The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Wii U / Switch

[Serebii]

When people talk about "proper 3D" Mario games, they're talking about the gameplay style from SM64 to Galaxy.

 

3D World is clearly based on the 2D Mario games.

 

Also, while Captain Toad is a fun little game, I think "unimpressive" is a apt term for it.

Super Mario Galaxy (and especially Super Mario Galaxy 2) is far closer in execution to Super Mario 3D World than it is Super Mario 64

 

Also, @Hogge, Tropical Freeze was actually a better bet for Nintendo to allow Retro to do, considering Donkey Kong Country Returns sold more than each Metroid Prime game combined...

Edited May 4, 2016 by Serebii

[Cube]

Super Mario Galaxy (and especially Super Mario Galaxy 2) is far closer in execution to Super Mario 3D World than it is Super Mario 64

 

I agree. Which is probably why I don't like them.

[Jonnas]

And how many F-Zero games have we had in that time?

 

Can I just say how bad this argument is? If you're measuring Miyamoto's or Nintendo's worth by how many space-race games they made, then yeah, they suck. So do Sony, Capcom, Sega, Namco and most videogame companies in existence because they also didn't make a space-race game in the last 10 years.

 

Can you imagine this argument being used for other developers? "Naughty Dog lost their touch, they haven't made anything worthwhile since Jak III. No, Uncharted doesn't count because it doesn't suit my tastes. Neither does Last of Us, because cinematic games aren't proper".

[Kav]

Can I just say how bad this argument is? If you're measuring Miyamoto's or Nintendo's worth by how many space-race games they made, then yeah, they suck. So do Sony, Capcom, Sega, Namco and most videogame companies in existence because they also didn't make a space-race game in the last 10 years.

 

Can you imagine this argument being used for other developers? "Naughty Dog lost their touch, they haven't made anything worthwhile since Jak III. No, Uncharted doesn't count because it doesn't suit my tastes. Neither does Last of Us, because cinematic games aren't proper".

 

Given how it's pretty much just Nintendo supporting their console and that its a game that is frequently mentioned when talking about Nintendo's catalogue that they could dig into to offer more diversity in the line-up of the console then I disagree with your comment. I still feel it's a very valid argument.

 

Your comparison is moot because Naughty Dog isn't a console manufacturer trying to support a console they've made that needs all the help it can get.

 

Also, mentioning how the competition haven't put out a game of similar ilk gives credence to Nintendi actually releasing an F-Zero to try and gain more of an audience that the opposition isn't catering for.

[Ronnie]

When people talk about "proper 3D" Mario games, they're talking about the gameplay style from SM64 to Galaxy.

 

3D World is clearly based on the 2D Mario games.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how much shit Mario 3D World gets. Give me its beautifully designed levels any day over Galaxy's wildly over-rated ones. Personally I think it's the perfect 3D platformer, regardless of whether the levels are as expansive as Galaxy's or not. It's a real masterpiece of a game and it's sad that it gets shit on so much because it's not "Galaxy 3".

 

Also, while Captain Toad is a fun little game, I think "unimpressive" is a apt term for it.

 

What's unimpressive about it exactly? The beautifully designed levels, the ridiculous amount of charm in every polygon or the pure sense of FUN the gameplay delivers?

[dazzybee]

I want f zero pretty much more than anything (second to a wave race), but it's purely an indulgent think an f zero would get great sales or push consoles...

 

Though f zero as part of a combination of games could show people they are serious about these franchises and the console in general I guess... I mean, surely a hd remake with online of gx would sell more than earthbound beginnings and they did that

[Pestneb]

I mean, surely a hd remake with online of gx would sell more than earthbound beginnings and they did that

 

Who would do the work though? Sega and Nintendo made that game together, I presume that complicates matters a little bit. Apparently GX sold under 1 million on the GC which sold about twice what the Wii U will. Maybe on the NX there is a tiny chance of GX getting updated, but unless NX sells maybe 40M units fairly quickly, I don't fancy the chances of a remake of GX

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

The thing with sales is that its accelerated by marketing, most times average products sell well due to good advertising.

 

I really haven't seen anything in recent times that makes me think Nintendo are doing a good job with their advertisements. (Splatoons online advertising was good).

 

How can ANYTHING expect to sell when you're not putting it in front of peoples faces, with a clear and concise message as to why it should be bought? In the cinemas, I'm seeing PS4 ads all over the place to the point where I remember their slogan "for the players" - I wasn't even interested in the game or the console thus far.

 

The "it won't sell so we won't make it" Nintendo approach is pretty lazy when they haven't IMO had a noteworthy advertisement strategy since the N64 and early GC days.

