Road to Release: All major gaming-related events until the end of the year.

Are you wondering where and when Nintendo might reveal new Wii info leading up to the console´s launch? Here´s a rundown of all important videogame related events until the end of the year.

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IEMA Summit
18th - 20th of July 2006

Description: The Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association´s annual summit.

Venue: Hyatt Huntington Beach Resort & Spa, Huntington Beach, California, USA

Notes: The IEMA Executive Summit is a retail purchasing show bringing together the leading merchants and publishers to discuss topically-important industry issues and conduct purchasing meetings. It´s apparently a trade-only event.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news very low.

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Online Gaming China 2006
25th - 26th of July 2006

Description: Optimizing marketing competitiveness, profitable game development and revenue strategies, organized by the International Quality & Productivity Center

Venue: Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, Shanghai, China

Notes: There is no full list of exhibitors, this is possibly a workshop and session only event. Nintendo not on the speakers list.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news very low.

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Siggraph
29th of July - 3rd of August 2006

Description: The 33rd International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, organized by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

Venue: Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Notes: Co-located with Sandbox - an ACM Video Game Symposium. Nintendo not an exhibitor.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news very low.

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Edinburgh International Games Festival 2006
21st - 22nd of August 2006

Description: The festival celebrates the best of the interactive entertainment industry and creates an environment where the development and publishing community can celebrate the latest creative milestones and look to future innovations.

Venues: Royal College of Physicians / Odeon, Edinburgh, UK

Notes: Co-located with the EIEF06 Edge Award. Nintendo is on the sponsors list.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news high.

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Games Convention 2006
21st - 27th of August 2006

Description: Europe´s biggest gaming expo.

Venue: Leipziger Messe, Leipzig, Germany

Notes: Co-located with GC Developer Conference. Nintendo is on the exhibitors list. Wii console is expected playable at the event.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news very high.

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PAX 06
25th - 27th of August 2006

Description: Penny Arcade Expo

Venue: Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, Washington, USA

Notes: PAX is a three-day game festival for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers. Nintendo is on the sponsors list.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news high.

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Toronto Independent Games Conference
31st of August - 2nd of September 2006

Description: 2nd educational conference and trade event for game developers, with a strong focus on 3rd party "indie" developers, hobbyists, and students.

Venue: George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Notes: Largely academic speakers, full event schedule not yet published.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news low.

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Austin Game Conference
6th - 8th of September 2006

Description: 4th conference for online and networked game development, including massively multiplayer online games, casual games, online PC and console games.

Venue: Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, USA

Notes: There is no full list of exhibitors, this is possibly a workshop and session only event. Co-located with Game Writers Conference, Casual Games Conference and Game Audio Conference. Nintendo not on the speakers list.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news low.

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TGS 2006
22nd - 24th of September 2006

Description: 10th Tokyo Game Show, organized by The Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Asia´s biggest gaming expo.

Venue: Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan

Notes: Nintendo is no exhibitor (like last year) and will not hold a keynote speech. Sony Computer Entertainment´s Ken Kutaragi and Square Enix´ Yoichi Wada are occupying the opening keynote slots, according to the Japanese TGS 2006 site. The English speakers list is still to be published.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news low.

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GameCity 2006
25th - 29th of October 2006

Description: 1st Annual Interactive Entertainment Festival, GameCity aims to entertain, inform and educate individuals, industry and the public sector on the value and the potential of interactive entertainment for everyone.

Venue: Not Specified, Nottingham, UK

Notes: Since it´s the first such event, little is known about it. There is no exhibitors list.

Likelihood of Nintendo related news low.

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vgXpo 2006
27th - 29th October 2006

Description: 2nd America's VideoGame Expo

Venue: Valley Forge Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Notes: Nintendo not on the provisional exhibitors list
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Likelihood of Nintendo related news low.

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EDIT I overlooked a sort-of important event, Digital Life in mid-October. Microsoft´s Peter Moore is holding one of the keynotes, but Nintendo isn´t even exhibiting. I just thought I added this in case you want to treat this as a complete list of gaming-related events, regardless of Nintendo´s participation.

