Dcubed

Here's an interesting perspective on Nintendo's position amongst investors from David Jaffe (creator of Twisted Metal & God of War) http://nintendoeverything.com/david-jaffe-weighs-in-on-nintendos-latest-financial-news-says-iwata-should-stick-around/#more-147620 He's right really when you think about it. Failure is a powerful teacher and grants a company a powerful knowledge base. Nintendo went through this song and dance before and the result afterwards was the most successful period in their history (Wii & DS); Apple went through the same kind of thing back in the late 90s/early 00s and look where they are now! Jettisoning Iwata and destroying Nintendo's BOD and their company culture would be throwing away everything that they had learned. Perhaps their current struggles will eventually create a stronger Nintendo than ever before! They cannot stay the current course forever, but they also can't afford to abandon their culture and who they are. Whatever changes they make, they need to make them while also holding onto their company's strengths and that won't happen if Iwata leaves. They've done it before and they can do it again.

No. The man power that is going into the Wii U's lineup hasn't prevented Nintendo from having an absolutely banner year for 3DS software. Their issues with the 3DS unfortunately appear to be more fundamental than that. Even with one of the best yearly lineups that any console has ever had AND a new cost cutted hardware revision, they still ended up being down YoY for 3DS hardware - a sign that saturation is reading its ugly head Sadly I get the feeling that the issue comes mainly down to software pricing and that the industry-wide downwards pricing trend is taking its toll on Nintendo (who based their entire business on premium prices, for premium quality of course). Tablets/smartphones, Steam Sales, ludicrous price slashing at retail; they're all taking their toll on the industry as a whole - and it's especially bad for handhelds, with iOS & Android being the leaders of the downward charge. Shibata/NOE's numerous crazy promotions (So Many Games, free Monster Hunter, free Super Mario 3D Land etc) are a sign that they can see the problem; but it doesn't look to be enough. People are extremely tight these days and clearly are not comfortable with the idea of buying specialist hardware and high priced software I can't see them being able to continue on much longer like this. Even if they manage to get the Wii U's costs down and eke out a profit from it, they can't continue to live off scraps forever. The problem is that they're caught between a rock and a hard place though. Taking themselves further upmarket would be suicide (and trying to compete directly against Sony & Microsoft over an ever shrinking pie is a fool's errand that they could never hope to win anyway), while putting out their own games onto existing mobile platforms would be tantamount to destroying themselves. Their entire business model thrives on the premium value of their software and giving up that margin would kill them (their skill set and development philosophy is also completely incompatible with the existing iOS/Android/F2P market - where quality means nothing and entertainment value is secondary to sleazy, money grubbing whaling tactics). Quite frankly, in order for them to be able to survive, they need to be able to have their cake and eat it too... Putting their games out on MS & Sony's machines is not the answer as their staff counts would be slashed (say bye bye to IRD, SRD, NBD, SDD as well as all of their 2nd party partners like HAL, Skip and everyone else, and probably Int Sys, Retro Studios, Monolith Soft, NST, NERD and most of SPD as well - leaving nothing but a shrivelled up EAD and SPD1), development costs would skyrocket (while their software margins get slashed since they would have to pay royalties AND conform to the MS & Sony's terms of license. - stifling their creative output and raising costs even further), their entire company culture would fall apart, their quality would falter, most of their talent would leave, their output would shrink down to just their absolute top IP like Mario (if you think they're milking Mario now, you ain't seen nothing yet!) and they become a mere shadow of their former selves. Their games are built around their own unique hardware and it is the continued evolution of their own hardware that has enabled them to continue to keep their existing IPs fresh with new and novel concepts and to enable their staff to make the kinds of games that they want to make. Damned if they do, damned if they don't Perhaps it's time for another 3rd pillar?

Aww, we ran out of time. Only finished 7 out of the 12 games so far... The battle continues on Monday! (Sneak peak at the results so far... It's not looking good for me )

And so it begins... Every single Mario Party game (excluding Advance obviously, because it's single player only) shall be played back-to-back today. Tears shall be shed, friendships shall be destroyed and lols shall be had by the shedload Boards will be decided by dice roll! The results shall be shown later on tonight, when all fun has been completed! : peace:

Yeah, this is that rainy day that they were saving it for... Anywho, the NPD result for Wii U was better than I had expected (don't get me wrong, it's still crap - but an enormous improvement: One of the largest November-December bumps in recent history actually), so that's somewhat comforting at least... The forecast actually looks (depressingly) realistic now. The 3DS' western performance is very disappointing though; that's one hell of a forecasted dive! They're in a bad state - especially when it comes to their position with retail... Not sure what they can even do...

