McHaggis

Well, it's an improvement at least. I lost all my Wii Shop downloads when my old Wii crapped out.

Still, it's a bit of a let down considering the PS3, PSP and PS Vita can all share the same PSN account, and machines can be de-authorised ready for authorising a different machine. Why is it so hard for Nintendo to get their online services right? They just don't seem to grasp what consumers want.

The reviewer's description kind of made me think of Space Crusade on the old Commodore Amiga. I've got fond memories of that game, so I think I might download this when I finish the current backlog of games I have.

Games need to be priced at £39.99 and less. I'm waiting for price drops on the current selection before buying them. I have my PS3 and a ton of Wii games that can keep me occupied until they become cheaper. I wanted to buy ZombiU, AC3, Arkham City and Darksiders II but I refuse to pay over £40 for a game just on principal. If everyone did the same (and it looks like a lot of people are), it would send the message that Nintendo can't just add a £10+ premium to the price of games just because it has a new console out.

We already know Nintendo are making a lot on games because a single game―from any developer―purchased turns the loss made on the Wii U into a profit.

I only bought one extra game with my Wii U. I think I'm going to stick to pre-owned if they insist on the ridiculously high MSRPs, even though I'd much rather give my money to the developer. It's not that I can't afford it either, I just think it's not justified.

'Blame Germany'
Why? A simple IP check against a geolocation database could deny that content to only German citizens, they don't even need to create a whole new eShop. I've set a similar system up before and it took me less than 3 hours.

This isn't Germany's fault, they've had their laws in place long enough for companies to anticipate these kinds of problems.

@Nibelilt: maybe @Shiryu will loan you his dollar

Thanks for taking another one for the team, Philip

@AJWolfTill: I was thinking the same thing whilst watching the trailer. I doubt it's Morgan Freeman, but Josh Robert Thompson does a mighty fine impression.

When Satoru Iwata decides to step down as president, I'm sure Just For Men will be eagerly trying to recruit him as a spokesperson.

InB4 UK/European eShop lists the game at £39.99. I'd rather buy a physical copy, though.

It's alright. Oh yeah mah honies know it's alright.

Every time I see this Wii Mini, I get The Red and the Black by Blue Öyster Cult stuck in my head. It kind of makes me want one more.

"Red and black... it's their colour scheme!"

@0LD_SK0OL_PUNK, I'm not so sure. Powerhouse consoles haven't worked out that well for Sony, in fact they did much better in the generations their system was the least powerful console on the market. I wouldn't be surprised if they change their strategy for the PS4. There's already rumours of them using a cheaper, lower power CPU than the Cell.

Microsoft may carry on with the powerful console legacy because they haven't done too badly with that, but I think they'll push Kinect (or something else) more and power less.

@Happy_Mask actually, it was 4A that called the Wii U's CPU horrible and slow, refusing to develop for it. THQ are just publishing the game on other platforms.

It's disappointing, but that "in the future" comment adds a glimmer of hope

They don't appear to be promising anything for Wii U or 3DS consoles, though. They said 'future Nintendo consoles and other devices', which indicates successors. I hope that's not the case, I'm already severely annoyed that I cannot transfer my Wii Shop purchases from my faulty Wii to my replacement Wii.

@RupeeClock: There's a chance the entire partition will be encrypted, much like the PS3's internal disk drive and the Nintendo Wii's NAND flash. If that's the case, mounting on another computer to access the data would be very difficult, perhaps even impossible, without the encryption key.

@Marios-love-child

I think it's safe to assume that was sarcasm.

@adamical: if it's one or two dead pixels, they won't do anything about it.

@Void, who's to say they wouldn't still sell out if those consoles had been allocated more evenly around the globe? Perhaps the US has a higher attach rate and that's why they have priority.

To be honest, I'm not too impressed by this. Recent versions of Netfront use WebKit as the rendering engine, which powers Chrome, Safari and a number of other browsers, so I think it's relatively disappointing that it didn't score higher.

'As with most home systems, it will not be possible to download or upload videos and pictures.'

Yet the 3DS can upload and download photos just fine. I guess those who want to share images saved from games will have to do a lot of SD card swapping.

I feel more likely to use this browser than I did the Wii or PS3's, though, as you can multi-task with it.