EDIT It appears that Nintendo will not appear at this year´s Tokyo Game Show at all. It was widely believed that Satoru Iwata would again hold one of the opening keynotes and reveal more information about Wii. This is not the case. Sony Computer Entertainment´s Ken Kutaragi and Square Enix´ Yoichi Wada are occupying the opening keynote slots, according to the Japanese TGS 2006 site. So it looks like there will be no Nintendo news at TGS this year.

EDIT I will no longer update this post, since I am constantly updating its mirror, so to speak, over on the NSider forums. The formatting is slightly different, so I cannot simply paste the same information here without some effort. And since this post has moved off the blog´s front page and my NSider forums thread is floated on the Wii board, I kindly ask you to go there for updates.

Sources: Gamasutra, Siggraph, SPOnG

Wii to launch in October?

The freshest Wii launch rumour is October. Kotaku claims to have learned this from an inside source.

A large development team working on a still to be disclosed Wii title just got a big kick in the ass from Nintendo.

The source tells us that Alpha, Beta and Final times for the game just got vastly reduced and the common belief among the team is that the Wii will in fact be hitting this October.

This latest tidbit lands as Nintendo starts making the rounds in Europe and here in North America meeting with mass readership magazines to give them first-hand experience with the Wii and it's tiny wii-mote.

Here in the U.S., the company is meeting with folks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, all to give them a chance to play on the new console.

An October release of the Nintendo console would make all kinds of sense. If they can swing beating Sony out the doors, why would they wait?

Why would they wait? Because they want a convincing array of launch titles, as I don´t get tired of repeating. Kicking some developers´ butts won´t work in every case, I am afraid. However, October is the only reasonable alternative to November (which I´m still putting my money on), so it´s at least possible.

Source: Kotaku
Thanks to: Codename Revolution

New Miyamoto game screenshots?

My god, what a productive Sunday this is turning out to be! Thanks to Raphael, we can all enjoy these six beautiful screenshots from this Chinese DS site´s forums:








According both to GoNintendo and their source, German Nintendo site PlayWii.de, these are supposed to be the first screenshots from a new Miyamoto IP. However, no such reference can be found on the original forum (which seems to be down at times).

The original thread is entitled 个未定名的游戏,游戏概念图, which approximates (according to Babelfish) to ´Has not chosen a name game, game concept chart´.

Further below, the topic creator writes: 游戏概念图, 应该不是即时演算的,不过感觉不错, which is translated as ´The game concept chart, should not be the immediate calculation, but feels good´, probably meaning that they are not real screenshots, but what the studio is aiming for.

Other people commented on the screenshots thus:

从古堡到现代都市，差距有点太大了
- ´From the old castle to the modern metropolis, the disparity a little too was big´

设定有点FF的意思……
- ´Hypothesis a little FF meaning... ...´

飞空艇都有，典型最终幻想
- ´Flies the spatial ship all to have, the model finally fantasized´

是相当期待的游戏
- ´Is game which quite anticipated´

原来是这个游戏
- ´Originally is this game´


I know that Babelfish turns every sentence into Yoda-Speak, which seems to fit the Star Wars feel of the screenshots. But some of the sentences are clear enough to suggest that this is a game that has been anticipated for some time. In this case, it couldn´t possibly be anything to do with Miyamoto, because there has been no word on a new IP - and who could anticipate something that hasn´t yet been announced?

In my mind, it can´t be a Miyamoto game. It may, however, turn out to be for the Wii, after all. Since it was posted on a DS site´s forum, that is actually rather likely.

EDIT The images are indeed from a Chinese CGI movie called ´Thru the Moebius Strip´. Thanks to Fyter for pointing this out. You can visit the movie´s website here. Some of the scenes from the alleged Miyamoto screenshots can be seen in the trailers. This could leave the whole story fake. However, it does not explain the comments by the people on the Chinese forum. They were clearly recognizing a game. Perhaps there is a game in development alongside the movie?

Source: NDSMan Forums
Thanks to: Raphael, GoNintendo, PlayWii.de (German)