C7_

It's a bold claim, but I really don't see why you claim that they are "rivals" in the article. He's a software developer in charge of developing small phone games, and right now Nintendo's focusing on shipping hardware using greater, more in-depth games. Sure, the game can be a fun pick-up-and-play game, but calling mobile phones and 3DS's rivals just isn't the case. People have proven they're willing to carry both. The fact that it's even being developed for 3DS proves they aren't rivals so it's kind of a silly word to use.

In any case this is just a media-grabbing statement, and if his game truly is amazing and not just mechanics slapped onto bejeweled then I wish him nothing but the best. I haven't played his game but It's good to see success and optimism in a world dominated by negative press.

Popularity of the PS4 skyrocketed as well.

They REALLY bombed.

"We didn't include backwards compatibility because it would require us to put expensive and outdated tech in our system, but instead of acting like adults and stating that the inclusion of backwards compatibility would add an extra $100 onto the price tag, we're gonna be cool kids from the 90's and insult our competitors for including a feature that help their consumers and justify it with a statistic that couldn't possibly be accurate that I clearly pulled out of my ***!" (censoring myself because I think this site has a node cursing policy)

There are so many things wrong with this system if it sells any copies at all it'll because the consumer wasn't informed enough or by some miracle people stop caring about their privacy and ability to play games without anti-consumer restrictions.

EA needs to stop announcing total partnership, and then immediately supporting the competition.

Seriously, you're making yourselves look silly as well as a terrible corporation with cancerous business practices. The Xbox One conference was an insult to gamers, but at least I have Nintendo exclusives on the WiiU and perhaps I may pick up a PS4 this time around if there's enough original IP on that as well. Sports games don't improve enough to justify yearly releases, and I can guarantee all of the fancy new AI they boasted about will go almost entirely unnoticed by the vast majority of the players anyway.

They announced 1 new IP, 5 sports games, and a Call of Duty coming to other platforms. This console is just a beefed up 360, it has no new innovations and is a multipurpose TV box which the public already owns. It's not backwards-compatible and has Anti-used software.

This actually strengthened my interest in the PS4, because as far as I'm concerned the Xbox One is a joke to people who actually play the 360. You can try and beef up the Kinect all you want, it's built on a flaw that assumes that people are comfortable doing movements with holding tools that people have evolved to use.

They're all available on other platforms, so unless the WiiU version is consistently deemed the definitive and best version, these wont sell consoles to people who already have the others. They would've helped a lot if they hadn't delayed Rayman for a simultaneous release as well, so really what they're saying here is "We're not mean and know Nintendo will soon make this console sell, but we want to make money as well so we're gonna make sure to sell on as many consoles as possible."

Which is really the philosophy all major third-party developers should have, but EA's literally one collective idiotic money-grab, and I still think it's ridiculous that other major developers are still using the "We don't know what to do with the gamepad." Excuse

EA's higher ups are all jokes; We're on Generation 8 of consoles, and the fact that this guy thinks consoles began when Sony joined is enough testimony of his bias and ignorance.

Remember when EA first announced it's amazing partnership with WiiU? That same year they were voted worst company in America and their public image went in the trash can. I sincerely hope Nintendo just flat out denied Origin and told them to shove off, because with this attitude I'd be surprised if Nintendo would let them touch another Nintendo console again.

And what if the WiiU turns out to be a success? The tablet controller has proven itself to be quite an asset and Miiverse is quite neat so far. EA's just shooting themselves in the foot with these comments.

@Jukilum I'd love to see your evidence for this claim, because I've seen from both personal experience and several studies that a child brought up in either scenario is just as likely to succeed in the other scenario.

@PvtOttobot That's not even a comparison, that's a joke and I debated whether or not I should humor it with a response. A 12 year old getting GTA isn't a civil rights issue, it's an issue of bad parenting. The game is CLEARLY rated M and he had to have a parent present to purchase it, and this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. I am strongly against little and impressionable kids getting games despite their ratings as well, but that's just not the issue.

And you support the lack of freedom of expression? You do realize that people that would make the Gay Marriage choice in the game are people who would consider themselves gay; a straight person would not pick the gay marriage choice and suddenly find themselves fancying their same gender; that's not how this works. People are born with these urges and it's again insulting to everyone involved if you think that they'll change because of a game.

And if you think a friend saying "woohoo" because of the sims is hurting society I strongly suggest you get a sense of humor and quit relating this issues with completely separate ones that have nothing to do with it.

