Grazza

I checked up, and the rules state that songs must not exceed three minutes. Because of this, I think a lot of them are just: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and don't include a bridge. On an unrelated note, the more I listen to Poland's, the more I like it. The gimmick drew me in, but it's genuinely a good song. I've just seen it was the British public's favourite as well, but our jury gave it no points. There's definitely an argument that Eurovision juries are too political and out of touch. Might as well get rid of them and leave it to the public, in my opinion. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27371264

One thing that bothers me about Nintendo's current philosophy of every console needing a differentiating factor (or gimmick, if you prefer), is the issue of legacy. Up to and including the GameCube, the controller was carefully updated every generation, adding useful features - it always absorbed the last one. Now though, the GC, Wii and Wii U have all used completely different controllers. What if Zelda Wii U turns out to be brilliant, but you can't play it next generation due to it needing a GamePad? It's making Nintendo's consoles seem like one-off products rather than a continuous system. Also, I don't quite understand the idea that Nintendo can't compete with the others. They don't have to win, they just have to make a profit. Profit is obviously when your income is greater than your expenditure, but I don't see what that has to do with specs. As we are now seeing, fancy controllers can make you lose money just as easily as high specs.

Thought it was an excellent show last night and I enjoyed all the songs much more than in the semi-finals (familiarity, I suppose). Really enjoyed Greece a lot more (very lively and pumping), but Hungary became my favourite with its drum & bass beat. Worthy winner from Austria too - good song and great vocals. Loved Poland's entry, and how Graham Norton referred to it as "a feminist anthem"! Also really cracked me up when the cameraman went into his cabin after he'd been taking the mickey out of the presenters. Felt a bit sorry for him being singled-out, but also a ripple of pride at our commentator being the most stand-out!

Where I disagree with a lot of people, is that I don't think the Wii was justified at all. No offence intended, but I feel it's defended just because it was successful. Personally, I was absolutely gutted when I saw what Nintendo's next machine was going to be like compared to the GameCube and, though I enjoyed some of the games, to me the Wii Remote never, ever justified the overall form of the machine. To me, the Wii U is better than the Wii and has the potential for much, much better games - HD graphics, a big technical leap from GC/Wii and the best Zelda control scheme back (Wind Waker's). It's not that the Wii U is bad, it's just that it doesn't aim at the casual audience as well as the Wii or the core audience as well as the GameCube, hence its lack of analogue triggers and decent-but-uncompetitive hardware. So in answer to the question, I still trust Nintendo's technical people as much as ever to assemble a good console. They just need direction from their president to aim a bit higher.

Yes, that's exactly what I thought too. Hope they haven't split their teams up to make too many small, experimental games. I would rather they just made some fantastic "big" games than ones that particularly utilise the controller's screen. It doesn't matter to me whether they justify the GamePad or not, as they are not going to keep using it for their next console, surely?

Let's see how good E3 is. I don't like to criticise individuals, but what I sense these days from Nintendo is a lack of either passion or logic. The GameCube was passionate, the Wii was logical. Whilst I much prefer the Wii U to the Wii, I see less logic in who it's aiming at. When you see the average Nintendo Direct, and Iwata is standing in front of those wood panels (sorry!) and showing off the GamePad or something like Nintendoland, I think to myself "Did this excite the staff at Nintendo? Were they passionate about working on it?" Because when you look at something like Twilight Princess, you can really see the point in making that, but most of their newer releases don't give me that feeling at all. As I say, it's all about E3. If it positions the next few years of the Wii U as a recreation of the GameCube days - Metroid, Zelda, F-Zero - I'll be ecstatic. But if it's more like Skylanders, SNES Remix and more Nintendoland-esque GamePad ideas I'll be more critical.

Definitely think we're on the same page here, Dcubed. Maybe I can get a bit carried away with my "principles" (which were about authorship, not sexuality) and sound a bit of an ass. Hope I haven't upset anyone either. Whilst I defend the "game" as it is (do you even "play" it?), it's no bad thing that Nintendo has been sent a message about this. Tomodachi Life is obviously highly experimental, and presumably any sequel would be more sophisticated. I would strongly support the inclusion of same-sex relationships in the sequel, and be against that being taken out for the European version (I can't speak for Americans, obviously).

(Rushes off to YouTube...)

Don't take too big a bite when Poland's on...

If there are 3DS games, I'm expecting sequels that reuse the engine of a previous game. Majora's Mask 3D would be nice, but my main predictions are Fire Emblem Awakening 2 (I forget which number in the series it is) and A Link Between Worlds 2.

This is about artistic freedom and freedom of conscience. Nintendo's right to not include something is more important than anyone's desire for it to be included. It doesn't matter to me whether it's about race, sexual orientation or whatever, the author of any fiction or software retains the right to design it how they want. Secondly, this is a problem with globalisation. Just because gay marriage is sweeping the West, doesn't mean Japan is under any obligation to accept it. If gay marriage is not legal in Japan, then of course their games won't reflect it. The backlash about this just reinforces the idea that Westerners can't accept Japanese games as they are.

