@Mr_Pepperami I want a cell shaded version that looks like a super high quality 80s anime. I’d go all in on that - ridiculous firey explosions and cheesy close fly pasts of the camera all round!
The rumoured Retro game sounds so off the wall it could be really cool too though. Though hopefully it’s not another nail in the f-zero coffin.
@Mr_Pepperami do they still exist? Haven’t they barely released a single game in over a decade? I’d guess that whatever talented staff they once had have long since left of their drive to prove themselves has been depleted. They seemed to struggle making 3D games a little anyway.
I used to love Treasure games but I think their time is over unfortunately.
I’ve always wished we could get a MM9 style redux of the Castlevania series - I guess this is as close as we’ll get.
My only concern is that it looks like it has a lot of complexity in its systems (much like Mighty Gunvolt Burst) and whilst great that can detract from the appeal of such a game for me.
@aaronsullivan this always annoyed me too. There’s never a good time to get those lives. You can’t even easily carry them to the last boss because the route to the last temple will drain your lives away. Apart from the one in the final temple they’re always wasted.
They should have increased your maximum number of lives when you found them instead.
@SmaggTheSmug it’s because Link is Jesus. He dies for your sins repeatedly (yes getting hit by an Octorok is a sin. It’s one of the 7 deadly sins - turns out that lust was a later substitute). Then he returns from the dead time after time.
If that’s not on the nose enough - in BoTW he even returns from the dead inside a sealed tomb...
@sillygostly I suspect the software will be widely available second hand for incredibly low prices on eBay within weeks as people finish building the packed in sets and have no interest in the garage (or without realising that you can use any cardboard - not just the pre-patterned sets included).
The robot is a different thing - those will be incredibly valuable 20 years from now if kept in mint condition. Even the software alone for that one might never drop significantly second hand.
That’s not bad at all in the UK. Nintendo has never had a particularly strong marketing and sales operation here. Labo doesn’t need to sell God of War numbers in the UK to be a success.
As @NewAdvent noted - a release just before Easter half term in a bundle would have helped Labo here but I guess it had to be this week to line up with golden week in Japan.
@impurekind I think the big difference between Sega and Nintendo is that, for all of the talk in the online bubble about how great Segas IPs are they actually aren’t (and never have been) that strong outside of their enthusiast community.
Aside from Sonic the Hedgehog could an ordinary member of the public identify a single Sega owned IP from the Mega Drive era? Whilst they made some great games in their most commercially successful period they were mostly either built around attractive but generic themes (you’re driving fast in a sports car! You’re shooting aliens as a non copywrite infringing Arnnie! You’re a ninja!) or licensed (Michael Jackson, Spider-Man etc.).
By the Dreamcast era they were producing very distinctive original IP attached to great games but those games have little penetration in the public consciousness and they were often ‘one and done’ even when the potential for forming a franchise was there.
Nintendo by contrast has some incredibly strong IP that’s been very well fostered over long periods of time. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokémon and Animal Crossing all occupy an important place in the history of video games and they’ve all at various points had incredible penetration into the public consciousness that will not fully fade in our lifetimes.
You literally cannot ‘make’ another Pokémon or Mario happen from scratch (enough people have tried). As the media world becomes more fragmented the value of those mega franchises will continue to grow. Holding so many of those solid gold franchises means that Nintendo should always be pretty valuable relative to Sega.
But I’d agree that not gambling on stock is a good idea - it is a roulette wheel best avoided!
They filmed scenes of a movie set in a terrible dystopian wasteland in Birmingham? That must have been a stretch - I can see why they needed Spielberg.
@Jayenkai most people phrase “go” slightly differently in this context - using a few extra letters and 2 words instead of one (the second being “off”) - but it does still mean basically the same as “go”...
@Heavyarms55 those are some very pessimistic lines of thought. A few things to consider though:
1- management in all organisations always tells the staff (& most other stakeholders) that budgets are incredibly tight. For obvious reasons. If your budgets aren’t tight you have to pay salary increases or accept cuts.
Of course some are incredibly hard up but not every school is and many do have a little room for manoeuvre (even if they’d never admit it - even to their staff).
2- the act of setting a budget usually means you end up ‘siloing’. So a school might not have the budget to pay you a penny more or even buy enough writing books but still have loads left in the budget for IT equipment.
3- relative to other areas of expense in a school buying a dozen Switches is really nothing. What £6000? Far less than the cost of a low level TA for a term.
4- giving kids a piece of equipment that they can instantly identify as being expensive and desirable has a big upside. It makes them feel valued and trusted. Whilst they’ll still break or steal things its not necessarily as bad as you’re imagining.
