@Malakai The justification for not revealing the hardware too early is that it's so easy these days to manufacture fakes, copycats and imitation products.
The hardware though, is just one part of the offering. Quality software/games can't be knocked-off in a couple of months.
Cloning has always been a factor on PC and mobile (when people aren't out and out pirating games). However, we're moving into an age of games-as-a-service. By the time someone has cloned the original Splatoon, the amount of new weapons and maps made available in the meantime will render the clone out of date (and not like you could connect to the servers anyway).
It's all about staying ahead of the competition and providing the authentic, up to date experience that no clone or pirate ever can, rather than trying to DRM and Lawyer your way to victory. I think though, the latter is written into Nintendo's DNA.
If in 2 years time, the NX's 3rd party offering is just full of games that play identical across PC/PS4/X1/NX. Then, not giving devs a head start on at least knowing what it is, so they can start brainstorming / prototyping, will most likely be identified as one of the causes of any lack of innovation.
Hopefully, I'm doing my fellow indie devs a disservice by suggesting they lack imagination and/or will to make something unique, but there are huge risks for anyone who sticks their neck out to do a platform exclusive these days. Nintendo can't wait too much longer to reveal this thing and not expect devs to say "well sorry, but we're busy with another game/ now".
@TruenoGT Can only speak for myself, but having the Wii U as my first Nintendo console, it's disenfranchising the way Nintendo and fans view all those old IP's
Ok, so seems motion controls are still in? That's great as I don't think motion control has quite run its course yet. (Plus I'm building a motion control game and would love to get it on the NX if it at all made sense).
I highly doubt Nintendo are purposely trying to gimp the Wii U version of Zelda. Nor is the GamePad likely to be causing performance issues. Almost certainly it's just a case of too complex to project manage separate builds with different feature sets for different platforms.
Hopefully there'll be something like Smartglass for NX to connect with people's smartphones. If not, whilst a shame, I think Nintendo would be justified in not having a feature that never took off on X1/PS4.
Makes sense for Nintendo to leverage their existing assets. Become a sort of Disney of Japan, but with their IP stemming from games first, rather than movies first.
However, Disney is constantly creating new IP. Constantly looking for the next Frozen or Lion King. I don't get that feeling with Nintendo.
Was listening to a podcast recently that suggested Nintendo retire Mario from games, to position of company mascot. In the same way Disney use Mickey Mouse, without him popping up in every second film.
Also I wonder where 3rd party devs fit into this? We still don't know what the NX is, yet Nintendo will need indies and others to help both generate and execute ideas to really sell the NX concept. Their comments recently about people stealing their ideas for the NX sound like something a first year game design student would say, and isn't conducive to an environment where innovation and cross-pollination of ideas thrives.
This line of focusing in on Nintendo IP is just going to further ingrain the feeling of 3rd party devs that they are very much periphery to Nintendo plans. That their games and IP don't fit in with the Nintendo ecosystem of theme parks, films/anime, amiibo and other merchandise, revolving around a core of mobile+NX games.
Good that Nintendo have all but confirmed who they are targeting this console at. But be nice to know when we can actually start developing for the system.
Was thinking about Pokémon Go the other day, and would make sense if NX had an AR headset. Then Pokémon Go is the mobile version you take with you to capture Pokémon, but maybe you can do extra stuff with the at-home AR stuff, like train them
I'm really just interested in NX and Nintendo have said they don't plan to reveal it at E3. That, plus the lack of opportunity to be surprised by announcements for WiiU and 3DS, is why I'm not very excited.
If my knowledge of making & publishing games for the Wii U is also relevant to NX, then it's not such a big deal.
Otherwise, it'll be a pain going back to square one, and that would definitely make me think hard about whether this is something I want to get into.
I think Nintendo at this point are trying to discourage people from jumping on the bandwagon: Either ports of games already out on Steam / ps4 / etc that do nothing to sell the system. Or rushed out games trying to make a quick buck, that likewise do little to enhance the console's overall prospects.
@TheGoof Gamestop did say the NX "will have physical media". Though I agree with the other commenters that Gamestop will probably say anything that helps justify their existence in a world of digital downloads and Amazon delivering to your doorstep
"the main improvement we would like to see are on the side of the Nintendo submission processes, support and tools. Everyone who ever had to create a Wii U eManual knows what we are talking about."
Cannot emphasise this enough! Nintendo did a great job of making things easier with NDI, and they now need to do the same for the back-end systems at the end of the development process, (lotcheck etc).
@AlexSora89
"the Wii U was a great platform to develop on"
Once you actually get everything set up, at least from my POV making Unity games for Wii U, the actual development process is pretty smooth, and Nintendo dev support department are really helpful and responsive.
I really hope they go for standard architecture, as it'll make 3rd party dev's lives easier (or in many cases, life easier for of the Unity and Unreal engineers on whom so many devs depend).
If it was a mobile chipset in a portable device, then that's make a bit more sense in being close to Xbox one power and not using x86. But in that case, you'd expect ARM, and not "custom" (unless we're talking highly customised ARM)
@Sakuraichu Quite the opposite. Only the other day I spoke to a developer in the process of submitting to NOA lotcheck. When I asked why not Europe at the same time, the dev was like "Want to get it sorted in NA, then we'll submit it to Europe later". Many of those devs never get as far as "later", because they get burned by the arduousness of the process of getting it onto one territory and conclude it's not worth doing all that again (especially if sales are less than great).
Today I produced two versions of the same trailer, one for NOA, the other for NOE. Two slightly different intros, two slightly different outros, uploaded to two different web portals using two different upload tools. Now multiply that across the entire publishing process.
I really hope that Nintendo are moving towards, if not merging NOA and NOE, then at least presenting a single entity/united front end to which 3rd party devs and publishers can interact with Nintendo and submit their games to. Having to do separate submissions for NOA and NOE as is the case at the moment is a largely pointless duplication of effort for the majority of small to mid sized games.
@Daemonite It's designed to be a really hard game (in a similar vein to super-meatboy, in that you die over and over, but in a "Oooh, so close that time!" way rather than a onerous "ugh now I have to go back to the start" way). To get really good at the game, you need to learn the buttons by heart, so you can play without ever looking down at the controller.
However, you're right in that not having the colours on the buttons of the GamePad/Pro/classic controllers makes it that bit harder to initially learn the colours/buttons.
There's a bunch of tutorial stuff and subtle clues (such as the damage/health dial in the bottom left of the screen has the four colour blocks/gates arranged in the pattern that corresponds to button positions on the controller), but it's not ideal.
