The Nintendo Wii Console Makes #1 On CNET’s Top 10 Must-Haves List

#1 Nintendo Wii 

The Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 may be the only boxes in town for hard-core gamers, but the Wii gets all the bonus points for mass appeal. Nintendo’s generation-transcending console is in high demand, thanks to its revolutionary motion-sensing controller and fun titles.

 CNET’s Top 10 Must-Haves

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This is an excerpt from the Preview of the Nintendo Wii game Spiderman 3 by Eurogamer

You’d almost think the folk at Activision are a bit paranoid to judge by their demo of Spider-Man 3, what with the controller being snatched away at various points and the console getting switched off with a dramatic flourish at the end of the presentation. However, it’s not the folk at Activision who are paranoid, but the folk at Sony Pictures, who are at pains to make sure that no grubby games journalist is going to spill the plot secrets of its forthcoming summer blockbuster. That’s because Spider-Man 3 is, like its predecessors, based closely upon the events in the film.

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Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president Shane Kim Talks about the Nintendo Wii

“…In general, I applaud Nintendo for their success. I think what they’re doing is very important. They’re trying to bring more people into the industry and — objectively speaking — I think it’s Nintendo and Microsoft that are really generating the excitement for the industry. And that’s important for the industry. The fact that Nintendo and Wii have launched strong and that people who are not traditional gamers find excitement in the video game industry is a great thing for the business, and for us as well, since we’re going to compete for that customer segment as well. I don’t view Nintendo as a direct competitor, simply because they’re not trying to do the same things as we are on the higher end — they don’t have the same online aspirations as we do — but Sony and Microsoft really need to compete for that customer segment if we want to get to the mass market and win this generation. Nintendo’s certainly done a lot of great things. That’s more what I think of as what we need to do a better job of as we go after that.

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Surf’s Up is a new animated feature being put out by Sony Pictures Animation. The film takes a mockumentary style approach to the world of surfing, which was apparently invented by penguins. Ubisoft has announced that the game version will be hitting store shelves on September 20th, 2007, the game being worked on by Ubisoft’s Montreal division.

The game focuses on the competetive surfing aspects of the movie. There will be a multiplayer mode, but it is not known if the Wii or DS versions will feature online play. 10 characters from the movie will make an appearance, with more secret characters to follow.

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One of Spore’s developers rants about Nintendo’s “two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape.”

March 7, 2007 - During a session at GDC this morning titled ‘Burning Mad - Game Publishers Rant,’ time was taken about half way through to allow developers a chance to spew their own rants. One speaker, Chris Hecker, currently working on Spore at Maxis, took the opportunity to call out Nintendo for not taken games seriously.

“The Wii is a piece of shit!” Hecker began his talk, which was called “Fear of a Wii Planet.” He blasted a few bars of Public Enemy to set the tone. Hecker said the Wii is nothing more than two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape, and that the console isn’t powerful enough to provide the next-gen experience he has been waiting for.

Although he stated the system is “severely underpowered,” Hecker noted that he wasn’t simply referring to the Wii’s graphical capabilities. He wants to spend a console’s CPU making games more intelligent, and he has found the Wii doesn’t have the power to process things like complicated AI.

Hecker also took Nintendo to task for not taking games seriously enough. “It’s not clear to me that Nintendo gives a shit about games as an art form,” he said. To illustrate his point, he searched for references to games as art on all three console manufacturers web sites. While he found numerous such references on both the official PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sites, Wii.com had none at all. He then shared quotes from executives at Sony and Microsoft talking about games as a serious artistic medium, and then a quote from a Nintendo executive saying the company only wanted to make “fun” games.

Hecker ended his spirited rant with two demands for Nintendo: First, recognize and push games as serious art. And two, “make a console that doesn’t suck ass.”

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Due out this August, eager fans will line up to immerse themselves in the High School Musical phenomenon as Disney Interactive Studios launches a new line of video games on multiple platforms. (more…)

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Thi is an excerpt from the Review of the Nintendo Wii game Sonic And The Secret Rings by AMN

Sonic and the Secret Rings is a fantastic improvement over the recent next-gen Sonic the Hedgehog for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 and a decent step up from the Sonic Adventure titles. Yes, there are some rough spots to be found and a few wrinkles that should have been ironed out, but on the whole this game shows that the Sonic series still has gas in the tank. Players still on the fence about Secret Rings may do well to rent the game before making an investment in it, but anyone who has been yearning for an enjoyable Sonic game should not miss this adventure. After all, the tales of the Arabian Nights are not going to save themselves.

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This is thefact sheet of the upcoming Nintendo Wii game Spiderman 3 (more…)

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THQ confirmed the plans to bring WWE Ready To Rumble game to Nintendo’s Wii systems

Traditionally, THQ hasn’t been shy about spreading its WWE-licensed games around to different platforms. The company has made games based on the professional wrestling company’s in-ring offerings for the PlayStation 2, the N-Gage, and everything in between.

However, 2006 was a fairly light year for the company’s WWE license because its only major offering was WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2007 for the PS2, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360. A PlayStation 3 version had been announced but was later canceled because THQ said the series would debut on Sony’s next-generation system in late ‘07.

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