HugoSmits

HugoSmits

I make Nintendo DS/3DS games!

Comments 290

Re: The Secrets Of The Nintendo Power Line Experts Are Revealed

HugoSmits

I actually know a few people who worked there... and yes, they did know all games by hearth.
Sure they have some maps and papers (didn’t we all have those?). But you could call them and ask them anything about Zelda and they know by listing to you (which items you had,etc) exactly which thing you missed or still had to do… and that’s not in the binder…

Re: Scribblenauts Is Doubling Up On Nintendo DS

HugoSmits

I totally agree.. bundles are awesome! mostly they are on one card which I think is more convenient (not having to carry so many cards or swap them constantly).

The GBA had awesome bundles.. wish it would happen more on the DS!

Re: Renegade Kid Clarifies 3DS Piracy Comments

HugoSmits

@LZBirdboi

I think you misunderstand me. I do not condone piracy in anyway. I honestly believe that piracy is theft.

That said; I don’t believe piracy is costing the industry as much as Jools or the articles are proclaiming. I also don’t believe piracy is the problem, but rather the effect or symptom of the real problem.

If tomorrow all games would costs 400 dollars (which is the equivalent of the price in poor European countries) how many can be expect to sell? If piracy would completely disappear tomorrow, how much more do you expect to sell at those prices?

And yes, it’s a luxury product. You do not need to game, but you obviously love to game. So would you be tempted to get games through different channels (piracy) or would you completely quit your hobby?

Most people (although again, I do not condone) would be tempted to pirate!

Re: Renegade Kid Clarifies 3DS Piracy Comments

HugoSmits

@theblackdragon that’s my point. My argument of prices was merely to show that it’s unlikely that every download equals a lost sale.

@RenegadeJools
The problem with the Nintendo statement is that they aren't actually supporting that with figures. A lot of those big publishers are screaming that 90% of their games are pirated,etc very few actually have the numbers to back this up.
In fact the link to the article you posted shows how Nintendo measured this, which I think is very crippled:

“In June 2009, Nintendo monitored 10 websites based overseas that allowed people to illicitly download game software, and found that software had been pirated a total 238 million times.

Multiplied by the average unit price for software, the figure translates into 1 trillion yen ($10.7 billion) in lost sales.”
So basically they assumed that if piracy wouldn’t exist they made 238 extra sales. This is just a fundamentally wrong way of doing things.
You (and the article) mainly talk about Europe. But nobody seems to care to figure out how many sales have actually been lost due to pricing instead of piracy.

Re: Renegade Kid Clarifies 3DS Piracy Comments

HugoSmits

@Windy how do you know this ? and how does Jools know this ?

there hasn't been a system that did not have pirates, so we really cannot compare sales figures and stuff like that.

Your points and arguments have as much ground as if I would claim that 100% of the pirates would have never bought the game in the first place.

In many European countries buying games isn't an option!

we just don't know, and thus there is no way of telling if piracy really does have a effect.

I went shopping in Budapest today… I didn’t expect to find anything cheap. But the games are actually more expensive than in the Netherlands while the average salary here is 4 times lower than the average Dutch salary.

New Super Mario Bros U and Blackops U are around 86 dollars!
DS games like Mario Kart or Nintendogs are still around 50 euro!

Now imagine you only earn around 300 dollars a month!!!

Re: Goodbye Galaxy Games Responds To Renegade Kid's Piracy Claims

HugoSmits

@Windy it's not even about being poor or rich. for example, I see you live in the United States. The federal minimum wage is about 7,25 dollar, so for a 40 hour work week that's 1160 dollar a month, right ?

if you convert that to euro's that's around 865 euro, well below the minimum wage of the Netherlands at 1200 euro.

Yet this doesn't matter because prices of other things scale also, a new game costs 26 euro in the United States, yet it costs 50 euro in the Netherlands.

But for some reason when you go to other European countries this scaling doesn't happen... somebody keeps the price high even though it's unreasonable.

Re: Goodbye Galaxy Games Responds To Renegade Kid's Piracy Claims

HugoSmits

@Windy piracy doesn't really costs us that much. The problem with the 'research' link you posted is that it's not really based on the 'complete' truth.
what they did was look at how many units where downloaded times the retail price.

which would only be correct if each person would also actually have bought the game if piracy wasn't an option. And we know for a fact most pirates would not.

If you take a look at that list, you see countries like Hungary and Greece. Where the mimimum salary is around 300 euro and a new game is priced at 50 euro.

Do you honestly believe that if piracy wasn't an option a family would spend 20% of their income on a single videogame ?

Re: Goodbye Galaxy Games Responds To Renegade Kid's Piracy Claims

HugoSmits

@Windy that’s not really factual. In this case it would also costs us money for every ’good’ person that decide not to pirate but also decide not to buy the game. I don’t have the illusion that if tomorrow piracy would completely dissapear my sales will go up ten folt.

