Here's some hope that the Wii could actually support a hardcore shooter playerbase. According to High Voltage Software, WiiSpeak is a go for The Conduit, as well as MotionPlus. I have high hopes for this game. It seems the studio is too - they don't have a publisher yet and they already have a sequel in mind. Details in the full article.

No new Tabula Rasa news today (we hear it's coming along nicely, though), but we do have a few snippets off of Episode 37 of IGN's State of Gaming Report, which puts the spotlight on DICE 2007. Why is this filed in the Tabula Rasa blog? Because Richard Garriot's in it.

In the video, Garriot talks about the state of gaming when he was but a wee little Garriot ("My first game was written on punch cards or strips of paper tape... There was no video terminal, [just] a teletype that made printouts on paper"), all the way to what's happening nowadays, when "games have become so large, take so many years, so many dollars and the returns are risky." He does have high hopes for online games, saying that it will bring about "all kinds of new ways of distribution and gameplay."

He also gives out his views on E3, saying that the format change was "pretty clear to everyone." In fact, he also points out that even before they had heard that E3 was changing formats, they were already thinking, "this is ridiculous, this is not a good investment of time and money."

Check out the vid below. You might want to skip from time to time if you just want to focus on Garriot's parts, but I suggest you watch the whole thing from start to finish. There's a priceless moment near the beginning where High Voltage Software's Eric Nofsinger says his favorite platform of all time is the Virtual Boy. No, I'm not too sure if he was kidding.

Eric Nofsinger of Chicago based independent game developer High Voltage Software, has nothing but sheer excitement about the Nintendo Wii. “The Wii controller is so cool,” Nofsinger responds animatedly. “I love this thing.”

High Voltage Software have been developing games for various gaming consoles like the XBox, XBox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation3,  PSP, Gamecube, and the latest addition, the Wii.

He says that it has been an incredible design challenge for his team working on how to make a fighter or how to platform on the Wii. Although he mentions that they have been busy on some unannounced stuff for the Wii, he shares that it'll only make sense to make a flight-sim or any game that will  require some pointing or shooting even Wario Ware-type games.

“You can do interesting stuff. But some of the actual base, traditional games are incredibly challenging. I think as far as a next-gen system, of any of the ones we’re working on, this is the one my money’s on. I hope it comes out on top, I really do.”