That sounds like a good visual marker--when people simply aren't talking about it. On the industry side, it means releases see a drastic drop in numbers and companies moving elsewhere... or going under.
Square-Enix AND Nintendo. Since NoA published several DQ games for the DS over here, they could be actively working to get them localized and published.
Judas Priest is one of the greatest bands ever formed. I still find it amusing that so much of the "metal image" (clad in leather with spikes and studs) came from Halford shopping for gay fashions in the 70's, and just liked the look of the leather. He found the gay leather he wanted, looked like a badass, and inspired an entire genre of music to look more badass.
You're far too touchy and in your last post, seem to have a sudden case of persecution complex. I am addressing the content of posts, not you as a person or anything to that regard.
And beyond that, my logic is quite sound--just because a game started on a Nintendo system does not mean any future games are obligated to be on there. That's absurd.
That's like saying that Donkey Kong only belongs on Coleco consoles, so hardcore Coleco fans should be outraged whenever another Donkey Kong game appears on a Nintendo system. "Well, it started on ColecoVision. We're who made the game popular!"
You guys need to simmer down sometimes and think about what it is you're saying. Saying anything along the lines of "X NES game should be on future Nintendo consoles, because it started on the Nintendo console" is extraordinarily faulty--yet that very statement has been thrown around like little people at the Professional Midget Tossing Quarter Finals. No, it doesn't. And to be upset that a spiritual successor is skipping those later Nintendo consoles is doubly absurd. It's silly enough to surmise that Castlevania in some form "belongs" on Nintendo systems, it's just plain wrong to say the same of an unrelated spiritual successor.
You guys can be upset all you want that it's skipping Wii U and 3DS (so far), but face reality, it's not like this is a shocker. Most games are skipping these two platforms now, regardless of what they are. And this is made in the Unreal 4 engine, which the Wii U and especially the 3DS cannot handle. That's fine, be disappointed, but have some understanding. And stop making up downright stupid excuses why it "should happen" by crazily linking this to the roots of a different game because console fanboyism.
I am responding to that general sentiment. As it is laughably nonsensical.
Yes, he benefited in the small term, and on a paycheck when you bought the games. But to act like "well, I bought something he worked on before, therefore he shouldn't need the money" is like saying that you "bought a meal at McDonald's once, and therefore, the guy at the cash register has the money to open his own restaurant."
That's just monstrously illogical.
Your reasoning is dubious at best, and just unfocused and so missing the point that it's not even wrong as it's not even properly addressing the point.
He has struck out, he is independent. He is funding his own team. He is looking to Kickstarter to see if gamers are willing to support that team and their game. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Wii U or 3DS, and it has nothing to do with how much money he as an individual made at Konami, and to say that it does, is just wrong in an otherworldly sense.
In some circles, it's been stated that the mobile bubble has already burst. Once a haven for indie creativity, mobile games have gone big business and overly corporate. Fewer than 50% of all mobile games are profitable. The vast majority of that revenue stream is through a tiny number of games and apps.
Nintendo fans don't want ports of old games? Funny, sales of the Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker ports/remakes seem to indicate otherwise.
By that logic, Sonic games should only be on Sega hardware and nothing else. Centipede should only be on Atari hardware and nothing else. Tomb Raider should only be on Playstation hardware and nothing else.
Just because Castlevania started on NES and also Commodore 64 and Amiga, does not mean it needs to stay on Nintendo hardware if the audience is elsewhere. Hell, by your own logic, Castlevania should only appear on modern Commodore and Amiga hardware.
This is a ridiculous argument. Sure, the original Castlevania fanbase may have been "born" on Nintendo consoles, but that doesn't mean they belong on Nintendo consoles now. What the hell does the logo box have to do with it? Times change, consoles change. Apparently, only Nintendo fans don't change.
Actually, saying the reason it's not coming is dumb... is dumb. Because you could very easily have actually looked at the Kickstarter. The game is being made in Unreal 4, which is an engine that the Wii U cannot handle.
They'd essentially have to rebuild the game largely from scratch in Unreal 3 to get it to run on the Wii U, and that's a lot of work for an audience that is clearly not that supportive of 3rd parties.
Also, you seem to have no clue at all how corporations or this industry works. Just because you bought a game in the past does not mean he has your money. He's independent now, he's not part of the corporation you supported. All he has is his personal savings from the paycheck he earned. As a developer, they did not receive the money from the games you purchased, as you purchased them from a different developer and corporation.
How is it unfair to lump Steam, XBO, and PS4 together? If a game plays on XBO or PS4, it'll play in Steam. Nintendo is the oddball in this.
Also, my "assumptions" about Nintendo fans are based on general behavior. As has been noted before, Nintendo fans do not support 3rd party, yet they take every 3rd party "abandoning them" personally, and 3rd parties have had a much harder time on Nintendo systems since the N64 at the very least.d
Clearly, if Nintendo fans supported 3rd parties (and Nintendo made hardware that could handle the games without compromise), there'd be a lot more third party games on the console. Suffice to say, they do not.
I like his "before April 2016" line. Going by Wii U history, that means these games will be spread out over a 6 month period that includes April, but is mostly after it.
Well, I didn't really address you personally in my post. But I can extrapolate that you seem to have an inflated sense of self-worth. Why should Itagaki respect your decision? He's never even going to see you deriding the project because it's not "on Nintendo." It's all well and good to have principles, but this just makes so little sense. Back the game because you either like it or want it, and if you don't, don't back it.
But to pretend that he "owes Nintendo fans something" is preposterous, and to base your principles on some sort of "fairness to Nintendo" comes off as remarkably silly. Now, if you really supported Castlevania on multiple platforms over the years, and really want this, then by all means, support a project and a game developer you admire.
So far, I don't understand your reasoning not to as you have apparently wound it all down to "because Nintendo fanboyism." Logically, it makes vastly more sense for him to aim for the two systems with both sales and sales of 3rd party games. If respect is big for you, you might respect how he came to that decision--because he's making a good business decision.
