Wii Sports Resort and Wii Motion Plus

Nintendo plans to capitalize on the monumental success of Wii Sports by doing what they do best, building a hot game with an accessory backing its success. The new Wii Sports Resort will be a mini-game set like Wii Sports and Wii Play but with a beach setting and games like frisbee.

Frisbee? How can the Wii motion controller handle a Frisbee toss? Wii Motion Plus of course! We believe they’ll be packing the game in with the Wii Motion Plus to add more value to the purchase. Honestly, this adds more value to the accessory as a driving force to make sales and increase margins. Game accessories are a great way for Nintendo to profit, consider the pack in game marketing material.

As Wii Play has shown us, historically, gamers want the accessory and the bundled game is just icing on the proverbial cake. Wii Play, as a game, was lacking in many ways and would be, as a stand alone product, a definite must-not-have title. But, considering the amount of Wii controllers sold, this allows Wii Play to show up high on best games sold month over month.

Wii Sports Resort takes this to a new level by using the term “Wii Sports” in the game, allowing the masses to flock to the store to get anything that can reproduce the fun of the original title. Nobody knows, yet, if it will reproduce the same fun factor but the accessory is neat.

(Thanks, joystiq)

0 thoughts on “Wii Sports Resort and Wii Motion Plus”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 326: Jordan’s BackEpisode 326: Jordan’s Back

Jordan is back, and even though he’s not 100%, he’s still well enough to do the podcast. He and Jonah discuss what things make them stop playing a game, while the rest of the podcast is all about Grand Theft Auto V. They also get into discussions about laserdisc players.

The news includes:

  • Microsoft: Women make up 40% of Xbox Live audience
  • Rumor: Steam Box announcement on Monday
  • Grand Theft Auto V hits $1B in sales after 72 hours
  • Dead Rising 3frame-locked at 30″ on Xbox One
  • Sony offers fix for GTA5 error 80029564 crashing system on install

All this and Listener Feedback, as well as the Question of the Week, “When will the current generation of consoles discontinue?”

Episode 278: Second Chance to Win Borderlands 2Episode 278: Second Chance to Win Borderlands 2

This week’s episode has heated arguments between Jordan and Jonah, as this new podcast runs a little long. However, there are tons of news items to make up for the lack of a new show last week.

The news items include:

  • Bethesda’s Hines unexcited over next-gen console launch
  • Borderlands 2‘s melee skill tree for Zer0 “thanks to them ignoring” Pitchford
  • EA’s Gibeau brags he has not green-lit any single player games
  • Valve responds to angry indie developers over $100 Steam Greenlight fee
  • Crystal Dynamics: Lara Croft had become “unrelatable
  • City of Heroes may be saved from shutdown
  • Ron Gilbert blames point and click adventure stagnation on DOOM

The contest continues – just mention what your favorite game from the 2000’s was – and a winner will be announced next week.

Sierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into HistorySierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into History

One of the great downfalls of an acquisition or merger, in the game industry, is the loss of great franchise titles. Sierra, or Sierra Online, once stood on its own as a company with great gaming titles but later fell into the depths of Hades under many different company names.

Sierra’s last stop on the acquisition highway was Vivendi, years after much of Sierra’s steam had slowed. Now, they’re part of Activision Blizzard so we had high hopes they’d find a great use for some of the old Sierra properties long since collecting dust. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and especially Gabrielle Knight were some of our favorites, but times have changed.

“We are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced. We will not publish any other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and we are currently reviewing our options regarding those titles,” says Activision Blizzard (joystiq)

This is unfortunate news, Activision Blizzard now has a large set of franchises on their hands, many of which have collected dust for years. Those dust collecting franchises could rise from the dead and reinvigorate their old fan base… or be dropped to the earth as unwanted scrapes after a big hunt with the vultures awaiting their take (sorry, too much watching of Animal Planet)

A reworked Kings Quest or Gabriel Knight could have seriously awesome potential in this time and age, imagine a dark comedy version of Gabriel Knight or a huge scaled world in King Quest using todays graphic engines. Although, these titles could also go the way Atari has gone and taken a well remembered franchise and made mud of its great name (*cough* Alone in the Dark).

Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know the distance an old franchise could go in this new world. We’ll have to pull out an old copy of our prized posessions and remember just how great they once where.