Dcubed

Exactly. And it's not like this kind of pre-launch story is anything out of the ordinary; pretty much every developer who has ever made a launch title for just about every console in existence has gone through a similarly harrowing tale. I'm sure that the PS4 and Xbone launch tales (especially the latter) will make for fun reads in the future too Yeah, those photos aren't helping your argument here... it's a monolith :p In fact it's the 3rd biggest console ever made (behind only the Xbone and then, as the reigning champion, the original Xbox). It's also pretty (and in some cases, sounding like )

What PS4 do you own!? That thing is huge! (Not as big as the Xbone, but it's still pretty massive!)

Because they wanted the console to be as small, reliable/durable and quiet as possible. Just like the original Wii. They assume that their audience doesn't want huge, loud and gigantic bricks like the PS4 and Xbone (and to a lesser extent the PS3 and 360 before them, which were huge and loud in comparison to all past game consoles except for the original Xbox: Speaking of which, the PS3 slim also marked a turning point for the console's sales...).

BTW another article related to this topic was released today; this time from Eurogamer... http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story This quote below in particular really stands out to me as it fits in pretty much perfectly with what I said before about Nintendo's 3rd party relations problems stemming back all the way from the SNES/N64 era and how those same pre-conceptions still continue to haunt Nintendo and their 3rd party devs... BTW it's a good read in general. Just goes to show how much of a nightmare console launches can be...

Good read. Goes a long way towards highlighting how much of a nightmare console launches can be. That being said, before people jump to conclusions, this sort of nightmare is actually a-typical of most console launches and (not that it excuses Nintendo for doing this), but a lack of English language support before launch is also a-typical of console launches from both Nintendo AND Sony (I remember another article, I think it was actually from Eurogamer as well actually, where some devs go over the PS2's launch and how there was no English language documentation given AT ALL along with the original PS2 SDK). The online features being unavailable before launch is also not unexpected, the big day 1 update was there for a reason! (And day 1 updates that bring along basic features for consumers and developers is standard fare with all consoles now, ever since the 360). That part about the staff being unfamiliar with how PSN or XBL works is pretty hideous though! No excuses there! This could also have played a role in this fiasco as well I suppose... Edit: Just took another look at the Eurogamer article about Need for Speed Most Wanted U's development and it's surprising how much different a tone Criterion's staff took with development; obviously due to the fact that their development cycle had the luxury of being able to work with completed dev kits and post-launch dev tools/documentation. Take a look at this quote for instance... Launch is always a fun time for development and makes for some crazy tales but it's never really representative of typical console game development :p

Legend of the Mystical Ninja is supposedly our next Wii U VC game... http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=96543869&postcount=370 Seems that NOE are focusing on getting through Konami's catalogue right now. Hopefully it wont be long until we get to Castlevania Dracula X at long last

Psst. NES Remix uses the same emulators as on the VC, just with modified ROMs and custom post-processing effects...

Anyone who looks at emulators like SNES 9x and seriously considers them to be "perfect" has absolutely no right to judge the quality of an emulator. Those emulators are FAR from perfect and to this day are STILL riddled with age old problems (like Kirby Dreamland 3's "pseudo Hi-res" transparency effects or the timing and sprite priority issues with Megaman X2 which AFAIK are still problematic in SNES 9X) The only PC emulators that could possibly be considered "perfect" re-creations of the original consoles are Cycle Accurate emulators like Higan/BSNES or Exodus and those are very recent creations that require absolutely beastly PC hardware to run at full speed (like high end i7, minimum). Of course Nintendo take a different approach and choose to code their emulators to run each individual game perfectly, instead of trying to perfectly accurately emulate the hardware itself (which would not only take an eternity to make, but would also not be able to run on their consoles - hell even the PS4 and Xbone wouldn't have the grunt to do it either!) It's sadly not something that is really appreciated by most people, but the emulation quality with the Virtual Console (as far as commercial, non cycle-accurate emulation goes) is second to none. Making a perfect re-creation of a game is far more difficult than most people give credit for and requires a lot more development work and QA than most realise too (even though they've already created the foundation of their VC emulators, they do still need to put in extensive QA work into re-releasing them on Wii U to make sure that nothing gets broken) and the price of their games does also reflect the work that goes into the emulation writing process... Quite frankly, many of you might not appreciate quality emulation; but I do and I wouldn't want to see that sacrificed in order to make the games cheaper or get them out quicker. If the emulation quality isn't up to scratch, then I don't want it (there's a good reason why I avoided Backbone products like the plague and thankfully publishers agreed with me, because they went bankrupt!)