Now, if I'm wrong, then what is your, specific, reason for being against it, as someone who is a self-professed Castlevania fan?
It's highly debatable that "Nintendo fans" made Castlevania a success to begin with. For one thing, back on the NES and SNES, they were just regular kids, gamers--not the ravenous, frequently anti-third party modern Nintendo fans. The people who first gave Castlevania it's success were the same people who continued to support it on the Playstation, PS2, X360, and PS3. Clearly, it's not "Nintendo fans," as the games went to consoles with good sales, not consoles where "there are Nintendo fans who made Castlevania famous."
This is just a rather silly way to be personally offended. If you think you supported Castlevania, but only did so on Nintendo systems, then you didn't really support Castlevania--you only bought it when it met with your console fandom. The people who still supported the games, regardless of platform, are the people who really made Castlevania famous.
Clearly, not supporting the Wii U or 3DS is not even remotely hurting the Kickstarter, so it's laughably absurd to claim he's "ignoring the people that made the {Castlevania} franchise a success to begin with." I mean, if that was really, even a little bit true, don't you think the Kickstarter would be faring worse?
In all seriousness, Nintendo fans, get over yourselves. You did not make Castlevania the big franchise it is now. People playing primarily on PC, Xbox, and Playstation played just a big a part in that as you did, if not more so because they didn't tie supporting the game down to a silly notion of "well, it has to be on Nintendo or I don't care." Other people--Castlevania fans--instead went through the years saying, "oh man, that kick-ass new Castlevania is on the Playstation. Just one more reason for me to get a Playstation." And they moved on from the NES and SNES to, later, the Playstation and Xbox. And that's where the games went--where the audience went first, or where the hardware showed the promise they needed to make the games they wanted.
This is the kind of thing only Nintendo fans ever get into--being offended and butthurt by missing a game, and somehow, absurdly, thinking they--in particular--are the primary reason that franchise exists in the first place! No, Nintendo fans, you did not make Itagaki or Castlevania rich or famous. You did not single-handedly or even primarly boost the Castlevania franchise into it's broad, impressive history. Because the people who really did that, kept playing Castlevania even when it wasn't on Nintendo platforms.
The people who boosted Castlevania on the NES and SNES were playing on the NES and SNES, but they were not bitter fanboys glued to the Nintendo logo on their game machine. And as they moved on to greener pastures and other consoles, so too did the developers and publishers, only to return in those rare moments when Nintendo's hardware had sales, like the GBA and DS--not because Nintendo fans, but because sales.
That argument is not invalid, as he pointed out, WoW launched that year. On top of that, the Xbox brought online gaming to consoles in 2001, and the Dreamcast did it in 1998/1999. Before that, online gaming existed on PC's, and even to an extent with peripherals on the Sega Genesis and Super NES.
The very term "MMORPG" was coined in 1997 after years of other games testing the early online gaming waters. One of the earliest online games was Island of Kesmai from 1985, which supported 100 players and cost an absurd $12 per hour to play.
Online was hardly "new" in 2004. And even if it was, Nintendo very clearly still lacked foresight concerning it, despite building the GameCube with a space for a broadband adapter.
I have observed that Nintendo fans frequently tend to carry large sacks of butthurt for missing out on games they usually had no intention of supporting anyway. Like Call of Duty.
Your statement is demonstrably false. First, not all indies are able to go multiplatform, nor do they. Those that are able to go multiplatform do it over a long period of time--like the developer behind Retro City Rampage, who could only focus on one platform at a time due to extremely limited funds and resources. I'm not really even sure what your point was.
I get that a lot of you guys are upset because too many of you play nothing but Nintendo systems, and therefore miss out on most games, but I have to ask why them skipping Nintendo systems is such a big mistake?
For one thing, the Xbox One and PS4 and Steam have way, way more supporters, subscribers, and sales than the Wii U.
For another thing, no matter the game or quality, third party games struggle badly on Nintendo platforms compared to every other platform.
Sure, it's unfortunate that it'll skip the 3DS, but the 3DS is clearly in decline already, and it's not like there's a huge, guaranteed Castlevania-like audience on that system. There was only one Castlevania game and it didn't appear to sell particularly well.
I'm not surprised it's not coming to Wii U or 3DS. Particularly since development is largely still in the early stages, and both the 3DS and Wii U are clearly in their decline already, it would be kind of a high-risk plan.
At least I can look forward to it on PS4. Not sure if I'll back it just yet.
Yeah, that quote frustratingly sums up how the company does things now. It's shocking how they went from being the most forward-thinking company in gaming--creating the first licensing concept (albeit, a terrible one at the time), modernizing the analog stick, making 4-player gaming a standard of a console, making portable gaming something other than an afterthought, inventing the simple D-pad, creating the prototype of the modern game controller (SNES, then evolved to a new standard by Sony and MS), etc.
The places where they utterly lack confidence or understanding totally baffle me. When they were saying "players don't want online games," they should have taken that as a cue to invent the kinds of games that change this the way they changed what a controller should be with the NES. And you're right, WoW showed, probably better than anything else, that online and social gaming is the future.
Instead of cowardly shying away from voice chat "because some people are mean," why not find a way to revolutionize voice chat to encourage it to be better? Hell, you could even put in a simple concept like, if the game registers a form of hostility in a person's voice, it automatically makes their character trip and fall or blunder with increasing frequency. If the very way a player performs becomes affected by their language or attitude, that would heavily discourage that kind of attitude. I'm nobody, and I can think of that--surely innovators like Nintendo could have come up with better.
I remember this issue when the GameCube was struggling, and Nintendo execs just bitterly dismissed much of gaming as "people just want to shoot at each other," instead of trying to find a way to capitalize on, and reinvent that. That was the proper time to create Splatoon. In some ways, Splatoon may be two generations too late. They didn't understand the appeal of shooters, didn't understand the popularity, didn't understand the reason they were so popular. They even seemed to refuse to understand it because they were angry and bitter that players didn't automatically flock to their style of games.
The point is that Nintendo has still dragged XCX to E3 for three years in a row. That's ridiculous. XCX will probably not arrive in the West until August at the soonest.
