cornishlee

Looks interesting to me.

@Amigaengine
Thankyou. That's the only SquareEnix franchise I've ever cared about.

Am I the only one that can remember various professed "leaks" of Wii U hardware over the last couple of years? It all seems a bit futile to try and compare photographs to speculation.

Not something I was interested in but a lot of people will be disappointed by this announcement coming so late in the day.

@bulby1994
Allowing retailers to sell download codes alongside actual discs should achieve just that. The RRP will remain the same but competition will mean that retailers reduce the price, just as they do for physical discs.

I've been waiting for this news ever since I got my Wii U and I didn't know they were already doing it in Japan. Hopefully we don't have to wait too much longer for it over here because it really does combine the best of both worlds: I'll be able to browse the online retailers to get the best price for a game, they can email me the code and I can set about downloading it straight away.

Odd.

@ThomasBW84 @Dazza
Going on the eShop just now I also spotted that Scribblenauts Unlimited says it's launching here on 8th Feb as well. That's got to be worth finding out about. It seems from the forums that there's quite a few people looking forward to that.

@FonistofCruxis
It's not just wishful thinking that led me to believe Ken's Rage might be £39.99. Contrary to what's often bandied around not all Wii U eShop retail titles are £49.99 - Sing Party, Sports Connection, SARTransformed, Rabbids Land, Just Dance 4 and Your Shape 2013 are all £39.99, Tekken is £37.49, Rise of the Guardians & Ben 10 are £35.99 and Family Party is £27.99.

It just seems to be the bigger games that are £50-55, which is why I'm surprised by Ken.

@Burn
Most comments were posted before the article was updated with that title.

@Dazza
Excellent, thanks. £10 more than I was expecting but I'm looking forward to the review.

I'm looking forward to Yarn Yoshi, or whatever it ends up being called, but that's entirely because of Good Feel. They could announce any 2D platformer right now and I'd snap it up. As a Sega player in the nineties I've never played any Yoshi games before (and to be honest, he's just irritated me in the games I have where he appears).

eShop RPG? That's ambitious.

@ThomasBW84
Yeah, that's what I meant about them not letting you know. It seems that Wii U eShop updates have more often been off the list than on it so far this year.

@ThomasBW84
I just thought, shouldn't Ken's Rage 2 be coming to the Wii U eShop his week? Seems to be a habit of NoE to not let you know about that's happening to the Wii U eShop lately.

I'd probably check out Sengoku 2 if my hack and slash time wasn't currently being taken up by NG3: Razor's Edge.

I rented GTA Vice City one weekend (whenever it was that that came out) and couldn't really get into it, it all just felt a bit... pointless...

So, I have no personal interest in the game but it is important that Wii U begins to share in the multi-plat releases if Nintendo's to claw back any market share from Sony and Microsoft.

@AugustusOxy said: "Cloud gaming is a terrible concept. It has nice applications, but I can't stand the idea of not being able to play a game when the internet cuts out. I'm tired of being strong-armed into concepts that other people accept because of the convenience instead of the actual applications."

A little off topic but this is exactly the problem I have the my mobile 'phone (which is Windows). My old Nokia had an SD card which, combined with built in memory gave me 64GB to play with. I could store my entire music collection on there and stil have memory spare for high resolution photo's. OK, it may not have been the best mp3 player or camera in the world but it was convenient and good enough. Now, my 'phone has no SD slot and Windows insists I store things "to the cloud". Great. I can no longer use my 'phone to playback music in the car, with service cutting in and out on long journeys and, most pertinent to me, since I spend 2-3 months every year working in remote parts of the world without mobile coverage I lose that storage completely. Also at my mum and dad's house, which doesn't have mobile reception.

Anyway, rant over. Microsoft does a wonderful job of forcing "progress" onto people for whom it's inappropriate.

@SCAR392
Correct. Bayonetta 2 and Lego City: Undercover are both second party.

Like many others, I always believed that Nintendo had held several games back from the announcement the other day for revealing at E3. Beyond that though, there are several interesting quotes in here:

-It's interesting to see Nintendo openly discuss the CPU/GPU issue. Like someone on the fourms here has been telling us (sorry, I forget who) what they seem to be saying is that the CPU is not important for running games. Taken with the "dedicated games console" line, it explains their decision to concentrate on GPU power for the Wii U.
-The fact that the final dev kit wasn't ready for developers until six months ago explains why the Wii U hasn't been included on recent multi-plat releases (and also underlines what a tight schedule launch day ports were made on).
-That Nintendo are actively recruiting more people with HD game experience underlines their commitment to supporting the ecosystem and sits nicely alongside their "games are getting bigger, we need to collaborate more" comments of the other day.
All in all, some interesting reading, thanks NL!

