I appreciate that Ubisoft has enough sense to understand that you must first establish a user base by supporting a system before expecting that user base to support your software. A fanbase must be earned and created. You can't just put out a couple halfhearted ports and expect big sales, then immediately pull the plug when things don't go your way.

Mario Kart is a definite purchase, I'm very excited about seeing the new 3D Mario game, and I'm practically pulling what's left of my hair out in anticipation of Retro's new title. I just hope they don't spend most of their time talking about Smash Bros.

This is a neat idea (especially for people who don't already own a Wii U), but it means nothing to me. I'm not driving three hours to a Best Buy to play demos for 20 minutes and then driving three hours back home. These demos really, really need to be released on the eShop as well.

I thought it was pretty common knowledge that Ted Price is a big fan of Nintendo. He plays every Mario game that comes out, and considers them a huge influence on the Ratchet and Clank games. He's a board member and former chairman of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, believes strongly in the First Amendment rights of videogames, and is a huge proponent of the sharing of technology and ideas. Good guy, Ted Price. I would love to see Insomniac bring some games to Wii U. It just sounds like they're spread too thin at the moment. Perhaps that will change once Wii U gets some more momentum going.

I've played through the 3DS version five times now, and I'm still looking forward to getting the Deluxe version. I just like the idea of being able to play this game on a big HDTV. Plus, those 20 new levels are a nice bonus.

I find this somewhat ironic. If anything is going to have a much better second half of 2013 compared to how it performed in the first half - it's Wii U.

I agree that Nintendo obviously gave this a lot of thought and, ultimately, made the right decision. But if he (or anyone else) thinks that Nintendo doesn't have some amazing Wii U games to show off (including some we haven't even heard about yet), they're crazy.

If they truly weren't impressed with the results of trying to get FB2 running on Wii U, it's simply because they didn't take the time and put forth the effort to actually get it running well. It's not because Wii U doesn't have the power to run FB3 (it obviously does), it's just because they don't want to bother with it.

Frontier Would "Very Much Like" To Make Another LostWinds Game.

And I would very much like to play a new LostWinds game. It's a 'Win-Win' situation! Seriously, the two LostWinds games are arguably the best thing on WiiWare (with only a couple possible exceptions). The style of gameplay would be a perfect fit for the GamePad's touchscreen, although I would hope they would also keep the Remote and Nunchuck option as well.

I hesitated to get this game because screenshots and videos make it seem more rough around the edges than it really is. Plus Nintendo Life's review wasn't exactly glowing. But I finally got it a few days after it came out (when it was still $7.99), and I don't regret it one bit. I've been playing this game more than any other game I have for 3DS at the moment. It's quite fun, and requires a good bit of skill.

This may be the best side-scrolling platformer ever made, so those of you who never played the Wii original should definitely check this one out. I'll be skipping it personally, though, as the Wii version suits me just fine. The motion controls that everyone seems to complain about are actually very fun and work perfectly. Actually making a ground-pound motion with your hands is far superior to just simply pushing a button. Still, that won't change the fact that this is still a fantastic platformer with excellent (at times, genius) level design and exciting, dynamic action.

Only about five months too late, Nintendo. And how many years has this been in development? It's going to feel very strange to see this game again at E3 this year, after thinking that we'd be playing it during the launch window. I mean, we're even going to have to wait almost two months after E3 before this comes out. Oh, well. I'm sure it will be fantastic and well worth waiting for.

In America, our choice of colors for the 3DS XL is:
Baby Boy Blue
Rosy Ribbon Red
Pretty Prissy Pink
Youthful Yippee Yellow
And I believe I will call this one "Silly Saccharine Sprinkles."