I still think Nintendo has to want to do it. They’d probably have to come up with something bespoke but it’s not a fundamentally bad idea to position Labo as a teaching learning tool.
From day one I’ve always said Chu Chu Rocket is a perfect fit for Switch. But it’s such a simple game with so much scope that a rote sequel with an extra mode or two and native HD graphics makes more sense
I love Skies of Arcadia - it’s the game that all 32 bit RPGs wanted to be but fell short of - but I’d be more interested in the GameCube version with its extra character and story than a Dreamcast port missing features (tied to the VMU).
Aside from the obvious (and second tier and third tier) Dreamcast games I suppose I’d like to see a lot of Saturn stuff. In particular Panza Dragoon (esp. Saga) and Burning Rangers but also anything 2d from that system.
With M2 I’d trust their judgement and execution though. If they pick turds they’ll polish them to a sheen with all of the obscure content and modes that we can only fantasise about from retro releases by any other company.
@Shellcore I think sales figures are often difficult for us to fully grasp as consumers (and I don’t claim to be an expert). Opening of new markets is probably part of the reason but gradual falls in price and an increased library of games available at budget prices also has an effect as a console gets older.
The ‘bell curve’ where a consoles sales increase, peak for 2-3 years then fall is pretty typical for a lot of products.
PS4 is actually an exceptional case - it’s on course to be the best selling console ever and Sony has got every major marketing call right at every stage. If last year was the peak sales year (this year could be bigger...) the trend would strongly suggest they’ve only just hit sold to half the people who will eventually buy one. The idea that “everyone who wants one surely already has one” is nonsense.
Of course late system sales are much less valuable and less important but that’s a different story.
@Shellcore except consoles typically sell higher numbers year on year until later in their life. These should be peak sales years for PS4 (and they are - PS4 worldwide sold more units than Switch last year).
In Japan it bears talking about because at this pace Switch could potentially have a larger install base there by the end of the year at a point when PS4 is entering its twilight years and Switch is on the threshold of entering much bigger years sales wise.
@MarcelRguez being a niche in Japan could still mean a console selling 5 million units and should still mean a console that gets notable support from Japanese publishers - especially the biggest ones who have a more global reach like Capcom and Square.
The way things are today though I just don’t think that Sony can whip around companies like Factor 5 or Atlus without spending big to do so and I don’t think it’s necessarily worth it. Had Vita been more successful or Switch take up been slower maybe the story would be a little different
@MarcelRguez I think the thing is that the Switch installbase (especially in Japan) and the higher attach rate for handhelds means that going forwards Sony will need to do something special to keep games like Ni No Kuni 2 as exclusives on PS4. In some cases they’ll need to do something special just to get those games launching on PS4 alongside the Switch.
Of course there is then the question of whether those games really add enough to be worth chasing in that way. They don’t sell millions of consoles. So long as EA, Ubisoft, 2K and Activision prioritise the PS4 and create games that strain to work on Switch (if they do at all) PlayStation is in a very strong, basically insurmountable, position in the West.
Writing Japan off as a niche market for PlayStation wouldnt necessarily be a terrible decision for Sony - even if they may not be at that point just yet.
@MarcelRguez I rarely look there because I don’t have a PS4. The tone was just jarring to me with it being the sister site of NL. Whilst not perfect the writing and reporting here is usually pretty ok.
Calling a CEO of a mid sized publisher a suit is about the same level as calling a grown man ‘boy’. Real fanzine standard (and not high end fanzine at that).
The more interesting analysis would be to point out that we’ll probably see a lot more of this from mid level Japanese companies in the next year or two and to explain why.
@daveyhall I think it becoming harder and harder to lead the toon to European glory might have more to do with increasing levels of realism in the game...
@YummyHappyPills the more surprising thing is the tone in which the PS article was written. There’s a fine line between journalism catering to fans and being a fanzine and I think the author was on the wrong side of that line.
Talking about the executive of a mid size in a derogatory way as a ‘suit’ because he didn’t say the right things? Fine for an amateur fan but you’d expect a high more even handed analysis from a professional journalist.
@Dom I don’t mean to add myself to the list of critics (I think the site is going OK) but you really need to be proof reading better for basic spelling and grammar mistakes.
“Now they’re are switches”
Things like this seem to be quite common. It happens but better proof reading would help.
@DarthMarth they want to defend the value of their games. I think it’s as simple as that.
Rightly or wrongly a lot of people correlate price with quality or ‘worthiness’. Price a game low and they assume it has no value and no worth.
Plus if the market were flooded with cheap old Nintendo games then they wouldn’t be able to sell new games for full price and their whole business model collapses.
