Dcubed

Germany is so efficient, that they refuse to release anything before 09:00 on the dot and not a second earlier or later

Whoa! Talk about out of the blue! Must've been something pretty serious to spark this off (probably child porn was found being sent as an embedded image in some messages). They invested quite a bit into that little app. Lots of regular updates and it was a popular PR tool for Nintendo in promoting their games (hell, they just sent out a Nikki (MAI WAIFU! NOOOOOOOO!!!) message only just last week! Swapnote.nintendo.com lists the service as "suspended" rather than terminated/cancelled, so I reckon that they're working on a retooled version to remove the image embedding feature as long as my little Nikki gets to keep her job, I'm happy

A third game (called Devilish Brain Training in Europe) has been released in Japan (around 200-250k including digital) and the US (roughly 20k physical, unknown digital). It was due for release back in April in Europe but was delayed indefinitely around a week before launch (it is still listed as an upcoming EU release in Nintendo's latest financial report, so its EU release hasn't been cancelled). On this subject, I do have to agree with the detractors to an extent. The market that bought the preceding Wii____ titles are not showing much interest in the console, nor the games themselves (looking at Wii Party's Miiverse activity in each region, it's rising pretty slowly; and Wii Fit U isn't faring much better in Japan either...) That being said, I don't feel that their development is a waste. Remember that these games would be pretty cheap to make and not exactly resource intensive (especially considering that much of the initial groundwork needed to make them was already in place through their predecessors). Even if they fail to spark the same fire that their predecessors did, they'll all make money and haven't really burdened Nintendo's internal development much. It's not like they made Wii Fit U instead of Metroid or Starfox or Zelda now :p These games help round out the Wii U's library and are quick & easy to make. Even if they don't set the world on fire, they add some much needed variety to the Wii U's roster (cause relying constantly on the same IPs like Mario over and over will just eventually make people sick of them!)

Pfft, as if anyone would ever pick the male trainer over the female one

About bloody time! (Those prices are amazing though! Cheaper than the MD games on the Wii VC! ) Will buy all of them (except for Altered Beast and Ecco)

TBH I still think that's possible. 2DS + Pokemon + the explosive growth of 3DS sales in Japan thanks to MH4 and Pokemon + a strong lineup of Q3-Q4 titles. 18 million still seems doable to me. Challenging, but doable (not like the loltastic Wii U forecast - no chance!)

Crazy to think that more than 50% of the Wii U's total Q2 US sales were made in those last 11 days of the reporting period! Really puts into perspective how badly it was doing before then (even moreso than before!) The "negative sales" anomoly from the PAL regions no doubt comes as a direct result of the Basic Wii U model recall that they did a month or so ago (those are also the units that are getting re-packaged in those new upcoming bundles). Still, its weird that it seems to be doing much worse in PAL territories than anywhere else... Also, it may not mean much really, but the Wii U has a decent software attach rate at least (5:1) Despite how bleak the outlook from these results look, the console did manage to do 90k-100k in the US last month; so the price drop and TWW bundle did have a profound effect... ... the issue though is one of momentum and if they can keep it up. Right now, my gut feeling tells me no. Super Mario 3D World, Wii Fit U and Wii Party U (which you can't judge by its first week as those types of games don't explode out of the gate and typically do very well around Xmas) don't feel enough to me. Losing DKCTF is a big blow and the impact of Wii Sports Club is greatly diminished by being incomplete and digital only. It still feels as if they're one or two games short of a gamechanging lineup... (Mario Kart 8 being ready for Xmas might've been enough, but alas ) Either way, that Wii U hardware forecast was made in total lalaland. Completely ludicrous! Not even an Xmas Mario Kart 8 release and free blowjobs for Wii U purchasers could make that happen!

IIRC in Wii Sports Resort, you'd set it when you first use your Mii in a game of bowling. Lord knows about Wii Sports Club though (I don't exactly have it to check; and even if I did, it would all be Japanese squiggles and nonsense to me ) Since it was optional in WSR, I'd imagine it to be the same case for WSC one way or another...

