The site PlayNintendo has up a list of possible launch titles for the Wii Virtual Console. Nothing on the list is particularly surprising, with classics like Sonic, various Mario titles, Metroid, and Castlevania filling out the roster. The article author goes on to discuss his source for the information, sharing additional tidbits he's learned. "I have received info from them before that has turned out true, including a tip back before E3 that Wii could ship as early as September with 20 titles. With the fact that Broadway has been in Nintendo's hands for some time, the console could, in fact, ship late September. However, they also stated that October is much more likely and if Nintendo did decide to wait, there would be more like 30 titles for launch. With the launch list continuously growing, that one has all but been confirmed as true too." With Nintendo's big announcement due later this week, we shouldn't have long to wait before this is confirmed or disproven.

Joystiq reports the news that, for the time being, Spore will be only on the PC. This, despite Will Wright's hopes that it would see publication on the Wii, 360, PS3, Gameboy, DS, and PSP. EA seems to be wanting to 'get it right' on the PC to begin with, though, and is discounting the game's publication on those platforms at this time. From the article: "The Wii reference may be a direct result of UK magazine NGamer's recent article that suggests Spore is coming to Nintendo Wii in Spring 2007. As it stands, Wright's team is '100% focused on finishing Spore on the PC and PC only.' That said, you'd have to be pretty foolish to believe Spore will remain exclusive to any format. Like The Sims before it, Wright's latest project will likely invade every screen -- television, computer, mobile phone, etc. -- on Earth."

An anonymous reader writes to mention Lore Sjöberg's 'Ultimate Blog Post'. He goes over the history of the blog (dating back over 2000 years), and conveniently condenses out the perfect blog posts for a few notable sites. From the article: "Boing Boing: Crocheted replica of subway map cracks DRM on collection of old video games. FARK: Drunk frat boy in Florida has sex with underage donkey, sues Strong Bad for negligence. Still no cure for overused in-jokes. Slashdot: AMD, SCO patent MP3 over TCP/IP, sue ATI, EA. Microsoft probably responsible somehow. Engadget: Samsung releases new cell phone/mp3 player/camera/web browser/GPS/game player/wireless hub. Now in gray! Joystiq: Will Wright to design first-person Warcraft shooter for the Wii. Jack Thompson responds with aneurysm."

simoniker writes "IBM has announced that the 'Broadway' CPUs created for the Nintendo Wii have been shipping from the company's East Fishkill, N.Y., fabrication facility since earlier this year. Nintendo, it would seem, is ramping up for the launch of their next-gen console in a month or two." Joystiq and Kotaku have the news as well. From the article: "Nintendo has also confirmed their reception of IBM's chip: 'The first chips are in our possession,' said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager, Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. 'Today's milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience.'"

Gamasutra has Nintendo's 're-confirmation' that they're going to try to ship 6 Million units by the end of March 2007. If you're looking forward to Nintendo's new-gen console, their upcoming media event on September 14th may have just what you're looking for. The article also has a few details on upcoming accessories. From the article: "Although the price and release date of the Wii console and controller is not likely to be revealed until worldwide press events on September 14th and 15th, the Gamestop website lists a number of peripherals for release on November 1st. Included on the site is a Wii 'Controller Glove' for $9.99, a 'HD Premium Component Cable' for $59.99 and a 'S-Video Premium AV Cable' for $39.99." Relatedly, 1up has the news that Castlevania's creator is warming to the Wii. This will result in Belmont-related adventures for the Wii, one would hope.

An anonymous reader writes "Sony has finally admitted that the November release date for the release of the PS3 is unfeasible. Specifically, it will not be available in any PAL territories until March 2007. Sony cites '(a) delay in the mass production schedule of the blue laser diode', forming a critical part of the much-maligned Blu-Ray drive. With the Xbox 360 having been released for almost 6 months in overseas markets, and the Wii looming large, can Sony afford a delay like this?" Update: 09/06 17:58 GMT by Z : Just to make sure you caught it, the announcement includes the word that the U.S. will only be getting 400,000 units at launch in November, with Japan at 100,000 units. Go Sony.

