CaviarMeths

Great, they can go alongside all the other great VC games that Sega of America has released on Wii U.

Am I missing something, or does this same rumour get brought up over and over? Didn't we already hear about this? Next Level had concept art and everything.

Madness. This is getting more popular than Pokemon.

Think the title should probably be "Non-News: Nintendo Remains Silent on Third Party Wii Games Coming to the eShop"

That character design tho.

LOL @ open OS. Pigs will fly too.

Everything else sounds fine though. I too want better interconnectivity, local play, network features, account systems, etc, as well as better tools for developers. I like the way Jason Canam, Tim Dawson, and James Montagna think.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Wii and DS combined sold 250m hardware and 2b software and were so open to homebrewing. Not saying, just saying.

Not my kind of game, but the enthusiasm of these guys is endearing.

@aaronsullivan To be fair, Ritchie Blackmore (guitarist) and Jon Lord (keyboardist) are both classically trained musicians and that reflects in the music they wrote for Deep Purple. Lord even wrote a concerto mixing rock and classical music, and parts of it sound like it could straight lifted from a Zelda score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od95KRjPat0

Ritchie Blackmore has had that exact same expression on his face for 45 years.

If Sega wants to restructure around digital smartphone and PC releases, I don't care. They're a sad shadow of their glory days anyway. I just care about what happens to all the IP left laying around doing nothing. Please Sega, for the sake of your legacy, unload your properties like Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, Shining Force, and Phantasy Star onto a publisher who cares and don't drag Atlus down with you.

Hopefully someone else picks up Sega-owned Platinum IPs like Bayo and Vanquish too.

@BieberBlows Yeah, for sure. I greatly overestimated how much space I would need and bought a 2TB drive. Dozens of games and still like 1.7TB left lol...

@Trapleton Nah, not at all. Size is a non-issue for me, really. I have 24 or 25 full retail games, a bunch of indies, and a couple dozen VC and my external HDD is barely dented at all.

Definitely didn't see Lego JP coming. The first JP is one of my favorite films though, so I may not be able to resist.

And I love the MCU, but don't have any biting need to play through it in game form. Marvel Heroes is a good game and I haven't finished it yet, so I'll probably just stick with that.

Soo... some better lighting?

My brothers and I used to make our own Mario boardgames back when we were kids. The series really does inspire imagination and creativity in children.

I haven't read it, but I have a copy of Akira Himekawa's adaptation. I imagine it's quite different in tone.

On behalf of my pasty brethren, I'm sorry that white people have found a recent hobby in getting offended by everything. It hurts us all.

David Wise's work on Tropical Freeze is brilliant, but as a collector of Zelda merch, A Link Between Worlds would have to be my first choice. Both is good too though! Love the music in MK8 as well.

Dude got like 12 points for that level.

Well, it's longer, but not really a significant leap considering that "improved battery life" is one of the marketing points. I mean, they're not lying, but still.

I would be more interested in power reduction in sleep mode though. Maybe it's Street Pass and Spot Pass, but the 3DS drains pretty fast while closed. In comparison, I can put my Vita in sleep mode for like 2 weeks and it'll still have plenty of juice in it.

@Vineleaf Well, Awakening got its own limited edition 3DS, plus a collector's edition with an art book and CD. I think there's a very high chance of the new Fire Emblem game getting both, but perhaps not for the holidays.

It's expected to hit Japan this summer. Awakening had an 8 month gap between JP and NA releases. Given that the series has kind of exploded in popularity due to Awakening and Smash though, it's probably in IntSys and Nintendo's best interest to be working on a localization alongside the development to get it out sooner. It's fair enough to assume less than 8 months this time.

So maaaaybe a holiday 2015 release. Summer 2015 in Japan = July-Sep, so even with a faster localization, a 2015 release might be a stretch. But still possible.

I must be a pretty average person, because turns out I voted with the majority for every single poll.

/goes back to doing average person things

@Quorthon It's actually a pretty huge upgrade with much higher resolution textures, advanced lighting and particle effects, etc. It looks like an entire console generation of difference, more on par with a Gamecube game than a N64 game.

Here's a side by side comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvV56AJS8dY

I dunno, this pack just feels lacking compared to previous ones. An alt of a character already featured and a gag character. Skull Kid would have been a good addition. The costumes aren't great either.

My season pass has already paid for itself, so I'll end the griping there, but I probably wouldn't buy this pack separately.

@Robotron2084 I had a bit of an opposite situation with Sony. Their Vaio 13 hybrid laptop was infamous for its great hardware... but inexplicably awful network adapter made by Broadcom. It had all sorts of incompatibility issues with other components and most Vaio 13 owners were stuck with a $1300 brick with no wifi/bluetooth.

After about 8 months on the market with no solution, Sony sold off its PC division and Vaio became independently owned. Within days, there was a fix for the Broadcom adapter. Maybe a coincidence, but a funny one. I do love my Vaio though. At least, now that it has onboard wifi/bluetooth.

