Dcubed

Surely you can't hate it more than the DS3! Personally I think it's a huge improvement (the improvements to the D-pad and sticks alone are massive - and it's all thanks to Nintendo's D-pad patent expiring ) I'd say it's better than the 360 and Xbone controllers too...

Best bit was when he couldn't skip the cutscene and complained about it Looking forward to tomorrow!

OH MY GOD SPACE HARRIER 3D IS A THING OF BEAUTY!!! Yes! Just yes! (This washes out the nasty taste of YouTube 3DS quite nicely ) The stylus controls are wonderful! And the rotating cabinet! And the clickity clackity sounds of the arcade buttons! YES!!!

Quite a fair bit. Lots of people have uploaded 3D videos of N64/GCN/Wii games for instance. Was looking forward to seeing what F-Zero GX would look like in S3D

Is there seriously no way to view 3D videos in the Youtube 3DS app!? WHAT'S THE BLOODY POINT!? THAT'S THE ONLY REASON I WAS EVER INTERESTED IN THE DAMN THING!!!

A few years back I would never have even considered it, but fast forward to today - with the likes of Steam (especially with Big Picture mode and the upcoming Steam Machines), the standardisation of plug-and-play Xbox 360 controller support and the resurgence of the PC platform as a whole (and the influx of mostly high quality console ports that put their counterparts to shame - with minimal tinkering and messing about required; this being a particular sticking point!) - and all of a sudden I find myself wondering why on earth I even need a PS4 or Xbone! Outside of the console exclusives (And even then, a lot of MS' exclusives are also heading to PC - with the possibility of more, down the line), what do these consoles provide that I can't get on a mid range PC? I wasn't even trying to build a super-duper high spec machine last year/late 2011 and it turns out to be significantly more powerful than even the PS4! As someone who has very little interest in Sony and MS' 1st party lineup in general (outside of the God Of War series, Killer Instinct and some of the games that come out of Sony's Japan Studio), these new consoles don't really look all that appealing to me... Back at the start of last gen, you would never have seen the likes of Capcom and Konami putting out high quality PC versions of their games, with the only real way of playing these games being on PS360; and look now! You're getting top quality versions of all of their games on PC on a regular basis!) You also don't typically have to do any real messing around to get them working. I can just buy and download the game from Steam and it just works, just like on a console. I'm now strongly considering building a mini PC or buying a Steam Machine for the living room & going Wii U/PC only this gen and I would never have even remotely considered doing that last gen! Am I alone in feeling like this? Has anyone else gone through that same thought process, feeling that PC is now at the point where you would feel comfortable replacing your future PS4/Xbone console with a living room PC/Steam Machine?

That may be all well and good (you're certainly right about pretty much everything regarding Nintendo and 3rd parties), but the fact of the matter is that they just can't support a console all by themselves. They need outside help to keep a consistent schedule going and to bring that all important software variety to their platforms. Like it or not, they need to earn their support to keep their platforms going. Maybe they can survive without some of them (they've managed to get by without Take Two or EA's support for the most part), but not all of them...

So nobody thinks that my idea is any good?

Nintendo is currently stuck unable to appeal to either end of the market. The casual audience currently seems uninterested, while the "hardcore" set of the market sees the Nintendo brand as utterly toxic - to the point that they would refuse to buy it, even if it did have GTA. Doing this (and removing the "Nintendo" branding from the box) would give them a place in the market however; while Nintendo fans would finally be given a steady stream of software. Meanwhile, they can continue with their lower priced Wii U system and try to win back that casual audience. It's all branding in the end, but it gives them a position at both ends of the market (staying out of the un-winnable middle).

The Wii U hardware would be entirely separate from the PC parts, so the games wouldn't be playable on PC (it would literally be a PC bolted onto Wii U hardware). And the price is something that isn't unprecedented - Xbone currently sells for $500 and had no issue exploding out of the gate. Nintendo would be selling this at a profit and the prices would come down quickly over time as these would be high volume parts (since they're off the shelf PC parts). This is a way they could have a model with full support from most developers and a cheaper model (the current Wii U) that only plays Nintendo games. It's also relatively low risk as it wouldn't require Nintendo to alter their current Wii U game development plans. If it doesn't succeed, dump it and just carry on with the Wii U like nothing happened.

