Nintendo just announced Wii Music, a new music game that lets you use the Wiimote, Nunchuk and Balance Board to create music. Unlike Rock Band or Guitar Hero, this one isn’t based on precise timing. Rather, it lets you basically hit buttons and swing the remote around to create original tunes. The Wii interprets your motions and button presses to make music for you. Essentially, this is like Beamz but instead of lasers, you use the Wiimote and Balance Board. Awesome?
The second new Wii accessory out of E3, the WiiSpeak community mic and speaker finally lets you chat with other people online. Unlike an Xbox 360 headset, it’s more about group chatting and is placed on top of your TV, like a conference call mic (how does it filter out game sounds?). It’s bundled with Animal Crossing City Folk, which is kind of like the Sims, but more Animal Crossing-like. It’ll be out later this year.
Mark and I are down at the Kodak Theatre for Nintendo’s E3 press event. It starts at 9:00 AM PDT, with Miyamoto and pals showing off whatever’s going to be sold out at Gamestops around the country for the rest of the year. Mark’s prediction: a bundled Wii Sports 2 that comes with the new Wii MotionPlus controller. Jason’s prediction: a new Nintendo DS motion adaptor and/or redesign and/or new colour. The liveblog will be here, so bookmark and check back frequently. Update: It’s started!
Microsoft dropped a bunch of awesome bombs in their keynote, but there’s more! Marc Whitten reveals that you’ll be able to copy full games and play them directly off the hard drive to shrink load times (and silence disc spinning), though you’ll still need the game inserted so they know you own it.
Harmonix has officially unveiled the track list for Rock Band 2. Besides being packed with rock gods like AC/DC exclusively, GNR’s Chinese Democracy‘s official debut, Alice in Chains and Rage Against the Machine (I’m a child of the 90′s), and full backwards compatibility with all DLC songs, you can “export most of the Rock Band disc tracks and upgrade them into Rock Band 2 gameplay,” giving real teeth to EA’s claim that it’s the “largest music catalogue” of any music game ever. One disc, all your songs, truly amazing–thanks for not screwing gamers, Harmonix. Every track and all the details below.
Microsoft revealed today at their E3 press conference that their dashboard will be completely redesigned in the fall, with an all new avatar system similar to that on the Wii. The fully customisable avatars, designed by Rare, can be imported into other games to be used as playable characters. New channels include the My Xbox channel, which includes games, photos and video. The friend list will now be manifested as “Community,” which uses the avatars to designate whether or not a friend is signed on. galleryPost('xbox360e3', 6, '');
We’re here in LA and liveblogging the Microsoft presser today at 10:30 PDT. Mark Wilson and I will be covering the hell out of the hardware announcements, but if you’re interested in the new game announcements, Kotaku will be the place to go. What announcements will there be? A motion-controlled interface? A karaoke controller? We’ll find out soon. The liveblog will be here, in this post, so bookmark it and keep checking back! Update: It’s started. Update 2: Lots of good news like new Xbox Dashboard.
Well, the worst kept secret of E3 is out in the open this morning as Microsoft confirmed the 20GB Xbox 360 will now feature a new retail price of US$299. The US$50 price cut is meant to clear inventory, and make room for a new a 60GB console, which will go on sale in the US in August. According to our sister video game blog site-in-crime Kotaku, the new 360 is US$349 (the 20GB model’s original price before the cut). [Kotaku]
Could the rumoured upcoming “Lips” accessory + game to the Xbox 360 have the most advanced karaoke microphone for a game yet? Quite possibly. The game’s made by iNiS, a team that’s no stranger to music games, and features the accessory that pulses in time with your singing, plus detects how you swing it around when crooning in order to score extra points. It seems fantastic, but no amount of peripheral distractions will distract from how really awful your singing is. I mean seriously, vocal lessons aren’t that expensive. [Gamekyo via Kotaku]
Not only does Monday mark the start of the week where you can wave your new iPhone 3Gs around in your coworkers’ faces, it’s the start of (what used to be) the biggest video game event of the year: E3. We’ll be there with Kotaku, and by extension, you’ll be there. There are a ton of hardware rumours this year like Xbox 360 motion controllers, and so Monday we’ll be at Microsoft and their press event which we will bring to you live the same way we do our Apple Liveblogs. On Tuesday, we’ll be covering Nintendo and Sony. Don’t miss it and remember to check Kotaku and their pre-E3 title coverage.
