Hi, this question is a followup to another question you had in this week's mailbag sent by 'Jonathan' about EA Sports games such as NCAA Football and NASCAR, asking why they are coming to other platforms, including PS3 and Xbox, and not Wii. Your answer was that the Wii audience was limited, and to not "expect to see the bulk of them until the system gets near the 10 million mark in the States". Then WHY ON EARTH are they slated for the PS3?! As far as I know, the PS3 audience is even more limited than the Wii, and is a whole lot further from the 10 million mark than the Wii! The fact that they are announced for the PS3 sorta negates your own answer to 'Jonathan', don't you think?

- Piper 13
Montreal, Qc

Don't think that the PS3, 360 and Wii are all completely separate platforms. The reason why you see so many multiplatform games announced for PS3 and Xbox 360, and not Wii, is because the PS3 and the 360 are essentially similar. The cost of porting a 360 game to the PS3 is nothing compared to the cost of developing a Wii-specific version on vastly underpowered hardware. That might sound backwards from what we know about comparative development costs between the Wii and PS3, but that comparison only applies when making a game from scratch, specifically for that platform. Porting a game over to a similar system only adds about 10% to the total development cost, a price that can easily be recouped because of the game's availability on another console.

In that same light, the Wii and PS2 are similar systems. If companies wanted to do so, it could port over PS2 versions of its games to Wii. And a lot of publishers have done just that. However, the problem is with the Wii's unique control interface. As we've seen with many Wii ports, not including a reasonable Wii control scheme severely degrades the quality of a game. Sales figures have shown that these bad conversions do not sell well on Wii (ask Ubisoft about that). Publishers have realized that unless they produce a proper Wii version with real Wii controls, it wouldn't be worth the resources needed to re-tool PS2 games and make them work fluidly on Nintendo's console. Again, this sounds backwards from what we know about Wii development costs. But the fact is, no matter how cheap it is to make Wii games, what's the point if no one will buy them?

As I said in the last mailbag a couple of weeks ago, NCAA Football and NASCAR will head to Wii eventually. I'm more surprised that NASCAR isn't already on Wii, but not so much about NCAA Football. EA understands that it won't be worth it to itself, or to fans, to release a half-assed Wii version. People would probably buy them if they came out with versions this year, but the majority would take the “wait until next year" stance and not plunk down the 50 clams. I know I did with Madden 07. There will come a point in the Wii's life cycle, either this year or the year after, where Electronic Arts will see that the audience on Wii is large enough to where spending the money and time to have one of its studios build a real Wii version of those franchises will be worth it. EA has taken unprecedented steps to make this happen with at least three of its top sports franchises already. The rest will come in due time.

Hey guys,

I've been reading all these articles across various websites about Nintendo's "unveiling" of their "new upcoming" WiiWare service which will provide new games in '08. I'm just curious, what's your take on this? I mean, the WiiWare section has been part of the Wii Shop Channel since launch, can it really be considered "new"? Granted, its lineup of software has been scarce and so far it offers only two titles-- neither of which can be considered actual "games", but it has been there all along. Plus, Nintendo's made it clear from the start that they would be offering low budget original games in the WiiWare section. It even specifically said so on one of the pages in the Wii Shop Channel itself at one point. With that in mind, why is it that everyone's making such a buzz about this amazing news? All the websites are treating it like huge news, and half of them are calling it a new "channel" even though their own descriptions further on in their articles make it clear that it's not. It seems pretty clear to me that this is merely Nintendo's crafty way of announcing their original Wii Shop content they've been promising has been delayed until next year, which I can easily understand-- they certainly don't want it to sound like a negative. But what I don't understand is why none of these sites are calling Nintendo out on this. If I noticed it, these sites had to have noticed too don't you think? Yet, they all seem to be going along with Nintendo's positive spin. Could Nintendo be paying all these sites for the positive press or is everyone really just too ignorant to notice? What do you think?

- Brad

This announcement is really nothing more than a confirmation of details about the Wii Ware portion of the Wii Shop Channel. We all knew it was coming, but didn't know when and in what capacity. Then Nintendo announced that the first downloadable indie games will be available in early 2008. While it's fine for people to get excited about it now that we have a time frame, I think the timing of the announcement is what caught a lot of people out on this.

To the point, why announce this development, which is really not anything terribly earth-shattering, a few weeks before E3? It took some convincing from other staffers, but I now realize that it was just to build a little pre-show hype and to make sure people knew about this before it got lost in the impending wave of news that will be coming out of the show. People are claiming that Nintendo is set to announce some sort of Wii hard drive add-on using the “announcement" of Wii Ware games as evidence— circumstantial evidence. I doubt it will announce such a device because at the show it would make little sense to a) tell people that it is effectively raising the price of the Wii for a peripheral that only a small percentage of Wii owners would actually need, and b) tell us about something that won't be arriving until next year at an event that is supposed to showcase Nintendo's lineup for the rest of this year.

