Said it before and I'll say it again. I've been happily living all-digital on PC/Steam for 7 or 8 years now and would never go back. If Wii U was like Steam, there'd be no debate. But it isn't and I can totally understand why people still prefer retail.
Having just done the PEGI/USK thing, it wasn't actually as bad as I was expecting. But it's still time consuming and expensive, and be nice to release games in Australia (which at the moment is unlikely unless the game turns out to be a spectacular success elsewhere).
I'd broadly agree with all of that. The only thing I'd add is being more aggressive at picking up high quality indies, who can then preach about the NX and reach places that Nintendo as a big corporation can't.
Also on the broad audience thing, Neko Atsume sequel as a launch title!
I clearly remember talking to one parent at a games convention who said she bought her son a Wii U, as the more family friendly option than Playstation or Xbox. But was now struggling to find games for it [that her son wanted to play]. I recommended Splatoon, or buy a PC and get Steam.
Above a certain age, kids all want what everyone else on the playground has, and someone's big brother has a PS4 or X1. Below that age is Minecraft territory. Seriously, there's a reason MS paid $2.5bil for it, and that's because it represents a whole generation of kids. It's like my generation are the Harry Potter generation, whereas this generation is the Minecraft generation. Can't underestimate how much not having Minecraft has hurt Wii U if it was actually aimed at kids.
However, it feels like a lot of Wii U games aren't actually aimed at families or kids at all, even if they might at first appear to be. Yoshi's Woolly World is clearly not a game for 10 year old boys. That yarn amiibo belongs on Etsy, not in GameStop. Amiibos in general are for people who grew up with SNES or whatever. Again, no 10 year olds are gonna know who half those characters are. Wii U is really a console aimed at 30 somethings who are bored of endless gritty shooters and just want something fun and colourful. Even Bayonetta is self-aware enough to not take itself too seriously.
@RCMADIAX Likewise, first I've heard of this. I wonder if existing devs will get access to it (or maybe we're just not high up enough in Nintendo's standings)? Kinda tempting to go through the registration process just to see what happens.
In any case, I've been quite critical of some of Nintendo's systems in the past. Anything that makes ROM submission easier is a big win in my books. As I said in comments on a previous article, really hope they merge the separate NOA and NOE publishing portals.
As someone new to console gaming (coming from PC), stuff like Amiibos and Rare Replay are really disenfranchising. I can imagine it's even worse for non-gamers.
I want to say that's a problem, but PS4, and Xbox One to a lesser extent, have been a smashing success just appealing to the hardcore market.
@MadAdam81 That's one possible way of doing it. Or you could make a new subsidiary as @whodatninja suggested. The tricky part is how you structure it legally, and I think that is a big part of why it hasn't happened yet.
As for quality control, that's infinitely debatable. At the moment, at least for Wii U, quality control is like the food standards agency inspecting different food products to make sure they don't kill anyone or contain nasty substances. But they don't test for "does it taste good". They let the free market decide that, as does Nintendo for their games.
Interestingly, the less "ingredients" a game has, the easier it is to pass. No miiverse? No leaderboards? Such simple gameplay that it'd be harder to code a crash-causing bug than not? Passes lotcheck first time!
Should Nintendo say "sorry, the game passes all the tests, but it's just not very fun / is yet another flappy bird clone, so we're not going to allow it on the system"? It's what ID@Xbox are doing. Probably not so great for indie developers like me, but better for consumers and the long term health of the system for sure!
Instead, what it often feels like is that with Wii U and PS4 have overly complicated bureaucratic systems to act as a filter and put the massed ranks of developers off. Well I can't get a fixed/static IP address because I'm an indie in my stupidly expensive London shoebox-cum-bedroom with a landlord who certainly isn't willing to go through the inconvenience of changing ISP and (hahaha) paying more to do so! So that's PS4 dev out the window. Whereas if I impress Strategic Content with my shiny near-finished game they'll help expedite some of that tedious paperwork and I'll sing their praises about how "indie friendly" they are.
Ultimately that's a false economy, but I don't think it's actually true either.
@Damo Whatever you make of the above philosophical debate about quality control (which actually you already answered as I was typing this and I probably agree with you ), because of the volume and hands-off nature of mobile app stores, Google and Apple have had to optimise their back end systems. Moreover, those systems were designed recently, and bespoke for the app stores they serve.
Ultimately, that means they are just more efficient than Nintendo's. I can think of one very specific example where on a couple of occasions, I've lost a half day of time in lotcheck queue because I made a typo in entering in information that I have to enter every time I make a submission with Nintendo, but which Google Play, after the first time I enter said info, saves for me for future use.
The problem is a lot of developers, like me, have now experienced that more efficient mobile way of publishing. So when faced for the first time with some of the Nintendo systems' foibles, like the one above, it typically elicits a response along the lines of "what the actual hell. That's massively inconvenient, makes no sense". Then I go away and think about it and actually, yes it makes sense for Wii retail disk compatibility or something like that.
The NoA-NoE split is one of those "something like that" situations. Ok, in the past for whatever reason, it made sense to have a legal separation between NoA and NoE, and now I can see that means that this thing I'm doing has to be done that way.
If Nintendo want to make a more modern, fit for purpose system that's friendly for small 3rd party devs, they need to start clearing some of these legacy issues clogging things up. NoA-NoE split is one of them, so if they can find a way that makes sense from a legal perspective (as often the issues are obviously a legal or compliance thing) then makes sense to do so.
Unfortunately, as implied, other things like backward compatibility would ideally have to similarly be dropped. Obviously not very popular for die-hard Nintendo fans. That's the kind of difficult tradeoff platform holders have to make, but which consumers who haven't had experience of the above won't understand.
Or maybe Nintendo don't want a system friendly to small 3rd party devs and actually are happier to deal with a few people from Curve Digital or Team17, who help do some of the quality filtering anyway. My plan b if my games turn out to be crap is to go off and work for a company like that. (Though I've already said waaay more than I should, so will shut up now so as to not hurt my future career prospects anymore )
@Damo @EllenJMiller If I wasn't under NDA, I could reel off at least 5 great reasons off the top of my head that would have saved me, Nintendo, and I'm sure other 3rd party devs days or weeks of development time and admin time. And probably find another half dozen reasons if I sat down and thought about it.
I'm not suggesting they close offices, as especially for marketing and localisation, it makes sense to have people in different offices around the world.
Nintendo are making big strides in improving that stuff I can't talk about. Even in the short time I've been a licensed 3rd party developer with them, and from talking to devs who've worked with Nintendo in the more distant past, it's clear that they've moved on massively in recent years.
