CaviarMeths

Very impressive, but not really necessary. I don't think I'd ever be away from a power supply for more than 5 hours at a time unless I'm on a camping trip or something, in which case I wouldn't have my 3DS with me anyway.

The best news here is that the online membership is coming. I suspect a true unified account system independent from hardware. This is also likely the replacement to Club Nintendo.

Also notable is that DeNA is now 10% owned by Nintendo... and 13% owned by Sony.

And yeah, Nintendo isn't going mobile. They're just doing what Iwata said they were going to do all along - use mobile to leverage their own IPs.

As with almost every theme released, these are all too loud and busy. Can barely even see the icons on the bottom screen. Nintendo seems adamant on ensuring that every theme they make looks like a tacky Hawaiian shirt.

"Over 16 unique bosses"

So... 17?

It's like cute anime girls have replaced the 'roided macho men of the 80s as "box art that has nothing to do with the actual game."

@Quorthon That 20 million figure was worldwide. NPD data is just the US.

@akaDv8R PS4 didn't sell 374k last month, but pretty close. It sold nearly 80k over Xbox One, which, according to Microsoft's PR, sold 276k. That puts it around 350k.

@MoonKnight7 Some math and speculation done by users on NeoGaf in the February NPD thread. Won't get too into it here, but it's pretty legitimate.

Thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1009513

@MoonKnight7 94k for Wii U. Sony doesn't give out numbers in their PR either though.

Lesser news, but the Wii U is also up YoY. It's still selling poorly, but it's still chugging along and picking up a little steam on the way. It's not much momentum, but it's momentum. I think 2015 will be its peak year. It would be following the same trend as the Wii, which also had its peak year the year following MK and Smash.

Fantastic results for Majora's Mask and Monster Hunter, and I'm sure NoA is pleased at the launch for N3DS as well.

I'm checking Amazon every day to pre-order ASAP. Almost didn't get my Ike because I put in my pre-order in a few days after they went up.

Trine and STEAM for me. Still waiting on oh about half a dozen GBA games that EU already has.

I genuinely feel sorry for people who take Senran Kagura seriously. It's a ridiculous over-the-top beat-em-up with with ridiculous, over-the-top fan service. It's like getting mad at Looney Toons.

@Takerkaneanite6 People aren't going to start stealing things just because they can. They haven't for the last few thousand years and they're not going to start now. People are generally pretty good at following the rules of society.

Piracy and theft is a relatively small market, and yes, it's bad. There are better ways to deal with it though. Updating firmware is fine and a good way to curb it. Competing with it works too, just ask Netflix and Steam. Sending a team of lawyers armed with cease and desist letters though is just wasteful, and that seems to be Nintendo's MO.

I hope Nintendo stops stopping this. Waste of resources to go after people these people. They could always just, you know, sell the ROMs themselves on the eShop for $0.99 each or something.

Happy birthday to the greatest video game ever made. It hasn't aged a day.

@Pixel-Perfect Nope. They're independent. They just have joint ownership of the Pokemon IP with Nintendo.

For what it's worth, I think Famitsu had EMD at 1st with about 70k, so the battle for first was very close. Either way, that's an improvement over both the last Etrian Odyssey game and the last Mystery Dungeon game.

Nice to see Majora's Mask still chugging along. Mario Kart 8 looks like it will crawl past a million some time this year too.

Massive drop for Dragon Quest Heroes, but pretty standard for Musou games. I'm impressed at the solid hold for PS4 hardware despite the big drop in software.

@KoiTenchi These products typically cost more in Canada. Every one of those 3DS games is $45, not $40, for instance, and the N3DSXL is $230.

The book was $21 in the US.

@KoiTenchi http://i.imgur.com/gylfXZ2.jpg

@dkxcalibur I pre-ordered it on Amazon for $25.

What a strange, random grab bag of goodies. It doesn't even add up to $500 of value either... I don't know why anyone would buy this instead of picking the items they want individually and just paying for those.

Not interested in any of that swag, but I'll take a digital copy of the game itself in NA, thanks.

I've discovered that I like rhythm games through Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, but I'm really not into J-Pop. Might buy on sale. It's good that niche games like this are being localized, anyway.

Time & Eternity is one of the worst JRPGs of all time.

I'd just take another season of DLC for Hyrule Warriors over a sequel, really. I'm still used to being an MMO gamer, where games get expansions, not sequels. For a new game for Nintendo, I agree with everyone else that Fire Emblem Warriors seems like the most logical (and awesome).

And Dragon Quest Heroes is doing more to convince me to buy a PS4 than any other game right now.

Oh neat, Zero Mission. Can't wait to play it in North America in 5 months.

@VeeFlamesNL First time seeing an indie game?

