Dcubed

Well we're off to a good start for today's Nintendo Direct. Nintendo have just confirmed that MSX and TG16 games will be coming to the Japanese VC service on both Wii U and 3DS! http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/12/pc_engine_and_msx_games_coming_to_japanese_3ds_and_wii_u_virtual_console_services Here's hoping that the west follows suit (and that more consoles will be coming too!) Hopefully we'll actually get the MSX games in the west this time, unlike on Wii where they only came out in Japan. PORTABLE LORDS OF THUNDER OH MY FUCKING GOD! YESYESYES!!

Well we're off to a good start for today's Nintendo Direct. Nintendo have just confirmed that MSX and TG16 games will be coming to the Japanese VC service on both Wii U and 3DS! http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/12/pc_engine_and_msx_games_coming_to_japanese_3ds_and_wii_u_virtual_console_services Here's hoping that the west follows suit (and that more consoles will be coming too!)

AHA! So YOU'RE the secret 5th character in DKCTF! I knew it all along...

Ha ha! Yeh bastard! Looks like you might've lucked out this time around At least this is one scenario where I'd be glad to be wrong Yes! Nothing less than DOUBU SATORU is acceptable! Hopefully he'll be belting out some tunes for Jam With the Band Pro in Europe and sporting some styles for Newer Style Boutique for Wii U! And then at the end... BOOM! Year of Cranky Kong! Cranky in Smash, Cranky in Mario Kart 8, Cranky in Mario Golf World Tour, Cranky Kong: The RPG, Wii Fit: Old Monkey edition, Cranky Kong Rap Star... TAKE IT TO THE FRIDGE IWATA!

The US has communities for Galaxy Force 2 and Ecco, but sadly you can't post screenshots from the EU version there

FABULOUS!!!

Looks like there's some online maintanence happening for this game tomorrow on Wednesday... http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=93872731&postcount=45 Considering that Knytt Underground is the sole game releasing on the Wii U eShop (really! For the week before Xmas!) and that Golf was shown off in that US TV advert not long ago...

HA HA HA HA HA... he he he... yeah

Life Force VC and the last two SEGA 3D Classics makes this a good week Cool to see them finally get Nintendogs & Cats onto the eShop in Europe (Bit late there!) Just Kid Icarus Uprising, Steel Diver and Spirit Camera to go and they'll have their full 1st Party 3DS lineup available on the eShop

Pretty pathetic considering that this the last update before Xmas. You'd think that they'd have SOMETHING lined up for Wii U...

Correctamundo

I think that Golf will still be released before the end of the year, while Baseball will see release in January and Boxing will be pushed to March (they're having trouble getting online to work in Boxing according to the Iwata Asks interview, so that'll take some extra time, but they'll push to get it out before the end of the fiscal year). Book it!

Oh hey, I know I'm a bit late in posting this one (I'm sure that some of you with a keen eye have probably already noticed this), but for those who haven't already spotted it... SEGA have been posting a series of interviews with developer M2 on their blog about the SEGA 3D Classics range that is now getting released on the 3DS here in the west and an... interesting... picture was included in one of their interviews... Before looking at it, bare in mind that M2 were the ones who handled the Mega Drive, Master System, Neogeo and most of the VCA releases on the Wii's VC service (as well as the Game Gear VC releases on 3DS)... Spot two controllers that looks suspiciously like a Wii U Gamepad and a Wii Remote, next to a Megadrive and a SEGA Saturn console? Tis a good sign

If I could have my way, I'd ask them to pause the production of every game they're currently making for a year and get them to localise EVERY single JPN only game in their history for release on the Wii U VC. Mother 1 & 3, Fire Emblem 1-6 (&12), Marvelous: Another Treasure Island, Shin Onigashima, Captain Rainbow, Famicom Detective Club 1&2, Kiki Trick, the whole BSX Satellaview and 64DD libraries, E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G! Then resume what they're currently doing and build some small teams to work on quirky new IPs, like what Game Freak did with Harmoknight!

Didn't help the N64 or the GCN...