Aww yeah! Totally expected it (they've been hinting at one of their two upcoming Wii U games being an online play enabled sequel to FAST for a while now), but still happy to finally see it confirmed! The first game was great. A bit simple in comparison to the F-Zero games, but still a really great racer. I have high hopes for this one!

That automatic release was optional in Wii Sports Resort... So I'd imagine that there's some sort of option to turn that off somewhere...

It's really great to see Nintendo stick to their guns and continue to push gameplay boundaries, despite the pressure on them to just conform and stop using the Gamepad for anything other than Off TV Play (not that Off TV Play isn't great, but I'm much more excited for new gameplay experiences that couldn't have been made before on any other hardware) That concept video is what got me excited for the console in the first place! I was so disappointed that the E3 Direct didn't show any games that really utilise the Gamepad in any significant way (especially Mario 3D World, seeing as how Mario games are usually built around showcasing what the new hardware can offer in terms of gameplay - and Mario Bros U was pretty disappointing in that regard...), so seeing the original Wii U Sports concepts for Golf and Baseball actually come to fruition is really comforting Now I just gotta hope that they're working on more games like this that really push what the Gamepad can do... (That Steel Diver sequel has a lot of potential as a two screen experience - one view below water and one above...)

There's more content than the original... (more training exercises and minigames, more ranking options etc) You can seemingly swing and miss the ball! (you have to actually physically aim for the ball; where and how you hit it also affects your shot, keeping track of the actual position of the club and its distance from the ball thanks to the Gamepad's built-in sensor bar )

Well from the way that Iwata and Shimamura worded it... ... it sounds like Golf is next in line for release. Considering that the Motionplus controls for Golf are already done (thanks to Wii Sports Resort), I reckon that there's a good chance that Golf will be out in time for Xmas Boxing sounds like it still has a good while to go though... ... Seems that getting the online to work for Boxing is proving to be difficult, so that'll no doubt be the last to release of the 3 upcoming games...

Crazy to think that the Iwata Asks was the first chance that Iwata had to actually see and try out the game! Poor guy must be overworked to hell trying to act as CEO at NCL AND president of NOA That video was cute as hell though You can tell that they're actually the ones playing it too (what with how the pointer moves and how they make the Miis look stupid by waggling around - heh, that's exactly what I do in Wii Sports when I'm playing ) Great to see that they haven't let me down here! Can't wait!

Woohoo! Sayonara Umihara Kawase is getting localised as an eShop download!!! (Yumi's Odd Odyseey is its English title) http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=705709 This'll be the first time that a Kawase game is ever getting released outside of Japan! (For those wondering, an EU version hasn't been announced yet; but Agatsuma Entertainment did respond to an email of mine that I sent a few months back, saying that a EU release is planned but they weren't ready to announce it publically yet - so we'll almost certainly get it too ) For those who are unfamiliar with the series (which is probably most people here and everywhere), there's a great article on Hardcore Gaming 101 that goes over the series, but in short; it's a really great and unique series of sidescrolling platform games (that started on the SNES in 1994) which stars a little girl who gets through levels by using a rope as a grappling hook to swing around (think Super Metroid's grappling hook, or Bionic Commando minus the gun but with super realistic "elastic band" physics!). It's this game below that was shown in a Japanese Nintendo Direct earlier on this year... This guy in the video below also did a good overview of the original SNES game, to give you an idea of what it's like (and why you should be excited for this game! )

Any word on who's making P.I.kachu? (that's the official name now, regardless of whatever Nintendo/TPCI pick for the final name, it's too perfect! ) Bit weird of them to announce a game that is seemingly in halted development though... (Genius Sonirity have been busy with the Denpa Men games and has no doubt undergone some turmoil as Manabu Yamana left to revive Heartbeat, so it's understandable, but still weird)

In for SCV4 and Wii Fit U. That RE: Revelations sale is weaksauce compared to the US one! (Mercs is crazy cheap though! If you haven't already bought it, GET IT!)

