gregrout

That was sad really... I think I felt the stampede of potential Wii-U console buyers running as far away from the Wii-U as possible in a mad rush to buy a PS4 or XBox One. "Buy the Wii-U! We'll have Donkey Kong is February! Ah, where's everyone going?! Did someone pull the fire alarm?" - Awesome marketing. It's almost like Nintendo doesn't have their own marketing team. I'm really starting to think Sony and Microsoft have this inside deal where the "generously" loan out their marketing teams to Nintendo.

If you look at it logically (God forbid) everything impacted deals strictly with the eshop. So if I was a betting man I would put my money down on this being related to Nintendo's promise to unify accounts (e.g. eshop shared balances between 3DS and Wii-U).

There's a void of activity when it comes to the Wii-U's launch titles. If they were going to give an award away for most recycled experiences the Wii-U would win hands down. Since launch the eshop remains painfully filled with remakes and recycled virtual console titles. By far the biggest contributor for Wii-U games is Nintendo itself. That unfortunately is the damning reality of the situation. There's a limit to how much and how fast Nintendo can pump out these games. Outside of that we are left with long lulls of waiting for the "next" big release.

Nintendo seems out of touch with the Americas. Surely they have to realize by now that North Americain kids are consuming anime series through such streaming services like Netflix. They have this huge catalog of Japan-only games that could be making them a tonne of money. My eldest daughter is really into music (plays drums, piano, guitar, vocals), just a few days ago she showed me a bunch of youtube videos with Hatsune Miku, this was a big thing at her school. I was amazed to find out that there's a Hatsune Miku 3DS game released in Japan only. If there wasn't this region locking I would have bought that game in a heartbeat. Instead I ended up dropping $150.00 on the actual Miku vocaloid software (English V3). That made her day.

Nintendo has made a number of daft moves here. It seems like every move is made on company hubris and ego. You almost get the feeling like Nintendo's head office believes the Wii-U is a sure thing, but it's just taking "dumb" customers a while to catch on. Thinking they could go up against the XBOX One with a lackluster year's advance is just brutally raw incompetence. They should have forced the issue. You release Mario early before the XBox and you create a dilemma in your favour. You have a proven Wii-U and a PS4 that's starting to get worrying press about overheating and faulty HDMI connectors. As unfair as it is, that's alarm is going to spread to the unreleased and unproven XBox One. It's slow week all the sudden we have a 10 out of 10 Mario game hits the charts. People have the motivation now to say screw it and buy a stable Wii-U console without risk to play Mario. Instead Nintendo releases on the same day as XBox One. I hate to think of all the people that went to their local retailer with Wii-U intentions only to get swept away in all the XBox Hype.

The one game that keeps coming to mind is Minecraft. So far every version has the built-in annoyance of a popup inventory and crafting screens, which could be all sent directly to the Wii-U gampad, leaving the game world intact on your TV at all times.

Very disappointing. Everything here is basically aimed at generating New Users. I get that more NEW users is better for everyone, but they've really gone out of their way to punish faithful Nintendo owners. If you bought the 3DS and Wii-U a long time ago there's basically nothing here. I know there's 3 whole 3DS games; but come on, most 3DS owners already have those titles, I know I do... to make matters worse, both eshops are oblivious to the fact it's Cyber Monday.

VERY disappointing to see the eshops (Wii-U and 3DS) utterly oblivious to the fact it's Cyber-Monday... It's one step forward (advertising) and two steps back with regular pricing on pretty much everything. A smart company would take advantage of this, especially if the cupboards are bare until 2014.

This goes beyond ratings. Many countries have certain restrictions. For example: EA Sports MMA was not released in Denmark because of a law prohibiting marketing for energy drinks. Hearts of Iron was banned in China for portraying Tibet, Sinkiang, and Manchuria as independent countries and Taiwan as under Japanese control. Wolfenstein (Uncut) was banned in Germany because of Nazi references. The Witcher - All the female portrait cards shown after Geralt's "sexual conquests" were censored ("retouched to a more modest standard") for the U.S. release version. As you can see there's a lot more where this came from. The current rating systems do not take into account social and cultural standards. There are a lot of Japanese releases that would be considered M-rated or banned due to sexual content in the USA. By the same token Resident Evil 4 - was sold as is in North America but in the Japanese version the game was censored to not show decapitations and other various portrayals of gory death.