It seems to me that the XL was designed for adults. It's a bigger system with bigger screens and better battery life. So, why Nintendo of America insists on selling a system designed to appeal mostly to adults only in colors designed to appeal mostly to children is beyond me. I have nothing against colorful electronics (the more color options, the better), nor do I have anything against anyone who actually likes these colorful options. But you should always start with a standard color option (Silver, Black, White) and work your way out from there. We've had the XL for almost eight months now, and we still don't have a standard color option. Europe, Japan, and Australia all have both the Silver / Black one and the All-Black one (even South Korea has the Silver / Black system). As far as I'm concerned, this is completely unacceptable. I've e-mailed Nintendo about this twice now, and I would urge anyone who agrees to do the same.

As much as I loved Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks (seriously, people, the touch-screen controls worked fantastically well), I'm glad this game seems to use a standard control scheme. Simply because it wouldn't feel like A Link to the Past otherwise.

It's definitely a sequel to FAST - Racing League. And I would bet the other one is either another Art of Balance, or Fun! Fun! Minigolf (hopefully the former).

Apparently, that Prince of Persia-looking game was, in fact, Prince of Persia. And I say "was" because it seems that it is no longer in development, unfortunately.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/04/16/is-climax-studios-developing-a-new-prince-of-persia-game.aspx

This may be my most anticipated 3DS game right now.

The last time I used the Weather Channel or the News Channel was when I was in college. That was...more than 5 years ago. But I found myself, just the other day, wishing the Wii U had a Photo Channel. I actually got quite a bit of use out of that one.

"When you shift almost 100 million units worldwide, is it not almost inevitable that some of those systems are going to be gathering dust in cupboards?"

Exactly. When you sell a system to millions of casual gamers, they're only going to play it - surprise, surprise - casually. It's a real shame that so many people abandoned the Wii so quickly. I have bought more games for Wii than any other system I've ever owned. And I've played it just as much as any other system I've ever owned. There are a lot of great, under-appreciated titles on that system.

I have a PS3 and I love it, but I still think that Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and the Metroid Prime Trilogy are better than anything you can get on PS3 or XBOX360. Also Donkey Kong Country Returns may be the best side-scrolling platformer ever made, and the Goldeneye remake is my favorite FPS since Half-Life 2. The Wii was definitely my go-to system these past several years. It really is a shame that so many gamers misunderstood or ignored the Wii.

At this rate, it looks like Pikmin 3 won't be coming out until August or September. It just seems strange to me to think that we'll have another E3 before we see any of these "launch window" games that were shown off at last year's E3. That just doesn't seem right.

I would consider it, but my Energizer Rechargeable AA's work pretty well. The charger takes only 30 minutes to fully recharge 4 batteries, and I've been using them for a couple years now.

"People need to be patient with Wii U." People need to be patient with Nintendo, period. I feel like all Nintendo fans should know this by now. Nintendo is not a company that works quickly. It has always been feast or famine for Nintendo fans. It's the moments of feast (a bunch of excellent games coming out within a short period) that makes the long periods of famine worth enduring. Unfortunately, people seem to have very, very little patience these days (and even shorter attention spans). Sure, it would be nice if Nintendo could somehow speed things up (buying / creating more development studios, securing more third-party support, etc.), but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon (at least not to the point where it makes a significant difference). When you buy a Nintendo system, you're not buying it for the games that are out right now. You're making an investment for the future. An investment towards all the fantastic games Nintendo currently has (or will have) in development.

Also, "Pikmin 3 is Nintendo's next first party release..." I would be willing to bet that Game & Wario will come out before Pikmin 3, seeing as how the game is actually finished (it's out in Japan). I just get this feeling that Pikmin 3 isn't as close to being finished as people think, unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Crossing my fingers now and beginning to chant: "Silver / Black 3DS XL. Silver / Black 3DS XL..."

If I do this continuously for two weeks, it will surely happen.

Mr. Ebert was the only movie critic whose opinion actually mattered to me. Even on those rare occasions where I disagreed with what he had to say, I still very much enjoyed reading his work (whether it was about movies or anything else). I've always admired his intelligence and ability to express his views so eloquently.

Downloading Toki Tori 2 right now, after it got glowing reviews on a few other websites (and a good one on here). Then, I think I'll pick up escapeVektor.