People in this thread on about how it shouldn't have been revealed at such an early stage, as if the final version is going to look much more polished than this lol.

Game looks like "Let's take everything terrible about modern AAA games and do it on a budget of $40."

@Quinn_Blackwood $60 in Canada.

Edit: Oh, saw your other comment. Nintendo of Canada publishes these games domestically, so there should be no currency conversion. 3DS games are normally $40-45. Etrian Mystery Dungeon and Persona Q are $50, so I had marked that up as the "Atlus tax." This game is $60, the price of a Wii U game. It is overpriced, even for Canadian 3DS games, even for Atlus games.

And the games are published domestically in the UK too, so British consumers aren't paying for a currency conversion either. £32 and $40 are almost exactly the same in terms of average wage vs price of game.

So that's what the extra $20 is for, a CD with 6 songs and some stickers.

These all look pretty fantastic. Will definitely be buying a few of them.

Can Shantae really be called the "director's cut" though? I mean... how much overhead would Wayforward have had the first time around?

Just to clarify though, if I already have Azure Striker Gunvolt, I can just run the game and it will automatically update, yes?

Well, when you're one of the greatest video game creators of all time, I suppose you get to say things like that. Wish he worked more with Nintendo. The Last Story was a fantastic game, better any of the Final Fantasy direct sequels.

@vitalemrecords ...oh hell. I was looking at the info on the right quickly, and all I saw was "March 23 (USA)". Didn't see the 2005 >_>

Sorry everyone. False alarm.

What?! I had no idea this was due out in NA this month.

EDIT: I am an idiot who cannot read. Please disregard.

Considering that Bravely Default's success in the West single-handedly caused the CEO of Square Enix to reevaluate the company's policies on localization, I have absolutely no doubt that Bravely Default will be out in NA/EU within in a year.

@gatorboi352 I don't have many problems with PSN on PS3, but what few I do mostly have to do with interface and performance. It's slow as balls and the interface is mess. It doesn't take next gen hardware to make an intuitive, easy-to-navigate store.

@rjejr I don't know if I'd consider almost 500% difference in sales "almost Wii U territory."

@rjejr Japan just got the Halo Master Chief Collection, bundled with a special white Xbox One and a $100~ price drop.

It's pretty much the same value as November in NA, when the Xbox One was $350 with two games. Only... the Xbox One sold over 2 million consoles in America in November. So Japan's 1,300 is still pretty much dead in the water.

Woah. Fantastic performance from the Vita. 3DS still edges it out with combined SKUs though, with total 38,173 units.

I still disagree that Nintendo should be offering full games on iOS/Android. That would seriously devalue their handheld line, their bread and butter. But I do agree that smart devices are a powerful marketing tool and should be utilized to their full potential. The suits in Japan are sniffing them and poking at them with sticks, trying to figure them out, and hopefully they eventually do.

They're about 10 years behind in internet years (the Xbox 360 had online down to a science day one back in 2005) and really need to close that gap. I see it as their biggest weakness right now.

That picture of Iwata-san and the Gamepad makes me happy every time I see it. I like to imagine that it's not a forced perspective shot and it's just a giant Gamepad or a tiny Iwata.

Wow, those Majora's Mask numbers are something else. It has a shot of even outselling the original. That almost never happens for remakes.

Nice to see such an increase over MH3U, but this series is still going to struggle to gain traction in the west. The game is designed from the ground up to be played on handheld with local multiplayer at meet-ups, conventions, after work/school with colleagues/classmates, etc, a style of gaming that westerners haven't really taken a liking to en masse.

That one dude legit has one of the ugliest suits I have seen in my life, but then, I wasn't around in the 70s.

Nintendo spends money on combating piracy, money that will not ever see a return on investment. Steam and Netflix make money on satisfying a market of otherwise honest consumers who just want convenient, fairly priced products.

Almost no one would be downloading illegal ROMs on their 3DSs if Nintendo just made them available and priced them right.

The problem with a score is that everyone reading it expects that you can directly compare one score to another, even if they're not in the same genre, don't have the same scope, goals, resources, etc. People could generally agree that Super Mario Galaxy, Journey, and The Last of Us are all nearly flawless games, but for some reason, you assign them all a number and people start flipping out.

And in that case, what becomes important is the actual body of the review, to find context for that score. If it comes to that, the score is rather unneeded in the first place, no? It doesn't really matter that SMG is a "perfect" game, what matters is why it's a perfect game, and you won't find the answer to that in a number.

That said, summaries or tag lines are probably needed. Most of the time, I don't want to read through a 500 word review about why a game is terrible and not worth my time. I have stuff to do. I only read full reviews about games that I'm really emotionally invested in.

Well, it is British. There's like 20 people in UK who like Nintendo and they all have NintendoLife accounts.