Let’s jump straight in with some bright old news: a little late to notice it but looks like something that seemed like an obvious idea ever since the Wii came out is actually happening. According to Engadget the BBC are launching, today, the BBC iPlayer Wii Channel. A dedicated icon and interface all ready to delivery wonderful streamed radio and TV BBC delights straight through your Wii. Now if only the UKs ISPs were actually up to the job of handling the data to actually make watching streamed video tolerable.
Now I’ll get right onto downloading that just as soon as Nintendo put out a new system update so I don’t have to risk bricking my Wii to get new downloads!
In slightly more up to date news we have been told to expect a Wii Zelda-related surprise (Sickr) at the next E3. I’ve heard this ‘expect a surprise’ from Nintendo before – anyone remember the E3 when Donkey Konga was announced? This will be taken with a pinch of metaphorical salt methinks. Let us not forget the last time the Zelda formula was messed with – was a busy day on the returns counter after Majora’s Mask was released. By the same token though the Legend of Zelda games have gotten a little familiar. They’re the big knitted jumper you always like to put on despite that there’s that little bit of it in the small of your back that just itches like mad. A change might well be good and, if they tell folk about it now, a boost to the franchise (Majora’s Mask is a great game – just took people a little too much by surprised.. oh that and the requirement for the then gold-dust like memory expansion pack).
To round up today’s offerings allow me to cite a great big WTF at Invizimals for the PSP. The concept of the game is awesome – use a camera to hunt invisible creatures lurking around your actual real-life home / school / place of work / worship / feeding arena with nifty augmented reality stuffs (you know, like the old Symbian game I had years ago on the Nokia 6600… the name of which alludes me rendering this anecdote, well, meaningless). You can interact with these super-imposed entities by throwing down real-life cards with specific shapes the software recognises and places other creature-mo-bobs on. Good times, nice to see this tech filtering into the market.
So why the WTF? Why the feted dingoes kidneys was something like this not thrown out on the DSi? For this to fly on the PSP an additional camera peripheral is required compared to the DSi’s included camera hardware. Often such requirements serve to limit the audience of a title. That said the DSi camera, quirky and gimmicky as it is, doesn’t exactly overflow with pixels. Invizimals could have had a go on the DSi but thinking about it… would it have just looked shoddy?
Musings… Oh well time to enjoy some Dead Space on a shiny 42″ LG screen methinks.