January is kind of a crappy month for hardware sales in general. Even the 3DS' sales have dropped massively and that's with the release of Kirby TD! (Which will probably go on to crack a million in the end - or at least get reasonably close to it) February usually cares a bit better, but sales don't normally see a significant uptick until March and April.

Early Famitsu numbers are in... Kirby did well, Vita held on surprisingly well and Wii U had the expected drop (on the plus side, it's still tracking ahead of the GCN's equivent week [week 2 2003], which was 13,526 - still a poor result though )

As for games you missed... There's a lot... (including Dr Luigi which just came out today!) One you should be on the lookout for within the next month or so is Sayonara Umihara Kawase (which is getting a US release on the eShop this month and an EU release shortly afterwards) I made a post about it some time ago with details here Other games you missed... Shovel Knight (Wii U & 3DS exclusive), Rusty Pup (Wii U & 3DS only), Scram Kitty (Wii U exclusive), The 90s Arcade Racer (Wii U & PC only), Tengami (Wii U and iOS only), QUBE: Director's Cut (Wii U exclusive - original version was PC only), Oddworld: New & Tasty (multi-plat), Shantae: Half Genie Hero (multi-plat), 1000 Spikes (multi-plat), Mighty No 9 (multi-plat), Teslagrad (Wii U & PC only) and even more should be on everyone's shopping list! Edit: Yeah I did just totally copy/paste my post from Ike's thread but like Retro Link said, a 3DS specific one would be nice (plus Umihara needs more appreciation anyway!)

@RedShell Have you not gotten Sonic Lost World yet? If not WHY NOT!? It's a great game! (don't listen to the reviews)

I never said he was lying, I just think it's strange how he said that the lotcheck requirements were very vague when I was under the impression that they were very much known, but just very strict. Seems to contradict what I've heard over the years... (Though I do remember hearing about strained relations with Codemasters ever since the Game Genie days, so that seems to gel with what I've read over time...)

Nintendo's lotcheck requirements can't be that vague; even I know a few ones that are definitely set in stone, like the capitalisation of the names of their consoles and controllers (accidentally type "wii" in the manual and your game fails lotcheck!), error handling requirements for saving while pulling out memory cards/SD Cards/USB storage, style guides on how button icons are supposed to look (Pantone colours, shapes etc - I've even heard of some indie devs getting button icon art assets being supplied by Nintendo themselves for their game!) limits on how many saves can be made in a minute long period etc, error handling (with set, standard terminology that must be used) for controller switching in games that support multiple controllers etc... They can be a pain to deal with, but this kind of thing is standard fare with all consoles. Sometimes these difficulties are why some games just eschew certain things like multi-controller support (the three Two Tribes Classics games on Wii U do not support anything other than the Gamepad for this reason - they also have super basic instruction manuals, in order to make their games more likely to get through lotcheck with minimal fuss; after all, they were just cheap quickie re-releases)

Don't hold your breath. It was obviously just an error because they only just started selling eShop download codes on their site today. Obviously some moron put the wrong prices up on the site... ... Yeah I'm gutted I missed out too

I wonder if we might see some of these codes appear on eBay? Wouldn't mind snagging a code for New Super Mario Bros U, Mario & Luigi DT, Paper Mario Sticker Star, Bravely Default, Layton & The Azran Legacy, Nintendogs & Cats or Pilotwings Resort...

Bastards! I missed this by just a few mins Even so, it's interesting to see that Nintendo are actually offering discounted prices on some of the eShop games, like New Super Mario Bros U, on their own store (not that they're much of a discount currently, but at least it's an alternative to GAME) - so maybe we'll some interesting offers down the line...

Oh yeah, it's still a great game. If you don't own a 60hz version and have no realistic way of playing one (US SNES, US Wii or US Wii U), then don't hesitate to buy the hell out of this game! One of the best co-op games of the 16 bit era for sure! : peace:

Pikmin 3 does have online leaderboards. Though no friend specific ones for some silly reason

Yeah I hope so. Would be a crime not to see at least Enguarde now that we have underwater levels back! Hopefully some new ones will follow on from him too!

