Colour me less sceptical over the Wii's future as a one-size-fits-all console; in a recent conference call held to discuss the latest financial results of his company, Take-Two's CEO Ben Feder said that the large installed base of Nintendo's Wii means that it cannot be ignored and that M-rated content would be considered for release in the future.
 
The imminent release of GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS will give the company some insight into the viability of more grown-up content with Nintendo users, although it's had its fingers burnt once with the disappointing response to the release of Manhunt 2 last year.
 
"Even much of our M-rated content that we feel is much more appropriate for the PS3 or 360, we have to look at the Wii as a viable platform across all our labels," said Feder. "We just have to. We can't ignore the installed base; we just can't. And we're going to do a lot of learning with GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS in terms of bringing that kind of content to a Nintendo platform." He added that all future sports titles are being considered for Wii release.
 
This news should come as a shot in the arm for those publishers considering bringing more adult-themed content to the Wii. While it will never compete graphically with its rivals, the control system, coupled with Nintendo fans' taste for things which are a little left of centre, means that some thoroughly absorbing experiences could be created.
 
And more adult content may mean we finally get to see the end of those god-awful Animal Crossing adverts that are on TV at the minute. "I just designed a new T-shirt!" Do one!
 

I finally finished Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations yesterday. It’s probably the best game in the series (including Apollo Justice) and the last case is a real whopper.
 
But it got me thinking about the things that Konami’s Hideo Kojima said at TGS this year; that Japanese videogame output has fallen way behind that of the West. This was a pretty ambiguous statement. Was he referring to the technical innovation and overall quality of the games? Or did he also mean culturally? Phoenix Wright 3 (made by Capcom, another Japanese developer that’s had big success in the West), sort of gives us a few clues.
 
The game’s last case gives us an insight into the power struggles in the Kurain genealogy, between the main and branch families. The Kurain families are female spirit chanellers, whose activities and garments bear a loose resemblance to Shinto mysticism. In this case, and indeed all throughout the series, the family’s identity is one of the core themes. Their clothes and symbols become significant and instantly recognisable, as do their musical themes which reflect this culture. Is the appearance of the Phoenix Wright games in the West a defiant statement of Japanese nationality amongst its alleged toning down for Western tastes?
 
Perhaps only partly. Despite the fact that the characters of the Kurain family all bear the visual signs of Japanese heritage, they are all written with American personalities, perhaps to fit in with where the game is set. Mia is an idealistic attorney, Maya a burger-crunching pop culture fanatic, and Pearl bears all the stereotypical resemblances to Western depictions of childhood: someone emotionally strong rather than intellectually strong.
 

A fun, family-orientated console for all ages to enjoy? A serious console to rival the PS3 and Xbox 360, capable of hosting the next wave of cutting-edge games? Or a halfway house between the two? Just what does Nintendo want from the Wii and where is it headed? The direction seems confused.
 
One thing's for certain: it cannot compete with Sony and Microsoft in terms of getting games that display the bleeding edge of graphical prowess. But, with recent announcements suggesting games designed for grown-ups are in development for the system, and developers don't understand the Wii and don't develop to its strengths, it seems no one's really sure what to do with Nintendo's little white box.
 
Another certainty: you cannot market a console for over a year as being something for the whole family to enjoy, with multiplayer fun-fests and fitness fads at the heart of your campaigns, and then expect people to suddenly see your product in a different light. This episode seems reminiscent of the GameCube, where everyone saw it as a fun little toy that developers eventually shied away from while Sony and Microsoft fought for the loyalty of hardened gamers.
 
This time around is slightly different: unlike the GameCube, the Wii has sold by the bucket load, ensuring companies at least have to take a little bit of notice of what Nintendo wants to do. But unless there's consensus over what that is, we'll continue to get half-arsed conversions, poor relations to the leading titles and ‘family'-orientated games which most people simply regard as childish.
 

The little white box of the Nintendo Wii doesn't have too much to look at, but it still pulls in a crowd. Ball-IT, a Finnish company, is hoping to compete with the Wii using the same tactics. They have produced a small, little squeezable ball, filled with sensors that can interact with TV screens, computers and mobile phones which they hope will revolutionize the way we play video games.
 
Established in 2005, the Finnish company Ball-IT "aims to become a global leader in the development and production of motion controlled gaming solutions. These solutions include enabling devices and modules as well as core software components for implementing consumer-level User interfaces."
 
Although many other companies are also trying to come up with the next Wiimote-like controller, none have a product like Ball-it. "Ball-it wants to become the non-keyboard standard for remote communication with your screen." By using Bluetooth the golf-ball sized peripheral can interact with most other Bluetooth capable devices. The ball has wireless sensors built in and can sense geomagnetic fields, orientation, direction, speed, air pressure and acceleration, something that no other competitor has been able to do.
 

Rumours have been going around the internet about a PS3 motion sensing controller for quite some time now, but due to a leaked youtube video the rumours look like fact. The video was leaked by PlayStation Lifestyle, and it was them who gave us the original information about the new PlayStation controller back in June.
 
