Burny

An estimated lifetime sales of 84 Mio. units (VGChartz) say quite clearly: there is no way back to a traditional standard controller layout, no matter how much a couple of million people might despise the Wiimote. If they're going the safe route, we might just see a revision of the Wiimote and something that's able to determine its position in a 3D space. A successor to the Wii would very likely be able to output (Full?) HD images, as CRTs are close to extinct by now. In terms of visual fidelity, I don't expect much more than what the XBox and PS3 are capable of. It's already hard enough to distinguish modern day FPSs by graphical quality on the high-def consoles. The race for the most powerful hardware comes to an end, and as Nintendo already bailed out from that race with the Wii, they're unlikely to start it again. It's not that a Mario game would gain anything from being able to spot the pimple's on his nose. A new Nintendo console might again be underpowered in comparison to a PS4 or XBox whatever, without actually being underpowered. I'm not completely convinced Nintendo will make their next home console 3D capable. This might strongly depend on how wide spread 3D TVs will be at that time and maybe if a solid technology for large 3D screens without glasses shows up. Nintendo will use whatever is the most widespread living-room display technology when the time comes. The media, they sell their games on, will likely be bigger, as SSBB and M:OM already use dual layer "DVD"s. A disc based medium would probably be the cheapest to produce, so they might either license Blu Rays or again introduce a version of their on, they don't have to pay licensing fees for. I don't expect wild things here and would expect that the latter will be the case. In terms of online capabilities, Nintendo probably will do much more than they did with the Wii. Given how commercially successful other platforms are with online content and how more and more download games get into the spotlight, it's not like they have a choice. They seem very focused on and will hardly do less for their next home console. In terms of friendlists, in- and cross-game chat I'm not so sure. If nothing else, they might want to provide a better conditions for 3rd parties to work with. That means ways of patching, possibilities for DLC etc. But that's all still very much "Wii-HD". After the Wii, they might be able to pull this off without suffering a similar commercial failure as the Gamecube was, but such a console will hardly replicate the Wii's success. It just won't stand out enough. So, it'll have something, where Nintendo can claim to be "first" at and which will get them into the headlines. As for really "disruptive" features, I'm mostly at a loss. The most "easy" way for innovation might again be the controller. Even here, "mind control" (nerve-/ brain- impulses) seem to me the only thing, that hasn't been done in some way by Nintendo, MS or Sony yet.

If that is the only enhancement, it isn't possible to use WPA encoded networks if you play this on a DSi? That might be the most useful enhancement the DSi can offer for games with an online component...

Haven't seen anyone doing it so far. I certainly wouldn't watch videos on the bus, no matter what device. Even less anywhere else in public. Extended train travels might be an exception. That said, most people don't actually use their gaming handhelds on-the-go, but in bed, on vacation, at relatives etc. Can't see the 3DS becoming much of a film-device either. Nintendo are unlikely to provide a good way for film distribution themselves, and for people to watch films on a 3.2(?)'' display, the 3D hype had to be enormous. At the end of the day, a larger display with higher resolution should always beat out the tiny 3D one on the 3DS for non-video game content. If someone provided a good 3D video service for the 3DS, it might be a bit like games on smartphones. If it is easy to use and available anyway, people might pick it up, but it won't be the reason they buy a 3DS in the first place.

I've seen very few people ever playing outdoors actually, neither on a handheld nor on a smartphone. I've mostly played my DS in bed, I believe. It seems to me, that this isn't related to a specific platform. They were not. As were Nintendogs, Mario Kart, Pokemon (I won't count emulators (The gaming industry hasn't become what it is today by supporting emulators, and neither have emulators replaced the gaming industry, so...). Nintendo have succeeded in turning generations into gamers with their games. You might say, Nintendo "were there first" with a lot of things. If I'm not mistaken, new Layton games are still exclusively developed for Nintendo handhelds? All those games made people buy Gameboys and DSs. Despite the impressive Unreal Engine and a wealth of small gems on the iPhone, I don't see any such games that make people buy iPhones to such an extent. It's rather the smartphones that make people buy the games (or not, if you're on Android ). Many people will be satisfied with a bird-flinging-game and their XBoxes (or PSs) for stationary gaming, but Nintendo has made a living out of making people (not necessarily the "core") care for things that were only on their systems. And now they are first with a 3D gaming handheld and a lot of support for it. It's much more interesting what they will do with online stuff, because that's were Nintendo is undeniably last with everything. That's also were Nintendo will (or won't, depending on how much they mess it up) mostly compete with smartphones. There is precious little on smartphones to replace Nintendo's large retail games. It'll be interesting to see how this has developed in say, six years. I don't think that smartphones will "take" a large chunk of the market, but suspect they might rather "create" that chunk. I don't think that chunk will come from Nintendo's part of the market. Retail 3DS puzzle games at full price might never appear on the 3DS the way they did with the DS, as they're easily replaced by 1-buck games on smartphones, but overall it seems to me that smartphones mostly expand the mobile gaming market into new territory.