Given Nintendo's recent history of hardware announcement to release, the NX should be out in fall 2016 as, with exception of the Wii, they have not gone more than 18 months between initial announcement and release. Any later than that and it will just be buried completely by the XBO and PS4, which will be at their absolute peak by then.
We also have to consider the library of the Wii U is already, very clearly, in a hard decline. Nintendo will reveal the "last hurrah's" for the console this E3, but those are just to keep the console slightly afloat over the largely empty next year until NX comes out in 2016. There is not enough Wii U content to fill this year, let alone next year. The first half of 2015 saw only, what, three full retail games for Wii U? That's terrible. Kirby in February, Mario Party 10 in March, and Splatoon in May. Those are the major releases this year so far. If it wasn't for the few remaining indies being added to the eShop, the Wii U would already be in a vastly worse position than the final year of the N64.
And worse, many of the "big titles" for 2015 are games we've known about for years, many of which were widely expected to be out in 2014, or even 2013. We're still waiting for XCX. Still waiting for Devil's Third. Still waiting for Shin Megami X Fire Emblem. Still waiting for Yoshi's Wooly World. We've known about almost all of these since 2013.
Unfortunately, the Wii U does not even have the momentum to reach 2017, let alone last most of that year waiting for NX to come along.
It's been, what, 2, 3 years since the announcement of the QoL platform? If it doesn't show up at E3, I doubt they're still doing it.
Overall, this is a disappointing, but not surprising move from Nintendo. It's going to hurt them in the long run as Microsoft and Sony build their fanbases and visibility there. But they have limited resources and are already struggling to support two region-locked systems at once.
My guess would be that they are planning to head into China by way of their mobile deal with DeNA and with the "maybe it'll finally be region-free" NX, which will most likely launch late next year.
I blame the memory cards, in large part, for harming the Vita's potential. Had Sony just gone with SD cards, the thing would've sold far, far better.
Because it's a great system--it's smooth, it feels good (could use some triggers and clickable sticks, though), it looks fantastic, and it has a robust series of features and options. But when a consumer is looking at it, they see the memory card prices and how hard it is to find the big ones, and it becomes a major turn-off. I went to half a dozen places trying to find the 32GB card after I got my Vita, and it was a complete pain in the ass. Eventually, I found it, thankfully with a slashed price, at GameStop, but it was still something like $55. I can get the same amount of memory in an SD card for half the price.
The cards are microscopic, so at the very least, Sony should have put multiple slots for them in the Vita so that it could hold, say, two or three memory cards at once. With PSN+, it doesn't take long to fill up that space. But the cards themselves are still too expensive. It's a double-whammy of fail as the cards are too small and too expensive.
My girlfriend bought me the Vita a year and a half ago for Xmas, and it was part of an Amazon bundle that came with a 4GB memory card, Walking Dead, Uncharted, Retro City Rampage, and I think one more game. All of the games were downloadable. The cruel irony was that the only game that would fit on the memory card, I think, was Retro City Rampage.
I could probably get behind an F-Zero from Retro, but that said, Miyamoto made an idiotic comment about not wanting to do F-Zero until he could come up with some kind of weirdly asinine control scheme for it, because gimmicks are what the guy lives by these days. Granted, it would be nice to see if all of Miyamoto's odd hints were just distractions and Retro is actually making one. That'd be pretty sweet.
What I'd really like, though, is for Retro to make a new Eternal Darkness.
From my understanding, it was good but flawed. Sot it's probably worth playing. I never got around to it, myself despite the DS and 3DS being two of my largest game libraries. Bioware either made it or at the very least, had a hand in it.
Your comment highlights a lot of how Nintendo works lately. Rather than being the industry leaders or innovators, they've fallen a full generation behind in their thinking and technology. But they still paint every idea as if it's some kind of daring new concept no one's ever heard of, and that they have to tip-toe through it.
Be it plastic toys for games, harddrive use, region locking, online gaming, voice chat, DLC, freemium games, or mobile games, Nintendo is just woefully behind the times in literally every single aspect of modern gaming. Yet they talk as if they're stepping into brave new territory. No, Nintendo, just because it's new for you does not mean it's remotely a new concept. Microsoft and Sega set the stages for online gaming two generations ago. Everybody else picked up on DLC last generation, and the concept of post-release expansions is far older. Nintendo going to mobile is only a big deal because they adamantly stood against it for so long. Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Capcom, Square-Enix, and countless others have been wading into, and studying up on mobile software since the launch of the iPhone or Android operating systems. Hell, Activision offered to work with Nintendo exclusively on the entire Skylanders concept and Nintendo turned them down. They went out of their way to sell the HD "power" of the under-powered Wii U in the vein of "it's a big deal that Nintendo is HD now, even though everyone else has been doing this for the better part of a decade."
These days, Nintendo is a company perpetually playing catch-up, yet constantly talking as if everything they're doing is some kind of brave new concept of daring innovation.
Oh, you covered this pretty well. Also, the Vita is region-free with it's memory cards, which is about the only positive thing that can be said about their memory cards... grumble grumble grumble....
I'd like to see some examples of game companies "being too lazy to localize games" on the Xbox One or Playstation 4, both of which were region-free at launch. Because I don't think that's likely to be accurate.
This might apply to indies, but in that case, casting the charge of "laziness" is itself intense laziness or ignorance. A lot of indies simply do not have the resources to do a full localization for different regions, so being region-free suddenly means way more people will have access to the games.
In the end, there are almost no good reasons for Nintendo to continue this "region-locking" nonsense, particularly as no company is worse at localizing games than they are. We still never saw Disaster: Day of Crisis or Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse in the US. We still don't have Dragon Quest X, or two other Dragon Quest games on the 3DS.
I find a startling amount of irony in Nintendo Life hosting this article, which spends considerable time explaining why a "woefully underpowered and outdated piece of hardware was so thoroughly dominated by technically superior and more robust competitors."