They’ve got it wrong in this case (it’s at least £10 too expense) but personally I think the logic behind their pricing is sound.
@bimmy-lee Wolfenstein isn’t cancelled. It being a no show alongside Yoshi simply means that it’s likely that both games are being reworked and combined into a single game: Yoshi’s New Collossos.
It comes with a Woolly Yoshi Amiibo with a Swasticker on it’s forehead. The reveal is being saved for the next Donald Trump video games summit as an example of how games are slowly aligning with his alt right philosophies.
June was surely always going to be the best month for a tennis game? Certainly no one in this country cares about the sport when Wimbledon has finished.
@BigBadJohn actually that sounds kind of great and I don’t care for Solitare.
I’m not sure I’d want to play a game like that in anything less than 4K though and it needs voice chat and micro transactions. I need to gatcha the Sheldon from Big Bang Theory skin.
@khaosklub Thanks for that link. I didn’t realise they’d been subject to a leveraged buyout.
I still don’t understand why it’s still legal to take an effectively free gamble with hundreds of people’s livelihoods at stake. Large companies shouldn’t be treated like buying a house - the debt can cripple competitiveness.
That said many companies are successful after leveraged buyouts. TRU has a failure of vision for many years before and after in my opinion.
It’s being used as an example of the death of physical shops but - actually - I think it’s just an example of bad management. I went into a random Toys r us a few years ago and it was exactly (exactly) the same as the Manchester branch in the uber 80s retail estate that I remember from being a child of the early 90s.
They never adapted or changed and found themselves rooted at the lower end of the market. Just like Woolworths (where I bought most of my games).
However there’s still a huge potential for a big physical shop toy shop chain. Hence Smyths are doing well. I expect they’ll expand into the void left or there’ll be a new low end ‘B&M Toyshop’ chain that springs up.
There are fewer sports games across the board. In large part because the majority of the audience for those games is particularly responsive to something (& only something) that looks as close to the TV product as possible. Other sports have multiple markets and multiple potential licenses but with baseball if you can’t get the MLB license you have no game that can sell enough to justify a large budget.
Of course baseball has another big issue - the demographics of support in the US has changed in the last 20 years. It’s simply not got the hold on America’s youth as it once did. Kids and teenagers drive the sale of sports games so as the potential audience for baseball games has withered.
@Cosats in addition to what @TheMadPolarBear said I’d add that our whole retail culture is very different here to that in Europe. Supermarkets are much more important here for non-food items than they are in (for instance) Germany where NoEs staff are mostly located.
If you treat the UK as if it were Germany you’ll miss that distinction and fail to understand why it’s so important to get the supermarkets onboard (instead of ticking them off like Nintendo did in the early Wii U days...).
A poweful Nintendo UK independent of NoE would have a lot more success. Or at least the potential to be more successful.
@chiptoon it was definitely a failure of marketing in every sense.
Part of that was the order in which the big games arrived. Had Wii U launched with MK8 and Super Mario Maker it might have been a very different story.
If Nintendo has taken just one lesson from the Wii U it seems to have been ‘get your biggest, longest lasting, most evergreen titles out straight away before getting more esoteric or niche things like Nintendo Land or Game & Wario or even Pikmin’.
I think we’re past the point where colossal unit sales figures are a good measure of the health of the system.
The number of games sold per Switch, how many hours they’re played per week, who is actually buying them, how they’re using them, which types of games they’re buying and the price they’re willing to pay for them are all now more important measures of success going forwards.
Now that it’s clear Switch has a large enough install base to be a viable format those are the factors that will most influence the type of games and the volume we get.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE they’ll be freely available online the second the packs are released (alongside “improved” custom patterns that are compatible) whether Nintendo wants them to be or not.
Whether you’d want to make the projects using cardboard you have knocking around at home (versus a slightly tougher grade) is a different question but it’s the software that’s the key component here.
Hmm. I don’t need any of those things - never used Facebook or Twitter or Netflix. Probably would’nt use the browser.
However having those pits Switch into competition with the iPad and the host of mid range tablets. If I had them on my Switch I’d probably never buy another iPad (or upgrade even less frequently).
So it’s potentially the difference between 100 million units sold and 200 million units sold. Having them could tip Switch into ‘comfortably the best selling gaming device of all time territory’ and make Nintendo a true giant outside of gaming.
Oh and where is the BBC iPlayer on your list (& the other UK specific apps like ITVs player, 4OD & Skys app etc.). That’s the biggest thing holding the Apple TV back.
