Rumours of new Nintendo DS hardware were unfounded but the games are coming, including Spore for DS and Animal Crossing for Wii.

The new Wii-mote add-on, Wii MotionPlus, announced yesterday was the most impressive new technology on display during Nintendo’s LA press briefing just now. It’s linked to an all-new Wii Sports game dubbed Wii Sports Resort that includes Frisbee throwing, Jet-skis and Fencing. The gist of Wii MotionPlus is that it accurately monitors the slightest movement in your arm or wrist, enabling pin-point accuracy while throwing the Frisbee and transforming your Wii-mote into a convincing sword. For the Jet-skis the new gizmo enables the Wii-mote to function as a throttle thanks to registering the twisting motion.

Wii Sports Resort is planned for worldwide release next spring, and it’ll come packaged with a custom-size rubber sleeve for the Wii-remote/MotionPlus combo and the MotionPlus gadget itself. Perhaps LucasArts can now revisit the idea of a first-person light-sabre battler for Wii? It’s now possible.

Wii-wise there were two more major attractions announced or rather just affirmed as coming soon (ish): Wii Music and Animal Crossing. Both will make novel use of the existing Wii-mote without the need of Wii MotionPlus, let’s do Animal Crossing first.

“Animal Crossing: City Folk” is due before the end of this year, and is a cute-and-cuddly community based experience as with previous editions on Nintendo DS and GameCube. The visuals aren’t so much improved over the GameCube version, but the big new addition is the Wii Speak microphone, an attachment that rests on top of the TV, allowing friends to chat – a la Xbox LIVE – while exploring the village or all-new city location on screen. Gamers can send messages to friends’ Message Boards from inside the game or to characters’ mobile phones and PCs within the game. Animal Crossing was terribly addicting on DS because of its community sharing features and calendar events. Animal Crossing: City Folk might look like nonsense to you now, but wait and see.

And so to Wii Music, something Nintendo has been composing since Wii was first announced in 2005. It’s grown to be much more than an orchestral conducting affair though; it’s now more like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. This being Nintendo, however, the appeal is much broader than heavy metal and rock and roll – the Wii accessories, including the Wii Balance Board – can adopt the guise of over 50 different instruments that include violin (nunchuck under your chin, jiggle the Wii-mote as though it were a bow), piano, xylophone, double bass and full drum kit. There’s no need to match button combinations to icons scrolling across screen, the idea is to just convey the sensation of playing musical instruments and the game fills in the rest. That said the drum kit looks pretty intense – requiring the full compliment of Wii bits and bobs, using the Balance Board as the kick drum. Looks like a lot of fun but we’re not sure about this miming without skill business…

Arguably Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS is going to do bigger numbers than Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, but they’re going out to vastly different audiences so you decide. The latter is set in the iconic Liberty City and will introduce new characters to go free-roaming and crime hunting – so not at all GTA-Lite. It’s out this ‘winter’ which could mean beyond Christmas but let’s see.

Spore Creatures will play to the DS strengths in Wi-Fi sharing, and is mainly about creature creation. Not sure who this will appeal to most. Arguably it’s another one for grown-ups – kids will be waiting on Pokemon Ranger Shadows of Alma, due November Stateside but unconfirmed for Europe as yet. Finally for DS there’s a new Guitar Hero in the works – “On Tour Decades" – due this year.

Nintendo is on a roll. It will have sold 100 million DS consoles by the end of March next year. It has sold over 700,000 Wii console in America this past three months alone. There are 200,000 DS consoles sold per week in Europe.

For the first time ever Nintendo didn’t dwell on Mario or Zelda, or any other of its core titles during this year’s US conference. Sign of the times. However the Mario and Zelda teams are said to be “hard at work on new titles”, which is really giving away nothing.

Wii Sports Resort will grab all the attention, but Wii Speak is the sleeper hit among all this, mark our words.