[Dog-amoto]

*Comes in to hear news on new Zelda as per thread title...

 

 

[Pestneb]

tbh.. my impression is that most people care about gaming as much as I do about television. I enjoy certain programs, but don't have a clue about the business side, nor do I care if the shows I watch aren't particularly good.

 

Most of us on here, if not all have specific tastes... judging from on here I would have assumed several million copies of F-Zero sold during the GC's lifetime, when only a fraction of that amount did sell.

 

My point is that the games we want aren't necessarily the games Nintendo needs. The top selling games like FIFA may not even be what it needs... I would never have predicted a game where you play tennis by waggling a short stick at the right time would lead to a 100 million selling console for Nintendo.

 

They screwed up big time with the Wii U, even if I do prefer the console to my Wii...but I'm sure they can come through with the NX.

 

I wonder if the gamepad screen will actually be used in any interesting way now, if the game is out on NX too, it is possible the gamepad screen will only be for off tv play... or an accessory that is compatible with the NC.

 

I'm definitely curious to see how this all turns out.... When is E3 by the way??

[Ashley]

*Comes in to hear news on new Zelda as per thread title...

 

 

In honour of Zelda on the Wii U, this thread promises something that won't be delivered for two years.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

 

My point is that the games we want aren't necessarily the games Nintendo needs. The top selling games like FIFA may not even be what it needs... I would never have predicted a game where you play tennis by waggling a short stick at the right time would lead to a 100 million selling console for Nintendo.

 

 

I think the point is that the Nintendo machine has a variety of games for a variety of players - tbh I don't really see '100 million sales' being anything great or an ideal to strive to when your fan base are accumulative and become repeat buyers over generations - Nintendo didn't even really follow through with developing Wii Sports and motion controls further.

 

Sometimes it's about fan service, sometimes it's about hard business tactics. But when the mantra becomes 'make it only if it sells', as a Nintendo gamer, you're left with Mario-something and a row of platformers and having that gimmick mentality of making one hit wonders.

 

Anyway, back to Zelda... Oh, there is no new news to discuss.

Edited May 4, 2016 by King_V

[Hogge]

Super Mario Galaxy (and especially Super Mario Galaxy 2) is far closer in execution to Super Mario 3D World than it is Super Mario 64

Which is why I'm luke warm towards those games.

Also, @Hogge, Tropical Freeze was actually a better bet for Nintendo to allow Retro to do, considering Donkey Kong Country Returns sold more than each Metroid Prime game combined...

 

Yet again: that it sells well doesen't mean that it sells very many consoles. Each game that Nintendo greenlights must fill a role in the machine's lineup.

[Blade]

It never ceases to amaze me how much shit Mario 3D World gets. Give me its beautifully designed levels any day over Galaxy's wildly over-rated ones. Personally I think it's the perfect 3D platformer, regardless of whether the levels are as expansive as Galaxy's or not. It's a real masterpiece of a game and it's sad that it gets shit on so much because it's not "Galaxy 3".

 

 

 

What's unimpressive about it exactly? The beautifully designed levels, the ridiculous amount of charm in every polygon or the pure sense of FUN the gameplay delivers?

 

Yeah I disagree. I much orefer prefer the beautifully designed levels that Galaxy offered. Personally I think 3D World is the worst 3D Mario platformer.

 

But these are just opinions. Don't get me wrong 3D World is excellent but for me wasn't as good as previous games.

[Dcubed]

3D Land was better than 3D World :p

[Zechs Merquise]

The laughable thing is, the people demanding things like new F-Zero games don't really have a clue how this industry - or even business works.

 

Let me explain, when a company or a group of investors green light a project they make an investment in that project, they then look to make a return on their investment (ROI).

 

We will start by looking at another entertainment industry, films. When a studio green lights a film they give it a budget, now say a film has a $200 million budget, the investors want a reasonable ROI for the capital they stumped up. When a film goes to box office, the receipts are split evenly between the box office and the studio (this is why I used the example of films as the math is easy).

 

The film with a $200 million budget needs to make $400 million to break even. Now really, the investors or the studio will want to make at least a 50% ROI, and will ideally be looking for significantly more. So a film with a budget of $200 million needs a box office of at least $600 million to be even considered a mild success.

 

The games industry used to be a very easy industry to make money in as budgets were nowhere near the level of those in Hollywood. The break even price for an average game on the PS1 was around 30,000 copies sold, which is nothing when there is an installed user base of 120 million. Making games for the PS1 was clearly very profitable and the output on that system was huge.

