Mahe

@sunrisensoul The releases. The d-pad. The design. The delays. The 3D. The firmware updates. The price drop. The screen scratching. The list goes on and on.

@Royalblues Also, Pokemon Go already boosted the sales of 2DS especially in the US (and probably elsewhere too), and the 3DS in Japan (the Pokemon anniversary 2DS was already sold out by that time by all accounts). Now the initial Pokemon Go craze has already faded somewhat, but the game and the 2DS discount brought a lot of new people in. If the new 2DS owners are happy with the system, they might be more likely to consider the NX, too.

@Royalblues How is it the consumer's fault when Nintendo, Sony and MS put out crap like Wii U, the original 3DS, PS Vita and the Xbone? Those are some terribly misconceived products with major faults bringing them down from their predecessors. This generation could have gone differently if the platform holders hadn't been completely clueless, or even downright malicious (Microsoft).

@Royalblues PS4 was selling around 20,000 consoles weekly before the slim rumor starting going around. Obviously, there are gamers who want a PS4, and they held out on getting the old model because now they can get the new, smaller model for the same price.

As for PS4 Pro, who cares? Sony did a really poor job of justifying that model.

So it's more like "Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 2DS", right?

Good start for 2DS. It would have been the best-selling device if PS4 Slim hadn't launched in the same week. However, there were no new games to go along with the new 2DSes. Also, Japan already had those 100,000 Pokemon Anniversary special edition 2DSes. The real test will be the coming weeks and months, up into the holiday season.

Nintendo obviously released 2DS in Japan the bolster the sales of the "3DS" family, which have been lagging during most of the time that New 3DS has been their main product. Now combine the 2DS with new games, and 2DS + 3DS will see better sales than if it had been just the old "New" and old old 3DS models.

@rjejr Yeah, 2DS is a much better value than 3DS. If Nintendo had released 2DS initially instead of 3DS, they could be in a different place right now.

"Nintendo, though, isn't directly competing in either space; the Wii U has finished the process started by Wii in terms of drifting away from mainstream third-party retail games, in particular..."

The staff at Nintendolife needs to check their air conditioning for any Fuzzies from Yoshi's Island. Wii is the system that brought Call of Duty back to Nintendo systems. Then Wii U killed it. Wii is the system that got FIFA games up to FIFA 15 or something ridiculous. Wii U didn't even get FIFA at that point.

So it was the Wii U that completely killed the progress that had been made by Wii. Wii U went in the complete opposite direction, lost those series and so many more, and now here we are.

@chiptoon Try Just Dance Kids. She literally can't die in that game. She probably won't get good scores either, but none of us were born with our current gaming skills.

While there was no official PR this month, it's likely that an upsurge in 2DS sales contributed a major portion to this month's sales as well. The 2DS has gained good word of mouth and consumer awareness, and it seems that people who played Pokemon Go and then wanted a handheld device to play more Pokemon, opted for 2DS in the majority. It's the best device for playing Nintendo's current-gen handheld games, and the most affordable too, so 2DS's relative success isn't surprising.

Is this Miyamoto's new project after Star Fox Zero?

If you're young and haven't played many other games, you might think it's good!

@rjejr NX has to be better. They missed the boat so badly with the Wii U Gamepad, they have to realize that they need to be better. But will the NX and its control options still be good enough?

@rjejr Yeah, I absolutely can't go back to 3DS models after 2DS, and the new buttons of the New 3DS just make it more ridiculous. Love those huge and responsive shoulder triggers of the 2DS.

Wii U Gamepad has good buttons, d-pad etc. but the controller as a whole is just too uncomfortable, massive and bulky. And it has no pointer controls, and it can't be used as a motion controller in the way Wiimote and Nunchuk could. And then there's the battery, the lag, and the limited range, and everything else. Because of all those reasons and even more, the Wii U Gamepad is a complete travesty of a controller. The bundling isn't the problem, bundling and forcing the use of such a terrible controller is the problem. The Wii U Gamepad is a crime against gaming.

@Samurai_Goroh You know where my Wii U Gamepad is? Stashed away with other unused game console junk, like my PS Vita that I never play. Likewise, I never play with the Wii U Gamepad anymore. I'll just plug it in for a second if I need to use it for something inane like changing the system settings, otherwise the Wii U Gamepad might just as well not exist for me. So while it has a headphone socket, I don't consider it a part of the console. It's just an extra controller that just takes up space in my junk stash.