So I was lamenting the Wii U's dreadful sales performance (especially in light of the hopeless looking numbers for Super Mario 3D World) and I was thinking about how Nintendo has no hope of winning back 3rd party support (even if they pulled off a miracle and revived the console's fortunes - the Wii proves that a large userbase means squat for getting quality support; and 3rd party games from the likes of Ubisoft have hardly set the Wii U charts alight anyway, so the demographics have no doubt scared them off for good). Even if they scrapped the Wii U altogether and brought out a new super duper powerful dickwaving machine, they would probably still have zero chance of getting any meaningful 3rd party support now; there's no way that they would willingly support Nintendo and there's no way that Nintendo could possibly pay for every game to be ported to their platform, not to mention that they couldn't possibly win a moneyhat bidding war against MS and Sony anyway... ...then suddenly a mad idea just hit me. What if they took the Wii U hardware (its CPU/GPU and Gamepad Wifi streaming hardware) and put it inside their own custom designed Steam Machine! I'm sure most of you are fully aware of what Valve are planning with their Steam OS platform (if not - go here: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/). So you'll know that it's a Linux distro that is offered to OEM partners for free, without any associated licensing fees, for them to build x86/64 based PCs in a console box. So what if Nintendo built and sold their own Steam Machine, featuring two sets of CPU/GPU hardware (the first being a set of PC parts that conforms to Valve's required specifications and the second being the Wii U's CPU/GPU - allowing the machine to be capable of playing both Steam OS PC games and Wii/Wii U games!). Nintendo would still design their games for the Wii U hardware, and the games/OS would function exactly as they do on the current machine; this would just be a luxury model of sorts (like the Panasonic Q). In one fell swoop, without having to beg anyone, Nintendo's console would instantly have the support of almost every current 3rd party developer! (Except for EA of course, since they only sell their games on Origin and would never support their competitors). They would also have exclusivity on all of Valve's own games too amongst the big 3 (since Valve are seemingly no longer interested in porting their games to consoles). The console's two sets of hardware would be unable to interact with each other and it would feature two segregated OS' (Steam OS and the Wii U OS - selectable on startup via a custom Bios, running on a seperate ARM chip) - this sandboxing would protect the Wii U side from being hacked for piracy. However, that same ARM chip could also function as an interpreter that would allow the Gamepad to be used to play every Steam OS game Off TV! (And the touch screen would emulate the mouse in every game - with the Analog stick defaulting to WSAD when it's used - giving it a powerful USP against other Steam Machines; on top of the playable Wii U games of course!) Ever since the N64, Nintendo have always suffered from two major, related and utterly crippling issues; the lack of 3rd party support (leading to long software droughts) and the baggage associated with the Nintendo brand (kiddy, underpowered, lol online etc - you all know the gist). By aligning themselves with Steam, they can feature these 3rd party games on their console and not have their branding become a detriment to the success of these games (and having Steam OS running seperately from the Nintendo stuff also would make for a comfortable experience for those who dislike Nintendo's cutesy style). Now, it does come with some significant problems. For starters, Nintendo would not be earning any royalties from the 3rd party Steam OS games that would be playable on their machine (but when you consider that they wouldn't be getting these games at all otherwise - does that really count as a loss?) - instead, the benefit of having these games playable manifests itself by making the hardware more desireable; giving Nintendo a larger userbase to potentially sell their games to. The hardware would also be expensive... very expensive, even in comparison to other Steam Machines since they'd have to also incorporate the Wii U hardware on top of the PC parts; we're talking possibly $500-650 at launch - but that would come down relatively quickly over time as they would be using parts that are (quite literally!) off the shelf. They could still offer the original Wii U as a cheaper alternative of course (since Nintendo would still be designing their games to run only on the Wii U side of the hardware), but the Nintendo Steam Machine would be more expensive than the PS4 and Xbone. On the flip side though, it would be more powerful than either console and thus would also have the best versions of every 3rd party game by default... However... ... The hardware might run into performance issues down the line as the minimum specs for PC games increase later on. While this one is kinda hard to predict, since we've yet to see the influence of Valve's model of standardised minimum specs for their Steam Machines, it's not hard to imagine that future games might not be optimised for play on the calibur of hardware that Nintendo would release with years after it has done so... (But those issues wouldn't necessarily be Nintendo's problem, as they wouldn't be the ones managing Steam...) And finally, the biggest potential issue is that Nintendo would become reliant on somebody else (we all know what happened the last time Nintendo tried something like this...). However, this scenario is different in that Nintendo and Valve both share a common foe in the form of Microsoft and both stand to gain tremendously from such a relationship (a super console that plays almost every major 3rd party game AND Nintendo games!? Crazy!). If Nintendo still continued to sell the Wii U though, they could always break off on their own once more if things go sour (it's not like they'd be in a worse position than they are now!) The result? A Nintendo console that has the best versions of almost every non-EA made 3rd party game (even GTA!) with Off TV play and the ability to play all Wii/Wii U games - and a powerful catalyst for Valve to get their storefront onto TVs and out of Microsoft's Windows ecosystem. Just a crazy thought of mine, but what do you guys reckon?

