New Wii Development Tools Planned

By Shawn White / Monday, 12 March 2007

In his Game Developers Conference 2007 speech titled "Rethinking the Development Timeline", Takeshi Shimada of Nintendo's Software Planning and Development Division revealed that his team is preparing upgraded development tools that will soon be available to Wii developers. 'Nintendoware' is the name one of these new tools. Created by HAL Labs and Nintendo, the tool emulates the Wii on a high-end PC so artists can quickly see an accurate preview of artwork and special effects without having to load data onto an actual Wii kit. Additionally, Shimada noted that his team is working on an easy-to-incorporate fur-shading middleware, as well as predictive motion sensing, whereby a game can predict a player's next movement and allow for smoother Wii controller movements during gameplay. Nintendo is also looking into a voice recognition utility for Wii, according to Shimada. A 14-year veteran of Nintendo, Shimada recently worked on the preparation and development of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for Nintendo DS and Wii's Photo Channel. He has also spent time working for the Research and Engineering Department, License Engineering Department, and Entertainment and Analysis Division. The Wiire will have all the latest news as it's made available.