I was sick all morning yesterday so I missed the whole Nintendo conference, but as I understand it Nintendo's conference was boring as hell.  They announced two new Mario games, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and a 2-d, four player sidescroller coming out this Fall.  Galaxy sounded better before finding out that it was, in its creators words, 'mostly new levels' to go with reused ones from the original game.  The sidescroller sounds pretty neat though, even if it's a shameless reaction to Little Big Planet. 

The big thing I guess was the Wii Motion Plus, which is an addon to the Wiimote that makes it suck less at actual positioning and tracking.  I was under the impression this would give it 1:1 tracking abilities but as it turns out they couldn't get that working.  There was also some wii fit stuff if you need to be called fat by your video games.  And a heartbeat sensor which I can only assume came out of a bet that they could get Americans to pay them money to pinch their fingers.

Oh and they farmed the next Metroid out to the creepy Japanese nerds who made the Dead or Alive series.  So Nintendo's one female character who isn't a pretty princess who must be saved by the manly Italian plumber is now going to get the full Extreme Beach Volleyball treatment.  Yes, that's a real game.  The purpose of it is to earn money from beach volleyball to buy skimpier bikinis to give to the women to make them like you and so you can ogle them in a special controllerless mode where you just watch them dance.  And it was successful enough to spawn sequels. 

So on to Sony's, which I actually watched most of live in between dry heaves.  Given that it was roughly 12 hours long that was impressive.  They showed some great looking games that won't be out until next year at the earliest, including the new game by the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus developers.  Fuckers, I'm actually going to need to buy one when that actually comes out.  Also they made a blatant Mario Kart clone with a Little Big Planet style track creator which is such a great idea I'm surprised nobody thought of it before. 

Then came their motion control solution, about which I can say that it looks prohibitively expensive and unlikely to get a lot of developer support, but is more likely to actually work and deliver on its promises than Microsoft's.  Basically instead of a cheapass sensor bar with two lights, it uses a full camera .  And instead of a remote you get a weird combination of magic wand and microphone.  It also has a glowing ball on the end that can change colors.  And it looks like you'll need two of them per person to do most of the cool stuff they demoed.  But on the plus side, it has incredibly fine control to the extent that you could write effectively with it.  But it's essentially just the Wii done better at a much higher cost with none of the wacky shit from Microsoft's offering. 

Which is the million dollar question: if you were going to make a motion control game would you make it for the Wii, which has an unspeakably huge install base and a much lower cost to develop for since you don't need decent graphics, or do you do it for the PS3, which has the smallest install base of the three consoles to begin with, not even counting that you need an Eyetoy and the new magic wand controllers.  And since they didn't announce a price drop, the core system costs nearly twice as much as the Wii without all the new addons.  Technology wise it's much cooler, but I can't really see it taking off until the next generation.

But fuck that shit, let's look at the only games that matter: music games:

Beatles Rock Band!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpBDOolcs9g

Guitar Hero 5!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTE1h_68Yqs

DJ Hero (with bonus godawful facial hair action)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9loz95y7vk