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Viewing Wii U through Apple-centric eyes
I had the opportunity to preview the Wii U last night at a Nintendo special event. Bold and bright, with flashing lights and helpful attendants, the preview was designed to build anticipation for the unit's upcoming debut. Does the age of Apple TV and iPad/iPhone AirPlay integration herald a challenge to traditional consoles? Apparently so, as the new Wii U controller seems highly influenced by tablets. The Wii U's large on-board screen offers a portable gaming solution that feels like the offspring that might occur if a Wiimote ran away to Vegas to marry an iPad. The Wii U offered all the standard gaming keys and buttons you'd expect, including switches on the back of the unit. It is very lightweight and rugged enough to use in active living room play. You wouldn't want to swing around an iPad while exercising, but the Wii U is built for use with Wii Fit and other active games. You don't have to worry about cracking glass, or the overall heft of the device, and the in-hand feel was not too far off from many games that use a sideways-held Wiimote. Nintendo had a bunch of new games they were showcasing including an updated Wii Fit, Super Mario Bros, a Karaoke Sing game, a dance title, and a bunch of shooters. I'm not entirely convinced any of these games benefited from adding a second screen. I should add that the console made it possible for a large group of people to play at once on separate devices, which is something the iPad / Apple TV paradigm doesn't support. Throughout it all, I kept asking myself if what I saw was enough to make me want to upgrade my current Wii system, and I'm not sure it was. Although a few of the games looked great, the hardware didn't particularly excite me. Wii U falls somewhere between the GameBoy/DS and the full screen console experience, which is where tablets normally lie, but it didn't define enough of a niche for me. Nearly every game I saw seemed to play just as well if not better using a normal WiiMote. If a unit fell into our lives, I'd certainly use it and enjoy it, but I don't quite understand the big draw. That's in contrast to my iPad experience, which fits so beautifully into work, reading, and play. Once people see you using one, they get how it's meant to be used. With the Wii U, I just kept thinking, "Oh, so now everyone playing in the living room can focus on their individual laps instead of playing together as a group." In the end, I found the Wii U to be cool but not compelling. What's your take on Nintendo's newest gaming device?
Vikings' Adrian Peterson rehabs using specially-designed games
Adrian Peterson, star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, suffered a torn ACL in December 2011. As part of Peterson's regiment to rehab his injured knee, he played Wii Fit and other specially-designed games to regain strength and balance.As seen in a video on the team's site, Peterson uses a leg press machine to guide an on-screen icon through a maze of boxes in one game, and dodge falling balls in another. The exercise machine strengthens his knee while also providing him with something other than agonizing pain to focus on. With the high-powered training programs they're used to, it's interesting to see a pro football player include games like these as part of their recovery methods.
Nintendo aims to flog 18 million 3DS, up to 10.5 million home consoles this fiscal year
All eyes are on Nintendo, now that it has revealed losses of $460 million. Buried in all of the financial paperwork were the revelations that it sells the 3DS at a loss, its plans for digital distribution and its projected sales figures for this year. It aims to flog 18.5 million 3DS handhelds and 10.5 million Wii consoles by March 31st 2013. But wait, what about the Wii U? That figure actually encompasses both old and new hardware, so it is either hoping for a sharp fall in Wii sales or a tough opening for the new baby. It's a bold pair of figures that relies upon how well New Super Mario Bros 2, Animal Crossing and the new hardware capture the public's imagination in a time when people are tightening their belts (especially if they've been using Wii Fit).
Nintendo says it refuses to 'succumb to patent trolls' as it wins Maryland case
Nintendo issued a fairly terse press release earlier today, announcing that it has prevailed in a US patent lawsuit for the "third consecutive time this year." That particular case concerned Nintendo's Wii Balance Board accessory and Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus software, which a company called IA Labs said infringed on one of its patents (No. 7,121,982); a claim that was dismissed by the Maryland District Court judge in the case. IA Labs was also more or less dismissed as a company by Nintendo's senior vice president of legal and general counsel Rick Flamm, who said that "we vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent," and that "we refuse to succumb to patent trolls." The company's full statement can be found after the break.