Games aren’t food, you don’t die if you don’t play. You don’t have to play. And people will decide that it’s just not worth 40/50 euro to them and not buy the game.

You can see this also with free-to-play games. The precentage of people that decides not to pay for anything is the same as the percentage of piracy on normal platforms.

@TheDreamingHawk piracy has been there ever since computer software was invented. It’s not going to stop, ever. It’s like trying to stay dry in a swimming pool. You can try and fight it, but you will get wet eventually. I rather focus my energy and resources on customers. I try to provide them with the best service and answer all their questions personally.

I hope this will make them care about me and my products and because of that, hopefully they are willing to invest rather than to pirate.

Re: Goodbye Galaxy Games Responds To Renegade Kid's Piracy Claims

HugoSmits

@Mk_II I don't know where you are from; but over here (the Netherlands) the DS shelf space is still the biggest in the store. But again, it mainly has games on it like bejewelled, Caesars palace, treasures of the ... you get the idea.

Partly this is due to the fact that economics are bad and those bejewelled clones are easy to predict (how many units will sell) while a fresh IP or unknown game are a big gamble.

So I don’t think less games appear on the shelves due to piracy.

@Slapshot you have to look at the bigger picture. Yes there are many hardcore titles you can list here, but if you look at it from a percentage point of view it really is a small number compared to the casual games.

a quick search on http://mobygames.com will reveal that around 70% of the games listed there are either puzzle, mystery/detective or education titles. Some of them are really good games, but they aren’t hardcore.

@Waann
That those titles sold well has more to do that they came from Nintendo and had a big marketing budget + fan following than the control scheme. I know a lot of people that weren’t so much in First Person Shooters, but bought Metroid anyway because it’s Metroid.

Not saying that the control scheme was bad in anyway, just that you cannot judge a control scheme by how many units a popular well marked game sold.

Re: Renegade Kid Worried About 3DS Piracy

HugoSmits

@Fudge Yes I do. Almost all developers do, especially things like emulators (to quickly test if the enemies are placed correctly for example). I also use a lot of homebrew texture converting tools and I wrote a lot of my own tools (level editors, convertors, compression tools).

Re: Renegade Kid Worried About 3DS Piracy

HugoSmits

I’m a hacker too… in fact, it wasn’t until the last two months of Flipper development I actually got cleared by Nintendo and got a real devkit. Now I think of it, the first time I showed Nintendo a build of Flipper was on my little sisters pink DS with some custom made hardware

When I look at the DS game market, I don’t really believe it was hackers that killed it, rather just a lot of bad games. The fact that Dementium II wasn’t selling well might also have something to do with the fact it wasn’t as widely available.

By the time that game came out the Nintendo DS was already marked a ‘casual gamer device’ meaning most stores where more happy to put puzzle games on their shelves.

I still see this, next February another bejeweled type of game I created will be released as a retail title for Nintendo DS.. while I still struggle to find somebody interested in publishing my original games.

I think we should stop putting our head into the sand by simply saying ‘it was piracy, nothing I can do about it!’ and instead take a good hard look at our industry, our games and how we market them (this includes pricing).
It’s time we face the real threats and deal with them in a professional way.

Re: Wii Mini Is Official And Has No Online Connectivity

HugoSmits

the price seems odd... Best Buy in Canada is selling a normal wii + Super Mario Bros for $149!! so you get a Wii + online + eshop + mario!

especially weird if you consider that Mario is still at 59$! so if you buy a Wii mini + Mario your total price will be 158! that's almost 10 bucks more than the old set!

Re: Number-Crunching Reveals That Nintendo's Handheld Market Is "Stable"

HugoSmits

am I the only one who sees this as negative ? the 3DS is clearly struggling!

It's like comparing a new triple A title that only sold 200.000 copies to a best seller NES game and conclude 'see.. we are a hit too.. we sold just as much!'.

Times have changed, markets have grown. If your numbers are on par with previous systems over almost a decade ago... you clearly did something wrong!

Re: Two Tribes Founder: Wii U Could Become A "Casual Haven"

HugoSmits

@Boo_Buster did you read the article ? because even in the header it says 'founder'. It's very unlikely Collin is going to fire himself.

I think his opinion is correct and I think it's really great for Nintendo. I mean, the big reason the Wii did so well is because of all the casual gamers going for Wii Sport.

We just have to realize that the casual group is much larger than the hardcore group.

And what is the problem with that ? It puts Nintendo in a great position where they can work on their own games without any pressure. I mean, as long as we can enjoy great Mario,Metroid,Pikmin,Pokemon and Zelda titles on WiiU I will be a happy hardcore gamer!

