This blog post claims that, The Sadness (Wii) has no longer it’s developer team and we aren’t going to see anything from NIBRIS team in a long, long time after this. I’m the last surprised person after reading this, I knew this kind of thing will happen with this game because it had the usual “Prey/DukeNukem 3D-2″ signs all over it.

Hi FRONTLINE Studios; NIBRIS claims that you are programming the game called Sadness for the Nintendo Wii. […] I was just wondering if you can confirm that you
are programming the game Sadness for NIBRIS and can for a fact say that the game is not fake.

And, what the good people of FRONTLINE studios answered to this question? Well, here it is:

Hello Ryan, I can confirm that FRONTLINE is no longer interested in developing Sadness game based on Nibris’ concept, and also Nibris is not authorized to claim
anything on behalf of FRONTLINE.

Best regards,
Marcin Machel

Now, this is true sadness. People, start learning that you don’t disclosure your game idea until you have at least, 90% of the development completed; then you can come out and scream your idea to the world, but if you just have some concepts to show, people like our friend Ryan here that emailed FRONTLINE Studios will get angry and make too many questions; questions that could damage your reputation as developers and your future as a company. And Ryan is right, he is right to ask all the questions he wants, because he wants to know if the game is going out for true or he will end up, like many others, waiting for something that a) won’t be close to his expectations or b) won’t come out at all. Now, they will have a hard time getting something published again after this (that’s my point of view, I hope they get more of their games published! but it might become hard!)

Gamers are the only people developers should satisfy, not publishers. Games, need to be made FOR gamers; not for publishers or for the press. Hey, keep the spirit up, everyone; everybody! new games are still about to come!

Nintendo made the Wiimote with accessories capabilities, but there are just a few companies out there taking advantage of the great world of accessories, the reason; you need to keep developing games for specific accessories, and if the game you developed isn’t a success story then your accessory won’t make any sells either… But the good news is that there is still companies with big cojones, like Taito; the old mother of games has a great accessory for the Wiimote; a train control panel (yup, and it looks excellent). Here, have a look at this video showing it!:

There are some rumors that Capcom Entertainment is about to come up with a Soccer accessory, it may happen sooner than we expected! stay tunned!

I just read from Cubed3 that at the Nibris forums the people behind The Sadness is answering some questions from time to time about this “when-it’s-coming” game. We all know the dangers of announcing a game when it’s not even completed at %1; this can result into a lost of interest by most of the gamers or high expectations.

If you don’t believe me, just read this comments people left at Cubed3 site:

“This is sounding brilliant. I can tell it’ll probably mess up my mind when I play it but heck, I don’t care. It sounds great.”

“Orchestrated music?!?! HUZZA!! Do we know who’s composing??”

“Very nice news! I can’t wait for that trailer now!”

And the list goes on and on… people is taking this game too seriously and, the seem to expect being blowed up of their chairs. Cubed3d said “Graphics wise - the game will incorporate plenty of fog effects during gameplay, and when asked how close the concept screenshots would look to in-game, the company’s response, pleasingly, was, near. Very near.”. It sounds like someone may be doing promises they won’t be able to keep! but let’s wait and see what will happen. We already saw a lots of “prey” and “duke nukem 3D’s” during our past gamer’s years to be excited about some weird announcement someone did on the air.

Best case? well, if you ask me, I would say they are running like crazy to have at least a functional bug-free demo where they can meet 10% of the player’s expectations, then they will throw it to some cool editor who is going to make the trailer look like if it were going to be the last game for Wii. After that, we will wait another year and hopefully, we will have the game and then, it won’t be as super as everyone expected, it will be just another game but with a minor features that by then, everyone else will be having too.

But, that’s old gammer talking. Let’s the new generation learn from their own history! In the meanwhile, here is some new artowrk for the Wii Game, The Sadness.

Update: it appears that Nibris said to Cubed3 web site they will be releasing a trailer much more sooner they expected and they will be handling it to them (the Cubed3 people). The trailer will be sent this year and the game will be set to launch no later than 2008; that means November-December people, if not first months of 2008.

