SilverSeraph

NOA seriously underestimated the appeal of the faceplates to American consumers. They don't understand their customer base and worse yet they don't try to or seem interested in trying.

Many Nintendo customers like that Nintendo is a Japanese company and identify with the "Japaneseness" of the company. This is why these bonehead decisions like region locking and no faceplates are so infuriating. Give customers what they want!!

The demand for amiibo is huge and not going anywhere. Here's a thought... maybe make more amiibo and don't discontinue them? You know, satisfy your customers and all that.

It's really disappointing the way Nintendo has handled the rollout for these products. The only amiibo I wanted from wave 1 was Marth, but with the sword being possibly bent so easily I wanted to buy him from the store where I could get the best looking one for my money. I never once saw Marth at any store, not even a poor looking one. None. Zip. And I started looking on launch day.

This rollout has actually almost killed my interest in these products. How in a day of 3D printing technology and other cheap manufacturing methods can these shortages occur? A lot of people will probably open Smash Bros on Christmas morning and only then want to start thinking about what amiibo they want to pursue, but Nintendo will have already decided which ones they will be able to get and not get and only a month after they were released! Ridiculous!

Still waiting for this. I was so excited. What a disappointment. But hey, we got the upteenth versions of FF 3, 4, 7, and 8 on Steam!! And don't forget all those wonderful DQ games for iOS and Android, because mobile!!!

Such a horrible and backwards policy. And in the end it costs them, and the few 3rd parties that bother with them, money.

For every person that leaves any position of leadership at a company like Retro there are 5 or 10 that are dying to climb the ladder and bring fresh ideas to the table. Creativity in situations like this seems to be destroyed by overbearing parent companies not by a loss of personel. See Infinity Ward or Rare or any company under the EA banner.

As long as Nintendo lets Retro be Retro I'm not too worried.

@CanisWolfred Digital distribution doesn't reduce localization costs, but it tremendously reduces publishing costs, and makes shipping/distribution effectively zero.

In the age of digital distribution there is literally no good reason whatsoever for anything to remain "Japan only". No good reason other than, perhaps, their own stubborness or stupidity.

This looks absolutely awesome, and the bosses totally have the Megaman look while still being fresh and unique and unlike previous Megaman bosses.

It's too bad Capcom is more worried about squeezing more and more cash out of it's loyal cusomers via dlc than providing quality stand alone content such as this.

I can't believe they can't figure out what their fans want.

Utterly ridiculous.

Would love to see this on 3DS with the physical book included. Further, would love to see the ps3 version on Wii U (again with the physical book), but with enhanced touch screen spellcasting like DS.

Nintendo should do the exact opposite of what everyone expects and actually extend an olive branch to Fish. In the end it's customers that matter and Wii U really needs content. Nintendo in reaching out to Fish, perhaps even porting the game as he says, would take the higher ground and create some good PR.

I know he said it would be a pain and extra work, but it would have sold so much better on the eShop. I hope he changes his mind someday. I want to play this on the gamepad with a Wii U exclusive monochrome Game Boy graphics filter. Would be so awesome.

This is more likely to go to OUYA than to Wii U.

A return to profitability for SE seems so glaringly obvious to me:

1: FF7 HD remake they know everybody wants
2: A True Final Fantasy Tactics 2
3: A True Kingdom Hearts 3 (not this 1.5 or 3D Dream Drop Distance BS)
4: Localize Bravely Default
5: Stop making sequels to sequels. If you make FF13 the next game is called FF14 not FF13-2.
6: Finish FF13 Versus for the love of God, but call it FF15 (see # 5 above)
7: Just for fun how about they make their worlds easy to pronounce. No more Fabula Novala Crysalis Blah Blah Blee Blee Blay. As a general rule, I find that as a game gets harder to pronounce it means it is less fun.
8: Return Dragon Quest to the offline realm

In general the management at SE need to stop being arrogant pricks and start listening to their fanbase instead of alienating them.

I would buy it. In fact, I wish the whole series would get an HD port to the Wii U with off screen play.

Konami you ported the PS2 games to PS3, come on and port them to Wii U! And Ground Zeros and Phantom Pain too! The series started with Nintendo after all.

Well at least there's no region locking on Nintendo handhelds. Oh wait....

Looking at THQ's financials one would think they would want to get as many of their games on as many platforms as possible.

