ZombieTechpad

I live in Northern Ireland. 17th March is St. Patrick's Day and Nintendo Switch will be released on that day in Europe.... Watches Nintendo Switch First Look Trailer... In reality everyone will be drunk on Guinness and watching the parades in the street. If NS has street pass features they could be onto a huge day one PR winner. hahaha

I'll be picking up all 3 games and the Limited Edition new 3DS XL console to replace my current Limited Edition Fire Emblem Awakening 3DS XL. I love spending money on myself.

@Yorumi Mobile can build Nintendo a unified account network in days when consoles & handhelds would take years/decades. Look at Miitomo, it's been downloaded 10 millions times already. How long did it take Live & PSN to reach 10 million users?

Their mobile strategy appears to be more different than what a lot of people think and fear. They've been in partnership for a year with DeNA and we've seen only 1 app published. 2 more traditional gaming franchises land in Autumn both cater to vastly different audiences. Nintendo are planning their mobile business very carefully, and I think NX is going to benefit from it in a very big way. By March 2017 I wouldn't be surprised if My Nintendo had 100 million accounts. They will all be compatible and unified with NX on day one. To me that's a fantastic way to leverage the mobile business.

@NewAdvent I completely agree with you and actually emailed Nintendo's customers service about that issue, just got a standard 'the collectors edition is physical only' reply. It's actually crazy how much more money they can make if they just copy Steam's store. Slightly off topic, the badge arcade on 3DS is a perfect example of how Nintendo can create a micro economy and have users trade/sell or purchase badges they don't have.

Play Journal sounds like the start of an achievement system.

The artistic direction is way off. I don't understand why these video's keep coming up. Nintendo have some of the best game artists in the industry and they create game engines that make their own hardware sing.

I hope that coffee was black with no sugar

Very interesting piece. It's no secret Nintendo moved around resources to save the 3DS (Retro helping with Mario Kart). Even looking at releases this year, while the New 3DS is getting lots of attention, it's still a bit thin on solid titles compared to 2013 which had hit after hit month after month. A scalable development environment for dedicated gaming hardware sounds like a step in the right direction.

@Einherjar I know what you mean, we don't get the Steve Amell - Green Arrow DLC.
On a different topic though, it's interesting to see Warner Bros. who own DC Comics handle Marvel/Disney IP again.

@ThomasBW84 thanks for the shout-out at the end of the article :-0

I tried to vote for new promo, but it didn't work.
@Quorthon I'm not sure Iwata actually said he would step down. http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/meeting/130627qa/02.html#qa5
I think the situation was blown out of proportion by the media especially at the time. As for mergers and acquisitions, in 2013 Nintendo purchased 27% of a Panasonic subsidiary PUX Corperation http://playeressence.com/nintendo-purchases-27-stock-panasonic-subsidiary-pux-corporations/ and they bought stakes in the Japanese mobile content company Dwango. Most recently (that we know of) last year they spent $150 million on a non Japanese, non game related technology company - my bets are it's to do with QoL which Nintendo claim is not related to the games industry at all.
As for DS on WiiU VC I totally agree with you man.

I think the history of the games industry is fascinating.

@Slayer61 @ericwithcheese2
General schedule maintenance is fine and I agree outside attacks are really bad for everyone, but PSN was randomly down a lot in October and Halo's matchmaking was simply unacceptable.
@Quorthon
I'm aware Halo and Drive Club are 1st party games, which actually makes things worse. Sony and MS will happily release broken games just for the sake of having products on store shelves. What message does it send when they release sub standard products? And what must they think of their customers?
I have little doubt these issues will appear again next year as I think netcode in games will be more refined and general services will be much more stable. Fanboy no, cynical yes. Nintendo have many many faults and a lot of work to do, but you can't argue their product quality is still top notch and Mario Kart 8 is testament to that.
As for AAA games, production costs are so high publishers have to sell a multitude of millions to see investment return. Remember games typically launch at high and quickly fall in the matter of weeks/months, their market value is greatly reduced. Methods of reducing this high sales number, which would be different for every game to be fair, are DLC or season passes (multi-player themed known as having the highest success), micro transactions, pre-order bonuses/pre-purchase incentives, multi-platform releases and the new toys to life. Not all AAA games feature all of these but compared to smaller titles (the amazing Child of Light etc) and Indie efforts the market is undeniably top loaded. Nintendo don't have production teams the size of Ubisoft or EA and they don't use motion capture for animations like Uncharted and may more titles, and I'm not saying that's negative in Naughty Dog's part. When I first played Uncharted I was blown away because well it's a fantastic game. They also don't drop the price of their titles which retains the market value of the game and the IP in as a whole. Personally I'd like to see more price drops in 1st party IP. And yes it's becoming more frequent high production cost games are shipping with online co-op sections, which will lead games into a service as opposed to an single complete product. Publishers know they can make more money more frequently when games run as a service. looking at MMO's and smartphone businesses it's clear they can. I'm not saying this will happen to every title released but I think it will hit the long standing and high profile titles first.