By the way, to all those who say "I buy Nintendo consoles to play "Nintendo games", well, yes, why else would you. Such statements kind of miss the point though. As someone who cannot afford more than one console I'm very keen to see as wide a selection of games as possible on the Wii U. I may like Nintendo games but I don't like Nintendo games exclusively.

Thanks for flagging this; he's a talented guy. I wonder if there's someone doing something similar with Master System/Megadrive games?

@StarDust
At least it's not just me. Reading through the comments I was beginning to think it was a cultural thing. It's nice that the name seems to make most U.S.Americans (you're an obvious exception!) think of sweets though...

As someone on the other side of the Atlantic I find the hysteria around video game violence in the USA bizarre at the moment, even if there have been campaigns against violent games and films here in the past (usually led by the Daily Mail, Sun or Mary Whitehouse). Even at the time though, many of these campaigns were both baffling (witness the renaming of TMNT in the UK as "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles") and less widely supported than what appears to be going on over there right now.

As an outsider, it seems only reasonable to suggest that the place to look for problems more or less peculiar to the USA should begin and end in the USA. Since the games scrutinised are available in many countries that don't suffer these problems then wouldn't it be fair to suggest that they're (at least) not (the primary) cause?

But then, what do I know? I'm just a foreigner who enjoys video games (even if they're not the ones with guns).

Sounds like they're really putting the effort in for this, I hope it pays off for them. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the reviews.

@Void
Grow up.

@Void
Nintendo's eShop approval sounds like it's fairly quick now.

Finally I see an article which focuses on the contraction of the games market instead of poor Nintendo performance.

"Good," I think to myself. "Maybe now people will stop blaming price/games/Iwata/latest excuse and realise that the global economy is the principle factor effecting this industry."

Then I scroll down and read the comments. How old are you people? Do you all just have great jobs or do you all still live at home and not have to pay bills? Sometimes I find the internet an exasperating and depressing place.

Doesn't the Wii U already use Unity?

"makes debates...relevant for debate"

@Koto
As I understand it, that's how current costs translate to a per-unit basis.

Of course, upfront manufacturing costs meant that any per-unit price point will always be hypothetical and in reality a large number of units would have to be sold before break even is reached, let alone profit. That applies to any product, even one which is not sold as a loss leader. That's not really that question that was being asked though.

@bluecat
It is already being sold below its manufacturing cost. They need to sell nearly two games on average, per console, before they make a profit.

@Marios-love-child
That's a problem too. Whenever I talk about it to anyone, they somehow miss the "U".

• "So are you still enjoying your Wii?"

There's simply not a great awareness of the product outside of the internet driven video games community. Even in stores (and online) Wii U consoles, hardware and games get stacked in the "Wii" section.

The absence of major first party games has clearly been a major factor in slow uptake but so also has been the absence of major multi-plat titles from the Wii U during the launch window. That fact alone has lent credence to claims of history repeating itself regards the continual absence of Nintendo's console from the platform lists of those titles over the last six years.

Nintendo is going some way now to try and get good exclusive games on the platform over the next 24 months. The support of major third party developers remains an issue.

@XCWarrior
That's ridiculously short-term thinking which would see any CEO rightfully sacked. The EU is going through tough times at the moment - it's not only Nintendo products for which "Europe seems uninterested in buying more or less anything" but pretty much any luxury or leisure goods. Pulling out of the market now would only harm Nintendo when it recovers.

Basically agree with Sean_Aaron. Company presidents have gone for far less in recent years.

That said, I think Nintendo have announced some bigger changes than people realise in recent weeks: integrating the handheld and console hardware divisions and collaborating more closely with second-party developers such as Monolith, Feel Good and Platinum should help them adapt to a changing market by offering users new experiences and developing new IPs which appeal to different people (or the same people for different reasons) than those who rabidly follow Mario, Zelda and Kirby (for the record, I like each of them, even though I only discovered them on the Wii, having never owned a Nintendo console before then). Xenoblade and Wonderul 101 are examples of these.

