Super Mario Galaxy is confirmed to have 2player, but last night Miyamoto said that he’s thinking of a way to have it be 4player, suggesting something like the 1st player controls Mario, while the other 3 try to mess with his environment to impede his progress. EAD GM Takahashi Tezuka said that Galaxy’s multiplayer will probably focus more on a co-op style of play. The game is being developed by Nintendo Tokyo (Jungle Beat guys), which is much smaller than SSB Brawl’s 70+ person team, and will likely be available within the 6 months following launch.
SSB Brawl’s main theme was composed by Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Advent Children).
Grasshopper (Killer 7) has announced that their Wii project is called Heroes and is being collaborated on with Marvelous Entertainment and Spike. It was supposed to be shown at E3, but was removed probably because it wasn’t in the best playable form yet.
The Havok physics engine is being liscenced by Nintendo for Wii development.
At Nintendo’s Smash Bros/Mario Galaxy Q&A yesterday, Miyamoto said HDTV penetration is “really not that high, yet. Of course I think five years down the road it would be pretty much a given that Nintendo would create an HD system, but right now the predominant television set in the world is a non-HD set.”
In a recent interview, Microsoft’s Peter Moore said “Tell me why you would buy a $600 PS3? People are going to buy two [machines]. They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii … for the price of one PS3.”
After showing a tech demo of a PS3/360 project, LucasArts employees were asked about making a Star Wars game with lightsaber battles for Wii, and responded with smiles saying “We are looking into it.”
Nintendo has chosen the Opera web browser for use in Wii, like the DS.
Games that were announced but not on the show floor: Trauma Center: A Second Opinion, Harvest Moon, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, Dragon Quest Swords, Pangya Golf, Metal Slug Anthology.
Speaking of wifi, Takahashi Tezuka said that Wii’s wifi will be an extension of the DS, focusing on the 3 qualities of “easy, safe and free”. Meaning that it will not have a standard central interface like Xbox live, instead the interface will depend on the software. Also, those insanely fun-to-input friend codes will stick around for Wii-fi. Get used to ’em.