements of the Torque Game Builder, a tool designed for easy development of 2D games.
In addition to the Game Builder functions, the new version of Torque for Wii features "extensible Wii Remote support, Wii optimized skinned mesh rendering, compressed texture, interior support, and hardware blending for terrain textures. Developers will also find a powerful WYSIWYG tool chain for designers, scripting language support, a comprehensive Lot Check compliance component, and Wii graphics and audio abstraction layers."
Torque's "zero-royalty, flat-fee structure" and reduced pricing for Wii Ware developers should be a boon to the download service, making a low-cost, easy-to-use design tool available to prospective developers.
Posted Nov 27th 2007 4:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Speaking at the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovations Conference, Reggie Fils-Aime talked about some upcoming Wii-related topics, including things other than how great Wii Fit will be. He discussed Japan's new TV Program Schedule Channel briefly, but only to mention that there are no plans for a U.S. release of such a service. Then, to answer the question proposed in the CNet article's title "Will the Wii be a set-top box?": no. Look to something like the Xbox 360, with which you can already purchase TV shows and movies, for something like that. The TV Program Schedule Channel is a neat convenience designed to get people messing with the Wiimote. Reggie mentioned that future channels "... may look like games. They may not look like games."
Other topics included Wii and DS development costs, which are obviously lower in comparison to other systems', meaning that a game can sell fewer copies and still make a profit. For Nintendo, of course, who is aiming at the biggest mass-market audience they can, this doesn't necessarily mean experimentation, but ridiculous profits. He also went on to talk about shortages, calling them "missed opportunities".
Posted Nov 27th 2007 1:30PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Super Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi gave the keynote at this year's Montreal Games Summit, discussing the evolution of 3D Mario. He has unique perspective on this, having been not only a 3D animator, but also co-director of Super Mario 64, then director of Sunshine and now Galaxy. His portfolio also includes work on Link's Awakening and directing the fantastic Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat. It goes without saying that all the talk about the early development of Mario 64 is fascinating -- including descriptions of Miyamoto pantomiming certain movements for the animators -- but the really interesting part of the story is how the problems of 3D platforming influenced the design of Galaxy. The major problem? The camera.
The world of Galaxy is, basically, a world free of walls. Without walls, backtracking is reduced, and sudden 180-degree camera movements become unnecessary. "We should tune the game so people can play without ever having to think about the camera," said Koizumi. An admirable goal -- awful cameras have just about sunk the Sonic series and countless other 3D platformers.
AILive has announced the next version of their LiveMove software, called LiveMove Pro, a motion recognition tool for Wii development. According to AILive chairman Wei Yen, developers are flocking to the new software, apparently showing an interest in good controls for their dang games: "We expect most existing LiveMove 1.x users to license LiveMove Pro as well as a significant number of new users," he told Gamasutra.
LiveMove Pro will allow developers to make games "that let players perform complicated motions tightly coupled to on-screen animations," if the completely unbiased AILive representative is to be believed. Anything to improve the occasionally iffy motion controls in Wii games is a-okay with us.
We don't pretend to know the first thing about technical game development, and we're certainly not going to applaud porting by any means, but we think that anything that makes it simpler or more cost-effective for developers to create Wii games is a positive development. Does this mean a Wii Oblivion is on the way? Not without a hard drive, it doesn't.
Development time on the Wii is already fairly quick, due to its architectural similarities to the Gamecube and general lack of difficult-to-corral horsepower hidden within magic-seal cores (you have to unlock them with the level 7 key). Takeshi Shimada, a Nintendo employee who works on toll packages for developers, spoke about some of the upcoming projects he had in mind.
In addition to updated handwriting and speech recognition software for the DS, Shimada is working on a host of tools for the Wii. First off is a Wii emulating technology for high-end PCs to mitigate the slow "loading time" of putting recent code and assets onto a Wii unit itself (if this ever gets leaked ... ). He's working on some "fur-shaders" (which might apply also to grass or carpet textures) and other graphical tools, and finally, an advanced text-to-speech system that seems to be all the rage these days.
What does this mean to you? Hopefully, prettier fur. We salute you, Shimada-san!
In case you live under a rock, GDC is kicking off this week (that stands for Game Developer's Conference) and it turns out Nintendo enthusiasts have something besides Miyamoto's keynote to look forward to. This week during the event, attendees will be able to get some schooling on how to create titles for Nintendo's new Wii console. To quote the AFP article: "Among its (GDC's) features will be lessons in designing games for Nintendo's popular new Wii video game console with motion-sensitive controllers."
The piece then takes a hard left turn into casual games territory, talking of the importance of that market. Still though, it should be interesting to see what kind of demonstrations those who attend the lessons on Wii development receive. How hard could it be to develop with a motion-sensitive control scheme?
Update: Changed headline to reflect organization of this year's GDC event on our end.
Hey, you reading this! You a Japanese developer? If so, we need a word! Firstly: wow, thanks for reading us -- that's awesome. Secondly, and with the niceties over: you know what your problem is? You're too soft! At least that's what Platinum Games' Atsushi Inaba reckons.
According to Time's latest interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, there may have been some genuine 
GarageGames has announced a new version of the Torque development engine for Wii, with added 2D drag-and-drop game creation functionality. Torque 1.5 features elements of the 