Wii Fit patent lawsuit dismissed
We know you've been unable to sleep restfully since the announcement of InterAction Laboratories' 2010 lawsuit against Nintendo, so you'll be relieved to know the situation is resolved. Nintendo announced this morning that a Maryland judge has summarily dismissed the case, which alleged that Nintendo's Wii Fit games and Balance Board accessory (among pretty much every other Nintendo peripheral) violated patents owned by IA Labs for exergaming devices.IA Labs' last announced gaming product was the "XR Station," a controller attached to a big lever, that players must exert pressure on -- push, pull, lean -- to operate. It also showed the "Sqweeze" in 2008: a Wiimote peripheral with two rubber grips to squeeze.
Wii becomes best-selling current generation console in Europe
We're always wary to talk numbers and Europe in the same breath, mostly because numbers over there don't mean the same as they do here. "One pound is a half kilogram? What does that even mean?" Luckily for us, there's no way to misconstrue the fact that the Wii is now the best-selling console in Europe this generation. The European chapter of the Wii Defense Force is popping the bubbly now, we imagine, celebrating the 30 million Wii consoles in the region as of 2011's end. New console bundles brought a new "value Wii" into the region, The PS3 isn't far behind, however, with reports of over 22 million consoles sold at the end of August. But, the Wii figure looks even better when compared to the GameCube, which sold 4.7 million throughout its five year lifetime in Europe and Australia, combined. On the peripheral front, Nintendo's also got robust sales figures for its Wii Balance Board and its bundled titles, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus, to celebrate. 22.67 million copies of Wii Fit and 19.31 million copies of Wii Fit Plus have been sold worldwide.
Wii Fit balance board hack takes a virtual Segway ride around Google's mapped world (video)
You can do a lot in seven hours -- fly coast-to-coast, slow-cook a pot roast, create a Google Maps-navigating, Wii Fit-controlled virtual Segway. Wait, what? Yes, that Nintendo-branded, dust-collecting relic of holidays past has been given a new lease on life thanks to an intrepid troop of Ivy-educated geeks, and a seven-hour hackathon. The marathon modding session, held by Stanford University's SVI Hackspace, banded together a like-minded set of overachieving modders to produce a balance board-guided Street View romp through Google Maps. The students' hack connects the Wii Fit board to OS X via the Osculator app, with a Node.js server processing the data and Socket.io handling board-to-browser communication. A Google Earth plug-in and pre-rendered Segway were all that was left to complete this foot-mapped joy ride through our digitized world. Video demo awaits you after the break.
Students use Wii Balance Board for kids' physical therapy system (video)
Nintendo's kid-tested, researcher-approved Wii Balance Board has struck at the heart of the medical supply industry yet again -- this time, the Bluetooth-connected scale is being used to help physically challenged children at Shriners Hospital in Houston. Seniors at Rice University hand-machined a set of force-sensitive parallel bars and programmed a monster-shooting game called Equilibrium to get kids excited about improving their walking gait, where they can play and score points with each proper step they take. The game automatically ratchets up the difficulty as patients improve, and handrails will play a part too, with a custom three-axis sensor box able to detect how much patients rely on the parallel bars (and dock points accordingly) in an effort to improve their posture. Yep, that sounds just a wee bit more useful than the Balance Board lie detector or the Wii Fit Roomba. Video after the break.
NPD: Guitar Hero 3 is this generation's highest-grossing game
Call of Duty: Black Ops might be the best-selling game by unit sales, but it isn't the US bestseller in terms of gross revenue. According to NPD data going back to 1995, and compiled by CNBC, the honor of the highest-grossing game of "this generation" goes to another Activision game, the Axl Rose-angering Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Black Ops is #2. The list of the NPD's top ten best-selling games by revenue (after the break) includes a second Guitar Hero game, too -- R.I.P. -- along with Rock Band and both Wii Fits, which suggests that the best way to make a lot of revenue is simply to make your game cost more. Although Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii are also on the list, so maybe people just really like finding peripherals inside their game boxes, like cereal box prizes.