It's not exclusive to Nintendo either. I've seen folks on XDev teams literally sat at a bar at the bottom of a bottle after finally making it through TRC's months after the game was finished. I know people who've gone through multiple rounds of cert for Xbox and it's soul destroying. Particularly for indies who can't just pick up their pay packet at the end of a 9-5 shift and go relax for the weekend. Who are emotionally involved in these games in every way, not just one of a number of games their publisher is putting out that month.
An opportunity now exists with NX coming along to solve some of the problems that can only really be fixed by starting afresh and building from the ground up.
Many of those problems come from the NoA-NoE split. Maybe they don't have to "merge", but 3rd party devs would benefit massively from legally and technically having only one Nintendo to deal with.
(Also, as a bit of an aside, when I talk to other indie devs and say I'm working on Wii U, a number say to me they'd love to publish their games in Japan, the home country of all those cool Nintendo and Sony games they grew up playing. They already can release their games in Japan... on Google Play. They can... on iOS App Store. They can... on PC. It's nigh on impossible for either Sony or Nintendo systems. You can probably count on one hand the number of non-AAA devs who've done it. This is purely from an admin point of view. Not talking localisation. I and many others would love to see NoJ mixed into that as well.
I know a guy who was an executive for Oracle in Asia-Pacific..except for Japan, where they had an entirely separate business division, such is their way of doing business. So I know how unrealistic that hope is. But not having that NoA-NoE split would be a good first step to one day being able to publish globally to Nintendo systems)
I hope he merges NoA and NoE. Times have changed and that split simply makes no sense anymore. It leads to so much needless duplication of effort both by Nintendo and 3rd party devs.
CEO's have all sorts of legal responsibilities and many spend most of their time doing dull admin stuff, with the grand strategy decided by a team of top people. Often you see tech startup where the founder eventually takes a more product focused hands on role and leaves what is technically the top job to a boring business man.
That's probably why Miyamoto would be wasted in that role, as romantic as the notion seems from the outside.
"Get the right people and success will follow", so the saying goes. It may be that's one of the signs Nintendo are putting out by promoting head of HR. Equally, it may be he was the best qualified Japanese guy at HQ with extensive US experience.
Nintendo from what I can see has a lot of bureaucracy and duplication of effort. I hope he will focus on streamlining the company, and especially on making life easier for for small 3rd party western developers like me
As a developer making a game that uses Wiimotes, I'll definitely be releasing the game on Apple TV. But if AppleTV appstore is anything like mobile, it'll come to Wii U first. It's a smaller market with less competition, and so more opportunity to get noticed and featured by Apple when it does hit Apple TV. Versus sinking without a trace in the ocean of shovelware.
The question for WiiU owners is if other devs will take the same attitude.
On the rumours of a Wiimote-like controller, or at least one that has motion control. If that's the case, it could mean lots of games made for one, could also work on the other (on a game design/conceptual level). I.e. lots of games "Coming to Apple TV and WiiU". Which may or may not be a good thing depending on how it pans out and your views on motion control.
Whilst it makes sense for Nintendo to put their games on it, Apple TV could be a direct competitor to NX in the scenario where NX is a FireTV-like set top box console. So I'm very much skeptical that this is more than just the guys at Nintendo Life wanting to write about Apple and needing an excuse
I always want to play against people better than me as that's one of the best ways to learn and improve. If Splatoon matchmaking decides that's against a room full of Japanese players, bring it on! (It invariably does due to the times of day I play)
Edit: Ok, some people genuinely live in countries with poor connectivity to outside the country, but talking places like Australia and South Africa, not Europe or North America.
Interesting that a smaller (indie?) dev like Yatch Club is doing this. I personally think games with an NFC component have massive untapped potential way beyond what amiibo currently offers.
My concern as before, is that there are now a confusing array of amiibo's and matrix of compatibility with various games. I understand the collectors aspect of it, but for people like me who didn't grow up with Nintendo and who aren't collectors, amiibo's just come across as over complicated.
I'd rather that there were fewer amiibo's (like 10 or something) but that each one worked with every Nintendo game and some 3rd party games, and did something more interesting than just unlocking extra skins
@Damo @Tsurii I backed it before they started with the stretch goals, and also this was before I got my Wii U.
Double checked, and it seems it is being made in GameMaker. PS4 has GameMaker support, making that the most likely target after PC. GameMaker also exports to HTML5, so should in theory work with NWF, but I don't know if anyone has actually done that yet? Or could be they rewrite it in Unity? Guess we'll find out
I also thought this was not coming to Wii U, since I seem to remember it was being made in monogame or gamemaker, or some other engine that Wii U didn't support.
I backed the kickstarter as well, but not that fussed about it being delayed. That's just the way these things work. Generally with kickstarters that I've backed, unless it's a kick-finisher type of campaign, I'm happy to sit here and get weekly or monthly emails from the creators. So long as it's clear they're making progress. The game will arrive when it's done, and when that happens, great!
The only annoying thing would be if Xbox One and PS4 get a version before Wii U. I totally understand why developers release on one platform at a time, but still frustrating if my chosen platform(s) happen to be near the end of the list
@doitcom Thanks! Will be my 3rd Insomnia as an exhibitor so maybe you've even played one of my games before?
Also, from speaking to the Insomnia organisers previously, sounds like they've been trying to persuade Nintendo to come along for a while, so great Nintendo have finally said yes!
I'm gonna bring along a couple of the Wii U games I'm making to Insomnia, though will be in the indie section / not officially with Nintendo (so maybe won't bring along my devkit hidden in a shoebox, just in case someone from Nintendo wanders past )
QoL makes business sense from the broader big picture perspective. I wonder if they tried a bunch of stuff only to find none of it was really clicking. It always seemed a bit nebulous as to what QoL would actually mean in terms of tangible product, so may have been Nintendo just didn't find that killer product that really leveraged their expertise.
But most likely it's a case of QoL was stretching them too thin, so they've prioritised NX and mobile, even if QoL is something they'd like to do
@FargusPelagius I think it's less about the SDK and more that devs weren't willing to (re)design games just for Wii U's gamepad.
Using gamepad in Unity is super-easy and Unity is very flexible - certainly you can make far more than just side scrolling platformers. There's clearly a failure of imagination on the part of devs, as well as a failure from Nintendo to the reduce risks of attempting something creative / different with the gamepad
Splatoon still didn't create as big an uptick on Wii U sales as Mario Kart 8. The rest of the games slated for Wii U, especially Mario Maker, will only really appeal to existing Nintendo fans / Wii U owners. My feeling is that Wii U will remain a console with a small but very loyal fanbase.