While that is true (and they do have to remake the manuals for each console again), he is right about it being less effort to get working than before and that is also evident in the lineup itself, with problem games like Kirby Super Star & Kirby's Dreamland 3 (SA1 chip) and Megaman X2 (CX4 chip) being available so soon, rather than later on like they did on Wii. They should be able to crank out games much more quickly than they currently are (and indeed they have actually been much quicker about getting their own 1st party titles out, as well as Capcom's lineup, this time around. The problem lies with the fact that they're still only currently releasing NES and SNES games and that 3rd parties seem reluctant/slow to get their own games out...

It is... http://www.gameinformer.com/games/donkey_kong_country_tropical_freeze/b/wii_u/archive/2013/12/24/nintendo-answers-our-donkey-kong-country-tropical-freeze-questions.aspx?PostPageIndex=2 People seem to really over-estimate this team's size. They're only about 20 odd members of staff strong, so you'll only really see them working on smaller projects or collaborating on larger ones with bigger studios.

Monster Games are currently co-developing DKCTF.

Quite the quandary isn't it? Sadly there's no easy fix for the problem. That's why I feel that the path they're currently taking with 3rd party support is the best one they could follow. There's still much more for them to do (and hopefully someday finally win back some goddamn support from the likes of EA, Take Two etc, through moneyhats or otherwise!) but blindly copying MS and Sony is a fight that they could never hope to win. At the very least, they're leading the way with indie developer support (giving out free Unity & Autodesk licenses was a stroke of genius!) but even then there's still much more to do. They could give financial support (especially for the developers who've stuck with them exclusively for a long time like Shinen and Two Tribes - the latter of which could really do with some help in that regard right now...), co-marketing through above-the-line media instead of just below-the-line or perhaps even build Kickstarter directly into the eShop! Why not allow people to pledge donations directly through the eShop? It would make people feel much more secure in their donations, give a guarantee that they would recieve the game that they're pledging towards (especially if it would actually show up in their downloads list right after donating!) and Nintendo could also pledge to match the amounts donated by their customers! Plenty more that can be done still (and quite frankly, I think my Kickstarter eShop idea is genius. Please steal it Nintendo!)

Here's something nice and cheery; a new interview with Next Level Games! http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/205707/Next_Level_Games_Working_with_Nintendo_making_a_studio_great_for_developers.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29 A few choice quotes... It's a good read

Kinda fitting that this interview with Next Level Games should show up on Gamasutra today http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/205707/Next_Level_Games_Working_with_Nintendo_making_a_studio_great_for_developers.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29 It's a good read. Goes over some of the issues they had in expanding their team and how the rapid expansion they underwent during the late 2000s ended up damaging their internal culture (upon which they cut down their staff numbers and are now back down to around 70 members of staff; which they're much happier with) Some choice quotes... So yeah, it just goes to show that it's not just about increasing your production capacity through a brute force hiring spree or just working with as many different companies as possible on your one project, it's about finding developers who will want to stick with you for the long term and establishing lasting relationships with them. This is why NLG has stuck with Nintendo for over a decade and has no desire to go elsewhere, unlike the likes of Silicon Knights who didn't have the same outlook on the industry as Nintendo and didn't want to follow the same path as them. It's also why Nintendo does not do M&A for the most part because there's no point in doing so if the company culture of the developer in question does not match Nintendo's own; the staff will just up and leave, with nothing but an empty husk being left over. Letting Rare, Left Field, Silicon Knights and Factor 5 go was the right decision (as much as it pains me to say as I loved their games back then) and history has proven that to be the case. Nintendo's approach to 3rd party relations is one of establishing long term relationships. Their partners are ones who Nintendo have worked closely with for a long time. Look at Tecmo-Koei for instance; they started getting chummy with them all the way back in 2008 when they helped revive the Project Zero series with Project Zero 4 (the issues with localisation being set aside for the moment - since it was actually Tecmo's reluctance to fix game breaking bugs that was the main cause there) and ever since, Nintendo and Tecmo (now Tecmo-Koei - that's two for the price of one for Nintendo there!) have continued to collaborate on many subsequent projects and Nintendo have continued to earn the grand majority of T-K's games onto their consoles - with their latest grab being the upcoming Hyrule Warriors. Same goes with many other developers like Skip, Prope and Chunsoft (now Spike Chunsoft) - in particular Nintendo have been getting especially chummy with them as of late and their parent company Dwango (who owns the NicoNico Douga video service - Nintendo bought a 2% stake in them only just a few months back, watch this space here!) - Monster Games and more. It's not that they don't do anything, it's just that they take a different approach to MS and Sony that is compatible with their own company culture and their desired path to take for the industry's future.