The original developer, Jay, from Drop Dead Interactive, is currently working on a PC version, which has the same problem if people use keyboard or a DS3/4 as their weapon of choice, rather than a 360 or X1 pad. So he's been trying out ideas for putting the button symbols / key letters inside each block/gate. That also has the added benefit of making things easier for colour blind people. Depending on how that goes, will probably patch a similar system in for the Wii U version (as will be too late for initial release unless it fails lotcheck again). The only reason for not doing that already is that some later on levels rotate, making it a bit of a question mark about what to do with the symbols. Should they counter-rotate? That would look really weird and be difficult to implement, versus ending up with upside down A's and B's, which could confuse people.
@Luffymcduck Yes, I released a game called Totem Topple last year on Wii U. It didn't do very well, but got a patch for it in lotcheck at the moment which adds a tonne of new features and fixes and totally rebalances the game.
I'm also porting the game Gear Gauntlet to Wii U, which my friend made for XboxOne. That's currently in lotcheck too and fingers crossed will actually be approved this time around.
I figured I wanted both to come out before E3 so they wouldn't get drowned out by any NX news or AAA game announcements from other platforms, but seems the former shouldn't be a concern now. Though my fear is still that Nintendo schedule a surprise NX reveal mid May, which would totally screw my plans up.
I'd also like to port more of my fellow indie dev's games to Wii U and long term, my plan is to build a build a business porting Unity games to PS4/Xbox/WiiU/NX etc, whilst making my own games on the side. But we'll see how things go with this first port, and if I can get any more porting work for Wii U considering it is coming to the end of its life. (Got one friend who has agreed to let me port his game, but he needs to actually finish it first before I can begin!)
Brilliant! This should give me enough time to finish and release my game Flight of Light for the Wii U, and maybe one or two other small projects too. Might even be good to release in January 2017 as people will be getting all excited for NX, but will need games to play in the meantime until it launches.
I'm happy this period of uncertainty is over. Makes planning a lot easier for devs like me. Hopefully Nintendo will be a touch more forthcoming about the NX in the next few months, so can start to brainstorm concepts for pitching to Nintendo. I figure if they let indie devs like me on the platform, then Summer 2017 will be a good bet for launching a game on there, as it'll be after the initial rush of release titles and in a traditionally quiet period for big AAA cross-platform releases
By tying together Xbox and Windows 10 and moving them closer and closer to each other into a single unified Xbox ecosystem, Microsoft are already effectively moving in this same direction.
"One argument could be that technology is advancing quickly and consoles are struggling to keep up"
I think this is right actually. A fixed hardware platform might be alright for 2 or 3 years, but not for 4 or 8. That means there has to be a PS4.1 and PS4.2 etc. Also, as much as gamers might whine about "graphics power" and technological step changes (or lack thereof), it's the services around a console that make such a huge difference these days. The friends lists, achievements, leaderboards, shared user-generated-content, tournaments.
Upgrading the Wii U with a supplementary device is an interesting speculation for sure. Super-fast streaming over a short distance (from supplimentary device to TV or GamePad via Wii U) makes more sense. To my mind, there are too many issues around doing anything in the cloud that is performance related. I'd say maybe the supplimentary device will let people record and upload videos to youtube like how PS4 and Xbox One have those inbuilt features, only we all know how much Nintendo love youtube...
Well I for one am still making games that use the Wii Remote. It's fun! Just that you need to design a game to use it from the ground up, otherwise, much like the GamePad, it feels a bit tacked on.
I way prefer digital when done right (Steam ftw). For indie titles, digital works great, but my Wii U has little space for bigger games, and (totally nonsensical to me) disks seem to be cheaper.
Hopefully the new account system is the first step for Nintendo digital services to catch up to industry standard, and the NX will complete that catch up.
@DefHalan I really like the idea of doing the opposite: Opening up a secret area when you summon your iWin button (whether that's your invincible ally turning up or your BFG spawning or whatever). Then you're forced to choose: Wait for the iWin button to beat the boss and progress on the main path, or choose the secret path but know you've then got to go back at some point and beat the boss without your get-out-of-jail-free card
The other thing is that sometimes it's a nice social thing if you're playing with a younger cousin or family member and you can be cool Uncle Jim who can help complete the difficult sections. Then it's kinda like "yeah, we beat the game together!"
@DefHalan With regards to something like a platform being universally difficult for players to reach, it can sometimes be a clue the control scheme is poorly designed. Or it could be that the game is purposely designed to appeal to people who like difficult games. And even then, you're giving the player super-quick respawn times and frequent checkpoints. So that since you're dying all the time, the actual cost of death is lowered dramatically. Or could be that platform gives you access to a secret area or rare item. But beyond that, it probably is bad level design, if a player can't progress through the main storyline of the game because it's so linear that they have to do a singularly difficult task. Rather than say taking a longer route but with more enemies or an alternative route that's not obvious at first, or needs a puzzle solving to unlock.
I guess you could say that the inverse of dynamic enemy difficulty is dynamic ally difficulty. So your squad mates become that little bit more badass. And I guess that'd fit right in with how Star Fox is constructed.
Though you can also over do it. There's a good story I heard about I think it was Gear's of War, where the author had to leave the room to go attend to their kids or something, came back and found they'd forgotten to pause, and their team mates had cleared the level without them. Without knowing that they'd do that in advance, all the situational stuff, voice acting, explosions etc mean that you feel compelled to start shooting and move through the level, even though you could just stand there and "win" by doing nothing.
Another game I actually quit was Total War: Battles Kingdoms, because whenever you levelled up, the game would always nudge up the difficulty of the battle enemies correspondingly. I wasn't good enough to win a fight more than maybe 1 in 5 times. After spending ages in the game waiting for the damn harvest timers to feed me some measly amount of resources to upgrade my soldiers, any feeling of progress was taken away soon as I tried to then use those better soldiers in battle. The game would up the enemy difficulty in line with how much I'd upgraded by. The difficulty curve was just a permanently high flat line, rather than a series of peaks and troughs.
When you give people the invincibility opt-out in a game, you screw up the difficulty curve, and so consequently, the pacing of the game. That big crecendo moment when the boss is defeated becomes a bit of an anti-climax if it's moved forward because you took that opt-out.
It's different as well from, say, giving the player a Big Frikking Gun, as then, they still have to aim that BFG. And/or maybe they have limited ammo. Then it becomes a feeling of the game giving them a single all-or-nothing chance type of helping hand, but one they still need to take. Rather than simply offering to take control and finish off for them.
An alternative, more cynical argument to all this could just be that when stuck, some people just hop on youtube to see how others play. Whereas that's not so easy in the Nintendo ecosystem.
