The folks at Epic Games certainly haven't been shy to make their feelings about the Wii known in the past, but company president Michael Capps took things up a few more notches in a recent interview with IGN, with him not only once again bemoaning the Wii's underpowered hardware, but even going so far as to compare the console to a "virus." You can find Capps' complete musings on the matter at the link below, but the short of it is that he thinks the Wii maintains its success by building on a chain reaction of sorts, with one person buying the console only to get tired of it two months later, but not before they showed it to someone else, who also though it was cool and went out and bought one, and also got bored with it a couple of months later, and so on and so on. Capps does add, however, that there's obviously "a class of people who really love it and enjoy it and are getting into the games," but that he's waiting for "that one game that makes me play it," and that "maybe Wii Fit will be it." That apparently still doesn't mean you can expect to see any games from Epic on the Wii, however, with Capps flatly saying that "we go forward, not back."

[Via Wii Fanboy]

So it looks like the family of that California woman who died of water intoxication after participating in a radio station-sponsored contest will only be able to find the justice they seek in civil, and not criminal, court, as the Sacramento County district attorney has decided not to file charges against 107.9 The End or any of its employees (or ex-employees, as the case may be, since many were fired as a result of the January 12th incident). In a statement released to the press, D.A. Jan Scully argued that 28-year-old single mom Jennifer Strange knew exactly what she was getting into when she signed up to compete for that Wii, and that her lack of symptoms while chugging down those two gallons of water relieved station employees of any culpability. Of course the Strange family still has the opportunity to hit The End's owner, Entercom, where it hurts, when they face the company in court to seek what will likely be millions of dollars over Strange's alleged wrongful death. Now we're no lawyers, but we've watched enough courtroom dramas to feel confident opining on the finer points of the law, and we're predicting a quiet out of court settlement here -- because even if jurors believe that the DJ's lacked malicious intent and took the proper precautions, the fact that they come off like callous buffoons during the broadcast should be enough to convince the defense that a trial is not the best option.

[Via digg]

As of writing, there's still a few hours to go until the day that pranksters worldwide like to call their own. Unfortunately that doesn't mean we get to escape from the droll task of reporting on outlandish and suspect game console rumors. This latest one is the most unlikely example we've seen for a while and it's not just the claimed features that stir our suspicions. The premise of the "Wii-volution" rumor is that Nintendo is on the verge of releasing a version of the Wii with an HDMI port and a 160GB Hard Disk Drive integrated into the base of the console. The evidence is an extremely pixelated and blurry photo which points to something on the panel of a black Wii. We're just speculating here, but we think that model could potentially be a developer's kit. And with that, we already feel stupid for in any way taking this kind of half hearted rumor seriously. Hopefully, tomorrow's efforts will be a lot more convincing.

Update: Not that we needed to tell you this, but the original source of the image suggests that this is definitely fake.

As some early Wii adopters have discovered, the Wii's sensor bar turns out to be far less complicated than it seems at first glance, consisting of nothing more than a couple of standard IR emitters, with that lengthy cord cluttering up your living room supplying nothing but a trickle of power to the device. While even a couple of standard TV remotes can serve as a substitute in a pinch, for a more workable wireless solution you'll have to bring your DIY skills to bear. Thankfully, as Brian "DoctaBu" Moore explains on his LiveJournal, the process is about as simple as homebrew projects get, requiring only an inexpensive trip to Radio Shack and some minimal soldiering abilities. While it ain't pretty, the contraption pictured above will let you enjoy a game of Wii Sports bowling (at your own risk) and rid one more wire from your life at the same time. Of course, if you're still hesitant to get your hands dirty, you can bet that there'll be more than a few third-party (if not first-party) options finding their way to store shelves before too long.

The Nintendo Wii might max out at a 480p resolution, but plenty of HDTV owning gamers will be picking one up at launch. Unfortunately, component cables for the console (not included -- although even some high priced consoles don't have them either) won't be available on store shelves at launch either. With the cables not listed as arriving until December at popular videogame retailers, the only sure option is to order now from Nintendo's website and spend extra on shipping. If you're asking yourself why cables are so important when the system is at best EDTV anyway, remember the lessons learned from the last generation. PlayStation 2 and Xbox games (and other sources) are considerably clearer on HDTVs when using component connections as compared to S-Video or composite cables, and early reviews of the Wii show the same trend. Remember, friends don't let friends game in 480i.

