StuTwo

Calling it: next Smash 3rd party character is the devil

@Moon it is. It has the number “2” at the end instead of the number “1”. That’s a 100% increase!

Incidentally I expect great things from Mega Man 11!

Apparently the same request went in at Eidos when they were making the original Tomb Raider. Of course they were all British and there was no confusion as to what it meant...

@Branovices The same old story that Butters faced in South Park: “Simpsons did it first”

That’s how we know the year of Luigi has now definitively ended.

@Heavyarms55 that’s the household median income figure. The “average” (white) person in the US earns around $30,000.

“UK tabloid blah blah blah can it be trusted?” Article tldnr. Answer: of course not are you insane? I don’t even trust the date on the front of newspapers like the Daily Mirror.

The guy wearing the suit was actually one of their top developers from the 8 bit days. He’s just been promoted out of privy duty to one of the less degrading positions at Konami.

They just lock them in a room, cage them up with rats and eventually they learn to love pachinko.

Still I’m ok. I happen to have a few notes signed by the Governor of the Bank of England himself promising to pay me in pounds of gold on demand.

A pound of gold is worth well more than a £ so I figure I’m laughing at this point!

@NEStalgia ah but here in the UK we have to go out of our way not to pay into a pension pot. It’s an opt out system because of the way the law works here.

Shorts and futures are not new things. The Cistercian monks who owned most of Northern England in the Middle Ages were trading futures in wool production for centuries (all profits to god I suppose?).

I was fortunate enough to study a module on Financial Maths when I was at university and found it very interesting. The main thing I’d take away from it is this: it’s all about the legal and social ecosystem around the transactions. The instruments themselves are mathematically sound but our legal systems are flawed or have the wrong priorities. They also often lose sight of the importance of transparency.

This is probably why, throughout history, radical reformist leftist movements like Christianity and Islam have gone into the temples of the money lenders and tipped the tables and told their followers “no ifs or buts, no subtleties, don’t even try to understand it - if you take or pay interest then you’re going straight to hell”.

@Heavyarms55 the problem is that a lot of the money in hedge funds are pension investments. Not the pocket money of millionaires - just the lifetime savings of middle class soon to be retirees who want the best returns for their retirement - who cares about the consequences for the rest of society?

The system is skewed and wrong but it’s the greed of ordinary people that has broken it - not necessarily just the mega rich.

@Fight_Teza_Fight nah, never low ball estimates for various reasons (even if it opens you up to minor embarrassment).

Third party publishers will make their investment decisions and set budgets based on projected sales. You need to set them high for that reason.

There’s some astounding results in the reports today about software sales that will soften the blow for publishers dramatically but they may only be on board because of the initial hardware sales projection.

The fact that HAL is technically an independent studio is something that the ‘Nintendo should just buy some third party studios’ should take note of. You don’t have to buy a third party. You just need a strong, close, mutually beneficial relationship.

Iwata was a tremendous businessman who imbued Nintendo with much of his own personality. Even before he technically worked there...

@Agramonte that’s not a ‘growth’ graph. It’s a graph of cumulative sales for the year plotted over time (& it suggests Switch software sales will end up ahead by the end of the year)

The important figures are the YTD for this year (which is what’s been plotted on the graph) and prior YTD. PS4 should be 2-3 times ahead of YTD because it’s a mature product with (at the start of the year) 2-3 times the install base.

Comparing them shows you actual growth.

@Agramonte it’s not actually what the chart says. You claimed that Switch was number 2 both in terms of overall software sales and improvement over last year. In fact the chart shows that Switch software sales YTD 2018 vs YTD 2017 have increased both more than PS4 sales in both relative terms and in absolute terms.

I’d also say the figures we get from Japan (especially in a week where 10 of the top 12 are Switch games - many holding on in the list from 2017) support a different narrative: the big releases may sell millions (& cost much more to make so yielding lower margins) but it’s the evergreens & ports that actually drive the long term increase in hardware sales necessary for big new releases to realise their potential.

@westman98 I take your point (I had considered DQXI) and it will make the PS4’s ‘growth’ figures look much less impressive after next week.

PS4 will - of course still be healthily ahead of Switch for this current YTD for the time being but it should be. It’s not normally fair to compare a mature product at the peak of its commercial success against a product that’s still in its early growth phase.

The PS4 started the year with an install base three or more times bigger than Switch in Japan. That software sales for PS4 aren’t outpacing those on Switch by at least 2-1 is the real comparison to make here.

@Agramonte that’s one very pessimistic way of looking at it I suppose.

The other is to note that PS4 sales YTD are boosted by Monster Hunter & the biggest PS4 games of the year in Japan are already out. Nintendo, by contrast hasn’t released anything of comparable scale yet this year.

Pokémon Let’s Go and Smash will dramatically change that chart.