It's like he's talking about the Wii U, not the PC FX. Hell, the way and reason they just tacked the "PC" label on the console (to capitalize on previously powerful hardware) feels staggeringly similar to Nintendo slapping the "Wii" moniker on the drastically different Wii U.
I am not particularly optimistic. Last year was Nintendo's big chance to turn the Wii U around, and it didn't happen. Both systems are now, already, very clearly in decline, so nothing shown this year will be so ground-breaking that it will reverse the fortunes of the current hardware.
That noted, I think Nintendo is going to focus on maintaining these systems with mostly predictable fare in order to keep them barely afloat over the next year until NX is revealed and released late next year.
Last year, they revealed very little new games were revealed and instead dragged out Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade for the second year in a row. I expect to see Xenoblade, Devil's Third, and Fatal Frame trucked out yet again, so I expect a lot of games we've already known about.
The highlight will be seeing whatever Retro is working on, which at this point, I hope is anything but Metroid or Donkey Kong. I expect a ridiculous amount of talk on DLC and Amiibos, and extensive talk about how they're going to be locking out more content behind Amiibo paywalls because Kotaku is right, Nintendo just wants to sell you plastic. http://kotaku.com/the-amiibo-problem-1702811182
I don't have a lot of confidence, and the Wii U games shown and revealed this E3 are pretty much going to be the final major titles for the hardware.
The 3DS did really well at it's peak about a year ago (it's clearly in decline already on a global level), but the Wii U almost never dominated. The PS3 has held a lot of positions in the Japanese charts for ages, with the PS4 adding to that now. And the Vita, apparently.
I'm not complaining anyway, I'm happy to see XCX actually appear near the top, particularly since the predecessor was apparently largely ignored over there on the Wii. My only note was that this is a very temporary victory--and I would not be surprised (though I hope it doesn't happen) if XCX isn't even on the chart next week.
So Nintendo is favoring smart device games over new hardware for the new territories. They are choosing to focus on selling games for other devices over selling their own devices. Gooood... goooooodd...
Their transition to 3rd party status is beginning.
I just hope that mobile success helps them move away from making game consoles. It seems Nintendo fans prefer the hardware over the actual software sometimes, going to great lengths to defend Nintendo making hardware that no one wants to buy, thus meaning fewer and fewer people experiencing their generally enjoyable software.
The reality is that Nintendo's hardware is now seen as a major hurdle preventing people from enjoying games like Zelda or Xenoblade, what have you. Outside of core Nintendo fans, most people do not seem to see value in buying the hardware for just one or two Nintendo games, but those games would likely sell far better on hardware people do want.
I'm expecting strong revenue streams from this mobile endeavor--so strong, that it'll become a major part of their business strategy going forward. Nintendo games have been shown to sell on popular hardware (i.e., the Wii and DS), but they do not, themselves, actually sell this hardware. I hope this mobile endeavor finally convinces them that third party has better revenue options for them.
I'm not sure a one-week top position exactly indicates Nintendo dominance when it's to be surrounded by weeks of near total Playstation dominance. That's like saying a professional sports team is "dominating" when they've only won 1 out of 4 games in a series.
Still, it is nice to see Xenoblade launch fairly strongly, brief though its time at the top will be.
Still baffled by Square-Enix and Nintendo's utter failure to bring Dragon Quest out of Japan.
Yeah, this seemed like such an obvious option that I just flat-out expected it given Nintendo's history of "couch multiplayer." I don't understand the exclusion, is Nintendo incapable of making a game with equally solid online and offline play? Can they only do one or the other?
Comments 2,916
Re: Nintendo Committed To Making Smart Device Gaming One Of Its Key "Revenue Pillars"
@Yorumi
That sounds like a good visual marker--when people simply aren't talking about it. On the industry side, it means releases see a drastic drop in numbers and companies moving elsewhere... or going under.
Re: Square Enix Announces Dragon Quest VIII For The 3DS
@IceClimbers
Square-Enix AND Nintendo. Since NoA published several DQ games for the DS over here, they could be actively working to get them localized and published.
Re: Newly Confirmed Guitar Hero Live Tracks Bring The Spandex And Poodle Perms
@rjejr
Judas Priest is one of the greatest bands ever formed. I still find it amusing that so much of the "metal image" (clad in leather with spikes and studs) came from Halford shopping for gay fashions in the 70's, and just liked the look of the leather. He found the gay leather he wanted, looked like a badass, and inspired an entire genre of music to look more badass.
Hard to believe this is the same band:
And K.K. Downing retired to play golf.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@OnionOverlord
You're far too touchy and in your last post, seem to have a sudden case of persecution complex. I am addressing the content of posts, not you as a person or anything to that regard.
And beyond that, my logic is quite sound--just because a game started on a Nintendo system does not mean any future games are obligated to be on there. That's absurd.
That's like saying that Donkey Kong only belongs on Coleco consoles, so hardcore Coleco fans should be outraged whenever another Donkey Kong game appears on a Nintendo system. "Well, it started on ColecoVision. We're who made the game popular!"
You guys need to simmer down sometimes and think about what it is you're saying. Saying anything along the lines of "X NES game should be on future Nintendo consoles, because it started on the Nintendo console" is extraordinarily faulty--yet that very statement has been thrown around like little people at the Professional Midget Tossing Quarter Finals. No, it doesn't. And to be upset that a spiritual successor is skipping those later Nintendo consoles is doubly absurd. It's silly enough to surmise that Castlevania in some form "belongs" on Nintendo systems, it's just plain wrong to say the same of an unrelated spiritual successor.
You guys can be upset all you want that it's skipping Wii U and 3DS (so far), but face reality, it's not like this is a shocker. Most games are skipping these two platforms now, regardless of what they are. And this is made in the Unreal 4 engine, which the Wii U and especially the 3DS cannot handle. That's fine, be disappointed, but have some understanding. And stop making up downright stupid excuses why it "should happen" by crazily linking this to the roots of a different game because console fanboyism.
