Bankai

@Slapshot how did Team Ninja baby down DoA? 5 is, mechanically, the finest game in the series.

@Hyperstar96 You're right. EA and Crytek should totally stop acting like businesses and bankrupt themselves to make sure a console that doesn't have a userbase that justifies AAA-game development can have a couple of extra games on it.

I like how gamers are quick to accuse publishers of being greedy and selfish, when the motivation behind that accusation is almost always greed and selfishness. You're asking a company to put around 800 people out of a job to satisfy your urge to play one game, dude.

DoA Beach Volleyball Touch kthnxbye

Team Ninja is a short walk away from being acquired by Nintendo. Is anyone actually surprised the developer saw a business imperative to defend the console?

@GazPlant would you lose a few million dollars for your best friend?

If there were more Wii Us in the market, there probably would be a port of Crysis 3 in the works.

This thing will be lucky to sell a thousand units. No brand name for console gamers, and it is going to be premium priced.

@jibberldd5 "it's no secret Australian gamers are being ripped off" - take a crack at everyone else in the games industry, be cool with the gamers.

Phil Fish tried something similar, got called out on it for being an obnoxious punk. Something tells me these guys won't be called out for such an punk marketing ploy, because naturally, it suits the consumer.

@SigourneyBeaver you're right. Never mind how much it costs to make, it should be free because it's totally just a download game.

@pashaveliki no it isn't

I love when indies assume that just because they can do something cheap, the big publishers should also be able to.

One of the reasons that prices are so high in Australia is because the local publishers have to pay, you know, wages and office space rent. Both of which are incredibly expensive in Australia, and both of which are things that indies can do for a fraction of the price of the big publishers.

But hey, being aggressive like this is a brilliant marketing plot by the developers, and I bet it's going to fool the vast majority of people that read stories like this. Pure PR fluff by the debs.

@OorWullie he doesn't know whether it will help or not at all, actually. That's the point I was actually making.

I really don't understand why this is news. Every book written in the history of mankind has thousands of words that got cut from the finished published copy. Every film ever made has hours of footage that is left of the cutting room floor. Every game ever produced has ideas and features that were originally intended to make the game, but left out for a wide range of reasons.

So, Sticker Star is a normal game?

@bowsersblog I assume you have statistical proof that an expanded TV Advertising campaign would result in a more profitable and exponential increase in Wii U sales?

Or are you just taking a guess and assuming that spending more dollars on advertising will magically turn disappointing sales into impressive ones?

People shouldn't guess with regards to marketing. Corporations such as Nintendo have databases filled with numbers to help them calculate what marketing initiatives they should perform, and how much they should spend on them.

No need to be an armchair expert, in other words. Nintendo's doing a very expensive global marketing campaign as it is, and Nintendo has been smart to realise that TV ads are so very unimportant for this kind of product. TV advertising is a tip of the iceberg for a modern, smart, marketing campaign.

EA owned the license to Sim City before this game appeared on the Virtual Console in the first place. Furthermore, other games have been removed from the VC, including Nintendo's own properties, in recent months.

So no, that is not the reason.

I wish companies (and people) would stop calling Mahjong Solitaire "Mahjong." Because the actual game of Mahjong is waaaaaaaaaay different.

It's like calling Spider Solitaire "Bridge".

@Koto There is almost no load time with the iPad. At all. Tap the icon at the program instantly loads.

@Hokori You have a broken iPad.

@rjejr No. That's not how it works. Corporations are not in the habit of asking other corporations to lose a whole heap of revenue in a reporting period to benefit themselves.

Nintendo will not buy THQ

@biggsydaboss I love you. The Internet needs more of you.

Before video games because the dominant entertainment form for people under the age of 30, movies were blamed for every mass killing. Before that, 'decadent' literature was in the firing line.

It's a compliment that represents how important games have become to society. Accept it as such and ignore the ignorant people who are always looking for something else to blame than the fact that in one specific country in the world, people seem to think it's a good idea to give everyone access to killing machines.

That is the sole problem here, but because mentioning that is political and social suicide, the tabloids look to find a different scapegoat.

@KromCompany at the risk of getting political. Other countries would love to get out of the US people's business if the US would stop acting like judge and jury for the rest of the world.

It goes both ways. Your government and people have no problem criticising other nations. Other nations have every right to look into your country and criticise something that is quite reasonable to criticise.

@Shworange Ghengis Khan personally killed a few hundred at most. He went to war, but if that counts as killing people, George Washington was also a mass murderer.

Dynasty Warriors is 'shockingly violent?'

Yes, Call of Duty is, but Dynasty Warriors is a game that features no blood, and enemies are 'knocked out,' never killed.

It's actually less violent than the book it is based on. LOL!

@theblackdragon Right. Because that other story on this game never existed.

@Crysos161 because they make more money than releasing on 3DS/ Vita.

Actually. The creation mode means that dedicated players will get more out of this game than the 3DS version.

I've been playing it on iPad for a few days now and it plays as well on 3DS, looks better on the retina display, and has that creation mode. You can hear samples of songs before you buy them, and there is no need to buy everything. $30 will give you more than enough content.

But let's not let reality get in the way of a good lynch mob!

Wait... Wifi ware? Holy crap that game is going to sell like 10 copies.

I'll just play it on the PS3. The console the series was designed on.

I find it amusing that the Nintendo fanboys want this. Seems they forgot that Sony was directly involved with the series original, Demon's Souls.

Oh. I just ruined the game for you Sorry!

