May 2006 in video gaming

May 26, 2006 (Friday)

• Nintendo executive vice president of Sales & Marketing Reggie Fils-Aime is promoted to President and COO. [1]

May 21, 2006 (Sunday)

• Steffen Gerlach releases version 1.0 of C-evo, a turn-based empire game.[2]

May 19, 2006 (Friday)

• Nintendo UK head David Yarnt criticizes Sony's encorporation of motion-sensing technology in the Playstation 3's controller as "copying" the Wii's motion tracking freehand controller. [3]

May 18, 2006 (Thursday)

• The Louisiana House passes bill HB 1381, which will ban games that are "patently offensive to prevailing standards" and appeal "to the minor's morbid interest in violence." [4]

May 16, 2006 (Tuesday)

• Nintendo recently announced an alliance with PixArt Imaging Incorporation. Under terms of the partnership, PixArt will provide the object tracking technology for the Wii Remote gaming controller.

May 11, 2006 (Thursday)

• Nintendo announces that it is considering not having a successor to the Game Boy Advance. [5]
• LucasArts staff have confirmed the company's intense interest in creating a Wii lightsaber game. [6]
• Nintendo demonstrates a new platform game for the GameCube, Super Paper Mario.
• Opera partners with Nintendo to put browser on the Wii game console.

May 10, 2006 (Wednesday)

• Will Wright demonstrates Spore at E3. The 20-minute demonstration showed many new aspects of the game. [7]
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl is announced by Nintendo. Solid Snake will be one of the playable characters. [8]
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is announced for the PlayStation Portable. [9]
• SiN Episodes: Emergence by Ritual Entertainment is released over Valve Software's Steam platform as well as traditional retail channels. It is the first game to be released in the episodic format by a major developer.[10]

May 9, 2006 (Tuesday)

Microsoft Press Conference[11]

• Microsoft announced Halo 3 with a trailer at their press conference at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA. [12]
• Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto IV will also be coming to the Xbox 360 and that they have partnered with Microsoft to bring exclusive episodic content in the GTA universe to the console.
• The Xbox Live Vision Camera and a wireless headset will be available for the console this fall.
• Other games announced include Fable 2, Blue Dragon, Viva Pinata, and Alan Wake

Nintendo Press Conference[13]

• Nintendo made many announcements at their press conference in the Kodak Theatre. On the Wii, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was announced to be released at the same time on the GameCube and Wii. It will be a launch title for the Wii.
• Over 27 Wii games will be playable at E3, including Red Steel, which were featured prominently in Nintendo's presentation.
• Among the games announced by Nintendo is Super Mario Galaxy, a new Mario game for the Wii.
• New games announced for the Nintendo DS were Diddy Kong Racing, Star Fox DS and Yoshi's Island 2.
• Although it was not demonstrated at the press conference, Nintendo also unveiled a classic controller for use with Virtual Console games. [14]
• The online service for the Wii will be called WiiConnect24.

May 8, 2006 (Monday)

• Yuji Naka leaves Sonic Team to found PROPE. [15]

Sony Press Conference

• Two different PlayStation 3 products were announced at the Sony press conference. One will contain a 20 GB hard drive and the other will contain a 60 GB hard drive. The latter will also have support for Wi-Fi and Memory Stick media. [16] [17]

• At Sony's press conference in Los Angeles the PlayStation 3 is detailed further. A new controller (DualShock 3) was shown which resembles similar looks as the DualShock 2 controller for PlayStation 2. There is no force feedback but it will have motion sensing capabilities. [18] [19]

• Dragon Quest announced for Wii at the Square Enix press conference. The game will be called Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. The company also announced Final Fantasy XIII for the PlayStation 3. [20]
• Sega announce that Virtua Fighter 5 will be released exclusively on the PlayStation 3. [21]

May 3, 2006 (Wednesday)

• Due to the consideration of more detailed depictions of blood and gore in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the presence of a locked out art files depicting topless female characters which may have been accessed via third party modifications, the ESRB decide to switch the Teen rating of Oblivion to a Mature rating. The change of rating is reminiscent of the Hot Coffee scandal which affected Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.[22]

May 2, 2006 (Tuesday)

• Preloading of Valve Software's Half-Life 2: Episode One begins over Valve's Steam network. The game is due to be released on June 1, 2006. Half-Life: Source Deathmatch, released as part of the Episode One package is available to play immediately for those who preorder. [23]

May 1, 2006 (Monday)

• Take-Two Interactive closes Top Spin and Amped developer Indie Built. [24]
• A study shows that gamer allegiance for next-gen consoles is fairly even, with the Playstation 3 having only a slight lead. [25]
• Rob Pardo, the lead designer of World of Warcraft, is named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. (Time)