Tiredman

@Arlo I am kind of curious about something. Is selling over 50 million before the end of a handhelds life cycle really declining? Because it doesn't do as good as another piece of hardware, is it really declining? I think when all is said and done, consoles will go back to being a pure gamer thing while phones and tablets will dominate the rest, and our hobby will be our hobby again instead of a big, casual fiesta where all our favorite franchises get turned into crap in the hopes of getting phone and tablet numbers of buyers. That is my view on all of this. I don't think games are on decline, I think they are normalizing back to sustainable numbers like it was before this new century hit.

@dronesplitter The pie isn't really getting smaller....because thanks to phones the pie has gotten exponentially bigger due to the sheer amount of casual gamers added to the mix. That is why Nintendo is wanting to lure the casuals to the handheld market with Nintendo phone games. Example would be like 20% of the pie 5 years ago may of been 30 million gamers, but 20% today is liable to be 100 million gamers.

@Arlo The problem with that view point is that while there are blind believers, there are also blind nay sayers. The nintendo handhelds aren't on a real decline until they are literally on a decline. When Nintendo can't clear 30 million sold, then there are problems. You can't really compare them to the amount of phone gamers there are because the vast majority of phone gamers aren't the audience of dedicated gaming consoles, both home and handheld. Just because another 100 million moms and dads have decided to take up angry birds on phones and earn the title of being a gamer doesn't mean it is a bad thing for Nintendo products.

Sony dug their own grave there. When people think handheld gaming device they don't associate that with a $300+ starter kit and lots of download only, big sized games. If the Vita had been $200 or less and used normal, cheap memory, they would likely be singing a different tune.

@Spoony_Tech Persona Q lacks the difficulty of an actual Etrian game, so if that is a turn off, I don't recommend it to scratch an EO itch. I haven't played the other game you listed, and I am currently about halfway through Untold, just taking my time. Picking up EOU 2 before the dlc goes back to costing cash though.

@FunkyMonkey We aren't fussing. Look at the end of the article, we are asked our opinions, so we are giving them.

Didn't care for it much. It felt like they just took a few hours, did these, and tossed them up on the net. They don't really feel professional, and sound amateurish. Basically it isn't my cup of tea.

Too many of the games on the eshop are first timers or developers with a lousy record. Then they toss a new game on eshop for way more than their reputation would allow them to get away with, and then they complain when they don't sell. You have to build a fan base before you can start making the money, because no fans equals nobody wanting to give you a premium price. If you can't build a fanbase with cheaper games, then maybe you need to look at how you make games and if they are fun or shovelware.

I am the same with feelings regarding this game being way too Persona. I knew something was wrong when the trailer said this was a story about youth. Any game that mentions its main characters and the word youth tend to be friendship or other crap plot focused story lines.

This game does not look like either of it's source material. While it may be a good game, so far it is a huge letdown for people who would buy it for the title.

No Lufia then no care. I was hoping they would give a pleasant surprise so kept my fingers crossed.....too many dev's just letting me down now a days.

I will snag the Grinsia discount. I hope that bug you mention isn't still there, would hate for my first game of theirs to sour me on their future games.

If Little Ninja Brothers is what I think it is, all I can say is damn, I did not see that coming and it will be a day 1 purchase for me. I played that back when I was a kid and I remember it being a ton of fun. I love the old games coming back on wii u.

If a game isn't copyrighted outside of Japan, then I don't believe it is illegal. Basically if a company wasn't going to release a game outside of their home country to begin with, do you think they are going to care if folks translate it and make it available to other countries and other languages? Especially 20 year old games?

I will never back an all digital future. I will never pay more than $15 for a digital only game. I will also argue against digital only any time the topic comes up. I don't believe in glorified renting of software as the future. I am also tired of all the buggy crap, games cut on half when put on disc so you are forced to download the rest, or fixes to the software, or your disc is almost worthless. All digital does is let the business folks find new ways to screw the consumer out of more money, and gives them control over the ability to not give us full games on a physical disc making it so even us physical lovers are forced online if we want a fully functional game.