Amazon offers buy one, get one 40 percent off; Wii bundles
Amazon's ramping up for the one-two thrift punch of Black Friday and Cyber Monday with a fairly handsome deal of its own -- buy any one of the many, many games on this list, get another for 40 percent off. Or, buy a new Wii and Balance Board, get a $50 Amazon gift card on the free.
Wii Balance Board-controlled robot a hit with toddlers in Ithaca (video)
How could we resist a story involving robot-powered babies? The Ithaca College Tots on Bots project aims to mobilize infants with physical disabilities by setting them atop a "mobile robot" equipped with a Wii Balance Board to let the young operator steer by leaning -- which, it turns out, works pretty well. Additionally, the vehicle uses sonar to avoid nasty crashes and a remote control that an adult can use to take control. Further study has to be made before any long term developmental benefits can be ascertained, but in the meantime it does look like a lot of fun. See it in action after the break.
Two universities adopt Wii Fit to monitor football concussions
As it turns out, there are quite a few uses for a $100 off-the-shelf computerized scale, above and beyond getting fit -- Nintendo's Wii Balance Board is now providing a mechanism by which college football teams at Ohio State University and the University of Maryland can cheaply determine whether players are suffering from concussions. Taking the place of force plate machines that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, the white plastic boards measure students' balance (using yoga poses) and coordination (in Table Tilt) before a game, to provide a frame of reference against which trainers can measure whether athletes are fit to keep playing. Though some scholars found Wii Fit didn't stack up favorably against the expensive force plates, the universities trialing the system called it "pretty decent," so the question is whether Nintendo's peripheral offers a reasonable enough benchmark for the price. We suppose the American Heart Association liked it well enough.
Wii Fit used to diagnose football-related concussions
Did you know that a football player's vocation requires them to hurtle their head at other football players' heads with little regard for the safety of either? Did you know that this type of reckless cranial colliding can cause concussions and other serious, long-term head injuries? It's true -- but according to the Washington Post, athletic trainers at the University of Maryland and Ohio State University have found a tool to help diagnose and monitor players' dome-piece health: Wii Fit. Trainers at the two universities now require players to use the Wii Balance Board to get a baseline reading of their -- what else? -- balance. When a player suffers a fairly nasty blow to the head region, they can take another Wii Fit test to see if their balance has deteriorated -- one of the telltale signs of a concussion. Man, combine this test with the Vitality Sensor, and the Wii will become a one-stop-shop for sports-related injury diagnoses!
Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus move one million units in Australia
Here at Joystiq, there's only one thing we value above video games: your health. And we were beginning to get worried about you specifically, Australia -- that is, until we heard you guys were trying to trim those love handles. Nintendo of Australia has announced it's managed to sell one million copies of Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus (including the balance board). And while Oz isn't necessarily one of the fattest countries out there, according to a World Health Organization study back in 2007 (via Forbes), its people aren't exactly the benchmark for healthy living, either. But hey, you gotta start somewhere and we're just glad you guys have taken that first step towards healthy living. If you're looking to build upon Nintendo's workout program, let us know. We'll let you borrow our Sweatin' to the Oldies tapes.
Navy Surgeon General eyes Wii Fit, Dance Dance Revolution for boot camp
We understand that Wii Fit has dubious health benefits at best (whatever CTA Digital might say top the contrary), but apparently word hasn't reached the Navy's top brass. According to the Navy Times, recruits need more work than ever before to get into fighting shape, "given that many young people prefer computers and video games" to sports and physical activity. The solution, says Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Adam Robinson, is to use break in would-be sailers slowly, introducing "the equivalents of Nintendo's Wii Fit or Konami's Dance Dance Revolution" in basic training. This sounds rather silly to us, but what do we know? We're lovers, not fighters.
