Wii Sports: Custom Faces

By Rob Galbreath / Saturday, 27 May 2006

In a recent interview with MTV News, Senior Managing Director and General Manager of Entertainment Analysis and Development Division Shigeru Miyamoto discussed character customization on Wii Sports, a launch title planned for the Wii console by the end of 2006.

When asked what new games Miyamoto has planned in the works, the Mario creator said, "This isn't [new, but] I'm directly involved in Super Mario Galaxy. Apart from that, I am involved in the Wii Sports series. Although these really aren't new characters so to speak, the Wii Sports series features these little models which you can put your own faces on ... and then you may start to see those characters, with faces you've created, appearing in different games on the Wii system. Beyond that, it's true that I am working on some different ideas. It's just a little bit too early for me to show those off yet."

MTV News did not ask Miyamoto whether said customization would be placed on the characters via custom-made templates, such as the ones found in The Sims franchise, or if face customization could be implemented by external media.

Another point of interest derived from the article is how Miyamoto came up with the Wii controller. "When we first launched the Nintendo Entertainment System," said Miyamoto, "people would look at that controller and immediately know which buttons to press [corresponding] on the screen. There were very few buttons and it was very simple; it was very different from computer games where you've got this keyboard in front of you and you really don't know which button to press to get started. So we saw a very big difference between those two audiences. But gradually, as video games have evolved, the controllers have become more evolved and they've added more buttons because we want to allow the players to do more and more things. With the motion-sensing and the pointing and these new types of interfaces on the Wii and the nunchaku, we're able to give players the freedom to do the types of actions that they want to do in video games without so many complicated buttons ÃÂ thereby making it both intuitive for longtime game players and for people who have never played video games before."

The article can be found here. The Wiire will keep you posted on how Wii Sports will implement face customizing in the future.