@Quorthon Really? I don't think 3rd party software was missed that much this year. ACU, Masterchief Collection, Destney, Watchdogs and Drive Club are just a few hugely disappointing games. Combined with serious online issues on both PSN and XBOX-Live brings a harsh reality to light. In 2014 3rd party games simply weren't ready! They where pushed out to door so companies could generate revenue from season passes and day one DLC.
2014 was a very poor year for Sony, MS and 3rd parties, in terms of actual product quality. The direction UBisoft, EA, Sony and MS are taking their games is an industry I don't want to be a part of. AAA games are moving towards always online which quickly brings in the question of ownership.
Also game delays happened across the board hence the countless remasters/remakes appearing last year and the start of this year.

I voted Xenoblade Chronicles X. Damn game looks great.

I'd really like to see localised releases on Japan only games like Yakuza, Dragon Quest X and Fatal Frame but the chances of that happening are very slim.
I'm pretty much with everyone on the improved accounts system and VC improvements.

@Quorthon and your the guy who is saying Nintendo should be Sony. I suppose you WANT online multiplayer locked behind a paid subscription.

@LordGeovanni
Some very good points I think. Nintendo can easily make a copycat system but in the short of it Sony and Microsoft ARE substantially larger than Nintendo. Personally I'd rather Nintendo work on a system that completely disrupts the industry and again expands the overall audience of games consoles.

Activision put transformers and the amazing spiderman 2 on eShop but not Call of Duty?

If you don't have child of light I'd recommend picking it up especially at that price.

@Quorthon
Your probably right little money was made on Wii Sports, but the cost of manufacturing the Wii would have allowed an extra game free and still count towards profits. It just so happened that Wii Sports effectively defined last generation for a lot of players. The Wii was no fad, 100Mil systems is not to be snuffed at, it carved a thriving business for many developers and publishers, was hard to find for 3 Christmas' in a row at retail, lasted a solid 5 years and put a substantial amount of money in the bank for Nintendo and it's partners.

This generation is no different from past there is no reversal. PS4 and XBOX 1 were initially sold at a loss. The systems had to hit the break even point and due to the rate of sales both claim to have done this. Which is really not that surprising considering both systems are made from off the shelf parts when in comparison the ps3 and 360 which were much more exotic at the time.

I don't really know what else I can say about Mario. He sells systems and he sells standalone, the proof is in the data, it's foolish to think that every Mario Kart Wii, New Mario Bros Wii and Super Mario Galaxy sold was bundled in with a system and therefore don't count towards profits. That's about 76 million units of software your disregarding and is nearly the entire install base of the Wii. In the Wii U business both Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3D World triggered hardware spikes. The same is true for 3DS, Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land triggered massive interest in the system. My personal opinion on Mario (I not a huge fan) is the industry was over saturated when New Super Mario Bros U hit as a launch title, which in turn effected the impact of 3D World for Wii U. In fact Nintendo's release schedule for the first 18 months had a negative effected the Wii U success even though the standard of it's games are very high.

Looking forward and at Amiibo's, every game Nintendo publish in the future has to potential to ship with a unique set of Amiibo. Who's the largest publisher in the console and handheld space? I'll give you a hint, if your thinking 3rd party your wrong. It's also stupid to measure Skylanders current situation with Amiibo's opening Christmas, for a better comparison you have to look at Skylanders launch and the exact same thing happened. Availability was a big challenge for Activision and there are select figures that got discontinued too soon and became very expensive collectibles. Nintendo have dropped the ball on communication big time and they have major supply/demand issues but as future games and Amiibo get released the supply issue will get fixed. From what I mentioned above Star Fox Wii U could receive it's own set of Amiibo which brings greater awareness to lesser know franchises increasing potential profits for the game. Not having a dedicated game is a massive positive for Amiibo and that's not to say maybe there will be one down the line at some point.