The biggest WTF part of it all is how the voice chat now supposedly works like the PS3 & Wii U ones, with developers having to make their own VOIP APIs because there is no standard VOIP API built into the system. WHY!? It's so stupid! It's just more unnecessary work for the developer!

That was an amazing fake! Really well made

No, sadly not. NOE's MO seems to be "if it had an EFIGS localisation originally, put up the PAL version; if not, use the NTSC one" Fair enough, I wouldn't want to see the games being unavailable in EU languages wherever possible, but at least give us a choice of which version we want to play when you do have cases like this!

TBH, we've been at that point for a while for most western AAA budget titles. Heterogeneity is the enemy of big budget games as they all stick to the established formula.

Exactly! Spot on! A good example of this difference can also be seen in looking at Pikmin 3 VS your typical RTS game. In something like Starcraft, you tell your characters where to go and the game extrapolates their trajectory and time of arrival (dealing with any hazards or battles enroute is also easy as the game already knows the outcome of your move before it happens, because you don't control their movement directly). In Pikmin 3 however, this kind of predictive netcode does not work because your character can turn on a dime, meaning that it would have to track your movements live (and doing that with 102 characters, who all move around independently, with their own set of health and attack states, is basically impossible). Because internet bandwith and IP technology is constantly improving. It might not be possible now, but in the future? Who knows? (They could also re-design the game so that online play is possible, like removing direct player interaction and making the other players ghosts - changing the level design to fit - but they're not gonna get into technical details with the interviewer or their audience of consumers; cause Nintendo like to avoid tech-talk as much as possible) Better to give a wishy-washy answer (which is probably also being distorted in translation), than to flat out say no and potentially make yourself look stupid in the future if you do ever end up making an online Mario game (through better online technology or a differently designed game).

FPS and racing games are very well suited to online netcode and that has been very much a "solved problem" for years now. There is a reason why every Mario Kart since 2005 has been playable online... Getting Mario to work online is more like trying to get a 4 player game of Street Fighter online though (only worse since you have stage hazards and enemies, with various amounts of health, to keep track of too). Developers have only just about managed to get 2 player 2D fighters to work online (and even then, just barely), while nobody has ever managed to get a 4 player fighter or platformer to work (just look at the total mess that Brawl is online, for the kind of experience you might expect!) But I've been saying this for years and still nobody wants to listen, so why bother? Obviously Ubisoft were just lazy with Rayman Origins & Legends and can't get a game to work online for toffee :p

Just tried it out at the MCM Expo... It's even worse than I had feared! Not only does it look like garbage, but it RUNS like garbage too! Battles run at 30FPS, while the out of battle scenes run at 60FPS. But not only that, both different sets of scenes also seem to have a really nasty judder with the animations (almost like telecene judder). It's like all the animation key framing is completely fucked! And if that wasn't bad enough, there seems to be a ton of input lag too! (I tried going back to the XMB to see if it was an issue with the TV itself and nope, the game itself had far more input lag than the XMB). So yeah, the port is hot steaming garbage (they've obviously just ported over the PS2 version and not fixed the framerate, while simultaneously fucking up the visuals and performance even more). Buy ONLY if you are desperate to experience the PS2 version's exclusive content in English - otherwise stick with the GCN original... Although mind you, TOS 2 seems to be a good port with no visual problems and a proper 60FPS framerate...

How many 4 player platformers are playable online? Hint, the answer is two - Little Big Planet 1 & 2 (there IS Trine 2 as well, but there's no direct player interaction involved and that makes all the difference when it comes to net code) Now, how was the lag in that game? (bearing in mind that it was nowhere near as precise and reliant on perfect frame timing as the Mario games, so any experience with the Mario games would be at least 10x worse...) Answer... ... Yeah... Maybe when we all have perfect fibre optic...