Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The new video game based on the movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, won't be meeting the public this year and is instead set to play in your living room and on the big screen at your local theater during the summer of 2009. This could be a good thing for fans, as it will give developers plenty of time to add some polish to the title. And from what we've already heard, some things were shaping up nicely, so we're extra excited that the game will get some more TLC before it hits retail shelves everywhere.

But, as good as this sounds to us (more time spent creating a game makes for a better game), it's not all peaches and creme for EA. The company projected that the game would bring in $120 million within its 2008 fiscal forecast. With the game being bumped back to 2009, it looks like EA will be relying on your future Boom Blox money a bit more.



Source - Harry Potter game gets delayed
Source - Delay will cost EA quite a bit of money

[Via Joystiq]

Who would ever think of Hogwarts as a glorified bartending school? Well, Jason Cipriano from MTV Multiplayer, for one. After getting his hands on the Wii's upcoming Harry Potter title, he was impressed with the potion-mixing minigame portion of the demo. The game works as you might imagine; simply enough, you tilt the Wiimote downward as if you were pouring liquids. The key is in applying the right amount of force to the motion, otherwise your potion might explode (making the new Potions teacher, Horace Slughorn, none too happy). There are some other motion-controlled mixing actions you have to perform as well, to keep the minigame from feeling too basic.

Harry Potter aside, though, Cipriano points out that this type of liquid mixing gameplay could work well in a title like Cooking Mama, where Mama kicks back with a few G & Ts, or perhaps even an original bartending title. Imagine a game like Order Up!, only instead of pleasing customers in a restaurant, you had to serve your patrons drinks. We think we could dig it, though we're not sure Nintendo would be so keen. Then again, we are seeing a Beer Pong game come to WiiWare sometime in the future, so you never know.

You probably won't be stupefied to know that EA announced the next video game in the Harry Potter series, based on the sixth novel by J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will come out later this year, so that it coincides with the movie's release.

In case you are unfamiliar with the games, though, the series puts you in a GTA/Bully-esque sandbox-style world, only you're spending your time at Hogwarts and aren't issuing magical commands to give people wedgies (accio underpants!). When Order of the Phoenix was announced for the Wii way back when, Potterheads everywhere salivated over using the Wiimote as a wand. Upon playing the game, though, it turned out the controls weren't very well-executed. We're too jaded to get our hopes up again, but EA made mention of the company's focus on waggle this time around. If there's any license-based series that we want to like, it's this one, so hopefully EA can deliver.

[Via press release]