@Samurai_Goroh The headphone socket is on the Gamepad, not on the actual console.

@Laki2 3DS, 3DS XL, New 3DS and 3DS XL combined have sold just over 50 million in 5½ years. DS, DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL combined sold close to 150 million in 6 years. And 3DS has sold a lot fewer games than DS too. That's a failure.

"Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2, Star Fox, Pikmin 3. You know what all those games have in common? All great games but didn’t sold well."

Did you just seriously quote Star Fox Zero as a "great game"?

@rjejr The 2DS mono speaker sounds really good, and the stereo output for the headphones is better quality than on a 3DS. Also, New 3DS 2nd analog nub is a joke, as is the rest of N3DS design.

Then in all their subsequent handhelds, the headphone socket was back.

Coincidentally, NX may be their first home console with a headphone socket. (Wii U doesn't count.)

@rjejr The 2DS was probably first made for Western markets because 3DS wasn't doing as well here as it was in Japan. In Japan, 3DS still sold relatively well, even if it wasn't in DS numbers. But since the New 3DS release, Japanese 3DS sales were starting to stagnate before Pokemon Go gave them a boost. Nintendo is probably hoping for the 2DS models to continue that boost in Japan. Also, Nintendo probably wants to keep the 2DS hardware uniform across regions. From the 2DS's continued sales in the West, Nintendo has seen that people just don't care that much about N3DS features, so instead of devising new 2DS devices for Japan, they go with what already works.

It could also be speculated that the 2DS anniversary Pokemon edition was a "test release" for Japan, and it was proven successful now that 2DS is seeing full release there.

Also, have you tried the 2DS? It's better than any 3DS!

@SKTTR Yeah. Every Wii and Wii U owner should check out Driift Mania. It's a great game!

Nintendo completely ruined their console market with Wii U, and made huge blunders with the 3DS too. Now they have to go to the mobile market for the money. So if anyone's unhappy seeing Nintendo games go to mobile instead of Nintendo consoles and handhelds, you can blame Wii U & 3DS for that.

They should send the prototype to me and delay release for any improvement suggestions I might have.

@rjejr Yeah, 2DS hasn't been "publicly" released in Japan, before the upcoming release on September 15. The previous 2DS release in Japan were the limited editions for the Pokemon anniversary celebration, and Media Create and others probably didn't include them in the charts as it was a one-time thing. But now that 2DS is getting a wide release in Japan, it should appear in the charts too.

@rjejr The new 2DS models for Japan are the original 2DS hardware, so no NFC. That's why Nintendo is selling the NFC reader add-on.

And if I remember some recent Nintendo report / Kimishima quote correctly, people don't use Amiibo in games as much as Nintendo thought they would. People just like collecting them as figurines.

How is it that Nintendolife seems to represent the Direct much more poorly than how it actually was? They leave out stuff like the 2DS model for Pokemon Sun/Moon (EU) and 2DS new colors / full launch in Japan, and other interesting stuff.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Look at the abysmal Gamecube controller. Nintendo already abandoned proper d-pads once.

(Twice if you count how poorly it was positioned on 3DS models.)

Seeing 2DS's recent resurgence... New 2DS model?

@Dakt Swords & Soldiers 2 is terrible, not on the level of the original at all. Not worth it even at a discount.

@sketchturner The PS4 version has seen a few sales already, and despite the guy's PR talk, it's certainly the best version. Adelman's record has been stuck on Nintendo PR mode from his recent history. And like somebody said, the PS4 release comes with the Vita version as a crossbuy bonus.

Actually, it could be on sale now. Go check your PS Store right away!

@MrGuinea This is one guy. The Wii U release doesn't have to support a 100+ people development team, or even a 10+ people team. These solitary developers are pretty much the only ones who are in any position at all to release on Wii U, and risk the low sales of their game on the platform.

Nintendo should focus on 2DS. They still continue the old mistake of marketing the New 3DS models. The July NPD results showed that new buyers overwhelmingly want 2DS systems, so when Nintendo is trying to push New 3DS instead, it creates customer confusion and lowers the potential install base that a full focus on 2DS could achieve.