Road Rash pls.

Well no one's said it so I will.... $320.00!? Are they out of their minds?

This is crushing news. My daughter is going to be very upset over this. She absolutely loves Rune Factory 4.

It's innovative, but no... I don't see this ever taking off. The only thing I've put my iPhone 5 into is an Otterbox Armor case. There's just no way I'm leave it all exposed to fit this controller. There's no protection, the iOS games just don't justify it. I'd also say that the multiplayer functionality would be expensive over data. Probably the most damning part is you'll bombarded by phone calls, tests, and other push content interrupting your game.

I really don't understand why Nintendo has resurrected the titles they have through Wii-U's version of e-shop. WTH are they thinking by releasing sooooo many damn NES titles. The number one jab at the Wii-U is that it isn't anywhere near as powerful as the PS4 / XBox One. "Well let's show the world otherwise! Release as many NES titles as possible!!" "That's a whole 8 color palette and look at how responsive these two gamepad buttons are! ... eat it Xbox fanboys!" Here Nintendo could at least pull up their socks, apply a little ounce of effort and release more SNES games or "gasp!" a N64 title... But, nope... they've been releasing grossly outdated NES titles, and mostly bad titles at that. The Wii-U version of the e-shop (virtual console) is an utter embarrassment with the exception of a few titles (mostly being SNES titles).

EA is pretty much dead to me. BF3 (PC) has never been stable enough for me to play through the campaign. Seems like BF4 has the same issues. The last EA purchase I made was the "deluxe" version of their SimCity remake. I'm done with them... hope they win "Worst Company of the Year" for 2013, that would make it 3 years in a row.

I wasn't sure about this game, I tried it and I really think it's a great game. It also felt like a perfect game for my eldest daughter (age 12- a tough age to shop for). This game has been nothing but shear joy for her. I don't think I could count how many times she's broken out in laughter playing it.

@MadAdam81 I'm not trying to disparage any system, it's just that we're caught in technical "evolution" of sorts which is shaking the traditional foundation. If you asked me 10 years ago if I thought Apple of all companies would been seen as a real gaming threat to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, I honestly would have laughed. Touchscreen technology / Smartphone & Tablets are changing a lot of the ways we do things. As for gaming systems, I made my choice based on my family. I have two daughters (8 & 12) so the Wii-U was definitely more appealing to them. Would I have loved to play/try Halo 3,4 or Uncharted? Absolutely. I make do with an Alienware laptop which allows me to play a number of titles that don't make it to the Nintendo platform.

@MadAdam81 to a degree you might get away with some components, like moving to passive touch screen tech, but something like the PowerPC chip (IBM) is a completely different animal compared to Intel/AMD processors. But I digress here, the point I guess I failed to make is that there are so many variables out there, even ones that seems irrelevant like Windows 8 sales could have a negative impact that hits Microsoft's XBox One. Sony could get called in by debtors (sick of waiting for the company to turn around misfortunes in their TV, smartphone and audio products) this could impact revenue available to Sony's inhouse development. Nintendo has the opposite problem, they're a game company only, they're dependent 100% on development and sales of games. So when titles don't preform as well as expected (e.g. Pikmin 3) it hurts them more that it would hurt a diversified company. I'm not saying any of this is going to happen, I'm saying it could happen. And that alone is why I'm saying no one knows what will transpire between these three companies. These companies aren't as strong as they used to be. Better technology doesn't always guarantee success. Beta was superior to VHS, but VHS tapes were easier to produce. This could be the same scenario here. Nintendo could pull ahead by tapping into the mobile market providing significantly more titles than XBoxOne / PS4 (that depend more heavily on high production titles that take years to make). The library is the key, it's what's killing Windows 8/Windows 8 smartphones (smallest app library) and putting Apple (largest app library) in the driver's seat. Today we're getting news of faulty HDMI cabling for PS4 units. Is this a rare occurrence or is this a fatal flaw that's going to be wide spread, we don't know. It's just too early to call it.