I don't know why it's so hard for everyone to figure out Nintendo's strategy. They have an actual business plan structured around profitability and gameplay innovation with less emphasis on impressing people with cutting edge visuals.

Once, when asked in an interview about the importance of graphics, Iwata pointed to DQ9 on the DS being the top selling game in Japan to refute the idea. I would also point to World of Warcraft or any Blizzard game for that matter as they never run on top hardware. Developers have to go for the widest range of consumers to maximize profit. This is what Nintendo does.

Nintendo has always been a very fiscally conserviative, and higly iterative company. This is probably why they've stayed in business, and remained profitable for all but a handful of years, since 1889!!

With every hardware iteration they release they are providing a stable and inexpensive ecosystem for consumers, developers, and themselves. Thus, the widest spectrum of consumers can buy in with relatively little buyer's remorse if it doesn't pan out, and Nintendo makes money on every unit sold. It's true the developers have been a different story since the N64 by supporting Nintendo's platform second, if at all, but that seems to be changing for the better with Wii U as Nintendo seems to be trying to improve it's relationship with 3rd party developers.

What's going to happen for some developers if the PS4/XBOX3 are prohibitively expensive to develop for? They may be able to produce photo realistic cities full of photo realistic people, but all of those art assets and the code to manipulate them have to be created and someone has to be paid to create them. Unless you are one of the Epic Games or Square Enix's of the world, that door will probably be closed for you due to the ridiculously high cost of development.

The next PS/XBOX consoles will also be ridiculously expensive for consumers. Sony for example seems to have no business strategy at all. The next PS is rumored to run games at 4k resolution, but the TV to display 4k resolution is $25,000! Who in the hell is going to buy that in this economy? Who's going to pay $500 or $600 for the PS to play the games on their $25000 TV? Almost nobody.

Nintendo know this because they've tried that strategy before. The N64 had the best graphics capabilities of the generation, but the PS1 beat it.

What's so disappointing about this is not the lack of backwards compatibility per se, but the pattern that is clearly being established. The Pro controller won't play Wii games, meaning it won't play anything in Wii mode, meaning it won't play Wiiware, Wii VC. Looking at the historical behavior of Nintendo as a company, this is something that is unlikely to ever change.

Couple all of this with the fact that the 3DS doesn't play DSiware (again unlikely to ever change), and it's not hard to imagine someday eventually wondering why we can no longer play our electronic back catalogues on Nintendo devices. I.e. when the Wii U/ 3DS successors come out they will no longer play Wiiware, Wii VC, DSiware etc. And when the systems after THOSE come out the next electronic (Wii U/ 3DS eshop) back catalogue is sunset etc. The arguement could be made that people won't want to play those games anymore, but that goes against the whole concept of building a library of downloadable games.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope Nintendo does maintain all downloadable games in perpetuity in a manner akin to Steam, but my gut tells me they won't if there is no revenue stream from it.

This is like saying the PS Move can do anything the Wii can do "quite easily". PS Move was also a commercial flop for the same reason others have already pointed out about the Vita/Wii U comparison. Developers can't count on their customer having one because it's not in the box with the PS3.

The way I'm reading this is that after 10 years I won't be able to play the game anymore and that saddens me as I still playGameboy Color DQ1,2,and 3 on my GBA.

I'm not sure how Pacter's opinion came to be so important that it has to be repeated everywhere. His predictions about the gaming industry have been about as accurate as Paul Krugman's about the economy. I.e. not very.

The people who want to pirate will pirate. They will always find a way and they have no intention of buying. Nintendo would better spend their time and resources on trying to better entice the people who ARE interested in buying legit software. The more they try to limit pirating the more they hurt paying customers.

Also, if they don't want people to mod their systems then they SHOULDN'T USE REGION LOCKS!!!! This blows my mind every time I think about it. The market for their products is worldwide with a worldwide distribution system. Hardware should play software from anywhere in the world!

I totally agree with Reggie. It's like the whole gaming community has become a nursery full of spoiled brats.

"New Pikmen is great, but we want a new Metroid Prime, a new 2D Metroid, a new Kid Icarus, a New Zelda, and a new 3D Mario U all immediately at launch! We don't care about development times or other trade shows tell us everything now Nintendo! We want it all right now!!!11!!11eleven"

a second circle pad would have split the user base. Developers would have no idea what hardware their customers had when making a game. Had a second circle pad been included it would not have been utilized very much I think.

July 14th is on a Saturday.

Nintendo always launches hardware on a Sunday.