Surely the problem is that games journalists, YouTube ‘personalities’ and analysts wrote Nintendo off? In part because they’re not generally up to the job, in part because they’re too much in a bubble to take an objective view of the hobby and in part because they have a personal vested interest in seeing Nintendo fail because they personally pay more attention to the AAA space (& have better contacts in that industry so want to promote it for their own importance).
Aside from Nintendo - the other big surprise in 2017 was just how successful Crash Bandicoot was on PS4. It was huge. There’s simply an incredible audience for premium family friendly video games that’s being neglected by almost everyone except Nintendo.
Typical NL cherry picking figures that look good for Nintendo. Of course they’re selling well in select backwaters like the US and Japan.
Why aren’t they reporting the figures from Dagestan? Sony is outselling Nintendo 100x there! Bias. I demand NL focuses on figures that make the majority of readers here feel bad not good.
Big 3rd party AAA publishers want to maximise their sales. That means being on all systems most of the time. They might offer timed exclusivity if the money hat fits but otherwise no.
The only other reasons for exclusive third party content is stuff that really wouldn’t fly with the audience on a different platform (so a lot of the JRPGs on PS4 that wouldn’t sell at all on XBox One), stuff developed in close conjunction with the platform holder (i.e Mario & Rabbids) and stuff that’s heavily dependent on the features/power of a particular console. Or a combination of the above.
We might (should!) see a lot of Japanese games targeting Switch first and foremost... but I’d still expect any that would do ok on PS4 to make it onto that platform too.
Comments 652
Re: Rumour: Fresh Details Of Star Fox: Grand Prix Suggest It's Not Like F-Zero At All, Thanks Very Much
@Kimyonaakuma I take it you’re not a Fox-Slippy shipper (OTP) then.
Re: Random: Nintendo UK Can't Resist Getting In On The Royal Wedding Hype
@Mr_Pepperami it’s a tie in with Wolfenstein 2 I understand
Re: Random: Nintendo UK Can't Resist Getting In On The Royal Wedding Hype
Mario looks nothing like Prince Harry dressed like that. If Nintendo really wanted all in they’d release the Nazi SS outfit for Mario.
Re: Weirdness: Someone Shaved Mario's Face And The Internet Cannot Cope
@SmaggTheSmug “I’m a-hunting wabbids”
Re: Rumour: Retro Studios Has Another Project In Development Alongside Star Fox
@Mr_Pepperami I want a cell shaded version that looks like a super high quality 80s anime. I’d go all in on that - ridiculous firey explosions and cheesy close fly pasts of the camera all round!
The rumoured Retro game sounds so off the wall it could be really cool too though. Though hopefully it’s not another nail in the f-zero coffin.
Re: Rumour: Retro Studios Has Another Project In Development Alongside Star Fox
@Mr_Pepperami do they still exist? Haven’t they barely released a single game in over a decade? I’d guess that whatever talented staff they once had have long since left of their drive to prove themselves has been depleted. They seemed to struggle making 3D games a little anyway.
I used to love Treasure games but I think their time is over unfortunately.
Re: Inti Creates Announces New Bloodstained And Gunvolt Titles For Switch At BitSummit
Looks great.
I’ve always wished we could get a MM9 style redux of the Castlevania series - I guess this is as close as we’ll get.
My only concern is that it looks like it has a lot of complexity in its systems (much like Mighty Gunvolt Burst) and whilst great that can detract from the appeal of such a game for me.
Re: New Splatoon Secret Project Is Set To "Shock The World" Just Days Before E3
Splatoon the dating game: guest staring Troy Maclure.
Re: The Man Behind The Wonder Boy: Dragon's Trap Remake Would Love To Tackle Zelda II
@aaronsullivan this always annoyed me too. There’s never a good time to get those lives. You can’t even easily carry them to the last boss because the route to the last temple will drain your lives away. Apart from the one in the final temple they’re always wasted.
They should have increased your maximum number of lives when you found them instead.
Re: The Virtual Console Isn't Coming To Switch, Nintendo Confirms
@SmaggTheSmug it’s because Link is Jesus. He dies for your sins repeatedly (yes getting hit by an Octorok is a sin. It’s one of the 7 deadly sins - turns out that lust was a later substitute). Then he returns from the dead time after time.
If that’s not on the nose enough - in BoTW he even returns from the dead inside a sealed tomb...
Re: Nintendo Hints That Not All Switch Games Will Support Cloud Saves
There’ll be other ways to save online for the non supported games - you can Pokemon Bank on it...
Re: Nintendo Switch Online Finally Revealed: Cloud Saves, NES Games And Pricing Confirmed
Terrible value. The most popular online game for PS4 and XBox owners (trolling on Nintendo fan sites) is completely FREE.