So, has everyone with iDevices picked this up yet

Plays pretty awesome

On topic again - if this is a iOS port, I do hope SE branches beyond the Final Fantasy series. I would love to see music from, say, Nier on there. Because Nier has the best game soundtrack ever, see.

Oh wow. That's neat. Thanks!

_{end. it. now. — TBD}

And once again Armyboy confuses his personal difficulties in using his fingers for, not only a fact that the game can't work, but 'proof' that an entire global corporation is going to not release a game it would make a fortune from.

The arrogance is breathtaking. Even by my standards.

Also, Square Enix released three or four games in the space of two weeks recently. You don't 'concentrate' on marketing game releases in the same way when it comes to the app store. Releasing multiple games in a short span of time seems to be perfectly acceptable for the big publishers there.

@kkslider - that's what I meant. The whole point of this game is to get the full synchronisations though. Otherwise you feel like a pretty poor assassin.

Harmoknight. I'm talking about numbers here. Square Enix wants to make, you know, money. So porting a game on a platform with 200 million + users makes a hell of a lot more sense. Whether you like the platform or not is completely irrelevant because guess what? Square Enix doesn't really care what you think.

And I agree with Square Enix - I really couldn't care less what you and ArmyBoy think about playing games on iDevices. Theatrhythm would play fine on it. That's fact. If this is announced on iPad, no doubt it will be a fraction of the price that I paid for the 3DS game, so I could trade in the 3DS game for a points card or something. Good stuff.

lol. You don't get to claim logic and then be factually incorrect. There's over 100 million iPads in the market. The iPhone 5 alone sold 5 million on release weekend. The total potential install base for any new game released on the app store is somewhere in the vicinity of 200 million devices when you take into account iPad mini, older iPhone models and the iPod touch models.

Yes the 3DS is factually a small install base for a publisher - it's barely over 10 per cent of the potential audience of the iDevices (and yes, Harmo Knight, the Vita's install base is even smaller. Congratulations for bringing up a completely irrelevant point).

So once again we get back to the whole "oh I wouldn't like to play it that way so CLEARLY it's not going to work. If you can't wrap your head around how to use a finger to tap on a little dot on a screen, that's your problem. That doesn't make it a bad idea for Square Enix.

I never got the comparison between Zelda and Darksiders. To me it's far more like a God of War homage than a Zelda one.

@Armyboy1994 Square Enix has released more games on mobile this year than any other platform.

I'm sure Square Enix has the brains to realise that most people wouldn't have any trouble using their finger rather than a stylus. And if they really did just have to use a stylus they could just buy one for the iPad all of five dollars.

And Square Enix gets to make more money from the game than it ever would have on the tiny 3DS install base. Win win.

Anyone who says this game is for the "casuals" clearly hasn't played any of its challenging missions. Which kick in after, what, two hours?

Good work.

No, it doesn't. I've played enough Theatrhythm and also the iPad music/ rhythm games (such as Groove Coaster - which does have directional flicks so I dunno what you're on about there - and SYMPHONICA, which is by Square Enix and is a more complex and multitouch version of Theatrhythm, but with classical music rather than a Final Fantasy score) to know that there are no inhibitors to the iPad and music games.

Theatrhythm is an entirely touch-driven game, for crissakes. Once again, stop turning your personal biases into some kind of "proof" that the iPad can't do something that it is perfectly capable of managing.

You don't want it. That's your loss, but that doesn't make it a bad idea.

@Gonzo1 Game studios are closing people consumers have been taught to wait for a couple of weeks, when a game is inevitably discounted (hurting the developer and publisher), or buy it second hand (hurting the developer or publisher).

You can justify it however you like - and I'm not saying you're wrong in buying games cheap/ second hand, the industry is at fault for not maintaining the value of its content - but yes, every time you buy a second hand game or a game at a discount, you are directly impacting on the revenue and profitability of the people that made that game.

Dear people saying games need to be cheaper: perhaps you haven't noticed, but a lot of games studios have closed this year.

No. Cheaper games isn't going to do anyone any favours.

Armyboy - there's a game on iOS called "Groove Coaster." It does virtually everything you do in Theathrhythm, is far more challenging, and is perfectly comfortable to play.

If this data doesn't include download numbers, than it's useless data.

Also, you anti iOS people need to stop embarrassing yourselves. Yes, you keep telling us that you don't like iOS games. Good for you.

Once again, you're factually wrong to say the iOS can't play good games. There is NOTHING in Theatrhythm that wouldn't work just as well on the iOS devices.

There is a point where being stubbornly loyal becomes childish.

Oh this would be a brilliant game for an iOS port!

Guys, the answer is in the hardware. 40,000 units of hardware on the market, compared to millions of PS3, Xbox 360s etc. Of course software sales aren't going to compete in terms of numbers with the established consoles.

Golem - not that, that happens in plenty of games and I'm fine with it.

It just seems to me that it's heavily inspired by something like Bastion, but the developers don't really understand the art style they're trying to emulate. In other words, it's not a technical issue with the graphics, it's an art direction issue.

But hopefully Damien is right and this gets Kickstarted and gets a nice art style in. I won't be supporting the Kickstarter, but I will be happy to try the game if things improve by release date.

Wow that game's art style might be in HD, but it's a textbook case study of how aesthetic is more important than resolution.

The characters have no personality and look uncomfortable on the backgrounds. I'm all for supporting indie developers, but this is one game I have no interest in whatsoever.