Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 1.26.07

Wii games channel coming…some time
Nintendo has confirmed that they will offer new games for download on the Wii, no doubt inspired by Microsoft’s Live Arcade. Since the Wii is already being positioned as the console to develop for if you have a small budget, it should be interesting to see what kind of games are distributed through the games channel (not the official name). Will it be home to crappy Flash games or is this the beginning of the 2D renaissance on home systems? I’m hoping for the latter but won’t be surprised if it’s the former.

Gears of War sells well in Japan
Well enough to break the top 10 list, in fact. Now American developers know breaking into the Japanese market is possible; all they have to do is make one of the best games of the year.

Silicon Knights President blogs about Too Human’s cold E3 reception
Denis Dyack describes how last E3 felt with a story from his college days. His company is responsible for Eternal Darkness, which I adore, but there is something slightly off about his priorities. He hints that critics of Too Human who complained about frame rate and camera positioning were missing the bigger picture, but he never really goes for the jugular. Instead, Dyack explains that all of those technical problems have been resolved and the game is going to push the 360 to its limit. Then the blog post ends with a new image from the title.

“Boo hoo, nobody likes my game, I was a wrestler, my studio uses the guild philosophy, Konami won’t let me make a real Metal Gear.”

These events remind me of the bizarre moral of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. In that story, Belle manages to fall in love with someone who is grotesque only for him to become beautiful. This transformation mostly undoes the lesson that something can be ugly on the outside but still worthwhile. Dyack could stand up for gameplay, narrative and innovation, but instead he says, “Here’s a new screenshot, isn’t it pretty?” No, Dennis, it’s not. And since you seem content with people judging your work by a pic, I guess that means your game is bad.

Sony and Namco Bandai create new company: Bamcony
Cellius Inc. will make games using the Cell processor in order to take market share away from Sony’s competitors. Wait, Sony takes it’s competitors seriously? When did this start?

Some processor overclocked to a lot
I don’t normally care about computer hardware, but I’ve recently come in to a little bit of money (we’ll miss you, great uncle Archibold). This means I’m getting a new PC and pedicure. My research has indicated that dual core chips are what cave peasants in Afghanistan use now that quad core chips are on the market. But now some nerds have overclocked a Pentium 4 processor to over 8GHz. Sure the chip has only one core and is smoking in the picture, but the obvious question is why haven’t they done this with a four core processor? If all it takes to prove you don’t have a small penis is a liquid nitrogen cooling system, sign me up.

Pope dislikes sexy violent games
“Commercial competitiveness (compels) communicators to lower standards.” Strong words. Communist words, if you ask me. I will add “violent and sexy games” to the list of what the pope dislikes, right under “saving peoples’ lives by embracing condom usage,” and “not being a Nazi.”

Interview with Team Ninja’s Itagaki
In case you weren’t convinced the guy behind the Dead or Alive games has questionable tastes and development practices, here is further evidence. So he gets satisfaction from good reviews but ignores bad ones. He only values reviewers opinions when he likes them, but that’s understandable. The butt-fighting mini-game in Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is based on Japanese game shows Western audiences aren’t familiar with. Still seems stupid, but we’ll chalk it up to cultural differences. At some point in the interview, he says, “Do you think there’s a prettier game out there than the jet-skiing I’ve made for DOAX2?” Even if this is a joke, which it may not be (Team Ninja has traditionally worked with whatever console has the best graphics processing ability), it seems pretty clear he is very happy about how pretty his game is.

Unfortunately, she ran out of money midway through the operation.

If you think his Dead or Alive Xtreme games are games and not graphics demos be sure to read his explanation of how processor intensive the girls hair and clothing were. And this is to say nothing of the real time breast motion engine and box of tissues Itagaki includes in all of his games. We can at least see eye to eye on the necessity of the Wii.

Wii’s Spring release schedule
Oh my. I’ll just reprint the list here so we can be disappointed together:

February 14 — Wii Play (with Wii Remote) / Nintendo
March 27 — Disney’s Meet the Robinsons / Buena Vista
March — Bust-a-Move Bash / Majesco
March — Prince of Persia: Rival Swords / Ubisoft
March — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Ubisoft
March — Bionicle Heroes / Eidos
March — Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII / Ubisoft
Q1 — Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’07 / EA
Q1 — SSX Blur / EA
Q1 — The Godfather: Blackhand Edition / EA
Q1 — Medal of Honor: Vanguard / EA
Q1 — Sonic and the Secret Rings / Sega

Some of these may sell well and appeal to a lot of gamers, but since that’s never prevented me from mocking PSP titles, it won’t stop me here, either. Besides Wii Play, which I’ll get mostly for the controller bundled with it, none of these games really appeal to me. Bust-a-Move may be fun, but I’ve played seventeen thousand other version of the game and can buy most of them for the same $50 it will cost to buy this new one. There’s always a chance Jesus will return to Earth, and then there’s a slightly less likely chance that the new Sonic game will be good. If either of those things happen, I may pick up Sonic and the Secret Rings (for information on why I’d buy a game because of Jesus’ return, see Revelations).