Nintendo’s Takeshi Shimada stated that the company is currently working on improving the Wii. First of all, the Wii is going to be equipped with a text-to-speech
ability, which means that the machine will read the news for you while you brush your teeth, or read your inbox messages while you’re busy doing something else. Second of all, Shimada also hints that the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller will get an upgrade as well, in the way that it will learn from the player’s movements and predict his/her actions

A new Wii channel is also in the scope for the machine. Using it will allow users to vote for their favorite Miis. It’s nice to see that Nintendo is thinking of improvements for their machine but as time passes, the Wii seems to become more of a 7-year-old kid’s toy. The truth is it does anything but serious gaming activity. Sure the upcoming features sound impressive but shouldn’t there be some new titles to go with them? And maybe not so childish ones this time.
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Nintendo recaps its new system’s first eight days at retail, says more than 75 percent of Wii owners also picked up Zelda.

While Sony said it would have 400,000 PlayStation 3 systems ready for its North American launch, Nintendo consistently refused to put a comparable figure on its own efforts with the Wii launch. Instead it would say only that it would ship 4 million systems worldwide by the end of the year.

Now that the launch has come and gone, Nintendo has finally tallied up the number of Wiis it has sold. Today the company said that more than 600,000 Wiis were sold in the Americas in the console’s first eight days of release.
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Would-be developers will get the chance to make their game concepts known

The London Games Festival, the week long cultural and business celebration of computer and video games that will take place throughout London from Monday 2nd October, has recently unveiled the panelists for the inaugural “Lizards’ Lair” pitching event. The confirmed “lizards” are Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead Studios, Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive and Ian Livingstone, creative director of Eidos.

Held on October 3rd, the “Lizard’s Lair” will see would-be developers pitch
their game concepts to the “lizards” for a chance to win great prizes, including one week’s work experience and possibly, the chance to see their gaming ideas come to life. The event will be held at Visit London’s headquarters and it will be presided by Paul Durrant, director of Dare to be Digital, the premier games creation competition in the UK.
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Wireless game publisher secure the rights to the Data East software library.

TOKYO–Mobile game publisher G-Mode has acquired the rights to over one hundred game titles owned by Data East. This includes classic games like Burger Time and more recent releases such as Magical Drop. G-Mode aims to release a select number of the Data East titles on mobile phones starting this summer. “We hope to expand our business and meet the demands of new customers,” the company said in a statement. (more…)