 

However with HD systems and the vast increase in graphical quality and the graphical 'arms race' that has followed, game development costs have sky rocketed. So now you see developers and publishers divulging that games need sales of 5 million units to break even. So really, if a game needs 5 million units to break even, the publisher is probably looking for sales in the region of 7 or 8 million to see the ROI they need to keep investors and stock holders happy. We are seeing games selling a million plus units and they are regarded as flops!

 

This is why it's not as simple as it was back in the PS1, SNES or NES days to just pop out an experimental title or release a niche title to fill a gap in the schedule and appeal to a different sector of the audience. F-Zero has suffered from declining sales and popularity in the mainstream, despite holding up as a title with both outstanding graphics and superb gameplay!

 

But it's not just F-Zero that has been 'cut', across the industry there has been a loss of many different types of games due to the rise in development costs. And the games that remain are all becoming far more similar.

 

Now, I'm not saying everything has become a 'COD' clone, but in chasing that ROI and the kind of money COD makes, we have seen a loss of genres like the survival horror genre - in fact both Resident Evil, Dead Space and Silent Hill have all adopted a more action orientated approach to try and get in on the action cash.

 

We've seen some genres almost completely disappear - flight sims, tactical military shooters (look at Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon), RTS games, 3D platformers, puzzle games, extreme sports games etc.

 

Whilst there is still diversity in the games being released, the similarities grow and grow between genres and games are trying to tick more and more boxes to appeal to wider audiences in order to justify growing development costs and see the level of ROI required to please investors.

 

This problem affects Nintendo, it also affects Capcom, Konami, EA, Ubisoft and all big publishers. We have seen so many genres and niche titles fall by the way side - and sadly so many studios closing because of the rise of development costs and push for huge budgets and huge ROIs.

 

I would love an F-Zero game, I'd also love a proper Rainbow Six game and a proper survival horror game and I love RTS games! But all of these things are becoming rarer, and it's not just Nintendo at fault, but a changing industry.

 

The games industry is interesting because in less than 40 years the big titles have gone from being produced in a bedroom by a couple of friends and sent out on cassettes to being produced by teams of hundreds working from different giant offices all over the world. These vast changes have lead to an industry that was once used to a huge number of genres and creative and experimental titles, to an industry of that is more focused on huge budget games that tick boxes for mass appeal which inevitably means companies are less willing to develop games with perceived risk attached.

[Serebii]

The laughable thing is, the people demanding things like new F-Zero games don't really have a clue how this industry - or even business works.

 

Let me explain, when a company or a group of investors green light a project they make an investment in that project, they then look to make a return on their investment (ROI).

 

We will start by looking at another entertainment industry, films. When a studio green lights a film they give it a budget, now say a film has a $200 million budget, the investors want a reasonable ROI for the capital they stumped up. When a film goes to box office, the receipts are split evenly between the box office and the studio (this is why I used the example of films as the math is easy).

 

The film with a $200 million budget needs to make $400 million to break even. Now really, the investors or the studio will want to make at least a 50% ROI, and will ideally be looking for significantly more. So a film with a budget of $200 million needs a box office of at least $600 million to be even considered a mild success.

 

The games industry used to be a very easy industry to make money in as budgets were nowhere near the level of those in Hollywood. The break even price for an average game on the PS1 was around 30,000 copies sold, which is nothing when there is an installed user base of 120 million. Making games for the PS1 was clearly very profitable and the output on that system was huge.

 

However with HD systems and the vast increase in graphical quality and the graphical 'arms race' that has followed, game development costs have sky rocketed. So now you see developers and publishers divulging that games need sales of 5 million units to break even. So really, if a game needs 5 million units to break even, the publisher is probably looking for sales in the region of 7 or 8 million to see the ROI they need to keep investors and stock holders happy. We are seeing games selling a million plus units and they are regarded as flops!

 

This is why it's not as simple as it was back in the PS1, SNES or NES days to just pop out an experimental title or release a niche title to fill a gap in the schedule and appeal to a different sector of the audience. F-Zero has suffered from declining sales and popularity in the mainstream, despite holding up as a title with both outstanding graphics and superb gameplay!

 

But it's not just F-Zero that has been 'cut', across the industry there has been a loss of many different types of games due to the rise in development costs. And the games that remain are all becoming far more similar.

 

Now, I'm not saying everything has become a 'COD' clone, but in chasing that ROI and the kind of money COD makes, we have seen a loss of genres like the survival horror genre - in fact both Resident Evil, Dead Space and Silent Hill have all adopted a more action orientated approach to try and get in on the action cash.

 

We've seen some genres almost completely disappear - flight sims, tactical military shooters (look at Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon), RTS games, 3D platformers, puzzle games, extreme sports games etc.