@Blizzaga: I wonder if there's any chance of a DS Player for Wii U I have a platinum GameCube and Game Boy Player, I remember importing the latter from Japan because they didn't have them in that colour here. I had to call Nintendo and get them to send me a PAL disc out to run it

@Nintendawg
"I would really love to hear from all you naysayers out there, what other hack & slash games for the (3)DS do you consider to be... good? I'm really curious."

Just because there are a limited number of games of a particular genre available for one console doesn't mean you should appreciate any games that are released. You only mention the complaints about graphics, something which only a handful of comments here complain of. Most of the other complaints are actually about glitches, lack of replay value and other issues.

I liked the demo, but not enough to buy the game. After all the reviews about the lack of replay value and other things, I think I would only buy it for a very low price. £35 is a lot to pay for something you'll only play once.

If they're so disappointed, why don't they take a look at all the feedback and release an update, perhaps with a harder difficulty setting and better rewards for replaying? This could prompt a lot of people to re-evaluate the game.

Or 25k of the ZombiU pack, with more of the premium pack and basic packs. Either way, I haven't heard anything from Sainsbury's Entertainment, which is where I pre-ordered mine with a juicy 10% off

YES! I still have my original cartridge from when I was a kid. I never completed it, though. I'm definitely backing this.

@Morphtroid: the 3DS isn't far off surpassing the DSi's total sales (of which, many would have upgraded to the 3DS). Sure, DSiWare games appear on the 3DS eShop, but they don't make use of the hardware ― not necessarily 3D, but higher resolution and widescreen, for example ― like 3DS download software does. It just seems like higher quality titles could be made with more or less the same reach, at least in the near future.

Personally, I don't like the filters much used on DSi games when upscaling, it looks blurry. Nor do I like to play in the original resolution, it's too small on the screen. For those reasons, I tend to shy away from DSiWare games and stick to games that run natively in 3DS mode.

Wait... developers are still making DSiWare games? Why?

In all fairness, this is exactly the kind of response you'd expect from any high profile company. Nintendo aren't exactly going to turn around and say "it's not our company, it's not our problem". Still, it's a reassuring message, even if it does read a bit like a canned response.

@Koto, the implication @Akera099 is making is that we are in the 21st century, but the Wii remotes are not.

The annoying thing about the old sync location was rechargeable packs needed to leave access to them, which meant you had to get a paper-clip or precision screwdriver or something to press the button.

Whilst evaluating this small design change, I'm surprised they didn't consider adding native charging.

Personally, I think these are pretty poor. I'd expect not even my gamer friends to "get" some of them, like the Samus and Sonic. Most of the greetings are rubbish, too, with the exception of Snake's card.

Given that there appears to be nothing special about them either―there's no mention of hand-made features beyond ordinary printed card―they seem rather expensive too at 80p each. I'd have no problem paying that if the cards had something premium about them like embossing or 3D cut outs or something.

IMO, FAIL.

Forget the soundtrack, release the frickin' game in Europe already!

I think it's hard to have an opinion on whether the ad was any good or not. It's clearly not aimed at the majority of people who frequent this site ― those people already know more about the console than an ad on TV could tell them.

I'd guess that the advert will do it's job, which is to get people talking about the console, asking questions and finding out more. After the console's release, they'll probably show game-specific adverts for some games like ZombiU and NSMBU.

Heh, I was in my local GAME store earlier, and the store colleague said he didn't think they'd do a midnight launch because it wasn't a big console like the PS3 or 360. I think he was trolling me

It looks fake, if you ask me. I'll stick with my SNES classic controller that I got from Club Ninty Europe.

@cammy: yeah, I'm pretty sure they said this was going to happen too.

@Damo I think that depends on the country they were in at the time they acquired the ROM, and also the method used. Cart dumpers are legal in some countries and emulators are legal in even more countries. You can even dump N64 games with an Action Replay. It is illegal to use another company's property to promote your own products, however.

Thundercats is awesome, but the DS is old news now.

Perhaps they're confusing the Wii and 3DS version? I could see the 3DS version being a single player game.

@V8_Ninja, it's not uncommon for contracts to contain a clause preventing a conflict of interest from occurring. Many, if not most, employment contracts do. This prevents, say, a pie salesman who works for Pukka by day from taking a night job as a Square Pie salesman. This is a conflict of interest because there's nothing stopping that salesman from advising his customers to buy the product he makes the most money on, potentially damaging sales of the other product.

