E3 Day 1 Coverage: Sony & Nintendo

Nintendo

In case you missed it, Wii is the name of Nintendo's next-gen console. I'll try to stay away from comments, such as "Are you ready to play with your Wii (pronounced 'we,' as in you and I - we)?" The company spent its time heavily promoting both Wii and its upcoming DS Lite handheld, which launches here on June 11^th. The booth design was elegant, but we were surprised to not see any Wii units available on the show floor. There was a line attendees had to join to see and touch the hardware. It was a very long line that became longer yet once the show floor opened to non-press attendees at 11am. Some folks spent 3 hours in line just to get their hands on what they hoped would one day be their Wii.

Booth Shot	Booth Shot 2	Wii Logo	Waiting Hours For Wii
These Frames Can Talk!	The Voice Behind Mario	Almost In	Conduct an Orchestra
The Wii Motion Sensor	What a small console	Wii and Remote	Wii Controllers

The Wii itself is diminutive in size. It will easily fit into some small nook by a TV. The box on display was iPod white and looks simple, but classy. Nintendo wants its products to appeal to non-gamers and the Wii does look (visually) user-friendly. The controllers in the pictures look nice. The nun-chuck add on along with the more conventional looking controller both look elegant and classy. I didn't get to play with the more conventional looking controller but took a few games for a spin with the nun-chuck controller, including Madden 2007, Wii Tennis, Wii Fishing, and Super Mario Galaxy.  Yes, it did work, but I expect a lengthy learning curve will be required for first-person shooters. And I imagine prancing around with a controller to play may be offensive to some. Then again, that's what curtains are for. We'll find out how successful Nintendo's controller innovation will be when it launches later this year (by Q4).

Wii Nunchuck!	More Controllers	How To: Madden on Wii	Madden in Action
Wii Tennis Action Shot	Not That There's anything wrong with that	Trying to get out!	Wii Virtual Console, for playing older titles.

I managed to get a closer look at Unreal Tournament 2007 and John Woo's Stranglehold along the way. UT2007 features the new Unreal 3 engine and looked fantastic, but Stranglehold didn't grab me with same enthusiasm as the presenter. Still, it's early and there's plenty of time left to make this an A-list game. More tomorrow. Time to pay ridiculous dollars for small portions of nasty food with long lines to pay...

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