Following its short unveiling during Electronic Arts’ E3 Media and Business Summit press conference last night, the firm has today officially announced SimAnimals for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, which will launch on both platforms in January 2009.

In SimAnimals you are challenged to engage, touch, move and try to control a wide range of animals as you journey deeper and deeper into the forest. You control an on-screen animated hand that allows you to reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the game from foxes and bears to trees and flowers. Interacting with the animals over time forges a relationship between you and them, and the creatures of the forest will either react positively or negatively towards you depending on how you have treated them in the past.

It’s probably best to stay on their good side, because they need your help with a lot of stuff and they’d really appreciate you stepping in to assist them. EA doesn’t say specifically what you’ll have to do, other than that there are a lot of tasks and goals to achieve, unlocking new areas and animals in the process. As well as a full single-player mode, SimAnimals includes co-operative play for up to three other gamers.

“SimAnimals opens up a new world of creativity with wild animal adventure, fun and mischief,” said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims Label. “For the first time in an animal game, you can reach out and touch, engage and play with a huge cast of wild animals in their natural surroundings. SimAnimals offers an immersive and tactile experience using the Wii remote and the Nintendo DS stylus that allows you to easily and intuitively become part of the wood’s expressive, quirky and sometimes surprising narrative. Classic story-telling about wild animals comes to life in SimAnimals.”

So it’s a lot of Wii Remote cursor action on the Nintendo Wii and stylus-based jiggery pokery for the Nintendo DS.