US Navy considering fitness video games for boot camp
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket effectively scared an entire generation away from boot camp. However, a new tactic being considered by the US Navy may completely change our perception of boot camp: video games. In the latest issue of Navy Times, Navy Surgeon General Vice Admiral Adam Robinson (he does sound important) suggested that games like Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution could help "newcomers to the military service build up the endurance they need to get in shape safely." According to the report, today's recruit requires much more work to get into "fighting shape" than in the past. With America's youth becoming increasingly sedentary, the US Navy has observed an increasing number of injuries suffered during boot camp. Recruits are "not used to the amount of standing and running that comes in recruit training," the report indicates. Games would theoretically provide a more approachable, familiar solution for physical activity. However, don't expect games to completely replace current recruit training techniques. The US Navy is simply looking into the possibility of augmenting its current regimen with fitness games. Additionally, there's no timetable in place for when games would be introduced into the military. Still, we're eager to see if the boot camps of the future will look less like the one in Kubrick's war movie and more like ... this. [Thanks Joseph!]
Nintendo Wii gets American Heart Association's stamp of approval
When we heard that Nintendo and the American Heart Association would be making an announcement today, we (and most everyone else) assumed that it would have something to do with Nintendo's forthcoming Vitality Sensor. As it turns out, however, it's something altogether more surprising -- the AHA has announced that it's actually putting its stamp of approval on the Wii itself (as well as Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort). That's obviously a first for a video game console, and fairly unprecedented for the AHA -- as ABC News points out, the association hasn't seen fit to put its seal on other "active" things like baseball bats. It apparently had some small incentive to do so in this case, however, as the organization says it will be receiving a cool $1.5 million from Nintendo over three years as a result of the partnership. Head on past the break to see the AHA president explain the arrangement. [Thanks, Katie]
GameStop holding Wii Fit Plus demo events
If lifestyle software like Wii Fit Plus is truly "evergreen," selling for long periods of time beyond the normal sales cycle, then we suppose it follows that its marketing can be evergreen as well. Which is why Nintendo can hold "Wii Fit Plus Demo Days" at GameStops across the U.S. now, even though Wii Fit Plus was released in October 2009. If you're curious about, say, the ridiculous Bird's Eye Bulls-Eye event, or the ability to create workout routines, you can go to one of the 100 participating stores between 1-4pm on April 25 or May 2 and try it out for yourself.
Wii Fit push up bars make sense, but this one isn't worth dollars
Push-up bars for the Wii Balance Board? Now that sounds like a fantastic idea -- just the thing broad-shouldered individuals need to play Wii Fit without backstrain. Too bad this particular set of bars isn't worth the plastic it's printed from. The latest and greatest from the minds in the chintzy plastic peripheral industry, the $25 CTA Digital Wii Push Up Bar is held in place by only your weight and a few foam strips without reinforcement of any kind, meaning it could detach itself with any significant exertion. The only good that comes out of all this is an embarrassing video demonstration after the break, which features a pair of smiling humans pretending to have fun with the contraption. QVC, eat your heart out.
Scientists using Balance Board in stroke rehab
While the Balance Board is a good tool for controlling cute little monkeys and perhaps creating a career, Australian scientists have found it's also an inexpensive way to measure the balance in stroke patients. University of Melbourne scientist Ross Clark decided to pick one up after reading that some physicians were using Wiimotes to help recuperating soldiers, and found it to be "an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up." That's a very good thing, considering the only alternative is a "force platform" which can set scientists back a hefty £11,000 ($15,700). There aren't any results out of Melbourne yet, but if you're interested in what's under the hood of that little plastic pad you're slowly turning a kind of brownish-black (would it kill you to wear clean socks when using it?), check out this Nintendo Channel video from back in the day. [Via Kotaku and New Scientist]