This is a new age. There is no fault of the consumer at all in this scenario. It is the producers of content who have to adapt to an ever changing market, not the consumers.

Think of it this way. Fifteen years ago, somebody would sell a physical copy of a game to a limited audience and the only real advertising they would get would be magazines and word of mouth unless it was big budget. This limited your base of buyers a great deal. Now, with the Wii U as an example, there is a base of 9 million customers to market to, and even more on the other systems. You have game websites, youtube, ad agencies, gaming magazines, and a few others I don't recall at the moment. The exposure of good games is a whole lot higher today that it was a decade ago. People can expect a lot more sales today than they would of a year ago. And yet they are willing to still charge premium in a time when premium doesn't sell as well as it used to. Developers are cutting their sales in half just to get an extra $5 per sale. While this is a guesstimate, I have no reliable proof of numbers to list.

Charging $20 for an indie title that looks like it could easily be a mobile title just doesn't fly in today's market place. That isn't the consumers fault, it is the fault of the developers and publishers who won't adapt to current market practices. They have access to bigger audiences than at any other time in history, and instead of embracing that audience, they price the game into niche category so only the few will buy it instead of the many.

That is not the consumers fault.

It isn't really about $20 for a good game. It is about $20 for a digital only game. My ultimate limit on digital only games is $15 and I won't spend a penny more. I don't buy big budget games digitally for that very reason. I know my line in the sand, so this isn't whining, I made a distinct choice when digital started becoming more popular that no game that is only a rental will be worth more than $15.

All the companies who used to be good were good when they made games at 1/8th to 1/10th the cost of today's games, and that is why they are failing. They want big sellers, not a large series of small sellers. That is why we have an indie surge over the last few years as people get tired of the big budget, bugs, and day one patches guaranteeing their games won't work right in 10 years. Capcom, Konami, and so on only have themselves to blame for this.

My gamestop has 2 for sale today for $19.99. I bought one a few days ago when they first got them in.

They are only doing it so they have exclusive access to the image. There is a Nintendo controller themed 3ds after all, and I see them doing similar in the future.

I know how it goes. My cousin came to visit me on Christmas Eve and to stay the night. He had a history of drug addiction, but he hadn't done anything to me to make me avoid him. He had me go get him drinks and stuff, but he acted desperate when I was taking my time going so I got suspicious. We were playing games, and we were talking about what a mess my room was and he offered to help me clean it up. I told him thats alright, don't have room for all that stuff. When he went to sleep on the couch that night, I figured it wouldnt hurt to straighten up my room a bit and I wasn't tired so I started organizing my many games. I was putting ds games back in their boxes, and making sure the correct games were in the correct boxes. I started noticing a lot of empty boxes. I was missing around 13 games.

My cousin had a shady past, so I was wary, and he left his coat in my room. I felt his coat, and noticed a pocket had all my missing games in it. I told him he could borrow a game and bring it back to get a new one whenever he want, but he tried to take a large amount of games to sell to get drugs with. Suffice it to say, he is no longer welcome in my home. He was on drug court till 2 weeks ago, but he failed it and last I heard he is in jail for a year.

Drugs make people do stupid things to family, friends, and strangers.

@IronMan28

That's Nintendo's fault for not giving us the full details. So yeah, we will jump to conclusions based on information given.

I am not happy with this because I have a feeling both sides will share a good bit of the storyline. Just because both sides have more battles means little as they are using the same engine from Awakening so battles are easy to make for them now. This is a case of trying to milk the popularity of Awakening in a manner I don't condone.

For me, I don't spend $20 on digital games, no matter the quality. If I don't own a physical copy, I don't spend that much, simple as that. It is a rule of mine, as I don't believe in an all digital future, and this rule is part of my stand against that future.

So happy I got the ps1 version. I have played all the English 3ds ones, and in my honest opinion, other than the graphics, the old ones that were released in the West are better than their DS counterparts.