 

Whilst there is still diversity in the games being released, the similarities grow and grow between genres and games are trying to tick more and more boxes to appeal to wider audiences in order to justify growing development costs and see the level of ROI required to please investors.

 

This problem affects Nintendo, it also affects Capcom, Konami, EA, Ubisoft and all big publishers. We have seen so many genres and niche titles fall by the way side - and sadly so many studios closing because of the rise of development costs and push for huge budgets and huge ROIs.

 

I would love an F-Zero game, I'd also love a proper Rainbow Six game and a proper survival horror game and I love RTS games! But all of these things are becoming rarer, and it's not just Nintendo at fault, but a changing industry.

 

The games industry is interesting because in less than 40 years the big titles have gone from being produced in a bedroom by a couple of friends and sent out on cassettes to being produced by teams of hundreds working from different giant offices all over the world. These vast changes have lead to an industry that was once used to a huge number of genres and creative and experimental titles, to an industry of that is more focused on huge budget games that tick boxes for mass appeal which inevitably means companies are less willing to develop games with perceived risk attached.

And, to their credit, out of all the big ones, Nintendo are the ones more likely to take risks in gameplay. That's why we still get crazy stuff like The Wonderful 101 even though it was doomed to not sell.

[Pestneb]

I think the point is that the Nintendo machine has a variety of games for a variety of players - tbh I don't really see '100 million sales' being anything great or an ideal to strive to when your fan base are accumulative and become repeat buyers over generations - Nintendo didn't even really follow through with developing Wii Sports and motion controls further.

 

Sometimes it's about fan service, sometimes it's about hard business tactics. But when the mantra becomes 'make it only if it sells', as a Nintendo gamer, you're left with Mario-something and a row of platformers and having that gimmick mentality of making one hit wonders.

 

Anyway, back to Zelda... Oh, there is no new news to discuss.

 

the 100 million is good for the business, and wii sports sold a lot.. which is a success in terms of meeting what the population wanted at that time. Agreed on the failure to follow through convincingly though.

 

My point on F-zero is about fan service though... something like 1 in 40 GC owners bought F-zero... 2.5%...that's tiny. Fan service is great, but Nintendo aren't a charity, if 2.5% of Wii U owners bought into F-zero then that would be 250k.... assuming the 2.5% didn't abandon Nintendo and now own PS4/X1. 250k to pay both Nintendo and Sega... better for Nintendo to try something new and have F-zero in reserve for NX. Although tbh with what they did with starfox, I'm kinda grateful F-zero seems to have skipped the Wii U...

Just to clarify I enjoy starfox, but wish it had a simplified control scheme... the gamepad isn't the problem, the way they used it is - they should have offered a different control scheme altogether. but that is for another thread!!

 

As for Zelda.. it is kinda tough to speculate seeing as we don't know what the NX is nor any further details about the game itself... 6 weeks to wait...

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

The laughable thing is, the people demanding things like new F-Zero games don't really have a clue how this industry - or even business works.

 

Let me explain, when a company or a group of investors green light a project they make an investment in that project, they then look to make a return on their investment (ROI).

 

We will start by looking at another entertainment industry, films. When a studio green lights a film they give it a budget, now say a film has a $200 million budget, the investors want a reasonable ROI for the capital they stumped up. When a film goes to box office, the receipts are split evenly between the box office and the studio (this is why I used the example of films as the math is easy).

 

The film with a $200 million budget needs to make $400 million to break even. Now really, the investors or the studio will want to make at least a 50% ROI, and will ideally be looking for significantly more. So a film with a budget of $200 million needs a box office of at least $600 million to be even considered a mild success.

 

The games industry used to be a very easy industry to make money in as budgets were nowhere near the level of those in Hollywood. The break even price for an average game on the PS1 was around 30,000 copies sold, which is nothing when there is an installed user base of 120 million. Making games for the PS1 was clearly very profitable and the output on that system was huge.

 

However with HD systems and the vast increase in graphical quality and the graphical 'arms race' that has followed, game development costs have sky rocketed. So now you see developers and publishers divulging that games need sales of 5 million units to break even. So really, if a game needs 5 million units to break even, the publisher is probably looking for sales in the region of 7 or 8 million to see the ROI they need to keep investors and stock holders happy. We are seeing games selling a million plus units and they are regarded as flops!

 

This is why it's not as simple as it was back in the PS1, SNES or NES days to just pop out an experimental title or release a niche title to fill a gap in the schedule and appeal to a different sector of the audience. F-Zero has suffered from declining sales and popularity in the mainstream, despite holding up as a title with both outstanding graphics and superb gameplay!