I am responding to that general sentiment. As it is laughably nonsensical.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@dkxcalibur
Yes, he benefited in the small term, and on a paycheck when you bought the games. But to act like "well, I bought something he worked on before, therefore he shouldn't need the money" is like saying that you "bought a meal at McDonald's once, and therefore, the guy at the cash register has the money to open his own restaurant."
That's just monstrously illogical.
Your reasoning is dubious at best, and just unfocused and so missing the point that it's not even wrong as it's not even properly addressing the point.
He has struck out, he is independent. He is funding his own team. He is looking to Kickstarter to see if gamers are willing to support that team and their game. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Wii U or 3DS, and it has nothing to do with how much money he as an individual made at Konami, and to say that it does, is just wrong in an otherworldly sense.
Re: Nintendo Committed To Making Smart Device Gaming One Of Its Key "Revenue Pillars"
@Yorumi
In some circles, it's been stated that the mobile bubble has already burst. Once a haven for indie creativity, mobile games have gone big business and overly corporate. Fewer than 50% of all mobile games are profitable. The vast majority of that revenue stream is through a tiny number of games and apps.
Re: Nintendo Committed To Making Smart Device Gaming One Of Its Key "Revenue Pillars"
That sounds like an awful lot more than the "just impressive ads" that so many fans adamantly claimed.
This sounds like some big, full-blown games and products.
Re: SEGA Records Financial Losses and Aims to Stick With "Mainstay IP" Game Releases
@liljmoore
Nintendo fans don't want ports of old games? Funny, sales of the Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker ports/remakes seem to indicate otherwise.
Re: SEGA Records Financial Losses and Aims to Stick With "Mainstay IP" Game Releases
@Mega719
Why would Sega have to work permanently with Nintendo?
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@OnionOverlord
By that logic, Sonic games should only be on Sega hardware and nothing else. Centipede should only be on Atari hardware and nothing else. Tomb Raider should only be on Playstation hardware and nothing else.
Just because Castlevania started on NES and also Commodore 64 and Amiga, does not mean it needs to stay on Nintendo hardware if the audience is elsewhere. Hell, by your own logic, Castlevania should only appear on modern Commodore and Amiga hardware.
This is a ridiculous argument. Sure, the original Castlevania fanbase may have been "born" on Nintendo consoles, but that doesn't mean they belong on Nintendo consoles now. What the hell does the logo box have to do with it? Times change, consoles change. Apparently, only Nintendo fans don't change.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@dkxcalibur
Actually, saying the reason it's not coming is dumb... is dumb. Because you could very easily have actually looked at the Kickstarter. The game is being made in Unreal 4, which is an engine that the Wii U cannot handle.
They'd essentially have to rebuild the game largely from scratch in Unreal 3 to get it to run on the Wii U, and that's a lot of work for an audience that is clearly not that supportive of 3rd parties.
Also, you seem to have no clue at all how corporations or this industry works. Just because you bought a game in the past does not mean he has your money. He's independent now, he's not part of the corporation you supported. All he has is his personal savings from the paycheck he earned. As a developer, they did not receive the money from the games you purchased, as you purchased them from a different developer and corporation.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@hosokawasamurai
Oops! My bad.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@Wolfgabe
How is it unfair to lump Steam, XBO, and PS4 together? If a game plays on XBO or PS4, it'll play in Steam. Nintendo is the oddball in this.
Also, my "assumptions" about Nintendo fans are based on general behavior. As has been noted before, Nintendo fans do not support 3rd party, yet they take every 3rd party "abandoning them" personally, and 3rd parties have had a much harder time on Nintendo systems since the N64 at the very least.d
Clearly, if Nintendo fans supported 3rd parties (and Nintendo made hardware that could handle the games without compromise), there'd be a lot more third party games on the console. Suffice to say, they do not.
And I don't monitor the eShop? I'm in the eShop.
Re: Nintendo Ditches Plans To Create New Hardware For The Chinese Market
@LztheQuack
How did I "forget" the iQue? Which is pictured above and was a very late to the game version of the N64?
Re: Nintendo Has Unannounced Wii U Titles Which Will Launch Before April 2016
I like his "before April 2016" line. Going by Wii U history, that means these games will be spread out over a 6 month period that includes April, but is mostly after it.
Re: Nintendo Has Unannounced Wii U Titles Which Will Launch Before April 2016
@rjejr
That list is just awful.
But terrifyingly likely.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@BonafideInfidel
Well, I didn't really address you personally in my post. But I can extrapolate that you seem to have an inflated sense of self-worth. Why should Itagaki respect your decision? He's never even going to see you deriding the project because it's not "on Nintendo." It's all well and good to have principles, but this just makes so little sense. Back the game because you either like it or want it, and if you don't, don't back it.
But to pretend that he "owes Nintendo fans something" is preposterous, and to base your principles on some sort of "fairness to Nintendo" comes off as remarkably silly. Now, if you really supported Castlevania on multiple platforms over the years, and really want this, then by all means, support a project and a game developer you admire.
So far, I don't understand your reasoning not to as you have apparently wound it all down to "because Nintendo fanboyism." Logically, it makes vastly more sense for him to aim for the two systems with both sales and sales of 3rd party games. If respect is big for you, you might respect how he came to that decision--because he's making a good business decision.
Now, if I'm wrong, then what is your, specific, reason for being against it, as someone who is a self-professed Castlevania fan?
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@PolarKoalaBear
Why?
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@BonafideInfidel
It's highly debatable that "Nintendo fans" made Castlevania a success to begin with. For one thing, back on the NES and SNES, they were just regular kids, gamers--not the ravenous, frequently anti-third party modern Nintendo fans. The people who first gave Castlevania it's success were the same people who continued to support it on the Playstation, PS2, X360, and PS3. Clearly, it's not "Nintendo fans," as the games went to consoles with good sales, not consoles where "there are Nintendo fans who made Castlevania famous."
This is just a rather silly way to be personally offended. If you think you supported Castlevania, but only did so on Nintendo systems, then you didn't really support Castlevania--you only bought it when it met with your console fandom. The people who still supported the games, regardless of platform, are the people who really made Castlevania famous.
