Raylax

I'm fairly confident that the Wii U will see a price cut this year. Probably not as drastic as the 3DS's (and thereby dodging the embarrassing "whoops we messed up, have 20 free games" scenario), but by about £30 ($50) or so.

@Tertis: Companies don't plan for their consoles to tank for a year just so they can have a decent E3. They want them to sell well and have a good E3.

News! Unknown somebody sends post to Nintendo.

Citizens of Earth! Prepare to invade Wii U eShop!

_{Attaaaaaaaaack~}

Entered~

Melt the trash~

I'm bored of the endless snidely remarks between indie devs, and indie devs vs the world. Grow up, folks.

Good to know that making excellent games doesn't change a person. He still sounds like a whiney GameFAQs ranter with a broken Shift key.

The annoying thing is, he was (in my opinion) quite on the money about MH3 being better suited to a console with dual analogues. It's a dual-analogue game. And the tutorial text is warped in horrendous ways for no better reason than they didn't bother to scale it properly. I don't think anyone can deny that. But he said it (and his backpedalling) like an entitled four-year-old and thus entirely undermined any point he may have made. Good show.

Nintendo's next console will be called the WiiU 3 DS, just to ensure that those last traces of ambiguity are well-captured.

Yay~

To the surprise of nobody

What.

**closes browser**
**reopens**

... WHAT.

Sweet! Human Revolution is a fantastic game.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

Bells and Whistles, the names of the two heroines in this year's next Disney blockbuster.

Part of me wants to say its a shame that this isn't hitting Wii U because it's a fantastic series. Then I remember that I wouldn't want to play it on Wii U knowing that there's a far, far superior version on other platforms. I'd rather buy it for PS4.

People, if we're basing "current gen" on release date and not the actual technology, then that portable N64 a few articles back is "current gen" too.

Otherwise, if you're sensible, you'll base generations on comparable technology. If PS4 is the current gen (or will be by the time this comes out), then the Wii U is not current gen. It is previous gen. It is comparable to the PS3 / 360 (before anyone blubs that Wii U is a bit more powerful than PS360, note I said comparable and not identical).

Anyway, it's not surprising that this isn't hitting Wii U. High development costs for a poor-selling console with an infamously volatile fan base towards third-party products, and hardly what you'd call a guaranteed ROI?

Edit: Skim reading ftw! Disregard this~

Monthly fee.

Welp, there goes 90% of the reason for using Flipnote Studio. It's like putting a monthly fee on Youtube.

We need an extra option:

• Check the writer. If it's Phil, read the hilarity, pity the writer.

Really? Jesus. Doesn't take much these days, does it?

He's either massively underestimated the cost of developing a game, or his non-Kickstarter starting budget was already in the thousands (which would the tiny £500 goal baffling, so I doubt it)

Or, as I personally suspect, he's yet to even contact Nintendo about the possibility of releasing it on eShop and is basically just thinking "YEAH. I CAN JUST SEND THE CODE TO NINTENDO AND THEY'LL PUT IT UP. THAT'S HOW IT WORKS, RIGHT?"

Best intentions aside, he's got a hyper-generic JRPG that appears to have been built in Game Maker and looks and plays entirely amateurish. As a hobbyist title from one guy, it's looking great. But as a multi-platform release on several platforms, he's thrown himself in far too deep and severely underestimated the time and costs of this level of distribution. This will not end well, I'm afraid.

Case in point: A Wii U dev kit, if Nintendo even allows him one (do they still have the office restriction in place? Because he'll need to rent one of those, too), will strip an entire third of his Kickstarter earnings before he's even started.

I have that "Asian Version" Sonic 2. Great box art :3

Don't just sit there and
waste your precious time.
When you want to do something,
do it when you can. Do it right away.
It's the only way to live life without regrets.

Super Meat Boy's a great game, but McMillen is as immature as his games and thinks far too highly of himself.

I've worked in a hospital long enough to know that surgeons (or indeed all other medical staff) would never, ever have time to play Wii for an hour before anything. Nor us admin staff, for that matter.

Really, this report is a bit like proving that firefighters are better at fighting fire if they play a game of monopoly before heading out to tackle the blazing inferno. Interesting (I guess?), but of use to precisely nobody, ever. Especially if your house is on fire

No it does not.

There was a Pokémon Official Magazine operated by the old Nintendo Official Magazine (which closed down and publishing handed over to Future for the current Official Nintendo Magazine), which lasted about 2 issues before shutting down. I remember it being quite good, but obviously never captured the necessary sales (we already have the unofficial Pokémon World magazine it had to compete with) to stay solvent. Still, Pokémon remains surprisingly popular in the UK, so I'll be interested to see how this does.

@MickeyTheGreat It is indeed sickening that a business should want to invent plans that they can profit and benefit from. Businesses in the game sector are, as we all know, exclusively charitable ventures with no interest in money-making whatsoever.

Sarcasm aside, this news doesn't affect me much. I genuinely haven't bought an EA game since it was known as Electronic Arts on the Mega Drive. That's not out of some internet-flavoured spite for the company, it's just a thing that has happened for no particular reason.

And to be honest, the way I see it, it's taking money off idiots, which can only be a good thing. Always milk an idiot, it makes life better for everyone else. You want to be the person who paid their way through a video game (that you already paid for), fine. Go for it. It strikes me as being akin to buying a cinema ticket, not watching the film, and then giving £10 to the first person coming out who'll tell you how it ends.

