Formula 1 2009 Preview

VideoGamer.com: It's two-player split-screen, right?

NW: It's two-player split-screen but you can do an entire championship split-screen. You can progress through the whole 17 races, follow the race calendar and play all the way through. You can play cooperatively, so you both pick drivers on the same side, or versus, so Ferrari versus McLaren or whatever.

VideoGamer.com: The game won't have online multiplayer. Why?

NW: We felt the most important thing was the split-screen multiplayer, particularly for the Wii platform. That was our focus.

VideoGamer.com: It was nothing to do with the Wii's online infrastructure and that you have to use Friend Codes?

NW: The online infrastructure on the Wii is good, to be honest. I worked as a designer on New International Track and Field. We developed a massive online feature set for that. It would notify you of when your friends are signed in; it would tell you what they were playing, what events they've done, whether they've broken records recently, it would help with skill-based matching. There's no reason you can't do all of that on the Wii.

VideoGamer.com: So why not do it?

NW: For us, as I say, we wanted to focus on creating a good local experience split-screen. That's where we wanted to focus our development on.

VideoGamer.com: What was your reaction to criticism of the Wii and PSP versions of DiRT 2, games Sumo also developed?

NW: I didn't have a reaction. It's not a product I worked on, so I don't feel I am in a position to comment.

VideoGamer.com: One of the things DiRT 2 on Wii suffered from was framerate issues. Some people who are interested in F1 2009 on Wii are worried about the framerate. What can they expect?

NW: We have 60 frames per second on the Wii. What you've seen hopefully is a realistic recreation of what it looks like to drive a car at 200 miles per hour. Framerate was important for us from the start - keeping it up and making sure we conveyed that sense of speed. It's a brutal sport. The driver gets thrown about ridiculously, and we wanted to make sure the player has an appreciation of what it's like to brake into a corner at 200 miles an hour. So the framerate was important in that regard to convey that sense of speed.

VideoGamer.com: Does the 60 FPS remain consistent throughout all modes and no matter how many cars are on screen at once?

NW: I believe so.

VideoGamer.com: We're not used to seeing that level of technical proficiency from Wii games.

NW: The Wii, people sometimes say, oh it's not an HD platform. There's no reason you can't make good games for it. I hope we've created a game of sufficient polish that players will appreciate it.

VideoGamer.com: The Wii is often scorned by some core gamers who own an Xbox 360 and/or PS3. Some of the games on it aren't great graphically. Is it the case that developers are simply not getting the most out of the console from a graphics point of view?

NW: I'm probably not the best person to answer the question because I have a design background. I'm not a technical person. My personal opinion is great games may not have the peak of graphical polish but they're still great games if they've got the gameplay, whereas you can have good-looking games which don't have good gameplay. Sometimes people forget what non-HD games look like. But there is absolutely no reason why great games can't be made for the Wii. You can make good-looking games for the Wii but ultimately aesthetics are no substitute for gameplay. Gameplay should come first. Then you build the look and feel of the game around that.

VideoGamer.com: How is the PSP version different?

NW: We didn't want to compromise anything making the handheld version. Everything you get on the Wii you get on PSP, with the exception of split-screen multiplayer. No matter how much we thought about it we couldn't get it to work! There's a series of driving challenges in the game, stuff you would be used to seeing in maybe more arcadey racing titles. We wanted to put them in an F1 context. There's stuff like slipstream challenges, cornering challenges and a whole set of mini-games that are there so you can take a couple of minutes at the bus stop. There are 70 challenges in all, so it's a comprehensive mode. We were able to make these multiplayer on the Wii, so you can play all those challenges multiplayer split-screen. Four-player multiplayer ad hoc on the PSP though.

VideoGamer.com: Have you played Gran Turismo on PSP and is your game better?

NW: I'm afraid I haven't! I would very much like to hope that it stands up to Gran Turismo.

F1 2009 is due out on the Wii and PSP on November 20.