Wii Peripheral Plethora Looms

May 24th, 2006, 02:12 Posted By: wraggster

One of the more interesting factoids to come out of Nintendo's showing at this year's E3 was the widely-held belief that Nintendo was openly courting third-party peripheral manufacturers with the tantalising carrot of an open invitation to make the most of the Wii hardware.

Specifically, one Nintendo developer-relations meeting offered the Wii sensor technology under licence to any accredited company looking to have bespoke controls for future Wii projects.

Have a look at this interview excerpt with SNK's Ben Herman posted by Advance MN, in which the Sopranos-sounding executive concretes some of the gossip floating around the show. "[Nintendo] were very happy to have us back on board. They didn't come chasing us, but they allow us to have creativity. One of the things about the development kit for Wii is that, they said to us, create accessories. Do add-ons. If there are companies like Logitech and the like that are going to create all kinds of accessories that Nintendo. . .Nintendo's not going to corner the market or say that these are the only accessories that will plug in and play. They essentially are saying "be creative." Today I went to see the presentation. They had some accessories that had not really been shown. They have a classic joypad. They're working on a gun. Other third parties as far as accessory makers will work on other accessories and you know. . .just have fun with it."

Of course, we all know about the Zapper-holder for the Wii and the Classic Pad, though Nintendo openly inviting third-parties to release their own peripherals does come as something of a surprise.

Via Spong

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