I read a good article a while back on gamasutra (I think) about this. The gist was that you as a game designer don't really want the player to die as it interrupts the flow of the game. However, players have to have a sense that they might die otherwise the game again loses its appeal. So you have dynamic difficulty - enemies do less damage the more the player is struggling.
A good example being the zombies from Half life. Because they're so in the player's face when attacking, the player rarely looks down at their health to see oh it's only doing 5 damage. The zombie also has 2 attacks, one of which takes way more time to spin up and does way more damage. So the AI gives you a load of soft punches, then eventually gives a big whack so you still die if you just stand there.
Same game also has swarms of low damage dealing enemies, such as the sonic dog thingies. Having loads of enemies attack at once masks the fact that maybe not all enemies are actually dealing damage. The player has too many targets to notice that some are really going easy. But the swarms feel more intense for the same reason of the player having slightly too much to cope with than is comfortable.
Edit: Don't know obviously how Star Fox's enemies, fights etc are set up, so may be it wasn't possible for Nintendo to take the above approach. But still feels like maybe Nintendo are solving the wrong problem. that's my gut instinct fwiw
That's a shame as although I'm not going to GDC, quite often these sort of things end up on GDCVault for free. My Dad works in geospatial industry so always on the lookout for things where that field and games overlap
@TheRealThanos Just because a game is an Xbox exclusive, doesn't mean that Microsoft own the company that made it.
In fact that'd be highly unusual. That's why I'm a little incredulous towards what you're saying.
Also I've seen this happen before. The internet warps things towards hyperbol. People just egg each other on, and before you know it, there's all sorts of unmitigated hate being directed towards whatever/whoever.
There's some important points in what he's saying, which have been lost in the rush to make a value judgement on the messenger, and not the message.
@Yorumi @TheRealThanos Naa, trust me, you're projecting that stuff onto him. When you've been through console certification, especially as an indie, where you're not just picking up a 9 to 5 paycheck doing this stuff for someone else, you'll understand.
@TheRealThanos Basically, as a fellow indie dev, I totally get his frustration and could easily see myself in the same situation. Just snapping and saying "sod it, this stuff needs to be said."
Game dev can be incredibly stressful and the internet makes it easy to speak your thoughts of a fleeting moment, and have them carved into stone for eternity.
Point being, humans aren't corporate robots, and it's unfair to criticise them for that. (All the more ironic that the guy's annoyance is with console makers' monolithic attitude).
Remember there wasn't Unity support for either Xbox One nor PS4 till about a year after they launched. And it took about the same time before id@xbox started to accept devs they hadn't previously worked with.
So this guy, who worked with MS on Xbox One, I can totally understand why he's saying to Nintendo "Start early, because even early is too late!"
Also I don't know the background of the folks who made Ori, but don't just assume they're novices just because the studio has one game under its name. Studios can have a very short lifespan, but often the teams behind them have worked all sorts of places, including big AAA, other indie studios or as contractors burried in the credits if bigger titles (or even not named in credits).
Games like Titanfall or smaller titles like Child of Light are where big AAA publishers can bring something innovative or different. But games like FIFA or CoD? Forget it!
Nintendo need to have a first party killer app/game (or at least the perception of one) on launch day. The FIFA's and CoD's are more like ballast.
I was on team red and got my ass handed to me for all but one game. Yeah I'm a little rusty having not played for a couple of months, but still didn't think I played that bad. Yet I'd go on a good run, get a positive KD ratio, splat a load of turf right up to the enemy's spawn, then die with 30 seconds to go, look back down at the gamepad map and see the rest of the map inked all inked in blue...
Personally a 2017 launch would suit me, as it gives me time to finish up all the games I'm currently developing for Wii U.
But 2016 makes business sense. VR will generate a lot of hype, but it lacks a real killer app/game, and has only a relatively modest volume of substantial sized games. So I think although it will get a favourable reception, it won't sell that well (as in low millions). In that context, NX can directly compete and be a success. The only question being does Nintendo feel it is ready (which ultimately is the most important)
I figured a beefed up NN3DS that could run Unity3d was the end of life strategy to cover them the next few years before its successor came out. Get a bunch of indies like the Vita has to act as filler between a few 1st party titles. But when everything went really quiet after last summer on the Unity front I wondered if they'd dropped the plan altogether. Especially since I think part of the reason Sony dropped PSM was that they baulked at the cost of upgrading PSM Unity to Unity 5. Seems though that Nintendo stuck it out with NN3DS. Guess I should have had more faith!
@RCMADIAX Good idea to test it with a friend's devkit first. At the moment, concentrating on porting other devs' games to WiiU rather than my own games. Don't want to get too distracted by adding another platform, unless lots of people start asking for it. Plus just plain can't afford it right now
Not sure whether it's worth buying a 3DS devkit. As others have said, 3DS is near the end of its life cycle and might be better to wait at least till NX details are announced before making a firm decision. If NX is not coming this year for example, then may just be worth it. Otherwise, as a one-man-band indie, probably better to concentrate my limited resources on WiiU, where I already have experience.
@RCMADIAX Steam is pretty crowded and I remember a while back hearing that only about 1% of users actually buy anything with any sort of regularity (though that still equates to about 1mil users).
9000 unit sales, from my own experience and what I've heard from other devs, is quite good for WiiU eShop. Above average for sure
NX will probably have launched by the time this game is finished, so pointless to put it on the Wii U. Plus even once finished, it takes time to do the port, especially if the engine hasn't been ported to Wii U before. There'd also be no certainty it'd perform up to the same standard as other versions.
I think devs come out the "It's technically impossible" line as a sort of cover-all reason. It's just way too difficult to fully explain this stuff (particularly on twitter!), and lot of technical details are covered by NDA's anyway. I wouldn't read too much into that.
Needs to work as a "conventional" console, and the portable part, if as rumoured it comes, can be an extra, used by Nintendo 1st party games and the more adventurous indies and 3rd parties. Maybe by big 3rd party mobile devs bringing popular Japanese mobile games, or games that might otherwise have been on 3DS.
All this assuming Nintendo actually make games to show off the capabilities of the portable bit this time! Unlike the Wii U, where they never really had a killer app for the gamepad
@rishisquid More important is that Linkle doesn't end up as a Mrs Pacman type character. Either needs to be actually the same character, like Cmdr Sheppard in Mass Effect. It's not like you see femshep and male-Shep having a conversation with each other in-game.
Or needs to have her own distinct identity. E.g. is Link's cousin or just happens to come from the same village where they all dress like that.