Again a better comparison for 3DS would not be DS but GBA as hardware unit sales indicate 3DS will sell sub 100Mill and we must keep in mind Nintendo haven't grown much since the GBA days we know this because they saved those huge profits from Wii and DS. I do think 3rd party wise Nintendo is in a greatly concerning situation but they have enough $ in the bank to try different things and see to the end of Wii U and 3DS life cycles. I enjoy 3rd party games too but I think the 'hate' on here appears when publishers don't show Nintendo systems equal support, Ubisoft coming to mind.

So I'm taking this away from what he said...
'We will not release another Mario game on the Wii U' Which I'd say I'm happy enough with.
'Mario's next main game will launch with Wii U's successor' Which makes business sense to me. Personally I'm not a huge Mario fan, I'm more into Metriod, TLoZ, Fire Emblem and Star Fox.

@andyg1971 I am hopeful account systems in the future will not be tied to hardware.

@Quorthon I agree with much of what your saying, Nintendo by themselves is a very bad situation, hell even 3rd parties don't want Nintendo taking up potential shelf space with systems they don't support. They have a lot of work to do with building confidence to 3rd parties and customers. However Nintendo made massive profits on the hardware in the last generation in both departments. Sony and Microsoft sell both their systems at a loss at least initially therefore both heavily rely on 3rd party licencing. The 3DS and Wii U where the first systems Nintendo launched at a loss and initially neither system resonated with their respective markets. This and the fast decline of the DS and Wii businesses hit Nintendo very hard hence the last 3 years of losses. The transitional costs of moving from one generation to another are very high and in the Wii U's case it has taken very long for the install base to become profitable for Nintendo let alone an 3rd party. In saying that I'd wager they make less money on licencing 3rd party games than selling 1st party games.

I'd also wager Amiibo's exist to replace money from licencing 3rd party software, to act as a gap filler between big 1st party games, which is a great move for them as they will have revenue coming in and complete control over releases. This Christmas has been a complete mess for Amiibo's but it has shown there is massive demand for them. In 2012 Activision announced the Skylanders business surpassed $1billion source: (http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=739250). The question is will Amiibo's generate that kind of revenue? Personally I can't see why they wont.

'Nintendo fans put too much stock and value on Mario and Zelda and Pokemon (the Pokemon Company is actually a second party, I believe), when what really brought them success last generation, was Wii Sports and waggling all the way to the bank. The only reason those Mario games sold so well was because the Wii did, not the other way around.'

Wii Sports was a new IP which expanded the industry. It brought a new audience into GAME stores that would never have entered before. But I'd also like to think Mario games tend to sell well because they are very high quality games.

I used to work in GAME and all the managers cared about is making money. The staff don't really know what they're talking about but sure why would they care they're on minimum wage. I'm not being funny here but even Nintendo Reps would give out miss information on release dates.
UK has never seen Nintendo as a popular choice, for the exceptions of NES, SNES and Wii, it seems to have always been a challenging market. There are a few different ways Nintendo can look at this but I think Iwata has the right mentality in thinking that there is much potential in UK and Europe as a whole.

As for the performance of the Wii U, I can distinctly remember UK based publications basically out right telling people to not buy a Wii U until its in the bargain bin. (When I seen this I did wonder how this actually helps the games industry... the industry they work in... colour me surprised!). MCV's editorial generally report on the negative side when it comes Nintendo, one could argue they are part of the Nintendoom club. A year an a half of negative reporting has effected the public's perception of the Wii U.

I'm very happy with the Wii U and most people seem to think market share is all that matters but look at the state of Sony if the PS4 had a similar launch to the PS3 I don't think they'd be trading as a company. How long are Microsoft happy to let the XBOX division bleed money from the company. In the end of the day Nintendo make great games and are trying to turn the Wii U business into a positive one. Which neither Microsoft or Sony can do without 3rd parties. It's not about market share for Nindento any more it's about making profits.

Look Sega just port some phantasy star to 3DS or WiiU please!

I have both games but I didn't pick them up day one. I got them about 4 weeks later.

Amiiboland has to happen as a free download. Unlock areas with your amiibos.

The possibilities are endless for amiibos when you think about it. How about a large mech for xenoblade chronicles x for £30 instead of a standard figure? Or samus' gunship for a new metroid game?