Oh! Well that's a nice surprise! Looks like the one Guild 01 game that was missing a western localisation (WEAPON SHOP DE OMASSE) is getting one after all! Nice! Here's a trailer of the Japanese version below (you play as the owner of an RPG weapon shop and make weapons/items for typical RPG adventurers who come to visit you - think Recettear if you've ever played that on PC and you've got the general idea)

I think the most accurate way of putting it is that Nintendo want 3rd party support without having to give up their company culture and who they are, in favour of cloning their competition, in order to get it.. Whether of not that is possible though...

Spot on. It is exactly these mistakes that they made back then that continue to haunt them to this very day. If there's anything that should be taken away from this piece, it's this. Anyone who truly believes that Nintendo's current attitude towards 3rd parties is anything like the N64-GCN era is insane. Yamauchi would never have bent over backwards to get support from Square or Capcom (insert Yamauchi's famous "[RPG players are]depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games." quote here). It's not that Nintendo don't want 3rd party support or don't try to get it, but rather it is that legacy of hostility towards 3rd parties (and that age old Kiddy image that has stuck ever since the SNES era) that continues to stop them from getting the support they need. Hell Nintendo even designed some of their controllers specifically for the needs of 3rd parties (the Classic Controller Pro and the Circle Pad were designed specifically for Capcom's Monster Hunter team - who co-designed them to suit their needs - while the Wii U Pro Controller was designed to replicate the 360 controller in order to make 3rd parties happy and give them as few excuses as possible to not port their games to Wii U). Do you really think that the Nintendo of the 1990-2000 era would have even remotely considered doing that!? No chance! But Nintendo's 3rd party problems of today still stem from that legacy that Yamauchi left behind. Add on the significant issues of demographic reach (with how Nintendo have focused on attracting a wider audience of "non-gamers" in recent years, as well as younger people and a large number of female players), poor Wii U sales (though their issues with EA, Take Two, Deep Silver, Kojima Productions, Epic and Zenimax in particular were un-related to that; as their actions were not made in reaction to the Wii U's poor performance), their reluctance to outright pay for support en-masse like Microsoft do and the fact that Nintendo's development philosophy and desired direction for which they want to see take is completely at odds with what the majority of publishers want (Nintendo wants to cultivate a market that accepts all types of games, while most major publishers are only interested in easily marketable, violent AAA blockbusters) and it starts to become clear why Nintendo have such trouble garnering 3rd party support. It's not the lack of hardware grunt in their consoles that prevents Nintendo from getting 3rd party support; it's everything else!

An article that consists almost purely of regurgitated quotes from age old interviews, taken out of context? Yep, it's another Emily Rogers article Nevermind the fact that Nintendo's attitude towards 3rd parties DID actually change dramatically after the N64 era (especially after Iwata took over - the most immediately noticeable effect being the mending of their relationship with Square; and the moneyhatting of the Capcom 5). When reading the article, you need to take into account 3 things. Firstly, Yamauchi was a very outspoken man who was not afraid to speak his mind with little tact for who got caught in the crossfire - something that was certainly not carried over to Iwata's reign. Secondly, many of these quotes come from interviews where the respondents are getting grilled; think about the situation that the respondent was in when they made their statement and how they may have needed to put on a brave face at the time (This is something that Emily doesn't ever do in her typical "expose" articles, perhaps purposely, because it would weaken her usual one sided narrative). Finally, don't forget that many of these quotes were made over a decade ago: While it might be funny to look at Iwata's famous "consumers don't want online games" quib and laugh at their position now, back then he was certainly right; broadband penetration was hilariously low and online gaming wasn't really feasible for them back then (MS lost literally billions with the original Xbox and never came close to the subscription numbers they hoped for). What was said back in the past is often not relevant today and not necessarily representative of their current stance (unless you really think that Bill Gates and Microsoft still believe that 640kb of RAM is enough for any computer today )

Define "massive". In the past 7 odd years, Nintendo's staff count has risen from roughly 4,300 worldwide to 5,200 worldwide (and that includes their acquisitions like Monolith and Mobiclip/NERD). To put that into perspective, Ubisoft employs almost double the amount of staff as Nintendo (around 9,200 worldwide) and they don't make hardware either...