@the-madprofessor @andrewccal Could have sworn I'd tried that! In any case, if that doesn't work, will give @Tman 's suggestion a go as fairly certain I've got one of those adapters kicking around
So my TV is actually a PC monitor with HDMI. Therefore doesn't have speakers. It frustrates me on most games I can only get music and full sounds on gamepad when I play in modes that just duplicate TV on Gamepad. Splatoon is not one of those games, so I play mostly to my own music, but be nice if Nintendo put in an option.
@Platypus101 Well, my vested interest is that I'm making a couple of games for Wii U, so definitely hoping it'll be around for another few years. If NX is pitched at a more casual (or Japanese) audience then there's a chance Wii U can run parallel to that for a while as the "core gamer" (or at least more "core gamer" than NX) part of their offering.
It all depends on the feels people get about the NX, plus it's release date, once the details are properly announced. That'll determine how quickly the bottom drops out of the Wii U market
@Platypus101 The couch sitting controller holding gaming community is remember, only a small minority of people who play games. To my mind, PS4 and Xbox One already have that market wrapped up, and Nintendo's games don't really feel like they fit in there anyway.
But yes, I meant more "at least" 3 or 4 years, and it may indeed be more like 10. That's why I'm skeptical of the analysts' suggestion Nintendo could have found a way to make a VR and/or AR solution appeal beyond core gamers shooting aliens (as cool as that is).
This would be cool, but there's a bunch of other forms NX could take, so will wait and see. I was kinda half hoping Nintendo would announce NX as supporting Oculus Rift and maybe some other headsets, but then MS beat them to the punch by saying Xbox One would support Oculus Rift.
Definitely agree also with the feeling that current VR solutions aren't mass market, but rather only likely to appeal to hardcore gamers or be used in commercial/industrial/defence settings (none of whom are going to buy large volumes of headsets, even if they do use them for some really interesting applications).
Personally, I'd love a consumer grade AR headset that people can take outdoors and play with, but having heard reports about HoloLense and its limited field of view, I just can't see it happening in the next 3 or 4 years.
@vitalemrecords Must admit, to people who have no knowledge of gaming, I usually just say "I'm working on a game for Nintendo's latest console (the Wii U)" since it's too difficult to explain that it's not the Wii, but the Wii 2 but it's not actually called that. Same as I just refer to PS4 and X1 as the more generic "Playstation" or "Xbox" and most people nod as they've actually heard of those. Except my Chinese teacher, who had never heard of Nintendo...
Also really hoping Nintendo just stick with the NX name. Maybe the "X" bit stands for "Xbox" and Nintendo are actually just going to make a storefront on Windows 10, which in turn will then work with Xbox as well as PC's, Windows phone/tablet etc. seriousface
Sounds like NX might support UE4 then. That'll be a good boost for 3rd party support, vs Wii U, which doesn't have UE4 support. It implies either that NX has similar architecture to something else UE4 already supports, or that Square Enix already has some NX devits. Still lots of "if's" though, so not going to read too heavily into it.
That box - the yellow plus lots of little bricks - definitely reminds me of the old Lego box branding. Probably just coincidental.
If it was up to me, I'd have a cut-price Christmas bundle of console + Mario Kart 8 + Splatoon, but I don't think that's realistically going to shift the needle. Probably most people who were ever likely to buy a Wii U have now got one.
Maybe a Minecraft bundle could persuade parents that the most kid friendly console, with all the games little timmy actually wants, is the Wii U. But that's highly unlikely now that MS own Minecraft.
@MamaLuigi @Quorthon Sorry, but you need to stop dismissing things as "fads". The Wiimote was the right device for the audience Nintendo were targeting, but the success was also predicated on having the right price, right games and also the timing.
I think @The_Dude_Abides has it spot on. The point about the social stuff is that consumers increasingly expect to be able to share their gaming - on youtube, twitch, and also on social networks that are already part of their lives. They're doing so not on dedicated boxes, but services like Steam or PSNow or Windows 10 that work across a range of devices.
I was in the 0% who voted for smartphone style games
That's not exactly what I want, but Nintendo need to go full in if they are gunning for the hardcore market, and my feeling is that it's just not in Nintendo's nature to make gritty testosterone fueled games. Plus PS4/X1 already have that market wrapped up and the Wii U showed there's no middle ground between casual and core.
So they should focus on making mobile games to get new customers, then upsell/offer the bigger versions of those games on NX.
This suggests Nintendo have decided to exit the core gamer market. That's probably the right decision, as it's relatively small (~50mil consumers worldwide?) and already dominated by MS and Sony.
The problem is getting 'casual' gamers to buy dedicated hardware when everyone already has a phone they can play games on.
The way I could see Nintendo doing this is by working on getting their 3DS customer base onto the new device. Partnering with companies like Atlus and other 3rd party Japanese publishers with already successful 3DS games. Launch with Animal Crossing and all those amiibo and amiibo cards supported. Plus bring in the likes of Gung-ho, Gree, Nexon and so on, as well of course as DeNA. Making familiar mobile brands available on a FireTV type device, like they did when bringing Puzzle & Dragon to 3DS. And of course having their own newly released mobile games cross over with the NX. It'd be a very Japanese centric strategy though, even if it plays to all their strengths.
A summer 2017 launch is plausible. Give them time to iron out teething problems in the lead-up to holiday 2017 then release some big hitting game titles in time for Black Friday in the US.
But summer 2016, I think Nintendo will struggle to give NX a strong launch lineup. Since they identified both Wii U and 3DS's poor launch as a problem they want to avoid, I can't see them rushing it just for the sake of cashflow.
It may be the specs are pretty much locked in and that they plan to manufacture a large stockpile? Or could be something daft like them using commodity / off-the-shelf components, but anticipating that Samsung or Apple are going to be using the same components later in 2016 for a large run of phones/TV's, at which point there'll be constricted supply.
Could also be Nintendo asked their suppliers the hypothetical "What's the quickest turn-around time if we were to give you these specs, and you were to get started asap?" If so, I'd suspect Nintendo are unlikely ready to give the go ahead quite yet. So the timing intervals are probably accurate, but not the start date (and so not the subsequent implied release date either)
@thatguyEZ It's not "couldn't be bothered". Not having a go at you personally, but we really need to dispel this myth of lazy devs. The majority of devs really give their all for the games they are making. The reason there are so many shoddy games out there is because it takes longer to make a quality game than pump out rubbish. Plus there are now large numbers of new developers hitting the scene, so proportionally there are far more "my first games" coming to market.
With Spacebase DF-9, it just wasn't popular enough to justify spending any more money on it. Why continue to pour time and money into a game that just isn't very fun / which no one really wants, and will never make a return?
The issue is more that they promised a whole laundry list of features, rather than committing to just a few at a time that they could then guarantee to complete before assessing whether it was worth starting on the next set.