@Aviator's Charles Martinet analogy wasn't a great one, but he does have a very valid point regarding the fact that Sony may actually have a case. As much as I dislike Sony for the whole fiasco of suing hackers who had done nothing illegal, I can't really form an opinion here because I don't know all the facts, and neither does anyone else who's commented so far.

Generally, reports on litigation in the news are terrible due to the lack of information available; the reporter's own bias or; the reporter's lack of legal experience and expertise. All of which seem to apply here, no offence intended to TW.

EDIT: Actually, according to the Kotaku article, it looks like they're suing for trademark infringement. After seeing the advert, there's no clarification that the character isn't Kevin Butler. Arguably, the two characters could be distinguished, but their are damning similarities ― like the hair style and facial expressions ― that could be seen to back up Sony's claims of "misappropriation" and "causing confusion". IANAL, so I wouldn't hedge my bets either way (I'd like to think Sony will lose), best to leave it to the courts.

Agatsuma said they were planning to bring the title to Europe, so it should only be a matter of time. Personally speaking, I'm in no rush for the game; it looks decent but not amazing.

I like the Mario one, it's pretty cool. I might get one if they come here.

Fire Emblem release date, please! Stupid game sites haven't listed the game for pre-order yet, so maybe a release date will be the kick up the backside they all need!

@WhiteKnight, kudos on the rebuttal. Yes, that's a much more appropriate description of your point of view, and even one that I agree with. It's possible Nintendo are making a loss on the Wii U hardware anyway, not much will be known until someone cracks it open and costs up the components; there's a lot of modern tech in it.

@WhiteKnight: what I corrected was your overly general statement that hardware is a loss-leading business and your following sentence that implies that the retail price of hardware doesn't take into account the R&D costs, logistics and marketing. My reply stated that this isn't always the case, but when it is then licensing is intended to make up for the loss.

This is the same for hardware in any business. A lot of R&D, logistics, marketing and after sales support goes into making other products, for instance, Televisions. These costs are covered by calculating a small percentage on top of the cost per unit × the number of units to be manufactured and shipped within a particular timescale, manually adjusting for what should be perceived as an acceptable price point to the average consumer (usually based on the brand).

Basically, I was saying that your argument "You want to debate this topic? Understand the games business first." implies that you understand the games business just fine but the statements you made in the previous paragraph contradict that. Whether hardware is profitable before 3rd party software licenses are considered is irrelevant to this topic, anyway.

Anyone up for a game of laser tag?

@Damo: I think he wasn't referring the entire news posting, but to the penultimate paragraph, in which you expressed your own opinion on the matter. He's still wrong, though.

@WhiteKnight all of that is factored into the market price of a console anyway, just like almost every other kind of business. Hardware is only a loss-leading business proposition for manufacturers who subsidise the high cost of hardware to make the console more affordable with the sale of third-party software licenses until the hardware is available.

What this group fails to realise is that Nintendo also makes a significant amount of money from third party licenses, which would all go away if they stopped making hardware. Every game sold for the 3DS makes Nintendo money.
Secondly, this all boils down to another stupid argument about processing power. None of Nintendo's consoles are about that, they're all about the user experience. Most DS and 3DS games would not offer the same experience on a mobile device for patently apparent reasons.

This "pressure group" reeks of butthurt individuals who opted out of the latest handheld hardware in favour of a state of the art touch phone whose games offer a limited experience and almost no replay value. I'd be all in favour of bringing Virtual Console to Android or IOS as that wouldn't alter the experience (except for stupid touch controls), but I think it unlikely that Nintendo would want to share their profits with companies like Apple or Google.

@Pikachupwnage, what makes you say Kotaku isn't a trustworthy source? I've read Kotaku for years and generally found their opinions to be mostly unbiased. Bash has given reasons for not liking the Wii U controller, good enough reasons to put me off.

I'm kind of glad I accidentally pre-ordered the Nintendo Land Wii U instead of the ZombiU package now, I'm going to wait and see what others say about the controller. If enough people are dissing it, an improved version will be released, I'm sure.

What, I can't take my GamePad to McDonalds to pay for my 'M' Burger?