Nintendo announces new hardware

Wednesday 16th July 2008 - 17:30

New motion controller for the Wii, Miyamoto flattered by Microsoft avatar system and Rise of the Argonauts screens

It has been a busy day at E3, the videogames show in Los Angeles. Nintendo's big announcement came with a slightly sour twist in the tale. First the bad news - there has been no official announcement regarding a follow up to either the Zelda or Mario franchises. All that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata would say to the E3 audience is that "our internal teams that make Mario and Zelda are both hard at work, and will bring new titles to Wii".

However, in a move that took industry spectators by surprise, the veteran console manufacturer vowed to stay one step ahead in the motion-sensor market by introducing the Wii MotionPlus. The new accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player's arm position and orientation, providing the opportunity for much greater control over the cursor. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play. The accessory will come bundled with Wii Sports 2, otherwise known as Wii Sports Resort in Spring 2009.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's legendary games designer Shigeru Miyamoto has responded to yesterday's announcement that Microsoft was all set to launch its very own Avatar system for the Xbox 360 - a direct imitation of the Mii-system on Wii.

In an interview with IGN.com, Miyamoto commented: "I don't really use the term avatar to refer to what we've done with the Miis. We created the Miis with the idea that the people you live with in your house or family, you also live together with inside the TV, and you can use those characters interchangeably in the games you play .To see that a company like Microsoft has taken something we've done and kind of looked at it in a way and brought it out on their platform to kind of show that we've done has become the standard, I find quite flattering. But on the other hand, I think probably the basic ideas behind perhaps those two different systems are different and because of that I think they will probably develop in different ways." Was that the sound of a sideways swipe heading in the direction of Microsoft?