I guess we'll find out the answer in Hyrule Warriors, but wouldn't be surprised if Linkle ends up non-canon, or they change her for mainline Zelda in response to feedback in Hyrule Warriors
So, will my NNID still be tied to a single WiiU box? If so, then Nintendo account system is still epic fail. I assume though if you can buy digital games on the web direct to your NNID, it'd be balmy not to let you log in on any WiiU device with that NNID. (Otherwise it's be possible to (accidentally) purchase a game for a device you no longer own, or is damaged, unusable etc).
Also from a dev perspective, great that you can now point an online advert, tweet etc to the Nintendo website and have people purchase the digital game there and then. Should help tighten the purchasing experience. Wonder if Indies will be able to use this and/or whether it'll only come once the new IARC system goes live for Nintendo systems?
I'm glad they're doing something with Miiverse as I think it's a great "my first social network". However, I think they might struggle to get over the network effect unless it integrates with other social networks.
More concerning is that the other games will all be premium, which means they're unlikely to appear on Android (or will get massively pirated)
My concern is that it's only really hardcore gamers who appreciate physical, and that most kids are now raised on mobile gaming, setting their expectations accordingly. If Nintendo doesn't want to get stuck in a niche of just people who grew up playing SNES, it needs to really up its game on the digital side.
Making digital better doesn't have to come at the cost of physical, but the approach to physical needs to evolve. For example, I don't think the future is in optical disks. A USB thumb drive for the special edition, along with the posters and plushies for sure! In fact, I think this will be a big opportunity for Indies and smaller devs in the future, what with 3D printing and building small but super dedicated communities around a game. Still, I feel digital should eventually become the norm (slowly phased in over the next 5 or 10 years). Physical as the primary distribution method is long term going to limit / hurt core gaming.
@SanderEvers Yes exactly, but it'll also extend to "Smart TVs" and tablets/mobiles running Windows 10 or Android (or Steam OS??), with Playstation and Xbox and Steam simply being storefront apps on them, through which you buy and run games, chat to friends on Xbox Live or PSN or whatever. I figure NX is an intermediary step in going towards that "device agnostic" future. That is, Nintendo's mobile games also work on the NX's (rumoured) handheld/mobile unit. If NX runs on Android, then all NX games would in theory be able to run on a bunch of other devices as well, and over time, consoles as stand-alone physical boxes (as we know them today) will sell less and less and eventually be phased out in 5 years time.
Hence the recent news that Xbox is now measuring Xbox Live engagement and subscriptions as their key performance indicator rather than raw Xbox One units sold. (Especially since Xbox Live, and presumably all Xbox games eventually, are coming to Windows 10 PC's. Plus also comments made a few months back by Phil Spencer about "We should have built something like Steam")
From what I've read, it sounds like console & handheld gaming has already become a niche thing in Japan, and in the West, the core gamer market is already wrapped up by Sony & MS.
So yes I hink analysts are right to say Nintendo need to make this stick. The difficult part is the change of attitude needed with mobile games. It's not at all about big flashy releases of super polished products, but rather soft launching a bunch of titles, evolving them in the wild based on metrics, then once the game clicks with consumers, piling in the marketing money.
If Nintendo try to do things "the Nintendo way" they may be in for a rude awakening. However, I believe after their first mobile game flops (and by flop, I mean Angry Birds 2 level of success - great by most people's standards, but pretty mediocre in the grand scheme of the app store), that Nintendo will turn to DeNA and be like "OK, we'll try it your way". And over 3 or 4 games, they'll eventually get it right. Learn when to slap their IP on an otherwise anonymous game that shows really good metrics.(This is where I disagree that the first game will be all or nothing. I think the overall venture must be made to work, but the first Nintendo mobile game will simply be formative, and success will.come a little further down the line)
I played this (survival mode I guess?) at EGX - was quite fun! I got the impression if you played it for a while, there'd definitely be some deeper tactics and planning - who does what and the like
@ejamer The big one for me is the account system. I actually genuinely thought people were joking when I first got my Wii U only to be told that purchases and accounts were locked to that physical box. Steam, I've been through at least 3 PC's now, and whilst disks get lost or scratched, I've still got my whole games library with me at all times. I recently bought Homeworld on Steam for this very reason (a game I already own on disk...somewhere...).
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Re: Nintendo is Making a Subtle Shift in Company Focus
@Malakai The justification for not revealing the hardware too early is that it's so easy these days to manufacture fakes, copycats and imitation products.
The hardware though, is just one part of the offering. Quality software/games can't be knocked-off in a couple of months.
Cloning has always been a factor on PC and mobile (when people aren't out and out pirating games). However, we're moving into an age of games-as-a-service. By the time someone has cloned the original Splatoon, the amount of new weapons and maps made available in the meantime will render the clone out of date (and not like you could connect to the servers anyway).
It's all about staying ahead of the competition and providing the authentic, up to date experience that no clone or pirate ever can, rather than trying to DRM and Lawyer your way to victory. I think though, the latter is written into Nintendo's DNA.
If in 2 years time, the NX's 3rd party offering is just full of games that play identical across PC/PS4/X1/NX. Then, not giving devs a head start on at least knowing what it is, so they can start brainstorming / prototyping, will most likely be identified as one of the causes of any lack of innovation.
Hopefully, I'm doing my fellow indie devs a disservice by suggesting they lack imagination and/or will to make something unique, but there are huge risks for anyone who sticks their neck out to do a platform exclusive these days. Nintendo can't wait too much longer to reveal this thing and not expect devs to say "well sorry, but we're busy with another game/ now".
Re: Nintendo is Making a Subtle Shift in Company Focus
@TruenoGT Can only speak for myself, but having the Wii U as my first Nintendo console, it's disenfranchising the way Nintendo and fans view all those old IP's
Re: FAQ: The GamePad Screen is, Tellingly, Largely Redundant in Breath of the Wild's Demo
Ok, so seems motion controls are still in? That's great as I don't think motion control has quite run its course yet. (Plus I'm building a motion control game and would love to get it on the NX if it at all made sense).
I highly doubt Nintendo are purposely trying to gimp the Wii U version of Zelda. Nor is the GamePad likely to be causing performance issues. Almost certainly it's just a case of too complex to project manage separate builds with different feature sets for different platforms.
Hopefully there'll be something like Smartglass for NX to connect with people's smartphones. If not, whilst a shame, I think Nintendo would be justified in not having a feature that never took off on X1/PS4.
Re: Nintendo is Making a Subtle Shift in Company Focus
Makes sense for Nintendo to leverage their existing assets. Become a sort of Disney of Japan, but with their IP stemming from games first, rather than movies first.
However, Disney is constantly creating new IP. Constantly looking for the next Frozen or Lion King. I don't get that feeling with Nintendo.