Clearly, not supporting the Wii U or 3DS is not even remotely hurting the Kickstarter, so it's laughably absurd to claim he's "ignoring the people that made the {Castlevania} franchise a success to begin with." I mean, if that was really, even a little bit true, don't you think the Kickstarter would be faring worse?
In all seriousness, Nintendo fans, get over yourselves. You did not make Castlevania the big franchise it is now. People playing primarily on PC, Xbox, and Playstation played just a big a part in that as you did, if not more so because they didn't tie supporting the game down to a silly notion of "well, it has to be on Nintendo or I don't care." Other people--Castlevania fans--instead went through the years saying, "oh man, that kick-ass new Castlevania is on the Playstation. Just one more reason for me to get a Playstation." And they moved on from the NES and SNES to, later, the Playstation and Xbox. And that's where the games went--where the audience went first, or where the hardware showed the promise they needed to make the games they wanted.
This is the kind of thing only Nintendo fans ever get into--being offended and butthurt by missing a game, and somehow, absurdly, thinking they--in particular--are the primary reason that franchise exists in the first place! No, Nintendo fans, you did not make Itagaki or Castlevania rich or famous. You did not single-handedly or even primarly boost the Castlevania franchise into it's broad, impressive history. Because the people who really did that, kept playing Castlevania even when it wasn't on Nintendo platforms.
The people who boosted Castlevania on the NES and SNES were playing on the NES and SNES, but they were not bitter fanboys glued to the Nintendo logo on their game machine. And as they moved on to greener pastures and other consoles, so too did the developers and publishers, only to return in those rare moments when Nintendo's hardware had sales, like the GBA and DS--not because Nintendo fans, but because sales.
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@Uberchu
That argument is not invalid, as he pointed out, WoW launched that year. On top of that, the Xbox brought online gaming to consoles in 2001, and the Dreamcast did it in 1998/1999. Before that, online gaming existed on PC's, and even to an extent with peripherals on the Sega Genesis and Super NES.
The very term "MMORPG" was coined in 1997 after years of other games testing the early online gaming waters. One of the earliest online games was Island of Kesmai from 1985, which supported 100 players and cost an absurd $12 per hour to play.
Online was hardly "new" in 2004. And even if it was, Nintendo very clearly still lacked foresight concerning it, despite building the GameCube with a space for a broadband adapter.
Re: Nintendo Ditches Plans To Create New Hardware For The Chinese Market
@Octane
Which part of "Electronics Entertainment Expo" says that it's a gaming-only show?
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@BinaryFragger
I have observed that Nintendo fans frequently tend to carry large sacks of butthurt for missing out on games they usually had no intention of supporting anyway. Like Call of Duty.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@Einherjar
Your statement is demonstrably false. First, not all indies are able to go multiplatform, nor do they. Those that are able to go multiplatform do it over a long period of time--like the developer behind Retro City Rampage, who could only focus on one platform at a time due to extremely limited funds and resources. I'm not really even sure what your point was.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
@Wolfgabe
I get that a lot of you guys are upset because too many of you play nothing but Nintendo systems, and therefore miss out on most games, but I have to ask why them skipping Nintendo systems is such a big mistake?
For one thing, the Xbox One and PS4 and Steam have way, way more supporters, subscribers, and sales than the Wii U.
For another thing, no matter the game or quality, third party games struggle badly on Nintendo platforms compared to every other platform.
Sure, it's unfortunate that it'll skip the 3DS, but the 3DS is clearly in decline already, and it's not like there's a huge, guaranteed Castlevania-like audience on that system. There was only one Castlevania game and it didn't appear to sell particularly well.
Re: Former Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter Launches, But Won't Come To Nintendo Consoles
Well, I called this.
I'm not surprised it's not coming to Wii U or 3DS. Particularly since development is largely still in the early stages, and both the 3DS and Wii U are clearly in their decline already, it would be kind of a high-risk plan.
At least I can look forward to it on PS4. Not sure if I'll back it just yet.
Re: Nintendo Ditches Plans To Create New Hardware For The Chinese Market
@flightsaber
Microsoft reportedly did way better in China than Japan.
Re: Nintendo Ditches Plans To Create New Hardware For The Chinese Market
@Curly_Brace
Man, it seems like forever.
Nintendo sure has a lot of "announcements" these days, but not a lot of follow-through.
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@BinaryFragger
Yeah, that quote frustratingly sums up how the company does things now. It's shocking how they went from being the most forward-thinking company in gaming--creating the first licensing concept (albeit, a terrible one at the time), modernizing the analog stick, making 4-player gaming a standard of a console, making portable gaming something other than an afterthought, inventing the simple D-pad, creating the prototype of the modern game controller (SNES, then evolved to a new standard by Sony and MS), etc.
The places where they utterly lack confidence or understanding totally baffle me. When they were saying "players don't want online games," they should have taken that as a cue to invent the kinds of games that change this the way they changed what a controller should be with the NES. And you're right, WoW showed, probably better than anything else, that online and social gaming is the future.
Instead of cowardly shying away from voice chat "because some people are mean," why not find a way to revolutionize voice chat to encourage it to be better? Hell, you could even put in a simple concept like, if the game registers a form of hostility in a person's voice, it automatically makes their character trip and fall or blunder with increasing frequency. If the very way a player performs becomes affected by their language or attitude, that would heavily discourage that kind of attitude. I'm nobody, and I can think of that--surely innovators like Nintendo could have come up with better.
I remember this issue when the GameCube was struggling, and Nintendo execs just bitterly dismissed much of gaming as "people just want to shoot at each other," instead of trying to find a way to capitalize on, and reinvent that. That was the proper time to create Splatoon. In some ways, Splatoon may be two generations too late. They didn't understand the appeal of shooters, didn't understand the popularity, didn't understand the reason they were so popular. They even seemed to refuse to understand it because they were angry and bitter that players didn't automatically flock to their style of games.
Re: Nintendo's E3 Focus to Reportedly be on Wii U and 3DS, not Smart Devices or NX
@Zyon
The point is that Nintendo has still dragged XCX to E3 for three years in a row. That's ridiculous. XCX will probably not arrive in the West until August at the soonest.