@PvtOttobot So are you stating life sims should not have the freedom to choose what they do with their lives? It's a simulation, not a sandbox; Laws enacted by governments are enforced within the context of the game, but Gay Marriage is a personal issue that isn't outlawed and is viewed as a personal choice. I understand you being against parts of the "It's your life" outlook when their decisions affect others unknowingly, but this issue has nothing to do with anyone else beside the two people getting marriage, which is why the outlook is an incredibly important aspect of life and should be held as important as freedom of speech.

@PvtOttobot That's a hilarious way to stretch the problem into something it isn't. Age of consent, polygamy, and slavery were never mentioned in my post and what you're making is a false comparison. Child abuse is not comparable in any way to gay marriage between two consenting adults and sex acts aren't even in this game.

The issues you stated have absolutely nothing to do with issues raised in the game, and essentially what you're doing is the "Where do we draw the line" argument, which is a joke in and of itself. We draw the line when these actions ruin lives, which all of the things you stated do. Are you telling me that two completely reasonable people who love each other despite tons of people who they don't directly affect can't have their love recognized? Two people who have nothing to do with you getting married by both of their legal consent under the laws in which we allow marriage does not ruin lives any more than normal marriage would.

And quite frankly I think by creating this comparison and using this argument you've insulted everyone capable of basic rational thought about morality, including yourself. If you can't see the difference between a 16 year-old marrying a 50 year-old, sex slavery, polygamy, and Gay marriage then I invite you to read a book.

EDIT: and the original post was removed because these comparisons were so offensively wrong so now I look silly arguing with posts that aren't there. Ah well, for the best.

@theblackdragon Fair enough then. I guess my view is a bit overly optimistic but I'd still like to see them keep it.

I'm rather skeptical about buying 3rd-party devices that attach directly to the machine; I'd much rather buy that battery wristband I saw on Destructoid a while back that allows you to hook up and charge phones, ipods, and even had cables for the entire family of DS's. The less I directly alter the original console the better.

Nintendo needs to stand their ground on this. Don't remove it; this is a life simulator and if that's the life the person wants have, what better place to have it than in a light-hearted game. If they're removing it because of political pressure they need to assert that the option of Gay Marriage affects no one who doesn't want to use it, and that if people think that something as simple as a video game like this is destroying the "sanctity of marriage" they're welcome to not buy the game.

Simply put: if it doesn't affect you personally then don't complain, and just because some people are uncomfortable with the option does not mean that they should outright remove it. I sincerely hope that the only "glitch" Nintendo fixes is that women can't marry, as equality and tolerance across the board is what everyone should strive for.

Also, was there any official confirmation that this is actually a glitch? My understanding is that Japan is a lot more tolerant of these issues than the US is despite not officially recognizing gay marriage, and seeing as I haven't heard any localization for this game I'm shocked this is even an issue outside of Japan.

Not to be mean but I think it would be news if this wasn't the case.

Not requiring me to be online at all times wont be a point in it's favor when I consider purchase, but if the opposite were true I would never consider it at all. It's much like police in that respect; if they do the job right you don't notice the benefits directly but if they're doing it wrong you notice how bad they are.

They have some points, but they also have some faults.

Iwata didn't announce that it was compatible with microtransactions as a solution, so pretending he did is a joke. He was merely suggestion it was more open with different models of games.

"Some new Wii U features, like the touchscreen-equipped controller feel convoluted, and less innovative compared to technologies like Microsoft's Kinect camera"

Oh, a tablet controller that people can easily use and can allow for tablet/smartphone game ports is convoluted, but a 3D motion sensor that doesn't read people correctly and is only good for dancing games isn't? I can get my family members to play Nintendoland for hours, but when given the chance to play kinect at a friends house they didn't spend more than three minutes in front of that joke. Fine, it's more innovative, but that technology will hit a wall in only a couple years when people realize that the human body has evolved to hold tools and not flail in front of a camera with no physical feedback.

"but this time around, simply pumping out its usual top notch games won't be enough."

That's funny, because if history shows anything, it's that the console with the best games and not the best hardware always sells the most.

"I'm gonna give my 13-year-old kid, who already has a child and is therefore is incredibly impressionable and not to be trusted in any regard, a violent video game recommended for adults as it says on the box which has a robust online community which in itself has parental controls, and not use any of them. Now when he commits a crime, it's clearly the proper thing to say that this violent video game was the cause of it and not that I, as a parent, screwed everything up entirely."

How is this even a case. How was video games even mentioned in this case other than as a pointless argument. The parents should be locked in prison and evaluated, the kid should be in a psychiatric facility, and that kid's kid needs to be put in proper care; the cause of this crime has nothing to do with video games. This chairman is making the problem worse by placing the blame on something that isn't a problem which already has a built in option to prevent the very thing he's talking about.