Working Designs is 99 percent of the reason I bought a Sega CD back then. I lucked out and found a copy of Shining Force CD for rent during one vacation to my grandma's house at the time, so I played through it and beat it. Then during that vacation, as i was with my folks traveling cross country, while I was sleeping, two of my cousins, around 10 years old, I was around 15, came into my room in my great aunt and uncle's house, took my sega cd, and dropped it while trying to take it downstairs to play it. It never worked since. I still have it, along with both Lunars, Popful Mail, and a few other games i can't remember right off hand.

I am all about making the handheld and home console interchangeable, meaning I can play one game on both. Yes the game will be a bit clunky on the home console, but I would enjoy playing many handheld games on my tv as I enjoy tv games more. I feel Nintendo's audience is split enough that they can sell their regular numbers, and I think the cross platform play could really help in selling more of both systems.

Looks interesting, though those soldiers on what I assume is a battle screen just look freaky. I can understand chibi design, but that is way overboard in that picture in the article.

I am not tired of that "tired old fantasy world". I enjoy my fantasy rpg's just as much as any other.

It doesn't really matter what the big names on the youtube channels think. When you boil it down, they make money off other people's work, by abusing the other people's work if they don't give them a share of the profit. It isn't a right to be able to use copyrighted materials to make money without the permission of the people who own the copyright.

People can moan and groan about it all they want, but just because many folks let them get away with it doesn't make it right, or the way things should be done.

How would you like it if you made a game and before it even had a chance to really sell and Let Play fella blew open your entire game? No, that won't make your sales stop, but many folks play games for the story, and if they can get past having to play the game, they will, especially when its free.

I have no problem with a behind the shoulder viewpoint. I got used to it in Valkyria Chronicles on the ps3, an awesome game in the same vein as this one, and while it starts out simple, it can get much more complex as the game goes. If they are using Valkyria Chronicles as a template for STEAM, then they are on the right track to make something truly interesting.

@TeeJay It has nothing to do with wishing. If those Sega employee's can't put out a quality product, they are personally making Sega unable to compete and make cash. This isn't really a feel sorry situation, its just Sega's bad practices coming back to haunt them. They really should look at the THQ fold and take a few lessons from that, those lessons being that even quality games can't save you if you keep doing lousy business practices.

Its pretty simple. Let's play's are already shady ground, and the people doing them are not paying out anything. They are playing games they enjoy, talking about them while showing the game from beginning to end to people watching the stream. The game's aren't their past buying a copy and they have no right to make unfettered cash off them. The people running those channels are just 2 bit star wannabe's who want the attention and cash and no responsibility otherwise. I think Nintendo giving them free run to do their thing while Nintendo itself gets a share of the streams about their games is perfectly legit, and perfectly acceptable.

Ok, 8 bit great fairy is awesome.

@PinkSpider Wallpapers or screen savers? I bought a screen saver off there and it was an animated constantly changing one, and I don't remember wallpapers.

Thats why I am so pro wii u this generation. It keeps me smiling, far, far more than the other 2 consoles would.

My biggest issue with this new system is how exactly will nintendo offer discounts on physical goods sold at places like Gamestop? Are they going to give us a printable coupon? Or is this service going to focus more on the digital formats of games, of which I will never spend more than $15 on, as I don't believe in paying more for a game I don't really own.

I hope they have a way of letting the loyal club nintendo users get a head start on their new loyalty program. I have spent way too much on new, full priced versions of Nintendo games, both because they are usually worth it, and for the unused club nintendo codes.

@JJtheTexan So glad you mentioned Crystalis, it is one of my favorite original nes games as well. Never forgot about maxing my level in a cave in the water cruising part of the game. I remember that boss. That stage leading up to it was a pain with constant slow down from me constantly using my fully charged thunder sword to hurt everything around me.

I did make a few calls in my youth, prior to the 900 time. Some games just had that puzzle that needed explaining.

