Dcubed

No live conference!? I can't believe that they'd truly make that same mistake again! Even if they have nothing to show, a show of showmanship makes ALL of the difference! The reaction to last year's E3 showing was terrible! How could they really think that doing the exact same thing again will go any differently!? Are they just trying save money? (Unlikely since they're still doing stage events and booths at E3 itself...) Cowering away is not the answer! Nintendo Direct is not a panecia for everything! It shouldn't be one or the other! GAH!!! WHHHYYYYYYY!!! The live reactions and stage flubs make all of the difference! A pre-recorded video can't replicate that! How stupid are these people!?

I don't think that any of their existing franchises can make the kinds of waves that Nintendo needs right now. The only thing that could potentially wow the world is a new IP that does something truly unexpected and previously un-imaginable... But I don't think that'll happen; especially with them choosing to forgo the live conference again...

Not much more to add really, you're spot on. Choosing to not go with a live publically broadcast E3 conference was a terrible mistake... That being said though, E3 as a whole hasn't really been great since 2010 across the board (not just Nintendo). I wouldn't really say that Sony's E3 2013 conference was anything special in of itself (indeed the thing that made the biggest splash was the no-used-game-blocking jab and that only came about a result of Microsoft shitting their own bed) TBH, even if Nintendo did go with a live conference again, what could they even bring to the table that would blow people away? Zelda? I doubt it... I get the feeling that no matter what they show, it won't be enough to turn heads... Their own games alone aren't going to cut it and even then, there's only so much they could even produce on their own...

Nintendo's new QOL venture is basically them spinning off their Touch Generations lineup into its own division - allowing them to take advantage of their own custom hardware (or smartphones/tablets and compatibility with their gaming hardware as appropriate). Did their Touch Generations venture eat into their resources enough to decrease their output of "traditional" games? Nope. Did the success of their Touch Generations line encourage them to abandon game development in favour of focusing on this new line? Nope. So what's the worry then?

Edge hogging just got more interesting

Oh not this again... WHO would they be licensing the Super FX chip tech from again? (Argonaut don't exist anymore...) Not to mention that they actually co-developed the chip in the first place; they didn't license it from anyone to begin with. I doubt that there's anything specific holding back Super FX releases but rather I think it's a matter of them just not being bothered to put the work in to emulate the games that used the chip while they've still got other content that they can re-release before having to bother with the Super FX games...

It didn't... The Super FX is the only major SNES co-processor chip (there are another couple of super obscure ones that were used in single JPN only games; but I'm not counting them) that they haven't emulated on the VC yet... The weird thing though is that they've actually bothered to emulate the Cx4 chip (Megaman X2) and the S-DD1 chip (Street Fighter Alpha 2) and they're arguably MORE difficult to emulate than the Super FX chip anyway... For what it's worth though, I don't think the GBA version is bad (and the extra 6 bonus level added into it are actually really good - easily just as good as any of the original levels and make the GBA version worthwhile in its own right) but it isn't as good as the original SNES version... Sound quality is worse (though considering the GBA's sound capabilities compared to the SNES, they did a great job! It's definitely one of the better GBA-SNES sound conversions!) visuals are washed out, two player compatibility for the minigames was removed, certain special effects were either mangled (Touch Fuzzy) or removed entirely (Kamek's magic) and there is some minor slowdown here and there... (though funnily enough, the spinning island title screen looks much better in the GBA version, so it's not a total loss!)

Ha ha! Nice This should be plastered on Miiverse itself :p (good lord they could do with it on there...)

Just go ahead and get the bigger SD Card; they pretty much hand them out in packets of cereal now :p I got my 64GB SD Card for £30 about a year ago, so they're probably even cheaper now...

Is this your first time playing an Advance Wars game? (If so, man you're lucky! Wish I could be experiencing all these GBA games for the first time again!) AW truly is a magnificent game (and its sequels are even better! - AW2 is probably my favourite of the series, narrowly edging out the two DS games for me). The perfect example of how to take a genre, cut out the conveluted crap and build up on all the good bits!

