@Saturn Ah, I was wondering when it would come to that. It's not pretty.

I have a 3DS XL and have owned every Nintendo console since the SNES, but I don't own a Wii U for obvious reasons. I want to see Nintendo succeed as the games industry needs them. Their production values are first class and they still make the kind of old school games which can be hard to find on other platforms.

However I'm not blinkered, it's plain to see that Nintendo have made mistakes, especially with the Wii U, and they're in a lot of trouble now. I'd like to see them innovate their way out, but instead they're taking the conservative route with endless sequels.

I like new things, I like original ideas and concepts, I like to be surprised. There's nothing surprising about yet another Mario Kart, Gran Turismo, or Gears of War.

@Saturn The 3DS does well in Japan because it has sold Japanese support. It gets some Western third party support, but not a great deal.

The Wii U has no third party support anywhere, so it's in a far worse position. It crucially lacks an easy to sell gimmick this time too, so it will rely entirely on it's software for sales, and as even the most die hard Nintendo fan would surely admit, the Wii U has little software of interest. Maybe that will change, who knows, but right now, there are already more games announced for a console which hasn't been released (the PS4), than there are for the Wii U.

@Saturn I guess you missed my post when I reeled of a load of original Sony IP.

Nintendo first party games sell to Nintendo fans. Fine, that's a dwindling but still useful source of income, but it's not enough long term. To succeed long term, you need to bring third party devs on board, and you need a platform which sells to everyone, not just a tiny niche.

The Wii U is a failure, and third party support, what little there was, has already abandoned the platform. Let's check back in a couple of years and see where the sales are, I suspect the Wii U will already have been discontinued. It's even more of a failure than the Dreamcast was. (a console I loved, but sadly a total disaster in terms of sales, which resulted in it's early termination)

I suspect that the next Xbox will be on top in a few years, as it's focussing strongly on video/TV stuff, which is a huge growing market. Everyone now has a Netflix (etc) app, but I think Microsoft will go much further. We'll see in a couple of days.

@Marshi Game and Wario is a sequel to the Warioware games. Nintendo land is of course casual focussed, and to me at least, uninteresting.

Did you hear me defending God of War or Gran Turismo?

I'd just like to see a mix from Nintendo. Say, 50% totally original games, and 50% sequels to keep the fans happy. Right now the balance is skewed massively towards sequels. If you never want to see anything new, then fine, you'll love Nintendo's approach.

@Marshi Listing a bunch of sequels doesn't really work when arguing against someone who wants fewer sequels. Nor does listing games from companies other than Nintendo.

There is a place for 'more of the same', if done well, and Nintendo's endless sequels are usually done very well. There is also a place for innovation.

I have a 3DS XL and I've been enjoying Nintendo's sequels - Fire Emblem especially - but I'd sooner have something completely original and surprising. For games like that, I have to look to Sony. (Who obviously, as you pointed out, make plenty of 'playing it safe' sequels too)

Can you imagine the excitement and interest in Wii U, if instead of announcing yet another Smash Bros etc, Nintendo had announced a slate of totally new ideas and concepts?

@Marshi The Wii was a gimmick designed to sell the console to casuals whose interest in gaming extends little further than getting the console out of the cupboard once a year when the relatives come round. It's the equivalent of Monopoly of Cluedo.

The Wii U is a failed attempt to cash in on the current popularity of real tablets like the iPad. Neither of those gimmicks did anything for real gamers, and in the case of the Wii, shoehorning in flappy hand motion controls actively damaged gaming.

As for Sony, they've often been innovative for many years now, and in the only way that matters - in games. A few examples - Journey, Flower, Locoroco, Little Big Planet, The Last Guy, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Patapon, Tokyo Jungle, and upcoming games such as Rain, Tearaway, and Puppeteer look interesting too. Sony are also embracing indie gaming very actively now.

The way I see it, the three platform holders now have three distinct identities. Nintendo exist purely to serve their remaining fanbase through endless sequels. Microsoft are mostly interested in making a fancy Netflix streamer, and Sony are the last console maker standing which is still interested in originality in gaming.

It must be pretty easy working in planning at Nintendo's Japanese dev offices. The plan is the same for every console - make a new version of all our franchises, then do the same again 5 years later. What was the last original Nintendo game? Pikmin? (I'm not including casual junk like Wii Sports for obvious reasons) How many years ago was that?

Innovation, originality, and new thinking used to be Nintendo's raison d'être, but no more it seems. For originality, Sony are now the platform holder to watch - especially their Japan studio.

The frame rate in that Sonic winter games thing was diabolical. I hope they have a LOT of optimisation planned.

I thought Lords of Shadow was at best a mediocre God of War clone with an abysmal camera, terrible frame rate, and a total lack of character and personality. In it's defense, it did at least look really good.

Why can't we just get a proper Castlevania game on a non portable console? Is it too much to ask?

@Void They used to be Sony exclusive, but are now multi platform.

@Jukilum That simply isn't true. There have been multiple developer reports, as well as performance analysis done on CPU intensive areas of multi-plat games, and the Wii U's CPU is a bottleneck and significantly slower than the X360 and PS3 chips.

@DePapier The Wii U is not more powerful than the X360 and PS3, sorry to burst your bubble. The GPU is slightly more powerful in some areas, and the system has a little more RAM (1gb, but half of that is lost to the OS), but the CPU is much, much slower than the X360/PS3.

