Not much was known about Artoon-developed “FlingSmash” until the recent Nintendo summit, despite being announced over a year ago. This Wii MotionPlus controlled game invites you to collect power-ups, break blocks and build up your score in side-scrolling levels by controlling a little yellow character.
The game is being published by Nintendo and though there is no solid release date, it is expected in the second half of this year.
Nintendo are happy with sales of the sequel to the highest selling game of all time. Wii Sports Resort has sold more than 500,000 units during it’s first 9 days on sale in North America and has sold about the same in its homeland. Not bad, but not surprising eh?
This is great news for the future of Wii MotionPlus however as the more that are sold, the more the peripheral will be supported in the future.
Hit the link for Nintendo’s press release.
NPD data for June 2009 show sales of the Wii MotionPlus add-on in North America have come mainly from the ‘Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10‘ game bundle of which 205,000 from the 374,000 total sold were part of. That means 164,000 of the $20 peripheral were sold on their own.
This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise seeing as Tiger is the best Wii MotionPlus enabled game out there and a solid EA franchise, however with the launch of Wii Sports Resort we imagine sales of the add-on will be boosted at a much higher rate than Tiger can achieve.
The excellent golf game sold a total 272,400 copies and only 67,400 of those were for the game on its own.
As many of you know, High Voltage Software, the developers behind ‘The Conduit’, ‘Gladiator A.D’ and ‘The Grinder’ are supporting the Wii’s core base more so than your average developer. They are excited about the Wii MotionPlus peripheral saying that there is much more potential to come from the add-on, which is probably more than true considering there are only a handful of games that use it so far.
“I think it’s fantastic. We’re all about accessible gameplay and Wii MotionPlus is a further step in that direction.” said Cameron Rains, producer at HVS to Official Nintendo Magazine.
So should we expect to see support for Wii MotionPlus in their future games?
If, like us, you’ll be one of the millions of people around the world playing Wii Sports Resort this summer, you might want to see some more of the game in action. Well that’s good as that’s exactly what we have above, more flying footage.
While we hold out hope that Nintendo are hard at work with a follow-up to Pilotwings 64 for the Wii, the likelyhood is that we’ll have to make do with the flying mini-game in Wii Sports Resort, at least for the time being. Let’s hope that there is a way to fly around without the 5 minute time limit as seen on the video as part of the charm of Pilotwings was messing around with no restrictions.
Wii Sports Resort is out next month in the west with the Wii MotionPlus peripheral.
1Up had some time with Wii Sports Resort recently and this video shows the ‘Freefalling In Airsport‘ part of the game being controlled with the wiimote being held like a paper aeroplane.
Looking at this makes us wonder why there isn’t a fully fledged new Pilotwings for the Wii. Maybe Nintendo are working on it!?
Those lucky guys and girls over in the land of the rising sun, or Japan as I like to call it, might be getting their hands on a sky blue wiimote, nunchuck and Wii MotionPlus all wrapped up in Nintendo safety plastic rubber! I say ‘might‘ as the blue beauties are not being sold but rather given away by Nintendo, 5000 of them.
All you need to do to be in with a chance of grabbing one (apart from being in Japan!) is to buy Wii Sports Resort, register the code between June 25th to August 31st on the Japanese Club Nintendo and keep your fingers crossed you get lucky.
Though it would be great if the rest of the world got the same or a similar promotion, I wouldn’t hold your breath!
Source: Nintendo Japan (via GoNintendo)
Now that all three console makers have revealed their plans for motion control on their respective consoles, you may be wondering how different they all are and what advantages they have over each other.
Wii MotionPlus is adding 1:1 accuracy to the wiimote, a function that gamers have really wanted from the beginning. Sony have developed similar tech to Nintendo with an added camera, however there are still many questions to be answered by Sony, not least a final design, price and release date. Microsoft have decided not to imitate Nintendo like Sony have and rather be innovative themselves with what many see as an advancement over the wiimote.
Thatvideogameblog have dissected all three technologies and given their view on the possible pro’s and con’s for each motion sensing peripheral.
First let’s look at Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus…
We recently posted some videos of the Archery, Swordplay, Golf, Frisbee and Power Cruising from the upcoming Wii Sports Resort and we now have some more showing Cycling, Sky Diving/Airplane, Basketball, Canoeing, Kendo and Wake Boarding.
To me this is looking much more varied than the original Wii Sports and with the accuracy of Wii MotionPlus it is sure to be crowned King of Wii sports games this summer.
Head inside for all the videos or see the originals here.
Today marks the day that the first Wii MotionPlus enabled game hits the shelves. In the U.S. anyway.
EA’s ‘Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10′ and ‘Grand Slam Tennis’ are now available with enhanced one-to-one motion control that will set the bar for sports games of the future and accuarcy previously unseen in a videogame so far.
Grand Slam Tennis is out in Europe June 12th and Tiger Woods follows July 12th, both bundled with the Wii MotionPlus peripheral.
Full press releases from EA are inside.
We have some new Wii Sports Resort trailers showing much more gameplay footage than the trailer we saw earlier from Nintendo.
Archery is above and we have Swordfighting, Frisbee, Power Cruising and the new Golf after the link.
Though a new Zelda for Wii was widely thought to be making an appearance at E3, nothing was shown at the conference. Miyamoto did briefly talk about it in a video interview, saying the devlopment teams are “working very hard“.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that because I’m making two Marios now I have to make two Zeldas as well. Mr. Aonuma’s team has been working very hard, continuously. So yeah I’ve just been really busy, we do have so many games that we are working on at once. Fortunately I’m still having a lot of fun, it’s been particularly, recently, it’s been great to be as involved as I have been with New Super Mario Bros…”
He also believes that the new game is proving to be a more challenging than you may think.
“There are people who think of Zelda more as an RPG with simpler controls, so trying to figure out how to make everybody happy is something that’s going to concern me.”
Miyamoto goes on to explain that the new Zelda will likely support Wii MotionPlus and drew comparisons with Wii Sports Resort Archery.
Nin-ten-do.com