I vastly prefer Advance Wars over Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem just doesn't do anything for me, unfortunately. Days of Ruin was fantastic. It was exactly what the series needed at that time, as it was starting to grow stale with Dual Strike. There's only so much cutesy "Yay, war is fun!" mentality that you can take before you start to think, "This series needs a new direction." Days of Ruin was exactly that. I'm not interested in Fire Emblem: Awakening, but I would buy a new Advance Wars the very second it came out.

I haven't played every game for the 3DS, but I can honestly say that not even once have I wished the system had a second circle pad.

I've been waiting for Pikmin 3 for about seven or eight years now (along with quite a few other people around here, I'm sure). I'm also pretty excited about Wind Waker HD, and Watch_Dogs looks like it has a lot of potential.

I went on Amazon the day the release details were announced for the Wii U to try to pre-order one. I didn't find the system at all. I chatted with an Amazon Associate about the issue. He knew nothing about it. I had a long conversation with Amazon through e-mail (about four or five e-mails) about this issue. Nobody knew anything about this issue. They wasted hours of my time without ever giving me a strait answer. I had to find out through a Google search that not only were Amazon not going to be taking pre-orders for Wii U, but that they hadn't been selling Nintendo systems directly at all for at least a few months. I have a friend who works at Amazon, so I asked him about it. He asked everybody he works with about it. They all knew nothing. Kinda frustrating.

Amazon isn't "sold out" of Nintendo products. They just simply don't sell them anymore, and haven't for quite some time now. Nobody seems to know why.

If a game's graphics are good for the particular system that the game is running on, them I'm perfectly happy. I just don't like to see squandered potential. I can go from playing a game like Uncharted on PS3 to Super Mario Galaxy, and still be blown away by Galaxy's graphics, simply because it pushes the Wii to its limit. Art design is much more important than the number of polygons. If PS4 games look better than Wii U games, does that mean Wii U games will look bad? If a game looks good, then it looks good. And that's all graphics really need to do. If it looks good and is fun to play, what more do you need?

I'm hoping they have a sale on the original game when this one comes out. I never bothered to pick it up, as it got very mixed reviews and I just couldn't bring myself to spend ten dollars on it. Also, to repeat what a couple others have said, I thought we've known for awhile now that the release date in America is the 11th....

Edit: "...when the title was revealed during a Nintendo Direct in February it was said the game would be with us in April." It also says in that very article "...11th April in North America."

There's no way it took Nintendo an entire month to approve a patch. Gaijin Games posted on Twitter that "The bug has been fixed, and we're pushing it through the pipeline now!" on March 20th. I don't know why they claimed "It's already in Nintendo's hands" on February 27th. Maybe it was just a figure of speech. Still, they are a very small studio and I'm sure they worked their butts off to get this done.

He has a few good points, definitely. But most of this letter is panicky, over-reactive nonsense. Still, you have to wonder why it's taking so long for Nintendo to get some games out. The Wii had nothing coming out for the last couple years of its life (aside from Skyward Sword) so you'd think there would have been at least a couple big games out by now.

A year or two down the line (and probably even sooner) we'll all look back at this time period and laugh. "What was all that 'Doom and Gloom' nonsense about? Remind me, why did people think that a unique system with some of the best developers in the world backing it would fail? Oh, yeah. Those three months where nothing big was coming out. Whatever."

What I would really like to see is An Open Letter to Nintendo of America urging them to release some decent 3DS XL colors.

Very much looking forward to this. I loved Dementium and Moon.

The release date was originally Holiday 2013, now it's Early 2014. Then, I read it's going to be three episodes, and now it's six. Oh, well. Whenever (and however) it comes, I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

I've played through this game three times now. It's still the first game I would recommend to anyone buying a Wii U. I really hope they make a sequel.

I'm very excited about this one. Those screenshots obviously take place during a very thick dust storm. I'm sure it looks amazing in motion (especially in 3D). Renegade Kid definitely know how to make good, atmospheric FPS games on handheld systems.