Perhaps Iwata's been slow to react to the sales problems (of which the wider global financial problems are clearly one underlying cause) but, under his stewardship, Nintendo has now reacted in a positive way and it would be unfortunate if he were to leave before the results of those actions are delivered.

@PALgamer
A very good point not often stated around here. In the early days of the Wii I started most days checking the news and weather on it.

I was glad for this demo. I had been seriously thinking abut buying it after the reviews. The demo was enough to convince me that it's not for me though, I found the controls awkward and complicated but perhaps that's just because it's been eight or nine years since I last played a sports title.

Interesting...

Not something I'm interested in and I can't imagine it'll be a big seller - the much criticised launch line-up (which I thought was good but I have never owned a PS3 or Xbox360) had more acclaimed titles than this which suffered poor sales in part due to their much earlier release on prior consoles. A "not exactly a Triple A release" is not going to perform well under those same conditions.

All of that said, all and any third party support is welcome: I just hope the poor sales of these titles aren't used as a stick to beat the Wii U with down the line. The market for major third party (or "aaa" as they're increasingly referred to for some reason) releases on the Wii U can only be judged fairly when those games come out on the Wii U simultaneously with the other supported platforms. I hope in twelve months time I'm not bewailing the absence of the Hitman/DmC equivalents.

@Sean_Aaron
It does confuse me when I read so many posts that ignore the economy when discussing sales figures.

@luminalace
As @ThomasBW84 said, the company has made a profit. It has also posted an operating loss on hardware and software sales. Accountants will always try to post an operating loss if they can - it means the company has less tax to pay.

Confused yet? That's why it's always so much better to have a chartered accountant do your tax returns (and I say that having just done mine without one for the first time in years, bleddy recession).

@Devil_Surivior
"In this article it states the Wii U's worldwide sales are 1.9 million so far, however I have seen it around 2.5 million places, so who's right?"

Nintendo have just released their quarterly earnings, putting it at 3 million Wii U's sold globally, Clearly it is selling better in some places than the UK and EU. That's probably a combination of Nintendo's legacy from the 8bit/16bit wars (coincidentally, it was announced yesterday that the Xbox360 has now outsold the Wii in the UK, another instance in which it bucks the global trend) and the record breaking recession.

Technically, I think it's second party but it really doesn't matter in this context.

@real_gamer
We still don't have TVii in Europe.

This is kind of depressing reading. I'm very happy with my Wii U but even if it's hardly a surprise that it hasn't been selling well in penniless Britain I expected higher figures than this. If the situation persists though, we can look forward to a lot more multi-plat titles not being released for the Wii U. IF it's any kind of compensation, it actually makes some of the games sales figures look pretty good as a proportion of install base.

@datamonkey
So, Nitnendo should have launched the Wii U both earlier and later?

I've just been asking on Miiverse abut Warriors Orochi 3. I'm enjoying Ninja Gaiden 3 right now but I think by the time I finish that and Red Steel 2 (I had to stop for a few weeks after cracking my ribs) Ken's Rage 2 should be out as well. I'm interested to see how that compares to WO3.

The sad thing is that stuff like this sells.

@Sean_Aaron
Barely. I think it's due for release on 28th.

@Cosats
Thanks for that, it's downloading as I type this. They did that a couple of weeks ago with SonicTR. I guess we just have to keep an eye on the demo's.

@ThomasBW84
I'm still waiting to see if Nintendo ever decide to have sales or reductions of retail titles on the eShop. Those £49.99 prices seem ridiculous today but what are they going to look like in twelve months time for titles like Batman and Assassin's Creed?

@pursuedrogue89
You know there's already a petition, right?

In full, the Tombraider Wii U petition can be found here: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/square-enix-eidos-crystal-dynamics-port-tombraider-on-to-the-wii-u

The Dark Souls 2 Wii U petition can be found here: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dark-souls-ii-for-the-nintendo-wiiu

And the Hitman Wii U petition can be found here: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/square-enix-ltd-release-hitman-absolution-and-hitman-hd-trilogy-on-the-wii-u

That's all the ones that I know of but I'd be pleased to hear of any others. Worth mentioning that the @HitmanWiiU Twitter feed has been posting updates on all of them, too.