Was listening to a podcast recently that suggested Nintendo retire Mario from games, to position of company mascot. In the same way Disney use Mickey Mouse, without him popping up in every second film.
Also I wonder where 3rd party devs fit into this? We still don't know what the NX is, yet Nintendo will need indies and others to help both generate and execute ideas to really sell the NX concept. Their comments recently about people stealing their ideas for the NX sound like something a first year game design student would say, and isn't conducive to an environment where innovation and cross-pollination of ideas thrives.
This line of focusing in on Nintendo IP is just going to further ingrain the feeling of 3rd party devs that they are very much periphery to Nintendo plans. That their games and IP don't fit in with the Nintendo ecosystem of theme parks, films/anime, amiibo and other merchandise, revolving around a core of mobile+NX games.
Re: Editorial: An Ode To The Wii U GamePad, Nintendo's Mad But Brilliant Controller
Shame as touchscreen should have opened up more genres to console gaming, including my favourite, strategy.
I still blame developers (3rd party and Nintendo) for a failure of imagination. Hopefully the NX won't suffer the same fate.
Re: Nintendo Outlines Key Goals to Ensure NX Success
Good that Nintendo have all but confirmed who they are targeting this console at. But be nice to know when we can actually start developing for the system.
Re: Second Wave Of US Pokémon GO Beta Invites Hitting Inboxes As We Speak
Was thinking about Pokémon Go the other day, and would make sense if NX had an AR headset. Then Pokémon Go is the mobile version you take with you to capture Pokémon, but maybe you can do extra stuff with the at-home AR stuff, like train them
Re: Editorial: With Lowered Expectations E3 Can Still Be Full of Nintendo Magic
I'm really just interested in NX and Nintendo have said they don't plan to reveal it at E3. That, plus the lack of opportunity to be surprised by announcements for WiiU and 3DS, is why I'm not very excited.
Re: Developers Don't Seem To Know Any More About Nintendo NX Than You Do
If my knowledge of making & publishing games for the Wii U is also relevant to NX, then it's not such a big deal.
Otherwise, it'll be a pain going back to square one, and that would definitely make me think hard about whether this is something I want to get into.
I think Nintendo at this point are trying to discourage people from jumping on the bandwagon: Either ports of games already out on Steam / ps4 / etc that do nothing to sell the system. Or rushed out games trying to make a quick buck, that likewise do little to enhance the console's overall prospects.
Re: US Retailer GameStop Hoping That Nintendo NX Can Arrest Decline In Hardware Sales
@TheGoof Gamestop did say the NX "will have physical media". Though I agree with the other commenters that Gamestop will probably say anything that helps justify their existence in a world of digital downloads and Amazon delivering to your doorstep
Re: Rumour: Nintendo's Next Generation Handheld Is Codenamed "MH"
@Tsusasi It's plausible "MH" is another iteration of the 3DS.
Re: Third Party Developers Share Their Hopes For Nintendo NX
"the main improvement we would like to see are on the side of the Nintendo submission processes, support and tools. Everyone who ever had to create a Wii U eManual knows what we are talking about."
Cannot emphasise this enough! Nintendo did a great job of making things easier with NDI, and they now need to do the same for the back-end systems at the end of the development process, (lotcheck etc).
@AlexSora89
"the Wii U was a great platform to develop on"
Once you actually get everything set up, at least from my POV making Unity games for Wii U, the actual development process is pretty smooth, and Nintendo dev support department are really helpful and responsive.
Re: Rumour: Sources Go to Battle Again Over Nintendo NX Power
I really hope they go for standard architecture, as it'll make 3rd party dev's lives easier (or in many cases, life easier for of the Unity and Unreal engineers on whom so many devs depend).
If it was a mobile chipset in a portable device, then that's make a bit more sense in being close to Xbox one power and not using x86. But in that case, you'd expect ARM, and not "custom" (unless we're talking highly customised ARM)
Re: Shake-Up to Nintendo Board Brings New Job Titles for Reggie Fils-Aime and Satoru Shibata
@Sakuraichu Quite the opposite. Only the other day I spoke to a developer in the process of submitting to NOA lotcheck. When I asked why not Europe at the same time, the dev was like "Want to get it sorted in NA, then we'll submit it to Europe later". Many of those devs never get as far as "later", because they get burned by the arduousness of the process of getting it onto one territory and conclude it's not worth doing all that again (especially if sales are less than great).
Today I produced two versions of the same trailer, one for NOA, the other for NOE. Two slightly different intros, two slightly different outros, uploaded to two different web portals using two different upload tools. Now multiply that across the entire publishing process.
Re: Shake-Up to Nintendo Board Brings New Job Titles for Reggie Fils-Aime and Satoru Shibata
I really hope that Nintendo are moving towards, if not merging NOA and NOE, then at least presenting a single entity/united front end to which 3rd party devs and publishers can interact with Nintendo and submit their games to. Having to do separate submissions for NOA and NOE as is the case at the moment is a largely pointless duplication of effort for the majority of small to mid sized games.
Re: Nintendo NX Will Be Launched Globally in March 2017
@Daemonite It's designed to be a really hard game (in a similar vein to super-meatboy, in that you die over and over, but in a "Oooh, so close that time!" way rather than a onerous "ugh now I have to go back to the start" way). To get really good at the game, you need to learn the buttons by heart, so you can play without ever looking down at the controller.
However, you're right in that not having the colours on the buttons of the GamePad/Pro/classic controllers makes it that bit harder to initially learn the colours/buttons.
There's a bunch of tutorial stuff and subtle clues (such as the damage/health dial in the bottom left of the screen has the four colour blocks/gates arranged in the pattern that corresponds to button positions on the controller), but it's not ideal.
The original developer, Jay, from Drop Dead Interactive, is currently working on a PC version, which has the same problem if people use keyboard or a DS3/4 as their weapon of choice, rather than a 360 or X1 pad. So he's been trying out ideas for putting the button symbols / key letters inside each block/gate. That also has the added benefit of making things easier for colour blind people. Depending on how that goes, will probably patch a similar system in for the Wii U version (as will be too late for initial release unless it fails lotcheck again). The only reason for not doing that already is that some later on levels rotate, making it a bit of a question mark about what to do with the symbols. Should they counter-rotate? That would look really weird and be difficult to implement, versus ending up with upside down A's and B's, which could confuse people.
Re: Nintendo NX Will Be Launched Globally in March 2017
@Luffymcduck Yes, I released a game called Totem Topple last year on Wii U. It didn't do very well, but got a patch for it in lotcheck at the moment which adds a tonne of new features and fixes and totally rebalances the game.
I'm also porting the game Gear Gauntlet to Wii U, which my friend made for XboxOne. That's currently in lotcheck too and fingers crossed will actually be approved this time around.