Of course there have been many games this gen which have great visuals (such as Bioshock Infinite), so there's no reason why the Wii U couldn't produce some nice looking games. That said, it's foolish and naive to expect the Wii U to compete with Durango, and especially the PS4 (which is around 50% more powerful than Durango).

@Hyperstar96 Insomniac is now multi-platform, as demonstrated by their soon to be released game Fuse.

@Sentinator The jump in development cost from this gen, to next gen isn't all that significant. The jump from last gen to this gen was huge, as we moved from systems with vertex shaders and low poly counts, to systems with pixel shaders (which require assets to be authored in high-res in ZBrush to produce normal maps) and high poly counts. The difference was night and day.

Next-gen is essentially the same as this gen, but with slightly higher poly counts and higher-res textures, and of course nicer lighting setups and shaders, as well as 1080p rendering. None of those are all that expensive to add.

No platform can thrive without third parties on board. Look at what happened with the N64, and that had more third party support than the Wii U.

The simple fact is that Nintendo have been cheaping out on hardware for several generations now, but they've always got away with it due to having some sort of mainstream gimmick which drives sales. The Wii U's gimmick is clearly not drawing in gamers of any level, which leaves just a box of very, very low end off the shelf parts which are incapable of running next-gen games.

The Wii U is dead, there's no point in trying to gloss over that. The interesting battle for next-gen will start soon, and if the specs and development rumours are to be believed, Sony are in a strong position.

I haven't played a Phoenix Wright game in quite some time, so it will be nice to revisit this great series.

This is quite a year for the 3DS. Nicely timed too, as the regular consoles are pretty much dead now.

The EU release is before the NA release? Wow, that's surely a first. We poor Europeans always have to wait months after the NA/JP release dates.

During the dark years of the SNES and N64 when Europe received horrible slowed down PAL versions of games months, if not years late (if at all) I used to import everything from Japan. Sadly I now own a UK 3DS and so am stuck with these brain dead delays.

Nintendo it seems is only very slightly better than they used to be, and in the age of simultaneous worldwide digital iOS releases, it shows just how out of touch and behind the curve they still are.

April the 1st, when the internet goes from the most useful thing in the world, to the most useless.

@FOURSIDE_BOY It's very difficult to sell a console in large numbers if the only games it gets are from a single developer. For a platform to be successful, it needs a thriving ecosystem.

With no easy to sell gimmick this time around I really can't see Wii U selling to many beyond the ultra hard core Nintendo fans. The casuals have all moved to the iPad, and regular gamers have the PS4 and Durango. Where does that leave Nintendo? In a very, very distant third place.

I'd honestly be surprised if the Wii U lasts longer than 3 years.

@TrueWiiMaster In the UK we have Netflix, and a video service from Amazon called LoveFilm. We also have famous BBC iPlayer, as well as a bunch of smaller on demand services from TV networks.

@Faruko You are massively out of line with your comments.

Firstly Polytron is comprised of two people, and they pretty much bankrupted themselves making Fez. It didn't sell well, despite it's high metacritic score so of course they couldn't afford the MS fee for putting out a patch. Why is that difficult to understand?

Also Fez is a game which is all about 2D. Have you even played the game? If you have, then you have spectacularly failed to understand it's concept.

And finally, why do you seem to keen to resort to crude, aggressive language? It's bizarre, pathetic, and makes you sound like a petulant teenager. Grow up.

I agree with Fish on this. The DS and 3DS are gimmicks, but they also happen to have better games than the PSP and the Vita. That said, those games would be better on a Vita.

I wish Nintendo would stop focussing on gimmicks. They sold plenty of hardware because of them with the DS and Wii, but the casuals have moved on, and Nintendo need to as well. Hopefully if anything good can come from the failure of the Wii-U, it will be for Nintendo to drop the gimmicks and get back to focussing exclusively on making games. It also goes without saying that we'd all be better served if they just followed SEGA's lead into being purely a software company. Who wouldn't sooner see the next Zelda on the PS4?

@Henmii You do know that Polytron consist of just two guys don't you? They're porting Fez to Stream now, and I dare say a PS3 version might come at some point. They obviously have very limited funds and development capacity, so will target the largest platforms they can. You can bet an iOS version is far, far more likely than Wii U or 3DS.

@tyrone The whole point of Fez is that the world is 2D. Even when it's rotating in '3D' it's isometric with no depth. To force some 3D into it would destroy the entire design aesthetic of the game.

Nintendo Europe's delays are as absurd and indefensible as ever. It's no wonder sales are going nowhere and everyone has moved to iOS and PS3/Xbox.

The Bit Trip Runner soundtrack is the one I want. It's composed by the amazing chip band Anamanaguchi.

This certainly isn't the best Castlevania (for me that would be Chi no Rondo on the PC Engine Super CD, followed by CV 4 SNES), but it's still a lot of fun. No ability to save your game either = authentic hardcore credentials.

Best update in ages, Pilotwings is a masterpiece and CastleVania ReBirth is great too.

Love it. Old school Castlevania is gaming perfection. You can keep your MetroidVanias, thanks!

The game looks fun and a nice retro update, but the TV show the footage comes from.. Wow, just wow. It's concentrated cheese made by and for retarded people. Just staggeringly awful.

And the wait goes on for Pilotwings and Super Mariokart on the US store. Nintendo, you haven't got a clue.

I love the Goemon games, but good as 3 is I rate 4 as the best of the series. They'll never come to the US or EU virtual consoles though due to the amount of kanji in them. Shame, as they're real gems.