Rumor: Nintendo to host pre-launch Wii event(s)?

by Blake Snow { Jul 27th 2006 at 11:00PM }

The Wii rumor mill is at it again with whispers of a Nintendo sponsored event(s) prior to the expected console launch sometime this fall. Nintendo Now reports that an unnamed insider from the Comic-Con conference last week told them there is a "strong possibility that some new announcements about the Wii will be made at the Leipzig Game Convention, which runs from August 24-27." The unknown source continued by saying (while looking over his shoulder, of course) that Nintendo will hold its own show to demonstrate the Wii.

In a similar story, Kotaku states: "Sources tell me that Nintendo is planning on showing the Wii around in the time leading up to the launch of the next-gen console. Rumor has it that the console will be launching on a big-ass, cross-country tour this fall, pre-launch, to bring Nintendo's flavor of games to the people." If true, Nintendo is obviously trying to capitalize on their "playing is believing" advertising campaign.

[via Wii Fanboy]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Probot @ Jul 27th 2006 11:46PM

Haven't they already had events around the world?

Like the one in Spain:
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/06/28/slight-alterations-to-the-wii-controller/

And the UK:
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/07/11/uk-loves-the-wii/

This kinda seems like a continuation of what they're already doing.

Siraris @ Jul 27th 2006 11:48PM

Well, with their lack of presence at TGS, I would assume they are going to do something prior to launch. If in fact Wii launches in October, it also makes sense that there is no TGS presence.

I wonder if Wii will launch with only one or two games like N64 did. That would be crappy.

vidGuy @ Jul 27th 2006 11:59PM

TGS is Sept 22 - 24. I'd venture a guess that Nintendo will revive the Space World conference, or at least what they could call Space World, and hold it the weekend before TGS, making it Sept 15 - 17.

They'd then have enough press to carry them over until an Oct 20 launch in Japan, Oct 22 launch in the US, and Nov 3 launch in Europe.

@Siraris, Wii already has half a dozen confirmed launch titles, and the rumor is that they'll be many more. Launch day titles could total 15 with the launch window (first 14 weeks) total being around 35 games.

Frank @ Jul 28th 2006 12:01AM

So, they did the same thing with the GC. Remember the "Cube club" ?

cringer8 @ Jul 28th 2006 12:17AM

Here's a rumor from Moz La Punk:

"Okay, this may be a tad old but who are we to deprive you of the juicy gaming gossip that has done the rounds this week?

Okay, the following is to be taken with a massive pinch of salt. As usual, until a rumour is officially confirmed, it is merely a rumour. Don’t shoot the messenger. :P

Recently a post was made on the official Nintendo message boards. The poster stated some controversial stuff concerning Nintendo’s Wii and it is in all likelihood complete rubbish, but soon after it was made, the post was removed from the Nintendo forums.

Here’s a tip from MLP to you Nintendo. If you want a rumour to go by unnoticed, do not delete it immediately when it is posted. If you leave it, people will practically always ignore it, but if you remove it, w-ell, here we are.

Anyways, without further ado, the post in question:

- First off let me say that the full scope of the Wii controller details has yet to be revealed by PixArt and Nintendo. Although I cannot elaborate any further let me say that the Nintendo should show that the movement in 3D space will allow experiences outside of just the TV screen. And its not 3D projection related.

- The official launch date has yet to be set in stone but will indeed launch before Sony’s PS3.

- Ironically enough, the first game that will be shown to the public that demonstrates the full scope of Wii controller potential will be Dragonball Z Budokai 4.

- When Nintendo first showed the controller at Tokyo Game Show late 2005 they were very hesitant to show it full usage. I will allow one more clue to my finding that the Wii controller can function exactly as we all have seen demonstrated WITHOUT the sensor bar. So ask yourselves, why need a sensor bar?

- The sensor bar was in all actuality in no use at E3 2006. What is will allow hasn’t been shown yet.

- According to people who are working close to everyday events at Nintendo R&D, Nintendo Wii specifications were far and away developed solely for that machine.

