Nintendo's Renewal

Nintendo's Wii has an...interesting conundrum. In terms of its software lineup, the potential of it seemed good initially since smaller developers would have a venue to have with the rising cost of development Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 software would undoubtedly entail. The initial third-party lineup was admittedly bare compared to the HD consoles, which raised some concerns. Since then, it's fluctuated between both extremes, with the software situation never settling into one comfortable position. Especially in America.

But that's not to say Japan and Europe have been perfect. When the third-party lineup was still distressing, Nintendo has plenty of fantastic software to provide to fill in the gap. But when they felt third-party developers were stepping up their offerings, they let their offerings lapse, and the system's overall morale suffered for it. Nintendo has recently promised to fix the problem, but with third-party games seeing underwhelming sales on the system, many of them are starting to leave. It's pretty bad in Japan, where no third-party Wii titles have been announced for months.

Yesterday, however, we saw a new lineup from Nintendo that showed promise for their future output. They're indeed keeping their promise to provide some titles that will appease the core audience. So yeah, there will be some games to play later on this year. Maybe.

You're already familiar with Metroid: Other M, a new Metroid title to be borne of a collaboration between Tecmo's Team Ninja and Nintendo's Metroid staff; the latter of which includes Yoshio Sakamoto, co-creator of the franchise. Given how both sides are talented, it should be pretty good. It also looks much more story-oriented than the previous games. The official Japanese teaser webpage went up in Japan yesterday, confirming that the game will release in summer 2010. The site also has a beautiful piano theme.

It took a while for Monolith Soft's new Wii RPG to resurface again, and it has in the form of a teaser webpage on Nintendo of Japan's website. Formerly known as Monado: Beginning of the World -- buried within Nintendo of America's press packet from E3 last year -- Xenoblade is going to be the final name of their new RPG. Yeah, Xenoblade. And the project is helmed by Tetsuya Takahashi too. And it apparently has mechs! This seems reminiscent of something in particular.

And before you conclude that the name is Takahashi's desperate attempt at recapturing the spirit of the good ol' days when the "Xeno" name was one of prominence, the final name was actually Nintendo's idea. We should be seeing more soon, as the game releases in Japan in spring 2010. Hopefully it's come a ways since its last appearance. Make sure to take in the music on the website too, because it's lovely. I've listened to it about six times now. I'm still trying to figure out who composed it.

We've known that Mistwalker's Hironobu Sakaguchi (formerly of Squaresoft) has been up to something for a long time, given his intermittent blog updates on Mistwalker's website. And now we know, as a site appeared on Nintendo's website yesterday revealing The Last Story. Interesting name too, as it's a little reminiscent of another name. Something representing finality. Subtle.

Both Nintendo and Mistwalker are being sparse on the details, but Sakaguchi said the theme of it will be "the universal theme of human emotion." The site also has some beautiful music, possibly composed by Nobuo Uematsu. The game releases in Japan sometime this year.

This is a pretty nice batch of games, especially when you also consider some of the other games from Nintendo that will appeal to core gamers, like Zangeki no Reginleiv (which releases in Japan on February 11th), Super Mario Galaxy 2, and the new Zelda. And while I'd like to think that all of these games will release over here, who knows what will come over with company so schizophrenic with whatever they release outside of Japan like Nintendo of America. Hopefully, they've changed their minds, but the skepticism remains.