I'm sure a Wii memory expansion device, be it a “hard drive" or something else, will rear its head eventually. But I don't think it'll be this year. And I think this Wii Ware affirmation is the red herring behind it all.

What do you think the benefit of using the blog style rather than Melee's info fest will do for Brawl. I mean, I like it and love the fact that they have RSS, but there really isn't enough info coming to signify a July release, so I'm sure they're holding out till November. Even by then, there's no that much info coming. With everything in the game, it looks like they're holding a LOT back and could quite possibly still hit for July/August when most people still have time to play the game.

By the info fest, I mean how you guys did all the game previewing and impressions. I think that might've also been how I came across the originally green PGC.

- Saturn2888
Kansas (Populated Area)

At first it seemed like an awful waste. Nintendo was just trickling out boring information that we already knew about, and although we knew it would run out of old stuff eventually, at the time there wasn't much to it. But now that we're getting closer to E3 the blog updates have gotten a lot more interesting. Details on the controls, final smashes, Bowser (holy crap Bowser) and other assorted goodies have gotten me extremely excited about the game. It almost makes up for the fact that Smash won't be playable at the show this week. Almost.

But therein lies the beauty of the blog. Yeah, it's a bummer that I can't school people in SSBB at E3. But it doesn't need to be playable at the show. (In fact, I'm glad it's not at the show. If it was, I doubt anyone would get anything done during the week.) There will in all likelihood be a new Brawl trailer debuting at E3—that's a forgone conclusion that I think a lot of people haven't realized as of yet—and don't be shocked or stunned if we see a certain new third-party character show up in it. Once that trailer hits the Smash Bros. Dojo, Nintendo can just increase the awesome level of the daily updates until it's ready to show off the near-final build to the press a month or two before the game's release in November or December. Or Nintendo can go for it all and make it playable to the public at E4All in October.

No matter how much stuff winds up on the blog, it will only be a small percentage of the amount of content in the final game. That's a scary thought.

My brother is a casual gamer. He loves Wiisports, wiiplay and thinks Brain Academy is ok.

Now he wants to buy Mario party 8 because it looks "fun and cool". I tell him that its a game that will be boring for only 1 player since he RARELY has people over to play wii. He won't listen to reviews stating that it sucks because "casual gamers are different so reviews mean nothing".

So for a casual gamer would you recommend Mario Party 8? Someone who has NEVER played any of the previous mario party games so its totally new to them.

- adv2k1

I am, of course, obligated to point you in the direction of our Mario Party 8 review. But you obviously already know that it's not too good of a game, which is why you're trying to prevent your brother from getting it.

But why? If he thinks it's a game that he wants to play, and still thinks so after hearing it from you, why stop him? If he buys it and winds up enjoying it, then you're a jerk for trying to deny him a game he may have a good time with. If he winds up buying it and not enjoying it, it's his own fault for not listening to his brother in the first place. Maybe he'll actually listen to you next time, too.

It's a win-win for you.

So...what's going on with e3? Why has it been delayed two months? Why is there zero hype this year? I know they said the show would be restructured, but that doesn't explain the total lack of interest in the show - isn't this when we find out the existence of hitherto unknown games from all our favorite developers? Alternative expos are usually smaller or limited to one company. Nu?

-eli b.
Brooklyn, NY

The lack of E3 hype is due to a few factors, I feel. First up, we really don't know what to expect with the show. In the past we all looked forward to the spectacle that was the Los Angeles Convention Center decked out from top (the skyscraper-height banner ads) to bottom (oh, Kentia Hall, how we will miss thee!), filled with booth babes, celebrity events, awesome games and a carnival atmosphere. The show was a lot of fun to attend, even if it was backbreaking work for people that were there with a job to do. So far, the new format is looking to be a sterilized version of its former self, with everything kept to strict appointments and timetables. Honestly, people can't get hyped for the unknown. That's really what the new E3 is—an unknown to the people attending (media and companies both) and the people who will be watching.

A lot of it also has to do with the fact that most of the people getting excited for previous shows were the ones slated to attend. Last year's E3 attendance was over 60,000. This year it's going to be 4,000. That's 56,000 people who aren't going to care that they can't play the latest Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games themselves. Downsizing the show that much will automatically downsize the hype by a similar degree. There's no escaping that.

However, people should start to realize that E3 is indeed this week, and the excitement will hit people quickly and suddenly. As I write this we're less than 48 hours from the Microsoft E3 press conference and Sony's media-exclusive Killzone 2 showing. Wednesday morning is when it hits the fan for us on the Nintendo side. I actually wasn't excited about the show until this weekend when I realized that E3 is kind of an exclusive club now, and we've been privileged enough to be invited to cover it. There will be many surprises, just like any other year, and we're happy to be bringing them to our million-plus site visitors this week. I hope you'll all tune in!