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Live from Nintendo's E3 2011 keynote!
Another day another liveblog, but not just another company. Today it's Nintendo that will be keeping us rapt with anticipation, and with any luck the big man, Reggie Fils-Aime, will be taking us on quite a ride. Will we see the unveiling of Project Cafe? Will Nintendo tell us just how its 3DS is going to compete in a PlayStation Vita world? Could we finally get that Nintendogs and Paper Mario mash-up we've been waiting for? We'll be going live shortly, at the following times below: 06:00AM - Hawaii 09:00AM - Pacific 10:00AM - Mountain 11:00AM - Central 12:00PM - Eastern 05:00PM - London 06:00PM - Paris 08:00PM - Moscow 01:00AM - Tokyo (June 8th)
Nintendo Wii HD / Project Cafe rumor roundup: What will E3 hold for the gaming giant?
We're a few days out from E3, that magical place where dreams are made and fanboys and girls from all walks of life are simultaneously appeased and slightly disappointed. Surprises are expected from all of the big three this year -- particularly Nintendo. How will the gaming giant top last year's 3DS debut? All signs point to the announcement of a Wii followup, which we've heard alternately referred to as the "Wii HD" and "Project Cafe." Rumors, leaks, and the occasional bit of confirmed information have been rampant in the months and weeks leading up to the event. We've weaved it all together into one handy guidebook, to make sure that we're all on the same page, come Tuesday morning. Let's start with a genuine bit of information: back in April, the company's CEO, Satoru Iwata, confirmed that Nintendo is, in fact, working on an HD followup to the Wii that is most likely due out in 2012. A few days prior to that revelation, the requisite blurry images of console concepts surfaced, detailing controllers with embedded touchscreens that display the system's 1080p gameplay via a technology called Stream Screen. These certainly weren't the first concepts of the console we've seen -- and they were apparently first brought to light by the folks at 4Chan.
Next generation Wii controller to feature 6.2-inch display, turn living room into giant DS?
E3 is getting close, just two months away now. As such the next-gen Wii console rumors have heated to a boil. One of the most interesting bits of tattle originates from Kotaku. The gaming site's sources claim (with impressive specificity) that the new 8-button controller features a screen pushing a whopping 6.2 inches, two analog sticks, and a camera. The new Wii console (sometimes called the Wii 2, Wii HD, or simply "Project Cafe") is said to support the new controller in addition to Wii Remote-style controllers for backward compatibility with existing Wii games -- at the moment, however, it's not clear if that implies support for existing Wiimotes. But why the giant display? Here's Kotaku's take: The 6.2-inch screen will receive data wirelessly from the Nintendo console and presents an array of options, from putting the player's inventory or map on the controller screen, to allowing players to combine it with the controller's camera to snap photos that could be imported into a game or even turning it into some sort of glorified viewfinder (we're unclear about whether the camera on the controller points at the player or can be outward-facing; we've heard both - maybe it swivels?). In other words, you can think of the new controller-plus-console combination as a modern Dreamcast system or "glorified mega-DS," as Kotaku puts it, where the TV is the top screen and the handheld controller is the lower touchscreen. If true then we'll likely hear the official first word at E3 which kicks off on June 7th. Update: IGN has its own set of "sources" confirming many of these details. Could this be a Nintendo rumor that pans out, for once? We should know in just over a month.
