Nintendo Europe's DSi/WiiWare Media Summit

Nintendo of Europe held a Media Summit earlier today to discuss their upcoming plans for WiiWare and DSiWare, as well as some of their successes with the platforms to date. European head of marketing Laurent Fischer was on hand to deliver a press conference before the masses were unleashed upon the playable titles. Cubed3's Adam Riley and Mike Mason were on hand.

Fischer began by speaking of the ease of creativity afforded on the download services that might not be able to blossom in the retail market. "It's easy for developers to have a lot of creativity and to finalise the games the way they want and then to reach our consumer with the DSi and WiiWare systems. For us, we're very happy because we can gather a lot of new talent and a lot of new developers which reach exciting and creative ideas. For us, this download world has nothing to do with the retail world. The retail world, the games that we sell on cartridge or disc, is the heart and the core business of Nintendo. We think that DSiWare and WiiWare are able to have additional content, something which has no direct competition in the existing retail market. The fact that you don't have to bear the same number of risks as a developer is the entry point to help all these people to go and develop unusual ideas, quirky games and things that would never have a chance in retail stores."



He then refreshed our memories on recent downloadable titles with brief trailers on Mario VS Donkey Kong: March Of The Minis, Zoonami's Bonsai Barber and a fan trailer for the next episode of Tales Of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan. This led in to the first of our special guests taking the stage, Dave Grossman of Telltale Games, who spoke about the decisions behind bringing an episodic Monkey Island series to WiiWare. "Monkey Island, there were four games that came out over a period of 18 years, meaning the average wait time between games was four and a half years. What we're doing now is a series of games that come out monthly, and that gives you a more engaging experience. You play the game, it takes a few hours, and by the time you're done talking about it with your friends there's already another one out. Nintendo has always had the best sense of casual, fun gameplay that fits the Monkey Island series." Later in the day we interviewed Mr. Grossman - look out for that soon.

Next, Fischer teased us with a mention of Lost Winds, "one of the highlights of the WiiWare launch", before launching a trailer of the sequel, Winter of the Melodias. Out in a few weeks, the game was made playable for the first time ever outside of the developers themselves today, and we'll have a hands-on preview of it very soon. David Braben of Frontier then joined Laurent on stage. Lost Winds came as a result of an internal messageboard at Frontier wherein staff submit and add critique on game ideas, "Game of the Week". Braben said: "We've put a lot of extra effort into the gameplay. The key thing what we've been trying to do is to move forward, where we've got all the abilities from the previous game still there, and we've added to them." We also spoke to David during the course of the day in another exclusive interview.



After a brief delay, a video for Kenji Eno's WiiWare title You, Me and the Cubes was shown. The man involved in Altered Beast and the D series then took to the stage after flying over from Japan especially for this event. He spoke of how when he saw the Revolution, as it was then known, and its controller for the first time, he decided he had to work on the system. "I want this one!" He created his own black papercraft Wii remote, such was his excitement, and got in touch with Nintendo. Eno-san was also happy to speak to us as the day went on; another one to watch out for.

Moving swiftly on to DSiWare, Fischer ran through some of the mini Brain Training DSiWare titles. Versions on DSiWare include the already released maps edition, which has already sold well - follow-ups are coming. Flipnote Studio was given time to shine, with Laurent proclaiming it to be the "best example" of creativity on DSiWare. The recently announced deal with Aardman to produce free downloadable weekly films in twelve weeks running up to Christmas using the software was mentioned, with a showing of the first episode, the very funny 'The Sandwich Twins'. The social aspects of DSiWare, such as the Hatena and Facebook integration, were also given a shout.


A trailer showed off key WiiWare/DSiWare titles for the rest of the year. Deep breath...: Lost Winds 2, And Yet It Moves, Bit.Trip.Void, Super Meat Boy, Max and the Magic Marker, Miffy's World, Night Sky, Zombie Panic In Wonderland, Learn With The Pooyoos Episode 1, Toribash, Worms: Battle Islands, Tales of Monkey Island and You, Me and the Cubes for WiiWare; Castle of Magic, Bomberman Blitz, Combat Of Giants: Dragons, Flight Control, Pop Island and Reflections for DSiWare. We'll have hands-on previews of the majority of these titles very soon.

To finish, Laurent Fischer announced the Connection Ambassador promotion, which encourages Wii/DSi owners to help offline Nintendo users get online. For each new user they manage to get to connect online, the helper will gain 500 Nintendo points; 20 people in total can be aided for points, to earn up to 10,000 Nintendo points. In addition, if you manage to get 10 people online you will earn gold status, allowing you to download the entire first party NES Virtual Console library for free; get the maximum 20 and they'll let you have the first party VC titles for NES, SNES and N64. So get promoting. With a final command - "play all the games - that's mandatory!" - Mr. Fischer left the stage, and we all dutifully went to obey his word.

Our coverage of the titles and interviews will start to crop up very soon; we hope you'll enjoy them.