So does this mean that Sony has officially gone 3rd party now? :p

While I obviously I don't know the full extent of how much autonomy they have, they do seem to have more than most people here claim. From what we know, the Wii Crush fiasco was lead by the guys at NOA themselves and NOT NCL (long story short, NOA didn't like what NST were doing with Project Hammer and forced them to turn it into a bright coloured "casual" game starring Miis. There's some screens of their cancelled projects here) Also it seems that NOA Treehouse are the ones who decide on which games get localised in most cases and not NCL (except the ones that they mandate, like Mario and Zelda) according to this interview here And supposedly NOA also actively seek out 3rd party support/exclusives from western developers (supposedly they managed to secure GTA Chinatown Wars on DS when they couldn't get Rockstar to give them a GTA game for Wii - I can't remember where the interview was that mentioned this, but I remember hearing it at the time. I'll try and dig it up later on when I have more time) So contrary to popular belief, NOA and NOE don't just sit on their arses doing nothing...

Nintendo do not like dealing in M&A. They prefer to establish partnerships that allow the studio the autonomy they want, while not saddling Nintendo with the costs of running the studio directly. Factor 5 and Silicon Knights left because they didn't believe in the path that Nintendo were following with the Wii; they simply had different desires in life, feeling that their visions were better served by the PS360 consoles (and sadly paid the price that went along with it). If Nintendo had bought them, the staff would've simply walked anyway - making such a M&A move utterly pointless; that's the danger involved with M&A and why Nintendo would only do it if they were certain it was what the studio's staff would want (like with Monolith and Mobiclip). Likewise, Nintendo did not buy Rare because they knew that the Stamper Bros were looking to get out of the business and that the studio was in turmoil, with staff bleeding left right and centre (remember that near enough the entire PD/GE team had left right at the end of PD's development). They have a reduced portfolio because games take longer and longer to make as their hardware improves; and Nintendo are very conservative about expanding their studios staff capacity because it comes with the very strong risk of destroying the company culture of their developers (something which has happened in force to many other developers). Instead Nintendo utilise different methods other than sheer brute force of numbers in order to increase their production capacity, without damaging their development culture (which is why you've seen Nintendo rely much more on collaborative development and art asset outsourcing in the last 3 or so years) Yeah, NST has been a big waste. Supposedly a lot of that came from NOA's side though as they apparently pushed to "casualise" Project Hammer into the failed Wii Crush project (resulting in a big staff exodus). They also worked on a lot of other projects that never came to fruition (like those famous Wii Motorbike and Horseriding patents that you saw a few years back). Those parts fall under NOA, not Iwata and NCL themselves though... It was under Iwata that Retro Studios was founded in its current form (after the Spangenberg scandal and the cleaning out of the studio - with roughly 100 staff members getting replaced) and that Nintendo established their relationships with Next Level Games, Monster Games, Warner Bros & Traveller's Tales, Freestyle Games and Ubisoft - as well as the acquisition of Mobiclip (now N.E.R.D). They've done plenty of work with western development in recent years. The only reason why people keep parroting this is because of that stupid one sided Emily Rogers article which purposely ignored all of the stuff that Iwata HAS actually done during his tenure; in order to big up the Howard Lincoln era as if it was a golden age for Nintendo (never mind the fact that he was responsible for some of Nintendo's biggest mistakes, like the fight against Night Trap that nearly brought government censorship upon the industry and helped established Nintendo's "Kiddy" image that still haunts them to this day)

You can get it working when doing a system update though... When the Wii U console does an update, it also updates the firmware of the Wii U Gamepad. During this process it's possible to overwrite the firmware of one region Gamepad with a different region's newer firmware (making it possible to switch Gamepad regions) I remember hearing about this happening back during the Wii U's launch. I'm not sure if the region can be switched any other way though...

There's Watchdogs, Project Cars and another exclusive Sonic the Hedgehog game (Iwata said that Nintendo had secured the next 3 Sonic games when they announced Sonic Lost World and Mario & Sonic Winter Olympics 2014). That's about it as far as announced US/EU bound 3rd party retail games go... There is always a chance that we might see some surprise localizations like Dragon Quest, X, or Puyo Pop Meets Tetris, but I doubt we'll see anything else new announced - especially not from any western developers (Nintendo could always moneyhat some Japanese developers though...) On the plus side, there's plenty of great indie games coming to the eShop! Games like 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!

Baseball in Wii Sports Club fits the bill. They're using it in the same way as in the original concept video (one player plays as the batter, with the expected Wii Remote controls, while the pitcher plays using the Gamepad - aiming and catching with the gyro motion controls while looking through the Gamepad's screen). Wii Fit U and Wii Party U also have lots of assymettric mini games, as does Game & Wario. The Wonderful 101 also had plenty of sections that require you to use the two screens in tandem (cleverly making you juggle your focus between both screens simultaneously).