I'm spent out after getting the great MK8 pins :-0

The whole thing is a complete sham. Nintendo need to speak up on availability, unfortunately I can only see this happening at the end of January for the 3rd quarter fiscal briefing.

A product having a 3 week shelf life is a joke. The problem is they picked smash bros to launch amiibo's with, they should have used a game that maybe didn't have nearly 50 characters in it.

Zelda looks great. Starfox may get a dedicated Nintendo Direct soon because we haven't seen much of it.

Shin Megami Tensei overclocked finally gets a discount.

@andyg1971 cool profile img, I've got one of those bad boys :-0

The PS4 isn't going to sell like the Wii, they aren't going to get young families picking up the system when it's priced so high and the less said about the vita the better. Sure EA and Ubisoft have abandoned the WiiU, Sony have abandoned the Vita!

I'd give the system a B+, it has already out preformed the Wii for me. The only thing I really dislike about the system is the massively negative public perception around it. 3rd party games dont really come into it, sure I'll miss resident evil etc, but I've never enjoyed EA or Ubisoft games I don't even like GTA but I can and have most 3rd party games on my Steam account. Console gaming is Nintendo, ps4 and xbox1 just dont get a look in.

I'm a big downloader and can see myself using this a lot in the future. It's actually great because I recently queried Nintendo UK about this in an email a few months ago. Also to me it's a big benefit downloads have over physical products. Best of all though it seems Nintendo are rolling this feature out for free, if I recall correctly Sony hide this sort of thing behind PS+ when it was first announced on the PS3. I'd like to see this be an eShop wide feature and not just for big N titles, Indies sell games on the eShop too!

For Nintendo to hit a more mass market they should lower the price point. Personally I think the system has always been too expensive, just because it's cheaper than the PS4 and XBO doesn't mean it's a good deal. For some strange reason the price of games consoles has raised over all this generation and I can't understand why consumers have allowed this to happen. I'm talking from a UK consumer perspective as I'm not sure about EUR or US. But I think Nintendo's biggest problem is public perception, they need to tell us about new games every 3 months, exclusives from 1st and 2nd party developers. They need to generate positive press around the system on a monthly basis because there is ZERO 3rd party support. Make directs for Indies, build new partnerships and sing about free online gaming.

It's almost getting to the stage where Nintendo/Game Freak should split pokemon development into different modules. One module for the rules that governs pokemon and the other that governs the adventure in the game. That way when they make changes like Mega Evolution it would work across the board in that game generation.

Nintendolife called it wrong. As great looking as the standard sized model is, I'm a big fan of my big screens. Come next year I'll be picking up the New 3DS XL. The custom face plates are just another expense too, that and now custom themes, it's like Nintendo are monetizing every aspect of the handheld. Not sure I'm into that!

So buying games and DLC for my games just got easier (in the US). My wallet is looking very thin as it is...

I've actually emailed Nintendo on a number of times asking exactly for this kind of functionality. I usually get a response that says they can not accept my suggestions as I don't work for them, which is just them saving themselves I case I'd ever sue them. It's good to see my nagging is coming to something ahaha

I pre-ordered and bought a digital code from GAME, does that count as a retail sale?

I'd still rather play this than Destiny.

And 3rd parties wonder why there games don't sell on Nintendo platforms...

I've a 16GB SDXC card, I actually thought I had a 32GB one in my 3DS but surprised myself the other day when I looked at it. I usually go digital on most of my game purchases, but the Limited Edition steel box Alpha Shapphire must be mine!

I'm totally picking up a Link Between Worlds as well as Hyrule Warriors now.

If they released it with an over priced limited edition pack, I'd still buy it.

Heart wrenching amazing experience. Can't wait to play it on the big screen.

I hope Nintendo plan to role this out with a email based account system (Miiverse on iDevices). This is going to have millions of downloads if apps like hearthstones is anything to go by, so why not take advantage of the massive mobile user base and expand the population of Miiverse?
I think Miiverse is THE vehicle to entice mobile users over to dedicated gaming devices.

There is loads of Mario on Wii U. I'd go for Eternal Darkness but looking over to my GameCube games, I'd have to admit there is so much more that should be released in HD

It feels like I've been kicked in between the legs. Awe well if they want to play it that way I'll pick it up when it's less than a tenner on steam.