That was a mistake by the developers (rather than anything malicious) and shows that even a studio with a reputation for making great games can still get it wrong when experimenting with a new business model.
It's ironic people still reference the game as an example of Early Access failing, since if that many people actually cared about the game itself, it'd probably still be going!
I'm not sure consoles are the right place for Early Access. It stems from the idea of MVP (minimum viable product) which is all about rapid iteration on a live product with a relatively small userbase until things click into place. It takes a combination of the right type of game and the right type of developer to do it.
I think as well, NOT having those games listed in the eShop would be a big help - so only those who are invested enough to follow the developers on social media or sites like this to get a download code actually play the game. And have a bit more understanding onf what is both expected from the developer and from them
For Early Access to work, developers need really good communication with players, and the ability to patch and update games super-fast.
As in, when a game-breaking bug appears, a player discovering it needs to be able to tell devs about it as fast and efficiently as possible. The devs then need a way to tell all the other players about the bug so they know to avoid it and that it's being fixed. The devs then need to fix said bug and apply a patch live to the game. And finally tell players the bug is fixed.
The turn around on that entire cycle needs to be in the range of 24 hours or less. Nintendo and consoles in general simply aren't set up for that. It's a great idea (for the right type of game and developer), but in practice, I can't see it working unless NX is radically different from Wii U in terms of publishing setup
I don't care particularly about the specs. The important thing is that Nintendo improve their publishing processes. Also making the build pipeline easier - Ideally the ability to deploy builds straight to retail devices once the console launches in stores. Unity support is also a must for me.
This is all assuming they'll still let random indies like me onto the console. May be they are a lot more selective with their dev program for NX than they were with Wii U. Be interesting to find out
I liked the developer stories and I also think it was right to not show mobile stuff at E3. Personally I don't mind hearing about mobile games, but I know the "gamer" audience has a massive hangup about them, and since perception is everything in this market, skipping mobile was the right choice.
I heard on another website a suggestion for Nintendo to do their own "Nintendo Fest" where they can talk about & stream just Nintendo stuff and not have to complete with everyone else for attention. Still do E3 but give NX andmobile and other announcements their own dedicated thing, and then just have a special edition Nintendo Direct at E3 (kinda like how they did it this year).
I definitely want to play as an Octoling. Already assumed it'd be relatively easy to implement since the art assets have already been made. Just be a case of if/how/when Nintendo decide they want to do it.
Though thinking about it, a lot of those hats and other headgear might not fit on the Octolings, so maybe not quite as easy to just throw the switch and let players pick Octoling at the start.
I think NX should be device agnostic. Meaning it's basically an app store for buying Nintendo games, plus services like achievements, leaderboards and whatever replaces miiverse, that can run on a bunch of different devices. Basically a Nintendo version of Steam that also runs on mobiles and smart TVs.
Nintendo could release a dedicated NX device for core fans that runs the NX software games and services, and maybe also supports the old hardware like the gamepad, wiimotes and so on for backwards compatibility. If they make it work with Android, they could take advantage of the existing emulators out there to give further backward compatibility - potentially everything for which a rom exists. But at the same time release new games on Android for more casual audiences.
They'd also sidestep the whole performance/specs thing as the 'platform' could be just insalled on whatever new latest greatest device.
Unfortunately demos are a pain in the ass to make, and there's some statistical evidence to suggest they actually reduce sales overall.
The comments are probably not aimed at people here, but the 95% who will buy MK8 and a couple of other retail titles and leave it at that. They probably don't browse the eShop and don't follow the latest Nintendo happenings on twitter or through sites like NintendoLife. So the challenge for Nintendo is how to match them with the games they are willing to buy / will enjoy
I liked the way it was presented, but I'm new to Nintendo consoles with WiiU and I don't own a 3DS, so there was nothing of interest. Sorry, but Star Fox just looks meh compared to Elite Dangerous, which my flatmate has been raving about recently.
As an indie dev making games for WiiU, was a sad day. There wasn't even an indie sizzle reel. All the signs are that Nintendo have given up on WiiU.
Comments 206
Re: Poll: The Tricky Issue of Retail Games as Download-Only Releases
Said it before and I'll say it again. I've been happily living all-digital on PC/Steam for 7 or 8 years now and would never go back. If Wii U was like Steam, there'd be no debate. But it isn't and I can totally understand why people still prefer retail.
Re: International Age Rating Coalition System, IARC, Set to Come to the eShop "Very Soon"
Having just done the PEGI/USK thing, it wasn't actually as bad as I was expecting. But it's still time consuming and expensive, and be nice to release games in Australia (which at the moment is unlikely unless the game turns out to be a spectacular success elsewhere).
Re: Talking Point: Five Key Challenges Nintendo Faces with the NX
I'd broadly agree with all of that. The only thing I'd add is being more aggressive at picking up high quality indies, who can then preach about the NX and reach places that Nintendo as a big corporation can't.
Also on the broad audience thing, Neko Atsume sequel as a launch title!
Re: Parent Trap: ​Does The Wii U Still Make Sense For Families?
I clearly remember talking to one parent at a games convention who said she bought her son a Wii U, as the more family friendly option than Playstation or Xbox. But was now struggling to find games for it [that her son wanted to play]. I recommended Splatoon, or buy a PC and get Steam.
Above a certain age, kids all want what everyone else on the playground has, and someone's big brother has a PS4 or X1. Below that age is Minecraft territory. Seriously, there's a reason MS paid $2.5bil for it, and that's because it represents a whole generation of kids. It's like my generation are the Harry Potter generation, whereas this generation is the Minecraft generation. Can't underestimate how much not having Minecraft has hurt Wii U if it was actually aimed at kids.
However, it feels like a lot of Wii U games aren't actually aimed at families or kids at all, even if they might at first appear to be. Yoshi's Woolly World is clearly not a game for 10 year old boys. That yarn amiibo belongs on Etsy, not in GameStop. Amiibos in general are for people who grew up with SNES or whatever. Again, no 10 year olds are gonna know who half those characters are. Wii U is really a console aimed at 30 somethings who are bored of endless gritty shooters and just want something fun and colourful. Even Bayonetta is self-aware enough to not take itself too seriously.
Re: Nintendo Launches Updated Developer Portal Website
Nevermind, managed to get access. Was just using the wrong password
Re: Nintendo Launches Updated Developer Portal Website
@RCMADIAX Likewise, first I've heard of this. I wonder if existing devs will get access to it (or maybe we're just not high up enough in Nintendo's standings)? Kinda tempting to go through the registration process just to see what happens.
In any case, I've been quite critical of some of Nintendo's systems in the past. Anything that makes ROM submission easier is a big win in my books. As I said in comments on a previous article, really hope they merge the separate NOA and NOE publishing portals.