I figured I wanted both to come out before E3 so they wouldn't get drowned out by any NX news or AAA game announcements from other platforms, but seems the former shouldn't be a concern now. Though my fear is still that Nintendo schedule a surprise NX reveal mid May, which would totally screw my plans up.
I'd also like to port more of my fellow indie dev's games to Wii U and long term, my plan is to build a build a business porting Unity games to PS4/Xbox/WiiU/NX etc, whilst making my own games on the side. But we'll see how things go with this first port, and if I can get any more porting work for Wii U considering it is coming to the end of its life. (Got one friend who has agreed to let me port his game, but he needs to actually finish it first before I can begin!)
Re: Nintendo NX Will Be Launched Globally in March 2017
Brilliant! This should give me enough time to finish and release my game Flight of Light for the Wii U, and maybe one or two other small projects too. Might even be good to release in January 2017 as people will be getting all excited for NX, but will need games to play in the meantime until it launches.
I'm happy this period of uncertainty is over. Makes planning a lot easier for devs like me. Hopefully Nintendo will be a touch more forthcoming about the NX in the next few months, so can start to brainstorm concepts for pitching to Nintendo. I figure if they let indie devs like me on the platform, then Summer 2017 will be a good bet for launching a game on there, as it'll be after the initial rush of release titles and in a traditionally quiet period for big AAA cross-platform releases
Re: Talking Point: PS4K 'Neo', NX and Supplemental Computing Devices - Home Console Gaming May Be Changing
By tying together Xbox and Windows 10 and moving them closer and closer to each other into a single unified Xbox ecosystem, Microsoft are already effectively moving in this same direction.
"One argument could be that technology is advancing quickly and consoles are struggling to keep up"
I think this is right actually. A fixed hardware platform might be alright for 2 or 3 years, but not for 4 or 8. That means there has to be a PS4.1 and PS4.2 etc. Also, as much as gamers might whine about "graphics power" and technological step changes (or lack thereof), it's the services around a console that make such a huge difference these days. The friends lists, achievements, leaderboards, shared user-generated-content, tournaments.
Upgrading the Wii U with a supplementary device is an interesting speculation for sure. Super-fast streaming over a short distance (from supplimentary device to TV or GamePad via Wii U) makes more sense. To my mind, there are too many issues around doing anything in the cloud that is performance related. I'd say maybe the supplimentary device will let people record and upload videos to youtube like how PS4 and Xbox One have those inbuilt features, only we all know how much Nintendo love youtube...
Re: Soapbox: Nintendo Was Wrong To Turn Its Back On The Wii Remote
Well I for one am still making games that use the Wii Remote. It's fun! Just that you need to design a game to use it from the ground up, otherwise, much like the GamePad, it feels a bit tacked on.
Re: Poll: Are You Ready to Download More of Your Retail Games From the eShop?
I way prefer digital when done right (Steam ftw). For indie titles, digital works great, but my Wii U has little space for bigger games, and (totally nonsensical to me) disks seem to be cheaper.
Hopefully the new account system is the first step for Nintendo digital services to catch up to industry standard, and the NX will complete that catch up.
Re: Editorial: Accessibility Through Optional 'Invincibility' Buffs Can Only Be a Positive for Nintendo
@DefHalan I really like the idea of doing the opposite: Opening up a secret area when you summon your iWin button (whether that's your invincible ally turning up or your BFG spawning or whatever). Then you're forced to choose: Wait for the iWin button to beat the boss and progress on the main path, or choose the secret path but know you've then got to go back at some point and beat the boss without your get-out-of-jail-free card
Re: Editorial: Accessibility Through Optional 'Invincibility' Buffs Can Only Be a Positive for Nintendo
@Yorumi Maybe. Seen plenty of games teach people this way at the start of a level for sure.
I mean I'm sure it won't be a problem, just feels off to me.
Re: Editorial: Accessibility Through Optional 'Invincibility' Buffs Can Only Be a Positive for Nintendo
The other thing is that sometimes it's a nice social thing if you're playing with a younger cousin or family member and you can be cool Uncle Jim who can help complete the difficult sections. Then it's kinda like "yeah, we beat the game together!"
Re: Editorial: Accessibility Through Optional 'Invincibility' Buffs Can Only Be a Positive for Nintendo
@DefHalan With regards to something like a platform being universally difficult for players to reach, it can sometimes be a clue the control scheme is poorly designed. Or it could be that the game is purposely designed to appeal to people who like difficult games. And even then, you're giving the player super-quick respawn times and frequent checkpoints. So that since you're dying all the time, the actual cost of death is lowered dramatically. Or could be that platform gives you access to a secret area or rare item. But beyond that, it probably is bad level design, if a player can't progress through the main storyline of the game because it's so linear that they have to do a singularly difficult task. Rather than say taking a longer route but with more enemies or an alternative route that's not obvious at first, or needs a puzzle solving to unlock.
I guess you could say that the inverse of dynamic enemy difficulty is dynamic ally difficulty. So your squad mates become that little bit more badass. And I guess that'd fit right in with how Star Fox is constructed.
Though you can also over do it. There's a good story I heard about I think it was Gear's of War, where the author had to leave the room to go attend to their kids or something, came back and found they'd forgotten to pause, and their team mates had cleared the level without them. Without knowing that they'd do that in advance, all the situational stuff, voice acting, explosions etc mean that you feel compelled to start shooting and move through the level, even though you could just stand there and "win" by doing nothing.
Another game I actually quit was Total War: Battles Kingdoms, because whenever you levelled up, the game would always nudge up the difficulty of the battle enemies correspondingly. I wasn't good enough to win a fight more than maybe 1 in 5 times. After spending ages in the game waiting for the damn harvest timers to feed me some measly amount of resources to upgrade my soldiers, any feeling of progress was taken away soon as I tried to then use those better soldiers in battle. The game would up the enemy difficulty in line with how much I'd upgraded by. The difficulty curve was just a permanently high flat line, rather than a series of peaks and troughs.
When you give people the invincibility opt-out in a game, you screw up the difficulty curve, and so consequently, the pacing of the game. That big crecendo moment when the boss is defeated becomes a bit of an anti-climax if it's moved forward because you took that opt-out.
It's different as well from, say, giving the player a Big Frikking Gun, as then, they still have to aim that BFG. And/or maybe they have limited ammo. Then it becomes a feeling of the game giving them a single all-or-nothing chance type of helping hand, but one they still need to take. Rather than simply offering to take control and finish off for them.
An alternative, more cynical argument to all this could just be that when stuck, some people just hop on youtube to see how others play. Whereas that's not so easy in the Nintendo ecosystem.