Re: Review: Nintendo Labo: Toy-Con 01 - Variety Kit (Switch)
@sillygostly I suspect the software will be widely available second hand for incredibly low prices on eBay within weeks as people finish building the packed in sets and have no interest in the garage (or without realising that you can use any cardboard - not just the pre-patterned sets included).
The robot is a different thing - those will be incredibly valuable 20 years from now if kept in mint condition. Even the software alone for that one might never drop significantly second hand.
Re: God Of War And Far Cry 5 Push Nintendo Labo Into Third Place In The UK Charts
That’s not bad at all in the UK. Nintendo has never had a particularly strong marketing and sales operation here. Labo doesn’t need to sell God of War numbers in the UK to be a success.
As @NewAdvent noted - a release just before Easter half term in a bundle would have helped Labo here but I guess it had to be this week to line up with golden week in Japan.
Re: Nintendo Is The "Cheapest Game Stock In The World" – But Not For Long
@impurekind I think the big difference between Sega and Nintendo is that, for all of the talk in the online bubble about how great Segas IPs are they actually aren’t (and never have been) that strong outside of their enthusiast community.
Aside from Sonic the Hedgehog could an ordinary member of the public identify a single Sega owned IP from the Mega Drive era? Whilst they made some great games in their most commercially successful period they were mostly either built around attractive but generic themes (you’re driving fast in a sports car! You’re shooting aliens as a non copywrite infringing Arnnie! You’re a ninja!) or licensed (Michael Jackson, Spider-Man etc.).
By the Dreamcast era they were producing very distinctive original IP attached to great games but those games have little penetration in the public consciousness and they were often ‘one and done’ even when the potential for forming a franchise was there.
Nintendo by contrast has some incredibly strong IP that’s been very well fostered over long periods of time. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokémon and Animal Crossing all occupy an important place in the history of video games and they’ve all at various points had incredible penetration into the public consciousness that will not fully fade in our lifetimes.
You literally cannot ‘make’ another Pokémon or Mario happen from scratch (enough people have tried). As the media world becomes more fragmented the value of those mega franchises will continue to grow. Holding so many of those solid gold franchises means that Nintendo should always be pretty valuable relative to Sega.
But I’d agree that not gambling on stock is a good idea - it is a roulette wheel best avoided!
Re: Events: Birmingham City University To Celebrate The Impact Of Rare And Other Midlands Games Studios
They filmed scenes of a movie set in a terrible dystopian wasteland in Birmingham? That must have been a stretch - I can see why they needed Spielberg.
Re: Splatoon 2 Is About To Have A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splatfest Tournament
@Shiryu because whilst he is technically cool he’s also crude.
Re: Sonic Mania Has Sold Over A Million Units Worldwide
@Jayenkai most people phrase “go” slightly differently in this context - using a few extra letters and 2 words instead of one (the second being “off”) - but it does still mean basically the same as “go”...
Re: UK Schools Want To Bring The Cardboard Creativity Of Nintendo Labo Into The Classroom
@Heavyarms55 those are some very pessimistic lines of thought. A few things to consider though:
1- management in all organisations always tells the staff (& most other stakeholders) that budgets are incredibly tight. For obvious reasons. If your budgets aren’t tight you have to pay salary increases or accept cuts.
Of course some are incredibly hard up but not every school is and many do have a little room for manoeuvre (even if they’d never admit it - even to their staff).
2- the act of setting a budget usually means you end up ‘siloing’. So a school might not have the budget to pay you a penny more or even buy enough writing books but still have loads left in the budget for IT equipment.
3- relative to other areas of expense in a school buying a dozen Switches is really nothing. What £6000? Far less than the cost of a low level TA for a term.
4- giving kids a piece of equipment that they can instantly identify as being expensive and desirable has a big upside. It makes them feel valued and trusted. Whilst they’ll still break or steal things its not necessarily as bad as you’re imagining.
I still think Nintendo has to want to do it. They’d probably have to come up with something bespoke but it’s not a fundamentally bad idea to position Labo as a teaching learning tool.
Re: Feature: Which Retro Classics Do You Want To See Come To Sega AGES On Switch?
From day one I’ve always said Chu Chu Rocket is a perfect fit for Switch. But it’s such a simple game with so much scope that a rote sequel with an extra mode or two and native HD graphics makes more sense
I love Skies of Arcadia - it’s the game that all 32 bit RPGs wanted to be but fell short of - but I’d be more interested in the GameCube version with its extra character and story than a Dreamcast port missing features (tied to the VMU).
Aside from the obvious (and second tier and third tier) Dreamcast games I suppose I’d like to see a lot of Saturn stuff. In particular Panza Dragoon (esp. Saga) and Burning Rangers but also anything 2d from that system.