Re: Talking Point: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD Would be No Surprise, as Nostalgia Rules for Nintendo
As someone new to console gaming (coming from PC), stuff like Amiibos and Rare Replay are really disenfranchising. I can imagine it's even worse for non-gamers.
I want to say that's a problem, but PS4, and Xbox One to a lesser extent, have been a smashing success just appealing to the hardcore market.
Re: New Euro Wii U Premium Bundle Contains Mario Kart 8 And Splatoon
A strong final push to anyone who might have still been fence sitting or maybe couldn't afford a Wii U when those games first came out.
I think after this holiday season and this bundle, can probably definitively say anyone who was ever likely to get a Wii U will have already got one.
Re: Talking Point: Tatsumi Kimishima Is A Safe Pair Of Hands In Changing Times
@MadAdam81 That's one possible way of doing it. Or you could make a new subsidiary as @whodatninja suggested. The tricky part is how you structure it legally, and I think that is a big part of why it hasn't happened yet.
As for quality control, that's infinitely debatable. At the moment, at least for Wii U, quality control is like the food standards agency inspecting different food products to make sure they don't kill anyone or contain nasty substances. But they don't test for "does it taste good". They let the free market decide that, as does Nintendo for their games.
Interestingly, the less "ingredients" a game has, the easier it is to pass. No miiverse? No leaderboards? Such simple gameplay that it'd be harder to code a crash-causing bug than not? Passes lotcheck first time!
Should Nintendo say "sorry, the game passes all the tests, but it's just not very fun / is yet another flappy bird clone, so we're not going to allow it on the system"? It's what ID@Xbox are doing. Probably not so great for indie developers like me, but better for consumers and the long term health of the system for sure!
Instead, what it often feels like is that with Wii U and PS4 have overly complicated bureaucratic systems to act as a filter and put the massed ranks of developers off. Well I can't get a fixed/static IP address because I'm an indie in my stupidly expensive London shoebox-cum-bedroom with a landlord who certainly isn't willing to go through the inconvenience of changing ISP and (hahaha) paying more to do so! So that's PS4 dev out the window. Whereas if I impress Strategic Content with my shiny near-finished game they'll help expedite some of that tedious paperwork and I'll sing their praises about how "indie friendly" they are.
Ultimately that's a false economy, but I don't think it's actually true either.
@Damo Whatever you make of the above philosophical debate about quality control (which actually you already answered as I was typing this and I probably agree with you ), because of the volume and hands-off nature of mobile app stores, Google and Apple have had to optimise their back end systems. Moreover, those systems were designed recently, and bespoke for the app stores they serve.
Ultimately, that means they are just more efficient than Nintendo's. I can think of one very specific example where on a couple of occasions, I've lost a half day of time in lotcheck queue because I made a typo in entering in information that I have to enter every time I make a submission with Nintendo, but which Google Play, after the first time I enter said info, saves for me for future use.
The problem is a lot of developers, like me, have now experienced that more efficient mobile way of publishing. So when faced for the first time with some of the Nintendo systems' foibles, like the one above, it typically elicits a response along the lines of "what the actual hell. That's massively inconvenient, makes no sense". Then I go away and think about it and actually, yes it makes sense for Wii retail disk compatibility or something like that.
The NoA-NoE split is one of those "something like that" situations. Ok, in the past for whatever reason, it made sense to have a legal separation between NoA and NoE, and now I can see that means that this thing I'm doing has to be done that way.
If Nintendo want to make a more modern, fit for purpose system that's friendly for small 3rd party devs, they need to start clearing some of these legacy issues clogging things up. NoA-NoE split is one of them, so if they can find a way that makes sense from a legal perspective (as often the issues are obviously a legal or compliance thing) then makes sense to do so.
Unfortunately, as implied, other things like backward compatibility would ideally have to similarly be dropped. Obviously not very popular for die-hard Nintendo fans. That's the kind of difficult tradeoff platform holders have to make, but which consumers who haven't had experience of the above won't understand.
Or maybe Nintendo don't want a system friendly to small 3rd party devs and actually are happier to deal with a few people from Curve Digital or Team17, who help do some of the quality filtering anyway. My plan b if my games turn out to be crap is to go off and work for a company like that. (Though I've already said waaay more than I should, so will shut up now so as to not hurt my future career prospects anymore )
Re: Talking Point: Tatsumi Kimishima Is A Safe Pair Of Hands In Changing Times
@Damo @EllenJMiller If I wasn't under NDA, I could reel off at least 5 great reasons off the top of my head that would have saved me, Nintendo, and I'm sure other 3rd party devs days or weeks of development time and admin time. And probably find another half dozen reasons if I sat down and thought about it.
I'm not suggesting they close offices, as especially for marketing and localisation, it makes sense to have people in different offices around the world.
Nintendo are making big strides in improving that stuff I can't talk about. Even in the short time I've been a licensed 3rd party developer with them, and from talking to devs who've worked with Nintendo in the more distant past, it's clear that they've moved on massively in recent years.
It's not exclusive to Nintendo either. I've seen folks on XDev teams literally sat at a bar at the bottom of a bottle after finally making it through TRC's months after the game was finished. I know people who've gone through multiple rounds of cert for Xbox and it's soul destroying. Particularly for indies who can't just pick up their pay packet at the end of a 9-5 shift and go relax for the weekend. Who are emotionally involved in these games in every way, not just one of a number of games their publisher is putting out that month.
An opportunity now exists with NX coming along to solve some of the problems that can only really be fixed by starting afresh and building from the ground up.
Many of those problems come from the NoA-NoE split. Maybe they don't have to "merge", but 3rd party devs would benefit massively from legally and technically having only one Nintendo to deal with.
(Also, as a bit of an aside, when I talk to other indie devs and say I'm working on Wii U, a number say to me they'd love to publish their games in Japan, the home country of all those cool Nintendo and Sony games they grew up playing. They already can release their games in Japan... on Google Play. They can... on iOS App Store. They can... on PC. It's nigh on impossible for either Sony or Nintendo systems. You can probably count on one hand the number of non-AAA devs who've done it. This is purely from an admin point of view. Not talking localisation. I and many others would love to see NoJ mixed into that as well.
I know a guy who was an executive for Oracle in Asia-Pacific..except for Japan, where they had an entirely separate business division, such is their way of doing business. So I know how unrealistic that hope is. But not having that NoA-NoE split would be a good first step to one day being able to publish globally to Nintendo systems)
Re: Talking Point: Tatsumi Kimishima Is A Safe Pair Of Hands In Changing Times
I hope he merges NoA and NoE. Times have changed and that split simply makes no sense anymore. It leads to so much needless duplication of effort both by Nintendo and 3rd party devs.