If this was actually the third installment of the series, this would be a bad word play in the title as well as an outstanding J'n'R. Somehow Nintendo has a knack for choosing console names, that can be integrated into game titles. I can see that smartphones will make a good portion of the handheld market in the future. In terms of the device people have always on them, gaming handhelds fight a losing battle unless "street pass" brings substantial functionality. If something like the Playstation phone proves successful, it might be an even more substantial portion, as games best played with buttons can be comfortably played on such hybrid smarthpones, too. Adventure games like Monkey Island etc. and some games designed to be played with a touch screen work even better on devices without buttons. Yet, there are some things about mobile consoles, that smartphones might just not be able to replace. For one thing, the gaming ergonomics of smartphones are limited by the fact, that they are still phones. That means no buttons on slick phones and in case of the rumored PS phone, I'd say it looks quite clumsy due to it's design as hybrid with buttons (might be wrong here, but it seems unproportionally bulky). Proportions of such hybrid phones might be improved over time, but with a dedicated gaming device such limits aren't there in the first place. What might be harder to beat is the handheld gaming market. The most successful smartphone (+ tablet) gaming platforms are the iOS devices. From what I read, Android struggles as a commercial software platform and WP7 hasn't really taken of, yet. That leaves the App store were everything from free stuff to 15 buck games can sell really well. So it's the ideal platform for indi-developers or smaller scale productions, but there are hardly any original large game productions. It's mostly fire and forget games comparable to polished flash games. In an environment where game prices are between 30-40 bucks, much larger investments should be possible for developers. And then there are Nintendo games. Where those are, there are usually gamers around, too.

How comes Forza has them? Does Microsoft have a deal with EA? It just seems weird, that GT continues to have no models from a sports car manufacturer of that size. It seems unlikely that they wouldn't want to include them, so there are probably licensing issues or somehow negotiations went very wrong. Without any real explanation from Sony/PD it it's a bit strange.

Delays don't necessarily mean good things, but rushed releases always mean bad thing. It's that simple. If Myamoto states they're about half way finished, it shows they're aware that they still have a ton of work to do. I'd be more worried, if they actually announced a release this February, considering what they showcased at E3 was a rough control demo and not much else. I won't bet on a release earlier than late 2011. Early 2012 might be even more likely and I don't consider it a problem. Looking back a bit: Yes, we'll definitely have the Remote+, as they're already phasing out the standard Wiimote.

They have in the past, but I don't see how this would make much sense nowadays. Their official e3-info site states the inital maximum size is "2GB" (in uppercase letters): I can't find an official specification for DS or GB cartridges from Nintendo atm., but Giga-/Megabit are usually written as Gb/Mb. And looking at what we know, I think that they've started to actually use the more common memory measure this time: 2Gb correspond to ~250MB and we already know, that there will be . The graphics didn't look like they were terribly downscaled in comparison to the PS2 version, and in addition there was normal mapping. The number of assets (sound + models / textures) in the game is huge and no matter what compression magic Konami works, it's a bit hard to imagine they will squeeze a 2 Disc (?) game into a 250MB, 500MB or even 1GB cartridge with added normal mapping. If "2GB" actually means what it stands for, than MG3DS would make sense. If by "2GB" they mean "2Gb", that would change the spec of the cartridges from "impressive" to quite disappointing. Also: Konami would be wizards. If I remember correctly, there is some DS game in Japan, that already uses the maximum capacity of DS cartridges (512 MB), which would then be more than the maximum space available on early 3DS cartridges. With higher texture resolution, higher sound quality etc. it just doesn't make much sense to produce cartridges that are that much smaller than the maximum size of the DS ones, although the majority of early 3DS games would probably be perfectly fine with that. I just don't see, how they would only double the maximum available space for cartridges (DS: 4Gb, 3DS 8Gb (vs. GB?)) six years after the release of the DS, when they produce a system that is capable of rendering roughly Gamecube/Wii-level graphics.

I've been using the gamepad so far. Not sure if I'll get a wheel eventually. My general button layout looks like this: Steering: left stick Shifting: right Stick Accelerate: R2 Break: L2 It's the first time in a racing game that I've started shifting manually and I'm quite comfortable with this layout.

The size of that update (in MB) is just unholy. Being stuck with a 45kByte/s connection in this village... At least they really care. ^^ I'm not far in and only getting to play every couple of days means this is probably a never ending story for me. Yet somehow I wish they'd do themed add-ons / DLCs. Probably my favorite NFS game was NFS:Porsche. I can't help but think that a Porsche themed add-on for GT5 would be a great. Is there actually any official information from Sony/PD why there never were Porsches in GT?

If the initial cartridges are manufactured with 2GB capacity, then they might want to limit the production costs. At least until the manufacturing cost drops below a certain level. Purely speculation, but you never know with Nintendo. It seems all their cartridge based systems started out with smaller cartridges. Anyway, 2 GB is still quite a large amount of memory. I don't see how most 3DS games will even scratch that. The only thing I'm wondering about is, if MGS 3DS will fit into that. To think that 3DS retail games might take up as much memory as single disc XBox games...