No doubt that a lot of that comes from the Louvre's licensing fees, as well as the 30+ hours of professional audio commentary (in 6 different languages no less!) It might not necessarily have taken much of Nintendo's internal resources to develop, but that doesn't mean that it's a cheap production...

Not happy that they took out the numerical activity indicator. That was actually a pretty decent way of estimating game sales (I used that to predict the US sales of the TWWHD Wii U bundle pretty accurately!). Otherwise it looks great! And seems to indicate that we'll be able to view communities for 3DS games on Wii U (and vice versa). It was starting to get a bit unmanageable to wade through all of those communities...

Probably cancelled. I'd be shocked if it ever gets released here now. But that's nothing new for us really; just like with Xbox, almost all of their multimedia/TV features are only available in the US. Negotiating all of those contracts across Europe (especially with the likes of Sky, who are notorious control freaks) is just far more difficult than in the US, where everything is much more centralised. And TBH, given the Wii U's current situation, it's probably not even worth releasing it and wasting money on securing support for it here anymore

I would imagine that the versions offered have country specific localisations (as indicated on the physical version's box art). Makes sense considering how much audio commentary is in there... BTW, the Iwata Asks is out! http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Nintendo-3DS-Guide-Louvre/Nintendo-3DS-Guide-Louvre/1-One-day-the-Louvre/1-One-day-the-Louvre-836504.html Oh... dammit, they know just how to taunt me...

That is sooooooo gonna become a collectors item! Cool to see that they're actually releasing this for sale now. Always wanted to try this out Surprised that they're releasing it in Japan and EU but not the US though... (Americans too uncultured confirmed? )

There is no OS level party chat function anymore, or even a standard VOIP API provided by MS for developers to slot into their game. Instead, developers have to code their own VOIP solution per-game and it only works within the game itself (so no cross game chat), just like on PS3, 3DS and Wii U. This is not true. ZombiU (who's online functionality works pretty much just like Dark Souls' does), Pikmin 3, Nano Assault Neo, Resident Evil Revelations and pretty much every major online enabled title I can think of (outside of Monster Hunter 3U) is an "always-online" experience, just like what you would find on PS360 (hell, the multiplatform games perform online exactly as they would on other consoles - and RE:Revelations has additional functionality not present in any other version to boot!) And all Nintendo consoles have a "previously downloaded" list. Even the Wii had it! Your other points are perfectly valid though. I shouldn't have to open up Miiverse to see who sent me a message (that little glowing Home Button isn't enough! - I should be have an option to have an overlay appear onscreen, telling me what messages/yeahs I've recieved and then be able to reply instantly, without leaving my game)

It's just a matter of media outlets needing something new to talk about now that the PS4 and Xbone are out (notice how they're only interested in talking about SM3DW; ignoring the rest of its library - that's cause it's shiny, new and a currently hot commodity). Things will settle down back to normal once these sites have had their fill of clicks...

Just wait till you figure out that you can post on here using the Gamepad screen while watching any HTML5 (Youtube/Ustream/Twitch/Plex etc) video on your TV at the same time and it works flawlessly...

Not interested in the Persona games, but I DO like Etrian Odyssey! Will keep an eye on this one

I LOVE the little musical chest! Hours of fun to be had with it! (It was the perfect accompaniment to my friend's birthday today - it's also fun for when people trip over ) Not gonna touch the game yet though... Too many other games to finish first before I get stuck in... (Gotta avoid those spoilers like the plague, so don't expect to see me much here - Or in the SM3DW thread...)

I would be shocked and stunned if Nintendo didn't make Smash Bros NFC compatible on Wii U (while the 3DS version uses AR Cards) Sakurai already did it in Kid Icarus Uprising, so why not again? Release figurines/AR Cards that unlock the equivalent trophy in the game (but of course it's still unlockable in the normal fashion - just like in KIU!)

OHOHOHOH! What have we here? A sneaky peek at Golf in Wii Sports Club you say? Oh Nintendo, you sly dogs (That's definitely not old footage BTW, - so that's definitely the real deal; must be coming soon if they're already advertising it )

Best bit is that most of those items are basically useless

Man, the 3DS demo version feels like garbage after beating the Wii U game! It actually seems better than I expected it to be, but it definitely feels like a 2nd tier effort in comparison to the original Wii U version...