I hope that Tanabe's comment doesn't mean that there are no animal buddies at all in DKCTF... The one thing (other than underwater levels) that I felt that was really missing from DKCR was the animal buddies, so I was really hoping to see some more of them (other than Rambi) this time around... The rest all sounds great! Wasn't expecting online leaderboards for the time trials, so that comes as a nice surprise The comment about the difficulty being kept high like in DKCR is also much appreciated Speaking of which, I just realised that it's one of the few Nintendo made games that doesn't seem to be using Miiverse from what we've seen so far. I wonder if there's some Miiverse stuff we haven't seen yet...

Interesting that Nintendo have gone back to the £34.99 price after trying to push £39.99 again over the Xmas period...

Be warned! Mystical Ninja is the 50hz EU version because it got a German localisation originally!

Go for it! OoT 3D would be a great choice for a follow up Zelda. It'll feel lovely and fresh and a significant change of pace from top-down 2D Zelda (plus you obviously have a 3DS, so go get it right now and fall in love with it! )

My first Zelda game was ALTTP and this is my Top 10! 10: The Wind Waker 9: The Minish Cap 8: Four Swords Adventures (I'm counting Shadow Battle but not Tetra's Trackers, that's a separate game entirely) 7: Phantom Hourglass 6: ALTTP 5: Link's Awakening 4: Twilight Princess 3: Spirit Tracks 2: Skyward Sword 1: Majora's Mask (goddammit @Sheikah) Of course ALBW is only 11th by virtue of the Zelda Scale, so it's still an amazing game And of course I love OoT as well but compared to the other games in the series, it has always felt very "vanilla" to me. OoT 3D's additions do mix things up a bit though (since you also have to count Master Quest, which is hilariously trollish - especially the Fire Temple ), but it still stands out less than most of the others amongst the series for me. Oh and Zelda 2 is ridiculously underrated! That game is awesome and I'd bloody love a new Zelda game in that style!

So I finally got round to playing it just over the last week and I've finished it! (Though I've still got a lot of pieces of heart to find and sidequests to play) But I feel comfortable in saying that it's my 10th favourite Zelda game. So in my mind it's better than Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, Four Swords, Zelda 1, Zelda 2 and Ocarina of Time (it's very close to the latter, I'd actually rate OoT3D above ALBW for the additions and changes that they made, but I'm not counting that in this comparison) in that order. I really like the jaunty pace that this game has, I love the over abundance of sidequests and minigames, I like all of the characters (especially Yuga!) and I like the light story (the twists at the end were nice too - in retrospect they're pretty obvious and I should've seen them coming a mile off but I didn't and now I feel stupid ), but I do have two very major issues that sort of link with each other... Firstly, the item rental system is a good idea but the execution is lacking. The biggest problem that the system has is that the rental period is far too lenient; death does not come often (well, I'm sure that Hero Mode might change that though) and the price to rent is too cheap (I was able to go ahead and rent everything immediately without even making a dent in my wallet - which does end up taking away some of the sense of discovery throughout the game). I think that the system would've worked much better if you had to give up your rental items whenever you saved (sort of like what happened in Majora's Mask) and that there was a limit on how many items you could rent at a time (some puzzles throughout the game would then require you to use certain combinations of items

I dunno... You can get some surprisingly small SFF PC cases these days... The Silverstone RVZ01 is not much bigger than an Xbone and allows for full size GPUs too! (Ok I'm going on a tangent here, but I just happen to be planning on building a living room PC so I was eyeing this case :p ) But yeah, for a console I would still consider it to be huge (and I'm sure that your average mum would also consider it to be big - which is the whole point of what we're on about anyway)

Hmm. Forgot about the height difference. So you're right then; it's a fair bit wider but the height is a lot shorter than the original PS3 model, so in terms of total volume it is indeed slightly smaller than the original fat PS3 - making it the 4th biggest and the original PS3 the 3rd biggest (how very fitting ) BTW, I'm still rocking that original 80GB PS3 model myself too (RIP my original 60GB US PS3 ). Still think it looks much better than the Slim or the Super Slim (neither of which are much smaller than the original anyway - they only really cut down on the height for the most part) Not that it's saying much, I'd still consider both the PS3 and the PS4 to be monolithic in size anyway :p But anyway, the point is that Nintendo wanted their console to be small, quiet and reliable; so that's why they were so adamant about getting that power consumption down.