I don't mean to be a downer here, but they probably aren't on virtual console because the original pokemon games used different mechanics and would therefore not be transferable to newer games. Abilities, Natures, Genders, Held items, and new moves were introduced, the Special stat was split into two separate stats, cloning and glitches were really easy to exploit in the original, two new types were introduced, and shinies (which aren't immensely important but still) were added since Red and Blue. Sure, it would be neat to have on Virtual Console, but Gamefreak probably sees it as a waste of time to even address these issues enough to even port it when recent version are still selling of the shelves, let alone create a transfer system.

Of course! Game Freak made the right moves in ensuring that progress made in previous games could be transferred to recent copies, and indeed some thing can only be done in previous games. My local Gamestop is still trying to sell a used copy of FireRed for $35.

I think Nintendo should just bring the stuff over without changing anything but the text unless it is truly offensive when translated (like a true translation of a word would lead to a derogatory term in another location). But this is what we have ratings for, and indeed ratings that take these into account. As far as I'm concerned, censoring trivial things like this is utterly pointless. The developers/artists put it in there for fanservice and most the time as a reward for finding an easter egg or doing particularly well, and it's frankly insulting when these things are found out. What, we non-japanese folk would be offended by someone in a swimsuit? Have these developers not seen American TV, where sex scandals and cleavage shots are reported AS NEWS? No one important cares.

If you're personally offended by a picture of a lady in a swimsuit that shows no naughty bits and is on screen for a few seconds then maybe you should read the rating provided ON THE BOX and understand what "Suggestive themes" means, that is why they are there after all. And even further, if you bought this T-M rated game for your 6 year-old and complain about its maybe you should learn to read and maybe even acquire some common sense, and if not contact child services.

Memes can be copyrighted?
That kinda defeats the purpose doesn't it?

Anyone ever notice how the projections that seem the most unlikely are always 4 years away?
Did you also notice that in 2009 there was a very significant percentage of the population that thought the world would end before 2013, and if it didn't we would have found a more efficient source of energy?

Just an observation.

Back to it's roots?
You've found a modern Sonic that works Sega, and have an episodic 2D platformer series. Make Sonic 4 Episode III similar to Episode II but without the stupid parts and we won't need a stupid "Back to its roots" campaign. Stop pretending that saying that is helping your case and actually improve on your current model.

Good, about time they addressed misconceptions.
Too bad anyone who keeps their Wii online would probably already know about the WiiU. They need to start going on Late-night talk shows and advertising it in a way that doesn't suck. Sending a notification message to people who probably will never care to open it is literally the least they can do.

I'm curious on how many studies need to happen until people can stop pretending that this is the problem and actually address the core problem of the child's mental health.

To those who say $665,000 is ambitious: You clearly have no idea how much it takes to make a game like that. Art alone will take a lot of time and effort, not to mention research on references.

Let's pretend this game will only take a year to create, and that only the four people mentioned on the kickstarter page will work on it full-time for 50k a year. That's already 200k, and that is optimistic at best, as they said ON THE PAGE that they hope to keep it in a permanent state of updating, meaning they HAVE to keep pumping out that money. They have to get the proper development kits and licenses for their consoles, with 5 different OS's for PC and mobile, AND the big 3 consoles, that is a lot of porting that needs to be done. That's going to require some massive help from professionals who deal with porting. They need cash too.

Office expenses? They need very nice rigs to build this kind of thing, and the space to do it, which means rent. The certification process for a lot of these platforms is time-consuming, and employees are still on their paycheck during the waiting period. Beta testing? You bet they need a bunch of random and experienced people to play this. How about localization? Plenty of cash down the drain for that alone. Music and Sound? A lot of people underestimate how difficult it can be to make both of those work within the context of the game, and the equipment it needs to be done.

And what about when the game is actually finished? Marketing something like this is going to be a massive chore, especially since even most of you were uninterested after watching the video. (although yes, showing off what little you had on an ipad is a joke)

If anything you should be happy to see a realistic price; gaming projects that only cost $20,000 should raise a lot of questions. I still think Kickstarter campaigns need an outline as to how this money is going to be spent instead of just saying "We need this much kthx." I'm not going to give to a project with a severely under-priced goal, the odds of them running out of money is really high, ESPECIALLY if it's an indie title. On this case, they started with a realistic goal and put it out there, along with a detailed list of what is going into the game itself that would imply such a high price goal.