Torus Games, you've outdone yourself.

@Xtremetdfdifan - developers of film tie-in games are generally constrained by extremely tiny budgets and extremely tight deadlines - the game **has to** ship with the film; you often can't delay a film tie-in without serious repercussions from the company making the movie.
So even if the developer wants to make something good (which clearly Torus Games didn't), there's no time or money to do it. It's largely off-the-shelf tried-and-tested code bolted together with the films' assets and story thrown in, ready to ship asap.
Occasionally developers will manage to pull out something good with a movie tie-in, but its a very rare thing. And often its in a developers' interest to keep costs down to a minimum, as the guaranteed sales will help keep their bigger, riskier stand-alone projects afloat.

Metroid Prime could link to Metroid Fusion, and you could play Prime the whole way through with the Fusion suit, which was really cool:

Plus, you could also unlock the original NES Metroid with the link too

Nintendo logic:
"Welp, the Wii U isn't selling brilliantly. Better put out a different bit of new hardware to siphon off a few more sales!"

"Welp, Mario games have been horribly over-exposed recently. Better re-publish 3 old ones!"

I remember that a few Mega Drive (Genesis) games had a multi-tap where the extra ports were actually built into the game in question.

Positive: Don't have to pay for an extra add-on that'll get lost in a box under the bed. It's built into the games that use it!

Disadvantage: Soon as anyone gets over-exited and yanks their controller, tilting the cartridge, **bzzzzt** the game crashes. Occasionally done with malicious intent

It seems that, rather like the brief availability of Scribblenauts Unlimited on the European Wii U eShop, someone has somewhat jumped the gun.

...What was James's job at NoE again? :3

I actually prefer the DS Phat and DSi, haha. The DSi wins for its gorgeous, ultra-bright screens.

Emmy's gif is amazing, omg

I personally consider Google's Street View to be one of the greatest creations of recent times. Not because of any technical, or financial, or political achievements - although it is certainly impressive in those regards - but simply because "we turned most of the whole world into an explorable street-level map. Why? Because we could."

I have to admit I've whiled away many an hour exploring the cities and suburbs, fields and wonders, of many places for no better reason than "because I totally can" and it's a continually fascinating experience.

There's a deeper achievement there too - it provides a literal snapshot of the world, circa early 21st century. Imagine if you could go to a museum and explore a virtual, accurate rendition of the whole world as of 60 years ago. Not just the big political and cultural events, but the people too, going about their daily business. It would provide a fascinating and invaluable insight. And that's what we've created here. Come the late 21st and early 22nd century, those Street View archives created today will inspire and enthrall generation after generation. That's why it's one of the greatest achievements for me.

Closer to topic, that's also why I can't wait to be able to check this out on Wii U.

This is fantastic.
Less fantastic is how ridiculously easily flamebaited this community is becoming. It's a little joke guys. Chill out.

Video Games: The Movie: The Official Video Game

I like how during the Wii era (Wiira?), people argued that they'd prefer dual-analogue over generally faulty (with a few exceptions) wiimote pointing.

And now they have dual-analogue, suddenly lack of Wiimote waggle is A Bad Thing.

@zerky Really? I used craigslist :3

I wasn't hot on the 3DS one, so I'll pass on this.

This will happen when you release nothing but Mario titles.

I approve of this development.

@3dbrains "are these 3rd party titles really so great? not in my experience, they are normally just filler... super buggy, badly made, unfinished turds. I am happier without turds."
@gavn64 "nintendo have shown that they can survive without these cretins"

It is precisely this mindset from the fans ("3rd parties aren't as good as Nintendo / Nintendo doesn't need 3rd parties") that is putting people off developing for Wii U.

It always astounds me that Nintendo fans can backlash at third party support so easily and at the same time demonstrate the exact reason why 3rd-party support is so poor.

Not terribly suprising. Nintendo gamers are not known for their heavy adoption of 3rd-party titles even when they are available; largely because of the wide-reaching coverage of first-party titles with less of the "risk" attached. Couple that with something of a seven-year "isolation" from major third-party titles with the low power of the Wii - Nintendo certainly managed to squeeze some juice out of it, but for most third parties it was too much hassle and too much cost for too little return to do so. And then when the new console doesn't sell, promises to be again a generation behind, and the new gens are on the horizon, the third parties are left with very little reason to continue backing the Wii U.
Nintendo has really failed to deliver on its promises - instead of a top-selling console with a strong third-party environment, it has a poor-selling console with third-party attention being further leeched off by its relentless Super Mario releases on Wii U and 3DS (half a dozen in 1 year, seriously). And the upcoming titles getting all the attention on Wii U? It's almost exclusively 1st party and Nintendo-supported/published titles.
This is not how you keep third parties interested.

Oh god, please. Let's not try to argue target age group concerns when talking about Nintendo.

"Tragic"? Really? We're really stretching the lower boundaries of our vocabulary definitions today, aren't we?

It's unfortunate and certainly indicative of Nintendo's bizarre stance towards online marketplaces, but I'm not exactly sure what certifies this as a tragedy. Did I miss the part of the story where Iwata dropped by and murdered a kitten or something?

"Confirmed for"? The game has been out in Japan since November. Its features weren't in question

James found a typo.

I almost worry about the horsepower behind the Wii U. And then I play Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii and promptly forget.

Sounds like this game has the anarchic personality that Paper Mario: Sticker Star so sorely lacked. Good to hear.