Dcubed

Good! Great to see that they're not giving up with Wii U. Overall, some nice announcements DS VC is much appreciated and long overdue (it also means that Nintendo have abandoned their rule of only re-releasing console games that are two generations old on the VC, so that means that when they release GCN games on the VC, Wii games should come along as well since they share they share the same hardware effectively!) No wonder they set their expectations so low with the Wii U sales though. May is a brutally long wait for MK8 That being said, the fact that they acnowledge and are actively looking to combat the issue of their lineup not really taking advantage of the Gamepad's unique functionality is music to my ears! That's exactly what I wanted to hear from Iwata! Those are precisely the kind of games that they need to be making for the Wii right now! As for the NFC game, I'm 99% sure that the game they're referring to is Smash Bros... As I said before; slashing the price is not going to work. The only thing that will have an effect is increasing value through new game releases or other means. It's good to see that Iwata believes in the same thing that I do It's also good to see that their development focus will be on Wii U this year. The platform desperately needs it (while the 3DS has enough content and support already that it can mostly coast along this year and make a tidy profit for them).

The fuck!? Well there's our 3rd pillar, just not in the way any of us expected! Trust Nintendo to throw yet another curveball! Still, anyone have any idea what he means exactly by "non-wearable" technology? Camera based stuff? Leveraging the Wii Balance Board? I imagine that it refers to ways of measuring and monitoring health through those kinds of technologies... Me thinks that we could also be seeing a lot of that R&D from the cancelled Wii Relax project (and the vitality sensor) might actually be put to use here. I also get that feeling that they'll be partnering with Konami in this sector quite extensively too, considering that health clubs now chiefly form the core of their business (proof that such an expansion can work) This might end up tying into the idea of them moving "services previously released on dedicated video game systems that are, however, capable of improving usability and consumer experience when they are implemented on smart devices" over to smart devices. Stuff like Wii Fit or the touch generations games might be moved over there where it makes sense - so a game that measures your activity might actually be made for smart devices instead since you always carry it round with you. Naturally it's worrying to see them take such a large leap into a whole new sector, but they do have a lot of competence & experience in this area (and some brand clout here too) so it's not a complete departure for them to make. It is still a completely fucking amazing curveball though! Forget getting dragged back into the red ocean comic-book-industry that is the "core gamer" market, we're getting even further away from that! It's great to see that they're not giving up and giving into market trends. They're sticking to their guns and sticking to what they're good at; delivering surprise and delight through the sound of their own drum beat!

Great! Now it sounds like Iwata is trying to start a pedophile ring! That's a great improvement! Though it would explain what happened with Flipnote Studio 3D and Nintendo Letterbox :p

You might not... But everyone else will... Don't go too mad trying to impose what you (probably rightfully) believe to be Iwata's intended meaning in what he's saying. Everybody will just believe what they want to believe, as they read all manners of translations, until the official English version comes out... Just looking out for your mental health here

The English version won't be up for a while afterwards though...

TBH, knowing that this crap will get a rise out of you only encourages people to bring it here (and the same goes for those on GAF too - Trolls will troll, surprise surprise... If you want it to end, stop giving clickbait articles the clicks they want and the messageboard trolls the vitriol they crave...

And he's right. Just slashing away at the price wont help (nor are they in a position to do so. They're taking a bath on the hardware as it is!) All they can do is add value; be it through new game releases or otherwise...

BTW, that's not new info. We've known that the Gamepad gets turned off when not used in this game ever since E3 2013. And yes it's a shame that they're not using it in any creative way with this game

Both work fine with the Wii U, but self powered ones tend to be more reliable and have longer lifespans in general. I'd recommend a self powered one if possible.

That doesn't really matter since they're intended for different audiences. The investors meeting is for their investors and the Nintendo Direct is for their consumers and the media. Hell if anything they probably would rather the media didn't comment on their investor briefings since they're notorious for taking snippets from them and purposely putting negative spin on them without providing a link to the original source (so much so that Nintendo started putting up disclaimers on their IR page asking for quotes to be properly refrenced - It's also something that Iwata keeps mentioning from time to time about how he keeps getting misquoted :p )

Have I stepped into bizzaroworld? Nintendo commenting on rumours and speculation!? Has it started raining Nintendogs & cats!? Watch everyone start taking it as confirmation that they'll be putting full games on mobiles instead of "minigames" If we get an ND this week, I'd imagine that it'll come before or around the same time as the investors meeting on Thursday...

Oh yeah, he does call it an item doesn't he... Oh well that's even better then!

Aww nice! Good to see Link's moveset getting expanded at last! Should make for some funny moments too (especially if 3 people decide to pick on one )

Yeah Serebii. Time to take some of your own advice and chill... It's only a couple of days until the Investor's Meeting anyway. Just don't feed the trolls until then at least I'm 90% sure that they're gonna do just that. But I get the feeling that it won't just be Nintendo Direct, but rather an all encompassing "Nintendo" App that also includes the app versions of Miiverse and the eShop, as well as little minigames/trivia/etc that keep enticing smartphone owners to keep checking back for more (the idea being that they read up on upcoming games while they're inside the app).