Given Nintendo's recent history of hardware announcement to release, the NX should be out in fall 2016 as, with exception of the Wii, they have not gone more than 18 months between initial announcement and release. Any later than that and it will just be buried completely by the XBO and PS4, which will be at their absolute peak by then.
We also have to consider the library of the Wii U is already, very clearly, in a hard decline. Nintendo will reveal the "last hurrah's" for the console this E3, but those are just to keep the console slightly afloat over the largely empty next year until NX comes out in 2016. There is not enough Wii U content to fill this year, let alone next year. The first half of 2015 saw only, what, three full retail games for Wii U? That's terrible. Kirby in February, Mario Party 10 in March, and Splatoon in May. Those are the major releases this year so far. If it wasn't for the few remaining indies being added to the eShop, the Wii U would already be in a vastly worse position than the final year of the N64.
And worse, many of the "big titles" for 2015 are games we've known about for years, many of which were widely expected to be out in 2014, or even 2013. We're still waiting for XCX. Still waiting for Devil's Third. Still waiting for Shin Megami X Fire Emblem. Still waiting for Yoshi's Wooly World. We've known about almost all of these since 2013.
Unfortunately, the Wii U does not even have the momentum to reach 2017, let alone last most of that year waiting for NX to come along.
Re: Nintendo Ditches Plans To Create New Hardware For The Chinese Market
@rferrari24
It's been, what, 2, 3 years since the announcement of the QoL platform? If it doesn't show up at E3, I doubt they're still doing it.
Overall, this is a disappointing, but not surprising move from Nintendo. It's going to hurt them in the long run as Microsoft and Sony build their fanbases and visibility there. But they have limited resources and are already struggling to support two region-locked systems at once.
My guess would be that they are planning to head into China by way of their mobile deal with DeNA and with the "maybe it'll finally be region-free" NX, which will most likely launch late next year.
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@ericwithcheese2
I blame the memory cards, in large part, for harming the Vita's potential. Had Sony just gone with SD cards, the thing would've sold far, far better.
Because it's a great system--it's smooth, it feels good (could use some triggers and clickable sticks, though), it looks fantastic, and it has a robust series of features and options. But when a consumer is looking at it, they see the memory card prices and how hard it is to find the big ones, and it becomes a major turn-off. I went to half a dozen places trying to find the 32GB card after I got my Vita, and it was a complete pain in the ass. Eventually, I found it, thankfully with a slashed price, at GameStop, but it was still something like $55. I can get the same amount of memory in an SD card for half the price.
The cards are microscopic, so at the very least, Sony should have put multiple slots for them in the Vita so that it could hold, say, two or three memory cards at once. With PSN+, it doesn't take long to fill up that space. But the cards themselves are still too expensive. It's a double-whammy of fail as the cards are too small and too expensive.
My girlfriend bought me the Vita a year and a half ago for Xmas, and it was part of an Amazon bundle that came with a 4GB memory card, Walking Dead, Uncharted, Retro City Rampage, and I think one more game. All of the games were downloadable. The cruel irony was that the only game that would fit on the memory card, I think, was Retro City Rampage.
Re: Nintendo's E3 Focus to Reportedly be on Wii U and 3DS, not Smart Devices or NX
@dkxcalibur
I could probably get behind an F-Zero from Retro, but that said, Miyamoto made an idiotic comment about not wanting to do F-Zero until he could come up with some kind of weirdly asinine control scheme for it, because gimmicks are what the guy lives by these days. Granted, it would be nice to see if all of Miyamoto's odd hints were just distractions and Retro is actually making one. That'd be pretty sweet.
What I'd really like, though, is for Retro to make a new Eternal Darkness.
Re: Nintendo's E3 Focus to Reportedly be on Wii U and 3DS, not Smart Devices or NX
@BioOrpheus
Wait, you actually want to see Xenoblade Chronicles X dragged out to a third E3 in a row?
Re: SEGA Records Financial Losses and Aims to Stick With "Mainstay IP" Game Releases
@dkxcalibur
From my understanding, it was good but flawed. Sot it's probably worth playing. I never got around to it, myself despite the DS and 3DS being two of my largest game libraries. Bioware either made it or at the very least, had a hand in it.
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@Kirk
Your comment highlights a lot of how Nintendo works lately. Rather than being the industry leaders or innovators, they've fallen a full generation behind in their thinking and technology. But they still paint every idea as if it's some kind of daring new concept no one's ever heard of, and that they have to tip-toe through it.
Be it plastic toys for games, harddrive use, region locking, online gaming, voice chat, DLC, freemium games, or mobile games, Nintendo is just woefully behind the times in literally every single aspect of modern gaming. Yet they talk as if they're stepping into brave new territory. No, Nintendo, just because it's new for you does not mean it's remotely a new concept. Microsoft and Sega set the stages for online gaming two generations ago. Everybody else picked up on DLC last generation, and the concept of post-release expansions is far older. Nintendo going to mobile is only a big deal because they adamantly stood against it for so long. Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Capcom, Square-Enix, and countless others have been wading into, and studying up on mobile software since the launch of the iPhone or Android operating systems. Hell, Activision offered to work with Nintendo exclusively on the entire Skylanders concept and Nintendo turned them down. They went out of their way to sell the HD "power" of the under-powered Wii U in the vein of "it's a big deal that Nintendo is HD now, even though everyone else has been doing this for the better part of a decade."
These days, Nintendo is a company perpetually playing catch-up, yet constantly talking as if everything they're doing is some kind of brave new concept of daring innovation.
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@AVahne
Oh, you covered this pretty well. Also, the Vita is region-free with it's memory cards, which is about the only positive thing that can be said about their memory cards... grumble grumble grumble....
Re: Nintendo "Currently Investigating" The Idea Of A Region-Free NX
@Zyph
I'd like to see some examples of game companies "being too lazy to localize games" on the Xbox One or Playstation 4, both of which were region-free at launch. Because I don't think that's likely to be accurate.