With M2 I’d trust their judgement and execution though. If they pick turds they’ll polish them to a sheen with all of the obscure content and modes that we can only fantasise about from retro releases by any other company.
Re: Wave Race Director Shinya Takahashi Hints That The Series May Return Soon
@Varkster you joke but the earliest showing of wave race 64 for the ‘Ultra 64’ was pretty much exactly that if I recall correctly.
Re: Kirby Star Allies Gobbles Up The Top Spot Again In The Japanese Charts
@Shellcore I think sales figures are often difficult for us to fully grasp as consumers (and I don’t claim to be an expert). Opening of new markets is probably part of the reason but gradual falls in price and an increased library of games available at budget prices also has an effect as a console gets older.
The ‘bell curve’ where a consoles sales increase, peak for 2-3 years then fall is pretty typical for a lot of products.
PS4 is actually an exceptional case - it’s on course to be the best selling console ever and Sony has got every major marketing call right at every stage. If last year was the peak sales year (this year could be bigger...) the trend would strongly suggest they’ve only just hit sold to half the people who will eventually buy one. The idea that “everyone who wants one surely already has one” is nonsense.
Of course late system sales are much less valuable and less important but that’s a different story.
Re: Kirby Star Allies Gobbles Up The Top Spot Again In The Japanese Charts
@Shellcore there are exceptions but for most systems the peak sales year is the 3rd or 4th year (usually with the 5th at a similar rate to the 4th):
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-sales-of-video-game-consoles/
Re: Kirby Star Allies Gobbles Up The Top Spot Again In The Japanese Charts
@Shellcore except consoles typically sell higher numbers year on year until later in their life. These should be peak sales years for PS4 (and they are - PS4 worldwide sold more units than Switch last year).
In Japan it bears talking about because at this pace Switch could potentially have a larger install base there by the end of the year at a point when PS4 is entering its twilight years and Switch is on the threshold of entering much bigger years sales wise.
Re: NIS America CEO Apologises For "Negative" PS4 Comments During Chat About SNK Heroines On Switch
@MarcelRguez being a niche in Japan could still mean a console selling 5 million units and should still mean a console that gets notable support from Japanese publishers - especially the biggest ones who have a more global reach like Capcom and Square.
The way things are today though I just don’t think that Sony can whip around companies like Factor 5 or Atlus without spending big to do so and I don’t think it’s necessarily worth it. Had Vita been more successful or Switch take up been slower maybe the story would be a little different
Re: NIS America CEO Apologises For "Negative" PS4 Comments During Chat About SNK Heroines On Switch
@MarcelRguez I think the thing is that the Switch installbase (especially in Japan) and the higher attach rate for handhelds means that going forwards Sony will need to do something special to keep games like Ni No Kuni 2 as exclusives on PS4. In some cases they’ll need to do something special just to get those games launching on PS4 alongside the Switch.
Of course there is then the question of whether those games really add enough to be worth chasing in that way. They don’t sell millions of consoles. So long as EA, Ubisoft, 2K and Activision prioritise the PS4 and create games that strain to work on Switch (if they do at all) PlayStation is in a very strong, basically insurmountable, position in the West.
Writing Japan off as a niche market for PlayStation wouldnt necessarily be a terrible decision for Sony - even if they may not be at that point just yet.
Re: Feature: The 26 Best Nintendo Game Boy Games Of All Time
Filing your article before Nintendo announces the Game Boy Classic edition so you appear near the top of the many resulting Google searches?
Seriously though, Metroid 2 as number 3? I’ve always found it to be a pretty poor game relative to the rest of the series.
Re: NIS America CEO Apologises For "Negative" PS4 Comments During Chat About SNK Heroines On Switch
@MarcelRguez I rarely look there because I don’t have a PS4. The tone was just jarring to me with it being the sister site of NL. Whilst not perfect the writing and reporting here is usually pretty ok.
Calling a CEO of a mid sized publisher a suit is about the same level as calling a grown man ‘boy’. Real fanzine standard (and not high end fanzine at that).
The more interesting analysis would be to point out that we’ll probably see a lot more of this from mid level Japanese companies in the next year or two and to explain why.
Re: Rumour: Sounds Like Football Manager Will Finally Be Calling The Shots On Switch
@daveyhall I think it becoming harder and harder to lead the toon to European glory might have more to do with increasing levels of realism in the game...
Re: NIS America CEO Apologises For "Negative" PS4 Comments During Chat About SNK Heroines On Switch
@YummyHappyPills the more surprising thing is the tone in which the PS article was written. There’s a fine line between journalism catering to fans and being a fanzine and I think the author was on the wrong side of that line.