- IBM and ATI have been working on Broadway and Hollywood for quite some time now. And according to many people Wii’s specs could go up or down at this point in the CPU/VPU departments. Apparently Nintendo has spent quite a lot of money having IBM and ATI fabricate many iterations of Broadway and Hollywood. Which range from a 3.4GHz-730MHz Broadway CPUs, and 1.2GHz-553MHz custom ATI/Nintendo Hollywood VPU. From what we hear Hollywood is key to the Wii’s power. The architecture is all about eliminating bottlenecks and maximizing performance, upgrade of the CPU with the slight downgrade of the graphics processor compliments this philosophy, striking a great balance for Wii. However, it was also indicated that since Hollywood is a truly extreme “Flipper II” and Broadway is a massively upgraded “Gekko II” at least in architecture. That early on Nintendo R&D took a good look at what GameCube did good and what it could have done better. It was mentioned that GameCube’s Flipper was an extremely powerful chip far more capable than even the Xbox’s. The Gekko design meant for balance, though was not able to support but about 50% of the ArtX’s Flipper’s power. This particular bottleneck has been ironed out allowing Broadway to fully complement Hollywood to its maximum potential and vise-versa. The initial estimates we got concerning final hardware spec was Broadway at around 1.5GHz and Hollywood at 555GHz.

- There is also word that Nintendo in private sessions has big plans for the Wii headset. Talk is, that Nintendo wants to lean away from having the headset only for online capability. They are wanting to go further. Having the headset of course include a microphone for use in games is a given. But there was also talk of a late to launch release of this “gyroscopic headset” that would be supported by the sensor bar as well. To sum up the theory we were privy to. The headset would be somewhat sensitive to movement that could be translated into the game. Such as if you get up and move to the right of your television something might correspond for that in the game. Such as dodging things, looking around corners etc. It was also mentioned that it might have a unique look and non-obstructive lightweight design.

- Our latest discovery concerning Wii software is that developer Nibris (Raid Over the River, Sadness) has received Wii development kits and has partnered with publisher Majesco.

We haven’t had anyone claiming to be a Nintendo “Insider” for quite sometime. Two things of note can be taken from the above post. Firstly, the fact that Nintendo deemed the post delete worthy is interesting. Secondly, very soon after this message was posted, fledgling Polish developer Nibris (Raid Over the River, Sadness) announced that they had finally found a publisher, the name of which they didn’t disclose.

We’ll leave this one to you."

Probot @ Jul 28th 2006 1:07AM

cringer8,

Too many of those rumors have been proven wrong to take any of it seriously.

The sensor bar was used at E3 for Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel. Nibris has denied that Majesco is their publisher. The paragraph about the GPU and CPU doesn't actually say anything at all. And he uses the word ironically wrong in the DBZ paragraph.

That really only leaves the suspiciously vague "outside the TV screen" stuff and the gyroscopic headset, which sounds like a bad idea to begin with.

cringer8 @ Jul 28th 2006 1:30AM

I am well aware that there is a .001% chance any of this is true, but no one can't say it's all 100% false (except Nintendo, who pulled the post).

·I think he/she almost used "ironically" right in the sense that you would assume a Nintendo title would be used to showcase the full potential of a Nintendo system.

·There is no way to know for sure that the sensor bar was actually in use at E3. Sure, it was there, but that means little to nothing. The Wii cases were out there, too, but we found out from another "insider" that they were doing nothing.

·He/She is claiming that the sensor bar is going to be used for something else entirely...something that hasn't been revealed. Apparently something to take the action outside of the TV.

·As for Nibris, until they announce their actual publisher, we don't know for sure it isn't Majesco. If they didn't deny it, we would all assume it was true.

So really, NOTHING in this rumor has been COMPLETELY debunked, it's just not likely to be true. We'll see in September.

*Bottom Line*
Rumors are rumors for a reason. This one has yet to be proven 100% false, so I think it's worth reading (with a skeptical mindset).

GSI @ Jul 28th 2006 1:34AM

I'd like to also make the "sensor bar was not being used at E3" rumor.