"We can definitely do this!" -Monster Games

@Robotron2084 "Sony, who tend to throw products out in bucket-loads irregardless if it'll sell or not ...; that's great for us consumers, but not great as a business decision"

Yeah, no kidding. I was just doing some research on smartphones and I got to the Xperia and am immediately confronted with this insanely huge list of models. They may as well have made a different form factor for every owner of a Sony Xperia! The Xperia Z3 is still a fantastic phone, arguably the best on the market now, but damn, they wonder why they're losing money in mobile lol.

So Nintendo is profitable, with margins high enough to continue course. That's $30mil worth of amiibo sold in the US in one month by the way, and probably a 30-40% profit margin for Nintendo. In other words, it just paid the bill for any of their current AAA games in production. Hell, it paid off the deficit from both Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2. Because toys.

That's important too here, because internet analysts like to spell doom and disappointment because Nintendo isn't "winning," or even doing as well as themselves in the past. But they're profitable, and making enough money to continue making worthwhile investments. That's why they're a business, that's why they've been a business for 125 years. Not because they're swimming in an Olympic pool filled with a few years worth of Wii/DS money.

Surprised so few people said "exclusive 3rd party games" for the last poll. Have you folks not played an Atlus or Capcom game on the system yet? They're fantastic!

Anyway, hanging onto my current 3DS until a price drop and limited edition Fire Emblem New 3DS.

"Different territories make their own business decisions. We here at Nintendo of America don't make very many though, and the ones we do make are baffling and frustrating to our consumers."

I'm not even huge on this type of game, but I might buy it anyway to support niche games being localized. On sale.

@Superstick Because that's what she is. She's a vocaloid, software designed to "sing" notes and tones that are inputted into a program. Think of it as a super advanced BonziBuddy.

Reggie yacking on for 15 minutes about N3DS stuff we already knew, then Bill comes on and says "Oh by the way, you can use the Fire Emblem amiibos in Codename STEAM," this is why I care about N3DS.

Though I'll wait for a price drop and/or a limited edition version for the new Fire Emblem.

$230 in Canada ($260 for MH4U bundle) is a joke.

2015 release confirmed for Japan, so probably 2016 for NA/EU.

I really hope the "and details" info on N3DS is kept to a minimum. Everybody watching the American Direct already knows all about the N3DS and NoA needs to stop pretending that we don't. Yes, we know it has face-tracking 3D, a 2nd analog nub, and a faster CPU. We've known for months. On with the games!

Are they trying to tell me that the target audience for MH4 in Japan ISN'T teens and young adults? Get out. Few months ago you had Iwata making comments about the reason that Pokemon ORAS sold so well is because it connected well with 13-25 year olds. Now you have Capcom trying to tell people that Monster Hunter is for kids.

Seriously though, what's the point in Mario Party with no multiplayer?

Man, it must be depressing to be a Mega Man fan.

Touhou would be a really good fit for the Wii U, in my opinion. That classic arcade style with huge emphasis on gameplay and recognizable characters, something Nintendo fans should be familiar with.

This project looks cool, but Touhou is really meant for 2D sprite artwork. Will still keep my eye on it though. I don't think it will be blocked by Nintendo. It admits upfront to being a SSB clone, but as long as no copyrighted assets are used, it shouldn't be a legal problem.

No real surprises, except maybe seeing Bravely Default in there.

Tempting, but nah. I bite on CEs for artbooks and soundtracks, not figurines.

Good price point though, for those who are into it!

@BLPs Sounds more like he was the Global Head of Things We Tell You To Produce.

So what's this guy's story on his split with Capcom anyway? Because within the span of five months, he went from being promoted to Global Head of Production to "starting his life over" and it totally looks like he just ditched them, started his own company, and resumed making a game that is a straight up, unapologetic clone of his previous work.

Mine.

@RantingThespian Absolutely. You "beat" piracy by providing a superior service at an attractive price point, not by throwing lawyers and lobbyists at the problem and hoping it goes away.

I consider Steam and Netflix the pinnacle of beating piracy at its own game.

IP laws in America need to be lessened, not hardened. It's a circus already as it is.

I wish the dinosaurs at Nintendo would at least try to understand piracy. It's a relatively small community that don't really buy games anyway, so cracking down on them is a big waste of resources and doesn't turn anyone on to your products. Besides, it's completely ineffective. You can't stop piracy. Pirate Bay recently had its servers raided and commandeered by Swedish police, and a mirror site was back up and running within a day.

Maybe Nintendo should be looking into how and why the PSP and DS combined sold nearly 250 million units and a couple billion software and work on that instead of chasing ghosts.

I guess I don't really understand this because I'm not from that side of the pond, but why would they ditch a dedicated audience to try take IGN head on? Isn't that a great way to sort of... fall into irrelevancy/obscurity? Better to continue serving a niche audience than get lost in a crowded market dominated by giants.

@Peach64 The disconnect is in UK and the rest of Europe and indeed, in most regions worldwide, where the Wii U is performing better than in US/UK. Problem is that the US and UK are such major markets that it puts a huge dent in the Wii U's commercial viability when both markets hate it. If the Wii U was selling comparatively as well in US/UK as it was in, say, France, Germany, or Japan, it wouldn't even be struggling at all. Probably a solid 12-15 million LTD.

But there is no myth here. The Nintendo brand is absolutely toxic in the UK and probably always will be.