CEO's have all sorts of legal responsibilities and many spend most of their time doing dull admin stuff, with the grand strategy decided by a team of top people. Often you see tech startup where the founder eventually takes a more product focused hands on role and leaves what is technically the top job to a boring business man.
That's probably why Miyamoto would be wasted in that role, as romantic as the notion seems from the outside.
Re: Tatsumi Kimishima Named As New Nintendo President
"Get the right people and success will follow", so the saying goes. It may be that's one of the signs Nintendo are putting out by promoting head of HR. Equally, it may be he was the best qualified Japanese guy at HQ with extensive US experience.
Nintendo from what I can see has a lot of bureaucracy and duplication of effort. I hope he will focus on streamlining the company, and especially on making life easier for for small 3rd party western developers like me
Re: Apple Just Announced Its Own Wii, Almost A Decade After Nintendo
As a developer making a game that uses Wiimotes, I'll definitely be releasing the game on Apple TV. But if AppleTV appstore is anything like mobile, it'll come to Wii U first. It's a smaller market with less competition, and so more opportunity to get noticed and featured by Apple when it does hit Apple TV. Versus sinking without a trace in the ocean of shovelware.
The question for WiiU owners is if other devs will take the same attitude.
Re: Rumours and Speculation Stir Over Potential Involvement of Nintendo with Apple TV
On the rumours of a Wiimote-like controller, or at least one that has motion control. If that's the case, it could mean lots of games made for one, could also work on the other (on a game design/conceptual level). I.e. lots of games "Coming to Apple TV and WiiU". Which may or may not be a good thing depending on how it pans out and your views on motion control.
Whilst it makes sense for Nintendo to put their games on it, Apple TV could be a direct competitor to NX in the scenario where NX is a FireTV-like set top box console. So I'm very much skeptical that this is more than just the guys at Nintendo Life wanting to write about Apple and needing an excuse
Re: Some Western Splatoon Players Would Prefer Not To Compete With Japan
People are just being racist.
I always want to play against people better than me as that's one of the best ways to learn and improve. If Splatoon matchmaking decides that's against a room full of Japanese players, bring it on! (It invariably does due to the times of day I play)
Edit: Ok, some people genuinely live in countries with poor connectivity to outside the country, but talking places like Australia and South Africa, not Europe or North America.
Re: Production Of Shovel Knight amiibo Is Being Handled Entirely By Yacht Club Games
Interesting that a smaller (indie?) dev like Yatch Club is doing this. I personally think games with an NFC component have massive untapped potential way beyond what amiibo currently offers.
My concern as before, is that there are now a confusing array of amiibo's and matrix of compatibility with various games. I understand the collectors aspect of it, but for people like me who didn't grow up with Nintendo and who aren't collectors, amiibo's just come across as over complicated.
I'd rather that there were fewer amiibo's (like 10 or something) but that each one worked with every Nintendo game and some 3rd party games, and did something more interesting than just unlocking extra skins
Re: Hyper Light Drifter Wii U eShop Release Drifts Into 2016
@Damo @Tsurii I backed it before they started with the stretch goals, and also this was before I got my Wii U.
Double checked, and it seems it is being made in GameMaker. PS4 has GameMaker support, making that the most likely target after PC. GameMaker also exports to HTML5, so should in theory work with NWF, but I don't know if anyone has actually done that yet? Or could be they rewrite it in Unity? Guess we'll find out
Re: Hyper Light Drifter Wii U eShop Release Drifts Into 2016
I also thought this was not coming to Wii U, since I seem to remember it was being made in monogame or gamemaker, or some other engine that Wii U didn't support.
I backed the kickstarter as well, but not that fussed about it being delayed. That's just the way these things work. Generally with kickstarters that I've backed, unless it's a kick-finisher type of campaign, I'm happy to sit here and get weekly or monthly emails from the creators. So long as it's clear they're making progress. The game will arrive when it's done, and when that happens, great!
The only annoying thing would be if Xbox One and PS4 get a version before Wii U. I totally understand why developers release on one platform at a time, but still frustrating if my chosen platform(s) happen to be near the end of the list
Re: Next Euro Splatoon Splatfest Sadly Doesn't Feature Any Robots In Disguise
For those who've seen it, my dancing has a ...reputation. Much as I love singing, only one real choice for me!
Re: Nintendo Is Bringing Splatoon And More To The UK's Biggest Live Gaming Events
@doitcom Thanks! Will be my 3rd Insomnia as an exhibitor so maybe you've even played one of my games before?
Also, from speaking to the Insomnia organisers previously, sounds like they've been trying to persuade Nintendo to come along for a while, so great Nintendo have finally said yes!
Re: Nintendo Is Bringing Splatoon And More To The UK's Biggest Live Gaming Events
I'm gonna bring along a couple of the Wii U games I'm making to Insomnia, though will be in the indie section / not officially with Nintendo (so maybe won't bring along my devkit hidden in a shoebox, just in case someone from Nintendo wanders past )
Re: Analysts Suggest That Nintendo's Quality Of Life Initiative Has Been "Put On The Back Burner"
QoL makes business sense from the broader big picture perspective. I wonder if they tried a bunch of stuff only to find none of it was really clicking. It always seemed a bit nebulous as to what QoL would actually mean in terms of tangible product, so may have been Nintendo just didn't find that killer product that really leveraged their expertise.
But most likely it's a case of QoL was stretching them too thin, so they've prioritised NX and mobile, even if QoL is something they'd like to do
Re: Nintendo: Wii U GamePad Is The Only Real Innovation This Console Cycle, But We Didn't Showcase It Well EnoughÂ
@FargusPelagius I think it's less about the SDK and more that devs weren't willing to (re)design games just for Wii U's gamepad.
Using gamepad in Unity is super-easy and Unity is very flexible - certainly you can make far more than just side scrolling platformers. There's clearly a failure of imagination on the part of devs, as well as a failure from Nintendo to the reduce risks of attempting something creative / different with the gamepad
Re: Wii U Squeezes Past 10 Million Lifetime Sales as Nintendo Remains on Target With Profits
Splatoon still didn't create as big an uptick on Wii U sales as Mario Kart 8. The rest of the games slated for Wii U, especially Mario Maker, will only really appeal to existing Nintendo fans / Wii U owners. My feeling is that Wii U will remain a console with a small but very loyal fanbase.
