At yesterday's "Lunch with the Luminaries" panel at GDC, five of the planet's most prestigious gaming industry figures had the opportunity to sit down for light snacks, civil discourse, and, of course, to flame their competitor's consoles. At least, that's what Sony exec Phil Harrison had in mind, as he warned EA Blueprint's Neil Young that the Wii is unfriendly territory for third-party developers -- due to Nintendo's overwhelmingly successful games on their own home console, everyone else can only hope to market their games to "only 40% of the installed base."

Young didn't deny this claim, but retorted that the development of their most recent game for the Wii, Smarty Pants, was "very easy to build very quickly" and "fundamentally much more fun" to create -- apparently, more fun than it was to actually play. Have third-party developers resigned themselves to living in Nintendo's shadow, prompting them to fire out "easy to build," mediocre titles? We don't think they quite understand -- if only 40 percent of Wii owners are buying your games, it's because the other 60 percent know better.

After bursting onto the scene with 34 titles in the Wii's first two months, Nintendo today announced they would "continue the flow of fun" with ... 12 new Wii games through March. Wait, what?

We understand that things tend to slow down a little in the months after Christmas, but even accounting for that the Wii's first quarter line up is kind of lacking. A few potential standouts like SSX Blur and Sonic and the Secret Rings are left to flounder among the usual mess of licensed crap (TMNT, Bionicle Heroes, Meet the Robinsons) and warmed-over third party games reworked for the Wii controller (Tiger Woods 07, The Godfather, and Blazing Angels, which was originally listed as a launch window title). What's more, Nintendo's Wii Play (a game which hit Europe and Japan in early December) is both the only first party game on the Wii's Q1 list and the only game we're likely to see for the system in all of February.

It might be a little early to declare Reggie's "no game drought" promise a failure, but this faint trickle of early games is, frankly, not that inspiring. Keep reading for a complete breakdown of the Wii's amazing "flow" for the next few months.

Oh boy, where to start? Maybe it was just that their previous gamepads were selling wireless to a wired world, or perhaps the good folks at Logitech just felt weird about building a gamepad that felt so light; either way, they've decided to give their new ChillStream controller a little something extra to distinguish it from the me-toos in the third-party controller rat race.

Yup, they added fans into the controller, to keep your sweaty mitts cool. If this strikes you as an especially gimmicky move for one of the more reputable peripheral manufacturers, you're not alone dear reader. Maybe the extra weight and a potentially lower third-party cost will be enough to drive frugal gamers into the arms of the ChillStream ... or is that ChillStream into the arms of frugal gamers? The controller doesn't have rumble, it presumably has motion sensitivity, it doesn't appear to be wireless -- oh yeah, it has fans -- and it carries a suggested retail sticker price of $39.99. How much is that "affordable" first-party controller going to be?

[Via CrunchGear]