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Looks like they have also found the custom games gravity and speed settings in that swords game.

So I actually have to speak up for Chris here even though I don't agree with his overall point that the Wii is crap. Everyone seems to assume that he is slamming Wii's graphical capabilities. I see tons of comment like "He should know that it doesn't take great graphics to make a great game!" Chris (as a Spore dev) is actually interested in CPU horsepower for reasons other then just graphics.

For example, Spore is going to require a fairly hefty CPU to run, but not due to high-end graphics. Things like high level AIs also require massive amounts of horsepower, power that the Wii may never be able to provide. Also, game programming (like all programming) is currently moving to a multi-threaded model that works best with multiple core system. Wii is going to be the odd duck out as the only system still based on a single core CPU. Which will mean that new AI and Graphical concepts will be hard to transfer to it from the PC, 360 or PS3.

I'm still going to buy one myself (as soon as I can find an unbundled one) but I do wish that they had beefed it up a little bit. Considering that it is totally sold out everywere at $250 would it have really hurt Nintendo so much to add in a dual-core CPU and boost the price up to $300 or $350? I know that Nintendo doesn't want to play the "who has the best graphics game" with Microsoft and Sony, but the lack of a multi-core CPU is going to hurt it down the road. Think like the N64 still being cartridge based while Playstation and Saturn moved to CD. The N64 still had some great games, but some games were just impossible on it due to storage size (FFVII). The Wii is going to find itself in a similar situation.

I'm suprised that no one has mentioned how similar the interface is to that of Microsoft Media Center Edition. Note that I'm not bashing Sony for that, as I'm a big fan of Media Center's look and feel. But the whole "vertical bar of icons intersecting with horizontal bar of icons" really does bear an uncanny resemblence to Media Center Edition.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Riding in on their moral high horse its....Joystiq!