Ubisoft's Red Steel, for the Nintendo Wii.
Nintendo has revealed their launch dates and price for their Wii (pronounced ‘we’) console for North America and Japan. European launch details are expected tomorrow (Friday 15).
It will sell at $249.99 and 25,000 yen (RRP), launching in America on November 19, followed by Japan on December 2. The move is the second Japanese console maker to give a greater focus on the North America. The territory includes the United States, the strongest Xbox market, although among the only market in which the Xbox is doing exceptionally well.
Around 30 titles are expected before the end of the year. The company says their own games will be set at a RRP of $49.99.
Nintendo says that in the US the one wireless remote control-shaped controller, along with one “Nunchuk” controller (both pictured), and what the company terms as the “groundbreaking collection of five different Wii Sports games on one disc”. Wii Sports includes tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing.
Nintendo today also named their menu system as the “Wii Channel Menu”. The firm claims it will make the console “approachable and customizable for everyone”. Besides games the interface will feature the ability to look at news and weather, or to upload and send photos, in a release the company stops short of saying full internet access. The sensors in the PlayStation 3 controllers are more limited, for example can not aim and act more like real aeroplane controllers.
In technical terms the Wii is said to be relatively close to the GameCube. It is not next generation in comparable hardware terms to the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, leaving less of a graphical “jump”; however the central change is the normal controller with built-in sensors, allowing games to be controlled with swings, swipes, aiming, punches, and slices.
The console will have 512 megabytes of internal flash memory, two 2.0 USB ports, built-in Wi-Fi, an SD memory card port, four ports for GameCube controllers, GameCube memory cards slots, and an AV Multi-output port for component, composite or S-video.
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