Yep, it's utterly abysmal. It's not like they don't have a ton of games already ready to go (and there's another legion of titles already PEGI/OFLC rated too...) For fucks' sake!!! WHY!? Why aren't sites HOUNDING NOE/NOA about this!? I'm sitting here, desperate to give them my money. WHY WON'T THEY LET ME GIVE IT TO THEM!? Every single time, the same old song and dance...

Disappointing week is disappointing. Was hoping for at least two games this week Once again Japan gets treated to an embarrassment of riches, while Europe...

Why on earth is there no Miiverse community for the Streetpass Mii Plaza!? There are so many potential golden moments that are just BEGGING to get screenshotted!

Yeah this is another pet peeve of mine. When's these people talk about "East vs. West" what they really mean is "Japan VS America". It's a lazy shorthand that pisses me off; I don't want to be lumped in with the Yanks, we're MUCH better than them :p (it also conveniently skirts past the issue of xenophobia that would be more obvious if people used the correct terminology... all the more obvious if you look at the influence of anti Japanese propaganda during World War 2... and it also unfairly pits the entire western world against one country by effectively merging all countries in the Western Hemisphere into America... but let's not get into that )

I'd go a step further myself and say that it's not just a matter of a homogenisation of visual design and marketing, but also the actual types of games themselves. 12-25 males have been conditioned to only find interest in the types of games that "AAA" studios find to be easy to produce and sell (FPS games, sports games, "dudebro" titles that sell based off their production values and licenses rather than the actual gameplay) and obviously that in turn makes it near impossible for the likes of Nintendo to attract them; as their core strengths are at total odds with the direction of the traditional side of the industry at large (which is why they gave up on that rat race with the DS and Wii in the first place) While it could be said to be an issue of cultural divide to some extent (after all, the likes of Capcom and Konami have largely thrown away their identity in an attempt to chase this demographic to the grave), I wouldn't really say that the games that Nintendo produce (barring a few notable exceptions like Fire Emblem and Sin & Punishment) have ever really been Japan focused anyway. In fact, Nintendo's first sets of character designs back in the Game & Watch era were actually very much inspired by 1940s American animation (most obviously Popeye - a property that Miyamoto actually originally wanted to use in place of Donkey Kong!) Look at their older character designs... Very reminiscent of characters from the Popeye and Mickey Mouse era. Even from the very beginning, their character designs haven't ever been what you would typically see as "Japanese" in style... And that traditional western style even continues across time too... (Hell the game as a whole was explicitly said to take inspiration from Thunderbirds, which is about as British as it gets!) Even amongst Japanese developers, Nintendo has always gone against the grain; and not just in character design too... (I don't really need to explain how their style of game making and the gameplay of their games is like no other developer, Japanese or otherwise do I? Zelda alone is an obvious enough example...) No matter the zeitgeist or how the winds of trends change, they're gonna keep sticking to how they want to make games - and that's nothing new for them either... ... Nintendo's problems are of their own making, from how unique they are, not as a result of cultural trends specifically...

This game got a really bad rap when it first came out for the decision to re-focus the gameplay to a more linear fashion of play and that it true to some extent (not that that's necessarily a bad thing mind you); but there is also still a lot of non-linear progression throughout the game. Fusion does a great job of guiding you through the early sections of the game and then building tension and fear when it then rips the handholding away from you. Suddenly you find yourself alone and longing for the guidance you once had when something on the station goes wrong and you are forced to stray from the map that is given to you upon entering a new sector, especially when the SAX starts roaming throughout the area too Despite the fact that you aren't alone this time around, it still does a great job of making you feel isolated and fearful as everything on the station seemingly actively works to try and impede your progress or kill you. In many ways it almost feels like a survival horror game! I love this game and I feel that it actually does benefit from the linear focus. The narrative was also really well done and actually foreshadows Metroid Other M in some surprising ways that only become clear after going back to it once I played through MoM (one scene in particular actually takes on an entirely different perspective, where the computer actually questions why Samus would ever have feelings for a man that "would sit in a safe command room and order you to die" and Adam regrets the choices he made in MoM). And like all Metroid games, the core gameplay is spot on. In particular it greatly streamlines the controls from Super Metroid and actually manages to improve upon them, despite having 2 less buttons to work with. My only real disappointment I ever really had with the gameplay was the lack of items/abilities that you aqquire throughout that were new to the series (the only really new one being the diffusion missiles and that one was kinda lame anyway...)