Re: Splatoon's Big Update Will Also Include New Music, Have a Listen
@the-madprofessor @andrewccal Could have sworn I'd tried that! In any case, if that doesn't work, will give @Tman 's suggestion a go as fairly certain I've got one of those adapters kicking around
Re: Splatoon's Big Update Will Also Include New Music, Have a Listen
@abbyhitter Yeah, that's what I should have done instead, but at the time I wasn't thinking about sound, just about resolution and price. Oh well
Re: Splatoon's Big Update Will Also Include New Music, Have a Listen
So my TV is actually a PC monitor with HDMI. Therefore doesn't have speakers. It frustrates me on most games I can only get music and full sounds on gamepad when I play in modes that just duplicate TV on Gamepad. Splatoon is not one of those games, so I play mostly to my own music, but be nice if Nintendo put in an option.
Re: Nintendo NX Might Be The First Social VR Platform, Claims Analyst Firm Digi-Capital
@Platypus101 Well, my vested interest is that I'm making a couple of games for Wii U, so definitely hoping it'll be around for another few years. If NX is pitched at a more casual (or Japanese) audience then there's a chance Wii U can run parallel to that for a while as the "core gamer" (or at least more "core gamer" than NX) part of their offering.
It all depends on the feels people get about the NX, plus it's release date, once the details are properly announced. That'll determine how quickly the bottom drops out of the Wii U market
Re: Nintendo NX Might Be The First Social VR Platform, Claims Analyst Firm Digi-Capital
@Platypus101 The couch sitting controller holding gaming community is remember, only a small minority of people who play games. To my mind, PS4 and Xbox One already have that market wrapped up, and Nintendo's games don't really feel like they fit in there anyway.
But yes, I meant more "at least" 3 or 4 years, and it may indeed be more like 10. That's why I'm skeptical of the analysts' suggestion Nintendo could have found a way to make a VR and/or AR solution appeal beyond core gamers shooting aliens (as cool as that is).
Re: Nintendo NX Might Be The First Social VR Platform, Claims Analyst Firm Digi-Capital
This would be cool, but there's a bunch of other forms NX could take, so will wait and see. I was kinda half hoping Nintendo would announce NX as supporting Oculus Rift and maybe some other headsets, but then MS beat them to the punch by saying Xbox One would support Oculus Rift.
Definitely agree also with the feeling that current VR solutions aren't mass market, but rather only likely to appeal to hardcore gamers or be used in commercial/industrial/defence settings (none of whom are going to buy large volumes of headsets, even if they do use them for some really interesting applications).
Personally, I'd love a consumer grade AR headset that people can take outdoors and play with, but having heard reports about HoloLense and its limited field of view, I just can't see it happening in the next 3 or 4 years.
Re: Dragon Quest XI Is Coming To The Nintendo 3DS And Nintendo NX
@vitalemrecords Must admit, to people who have no knowledge of gaming, I usually just say "I'm working on a game for Nintendo's latest console (the Wii U)" since it's too difficult to explain that it's not the Wii, but the Wii 2 but it's not actually called that. Same as I just refer to PS4 and X1 as the more generic "Playstation" or "Xbox" and most people nod as they've actually heard of those. Except my Chinese teacher, who had never heard of Nintendo...
Re: Dragon Quest XI Is Coming To The Nintendo 3DS And Nintendo NX
Also really hoping Nintendo just stick with the NX name. Maybe the "X" bit stands for "Xbox" and Nintendo are actually just going to make a storefront on Windows 10, which in turn will then work with Xbox as well as PC's, Windows phone/tablet etc. seriousface
Re: Dragon Quest XI Is Coming To The Nintendo 3DS And Nintendo NX
Sounds like NX might support UE4 then. That'll be a good boost for 3rd party support, vs Wii U, which doesn't have UE4 support. It implies either that NX has similar architecture to something else UE4 already supports, or that Square Enix already has some NX devits. Still lots of "if's" though, so not going to read too heavily into it.
Re: Talking Point: Assessing the Odds of Super Mario Maker Making a Commercial Splash This September
That box - the yellow plus lots of little bricks - definitely reminds me of the old Lego box branding. Probably just coincidental.
If it was up to me, I'd have a cut-price Christmas bundle of console + Mario Kart 8 + Splatoon, but I don't think that's realistically going to shift the needle. Probably most people who were ever likely to buy a Wii U have now got one.
Maybe a Minecraft bundle could persuade parents that the most kid friendly console, with all the games little timmy actually wants, is the Wii U. But that's highly unlikely now that MS own Minecraft.
Re: Industry Analysts Speculate On Nintendo's Future And Satoru Iwata's Possible Successor
@MamaLuigi @Quorthon Sorry, but you need to stop dismissing things as "fads". The Wiimote was the right device for the audience Nintendo were targeting, but the success was also predicated on having the right price, right games and also the timing.
I think @The_Dude_Abides has it spot on. The point about the social stuff is that consumers increasingly expect to be able to share their gaming - on youtube, twitch, and also on social networks that are already part of their lives. They're doing so not on dedicated boxes, but services like Steam or PSNow or Windows 10 that work across a range of devices.
Re: Poll: What Do You Want From Nintendo's NX Platform?
I was in the 0% who voted for smartphone style games
That's not exactly what I want, but Nintendo need to go full in if they are gunning for the hardcore market, and my feeling is that it's just not in Nintendo's nature to make gritty testosterone fueled games. Plus PS4/X1 already have that market wrapped up and the Wii U showed there's no middle ground between casual and core.
So they should focus on making mobile games to get new customers, then upsell/offer the bigger versions of those games on NX.
Re: Editorial: Nintendo's Strategy Needs to be Global, With a Western Touch in the Boardroom
I'd settle for them merging NoA and NoE as far as submissions go. There's some ludicrous duplication of effort going on at the moment.
Re: Talking Point: Raw Power Isn't Vital to Nintendo's NX, But It Does Matter
This suggests Nintendo have decided to exit the core gamer market. That's probably the right decision, as it's relatively small (~50mil consumers worldwide?) and already dominated by MS and Sony.
The problem is getting 'casual' gamers to buy dedicated hardware when everyone already has a phone they can play games on.
The way I could see Nintendo doing this is by working on getting their 3DS customer base onto the new device. Partnering with companies like Atlus and other 3rd party Japanese publishers with already successful 3DS games. Launch with Animal Crossing and all those amiibo and amiibo cards supported. Plus bring in the likes of Gung-ho, Gree, Nexon and so on, as well of course as DeNA. Making familiar mobile brands available on a FireTV type device, like they did when bringing Puzzle & Dragon to 3DS. And of course having their own newly released mobile games cross over with the NX. It'd be a very Japanese centric strategy though, even if it plays to all their strengths.
Re: Talking Point: The Pros, Cons and Questionable Likelihood of a Nintendo NX Release in Summer 2016
A summer 2017 launch is plausible. Give them time to iron out teething problems in the lead-up to holiday 2017 then release some big hitting game titles in time for Black Friday in the US.