Re: Ex-Rare Staffer: Exodus Wouldn't Have Happened Under Nintendo

HugoSmits

They only went to Microsoft because Nintendo didn't want them. So putting the full blame on Microsoft is a bit weird.

Also their working style wouldn't have worked in the currently industry. This is really visible in their Star Fox Adventures game. Nintendo knew Rare wasn't able to make the leap to next-gen and that's why they didn't buy them.

Re: Feature: 20 Years of Mario Kart

HugoSmits

whooaa... whoa whoa whoa!

Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA is da bomb! what do you mean it's graphics have not aged well ? it looked extremely impressive at the time and i still love the look today!

The sprites are pre-renderd 3D models (Like Donkey Kong Country) with much more detail than the original SNES version and the track themes look much better too.

THIS was why I bought a GBA... heck, THIS was why I got extremely excited about the GBA months before it came out! such an amazing leap forward from GBC to GBA!

Re: Reaction: Age Ratings and Video Games

HugoSmits

@Sean:

I played 18+ games during my youth and so did all my friends. We all turned out okay. My favorite game since I was 7 has been Mortal Kombat.

Honestly I get more scared from the tv news shows like CNN then I do from videogames or movies.

Re: Nintendo Appoints New UK Marketing Director

HugoSmits

@Neram:

I suspect as well that this is all part of James grand master plan. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years he will become President of Nintendo and buys the SEGA brand name and releases a new console called ‘Mega Drive U’.

Re: Review: Ace Mathician (DSiWare)

HugoSmits

@BulbasaurusRex:

You can change platform position when Ace is jumping, but the game pauses at that moment and continues when you are done moving.

so swapping control doesn't really affect your gameplay. But I can see why some people might find it a bit annoying constantly.

Re: Review: Mad Dog McCree (3DS eShop)

HugoSmits

@yobokkie me too! I loved the PC version!

I also played this game for weeks now, and I still love it.... I would rate it 7 at least! sure, it's old fashion and there's not so much to it gameplay-wise.

but cowboys falling of roofs never gets old!

Re: Oster Lays Out WiiWare Criticisms

HugoSmits

@dizzy_boy

it's more than just 'playing it through a few times'. It's extremely little things like having a ' on the é. for example. And people can say that's just a stupid misstake to make and the developers should easily spot such a gramma fault... but it's really harder than most of you think (for example words are written different in Frech or Canadian French).

Re: Oster Lays Out WiiWare Criticisms

HugoSmits

@exDeveloper. It really depends on when you go into QA/lotcheck. If you submit your game in a busy period they will let you off the hook much easier than when it's a slow period.

I had games come back for nothing more than missing a stripe on top of a letter (e instead of é).

Re: Mad Dog McCree Takes Aim at 3DS

HugoSmits

This game is what made me want a CD-ROM drive all the way back in 1995 ?

I remember getting it for xmas... My dad loves to tease me with those things. He build in the drive a few days before xmas (and I didn't even see it or notice it!). And then on xmas he only gave me the game.

So I was like "yeah.. but I cannot play this!" and he was all like "well.. I didn't know! what a shame!". Just before I thought this was going to be the worst xmas ever he started to laugh and show me the drive... he even already installed the game so I could play right away!

Re: Feature: Nintendo’s Biggest Blunders

HugoSmits

I really liked the Link games and Hotel Mario. Mainly because of the cartoons....

Sure they look really crappy now, but at the time it was normal for games to tell story in text (mainly white text on a black background). So having realy animation AND music/voices was awesome!

Re: Ace Mathician is Goodbye Galaxy's Next DSiWare Game

HugoSmits

@bboy2970 you don't need any real math skills.

Hell, you can even guess. In each level you have 4 buttons with math symbols. You can use those to create a formula.

so if you have : sin - x - 2 - *

in that case your options are :

x
2
x*2
sin(x)
sin(2)
sin(x)*2
sin(2)*x

so it will never be unplayable!

Re: Ace Mathician is Goodbye Galaxy's Next DSiWare Game

HugoSmits

@battLeToaD
Probably not.. it's going to be 200 point game. And sharing is very difficult to do (not so much in the sense of technical aspect, but to get it through Nintendo lot-check).

@6ch6ris6
Any formula you can come up with will have an effect on the world. So there are alot of different answers possible! Ofcourse it will be a bit more tricky to collect all the stars

Re: Review: Tekken 3D Prime Edition (3DS)

HugoSmits

@BulbasaurusRex

Wait.. what ? Tekken advance was amazing. I never liked Tekken, but the graphics where mindblowing for the GBA.

Yes it has less characters,modes,etc than it's console counterparts. But that's something that's true for almost any next-gen game versus it's handheld release.