I would have to agree that games will be the major factor for these three companies. My biggest concern goes beyond consoles to include PC gaming. The level of production values people are now expecting today are pushing timetables to the point where a lot of these high production games are taking 3 to 5 years to develop. Right now video game media are collecting up screenshots between the different consoles. After all the comparisons are done, there's going to be an arms race to push that graphics envelope and my fear is more and more developers are just going to abandon developing these high production titles. It take a substantial investment of time and resources to fund the creation of these games. So far developers have been able to counter this by releasing sequel after sequel, recycling code and reusing the same game engine. But as we know the bar is going to keep rising and rising.

These articles always give me a snicker. The one thing that always makes me shake my head is this island mentality. You can't isolate a company from itself. Sony has been hemorrhaging billions for at least 5 years. By the same token, Tablet sales are to surpass PC sales this year... Things don't look good for Windows 8, MS Surface, Windows Smartphones... These are all things that could greatly impact Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo could get hit due to their choices in hardware. Both PowerPC chips (used to be used by Apple) and the resistive touch tech (new tablets/smartphones use superior passive touch tech) are obsolete and manufactured by few. Should their supply line get hit (just like an earthquake hammered 3 of the 4 major RAM factories in Asia 4 years ago) could decimate Nintendo's ability to manufacture Wii-Us.

What exactly is this game... it looks like a generic button masher?

I'd lose the IVs, turn all HMs to TMs, kill that annoying "mini-soccer" game and I would increase the number of moves per-pokemon to 6. I'd even go as far as allowing mega-evolution pokemon duel-spec (2 sets of 6 moves, one regular set and a another that gets loaded when you evolve). I think battles would become a lot more dynamic and exciting this way.

Retailers are becoming more irrelevant in this age of digital downloads. I wouldn't be surprised to see Best Buy go under. Their PC Games sections are basically empty or stocked with outdated games, it's only a matter of time before console software runs into the same irrelevance bug.

This rests 100% on the user, if there's a single complaint about this it should be directed at the person that didn't setup parental controls, entered their password to gain access to purchase "offensive" song(s), paid for the "offensive" song(s) and downloaded the "offensive" song(s). I don't see how Nintendo has anything to do with this at all. The steps involved in actually getting an "offensive" seem VERY end user intensive. If they went through all those extensive steps to get these offensive songs and still think it's someone else's fault they should immediately pack up their Wii-U, head over to the retailer and exchange for something more their speed, like an empty can of beans or a stick without pointy bits.

I haven't seen a single ad in Canada. The only source I've seen Nintendo "advertise" is through Nintendo Direct, which is idiotic because you're communicate mostly with people that have already purchased the system.

And this is why I pre-purchased the PC version. With all these "why bother" attitudes from developers regarding the Wii-U, it's pretty much self-fulfilling prophesy that the Wii-U versions won't sell.

Sounds absolutely expensive if you want to purchase the full game. I'd feel a lot less gouged if Nintendo would release a "season's pass" option to buy everything for the regular $49.99 - $59.99 price. At the current rates we could end up paying over $99.99 for this game.

You have to explain to me why I would want to repurchase these 3 games that were released over half a year before the Wii-U debuted, especially considering I already bought them for PC. I'd chalk these lackluster numbers to poor leadership, but that would be redundant considering they've already replaced their moron CEO.

I think Animal Crossing needs a lot of regular updates to game to hold on to its player base. Don't get me wrong, the game is quite a bit of fun when you're starting off. Once you've run out of town projects, your house is maxed out, there's really not a lot of incentives to keep playing.

I really don't blame them at all. Development is going to be a cakewalk for Xbox One and PS4. The architecture for both systems are similar, making development turn around much easier. Then we have the Nintendo side of things, a power PC chipset designed by IBM (abandoned by Apple) and a touchpad Nintendo insists developers use for Wii-U titles. It's kind of a no-brainer here. Why would you allocate your development team to take on all that overhead? To me this goes way beyond EA, the Wii-U has to be a nightmare to develop for.