When I read the title of this article, I immediately thought of Aladdin. The SNES version of that game (which was far, far superior to the Genesis version) was like a modern Prince of Persia long before Sands of Time came along.

Unfortunately, anyone hoping for Lion King - that game wasn't Capcom. It was made by Virgin Interactive.
Now that I think about it, the Genesis version of Aladdin wasn't made by Capcom either. That was Virgin Interactive, too.

I imagine at this point some Nintendo employee and some Apple employee probably know each other very well.

"Hey, Dave, it's Bill. Yeah, here's the list of things we need you to remove from the App Store. You know the drill.... Talk to you tomorrow."

Just to clarify what I said earlier: I'm not saying the controls didn't make sense to me. I perfectly well understand what button does what. What I mean is that the "feel" of the game is extremely clunky. When I push the block button, and the character continues to attack and literally takes 3 or 4 seconds before he actually raises his shield, that's clunky. When you can't move and attack at the same time, that's clunky. When you have to put your weapon away to be able to run (which sometimes takes a second or two), that's clunky. It's not smooth or responsive. It just doesn't "feel" right. But having said that, perhaps that's exactly what the developers were going for. Maybe they want the characters to move more slowly and be difficult to control. That's just not how I like games to feel, personally. I guess Monster Hunter just isn't for me. The game is getting good reviews, though, so I hope everyone who buys it enjoys it very much!

My first taste of this series was the Wii U demo. I played through it three times with three different characters and managed to beat the first monster. As several people have already pointed out, a demo isn't always representative of the game as a whole. But my problem isn't that I found the demo to be boring and repetitive (although it is). My problem is that (again, just judging by the demo alone) it was easily the clunkiest thing I've ever played. The controls and the responsiveness of the characters are just absolutely awful. It amazes me that anyone could play a game that feels like that and actually enjoy it. Does the actual game control better than the demo?

It's been almost three weeks since the patch was supposedly submitted to Nintendo. What is the hold up?

"The Direct Consumer Communications team is moving to Redmond headquarters to merge with our Network Business Department to provide better digital offerings and services for consumers." ... "Nintendo of America said the restructuring will have no impact on consumers whatsoever."

So, they will provide better service for consumers without having any impact on consumers. Interesting.

(Yeah, I know what they meant. I just thought it was funny.)

I'm sure Toki Tori 2 is a good game, but if any indie studio could do a Wii U Star Fox game justice, it would probably be Shin'en. Anyway, I'm betting Retro Studios are already working on it.

So, if we get the Pikachu 3DS XL, then we'll have Baby Boy Blue, Rosy Ribbon Red, Pretty Prissy Pink, and...Yippee Youthful Yellow. Somebody let me know when we get the Silver / Black or the all Black one. Almost seven months of availability in America and we're still waiting for a standard option.

1) In what reality is a videogame console selling 50 million units considered "dismal"? Especially when it's a Nintendo system - a system people buy to play Nintendo games. Nintendo could sell half as many units as the other systems and still make more money from software sales.
2) The Wii U is priced too closely to the launch prices of PS4 and Durango? Exactly how much money are Sony and Microsoft going to be losing on each system they sell? $200?
3) "It's possible exciting new titles will reinvigorate growth"? No, it isn't "possible." It's inevitable. It WILL happen.

All of the people here saying "The Wii U doesn't need a price cut, it just needs games" are exactly right. Surely, even at its current price the system will be significantly cheaper than the other two systems launching later this year. How much money does Nintendo have to lose on each system they sell for people to consider it a "good deal?" Software sells the hardware. A handful of big games will change everything.

Beyond Good & Evil is just about the best thing Ubisoft has ever done so, yes, I'm interested.

I'm sure Nintendo will come up with some very cool ways to use the NFC technology in the GamePad. But it seems to me that their top priority right now should be, you know...getting some big, amazing games out as soon as possible.

The patch has already been submitted to Nintendo? Wow, that was fast. Good job, Gaijin Games. I beat this game last night. It is fantastic. And yes, it froze up my system about 3 or 4 times. But it was worth it!