Mega Man 9, WiiWare, Retro Gamers Rejoyce!

It’s been confirmed, in Nintendo Power at least, that Mega Man 9 is officially going to be something you can download on the Wii console. The game is being developed by Ini Creates, a company of ex-capcom folks who are also responsible for Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX series.

Of course, this is a Capcom published game and is said to also be ‘multi-platform’ with an appearance being made on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

At first, there was a fear the game would go “new school” and take advantage of all the Wii has to offer, but with the Virtual Console and all of its retro appeal they’ve decided to stick with an old school feel to the game. This is by far the best move we’ve heard, as a retro gamer at the target demographic age, I’m thrilled.

Mega Man 9 is going to reflect the older games, without an 8-bit graphical look of course, using the Wii remote sideways (presumably also using the retro classic controller) and is not said to use any of the motion sensing abilities of the Wii.

This will be the first title in the Mega Man series to offer a female robot opponent. Mega Man 9 will provide a new host of baddies, including:

  • Magma Man
  • Galaxy Man
  • Jewel Man
  • Concrete Man
  • Hornet Man
  • Plug Man
  • Tornado Man
  • Splash Woman

The inclusion of a female robot may be playing to the casual game demographic which is popular with the Wii and casual games in general. Or, they’re just looking for variety. End result is still retro awesomeness.

(Thanks, 1up)

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Microsoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 ValueMicrosoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 Value

Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”

Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”

We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.

Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.

They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.

“OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.” (gamespot)

Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).

It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.

Which is fine, we like games.

Xbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales IncreaseXbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales Increase

Why release a single block buster game with a two week pop when you can simply lower the price of your console and boost sales by 100%? That’s a question Sony may be asking themselves right now, as Metal Gear Solid 4‘s hype may have lasted years but the sales and console unit sale boots lasted a month.

Gamers show how they feel about costly consoles with their wallet. With 100% increases in sales, it’s clear that many gamers have been holding out from the “next-generation” of consoles because the price was too high. Now, Microsoft can report huge sales numbers this quarter with a special thanks to their price cut. Imagine the sales boost the PlayStation 3 would have if it was competitive in price?

Microsoft could have kept the savings of manufacturing costs to themselves but they chose to pass savings onto the consumers. The increase in unit sales means more households own the product and newly released games will probably see larger spikes now that people have invested in the 360 console.

End result, developers will want to produce games for the Xbox 360 because they’ve got a larger audience and publishers will be less likely to pick Sony as an exclusive because the 360‘s got sway in the market. It might not be a Wii in total sales records but it’s not half bad!

(Thanks, gamasutra)