Sheikah

Hyrule Warriors LE preorders are going for £70 ish on eBay, so I don't think you'll get it for that low.

Congratulations, flamebrah.

It was just announced that if you buy Destiny on PS3 or 360 digitally that you can upgrade for free to PS4 and X1. You can also keep playing the last gen versions after upgrading.

But it was an anomaly. Regardless of the fact it was designed and not randomly created (didn't say it was), the success of the thing was by all accounts an anomaly. Nobody could have predicted the success - nor the sudden drop off (look at Wii Sports on Wii U). Ok, perhaps not true on the latter - most of us saw the drop off, but Nintendo apparently didn't. It's a textbook example of a craze. The kind of thing that sells extremely well and gains massive amounts of exposure, then before too long drops off and nobody cares about it much anymore. Actually, there's no maximum amount of time that a craze can last. Either way, consoles may have sold well, but the Wii games did not sell that well relative to the size of the install base in the last few years. Most top charting games in this time were not Wii games, and the Wii lost a lot of support. Again, that shows the frivolous nature of the audience it attracted. They were buying it for Wii Sports, and maybe a few other titles, but they simply weren't the audience to continue to buy games on it, or have it as their primary console. I don't believe you really think he is accidentally stumbling upon the answers. Anyone with a reasonable grasp of the current situation would call for similar things. Maybe not for Nintendo to go third party (although I do agree), and I don't think cloud gaming is the way yet. But at some point it will most likely be the way we play. I don't think the two beliefs are mutually exclusive. They thought outside the box, for sure. But at the same time it came at a great cost, as the result of the Wii is the Wii U (including the Gamepad and casual specification). The Wii may have brought transient success and money, but the trajectory they've gone off at is pretty bad for both casuals and core gamers (if we're going to keep using those terms) alike. I disagree there. I think the Gamepad is a piece of the problem, but still a rather large piece. I'm not calling out the pad physically, but more what it represents. The Gamepad was their focus; something that took pride of place over making their console more powerful or contain the features that third parties want. It cranked the price up to £300. Supposing they hadn't run with it, the thing may either be super cheap or they may have opted to power the thing up. Most of all, it just wasn't really necessary and isn't well supported. The PS4 shows that people are happy to have the best games console they can while leaving it to developers to innovate through software. You don't always need a gimmick, but I think the Wii somehow made Nintendo think they did. Running with a gimmick peripheral is risky, since it either takes off (Wii) or doesn't (Wii U). This is basically the opposite of what Sony does, who tends to innovate their home consoles less, but have pretty much delivered every single generation (despite the shaky PS3 start). Different ways of approaching it, I guess, but I know which I prefer.

To be fair to the guy, aside from the Wii (which was pretty much an anomaly as it had a particular gimmick that caught people in a way we're unlikely to see often) he has a point. Nintendo home consoles have been on the decline since the N64 in terms of sales and third parties (again, Wii aside). And it became particularly apparent during the Gamecube era. On a side note, while the Wii delivered short terms success I'm of the belief that the Wii period ultimately didn't help Nintendo much in the long run. It was the first instance where they pretty much sacked the idea of graphically improving the console much, and they took a much more casual focus - completely distinguishing themselves from the core consoles for the first time. The success with that console also resulted in the Wii U - so the Wii pretty much doomed the next generation. If Nintendo hadn't done so well with the motion peripheral then I'm positive they wouldn't have pursued the Gamepad (their 'new' controller gimmick).

Very easy to do, you can set a new profile on your PS4 to associate your US PSN account with, such that switching PSN accounts is as simple as changing your profile. Anything you download off your US account can also be played while signed in as your normal PSN account so that you still get trophies on your regular account and play with/talk to friends.

Yep, it is. The only drawback is that if you want DLC for the game you have to buy it off the relevant store. But that's fine, just means you have to make a US account too.

Unfortunately not. Would be great if you could connect to always on standalone PC servers on PS4.

Gamecube was indeed a great price, £130 and it was in line with the competition (and better than PS2).

I'm not talking about perceived value, rather actual. When you consider what you're getting in the machine, even comparing it to £100 tablets it is very overpriced.

Fun tidbit, I got the US version of Gold and then went on to later trade with some of my friends when they got their UK versions. Doing this permanently prevented them from ever trading again, even after starting a new game.

Inevitably this will draw hate from the Nintendo massive about these parts, but I agree. Their hardware is behind the curve and expensive for what it is, relative to the competition (£200 for a 3DS XL is pretty insane).

I hope the Gamepad does nothing more than be an optional way of showing the map, that way I don't have to use it.

I need to properly play it, Sonic 2 was my first ever game and I played it to death. Never had the third game but did play a little of it on emulator.

He means Nintendo the developer vs indies, I think:

He only compared Nintendo to indie developers, the latter of which he thinks now are the ones with the 'Nintendo magic', so not sure why you brought up PS4 retail titles to compare to. As it stands, it's a fair point. The PlayStation consoles are getting a lot more of the good indie content than the Wii U, so I can see why he'd be more active with it if that's his thing. Also there must be something wrong with your PS4, loads of people now have said their PS4 is barely audible. I'm someone who can hear fairly quiet fans, too.

Ah man, that's sad. I know she had a lot of surgery but boy, did she look nowhere near 81 in the end.

In my opinion, having it on the Wii U really hurt it. Nobody is buying the thing so they can't really expect too many people to play it. They're also competing against other console MMORPGs now like FFXIV, which is doing really well. I can't see it taking off hugely over here.

I got this as it was cheap/popular and I thought more is probably just overkill, a whole extra charge or more seems like more than enough since I charge it at night anyway. Just used it now to charge my phone from 50-100%, it charges pretty quickly.

That reminds me of this* *(Will make literally no sense to anyone except players of Final Fantasy XII)

Code is HJDPYF38 (Amazon) I've charged it but not really tested it yet, reviews say you'll get maybe 1.3 charges of an iPhone out of it (I have a Nexus 4 though, so not sure what it'll turn out like). Comes with a nice little bag and a USB lead, so pretty good for a tenner.

Yeah, there's no real benefit to preordering unless you're sold on what you've seen/played already. You could walk in a store one week later and pick it up for the same price.

Here is my review, of the beta: Really good. Co-op play seems to be the focus and Bungie's tried and testing FPS mechanics. If you like that sort of thing, along with a bit of an RPG/MMO loot gathering focus, you will like this.

Sounds like a great way to adapt a franchise for a mobile audience while not detracting from the existing game.