Re: Editorial: Accessibility Through Optional 'Invincibility' Buffs Can Only Be a Positive for Nintendo
I read a good article a while back on gamasutra (I think) about this. The gist was that you as a game designer don't really want the player to die as it interrupts the flow of the game. However, players have to have a sense that they might die otherwise the game again loses its appeal. So you have dynamic difficulty - enemies do less damage the more the player is struggling.
A good example being the zombies from Half life. Because they're so in the player's face when attacking, the player rarely looks down at their health to see oh it's only doing 5 damage. The zombie also has 2 attacks, one of which takes way more time to spin up and does way more damage. So the AI gives you a load of soft punches, then eventually gives a big whack so you still die if you just stand there.
Same game also has swarms of low damage dealing enemies, such as the sonic dog thingies. Having loads of enemies attack at once masks the fact that maybe not all enemies are actually dealing damage. The player has too many targets to notice that some are really going easy. But the swarms feel more intense for the same reason of the player having slightly too much to cope with than is comfortable.
Edit: Don't know obviously how Star Fox's enemies, fights etc are set up, so may be it wasn't possible for Nintendo to take the above approach. But still feels like maybe Nintendo are solving the wrong problem. that's my gut instinct fwiw
Re: Niantic Cancels Pokémon GO Presentation At Game Developers Conference
That's a shame as although I'm not going to GDC, quite often these sort of things end up on GDCVault for free. My Dad works in geospatial industry so always on the lookout for things where that field and games overlap
Re: Ori and the Blind Forest Director Criticises Secrecy and Lack of Access to NX Devkits
@TheRealThanos Just because a game is an Xbox exclusive, doesn't mean that Microsoft own the company that made it.
In fact that'd be highly unusual. That's why I'm a little incredulous towards what you're saying.
Also I've seen this happen before. The internet warps things towards hyperbol. People just egg each other on, and before you know it, there's all sorts of unmitigated hate being directed towards whatever/whoever.
There's some important points in what he's saying, which have been lost in the rush to make a value judgement on the messenger, and not the message.
Re: Ori and the Blind Forest Director Criticises Secrecy and Lack of Access to NX Devkits
@Yorumi @TheRealThanos Naa, trust me, you're projecting that stuff onto him. When you've been through console certification, especially as an indie, where you're not just picking up a 9 to 5 paycheck doing this stuff for someone else, you'll understand.
Re: Ori and the Blind Forest Director Criticises Secrecy and Lack of Access to NX Devkits
@TheRealThanos Basically, as a fellow indie dev, I totally get his frustration and could easily see myself in the same situation. Just snapping and saying "sod it, this stuff needs to be said."
Game dev can be incredibly stressful and the internet makes it easy to speak your thoughts of a fleeting moment, and have them carved into stone for eternity.
Point being, humans aren't corporate robots, and it's unfair to criticise them for that. (All the more ironic that the guy's annoyance is with console makers' monolithic attitude).
Re: Ori and the Blind Forest Director Criticises Secrecy and Lack of Access to NX Devkits
@TheRealThanos I think you guys are projecting way too much into this guy based on one forum post
Re: Ori and the Blind Forest Director Criticises Secrecy and Lack of Access to NX Devkits
Remember there wasn't Unity support for either Xbox One nor PS4 till about a year after they launched. And it took about the same time before id@xbox started to accept devs they hadn't previously worked with.
So this guy, who worked with MS on Xbox One, I can totally understand why he's saying to Nintendo "Start early, because even early is too late!"
Also I don't know the background of the folks who made Ori, but don't just assume they're novices just because the studio has one game under its name. Studios can have a very short lifespan, but often the teams behind them have worked all sorts of places, including big AAA, other indie studios or as contractors burried in the credits if bigger titles (or even not named in credits).
Re: Editorial: Triple-A Third Party Games Will Need Creativity as Well as Marketing for NX Success
Games like Titanfall or smaller titles like Child of Light are where big AAA publishers can bring something innovative or different. But games like FIFA or CoD? Forget it!
Nintendo need to have a first party killer app/game (or at least the perception of one) on launch day. The FIFA's and CoD's are more like ballast.
Re: The Pokémon Splatfest Results Have Been Confirmed
I was on team red and got my ass handed to me for all but one game. Yeah I'm a little rusty having not played for a couple of months, but still didn't think I played that bad. Yet I'd go on a good run, get a positive KD ratio, splat a load of turf right up to the enemy's spawn, then die with 30 seconds to go, look back down at the gamepad map and see the rest of the map inked all inked in blue...
Re: Analyst Firm DFC Believes a 2016 Nintendo NX Launch "Would Be a Mistake"
Personally a 2017 launch would suit me, as it gives me time to finish up all the games I'm currently developing for Wii U.
But 2016 makes business sense. VR will generate a lot of hype, but it lacks a real killer app/game, and has only a relatively modest volume of substantial sized games. So I think although it will get a favourable reception, it won't sell that well (as in low millions). In that context, NX can directly compete and be a success. The only question being does Nintendo feel it is ready (which ultimately is the most important)
Re: Talking Point: The New Nintendo 3DS is Yet to Have a Real Chance to Revive the Portable Family
I figured a beefed up NN3DS that could run Unity3d was the end of life strategy to cover them the next few years before its successor came out. Get a bunch of indies like the Vita has to act as filler between a few 1st party titles. But when everything went really quiet after last summer on the Unity front I wondered if they'd dropped the plan altogether. Especially since I think part of the reason Sony dropped PSM was that they baulked at the cost of upgrading PSM Unity to Unity 5. Seems though that Nintendo stuck it out with NN3DS. Guess I should have had more faith!
Re: Unity Support on New Nintendo 3DS is Now Available to Developers
@RCMADIAX Good idea to test it with a friend's devkit first. At the moment, concentrating on porting other devs' games to WiiU rather than my own games. Don't want to get too distracted by adding another platform, unless lots of people start asking for it. Plus just plain can't afford it right now
Re: Unity Support on New Nintendo 3DS is Now Available to Developers
Not sure whether it's worth buying a 3DS devkit. As others have said, 3DS is near the end of its life cycle and might be better to wait at least till NX details are announced before making a firm decision. If NX is not coming this year for example, then may just be worth it. Otherwise, as a one-man-band indie, probably better to concentrate my limited resources on WiiU, where I already have experience.
Re: Gunman Clive HD Collection Has Sold 9000 Copies But Has Still Made A Profit
@RCMADIAX Steam is pretty crowded and I remember a while back hearing that only about 1% of users actually buy anything with any sort of regularity (though that still equates to about 1mil users).