Just two days after we did the Wii/PS3 comparsion that nobody could ever read, because we just opened the doors and people isn’t yet reading this blog; Ken Kutaragi, the Playstation creator announced his retirement from Sony. I think it was obvious this would have to happen; Nintendo not just burst into the market by surprise, but also made Ken so sad he retired from Sony; and if you ask me, I would say “good for you Ken, that’s a very honorable gesture.” We need more people like Ken, when you didn’t made it work properly, step down and leave another guy have it’s chance; you can always come back later ALA Steve Jobs and make a hit; but you need to recognize your errors and step down. Good for him, really.

Here’s the whole Press release (via Destructoid)

TOKYO, JAPAN, April 26, 2007 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) and Sony Corporation (Sony) have jointly announced today that Ken Kutaragi, Representative Director, Chairman and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., will retire from his executive position at SCEI effective June 19, 2007, when SCEI’s annual shareholders’ meeting will take place. Mr. Kutaragi will pass on the torch to the next generation, stepping back from his executive management responsibility of the company to serve as Honorary Chairman of SCEI. With his deep and instinctive insight into future technology, Mr. Kutaragi will also continue to support Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and CEO, Sony Corporation, as senior technology advisor.
(Keep Reading the rest!)

Nintendo DS and the new Nintendo Wii are the most affordable consoles on the market; they graphics aren’t “Next-Gen” or they games being specially developed by a team of 900 developers by six years, and yet, they are selling more consoles in short time than any of their competitors; it’s the end of the Next-Gen consoles?

Currently, the big boss is the Nintendo DS with 508,000 sales only in america; and the Nintendo Wii is on third place with almost 260,000 consoles sold in March 2007. The Nintendo DS, a system with a poor 3D capability (let’s face it, isn’t the greatest 3D you will see in your life) and a full 2D engine with 2 screens, one of them touch sensitive has replaced Playstation 2 leaving it at second place with 280,000 sales that month. In economy, numbers are the king, they tell economists and business owners what is happening and predict what is going to happen; there is no “sure” prediction of course, but you can get a fair idea of what is going to happen in the next two years.

Everyone less the Electronic Arts Boss who recentyle decraled at the gamesindustry.biz online magazine the following:

Look at the price in two years’ time, and then you can say whether it’s too high”

said Gerhard Florin. He also said “I wouldn’t make any judgements within the next two years” (I’m sure he won’t!) .

Next Generaton Games are being developed in every Game Studio across the world; some people will try to burn me for what I’m going to say, but I think next-gen games aren’t about how many poligons a console can handle, or how big the textures can be, gosh! it isn’t even about the lights or physics you can add to it; it’s about the gameplay. But let’s go back to the facts and see how well the Wii is going, and why is going that well.
(Keep Reading the rest!)

No more Beautiful Katamari? after being announced it was called off?

Katamari Damacy (We love Katamari!) is one of the greatest game for the Playstation 2 console. The game’s plot concerns a tiny prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations and Moon, which his father has accidentally destroyed. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to schoolchildren to mountains, until the ball has grown large enough to become a star. The game falls under both the puzzle and action game genres, since strategy as well as dexterity are needed to complete a mission. Everyone by know knows the Katamari Damacy line of video games; I’m sure of that.

It was announced for the NDS by the Nintendo Power magazine a while ago, but months and months have passed and still, we don’t see the prince rolling his Katamari anywhere close…

The director of Beautiful Katamari, Jun Moriwaki made an interesting comment recently and from that comment we can think they are expecting to come up with Katamari for the Nintendo Wii (basically, he express his willing to be challenged by the Nintendo Wiimote).

So we can sit tight and wait for Katamari to come up on the Nintendo Wii, but the future isn’t that bright for the DS system… it might be too much 3D for the little fellow. We hope we can see Katamari Damacy on the DS.

Won $499 USD executing the Linux operating system on a Wii

This must be the craziest contest I ever seen! The group of developers behind WiiLi (Wii Linux) challenges any developer to create a LiveCD of linux to be executed on a Nintendo Wii console without breaking the original system security on the Wii; they even made a first draft of the rules to be followed on their website; which includes:

• Boot Linux on the Nintendo Wii without voiding the warranty.
• Using attached hardware on USB, etc, is fine, as long it is documented what it does and where to obtain/build it.
• Wiimote, keyboard, mouse, dvd drive, sd-card and network support.
• Youtube video and how-to.

The WiiLi could be used to browse the web, send emails, write docs and maybe play games that aren’t made for the Wii; but if you ask me I think they are just making it for fun :_)

Let’s hope someone come with that soon!