Impressions: Wii News Channel

Yesterday Nintendo released the final missing channel to the gaming hordes of the world. While the Forecast Channel was met with indifference at best, the News Channel is actually surprisingly useful.

From the Wii Menu, you are taken to a list of various news categories including National, Regional (confusingly the regions are areas such as ‘Europe’ and ‘North America’ rather sub-national areas, Science & Health and Technology. You can then access news stories from these menu selections.

In comparison to my three regular news sources (the BBC website and the Herald and Guardian newspapers), the news stories are more detailed and varied then many of the BBC’s stories and cover far more international news then either newspaper. Unfortunately it also lacks the editorial slant of the newspapers, which renders it a bit bland.

The most amusing feature in the News Channel is the reprisal of the Globle view used in the Forecast Channel. This can be accessed by clicking on a news article marketed with a globe symbol and then clicking on the map that appears beside the news story. Unfortunately, this has it’s limitations as well, since not all stories are available on the map and locations are arranged from where stories were filed from rather then where they actually took place.

So, to sum up, I’m probably more likly to turn the Wii on then I am to turn my computer on to check the news now. My only gripe is the lack of  coverage by other companies. Hopefully, in time Nintendo might allow you to read RSS feeds or let other (hopefully specialised) media providers to distribute material over Wii News as well.

Square-Enix License Unreal 3 Graphics Engine

Square-Enix have licensed the Unreal 3 graphics engine from Epic Games (developer of the Unreal franchise and Gears of War) for their next current gen games.

So what does this mean for Final Fantasy fans? Well, the R&D manager for Square-Enix stated that this would mean a shorter development time for games in the future with less time spent developing custom engines for each game and more time spent on the mechanics and design of the games. PS3 Fanboy even managed to dredge up a quote (which I haven’t actually been able to find a source for) which claims:

“Since this is the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy, we have a surprise we’d like to keep for our fans until the end of the year.”

Hmmm…could we have Final Fantasy XIII in 2007? Possibly, but FFXIII is known to have an advanced, custom built game engine known as the White Engine which has previously been demonstrated at E3 ‘06, so it’s pretty unlikely that it’ll be using the Unreal 3 engine. However, there are currently other FF and Kingdom Hearts projects in development (details on these is due to be released in Q2/3 07), so it’s likely that these will make use of the Unreal tech.

The licensing of technology from a company that is best known for developing for the PC and Xbox has added further fuel to the already rampant rumors that Square-Enix is planning to take one of it’s major franchises to the Xbox 360 in 2007/8.

Tesco Selling Xbox 360 Games for £16

Good news for British gamers for a change. UK retailer Tesco is offering a selection of big name Xbox 360 games for under £20 each.

Games included in this offer include Tomb Raider: Legend, Perfect Dark: Zero, Kameo and Quake 4. All the titles were Xbox 360 launch titles, but most of them are pretty good games and defiantly worth checking out if you’ve got a few pounds to spend.

Personally, I’ll be picking up Kameo and Quake 4 as soon as I can afford them. I’m not sure if this offer is online only or available in stores, but I shall update once I’ve done my weekly shopping on Sunday. Oh, and you can buy the games here.

[Via MCV]

What do you get if you cross an Xbox 360 and Vista? Games for Windows!

Microsoft have been producing Games for Windows labeled games for the best part of a year now. Both Lego Star Wars II and MS Flight Simulator 10 received the shiny GfW branding, but at a press conference last night, MS revealed what Games for Windows/Vista actually means for your average PC gamer.

Basically, with the next generation of Windows games, we’re going to be seeing the Live service extend on to PCs as well as the Xbox 360 and the Zune. This includes cross-platform multiplayer (Uno and Shadowrun have been confirmed as having cross platform multi-player so far), Achievement Points and the release of a number of Xbox Live Arcade titles for the PC, presumably over a download service.

The live features will be rolled out gradually on Vista following it’s release at the end of the month. Upcoming Games for Windows titles include Crysis, Age of Conan, Age of Empires III, Bioshock and Halo 2.

Thrills Killa from the Xbox Domain was lucky enough to get an invite to the GfW showcase event and has a good write up of it here.

I think that overall, Games for Windows is a good idea. The PC gaming market needs some kind of regulation when it comes to compatibility and Microsoft are the only company that are really in a position to do it. It will take a while to catch on (much in the same way that it took a good year for the Steam download service to take off), but when it does I think publishers will be clamoring to get on board and get a peice of the pie.

The addition of Achievement Points and Live style features is an amazing bonus for PC games. Achievement Points add a lot of replay value to games and give you more satisfaction then just completing the game. The Live Arcade games on PC is a good idea, but to be honest, I wouldn’t use them. I like playing the arcade games on my 360 and I’d get bored of Geometry Wars too quickly on a PC.

Finally, I have concerns over cross platform multiplayer. In Phantsay Star Universe, it worked. In Counter-Strike, it didnt, resulting in the servers for Xbox and PC being seperating. I think it will very much depend on a the games.

Fable 2 Teaser Released

GayGamer.Net came accross this rather interesting photo which had been posted on Lionhead Studio’s public forum.

It comes from the upcoming Fable 2, looks sexy as fuck and has a rather interesting teaser message attached.

The message comes from one of Lionhead Studio’s development staff and reads:

There is something we’d like to show you…… and we would like to add the following 3 points, for you to speculate: * This is a castle * “Own all the world’s property” * Located in a city

So, with any luck, Fable 2 is going to have Elder Scrolls Style cities, with even more potential to own and customise houses and even the above castle.

Just now, Fable 2 remains Xbox 360 exclusive, but given Microsoft’s push for high quality, high graphics games on Windows Vista, I suspect that there’s a good chance that we’ll see it released under the Games for Windows brand.