@Fake-E-Lee I kind of feel the same.

There is a logic to the level design in Sonic games but it’s something that tends to fly by me. They more often than not end up feeling like a giant confusing mess.

Plus the controls and physics are a bit floaty compared to Mario and enemies are too often hard to hit without being hit.

The games do have a big upside - they’re approachable (partly because the rings system makes you durable) and they’re pretty but they are a mess compared to - say - any Mario game.

It’s a great game and a well deserved success.

Switch could easily become the platform where high quality indies release first - it’s just so viable as a platform for them. I doubt we’ll ever see many true exclusives from the indie community but I don’t actually think that’s very important.

The marketing failure started by not deciding who the console was aimed at. They wanted to sell the Wii U to everyone but different groups need different hardware, different games and different messages through advertising.

This is why their message was muddled. They didn’t know what it needed to be.

The Wii U could have been moderately successful if it had been pitched as a pure party machine but it would have needed a lot to get it to that point (cheaper games and MK 8 in year one for a start).

It could also have been moderately successful as a core gamers machine but not with the specs it had and not without fighting much harder to attract an audience for 3rd party games. It couldn’t ever have been successful as both a party machine and a core gamers machine at the same time.

@Hughesy yeah, EA should hire the guy at Activision who ported Crash Bandicoot. Give him an evenings worth of overtime and he’ll have frostbite running on Switch.

“Based on absolutely no evidence we thought it probably wouldn’t work so didn’t even bother to look into it.”

...

Of course more realistic would be persistent cross progression of FUT.

Samus power armour skin

@Nego under the thumb of the decrepit Sega empire.

Come on - those are all games. And reasonably sensible ones.

Let’s be realistic there will be one or two new Amiibo, joy con and Labo announcements.

Personally I’d like to see new pro controller colour options (preferably one that improves the d pad at the same time). And some off the wall games like an F-Zero tactical card battling game or Animal Crossing Battle Royale.

A sub title for Metroid Prime 4. Is like to see them take a leaf from the Super Mario Advance series. To whit:

Metroid Prime 4: Federation Force 2

So unlike Nintendo. They’re really going all in on Switch and not simply sitting on an already decent install base. It’s a big sign of ongoing success and ambition.

When you have a good line up of exclusive evergreen titles this is one way that you sell a lot more units without big new releases.

It’s also the sort of thing that catches the eyes of big third party publishers - when Nintendo has a big marketing budget they’re a more interesting platform to be on because there’s more spotlight they can potentially give to your games.

@itslukec I think since Trump was elected they’ve tried to put a bit of distance between Canada and ‘America’. It’s the national equivalent of the uncomfortable body language that you’d make if someone you went for a night out with got incredibly drunk and started loudly making inappropriate comments that are getting increasingly racist. Ideally you just want to get out of there before it goes really South but you’re trapped in the corner so the best you can do for the time being is shift your shoulders away and give the impression that you didn’t choose to be there in the first place.

When they announce that one of the titles is “Sexy Gradius Solid X Mystical Erotic Ninja Violence: The Twin Snake Alien Wars of Blood” we’ll all be here saying that Konami is well and truly back!

About this result though - although only one month the pattern is clear. Nintendo needs to leverage this to get equal or greater space at POS.

They’re under represented in stores relative to their share - equalling that would be important for the prospects of third party games.

@NewAdvent I’ve said the same in the past. Licensing an operating system and working with OEMs is a business that Microsoft ought to be very comfortable with.

@Ooyah I’d be hugely surprised if NL were a completely amateur endeavour. It looks and feels like a professional outlet (much better than most) so if they’re all in it for nothing more than love then they’re doing an incredible job rather than just a good job.

When the criticism they’re fielding is “why are we not getting a regular flow of content from you at the weekend” and not “why do your articles feature embarrassingly elementary mistakes” then you’ve got to be pretty happy (even if things could be better still).

@Ooyah of course. It can’t be the best rewarded job in the world (if it’s rewarded at all!) and I think overall the site is well run and offers a great service.

However you can sometimes do things more effectively without doing a lot more work. Sometimes there are even opportunities to do things more effectively whilst doing less work.

Like today we have weekend updates but they’re all by Liam. Will they be as well seen as they could be? I don’t personally check the site as much over the weekend because I’ve been trained not to bother.

@MartyFlanMJFan @Ooyah I don’t personally have any issues with NL taking the weekend off (or at least not posting over the weekend) but:

1. They’ve got a (modest) team of writers - it’s not a one man band. Managed correctly it’s not impossible for them to cover the whole week between them whilst still all having 2 days off a week.

2. Even if they all completely downed tools at the weekend they could still schedule content written at other times to go live at the weekend. Design a regular feature not dependent on fresh news (a “1 year ago game x was released this week - this is how we feel about it now” for instance). Or schedule a few interviews or indie reviews to be published at the weekend.

