Hardcore will "pay attention" to Wii soon

Nintendo US almost-boss Cammie Dunaway reckons hardcore gamers will sit up and take notice of the Wii next year, as the "breadth of offerings" will increase to cover plenty of audiences.

"Well, certainly, I feel there are titles that should make that group stand up and pay attention next year," Dunaway told MTV Multiplayer.

"If you look at something like The Conduit, that's really pushing the edge of graphic capabilities on the Wii and doing things that people didn't think were possible. And I think, one, that makes other developers stand up and take notice. And two, that makes consumers say, 'Huh. Maybe there's something to this.'"

She added: "I think that next year you're going to see the tide turn a little bit, in terms of people realising that the Wii can have something of interest for everybody.

The Conduit, incidentally, is a first-person shooter from SEGA and High Voltage, and has made headlines for boasting about how good it looks compared to most other Wii games. Launch is aimed at spring 2009.

Dunaway also went on to touch on the "sheer creativity" of SEGA's MadWorld, before explaining how she had assumed games such as Sin & Punishment and Punch-Out would "get at that action-seeking, thrill-seeking need that [the core] audience has".

But Nintendo has come under fire by consumers repeatedly in 2008 for a lack of traditional game announcements, despite repeated assertions that they're in development.

The platform holder has continued to tease us with news that Mario and Zelda teams are "hard at work" on new Wii games. When we'll hear about these projects, however, is unknown.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's Wii Music failed to make the same impression as games such as Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii - entering the UK All-Formats chart at 16.