Nintendo Flagging Big Announcement Today

Nintendo are gearing up to some big announcements later today, setting up a special E3 website to cover their hot news.

The revelations are likely to be centred on their new Wii motion plus controller, a dongle that attaches to the bottom of your wii-mote to provide extra 3D information to the console. We will keep Knitware readers up to date with developments as they happen. read full post »

The average age of a gamer is 31.  The increasing age of gamers has served to make gaming a mass market pass time.  Gaming is now a channel through which any age audience can be reached - Adults play casual games, young kids are playing on their DS, and families use the Wii.  But what of the teen generation?  For teens, new consoles are still expensive but their old consoles (PS2 / original Xbox) are too out of date to be of interest.  So, what are they playing?  Is gaming still a way to reach them too?  You’ll be surprised…

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Everything changes. 10 years ago who would have thought pubs would be smoke-free, Def Leppard would release their new single via a console game (seriously, it’s being released via Guitar Hero) before it hits the shops, and the mass market would be embracing gaming especially a games console where you wave your arms about? So, could the video arcade be the next great social meeting place?

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It was announced yesterday that BBC’s iPlayer will soon be available on the Wii (having already been rolled out to iPhone and iTouch - all the iProducts sticking together).  I read the anouncement and thought “Wow”, then thought I can watch TV on my, er, TV.  So, I thought, “Hmm”, then I thought having Internet sites that deliver TV programs fed to your TV is the best place for them as they’re at the centre of your entertainment set-up at home, so I thought, “Wow”.  Then I thought, “But not many Wii’s are actually set-up to connect wirelessy compared to say over 70% of Xbox 360s and 40% of PS3s, so I thought “Hmm”.  Is this “Wow” or “Hmm”?  Help me out…

I was in Game recently looking at all the accessories you can get for the Wii: the steering wheel, golf club, tennis racquet, shotgun, crossbow, fishing rod, the list goes on… But mostly these are simple extensions of the Wiimote; they don’t actually do anything. However the ‘balance board’ is coming to the UK and proves to step up beyond the capabilities of Wiimote prosthetics.

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The increase in self-improvement games on the Nintendo DS shows no signs of slowing. Just on their own Nintendo has a large stable and the list is becoming increasingly unusual:

Brain Training - fine
More Brain Training - naturally
Sight Training - okay
Face Training - getting weird now…

But, just when you thought Face Training DS (a Japanese game which tells you how to move your face and uses a camera to judge your perfromance) could not be topped for weirdness, Nintendo have released Common Sense Training DS. Thing is if you have no common sense to start, the result is that it’s unlikely you’ll think it a good thing to buy the game to increase it.

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