I played the entire SM Galaxy demo and during certain points in the game you have to click the "B" button (the one on the bottom) to activate or select stuff on-screen during gameplay.

...and with WarioWare, you had to hold the remote a certain way and in a certain way in order to successfully complete the current mini game.

Probot @ Jul 28th 2006 2:22AM

The sensor bar was used in the E3 demos of Metroid Prime, unless everyone previewing was lying when they said the Wiimote needed to be in the senor bar's range to work. Or the developers were lying when they said the sensor bar's positioning mattered.

http://nintendonow.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=30&m_articles_articleid=3715

Nibris:
"The only comment we could get out of Nibris relating to this issue is that the publisher is neither Atlus nor Majesco (two companies heavily rumored to be publishing the game)."

Source: http://wii.ign.com/articles/721/721396p1.html

Again, that only leaves the headset and the "outside the screen" thing which seems to be based on what a Red Steel dev said about multiplayer recently.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/17/red-steel-split-screen-multiplayer-the-fight-will-not-be-only/

And irony is more like sarcasm than anything else. The word he was looking for is "surprisingly."

Probot @ Jul 28th 2006 3:00AM

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a secondary meaning for irony is "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs." This would cover the original poster's use of irony IF he were proven to be correct.

But as of right now, Twilight Princess is the only game known to use the full (announced) abilities of the Wiimote: motion, pointing, accelerometer, speaker.

There have been some scans of DBZ using a new peripheral, but that wouldn't technically validate the rumor as it is written, since using a new attatchment is not equivalent to using the "full potential" of the Wiimote.

Drew @ Jul 28th 2006 6:02AM

There has been a lot of comparing Nintendo to Apple. And some have speculated that Nintendo may indeed pull an apple by holding a special event and saying at the end "One more thing, the Wii is shipping next Week!"
Well this looks to be the case with the current launch rumor of October 2nd especially if they announce in late september.

While I can see why Apple does this as they don't want people to stop buy current products but why Nintendo. I think the would rather convert new would-be Cube owners into Wii owners.

vidGuy @ Jul 28th 2006 8:14AM

That DBZ game with the periph was a separate game and cost roughly $70, at least according to translation of the magazine text by posters on nintendowiifanboy. It is NOT a Wii game.

It should be obvious that the Wii can detect actions that do not take place on-screen. The TV is never a part of the aiming... the remote reads its information from an infrared grid that is laid out by the sensor bar and then passes that info to the console via bluetooth.

So the remote can easily detect where it is being pointed, even if it is off-screen. This would allow you to, say, run down a hallway and fire at enemies in front AND to the side of you while always looking forward.

In multiplayer, you could do the same thing, or cheat and screen peak to get an idea of where your opponents are and how to fire at them.

And as a posted on gonintendo when cringer's source was first posted...

Well let’s look at this, point by point:

‘Nintendo’s holding back details of the controller’ - seems likely

‘Movement in 3D space outside TV’ - seems possible, like I said, the remote can detect motion and pointing without it being directed at the TV screen

‘Launch before PS3′ - very likely

‘DBZ first to use full scope’ - ok, it doesn’t say first to use each property, just the first to use all of them in one game

‘Could act similar without sensor bar’ - if the action all took place on the tv, you could tell the Wii how big the tv was and play without the sensor bar. However, this would limit the action to be on-screen only. Thus the sensor bar is used to allow off-screen action.

Power info - not out of the range of possibility. At 1.5GHz, the Wii would be significantly more powerful than the GC and XBOX, but not as powerful as the PS3 and 360… just like what we expect. I’d imagine it’ll be more like 1GHz, but 1.5GHz is still within range.

Gyro headset - headset is 100% likely, gyro, I don’t know. We have seen a lot of bob-and-weave from the PR videos, but I think this is only marketing. This is the first point that I don’t think will come true.

Sadness gets a publisher - we know that, we just don’t know who yet. So this is possible too.

So besides the Gyro headset, this is all within degrees of “likely”. While I’m not saying it’s true, I don’t think any of it is that far off base.