A Winnipeg company is aiming for development of a curling video game for Nintendo's Wii console, and appears right on target. Complex Games is producing Wii Curl in hopes of putting it on the market by late next year, after securing a prized licence with the Nintendo home gaming giant.
"Without a licence from Nintendo, you can't actually get access to their hardware ... so that's a big deal for us," president Noah Decter-Jackson said.
"Now that we've got the licence, we can develop our curling game for the Nintendo Wii."
The "very important milestone," said Decter-Jackson, follows development of a game prototype for an event in conjunction with the Canadian Embassy. After attending a video game conference in San Francisco, the company's management figured it had a shot.
Though the firm refuses to reveal what the Nintendo licence has cost, it says the game could be lucrative.
"They have the largest console, and the most popular console in the world," Decter-Jackson said.
"Getting on the Nintendo Wii is a huge deal."
One of their goals is to throw out a product much more realistic and in line with the actual sport than an existing curling video game which is part of a large Nintendo Wii package.
"You have to make some concessions and tweak things to get it there. But having an idea of how the basic motions are, helps craft the game," said Adrian Cheater, Complex's technical director.
"We sort of draw on people we know with much more experience in the game to get a more accurate representation of what the game is."