Follow the Japanese and North American press conferences held in the past 24 hours Nintendo’s official Wii website has launched providing some great video coverage of features, information on games and technical specifications of the system too boring to be detailed at a press conference.

Movies featuring a user interaction with a number of features of the Wii channel give a good insight into what the menus and such will look like. The fact that wide screen displays are used in all these shows great promise for the possibility of widescreen support for many titles. This page gives a nice explanation of many of the services offered.

We get a nice rundown of some choice games. Wii Sports, Zelda, Wario Ware, Excite Truck, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Mario Strikers, Big Brain Academy and Batalion Wars are featured. There’s also another 42 games listed to be released by March 2007.

The Japanese version of the page features a great video combining clips of many games and some bozos playing them.

Now some noteable things about the Wii’s hardware.

– It’s tiny
– Wireless capable out of the box using a wireless 802.11 b or g
– Can be networked using a USB 2.0 LAN adapter which I figure is something you plug into one of the USB slots to accept an ethernet cable that does not seem to be included with the system
– Backwards compatible with Gamecube games, 4 controllers and 2 memory cards (which will hopefully support the Microphone peripherals)
– Stadard DVD sized discs for games
– 4 Wii remote capacity
– SD memory card slot
– AV Multi-output port for component, composite or S-video which, if as described is a single port, is not the same port we’ve seen on the SNES, N64 and Gamecube alike. Great to see them supporting component video again after removing it from later models of the Gamecube
– Blu-Ray

Here’s the run down in bulleted form for ease of reading.

• American Release: November 19th
• Wii includes Wii Sports game
• One color, white, in initial shipment
• One configuration available
• MSRP: US$249
• First Party games will be priced at US$50
• Wii Sports includes:
  • Wii Tennis
  • Wii Baseball
  • Wii Golf
  • Wii Bowling
  • Wii Boxing
• Zelda: Twilight Princess available at Launch
• Expecting 30 launch titles
• Virtual Console called Wii Channels
• Shop Channel for buying old games
• Disc Channel is for 130 Gamecube games(?)
• Mii Channel – lets you make an avatar and store it on your Wii-mote
• Wii Digital Photo Viewer (plays videos too!)
• Internet access with Opera Browser
• Cost of extra Wii-mote: US$39.99
• Cost of extra nunchuk attachment: US$19.99
• DS and Wii interaction will be announced in the future (seems to be a secret still)
• Wii comes with:
  • Console
  • cables
  • sensor bar
  • one wii-mote
  • one nunchuk attachment

I’ll make this pretty later, but there you go. The Wii. Coming November 19th.

Info from Engadget’s Live Blogging of the NYC Press event.

Slave Labor Graphics’ deal with Disney is resulting in some strange deals. For example, Comicon.com’s PULSE has an article on the new Tron series, that’s apparently already shipped its first issue. What? Missed that one.

As for Marvel, SuperHeroHype.com reports that the Sub-Mariner movie is going to be directed and REWRITTEN (what x 2?) Johnathon Mostow. His previous work? Most recently, Terminator 3. I hope he’ll have time, around the demands of directing Terminator 4. How can it fail? After all, the listed writers previously wrote the stunners Catwoman and The Net 2.0 (a direct to video sequel).

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has an article reporting a November 19th 2006 release date for the Wii at a price point of 250$ US. Shortly after this article was posted it was pulled and gave a 404 error but as of posting this the article is there again. Due to this the accuracy of the information is somewhat suspect until further verification can be made. It’s important to note that the article orginally did not mention the December 2nd release date for the Wii in Japan but rather had that information added to it after the Tokyo press conference with this announcement ended so this article can’t be considered to have been breaking this news accurately.

Here’s the relevant quote in case the article is pulled again:

In a move that may allow Nintendo of Japan to take advantage of stumbles by its main rival, the company plans to announce today that it will release its new Wii video-game console in North and South America on Nov. 19, just as the holiday shopping season begins, and that the machine will cost $250 in the United States.

The article goes on to mention that Wii games will be sold at a price of 50$ US, 10$ cheaper than the competition and that Wii Virtual Console titles will be going for 5 to 10$ US, a statement supported by what we’re seeing out of the Nintendo press conference in Tokyo.

From Gaming World Network‘s coverage of a Japanese Wii press conference we learn the prices for the Wii and Wii Virtual Console games, in Yen.

The Nintendo Wii, to be released in Japan on December 2nd, will retail for 25000 yen. This is approximately 212.50$ US. This is by no means an accurate way of measuring the price of the US version.

Below shows the price of the Wii Virtual Console games:

Converting to USD that’s 4.25$ for a Famicom (NES) game, 6.80$ for a Super Famicom (SNES) game and 8.50$ for N64 games. Of course there’s no telling exactly how this will compare to US prices but this gives us an estimate.

There are to be 30 Nintendo Virtual Console titles and 30 from other systems (Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx …) which supports the idea that the 7 Sega Genesis Wii Virtual Console titles we mentioned yesterday would be the only ones at first for that system.