Thursday 24 August 2006
As the Leipzig Game Convention opens its doors to the public today, show-goers eager to try out Nintendo's motion-sensing wonder box for the first time will be mighty disappointed to find that it's nowhere to be found on the show floor and is only available for members of the press to play behind closed doors.
The Nintendo stand is dominated entirely by DS Lite, so with Wii nowhere to be seen we asked several third-party publishers attending the event why they weren't showing their Wii titles to the general public and were told that Nintendo had specified that it didn't want any Wii in the hands of the gaming masses.
When we enquired as to why, no one was forthcoming with a response.
Above: Even the painfully hip Wii dancers at the Nintendo conference were wondering where the console was hiding...
Is Nintendo conscious of sharing space on the show floor with other, more graphically impressive games? Does it feel that its machine simply isn't ready to make its playable public debut just yet?
Whatever the reason, it's a shame that Wii hasn't been rolled out for all to see at Leipzig - European gamers attending would surely have been hoping that they would be able to at last try out the console first-hand and decide for themselves whether Wii really has the potential to prove its promise.
