If you didn’t already know, the 2009 Game Developers Conference takes place this week in San Francisco, CA, and today Nintendo President Satoru Iwata gave a short, statistic filled keynote address complete with what we have been waiting years for.
Iwata, casually dressed without tie, spoke about the rampant success of the Nintendo family of products with the Wii at nearly 50 million units sold worldwide and the DS already surpassing 100 million units.
Iwata also praised legendary video game creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s efforts by saying Miyamoto “sees game opportunities where others don’t” and “In my opinion he is leveraging these development opportunities better than anyone else today” furthermore, “When Miyamoto sees something that a lot of people are enjoying, he’ll study what part of that activity is fun,” and finally, “Even if people don’t realize why they are having fun, Miyamoto does.”
Bill Trinen of Nintendo spoke to the question of a Wii storage solution and if you fire up your Wii today, you’ll find Wii menu update 4.0 which adds the “SD card menu” that allows for additional storage space with 12 channels per screen and up to 20 screens which equals a total of 240 games!
How can a simple SD card hold so much information? The answer lies in SDHC card, capable of up to 32GB of space.‚ You can download from the Wii Shop Channel directly to the SD card, and then launch titles directly from the SD card.
Next, Iwata took back the stage and announced the Virtual Console Arcade, an expansion on the Virtual Console with titles Space Harrier, Gaplus, Star Force, Solvalou, The Tower of Druaga, Mappy and more available today!
In addition, a slew of Final Fantasy titles for WiiWare as well as Virtual Console.‚ “My Life as a Darklord” is a sequel to WiiWare launch title “My Life as a King” as well as “Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and yes, Final Fantasy will come to the Virtual Console in Japan with all six Famicom/SuperFamicom titles released in Japan and “FF 1” and “FF:IV”‚ debuting stateside.
Finally, after an interesting, dungeon filled trailer, Iwata announced “The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.”
“This new DS title is tentatively named The Legend of Zelda; Spirit Tracks. It will be available this year.”
Iwata said that while new original development may be difficult during the economic downturn, he noted that the jet engine, television and the chocolate chip cookie were created during The Great Depression.
Stay tuned for updates and more information regarding everything we heard today, but feel free to let share in giddy excitement over a new Zelda title, I know I will.
Via Michael McWhertor at Kotaku.
Leave a Reply