 

But it's not just F-Zero that has been 'cut', across the industry there has been a loss of many different types of games due to the rise in development costs. And the games that remain are all becoming far more similar.

 

Now, I'm not saying everything has become a 'COD' clone, but in chasing that ROI and the kind of money COD makes, we have seen a loss of genres like the survival horror genre - in fact both Resident Evil, Dead Space and Silent Hill have all adopted a more action orientated approach to try and get in on the action cash.

 

We've seen some genres almost completely disappear - flight sims, tactical military shooters (look at Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon), RTS games, 3D platformers, puzzle games, extreme sports games etc.

 

Whilst there is still diversity in the games being released, the similarities grow and grow between genres and games are trying to tick more and more boxes to appeal to wider audiences in order to justify growing development costs and see the level of ROI required to please investors.

 

This problem affects Nintendo, it also affects Capcom, Konami, EA, Ubisoft and all big publishers. We have seen so many genres and niche titles fall by the way side - and sadly so many studios closing because of the rise of development costs and push for huge budgets and huge ROIs.

 

I would love an F-Zero game, I'd also love a proper Rainbow Six game and a proper survival horror game and I love RTS games! But all of these things are becoming rarer, and it's not just Nintendo at fault, but a changing industry.

 

The games industry is interesting because in less than 40 years the big titles have gone from being produced in a bedroom by a couple of friends and sent out on cassettes to being produced by teams of hundreds working from different giant offices all over the world. These vast changes have lead to an industry that was once used to a huge number of genres and creative and experimental titles, to an industry of that is more focused on huge budget games that tick boxes for mass appeal which inevitably means companies are less willing to develop games with perceived risk attached.

 

the 100 million is good for the business, and wii sports sold a lot.. which is a success in terms of meeting what the population wanted at that time. Agreed on the failure to follow through convincingly though.

 

My point on F-zero is about fan service though... something like 1 in 40 GC owners bought F-zero... 2.5%...that's tiny. Fan service is great, but Nintendo aren't a charity, if 2.5% of Wii U owners bought into F-zero then that would be 250k.... assuming the 2.5% didn't abandon Nintendo and now own PS4/X1. 250k to pay both Nintendo and Sega... better for Nintendo to try something new and have F-zero in reserve for NX. Although tbh with what they did with starfox, I'm kinda grateful F-zero seems to have skipped the Wii U...

Just to clarify I enjoy starfox, but wish it had a simplified control scheme... the gamepad isn't the problem, the way they used it is - they should have offered a different control scheme altogether. but that is for another thread!!

 

As for Zelda.. it is kinda tough to speculate seeing as we don't know what the NX is nor any further details about the game itself... 6 weeks to wait...

 

Both fair points - (sorry for the minimalist response, doing this on iPhone)

[Hogge]

I'm not going to quote your whole post, Zechs, but I did read it.

You are right in everything you wrote. But you missed out on one very important thing, which I have been pointing out time and time again. Nintendo are not just simply a software publisher. If Nintendo were a software publisher, their Wii U lineup would've been perfectly logical.

But now they're in the business of selling consoles. That means that it's good business sense to develop games that are less profitable that will get people to buy the console. Then they'll have a bigger user base to potentially buys games, third parties will release their games for it and pay licese fees and perhaps they'll be able to launch a paid service to get extra content online.

 

The Order 1886 probably made a lot of people choose the PS4 over the XBONE. Probably way more people than who actually ended up buying the game. Things are no different for Nintendo. If Nintendo release F-Zero, people might be swayed by it because it looks flashy and different. Even though they don't want to buy it themselves. But a sixth, seventh or eight fucking sidescroller is probably not going to shift a single console.

[Ronnie]

But a sixth, seventh or eight fucking sidescroller is probably not going to shift a single console.

 

I bought a PS4, regardless of the sixth, seventh or eighth fucking shooter that seem to release each month.

[Hero-of-Time]

14th June Treehouse Live Zelda will be revealed.

 

 

Happy birthday to me!

[Kav]

I bought a PS4, regardless of the sixth, seventh or eighth fucking shooter that seem to release each month.

 

Amongst these you have a plethora of other genres though and many games within each of those genres Whereas with Nintendo, you may have different genres, by not much choice within each genre. So it's not quite the same.

[Hero-of-Time]

Wait, does this mean there is no Digital Event/Nintendo Direct for E3? I assumed we would at least still get one showing various 3DS and Wii U games?

[Glen-i]

14th June Treehouse Live Zelda will be revealed.

 

Happy birthday to me!

 

I'm too annoyed that it's looking like there'll be no digital event at all this E3 to be hyped.

I don't want to have a day of things spoiling Zelda, I know I'm getting it already.