I would think that the reason why Nintendo Land didn't resonate in the same way as Wii Sports would be obvious. It's too abstract and cannot sell the Wii U's unique gameplay experiences just by sight alone. With Wii Sports, you take one look at it and you instantly know how to play (swing your arm like a tennis racket!); with Nintendo Land (and the Wii U in general) however, it's far more convoluted and isn't instantly accessible. The fact that even Nintendo struggled to explain the game back at their disastrous E3 2012 presentation should be evidence enough of the difficulty involved in their Wii U messaging (I do also agree that the lack of Nintendo brand baggage associated with Wii/Wii Sports also helped big time as well BTW). But the time for those discussions has long since past... Now they have no choice but to soldier on and try to carve out a niche for themselves. They're not getting the wider Wii audience back en masse at this point, but they can still at least try and eke out a profit from the console...

The results aren't good in of themselves for Wii U, but on the bright side - it got a much larger November bump than previous Nintendo consoles received going from October-November on their 2nd Xmas... So the results were better than I had expected for Wii U hardware at least... SM3DW's sales are disappointing though. The attach rate to hardware is lower than its equivalent Wii and GCN counterparts... The real damning part of Nintendo's November performance is the 3DS though. It should've done MUCH better considering the launch of Pokemon, Zelda ALBW, Mario Party IT AND the 2DS...

You're right in saying that Nintendo's brand means more to the Brits now than before, but it's also true that it's still their weakest market (reletive to marketshare and population size). Culturally, the UK is an outlier amongst the rest of Europe, we're much closer to the US than anyone else really. The Xbox brand is also much more popular in the UK than mainland Europe (and the same seems to be true for the Xbone). The Wii U has been doing poorly everywhere, it's just that their reletive unpopularity in the UK is making the situation even worse.

The UK has always been Nintendo's weakest market, even during those days of Wii/DS though... Strange that games for both new consoles seem to be sticking around at the upper end of the UK charts, but not the German ones. I would imagine that shipments wouldn't really be that skewed in favour of the UK, considering that Germany is Europe's biggest individual game market...

Ahh, this is one of those times where having an NTSC Wii collection and a homebrew enabled (and now totally useless and redundant PAL Wii) comes in handy :awesome: #smug Anyway, I have version 2.0 (yet to try 3.0) and I think it's very hit and miss. The stages just flat out suck for the most part; they sucked out all of the randomness and fun from most of them, going out of their way to turn most stages into Battlefield clones The characters though... A lot of them are REALLY fun! I LOVE the Project M Lucario! It's just brilliant! They basically made him into Ryu from Street Fighter with his moveset and the aura mechanic is actually useful! There's even a new move that's activated by pressing A&B together! Wario is also amazing! They have him his shoulder barge attack from Wario Land and even made him animate just like in the GB/C/A Wario Land games! It's incredibly well done! And then you get to Squirtle... Which is just WHHHYYYYYY!!!?!!? He sucks something fierce now! Utterly worthless! Overall though, it's really fun and incredibly well made. I have no idea how the hell they do what they do, but it really feels professionally done! I'd wholeheartedly recommend it if you can play it!

Really interesting just how much mainland Europe can differ from the UK... PS4 and Xbone really dropped like stones in Germany! (Meanwhile, Mario 3D World and Wii Party U are showing much stronger legs there than in the UK) Bravely Default also seems to have performed better there than in the UK too It's a shame that we don't get as much information on the other EU nations as the UK (especially seeing as it's not even the largest EU market...)

Holy mother of ducklet! That's a GREAT result for Wii U! Much better than I had expected and quite a bit better than the GCN's equivalent 2nd Xmas week! (Which was 39,849 in 2002). Dat DQX Ver 2 effect. The split is also much more favourable to Wii U than I had expected too (and no doubt much higher when you add in digital sales as most DQX Wii U sales supposedly came from the eShop - thanks to that special promotion they did back at the launch of Ver 1 for Wii U) I just hope that the bump also translates world wide... GT6 also fared better than I had expected, given all the room and gloom surrounding its release.

Yeah, I'm still not able to get onto the 3DS eShop or get the Streetpass Plaza update...

They got/are getting dual voice in all of those except for Rhythm Paradise Wii U (and that was added as an apology of sorts for the long EU release delay).

Normally (on both Wii U and 3DS) if a game has no community, then it just boots you to the Miiverse Community List page. There has to be something in the game itself preventing it... Yeah, no kidding! I don't envy them... (but still, HURRY UP ALREADY! )