Mike Bantick
Friday, 25 July 2008 07:17
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The single biggest surprise of the Nintendo E3 presentation was the Wii MotionPlus attachment for the existing controller. It promises a more accurate representation of the Wii waggle, giving developers even more to work with when it comes to the unique control mechanism for Wii games. If only developers had actually been told it was coming.
Having worked much of my IT career in the corporate sector, I understand the value of keeping a technology secret. Conversely I understand the value of partnerships, time to market and integration.
In some fields it makes sense to adhere strictly to secrecy, in others, such as platform and OS development it makes sense to keep your close partners in the loop.
And so it is with gaming peripheral technology. What is the point of a new gaming input device without the software to back it up?
Like the Wii itself, where – apart from Nintendo itself – as the console flew off retail shelves, many excellent third party developers were caught with their content pants down, . The biggest of them all Electronic Arts in particular took a long time to shift resources to Wii titles, missing a great opportunity to exploit much of the Wii success.
As such, though the Wii has been a phenomenon in sales terms, with many happy consumers spending hours in front of Wii Sports, Mario, Zelda, Metroid Prime and other Nintendo first party games, the third party roster is comparatively thin on the ground.
CONTINUED Page 2