Read - Wii component cables available online now, in stores December 5
Read - PSA: Use the right cables for your TV

As any console launch date draws near, you can usually count on one thing happening: being able to test out that fresh new machine at your local Wally World, whether or not they have any in stock, and regardless of whether you can actually afford to take one home. However, when November 19th rolls around, you're likely to be stuck demoing the oh-so-coveted PlayStation 3 all by its lonesome. It's being reported that Wal-Mart will not have its usual demo station for the Nintendo Wii for simple safety concerns over the fling-fests that could inevitably ensue. While it's certainly not a stretch to envision how quickly a Wii Sports battle could morph into a full-fledged spat, the world's largest retailer is apparently playing it safe by keeping those untethered Wiimotes out of the unpredictable hands of youngsters (and us not-so-young folk, too). Although the corporate giant won't answer its phone and the big N refuses to comment on rumors, our pals over at Joystiq were able to confirm the lack of pre-planned demo space for the Wii in the Q4 store layouts. So while you might not have much luck trying out the Wii at your nearest 24-hour SuperCenter, you can rest assured it'll be available -- along with those questionably priced accessories -- for purchase.

Yeah, so we already know most, if not all, of the gory details, but we're here live in New York for Nintendo's US press conference for the Wii anyway. We'll have updates on the regular, stay tuned!

9:20AM EST - Perrin Kaplan is on stage doing an introduction.
9:21AM - Reggie! He walks on, "We will reveal all the relevant information for the Wii." "Today marks our next planned step in driving this industry forward."

9:23AM - "Our strategy is based on one core belief: brining gaming back to the masses. It's literally that simple. Appealing to current gamers as well as broadening the market. Four landmarks we've brought to market. Today marks the fifth. The first, the Nintendo DS."

9:26AM - "How we changed the user interface, with two screens, voice activated microphone, changed the definition of what a video game could be. 2nd: Introduction of touch-sensitive games. Nintendogs, Brain Age. DS supplements your life instead of replacing it. Is it working? Definitely. New Super Mario Bros. exclusively for DS. Sold to 1M players in less than two weeks. What's driving growth are new players enjoying new types of games. In past four months, New Super Mario Bros. represents 35% of first party sales. Touch-generation represents 39% of sales."

9:27AM - "So far in 2006 everyone is pleased with industry revenue growth at 8%. Nintendo DS is up 142% over last year. Take away DS, industry only at 2% growth. Nintendo WiFi Connection is the 3rd. 4th, the Wii controller."

9:29AM - "The Wii Remote. The reaction has been astounding. The 5th step is today. We're not just altering the interface between player and game, but in the household. Here's the hard news: Wii November 19th, worldwide debut happens right here in the Americas, same place as Nintendo DS. On Nov. 19th, avail. in 25,000 retailers in the Americas."

9:30AM - "MSRP: $249. One price, one config, one color: white. This simplicity allows us to maximize volume throughout the Americas. Our shipment goal worldwide is 4M consoles during the 43 days between launch and Dec 31. The Americas will receive the largest share, a continuous flow of units." Continued...

Take this one with the usual grain of salt, but the latest Wii rumor making the rounds is that the some Wii games will feature "advanced" voice recognition, adding a whole new way to make a fool of yourself while swinging a remote control around the room. The news comes from a so-called "trusted person" on IGN's Insider forums, who's apparently been spot on about Wii deets in the past. According to the source, the system converts speech to text that can be sent to other players, even detecting the tone, pitch, and volume of your voice and adjusting the font size and color accordingly. As you'd expect, much of the initial support will apparently come from first-party Nintendo titles, in particular those aimed at a younger audience. The source also says that the system will employ wireless head-mounted microphones, and drops one other interesting tidbit, saying that some Wii and DS peripherals will be compatible with each other. More on this as we get it, but somehow after everything Wii thus far we'd like to think this one might be workable.

We've heard enough Wii launch dates by now to fairly flesh out a fall calendar, but the rumors just keep coming. A pre-Thanksgiving launch in America is the only official word we've got to go on so far, but IGN is seeing all sorts of clues that point to an earlier release. For starters, lots of big-name publishers are promising Wii titles in mid-to-late October, and they're going to need a console to play on. Then there is the November 2 crowd and the November 12 types, which seem to be the main dates floating around currently, in spite of the fact that November 6th used to be a favored date, and we've heard things as wild as October and late September. All the same, most of IGN's sources seem to be settling on a $229 pricetag, with around five million units in black and white due to be available by the end of the year. The latest hard fact out of Nintendo on all this is that they're planning to release the Wii in Brazil the first week of December for 1,400–1,500 Brazilian reais (around $640–$690 USD). We're not sure if this is a slip by Nintendo's Latin American distributor, or just a clever ploy to throw us off the scent, but what we do know is that Nintendo will most likely announce launch deets before they release their console, so the window to take such an action is narrowing by the day!