@Shiryu I wouldn't forever remember it =p The Sega logo was on the intro to Bayonetta after all.

Honestly, what Nintendo and many other places should do it a preorder deal regarding units preordered. Nintendo says, "If we get 10,000 preorders for this, we will make that 10,000 and send them out to the preorders." One would assume the number they would pick would bring them a profit after manufacturing and shipping. So they bring this 3ds to preorder status, and they give it 2 months to build up as many preorders as it can get, and then if enough get preordered, they fulfill that order, make some extra's for stores, and call it a day.

That trailer literally sent a chill down my spine. Flying mechs around, huge monsters at every turn, so many different environments, and the thought of just how big that city at the end really is by itself. Yeah, plenty of hype there.

Well I am interested. Currently playing through the Fire Emblem game that was released on the Wii U gameboy advance line up a few weeks ago. I am pretty positive the blue haired dancer is the one from that game, Ninia or something like that. Gotta admit, i am curious to see what the story is in this next FE.

I just hope they don't give the new amiibo's specific functionality that the old ones don't have. If they do, I am done collecting them.

My main question is Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem, followed by amiibo. Most of my other questions are already answered, or don't need an answer as time will take care of it.

I don't know, I would feel like I got a big middle finger if they updated it the way you mention in the article. This is just an option for those who want both games in a physical format that they can physically own to do all the fun things you can do with physical games.

This game has so much content, I can honestly say its the first game I have picked up after beating it, just to play bonus content more than a month later. Most games I play post game are usually grind levels and gear for a week, beat super bosses, put down game. This is the first time I have actually just played for playings sake for new maps and what not. Already bought the season pass, and so worth it. I don't normally say this about a majority of game releases nowadays, but this game is worth every cent.

A lot of pixel developers who go HD tend to make their games look like flash games with the upgrade. I am with the developer in this article, I don't play 2d games for HD, as I feel pixel based games age beautifully.

Kinda sad to see no Golden Sun 2 on there.

I haven't owned a Nintendo console since the Super Nintendo until these last few years. I got a DS to play all those rpg's that i wished i could play on a console, but that quit coming out. I had a good time, with my favorite DS game being Super Robot Taisen : OG Saga - Endless Frontier. Then I bought a 3ds, I don't regret it one bit.

Then the Wii U caught my attention. I kept paying attention. I saw the games coming out for it, and my hype was going up. When I started thinking about ps4 or Wii U, I realized that it would be ages before the PS4 would have games I care about in sufficient numbers to lure me in, while the Wii U had what I wanted and so much more already. I was tired of all the big AAA games. I was tired of realistic graphics and way too much pure violence for no other reason than because it is popular. So a year ago from this Christmas, I got a Wii U, my first Nintendo home console since the Super Nintendo. I do not regret that purchase. I bought it for 5 reasons, Wonderful 101, Earthbound, Breath of Fire 2, Bayonetta 2, and Xenoblade.

After i got it, I found out it was backwards compatible, then so many awesome games came out, and Gameboy Advance (a system I never owned) games started being released and I got to finally play Golden Sun....so much happiness has the Wii U brought me, and tons of entertainment. Not much more I can say about the Wii U, though I guess I am lying on that score. It is a different type a system, a system for people who don't want to shoot other people in the head, a system for people who are tired of the same crap from the last 8 years. I am glad its around.

As for the west, I think they need to quit thinking so much about the online approach and try to focus on people who aren't internet prowlers. Those of us on boards like this aren't the target audience they should be trying to lure to the Wii U. Its the people who don't browse online all the time, the people who go to the store and pick their system based on commercials of hardware and software they have seen.

Have you ever noticed they only put games on sale, and not dlc. This is rather annoying as I would like more dlc. I picked up the special points and xp bundles just to find out they were the exact same map with different monsters on them, and that just showed pure laziness to me. Due to this I am afraid the more expensive ones will be similar so I won't be snagging them until they get a reduction.