I wouldn't necessarily say that it's something that is exclusive to "the west"... F2P games, browser games and the like are just as popular in Japan as they are over here (actually even moreso!) And of course they have (and still have) the largest market for arcade games (which are the classic example of instant gratification games). These are trends that are being followed worldwide... But Nintendo has never been a trend follower anyway (in fact they pride themselves on NOT chasing trends, but rather following the sound of their own drumbeat; for better or worse). I don't know why people in general are so laser focused on the whole "East vs West" narrative in gaming. It's as if fans and industry media feel a compulsive need to beat their own cultural chest at every given opportunity (to the point where I actually think it's borderline racism/xenophobia in certain places...) Nintendo has never even been a really "typical" Japanese developer anyway. They strive to be as culturally neutral as possible with almost all of their games anyway (and that also includes the developers that they work with too; they have always had a decent number of 1st and 2nd party development partners outside of Japan and that has only increased as time has gone on; even accounting for the loss of Rare, Left Field and DMA design)

Both versions of Battle Network 3 just got OFLC rated! http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=807670&page=2 Interesting that they choose to start with 3... Well I've never played a Battle Network game before, so here's a good chance to try one! Nice to see that Capcom are getting in on the GBA VC action!

Yes you are... You deserve to be burned at the stake for such heresy, HEATHEN!!! Only joking... kinda... :p

If it was a "small loss" then it would be costing Nintendo more than £240... More like £260+ Also you're thinking of Amazon US... Amazon UK still has a very good relationship with Nintendo, unlike their US counterpart... Not to mention that because of the Wii U's poor sales so far, they've not been able to benefit from economies of scale like they normally would've been...

They're not selling it for £170... Amazon are taking a hit in the hope that it'll increase sales (and are probably hoping that consumers pick up some other games and accessories along with it). I bet that they're making almost no margin on it at all (consoles in general are usually very low margin, usually 10-15%, goods anyway - it's the software that retailers really make money off...) The one major exception to this rule was the PSP Go, which ha a whacking great retailer margin slapped on the price because they couldn't make any money on the software (obviously, because it was all digital). Consoles can get away with being low margin because they are the blades that well the high margin razors that are software...

Hey I never said it was good value, I'm just noting how you're saving off the typical RRP. The official Nintendo UK store is never gonna be price competitive with the likes of Amazon because they sell everything at RRP (which is what you would expect, naturally. A manufacturer is not going to undercut their own RRP after all - that's the whole point of having an RRP in the first place!) Buying directly from any manufacturer is always more expensive than buying from a middleman in any business...

The Wii U doesn't normally come with a Wii Remote so that's £40 (RRP) saved already. Add on the wheel, hat, decals, Guide etc and you're saving a fair bit there (obviously that's dependant on whether that extra stuff means anything to you though...) If they dropped the price by £50, they would be losing £50 million for every million consoles that they sell on top the money that they're already losing on each system as it is! (Not to mention that they also lose out on potential retail sales of MK8 too, so that's another £50 million worth of potential revenue gone...) It's just too much for them to throw away. Sony and MS lost billions on doing this sort of thing but they had other revenue streams to fall back on when this happened. Nintendo however has nothing else other than games... (Well, at least until they start with their QOL products at least...) They obviously need to increase the Wii U userbase, but not at that high a cost! They need to be able to make money off the console!

If they dropped the price to £199.99 they would be killing themselves to do so. They need to be able to make some money off this thing...

That Yoshi arm is lanky as hell! The hell kinda fuzzy has he been touching!? Also there's something really unsettling and creepy about Peach's arm in that pic...