I don't think it will be that expensive, neither in the US, nor here. It's the same as the Wii's launch price in Japan, so I expect it to be the Wii's launch price over here. And that was 250€ including Wii sports. Which, I think, is still too expensive for a dedicated gaming handheld with little to no other use, even if it has OoT in 3D.

Tbh., the aspect ration of the images fits for the 3DS, so I'd say it's more likely that they're from some dev-kit. The original PSP has a 16:9 aspect ratio and I'd expect the new one to have the same.

The screen's natural resolution is 800x240 with an 5:3 aspect ration. In 3D mode the perceived resolution is 400x240, as each eye sees only half the pixel columns due to the slits on top of the pixel matrix. It's just that both halves of the screen will render a slightly different image, so the full resolution is required. I'm unsure wether these slits (the parallax barrier) are static in the Sharp screens used for the 3DS. If they are, the effective 2D-resolution is 400x240, too, as both halves of the screen must display the same image in order to achieve the 2D picture. If this barrier is not static however, you would actually have the full resolution for the 2D mode. Not that it'd be much use, as there would be two horizontal pixels to one vertical one (so they might duplicate each vertical pixel column anyway, which would again result in 400x240 pixels). No matter how we look at it, those images above aren't authentic ingame screenshots.

There was news about them playing around with effects in 2D and 3D mode. But the "screenshots" are neither from the 2D, nor from the 3D mode. The 3DS has a 800x240 resolution, where the horizontal resolution is twice the vertical resolution (800x240 with a 5:3 ratio). Those "screenshots" are 600x360. They're definitely NOT from the real machine. That said, the real graphics might not be as sharp, but they should come close. Unless of course, Nintendo has changed the specification for the 3DS's top screen. But I'd rather believe that these screenshots are from a different machine (PSPhone, PSP2 ?) that will also receive the game or from some devkit, than that Nintendo made a change this significant to the hardware. So the real images would look more like this: ..and might have a lot more jaggies due to less anti-aliasing, like this: Although, as I recall, the 3DS is supposed to have some kind of hardware anti-aliasing. Those MGS3D screenshots were certainly made without any anti-aliasing.

This isn't meant as a critique of the game, which may be fine and everything, but doesn't it strike anyone else, that this game is at least partly pieced together from bits of various sources a bit too obviously? Only by looking at the youtube trailer, I can at least make out two obvious sources for "inspiration". The human race fleeing the earth in huge spaceships and crashing onto a new planet, where they reestablish society is Trigun all over. And the character's weapon looks like it would be very much at home in Xenoblade. Seems interesting, but all the JRPGs I want at the moment are Xenoblade and The Last Story.

So... Drake's new adventure will begin with a crashed ride. Thats... unheard of!

Hi! Haven't found anything about it within the last two pages, so don't kill me, if it has come up already. There is a promotional game for GT5 on facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/takeittothetrack/ Nothing special in itself, but by creating four "grudges" against other players you can unlock a PSN download code for a Jaguar (Chromeline edition) (Yay!) and a suit for PS Home (Meh.). The game however, is severely broken! It just crashes when you try to create a grudge the "normal way". Still, there is a way to get the codes and it is described in detail (with screenshots) here. Basically: PLAY the "Shot in the dark" game (score doesn't matter) In the ending screen, select one of the five people in the lower right corner select three arbitrary other people from the list in the window that opens and just type some stuff Gray tooltip appears, game freezes -> Refresh the page Go to the "GT5 Profile" tab in the game. The codes can be found in the lower right corner As silly as I find facebook games, it's a nice promotion.

Soundtrack sounds excellent: Audio

Pics or it never happened! ^^

Wouldn't a quiet year be the best case scenario for us all? I mean, when are we supposed to play all the too many games we have now? That would make one year of catch-up, ended with a bang by the new major Zelda (I doubt it'll be out within the first 9 month of 2011). Sounds rather good. I'm very much hoping for Xenoblade and The last Story in 2011, but you never know what Nintendo will do with them.

@Hero-of-Time Do you want to play it and do you want - by any chance - that Spector continues to make games? You might as well pick it up. We know that DKC won't be the last of its kind, nor will CoD 7, FIFA xx or or Kirby be. But when there is no real pressure to get on of the other games instead, like the peer pressure to join the friends, because they're playing the hell out of game X online or the other game being much better, I'd rather get one of the good games that won't be churned out annually. The other games are all so big and successful, that we'll be seeing them on the shelves for a long time. And their successors within a year after that, unless they're from Nintendo, in which case a successor will take 3+ years. Well, Duke Nukem and Gran Turismo have been known to take a bit longer, too. :p

One boss would mean the zombie cow. Which in turn means, that you've hardly scratched the surface. This game is massive.

8 isn't. Clunky camera etc. is. I'd really have liked to play the game right now, but we missed the post, so I'll have to get it tomorrow or Saturday. :-/

Eurogamer aren't too happy either, judging from their score alone... *Sigh*