192939495969798999 writes "CNN reports that Madden 07 grossed over $100 million in the first week, helping to resurrect a sales slump for Electronic Arts. The article states that most people are waiting for the release of PS3 and/or Wii to make game purchases." From the article: "An industry turnaround isn't expected until next year, and EA officials predicted during its quarterly earnings report on August 1 that videogame sales for 2006 across the industry would be flat to down 5 percent."

MTV Games has a great article looking at how developers are refining Wii controls, now that they've had most of a year to work on them. The game cited is the Wii version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance; the Wiimote is used to represent Thor's Hammer, Spidey's webshooters, and Wolverine's claws, among other things. From the article: "'Now in some cases people will do something that's not going to work right, and in that case they're probably going to have to adjust the way they do it,' said Chrzanowski, a black Wii development controller in hand. 'But that's a rare case.' He wasn't talking idly. He said a system developed by a Vicarious colleague, Jesse Raymond, a few weeks ago has been crunching the data of dozens of players who have tested the game on the Wii, analyzing the results of requests for players to do 10 swipes in a row or 10 stabs in a row, recognizing which moves the current version of the game fails to recognize as the intended gesture, tweaking the code, checking the pool of data from the gesture trials again for any new misunderstandings, repeat and recode, again and again."

Via Joystiq, a preview for Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam at IGN. Such a thing isn't really news, of course, but down at the bottom of the article there is some distressing information. According to IGN, third party online support for the Wii will have to wait until next year. Joystiq points out that this could mean launch titles like Monkey Ball, Blazing Angels, and Call of Duty 3 may be offline-only.

GameDaily is reporting on an interview that Nintendo Dream scored with legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Mr. Miyamoto spoke about the future of design and Wii gaming during the interview, touching on several interesting topics. Older Gamecube titles, for example, may be remade for the Wii at some point in the future to take advantage of the console's unique control scheme. There are no announcements of which titles might see this treatment, but he seemed confident that if it does happen the pricepoint would be rather low. In some more high-level comments, Mr. Miyamoto stated that game designers have come to a dead-end as regards gaming today. Not sparing his own company, the designer thinks that future titles will have to come at gaming from a very different perspective if they are to succeed.

The Leipzig Game Convention continues in Germany. Folks looking forward to the Wii should be happy to hear Nintendo has announced some new games. They announced the new titles at their press conference, an event which both Kotaku and 1up were on-hand for. Sony hasn't had a lot to say in the last few days. As promised, there are no playable PS3 games available; just the same, gamers can look forward to 27 playable PS3 titles at the Tokyo Game Show. Microsoft, meanwhile, spent time at the convention talking about Xbox Live, and showing off their new peripherals. 1up up was there for the Microsoft press conference as well.

IGN has the news that the Wii version of Twilight Princess has been retooled to allow you to swing Link's sword. The bow and arrow has been moved to the 'B' button, alleviating one of the big complaints hands-on users had at E3. From the article: "Miyamoto felt that that shooting the arrow with the D-pad was too difficult, and the B button allows for quicker and easier shooting. It's unclear if the game will require the new control scheme or if players will be able to chose between different methods of control. Nintendo Dream closed off by asking Miyamoto to name the version of Zelda he personally prefers. The master game maker said that he'd play the Wii version, but added that both versions will be fun."

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the Games Convention Developer Conference in Leipzig, Peter Molyneux gave attendees a sense of what he believes the future of combat in games will be like, some of which he is trying to get his team to include in Fable 2. He also showed videos of some prototypes based on his concepts. Later in his presentation, he responded to a user's question about Nintendo's Wii, saying that he's not sold on motion-sensing controllers."