9000 unit sales, from my own experience and what I've heard from other devs, is quite good for WiiU eShop. Above average for sure
Re: Wii U Version Of Indivisible Not Possible, But NX Is Up For Consideration
NX will probably have launched by the time this game is finished, so pointless to put it on the Wii U. Plus even once finished, it takes time to do the port, especially if the engine hasn't been ported to Wii U before. There'd also be no certainty it'd perform up to the same standard as other versions.
I think devs come out the "It's technically impossible" line as a sort of cover-all reason. It's just way too difficult to fully explain this stuff (particularly on twitter!), and lot of technical details are covered by NDA's anyway. I wouldn't read too much into that.
Re: Review: Totem Topple (Wii U eShop)
@J-Manix98 Offensive how so? If you have any suggestions for how to change it, I'd like to hear
Re: Timing Of NX Launch Could Help Nintendo Grab Some Of Sony And Microsoft's Market Share, Says Analyst
Needs to work as a "conventional" console, and the portable part, if as rumoured it comes, can be an extra, used by Nintendo 1st party games and the more adventurous indies and 3rd parties. Maybe by big 3rd party mobile devs bringing popular Japanese mobile games, or games that might otherwise have been on 3DS.
All this assuming Nintendo actually make games to show off the capabilities of the portable bit this time! Unlike the Wii U, where they never really had a killer app for the gamepad
Re: Editorial: Linkle May be a Clunky Introduction For a 'Female Link', But Opens Up Interesting Possibilities
@rishisquid More important is that Linkle doesn't end up as a Mrs Pacman type character. Either needs to be actually the same character, like Cmdr Sheppard in Mass Effect. It's not like you see femshep and male-Shep having a conversation with each other in-game.
Or needs to have her own distinct identity. E.g. is Link's cousin or just happens to come from the same village where they all dress like that.
I guess we'll find out the answer in Hyrule Warriors, but wouldn't be surprised if Linkle ends up non-canon, or they change her for mainline Zelda in response to feedback in Hyrule Warriors
Re: Details Emerge on How Nintendo Accounts Will Work
So, will my NNID still be tied to a single WiiU box? If so, then Nintendo account system is still epic fail. I assume though if you can buy digital games on the web direct to your NNID, it'd be balmy not to let you log in on any WiiU device with that NNID. (Otherwise it's be possible to (accidentally) purchase a game for a device you no longer own, or is damaged, unusable etc).
Also from a dev perspective, great that you can now point an online advert, tweet etc to the Nintendo website and have people purchase the digital game there and then. Should help tighten the purchasing experience. Wonder if Indies will be able to use this and/or whether it'll only come once the new IARC system goes live for Nintendo systems?
Re: This Is How Nintendo's First Smartphone Game Miitomo Will Work
I'm glad they're doing something with Miiverse as I think it's a great "my first social network". However, I think they might struggle to get over the network effect unless it integrates with other social networks.
More concerning is that the other games will all be premium, which means they're unlikely to appear on Android (or will get massively pirated)
Re: Editorial: It's Far Too Soon to Go Download-Only, and Physical Retail Still Matters
My concern is that it's only really hardcore gamers who appreciate physical, and that most kids are now raised on mobile gaming, setting their expectations accordingly. If Nintendo doesn't want to get stuck in a niche of just people who grew up playing SNES, it needs to really up its game on the digital side.
Making digital better doesn't have to come at the cost of physical, but the approach to physical needs to evolve. For example, I don't think the future is in optical disks. A USB thumb drive for the special edition, along with the posters and plushies for sure! In fact, I think this will be a big opportunity for Indies and smaller devs in the future, what with 3D printing and building small but super dedicated communities around a game. Still, I feel digital should eventually become the norm (slowly phased in over the next 5 or 10 years). Physical as the primary distribution method is long term going to limit / hurt core gaming.
Re: Analysts Talk About Nintendo's Upcoming Mobile Release Strategy
@SanderEvers Yes exactly, but it'll also extend to "Smart TVs" and tablets/mobiles running Windows 10 or Android (or Steam OS??), with Playstation and Xbox and Steam simply being storefront apps on them, through which you buy and run games, chat to friends on Xbox Live or PSN or whatever. I figure NX is an intermediary step in going towards that "device agnostic" future. That is, Nintendo's mobile games also work on the NX's (rumoured) handheld/mobile unit. If NX runs on Android, then all NX games would in theory be able to run on a bunch of other devices as well, and over time, consoles as stand-alone physical boxes (as we know them today) will sell less and less and eventually be phased out in 5 years time.
Hence the recent news that Xbox is now measuring Xbox Live engagement and subscriptions as their key performance indicator rather than raw Xbox One units sold. (Especially since Xbox Live, and presumably all Xbox games eventually, are coming to Windows 10 PC's. Plus also comments made a few months back by Phil Spencer about "We should have built something like Steam")
Re: Analysts Talk About Nintendo's Upcoming Mobile Release Strategy
From what I've read, it sounds like console & handheld gaming has already become a niche thing in Japan, and in the West, the core gamer market is already wrapped up by Sony & MS.
So yes I hink analysts are right to say Nintendo need to make this stick. The difficult part is the change of attitude needed with mobile games. It's not at all about big flashy releases of super polished products, but rather soft launching a bunch of titles, evolving them in the wild based on metrics, then once the game clicks with consumers, piling in the marketing money.
If Nintendo try to do things "the Nintendo way" they may be in for a rude awakening. However, I believe after their first mobile game flops (and by flop, I mean Angry Birds 2 level of success - great by most people's standards, but pretty mediocre in the grand scheme of the app store), that Nintendo will turn to DeNA and be like "OK, we'll try it your way". And over 3 or 4 games, they'll eventually get it right. Learn when to slap their IP on an otherwise anonymous game that shows really good metrics.(This is where I disagree that the first game will be all or nothing. I think the overall venture must be made to work, but the first Nintendo mobile game will simply be formative, and success will.come a little further down the line)
Re: Video: New Aperion Cyberstorm Trailer Shows Off Multiplayer 'Onslaught' Play
I played this (survival mode I guess?) at EGX - was quite fun! I got the impression if you played it for a while, there'd definitely be some deeper tactics and planning - who does what and the like
Re: Poll: The Tricky Issue of Retail Games as Download-Only Releases
@ejamer The big one for me is the account system. I actually genuinely thought people were joking when I first got my Wii U only to be told that purchases and accounts were locked to that physical box. Steam, I've been through at least 3 PC's now, and whilst disks get lost or scratched, I've still got my whole games library with me at all times. I recently bought Homeworld on Steam for this very reason (a game I already own on disk...somewhere...).