Titled the ‘Sixense', the Wiimote-like controller is based on the Nintendo motion sensing principle but the difference being the Sixense will include "precise tracking relative to the base station."
 
"Sixense designed this thing to use magnetic field detection so it can track both your hands on the controller position in full 3D real-time, with an accurate 10 millisecond refresh rate."
 
Nintendo and their vision carved the way for this new technology with the Wii being a massive success. With a unique style of gameplay that offers a physical way to interact with a console, the Nintendo Wii showed us the future of how to play games, and although the graphics are not up to the PS3's standard by far, it's the motion sensing that has kept the Wii at the top of the sales chart since it was released 2 years ago.
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Got a few thousand Wii Points to spend? It’s worth investing them in the enchantingly odd (and odd-titled) Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People. The first two episodes of the game series that defines acronymic awkwardness are now available on WiiWare, and provide welcome resuscitation for the sporadically dead genre of yore: the Point and Click Adventure.

Based on the long running online animated cartoon Homestar Runner, S.B’s.C.G.F.A.P focuses on the Macho Libre figure of Strong Bad and his frequent attempts to make Homestar’s life a misery. The first episode sees him, among other things, ruining Homestar’s attempt to win The Free Country Tri-Annual Race to the End of the Race, using a metal detector to find buried treasure, and chain-sawing bushes to death in order to gather their precious branches. It’s all madly surreal stuff, brilliantly written and spoken in wonderfully self-mocking internet idiom. And it might remind you of such classics as…such classics as…DAY OF THE TENTACLE!

“Pistols on Licence to Kill! No Oddjob! Isn’t there an option to disable the body armour?”

 
Hear that? That’s the sound of gamers talking. And not through a headset which sounds like they’re holding an angry bee in their mouth as they do so. About which game? Goldeneye 007. Granted, Rare’s masterpiece/fluke is now a jerky and unplayable mess, but at its time of release, it laid down both the technical and social foundations of split-screen multiplayer gaming. So why have these foundations been abandoned, and why has nobody returned to build a party house upon them?

A recent spate of firmware updates trying to stop the Homebrew Channel has finally ended up with a change of the Wii Network Service Privacy Policy. It gives details how your Wii may now download updates without your permission or even without notifying you first.
 
Old Policy
"To ensure that your Wii Console is operating properly and efficiently, we may download updates, patches, upgrades and similar software to your Wii Console. In addition, we may disable unauthorized or illegal software that has been placed on your Wii Console without notifying you where necessary, in order to comply with applicable laws, assist law enforcement, protect us and our customers, and prevent the use and distribution of software obtained through improper channels."
 
New Policy
"We may without notifying you, download updates, patches, upgrades and similar software to your Wii Console and may disable unauthorized or illegal software placed on your Wii Console to ensure that your Wii Console is operating properly and efficiently, comply with applicable laws, assist law enforcement, protect us and our customers, or prevent the use and distribution of software obtained through improper channels."
There are also some other changes due to the update, including;
 
USB keyboard support in the Mii Channel.
Enhanced Parental Controls.
Twilight Hack version 0.1 beta1 can't be copied to the system memory.
Improved SD card read/write speed.
Improved disc reading.
 

Over the last few weeks I have been thoroughly hooked on ‘Brain Training' type games. My favourite of which has been the newly released ‘Brain Challenge' on Nintendo Wii. This 1000 point WiiWare title has plenty of give with its five categories of puzzles: Logic, Math, Memory, Visual and Focus, and 43 different mini-games which include;
‘Balance' where different objects are shown on scales and the player must determine which is the heaviest object.
‘Trout Route' where the player must follow a path based on the progressive numerical relationship given (ie. +2, -3, etc.)
‘Travelling' requires the player to memorize a route of arrows.
‘Bouncing Ball' has the player determining which ball bounces highest.
Of course all of these have to be played as quick as possible to receive the highest score. Your score then gets turned into a percentage of brain power, and with the game starting with a quote "They say humans only use 10% of their brains..." don't expect to see huge numbers.
 

Animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has turned its vengeance away from the fashion industry and vast Japanese whaling fleets and honed its ire on the videogame industry. In particular, it's unhappy with that paragon of domestic virtue, Cooking Mama.
 
In a bid to raise awareness over the conditions in which many farm animals are kept and treated during slaughter, the group has launched its own Flash version of the game, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, where Mama's wholesome twinkle-in-the-eye is replaced by a malevolent, icy gleam. Players are first invited to prepare a sad-looking turkey by plucking it, stuffing it and cooking it. To emphasise the plight of the poor birds, each mini-game is followed by facts and videos describing the appalling condition in which livestock is sometimes kept (you can play the game here - http://www.peta.org/cooking-mama/index.asp?c=pcmgb08). It then invites you to contact Majesco, the DS title's North American publisher, to let them know that you'd like to see Mama be a bit more ethical in her sourcing of ingredients and perhaps throw a few vegetarian recipes into her culinary repertoire. "If you take just a minute to think about what happens to the animals who are killed for Mama's meals, a fun cooking game no longer seems quite so innocent," says a statement from PETA.