Want to learn about the development processes of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Wii Fit? Now's your chance.
Microsoft's not the only hardware maker with Game Developers Conference announcements this morning: Nintendo has also revealed that they will bring three of their designers to San Francisco next month to present panels all about Wii and its games.
"While the company usually lets their products speak for themselves at most other venues, we've enjoyed a strong editorial relationship with
Nintendo for a few years now," GDC director Jamil Moledina wrote in a blog post this morning. "We're particularly proud that we've earned their trust in sharing real development experience and knowledge in our professional forum."
Certainly the most anticipated session will be "Building Characters: The Super Smash Bros. Brawl Postmortem," in which designer Masahiro Sakurai (right) discusses how to put a whole bunch of widely disparate characters into one single game, then make it work online.
Sadly, with Smash Bros.' recent delay into March, this session will now take place before its U.S. release, not after. But the game will have been out in Japan for about three weeks, so Sakurai will be free from his obligations and ready to chat.
Just as critical a product for Nintendo, perhaps even more so, is Wii Fit. Project lead Takao Sawano will give a presentation called "Wii Fit: Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console," in which he will discuss the "philosophical and culturai ideas as well as the practical challenges" involved in producing this fitness game, which has taken Japan by storm and which Nintendo plans to release in early 2008 here in the U.S.
Finally, Takashi Aoyama of Nintendo's "Network Group" will talk about the development of the Wii Menu interface that connects Wii users to the internet and each other. The session, titled "Planning the Wii Menu: From Pre-Launch to WiiWare," might sound like it won't contain any news, but since we haven't seen much of WiiWare -- Nintendo's games-on-demand service scheduled to launch in March -- this could be our first glimpse at how it will work.
In his blog today, Moledina also points out that we'll definitely learn a lot more about WiiWare from a Square Enix panel in which they discuss their WiiWare launch title: "WiiWare Project Lifecycle: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King."
That's not a bad content lineup, and it's certainly indicative of the fact that, like Moledina said, Nintendo is much more comfortable now putting its designers in front of their peers and discussing the ins and outs of their projects.
That said, this year represents a non-trivial scaling back in terms of Nintendo news and big-name appearances. In past years, Nintendo luminaries like Satoru Iwata or Shigeru Miyamoto have given keynotes at GDC, which have generally been accompanied by at least medium-sized announcements. But with no Nintendo keynote at GDC, it seems like we're not going to get any big news, product announcements, etc.
It's not entirely out of the question that Nintendo, now with the San Francisco office up and running, might hold a media event separate from GDC proper to make some announcements or let us get hands-on with some new games. But that remains to be seen.
Director's Cut: The Return of Nintendo [GDC News]