Super Metroid doesn't bore me, but I do agree it's a bit too "untouchable", to the point where the brilliance of subsequent 2D entries (Zero Mission and Fusion) wasn't fully appreciated.

I was too busy letting the steam out of my shirt! The chap from Austria had a good voice, and a much better beard than I can grow!

I do agree that it's preferable for consoles not to exceed £300. That's a good launch price, whereas £200 is when they can really take off. The issue with the Wii U, though, was not the price, but what the money was paying for (ie. the controller). Without the GamePad, surely the Wii U could have been in the same tier as PS4/Xbox One in the important areas (CPU, GPU, RAM). I was honestly ready to spend £300 on one at launch, but then I saw the CPU was weaker than the PS3 (it's much slower), and many of the early games were continuing the "Wii" vibe, and I just thought "This isn't what I want my money to go towards". I've ordered one now and I genuinely think the Wii U can be a great machine if Nintendo supports it and does get out Metroid, Zelda, F-Zero etc, but I think it'll always be characterised by having a slow start which aimed at the wrong market. Hopefully the next two years will see it remembered for great games instead - it's all in Nintendo's hands.

I'm totally happy to pay £30-40 for a launch day game if it's something I really want. After all, if I don't like it, I can sell it and get a lot of the money back. Plus, I tend to play rare-ish RPGs that will likely disappear if I don't secure my copy. If it's something I want to play but am not totally excited about, I will wait for it to be about £20, especially if it's the type of game which they will have printed a lot of copies of. As for digital games... Yeah, I do buy quite a lot, but not retail ones. Getting a great game for £5-10 doesn't put me off paying full price for a physical one. What I won't do, however, is pay full price for digital retail games if there's any other option. There are three such titles on my 3DS - Super Mario 3D Land, Animal Crossing and Code of Princess. The first two were free, whereas Code of Princess was download-only. I would like to download all my retail games, but they'd really have to get the prices down to £20 or so.

Hmm, well I don't love any this year, but I suppose Ukraine and Belarus are my picks for the final.

Nintendo's own games look great. But if a console isn't in the same tier as its competitors in any given generation, you simply don't get the multi-format games, which effectively means no 3rd-party support at all.

PS2 was weaker than the others, but still powerful enough to be the lead format that generation. Not that I want to start the "generation" argument again, but think about it - the only reason we have that argument is because Nintendo releases consoles with tech similar to the previous generation (first with the Wii, now with the Wii U). When you think about it, that's a highly absurd and unusual thing to do.

Might be the opposite. Games like Metroid and Zelda must be more expensive and time-consuming to make, and we know from Twilight Princess that Nintendo gets nervous about them not reaching a big enough audience (apparently we have Miyamoto to thank that it was actually released on GC). So it could be that we just see lots of quick, cheap ideas.

It's one thing to be positive, but the latest figures are the most worrying yet. Even Nintendo doesn't expect it to sell. With projections like that, do we really think they're going to show anything good at E3? Their only chance is to completely ditch the GamePad (and make sure no game from now on needs it) and get the price down to £150 or so. That way you could still have a decent HD machine that plays Mario Kart, Smash Bros and Zelda (assuming it doesn't do a "Twilight Princess" - which I now think it will). Early adopters wouldn't miss out, as the actual Wii Us (the ones with the GamePad) would be the only ones capable of playing Wind Waker HD, Super Mario 3D World etc (I think?) and the games of the revised, renamed system. New owners wouldn't be able to play the early Wii U games, but... it doesn't look like they're that bothered.

It wouldn't bother me if Smash Bros was the only big Wii U game this year, or that Nintendo didn't expect it to sell. What bothers me is that there might be no more big games planned for Wii U. If they were planning to show anything exciting at E3 - Metroid, Zelda etc - you'd think they'd expect the announcements to sell consoles. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if there is no Wii U Zelda and they just do a "Twilight Princess" with it. If no future Wii U games utilise the GamePad, that's fine, but at least release them (and make it so they will run on the next system).

Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to seeing Austria's entry tomorrow.

Yeah, definitely! The nest is much bigger now and the Wyvern actually fires breath at you. What I like about this remake is that they've managed to keep the feel of the original, even though every floor (apart from B1F) has a different layout. The music in particular is just beautiful. My heart sank when I saw the worst Quest (spend five days on B8F) is still in it. However, it's been revised enough so it's no longer awful!

It's the last episode of The Trip to Italy this week. Loved the Frankie Howerd impressions, "Roger Moore" (Steve Coogan) singing Alanis Morissette and the banter when they were trying to impersonate Marlon Brando. Also watched The Guess List last night and can't remember when I've laughed harder.

Ukraine is my favourite so far. Genuinely think the UK has a good chance this year too.