Read - IGN rumors on Wii release
Read - Wii due in Latin America early December

Alright, we briefed y'all on what we knew so far about the Wii controller early this morning, but now that we've gotten our paws on the Wiimote itself, we wanted to let you know how it is in the flesh. Nintendo and millions of fanboys are betting a lot on this concept, and Nintendo itself said that "playing is believing" every other sentence of their keynote, so the real question is: do we believe?

The short answer is that we're just not sure yet. The first chance we got with the Wii was for a golfing game (the shortest line we found, go fig) and as soon as we got our hands on the Wiimote we knew it was something special. We slipped the wrist lanyard on so we didn't fling the remote across the room, and held in our hands the light weight, ergonomic, and simply beautiful controller. If this was as far as we'd gotten we would have gone home happy. The controller allows plenty of leverage for the trigger "b" and the large "a" button, and only slipped out of our hand once from a particularly aggressive sword strike in "Red Steel." Click on for the rest.

Almost lost among the hubbub of Sony's keynote extravagance was a little forum-derived rumor about Nintendo's Wii. It claims to be based on an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly with Zelda on the cover and a whole lot of Nintendo gems inside, including a purported $250 launch price. The tipster hasn't shown any scans of the magazine's actual content, but he did manage to get a picture of the magazine's cover up on the forum after work, so our legit-ness meter is looking pretty good. Along with the console price, and screenshots of Monkey Ball, Tony Hawk, Rayman and Red Steel, he mentions the Virtual Console gaming, Wii-remote tech, and some vaguely defined "ALWAYS online" functionality (the console is always hooked to the Internets, even when off). There's also a supposed built-in speaker in the controller (a DS-like mic seems more likely to us, but that's what he says). As we said, the rumor looks fairly solid, though we don't have long to find out, since Nintendo's keynote is kicking off early tomorrow. And being that we really don't have anything better to do, we'll be sure to liveblog it to pieces.

[Via Joystiq]

We knew we should have taken that call from Miyamoto the other day, but our loss was TIME magazine's gain, because the Mario and Zelda creator was looking for someone to, wouldn't you know it, take the upcoming Wii for a little spin. TIME's five page article is so full of interesting deets that we barely have room to scratch the surface here, but suffice it to say that Lev Grossman not only reports on his hands-on experiences with a number of games, he's also able to get inside Nintendo's head, if you will, and tease out a bit of the methodology behind what some hardcore gamers perceive as the company's madness (Wii? those controllers? Nintendogs?). As for the actual gaming, Grossman got to play some tennis (the sensors even allow you to add spin), slay some dragons (brandishing the controller like a sword in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), and bring those wacky Warioware minigames into the third dimension (think: fishing, weight lifting, cooking, etc.). Geez, this thing sounds like so much fun that we may just skip the Sony keynote this afternoon and see if the folks from Nintendo will let us play with their goodies.

Now that wii've (sorry, wii'll stop) had a few hours to let it all sink in, Nintendo's new "Wii" moniker for their next gen console still isn't ringing true. Sure, we get that whole community-ish thing they're going for, and we're happy for our friend, the letter "i," which has had quite a few successes in the consumer electronics industry, including a slew of popular Apple products and a double role in Intel's Viiv platform, but we're just not feeling "Wii." Turns out we're not the only ones, and between the comments on our Wii post earlier, Joystiq's informal poll, and the insightful commentary of our editorial staff...

Ryan: "Eh, I thought the iPod was a pretty stupid name too. We'll just have to wait and see."
Evan: "Just let me know when I can emulate the console on my phone."
Marc: "Why?"
Paul: "What do you want? Leave me alone! Can't you see I'm talking to Zelda right now?"
Ross: "Sometimes, even hardcore gamers need to stop and take a Wii."

...it's not looking like a home run for Nintendo marketing. Of course, the DS didn't get a lot of love at first, and in that case Nintendo clearly demonstrated that it's all about what you do with it. But with proponents of the console already facing an uphill battle in evangelizing the strange control scheme, Nintendo sure isn't helping out much.

Read - Game Informer interviews N's Matt Atwood
Read - Joystiq's Wii poll
Read - Joystiq's first impressions
Read - Revolution Fanboy
Read - Go Nintendo
Read - GameSpot
Read - IGN
Read - 1UP
Read - Straight from the horse's mouth

Seems like we've been calling this thing the Revolution for, well, forever. Well, we just got word over the wires that -- well ahead of any expected E3 announcements -- Nintendo announced the officially truly true name for the Revolution: the Nintendo Wii (like "we"). Nope, stop calling it the Revolution, it's not the Go, either. They're going for that whole gaming plurality thing that they've been talking about, bringing together communities who love to play, old school gamers, casual gamers, today's more evolved gamers: "It's about Wii, and together Wii will change everything." Ooook, guys, whatever you say. And yeah, we'll spare you all the puerile jokes.