This might apply to indies, but in that case, casting the charge of "laziness" is itself intense laziness or ignorance. A lot of indies simply do not have the resources to do a full localization for different regions, so being region-free suddenly means way more people will have access to the games.
In the end, there are almost no good reasons for Nintendo to continue this "region-locking" nonsense, particularly as no company is worse at localizing games than they are. We still never saw Disaster: Day of Crisis or Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse in the US. We still don't have Dragon Quest X, or two other Dragon Quest games on the 3DS.
Re: SEGA Records Financial Losses and Aims to Stick With "Mainstay IP" Game Releases
@dkxcalibur
A Sonic RPG would not be that unexpected.
Behold, the first Sonic RPG.
Re: SEGA Records Financial Losses and Aims to Stick With "Mainstay IP" Game Releases
@EllenJMiller
Yeah, but that's not likely to be a very big revenue stream.
Re: Feature: What NEC And Hudson Did Next: The Disasterous Story Of The PC-FX
I find a startling amount of irony in Nintendo Life hosting this article, which spends considerable time explaining why a "woefully underpowered and outdated piece of hardware was so thoroughly dominated by technically superior and more robust competitors."
It's like he's talking about the Wii U, not the PC FX. Hell, the way and reason they just tacked the "PC" label on the console (to capitalize on previously powerful hardware) feels staggeringly similar to Nintendo slapping the "Wii" moniker on the drastically different Wii U.
Re: Nintendo's E3 Focus to Reportedly be on Wii U and 3DS, not Smart Devices or NX
I am not particularly optimistic. Last year was Nintendo's big chance to turn the Wii U around, and it didn't happen. Both systems are now, already, very clearly in decline, so nothing shown this year will be so ground-breaking that it will reverse the fortunes of the current hardware.
That noted, I think Nintendo is going to focus on maintaining these systems with mostly predictable fare in order to keep them barely afloat over the next year until NX is revealed and released late next year.
Last year, they revealed very little new games were revealed and instead dragged out Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade for the second year in a row. I expect to see Xenoblade, Devil's Third, and Fatal Frame trucked out yet again, so I expect a lot of games we've already known about.
The highlight will be seeing whatever Retro is working on, which at this point, I hope is anything but Metroid or Donkey Kong. I expect a ridiculous amount of talk on DLC and Amiibos, and extensive talk about how they're going to be locking out more content behind Amiibo paywalls because Kotaku is right, Nintendo just wants to sell you plastic. http://kotaku.com/the-amiibo-problem-1702811182
I don't have a lot of confidence, and the Wii U games shown and revealed this E3 are pretty much going to be the final major titles for the hardware.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles X and Dragon Quest Help Wii U to Top Spot in Japan
@MJKOP
The 3DS did really well at it's peak about a year ago (it's clearly in decline already on a global level), but the Wii U almost never dominated. The PS3 has held a lot of positions in the Japanese charts for ages, with the PS4 adding to that now. And the Vita, apparently.
I'm not complaining anyway, I'm happy to see XCX actually appear near the top, particularly since the predecessor was apparently largely ignored over there on the Wii. My only note was that this is a very temporary victory--and I would not be surprised (though I hope it doesn't happen) if XCX isn't even on the chart next week.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles X and Dragon Quest Help Wii U to Top Spot in Japan
@Vineleaf
Ha ha ha, no I have not. I'm a little more to the west, and our boys seem to have finally found their focus.
Re: Nintendo Share Value Increases With Profits and Smart Device Gaming on the Agenda
@Nintendude789
As opposed to what?
Re: Nintendo Share Value Increases With Profits and Smart Device Gaming on the Agenda
So Nintendo is favoring smart device games over new hardware for the new territories. They are choosing to focus on selling games for other devices over selling their own devices. Gooood... goooooodd...
Their transition to 3rd party status is beginning.
Re: Feature: The Key Details on Splatoon, Nintendo's Shot at a New Wii U Hit
@Ryno
Duke Nukem Forever.
Re: Nintendo's First Smart Device Game With DeNA to Land This Year, But Only Five Planned Up to March 2017
@aaronsullivan
I just hope that mobile success helps them move away from making game consoles. It seems Nintendo fans prefer the hardware over the actual software sometimes, going to great lengths to defend Nintendo making hardware that no one wants to buy, thus meaning fewer and fewer people experiencing their generally enjoyable software.
The reality is that Nintendo's hardware is now seen as a major hurdle preventing people from enjoying games like Zelda or Xenoblade, what have you. Outside of core Nintendo fans, most people do not seem to see value in buying the hardware for just one or two Nintendo games, but those games would likely sell far better on hardware people do want.
I'm expecting strong revenue streams from this mobile endeavor--so strong, that it'll become a major part of their business strategy going forward. Nintendo games have been shown to sell on popular hardware (i.e., the Wii and DS), but they do not, themselves, actually sell this hardware. I hope this mobile endeavor finally convinces them that third party has better revenue options for them.
Re: Nintendo's First Smart Device Game With DeNA to Land This Year, But Only Five Planned Up to March 2017
@Nintendian
I could see them using this idea. The StreetPass games have an addictive quality about them.
Of these five games, I expect maybe one new IP experiment, and two of them to be based around Mario.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles X and Dragon Quest Help Wii U to Top Spot in Japan
@Spoony_Tech
I'm not sure a one-week top position exactly indicates Nintendo dominance when it's to be surrounded by weeks of near total Playstation dominance. That's like saying a professional sports team is "dominating" when they've only won 1 out of 4 games in a series.
Still, it is nice to see Xenoblade launch fairly strongly, brief though its time at the top will be.
Still baffled by Square-Enix and Nintendo's utter failure to bring Dragon Quest out of Japan.
Re: Feature: The Key Details on Splatoon, Nintendo's Shot at a New Wii U Hit
@abbyhitter
Yeah, this seemed like such an obvious option that I just flat-out expected it given Nintendo's history of "couch multiplayer." I don't understand the exclusion, is Nintendo incapable of making a game with equally solid online and offline play? Can they only do one or the other?