E3 2006: Hands on with Nintendo's Wii and new Dell Designs
by Haider Farhan on May 11, 2006 9:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, held in the famous Los Angeles Convention Center (next door to the Staples Center, home to the L.A. Lakers and L.A. Clippers) here in downtown Los Angeles. E3 is an annual trade event in which numerous exhibitors converge to bring their latest creations to the eye of industry related media and professionals to salivate over.
Tens of thousands of industry professionals and media are expected to attend E3 2006 and hopefully this year, everything goes according to plan. If you didn't hear about what happened last year, the power went out in the media and administrative facilities and on one of the show floors. With no power in the media and administrative facilities, that meant members of the media had to wait in up to three and a half hour long lines to receive their well sought after press badges (yes, we were in the midst of this last year). And with a power outage on one of the show floors, that meant no air conditioning; and with thousands of people in one large room, it gets uncomfortable in a short amount of time.
At E3 2006, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), whom E3 is owned and operated by, expects nearly four hundred exhibitors from eighty countries around the globe to bring to life their well hidden and sought after productions.
Some highly anticipated games that are expected to be displayed this year are: Spore, God of War 2, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Halo 3, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Final Fantasy XIII, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and many, many more. We're also expecting Nintendo to have their latest console, the Wii, on display as well as Sony's PlayStaion 3. We will no doubt find Microsoft to have one of the larger booths on the show floor, but with their latest console, the 360, already in the hands of enthusiastic gamers, we're mainly expecting a wide array of software and accessories to go along with it.
We spent some time with Nintendo's Wii, formerly known as Revolution, as well as some of Dell's upcoming XPS designs, which we're covering here today.
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ninjit - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
I knew some dumbass would bring that up as soon as I hit post.If someone's walking past you to hit up the fridge while you're in the middle of a game, they'll normally try and duck (if they have any sense) so that you can still see over them and play on. But with an infra-red controller you would have to raise your hands up too, or the line-of-sight between your hands and the system would be severed.
And that was just one example, there are so many different ways in which the signal could be blocked: you could have a book or a bowl of chips on the coffee table in front of you, which you'd have to point around... I could go on and on...
If you had actually "thought about it" yourself, you would have realized what I was talking about.
But, from the above two replies it appears commmunication is still done by RF. In which case I'd like to know more about what the infra-red bar is for.
Sea Shadow - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
My guess is that it is only partially based on IR, it would be crazy for nintendo to drop the RF method after all the work with the wavebird. Perhaps there is something more to it. Heck maybe the console uses the IR link to establish an RF connection with the controllers, after all things might get crazy if you just power on 3 or 4 consoles in the same room and expect the various controllers to communicate with the proper consoles. But that is just a guess though.ColdFusion101 - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
Actually the IR is only part of the Wiimote's motion sensing combined with an accelerometer. The controller talks to the Wii through BLuetooth.yonzie - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
On the front page it says "We spent some quality time with Nintendo's Wii"...Well?
Is it any good then?
(all you got is one paragraph :'-( )
oh, and:
"[...] the Classic style controller is designed to be used for NES, SNES and N64 games."
The Wiimote seems perfectly capable of playing NES games (unless of course it's completely IR based), so that should probably have read "[...] to be used for SNES and N64 games."
NegativeEntropy - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
Seconded! If they had final games, tell us about the graphics as that seems to be the only thing about the Wii people are concerned about.solgae1784 - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
......is quite similar to Apple G5 desktop.yonzie - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
... except hideously ugly.johnsonx - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
Can anyone say how I'm supposed to say "Wii"?Same as the english word "Why"?
Same as the english word "We"?
something else?
artifex - Friday, May 12, 2006 - link
like, omg wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!:)
mjh - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
The Nintendo Wii is pronounced as "We."