Mike Bantick
Friday, 25 July 2008 07:17
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Looking through the
upcoming roster of game releases , there is good representation from third party developers, Activision, THQ and Ubisoft in particular are well represented. Games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Da Blob, Brothers in Arms and others flesh-out a roster that without third party developers can be become very 'samey'.
Looking at the individual release calendars of some of the publishers and you can see that their Wii output is on par with rivals Xbox 360 and PS3 by enlarge.
And the
Wii continues to break sales records along the way , providing further encouragement to developers to get on board the Wii gravy train.
So what could be wrong? Nintendo announce the the Wii MotionPlus attachment for the Wii-mote controller, addressing the biggest complaint of the unique system, its accuracy. Promising a 1 for 1 representation of controller movement as opposed to the somewhat jerky experience currently.
And yet the developer boat has been rocked with the announcement.
Seems nobody new it was coming. Think of all the work that has gone into current projects, all the effort poured into allowing for the current controller limitations, and the adherence to strict time table milestones as a title edges towards completion.
Now Nintendo springs this new option on developers, having already had their own opportunity to utilise the technology (Wii Sports Resort featuring a sword fencing game), without notice. Witness the follicle colouring change in a third party project managers hair style, edging towards the grey end of the spectrum as he/her realise what such knowledge could have meant to their about-to-be released title if they had have had access to such technology six months ago.
Frustration will be high, in fact
gameinformer had reported on developer reaction to the announcement;
“the general feeling was one of annoyance and betrayal. None of them said they had any advance notice about the peripheral, and we were told that they were as surprised as everyone else when Nintendo revealed its existence on stage. That lack of prior notice means that, aside from Nintendo’s own roster of games, users won’t likely see any support for the device for at least six to nine months. The developers we spoke to said they hadn’t received any information from Nintendo about how to implement Wii MotionPlus into their upcoming projects, and they also expressed doubt that they would be able to incorporate it into games that are currently deep in development.”
Understandable really. So Wii owners, expect another lull in seeing any exploitation of new Nintendo technology not featuring Mario or Zelda.
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