Wowzer writes "Nintendo hopes that Solid Snake's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Wii will encourage other publishers to allow their characters to join the Smash Bros. line-up, and is already actively negotiating for the rights to include at least one or two other non-Nintendo character. The plot thickens when Smash Bros. series director Masahiro Sakurai and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto say that 'Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog is the character that Smash Bros. fans have requested the most.' This begs the question, which non-Nintendo characters are most likely to appear?"

simoniker writes "At Microsoft's GameFest earlier this week, Gamasutra got up close and personal with the Xbox 360 Live Vision camera, including more information about packed-in game TotemBall, as well as the Xbox 360 facemapping tech from Digimask, and most interestingly, the gesture-based Xbox 360 software from GestureTek. This includes face and motion-tracking, as well as "a solution for tracking individual, non-facial objects on-screen, such as handheld peripherals". Could Wii-like control schemes work on Xbox 360 using this tech?"

Next Generation is reporting that Gamestop has declined to take preorders for the Wii and PS3, on the grounds that they don't know how many units will be available at launch. They're apparently trying to avoid a repeat of last year's problems with the 360's launch. From the article: "Analysts also inquired what would happen if PS3 launch quantities fell short of expectations. '[Last year,] the 360 in short supply had an effect of freezing the market,' said DeMatteo. 'But if you look at it, there wasn't anything new. I mean, there weren't any new platforms out there, so the 360 was the newest thing in the last four or five years. This year, there will be a Wii and there will be a 360, so I can't believe that it will have the same kind of impact that the 360 [shortages] had.'"

eldavojohn writes "The Yankee Group (a Boston Technology firm) recently announced that it predicts Sony's PS3 to lead the market with a 44% share through 2011. Most interesting is their prediction that the Wii will maintain only 16% of the market share. From the article: 'The analyst group believes Sony will lead in next-gen market share by 44% in 2011, with Xbox 360 taking a close 40% share, followed by Wii with a wee little bitty 16% share.'"

conq writes "BusinessWeek.com has a piece on how some new videogames are being designed with health-related applications in mind. From the article: 'A stopwatch and a tub of frigid ice water are the standard tools medical researchers use to test pain tolerance. How long can a person keep his arm submerged? In an unusual project, last year researchers at the University of Maryland's medical center used the arm-in-ice water test to evaluate a new video game called Free Dive. The researchers found that their subjects — 60 children, ranging in age from 5 to 12 — were able to keep an arm submerged for about 19 seconds on average. If, however, they simultaneously played Free Dive on a PC with their dry hand, the kids could tolerate an average of 86 seconds in the icy liquid — an increase of more than 400%.'" Juan Rey also writes to mention a report from financial news group Bloomberg, saying that Nintendo expects that their upcoming diet-related software for the Wii will succeed the way 'Brain Training' has done with DS.

1up is reporting that the Wii version of Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will require the use of the Wiimote. The GameCube controller for the Wii will not be usable for the Wii version of the game, despite the fact that the game will also be coming out on the Cube. This has provoked discussion that the Wii version of the game may include extra content or gameplay elements, which will make it unplayable with the GameCube controller. From the article: "Many had hoped Nintendo would allow for dual Wii and GameCube support ala a number of upcoming Wii releases, but Nintendo appears confident enough in its design that hardened fans will have to pick up the GameCube release if they're that hardcore. You still have time to decide which one sways you, as both versions will be launched simultaneously during Wii's launch date this fall."

Next Generation is reporting on numbers from the Consumer Electronics Association, who has projected that game shipments this year will top $12 Billion. With the launches of the Wii and PS3 expected by year's end, and continued brisk 360 sales, the organization expects a near-record breaking year. From the article: "The overall games industry appears to be rebounding quicker than expected, in the midst of the console transition. Combined software, hardware and accessory sales were up 29 percent year-over-year in July, according to the NPD Group. CEA's news release, which was only an excerpt of a complete report, didn't mention thriving handheld sales, most notably of the Nintendo DS, which drove hardware and software sales last month."