Nintendo Report

In their preview of Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam, IGN revealed that there will be no third-party games for the Wii until 2007.

Gamers hoping for an online component, however, are in for bad news, because one isn’t planned. Activision would not say why, but IGN has separately learned from multiple development sources that Nintendo will not release Wii Wi-Fi Connection libraries to third parties until early 2007, which means that no third party launch title will have an online mode.

This means that third-party launch titles such as Call of Duty 3, Red Steel, Far Cry, and Madden NFL 07 will not have online support.

EA, at the Leipzig Games Convention, confirmed that they will be releasing 6 titles for the Wii within the months following its launch. The games are:

• Godfather
• Harry Potter
• Madden NFL 2007
• Need For Speed: Carbon
• SSX 5
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007

Several screenshots and character renderings from Battalion Wars 2 are available at Jeux-France.com. Battalion Wars 2 may be playable at the Leipzig Games Convention, so more gameplay screenshots should be available soon.

1UP.com has posted a number of videos and photos from the Leipzig Games Convention, which is being held from August 23rd to August 27th. Nintendo doesn’t have any public kiosks for the Wii, but will be showing it behind closed doors to industry insiders.

Nintendo has announced the European Wii price will be under 250 euros, which equates to £170 and $320 USD. With this news, a $170 USD price for the Wii no longer seems very likely, but it’s still significantly less than that of the XBOX 360 or PS3.

Until now, only the Polar White version of the DS Lite has been available in the United States. But on September 13th, Nintendo will be releasing Onyx (black) and Coral Pink (pink) versions of the DS Lite in the US, giving purchasers the choice of color they haven’t previously had.

Nintendo is releasing the pink DS Lite, which has been long released in Japan, to Europe on October 27th. There’s still no word on when it or the blue or black DS Lite will be released in the United States.

Update: It has been announced that the black and pink DS Lite will be released on September 13th–maybe the US does get fair treatment after all!

Nintendo’s “Brain Age” has earned Edge Magazine’s EIEF06 “Innovation in Gaming” award. Quoth magazine editor Margaret Johnson:

We’re delighted that Brain Training won – it’s a great ambassador for gaming and proves that the instincts for making rewarding and entertaining software that Nintendo has honed for decades can be applied in entirely unexpected ways.

Other contenders for the award included “Amped 3″ for XBOX 360, “Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King” for PS2, “Electroplankton” for DS, “Fahrenheit” for PC, PS2, and XBOX, “Guitar Hero” for PS2, and “Killer 7″ for GameCube and PS2.

Shigeru Miyamoto has announced that Nintendo is considering remaking GameCube games for the Wii, should the dual console release of Twilight Princess prove to be a success, and modifying them to make use of the Wii’s unique controller. To quote Miyamoto:

We’ll be upgrading the development tools, but GameCube code can be used for the most part as is. In that sense, I believe that it would be good to remake GameCube games for Wii, and that some titles would become better with the change to the Wii remote controller.

Because porting games from the GameCube to the Wii is such a simple process, Miyamoto says that any rereleased titles will likely debut for less than standard full retail price.

In a recent issue of Nintendo Dream, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that players of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii will be able to swing the Wii controller to slash with Link’s sword. The sword had previously been assigned to the B button, which will now be used for the firing of arrows. More information is available at IGN.