Talking about the executive of a mid size in a derogatory way as a ‘suit’ because he didn’t say the right things? Fine for an amateur fan but you’d expect a high more even handed analysis from a professional journalist.
Re: Review: Warp Shift (Switch eShop)
@Dom I don’t mean to add myself to the list of critics (I think the site is going OK) but you really need to be proof reading better for basic spelling and grammar mistakes.
“Now they’re are switches”
Things like this seem to be quite common. It happens but better proof reading would help.
Re: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze's Switch File Is Almost Half The Size Of The Wii U Version
@DarthMarth they want to defend the value of their games. I think it’s as simple as that.
Rightly or wrongly a lot of people correlate price with quality or ‘worthiness’. Price a game low and they assume it has no value and no worth.
Plus if the market were flooded with cheap old Nintendo games then they wouldn’t be able to sell new games for full price and their whole business model collapses.
They’ve got it wrong in this case (it’s at least £10 too expense) but personally I think the logic behind their pricing is sound.
Re: Feature: CIRCLE Entertainment On Outgrowing 3DS, Embracing Switch And Maturing As A Publisher
@Maxz That’s a trifling analogy if ever there was one. I personally come to this to read wibble and I remain fulfilled.
I do wonder if Tom now acts like a (jellied) eel now he’s in PR for a publisher though...
Re: Feature: The Big Nintendo Direct Summary - 8th March
@bimmy-lee Wolfenstein isn’t cancelled. It being a no show alongside Yoshi simply means that it’s likely that both games are being reworked and combined into a single game: Yoshi’s New Collossos.
It comes with a Woolly Yoshi Amiibo with a Swasticker on it’s forehead. The reveal is being saved for the next Donald Trump video games summit as an example of how games are slowly aligning with his alt right philosophies.
Re: Super Smash Bros. For Switch Is Coming This Year, And It's Got Inklings
@LUIGITORNADO No - you’re seeing something that isn’t there! Those ink blobs actually look like Shrek fighting Goku if you squint hard enough.
What that means I don’t know...
Re: Looks Like 3DS Title Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido Is Getting A Switch Upgrade
June was surely always going to be the best month for a tennis game? Certainly no one in this country cares about the sport when Wimbledon has finished.
Re: Surprise! There's A New Nintendo Direct Coming, And It's Due Tomorrow
@BigBadJohn actually that sounds kind of great and I don’t care for Solitare.
I’m not sure I’d want to play a game like that in anything less than 4K though and it needs voice chat and micro transactions. I need to gatcha the Sheldon from Big Bang Theory skin.
Re: Feature: Remembering Toys R Us, The '90s Gamer's Paradise
@khaosklub Thanks for that link. I didn’t realise they’d been subject to a leveraged buyout.
I still don’t understand why it’s still legal to take an effectively free gamble with hundreds of people’s livelihoods at stake. Large companies shouldn’t be treated like buying a house - the debt can cripple competitiveness.
That said many companies are successful after leveraged buyouts. TRU has a failure of vision for many years before and after in my opinion.
Re: Feature: Remembering Toys R Us, The '90s Gamer's Paradise
They were ace. The wall of games!
It’s being used as an example of the death of physical shops but - actually - I think it’s just an example of bad management. I went into a random Toys r us a few years ago and it was exactly (exactly) the same as the Manchester branch in the uber 80s retail estate that I remember from being a child of the early 90s.
They never adapted or changed and found themselves rooted at the lower end of the market. Just like Woolworths (where I bought most of my games).
However there’s still a huge potential for a big physical shop toy shop chain. Hence Smyths are doing well. I expect they’ll expand into the void left or there’ll be a new low end ‘B&M Toyshop’ chain that springs up.
Re: Soapbox: What Happened To All The Great Baseball Games On Nintendo Consoles?
There are fewer sports games across the board. In large part because the majority of the audience for those games is particularly responsive to something (& only something) that looks as close to the TV product as possible. Other sports have multiple markets and multiple potential licenses but with baseball if you can’t get the MLB license you have no game that can sell enough to justify a large budget.
Of course baseball has another big issue - the demographics of support in the US has changed in the last 20 years. It’s simply not got the hold on America’s youth as it once did. Kids and teenagers drive the sale of sports games so as the potential audience for baseball games has withered.
Re: Switch Surpasses Wii U Lifetime Sales in UK, But Its Dominance Isn't As Strong As Elsewhere
@Cosats in addition to what @TheMadPolarBear said I’d add that our whole retail culture is very different here to that in Europe. Supermarkets are much more important here for non-food items than they are in (for instance) Germany where NoEs staff are mostly located.
