Nintendo su WiiWare, codici amico, Retro e altro

Riportiamo una porzione di intervista di Gamasutra ad Eric Walter, responsabile pubbliche relazioni della casa di Kyoto. Qui potete leggere il resto dell'intervista. Sui codici amico: :|

GS: Now that Monster Hunter 3 is announced as a Wii exclusive, there’s been some speculation that this game might be the first to “circumvent” friend codes, because it really hinges on group play, and friend codes can be somewhat unwieldy. Will there be some kind of solution to this?.

EW: We’re still discussing that; we don’t have anything to announce today. But the way that we think about friend codes is, when folks are online, and they want to play, they typically want to play with their friends. And so, they want to keep it to groups of people they know. We’ve seen, in the feedback we’ve gotten, that people don’t mind the friend codes. They like them, because it keeps them playing with the friends that they do know, and it keeps their games “undisturbed,” if you will.

GS: Another WiiWare question — considering the Wii has a rather small flash drive, how many titles will it be able to hold? For example, even though Crystal Chronicles on WiiWare is not going to be large, it might be difficult to have even ten games of that volume.

EW: A lot of the games for WiiWare that have been submitted so far are smaller in size, so they’re not gonna take up a ton of your drive. But the way that we look at it is, we really don’t want people storing every single game they buy on their drive. When you buy a game, it’s yours forever, so you can delete it, and go back and get it at any time you want. In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod; you listen to it for a while, and then you get tired of it, and you pull it off, and you put some new stuff on.

GS: Can you say, at all, what Retro is working on now?

EW: I can’t. I can tell you they’re definitely hard at work, though! I just talked to those guys this morning, in fact, and they’re definitely hard at work. There’ll be some things coming out, for sure. They’re really excited about Metroid Prime 3; it’s doing well, and that’s a game that I think will see good sales through the holidays.

Certainly, the hardcore ran out and got it right away, and I think as fans start to see that game — and there are still folks coming to the Wii every day — it certainly hasn’t reached its lifespan just yet. So, I think as people begin to come to the Wii, they’ll see that game; and even new players can get into a game like that.