3. Other sites are active the week round. Like it or not NL is in competition with them. The work culture of those sites and the games journalism industry might be wrong but unfortunately it can’t be changed unilaterally by one site.

@gortsi the bigger question is whether or you can think 94 WPM or if it’s just words that your brain hasn’t had time to properly digest yet being spewed out like diarrhoea onto the comments board.

@BlueOcean I think that’s normal for a lot of games on all formats (but not all games - a select few are slower burns). I think it suggests that the audience buying most games is actually far smaller than most people believe - but that audience is very keen and well informed.

Nintendo’s evergreen first party games are exceptions (in large part because they’re appealing well beyond the enthusiast bubble). Mario Kart 8 for instance will sell one copy for around every 3 Switches sold. So any game that causes a peak in Switch sales will normally push it back up the charts.

@gortsi there is analysis but it’s so superficial and obvious (i.e “Switch outsold PS4 by a good amount this week”) I wouldn’t blame anyone for not noticing it’s there at all.

Is Mega Man collection a success on those numbers or not? How many copies did the previous releases sell & what was the size of the install bases for those consoles at the time?

Would 35,000 units a week have been considered a good showing for the 3DS or DS in its second year in a week with no big new releases? That’s the type of base line information that should support these info dumps.

Sales analysis on this site is notoriously poor. Sales charts shouldn’t be treated as if they’re a football league table - one title can be top in sales but a complete commercial disaster while another can be way down the list but still indicate an incredible success.

Different games have different objectives, different audiences and different criteria for success. They can all be winners or losers.

It’s not a fight to the death.

A mega popular game with a Nintendo fan friendly aesthetic and design appearing on a popular Nintendo console while both are at the height of their relevance?

Ok - which one of us snuck into the dark lords lair, stole the forbidden book and read aloud the words of the spell that must never be cast?

Is this the mirror universe? Do I need to grow a goatee?

0/10 none of these designs are based on garbage, ice cream or key rings.

@MasterJay exactly this. They’ve presented the Go style capture mechanics front and centre but the game seems to have a traditional battle system.

I suspect that it’ll basically be a core game. With no more random battles (finally- when even Dragon Quest has dropped a sacred mechanic you know it’s time to go). The Go ‘integration’ seems very much tacked on - mystery gifts once a day like say the Pokewalker or the pokemon mini. The hints that they’ll play the story more like an anime (as in Yellow) - well that’s anyway a valid and popular direction for the series and always more likely than Pokémon BoTW for anyone who’s been paying attention for the past 15 years.

I’d also go further: The 2019 game will closely resemble this one with a new story and region. But that’s not a bad thing - Let’s Go is the game most of the audience has wanted for 20 years.

Wow - it’s Pokémon the Wind Waker.

@Equinox except the ‘bants’ (i.e cruel blunt “jokes” at the expense of a third party) are not an adjunct to the hate - they are an integral driver in that cycle of hate.

It’s like me saying that if there were a few crack cocaine addicts hitting up outside your house every night that you should just live with it because there will always be drug addicts. You know you can’t solve their problems but you can expect them to be moved on somewhere else so they’re not leaving their needles on your lawn.

@Equinox utter nonsense.

People can and will always be hateful but denying them access to an easy and loud platform means that they are less of an influence on mainstream society. Banning them doesn’t fix the world but it isn’t intended to. It’s intended to solve one immediate problem - it makes an online community more friendly and welcoming.

If trolls want to troll they should expect to be made to live under the bridge.

@Equinox by “makes you follow the SJW code” you mean they expect you to not liberally use the N word, not to call everyone with a different accent gay & to be reasonably civil to everyone?

Those SJW at Blizzard - how is anyone supposed to let the world know just how much of an ignorant hateful they are?

I think there are two things to note about the Japanese market:

1. When Pokemon and Animal Crossing hit it’ll be chaos out there.

2. The game is over there but we’re not seeing the fruits of it yet. The 3 non-Switch games in the top ten could easily be on Switch - surely those types of game will migrate to Switch going forwards. A fully Switch top 10 could easily happen there some point next year. It could even become the norm...

@carlos82 Bloody tears for the soundtrack surely?

@gatorboi352 don’t worry the stick would be authentically wonky after about an hour of playing.

@Koudai1979 100%. A full on cell shaded anime art style would be fantastic for Star Fox.

@electrolite77 wow. I’d not noticed that. Nintendo doing good clever topical marketing in the UK... are we in some sort of Bizzaro alternate reality?

@AJWolfTill thanks.

I know it’s unfair on Harry though. Almost everyone in our upper class sympathises with the Nazis - his grandmother was a big admirer and his great uncle Ed too. Why single out Harry?