If the game is only 3- hours long, regardless of how fun that time was, I'm not gonna be dropping $60 for it. Maybe if it went on sale, but $60 is a lot to drop for me now-a-days.

I'll definitely have to see what reviews have to say about game length first.

Oh, has it been 6 months since the last one already?
How thrilling.

@OMEGA48 Games take time to develop, ESPECIALLY smash bros. They made a massive mistake saying anything about it so early in its development (specifically when they hadn't even started making it yet, and wouldn't until after Kid Icarus was released several months later). The other ones you mentioned have only been announced, and Yarn Yoshi only has screenshots and like 15 seconds of gameplay footage, and therefore are not nearly ready for release.

So yes, they do have a problem with WiiU support and should've focused more on making games that would make it to launch rather than waiting until the thing came out to announce a long line of huge titles. Now the only thing they can do is encourage third-parties to develop for them (which, as far as I can tell, they aren't doing anything on that front) and continue trying to finish the games and make sure they're good. Releasing a game too early would be even more catastrophic to the console, so now it's just the waiting game until they get their act together.

They had potential to get people who owned the WiiU already to keep playing with the VC update, but they also tripped over themselves with that one so I really have no urgent reason to turn on my WiiU until August.

Only four games that they haven't already released...?
I could forgive this if they were adding online support built into the overlay (Sega's had it figured out on the 360 for years now; Online leaderboards and multiplayer for Sonic 2), but they're just slapping ports they already own into the WiiU template they already possess. How is this even progress? I expected way more than this, and they aren't even going to release all the games in their advertisement!
No way I'm paying that much to be able to play on the Gamepad, which I still think is a feature that it should've come OUT with with Wii VC.

sniff

So true...

I've heard of the issue with young gamers being oblivious to secret paths. The cool part about the NES and SNES days were that secret paths were designed to be found only if you were paying a lot of attention, and contained completely optional upgrades. Nowadays secret paths are marked by a different color entrance, some alcove, an enemy walking out of it; it kind of sucks that the younger ones can't think to look but that's what you get when games encourage linearity that much.

@HeatBombastic Adam Orth is an example of someone giving their honest opinion about a system which he supports. He misunderstands the problems with always-on by a lot, but now we know a lot more about the opinions of higher-ups within Microsoft's higher-ups (until he got fired).
Not to mention he wasn't even speaking with regards to or on behalf of Microsoft, he was speaking about the system in general, meaning what he said was unrelated to the console and can at most be seen as a statement that can support what is still at this point a rumor. So in that sense, Adam Orth's thoughts and Marc Franklin's answers are completely unrelated.

But yes, we are better off with brutal honesty, because we learn about what people think and what other opinions are out there. If you believe in what your company's doing, you should be more than willing to tell the truth (or your opinion in the case of Orth) about the product, granted they're at a point where information on the product can be released.

Good interview; a shame he couldn't just answer some of the questions and instead answered with dodges and rehearsals. I just hate how they can't say things along the lines of "We hope we can do this if we can" or "That's not what we have in mind for that hardware" and instead go with "We have no plans for it."
Probably the most common useless answer.

And yet another quick dodge on the Earthbound legal questions. "representative of Earthbound" is not a meaningful statement in the slightest, and in fact raises more questions and doesn't answer the original one.

Can we just get some answers to things he can answer, and "I'm not able to answer that at this time" rather than regurgitating advertisements?

Though I mean the stats were neat so I can't really complain about that...

I'd really like to know why it took so long then. It's not that they didn't know the fan's want for it until Miiverse; iirc, Reggie and others within Nintendo said they they were constantly getting Earthbound requests and hate mail, even for Mother 3. So they weren't ignorant, so it had to be legal issues.

So if there aren't any legal issues, then WHY? Did they not understand the MASSIVE fanbase the game has until every other message on Miiverse was "give us Earthbound"? Did they think that the poor initial sales (which was probably because it was so expensive) would mean that the game would not sell well even if ported through VC?

It just CAN'T be that they were ignorant until now; It's been the most wanted VC game in North America since the service launched!

FINALLY.

It's not the first half of 2013, but at least now I know that I'll be able to get it before I move and getting retail copies of a game becomes impossible.

It's going to be embarrassing at E3 however when their opening title for E3 2012 still isn't out yet.

Hey Nintendo, remember that console that you said Pikmin 3 would come out on last year, yet still doesn't have a release date?

Because I do.

I'm torn; on one hand I want a physical copy because I'm a collector and I never have to worry about losing everything if something were to happen to my 3DS because Nintendo's still rather archaic about their store accounts.