That's all in-line with what Iwata has already said he plans to do. The "playable demo" part will not happen in the sense of what most people think (actual ported versions of games on smartphones in demo or full form) of course, but everything else all fits in with what Iwata has said he wants to do on numerous occasions. They want to use smartphones as a marketing tool for their own games and devices. There's also an official Miiverse app due and an eShop app due too (there's also supposedly a web version of the eShop store due too - but that seems to be well past its due date as that was mentioned a LONG time ago...)

Meh. The JPN boxart was better.

Well as long as they continued to provide that, I wouldn't complain. Still, I don't see any reason for them to bother with that. That's adding even more workload on them, having to maintain two sets of emulators. And besides, it's not like we don't know that they don't have loads of games already released in other regions that aren't currently available to us (Super Mario Kart, Secret of Mana, Ogre Battle, Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack, Castlevania 1 & 2 etc). I really doubt that the technical challenges involved are what's keeping the schedule moving so slowly. Sony take a generalist emulation approach and their PS1/PS2 classics services are hardly swamped with content every week. Licensing/convincing 3rd parties to allow them to re-release their games is the biggest challenge here, not the actual task of converting the already existing emulators (though of course, as I mentioned before, other consoles would of course prove to be more challenging) and changing the method of emulation won't get past that problem.

If they do that, I'm done with the VC. The emulation quality is why I continue to invest in this service! TBH, they could easily pump out games a lot faster than they currently are. In all likelihood they already have most of the existing Wii VC catalogue already converted and ready to go (the manuals are probably still not done for all of them, but that's a different issue). They've already got almost all of the problem SNES & NES games (special co-processor chips) from the Wii VC already sorted, so I doubt that technical reasons are what's holding them back (N64, GBA, potentially GCN, Wii, Dreamcast, Saturn etc would be a very different story though...), but rather it's licensing that's the problem. Nintendo have had little issue in pumping out their own games at a good pace, but its the 3rd parties like S-E and Konami that are holding up the schedule (Capcom have been very good so far though).

You also forgot to mention that you can still buy one of those games even during the promotion and you'll still be eligible to get 60% off the remaining 4 games. Of course I already bought Toki Tori 2 and Runner 2 (like any decent human being should've done!) so I'm good to go

You smell something brewing one month too soon mate :p

Those are some nice deals. Will probably get Bumpie and MSF HD (yeah, I've got the 3DS version already, but at that price? Eh? Why the hell not!)

Europe not getting this game originally was the single biggest travesty of the 16 bit era! I first played this game in 2006 and it instantly became my favourite RPG of all time (and even to this day, Xenoblade is the only other RPG that I feel comfortable in putting on that same level... Strangely enough, despite representing almost the exact opposite approach in its design!) It's disgustingly loveable! Every character is utterly developed, every piece of music is a masterpiece, it's perfectly paced (short and incredibly sweet), immensely replayable (and that's before we get into the FIFTEEN DIFFERENT ENDINGS!!! ) and stupendously fun to play, with a crazy battle system that constantly throws surprises and new concepts at you right up until the very end and even beyond! (Chrono Trigger speed runs are just ridiculously awesome and insane to watch!) As an aside, I don't like the DS version for what it did to the script (how could they remove Frog's faux Shakespearean accent WHY WOULD YOU DOOOO THAT!?) or the addition of crappy, pointless and needless extra content that doesn't come even close to matching up in quality with the rest of the game). The extra anime cutscenes are also take them or leave them; they don't add or take anything away from the game, they're just there Get it on the SNES/Wii VC for the true CT experience! So yeah. 100/100. A superlative game that has, forever shall and has even superceded, the test of time. It is the RPG that all other RPGs are measured by and probably will be for as long as time itself!

Well that was an unexpectedly fast announcement! More of that kind of treatment please Capcom! Surprised that they're sticking with the "Ultimate" branding though, considering that we didn't get the original version of MH4 (This happened with the first PS2 game, where we got an enhanced version in the west that was later re-released as Monster Hunter G; which is how the whole expansion thing got started in the first place) Anywho. Here's hoping that this new version supports voice chat this time around (and here's hoping that we also get a Wii U version eventually too!)

I hope we get a Wii U version as well. Really liked playing locally with one person on the TV and the rest of us on our 3DS'! If it does happen, it wouldn't be announced yet anyway. They seem to like doing HD versions a while after the handheld version has already launched (that's what they did with Portable 3rd HD and MH3U Wii U)

Well I guess this explains why they haven't announced a localisation yet... That was bloody fast! The game hasn't even been out for more than 3 months in Japan!