"With the introduction of Telltale's The Walking Dead a few years back, the long dormant adventure genre came back"

Uhh... have you guys ever heard of the Wii?

Huh, Armikrog on Wii U? That's actually interesting. Hope it has Wiimote pointer controls.

Yeah, 2DS effect in play. 2DS fixes a lot of the problems that 3DS models have, and if you can find the New SMB 2 bundle, it's a great deal.

This could have been so much better than that "Tokyo Mirage" mess we got.

Epic Mickey was interesting, but Epic Mickey 2 was just a terrible game. It's no wonder the whole "Epic" series was canned after EM2.

The renewed focus on 2DS is paying dividends. 2DS is the current go-to system for playing games in the "3DS family".

@gatorboi352 "Nintendo is slowly slipping away from the new crowd and quickly being associated with a past time long ago."

Yup, completely agree with that. Nintendo has been making some really boneheaded decisions in the 3DS and Wii U years.

"I just don't see the (rumored) NX bringing them back to Wii-like or DS-like relevancy and that sucks."

Yeah, there's a possibility of NX continuing on the sorry path of 3DS and Wii U. Guess we'll see.

@gatorboi352 Wow. Here's a tip for you: Wii U didn't fail because of mobile.

A large number of Wii owners have actually been updating to PS4.

@gatorboi352 You're trying to evade the point once again.

Wii U sold less than 1/10 of the games that Wii did. That means that compared to consoles sold, even the attach rate on Wii U is much worse than it was on Wii! So not only was Wii U a total failure in absolute numbers, it was also a total failure in relative numbers. This is why Nintendo needs the mainstream gamers that Wii had and Wii U didn't.

Looks great! Why can't Nintendo make anything like this anymore?

@Steve_Bowling This review is made poorer by mentions of the Gamepad.

@OorWullie That was the time that rumored and even announced Wii U games were being cancelled left and right. It was probably going to be the Castle of Illusion remake that PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 got. The PS3 version also came with the original Sega 16-bit version as a pre-order bonus, so that would probably also have been included as a Virtual Console release if the remake had come to Wii U.

The 3DS Epic Mickey game had already been released by that point.

@gatorboi352 That's one point I was making. Your concept of "casual" games and "casual" gamers is wrong.

You do know that Wii sold close to 1,000,000,000 games, right?

@gatorboi352 Looking at 2DS/3DS side of things, not all Nintendo games took a tumble. Animal Crossing did very well. Tomodachi Life did surprisingly well. Fire Emblem sold better than before. AC and TL are considered "casual" games, so they should have been hit the hardest. yet the opposite happened. Fire Emblem is competing against all the strategy games on mobile, so it should have been hit hard. Yet the opposite happened.

Then Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival happened, and it flopped totally. Was it because of mobile? Or because it was just a terrible game?

Nintendo made some bad hardware decisions and bad games this gen, so it's wrong to blame mobile for Nintendo's own mistakes.

@ultraraichu No, that doesn't work at all. You don't get the feeling for the control and don't get scored. Without a controller, you're not playing, you're... just dancing? Oh wait.

@gatorboi352 The argument goes that mobile games are the reason why Nintendo's games and consoles have done so badly lately. That should apply to Just Dance too: people should be playing on mobile phones, not necessarily on Just Dance Now, but in any case Just Dance sales should have plummeted as hard as Nintendo game and console sales.

Yet Just Dance keeps selling, especially on Wii. That shows the userbase is loyal, and they want new games. When new games come out, they buy them.

That also means that mobile did not kill Wii U. The people just didn't want that console or its games.

"It'll land on the Wii U and Wii in October (likely missing some features on the latter)"

Actually, the Wii U (and other current-gen) versions of Just Dance 2016 were missing the World Dance Floor online mode, making the Wii release of JD2016 the best version available. If this continues, JD2017 could also be best on Wii.

"Missing" the JD Unlimited features could be considered a bonus too. Even if you don't subscribe to JD Unlimited, it gets shoved in your face all the time in current-gen versions. But not on the Wii!

@wazlon Great to hear that!

@8itmap_k1d It also has 90 % fewer classics than Wii.

Hmm. Better check if I have any points left to use.