If you treat the UK as if it were Germany you’ll miss that distinction and fail to understand why it’s so important to get the supermarkets onboard (instead of ticking them off like Nintendo did in the early Wii U days...).
A poweful Nintendo UK independent of NoE would have a lot more success. Or at least the potential to be more successful.
Re: Sega Is Getting Ready To Show Us What's Next For Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic the hedgehog (2006) 12 year anniversary edition incoming.
Re: Analysts Suggest Nintendo Switch May Have Sold 14.6 Million, Trounced Wii U Lifetime Sales
@chiptoon it was definitely a failure of marketing in every sense.
Part of that was the order in which the big games arrived. Had Wii U launched with MK8 and Super Mario Maker it might have been a very different story.
If Nintendo has taken just one lesson from the Wii U it seems to have been ‘get your biggest, longest lasting, most evergreen titles out straight away before getting more esoteric or niche things like Nintendo Land or Game & Wario or even Pikmin’.
Re: Analysts Suggest Nintendo Switch May Have Sold 14.6 Million, Trounced Wii U Lifetime Sales
I think we’re past the point where colossal unit sales figures are a good measure of the health of the system.
The number of games sold per Switch, how many hours they’re played per week, who is actually buying them, how they’re using them, which types of games they’re buying and the price they’re willing to pay for them are all now more important measures of success going forwards.
Now that it’s clear Switch has a large enough install base to be a viable format those are the factors that will most influence the type of games and the volume we get.
Re: UK Pricing For Nintendo Labo Is Confirmed
@SLIGEACH_EIRE they’ll be freely available online the second the packs are released (alongside “improved” custom patterns that are compatible) whether Nintendo wants them to be or not.
Whether you’d want to make the projects using cardboard you have knocking around at home (versus a slightly tougher grade) is a different question but it’s the software that’s the key component here.
Re: Feature: Killer Apps We Really Want To See On Nintendo Switch
Hmm. I don’t need any of those things - never used Facebook or Twitter or Netflix. Probably would’nt use the browser.
However having those pits Switch into competition with the iPad and the host of mid range tablets. If I had them on my Switch I’d probably never buy another iPad (or upgrade even less frequently).
So it’s potentially the difference between 100 million units sold and 200 million units sold. Having them could tip Switch into ‘comfortably the best selling gaming device of all time territory’ and make Nintendo a true giant outside of gaming.
Oh and where is the BBC iPlayer on your list (& the other UK specific apps like ITVs player, 4OD & Skys app etc.). That’s the biggest thing holding the Apple TV back.
Re: A Free Update Is Coming to Super Mario Odyssey Next Month
Yes Luigi - embrace your inner Tingle!
Re: Soapbox: Switch's Rampant Success Is Proof Positive That You Should Never Write Off Nintendo
Surely the problem is that games journalists, YouTube ‘personalities’ and analysts wrote Nintendo off? In part because they’re not generally up to the job, in part because they’re too much in a bubble to take an objective view of the hobby and in part because they have a personal vested interest in seeing Nintendo fail because they personally pay more attention to the AAA space (& have better contacts in that industry so want to promote it for their own importance).
Aside from Nintendo - the other big surprise in 2017 was just how successful Crash Bandicoot was on PS4. It was huge. There’s simply an incredible audience for premium family friendly video games that’s being neglected by almost everyone except Nintendo.
Re: Nintendo Switch Is The Fastest Selling Console In US History With 4.8 Million Units Sold
Typical NL cherry picking figures that look good for Nintendo. Of course they’re selling well in select backwaters like the US and Japan.
Why aren’t they reporting the figures from Dagestan? Sony is outselling Nintendo 100x there! Bias. I demand NL focuses on figures that make the majority of readers here feel bad not good.
Re: Soapbox: Let 2018 Be The Year The Third-Party Exclusive Takes Over On Nintendo Switch
It would be nice but it’s not realistic.
Big 3rd party AAA publishers want to maximise their sales. That means being on all systems most of the time. They might offer timed exclusivity if the money hat fits but otherwise no.
The only other reasons for exclusive third party content is stuff that really wouldn’t fly with the audience on a different platform (so a lot of the JRPGs on PS4 that wouldn’t sell at all on XBox One), stuff developed in close conjunction with the platform holder (i.e Mario & Rabbids) and stuff that’s heavily dependent on the features/power of a particular console. Or a combination of the above.
We might (should!) see a lot of Japanese games targeting Switch first and foremost... but I’d still expect any that would do ok on PS4 to make it onto that platform too.