But on the other hand I know I'll give it more time if I know I can always access it.

I wish I had the money to do both D=

R.O.B. 2
Yes. YES

I'm actually surprised to say that I agree with the majority of his points, especially about Nintendo's lack of third-party support and online capabilities. Not so much about the price cuts and mobile market cutting into sales, as its been shown that people are willing to have both a portable console as well as a smart phone. A price cut may help, but in the end people wont buy the thing until it gets more games, so while a price cut can boost sales with software out, a price cut in its current state will do very little.

However, I have to ask a question with regards to this:

"NL: What impact will the PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox will have on Wii U sales?
MP: PS4 and next Xbox will impact the Wii U if competitively priced, and will impact it less if not competitively priced. Let’s wait and see what the price points will be."

If we should wait and be patient until we know pricing information (or indeed, any information at all about the next Xbox) then why were you so willing to say both the PS4 and the "Durango" will sell 85-95 units each? Why are you so reserved in calling a conclusion now, but a month ago were able to say that PS4 and Durango would be runaway successes?

Fifa, Madden, and any other franchise are available on every other console in near-identical versions. They would sell some copies on WiiU, sure, but they would not be system sellers in any regard. They don't need straight up ports for all consoles, they need unique titles, which is not something EA does.

On the other side, EA's quickly becoming the greatest example of what not to do with DRM, and somehow claim that SimCity's online components are not in any way DRM despite them being the textbook definition of it. They're happily embracing the exact wrong form of microtransactions every step of the way, and they honestly don't care about there consumer base unless they need to win some press, in which case they do as little as possible to win some back.

Sure, once the WiiU gets some games out and becomes a force among the consoles then EA can develop all they please. Personally I can do without ever seeing the inevitable Origin app/integration with the game on the WiiU menu should EA decide to give it more attention..

I'm excited, I really liked this game and if they add enough content I might end up giving it a buy. A system-seller though? I doubt it, but hey if it's amazing enough.

Clever marketing Nintendo; that's $120 worth of eshop credit being sold with cardboard that costs virtually nothing for you.

And yet I want them so much D=

Implying that CoD, Battlefield, and other yearly updates would continue to be made after players stopped buying the games.

I thought this was common sense and how business worked

A friend of mine showed this story to me last night. I guess the best plan random reddit comments came up with was having a friend come in and say "oh, my father came in the other day and turned it in by mistake" but that plan and anything similar is out the window since it's on the internet.

Also, Best Buy's mostly in the right to have the policy; while ROB isn't going to have personal information, other electronics that people bring in might, and while I feel for this guy because I have this entire set and the box myself, he just needs to let it go.

A narrated walkthrough of the gameplay they showed at the PS4 unveiling conference?
Seems kind of lazy to me; or maybe even just a justification of why and how he's getting information that isn't just "He's really good at technology" but i'm still interested to see where this game ends up.

I respect Phil because he released an indie game which was pretty, but at this point you can't take 5 years to release 1 game, choose the system with a bad patching policy, release a patch that breaks the game for some people, and talk this much smack on the industry.
And suggesting that Nintendo would handle the port themselves? How pretentious can you get? Surely he could convince a 3rd party like Nicalis or something to help with the port; now he just sounds like an ass.

They need to stop comparing the two side-by-side, it only adds to the problem that people think that the WiiU is just a new peripheral for the WIi. They need an advertisement campaign that focuses on people playing the games and its unique features, not ones that show families playing with Wii Remotes and a gamepad. Clearly this console confusion is what's cuasing a lot of the problems, and keeping the same stupid advertising as the Wii had isn't helping. They need to have a slogan that makes it clear that it's not a Wii, and people will gain interest.

Of course, games help too.

He does have a point. The whole point is that you can't see how platforms stack up without using the 3D flip feature.

Would want to see it on WiiU eshop, despite his comments on WiiWare. I mean it was abysmal

Pachter's a troll who gets paid to predict the future of the industry and is consistently wrong. He has no basis for any of this rather than his own proven dislike of Nintendo, and he cannot possibly know how well the PS4 will do seeing as its price and launch line-up will be what propels it to success. How can he say with certainty the sales figures for two consoles we know almost nothing about?

The fact that he's even pretending to know anything about the Durango is nothing but a joke, and you can see his bias when he compares the WiiU to an oversized DS. It's not, the only similarity is that there's two screens, which he would know if he even played the thing himself. I know this is considered news, but it's really just one massive troll's opinion that's given credit by news sites and his parent company. Anyone else with a track record like his would've been fired years ago.