But summer 2016, I think Nintendo will struggle to give NX a strong launch lineup. Since they identified both Wii U and 3DS's poor launch as a problem they want to avoid, I can't see them rushing it just for the sake of cashflow.
It may be the specs are pretty much locked in and that they plan to manufacture a large stockpile? Or could be something daft like them using commodity / off-the-shelf components, but anticipating that Samsung or Apple are going to be using the same components later in 2016 for a large run of phones/TV's, at which point there'll be constricted supply.
Could also be Nintendo asked their suppliers the hypothetical "What's the quickest turn-around time if we were to give you these specs, and you were to get started asap?" If so, I'd suspect Nintendo are unlikely ready to give the go ahead quite yet. So the timing intervals are probably accurate, but not the start date (and so not the subsequent implied release date either)
Re: Reaction: The Concept of eShop 'Early Access' is Both Exciting and Slightly Terrifying
@thatguyEZ It's not "couldn't be bothered". Not having a go at you personally, but we really need to dispel this myth of lazy devs. The majority of devs really give their all for the games they are making. The reason there are so many shoddy games out there is because it takes longer to make a quality game than pump out rubbish. Plus there are now large numbers of new developers hitting the scene, so proportionally there are far more "my first games" coming to market.
With Spacebase DF-9, it just wasn't popular enough to justify spending any more money on it. Why continue to pour time and money into a game that just isn't very fun / which no one really wants, and will never make a return?
The issue is more that they promised a whole laundry list of features, rather than committing to just a few at a time that they could then guarantee to complete before assessing whether it was worth starting on the next set.
That was a mistake by the developers (rather than anything malicious) and shows that even a studio with a reputation for making great games can still get it wrong when experimenting with a new business model.
It's ironic people still reference the game as an example of Early Access failing, since if that many people actually cared about the game itself, it'd probably still be going!
Re: Reaction: The Concept of eShop 'Early Access' is Both Exciting and Slightly Terrifying
I'm not sure consoles are the right place for Early Access. It stems from the idea of MVP (minimum viable product) which is all about rapid iteration on a live product with a relatively small userbase until things click into place. It takes a combination of the right type of game and the right type of developer to do it.
I think as well, NOT having those games listed in the eShop would be a big help - so only those who are invested enough to follow the developers on social media or sites like this to get a download code actually play the game. And have a bit more understanding onf what is both expected from the developer and from them
Re: Nintendo Is "Exploring" The Idea Of Early Access Games On Its Consoles
For Early Access to work, developers need really good communication with players, and the ability to patch and update games super-fast.
As in, when a game-breaking bug appears, a player discovering it needs to be able to tell devs about it as fast and efficiently as possible. The devs then need a way to tell all the other players about the bug so they know to avoid it and that it's being fixed. The devs then need to fix said bug and apply a patch live to the game. And finally tell players the bug is fixed.
The turn around on that entire cycle needs to be in the range of 24 hours or less. Nintendo and consoles in general simply aren't set up for that. It's a great idea (for the right type of game and developer), but in practice, I can't see it working unless NX is radically different from Wii U in terms of publishing setup
Re: Nintendo Reportedly Pitched NX To Third Parties During E3 2015
I don't care particularly about the specs. The important thing is that Nintendo improve their publishing processes. Also making the build pipeline easier - Ideally the ability to deploy builds straight to retail devices once the console launches in stores. Unity support is also a must for me.
This is all assuming they'll still let random indies like me onto the console. May be they are a lot more selective with their dev program for NX than they were with Wii U. Be interesting to find out
Re: Nintendo Didn't Mention Mobile At E3 2015 Because It Was The Wrong Crowd
I liked the developer stories and I also think it was right to not show mobile stuff at E3. Personally I don't mind hearing about mobile games, but I know the "gamer" audience has a massive hangup about them, and since perception is everything in this market, skipping mobile was the right choice.
I heard on another website a suggestion for Nintendo to do their own "Nintendo Fest" where they can talk about & stream just Nintendo stuff and not have to complete with everyone else for attention. Still do E3 but give NX andmobile and other announcements their own dedicated thing, and then just have a special edition Nintendo Direct at E3 (kinda like how they did it this year).
Re: Splatoon Hackers Make Octoling A Playable Character
I definitely want to play as an Octoling. Already assumed it'd be relatively easy to implement since the art assets have already been made. Just be a case of if/how/when Nintendo decide they want to do it.
Though thinking about it, a lot of those hats and other headgear might not fit on the Octolings, so maybe not quite as easy to just throw the switch and let players pick Octoling at the start.
Re: Talking Point: E3 Highlighted Nintendo's Development Shift Towards NX, and Away from Wii U
I think NX should be device agnostic. Meaning it's basically an app store for buying Nintendo games, plus services like achievements, leaderboards and whatever replaces miiverse, that can run on a bunch of different devices. Basically a Nintendo version of Steam that also runs on mobiles and smart TVs.
Nintendo could release a dedicated NX device for core fans that runs the NX software games and services, and maybe also supports the old hardware like the gamepad, wiimotes and so on for backwards compatibility. If they make it work with Android, they could take advantage of the existing emulators out there to give further backward compatibility - potentially everything for which a rom exists. But at the same time release new games on Android for more casual audiences.
They'd also sidestep the whole performance/specs thing as the 'platform' could be just insalled on whatever new latest greatest device.
Re: Take More Risks With Your eShop Purchases, Pleads Nintendo's Damon Baker
Unfortunately demos are a pain in the ass to make, and there's some statistical evidence to suggest they actually reduce sales overall.
The comments are probably not aimed at people here, but the 95% who will buy MK8 and a couple of other retail titles and leave it at that. They probably don't browse the eShop and don't follow the latest Nintendo happenings on twitter or through sites like NintendoLife. So the challenge for Nintendo is how to match them with the games they are willing to buy / will enjoy
Re: Iwata Vows To Listen To E3 2015 Digital Event Feedback And "Work To Better Meet Your Expectations"
@Ak_Dub I've been spoiled by PC gaming for sure.
Re: Iwata Vows To Listen To E3 2015 Digital Event Feedback And "Work To Better Meet Your Expectations"
Echoing what others have said:
I liked the way it was presented, but I'm new to Nintendo consoles with WiiU and I don't own a 3DS, so there was nothing of interest. Sorry, but Star Fox just looks meh compared to Elite Dangerous, which my flatmate has been raving about recently.
As an indie dev making games for WiiU, was a sad day. There wasn't even an indie sizzle reel. All the signs are that Nintendo have given up on WiiU.
Re: USK Reiterates That IARC, A Quick and Global Age Ratings Option, Will Come to the eShop
Last I heard, IARC isn't coming to the eShop this year, so not going to get excited about it till it actually arrives.