I think the real behind the scenes issue here is Nintendo's insistence that all Wii-U games make use of the Gamepad's touchscreen. From a 3rd party developer standpoint that's a huge additional development cost for such a small audience. The way I see it, Nintendo can either back off entirely, pay developers to include touch screen play, get developer permission to add touchpad functionality at Nintendo's expense or they can try to go after touchscreen developers (Andriod/iOS). It seems like Nintendo is doing the later. The biggest losers here though are the Wii-U owners that see the Wii-U getting passed over by big production developers. Angry Bird's for $59.99 isn't going to fill that void.

Nintendo is utterly out of gas for 2013 and pretty much banking on Mario World 3D to do the impossible. The "just takes one game" motto that's taken over Nintendo lately only adds to their disillusionment. Throw in their big push to get iOS and Android developers on-board just stinks of 3rd party developer abandonment and desperation. We have comparable consoles in Xbox 360 and PS3 selling for dirt cheap along with proven monster titles (Halo, Last of Us, etc...) and New block busters like (Grand Theft Auto V) and in the opposing corner we have Wii-U and Angry Birds for $59.99...

"I-AM-REGGIE said: Do you lot really believe that PS4 andX1 won't have this same problem ?"

No I don't see the same problems at all. Their marketing is on track, everyone knows these are NEW consoles (no confusion). There's ZERO chance a developer will utterly denounce their hardware on social media, skip over their consoles completely (naturally this doesn't include exclusives), cancel exclusive projects because console sales are pathetic. There's a million things wrong with the Wii-U launch and their lack of a lineup. The biggest problem for Nintendo right this second is the lack of software development outside of their own studios. Nintendo has had OVER a year to improve this and so far things aren't looking very good. They've been abandoned by most 3rd party video game developers and now they're trying desperately to bring Android and iOS titles to the Wii-U. They're in desperation mode right now... Angry Birds for $59.99... So far that looks like the future for the Wii-U, in house titles and grossly overpriced tablet games. The way things look right now, Nintendo is completely out of the running.

Let's recap... so far Nintendo has been advertising itself through Nintendo Direct, so at most they might be preaching to 3DS owners that might be curious about the Wii-U. They haven't advertised outside of that, so I'm not seeing any run away success. They're going to need to blitz the advertising maybe around Mario World 3D, throw in Nintendo exclusives like Zelda, Wonderful 101, Wii-U Fit, Pikmin 3, Zombi-U, might generate interest. I don't think they have a whole lot to offer to be honest. Outside of Mario World 3D and Wii-U Fit all the other titles have been released so if people weren't buying Wii-Us for Zelda, etc, then there's little hope Wii-U fit or Mario World 3D will fix things. You also have to look at non-exclusive titles that have completely bypassed the Wii-U (which you may as well consider them to be exclusives to Xbox and PS3). I don't think Nintendo's line up is strong enough, especially after Sonic's (exclusive) dismal ratings. I wouldn't be surprised to see Xbox 360 and PS3 sales perform better than Wii-U in the forth quarter, especially with all the discount titles and Gran Theft Auto V in the lineup.

@WebHead With the reviews I've been reading, the very LAST thing Sega should do is release a demo of Lost World.

I don't know, how about an app that keeps track of gaming titles 8 or higher that will be skipping the Wii-U? The only title coming up is what? Mario World 3D? If they want to impress me, come out with Pokemon Z for the Wii-U. Make the jump, create the connectivity between the 3DS's Pokemon X and Y. I could see that pushing 3DS users towards the Wii-U a lot more than some half-assed Mii Plaza iOS app.

Does this mean the Wii-U version will be cheaper? I'm going to bet a big flat "NO" on this one. Nintendo Wii-U owners crossed the line and accepted watered down titles for regular pricing. So why would any game developer waste time and resources on features they don't have to? It's not like Wii-U owners won't purchase this title out of desperation.

The Virtual Console is pretty much a waste of time and effort to me. There's not a single NES game I would consider purchasing. Sadly, it seems that NES titles are the priority for Nintendo nowadays. That said, I do have a soft spot for SNES titles. The problem as I see it, has to do with Nintendo's own policy. A game like "A Link To The Past" which I would buy again in a heartbeat (bought for SNES, Wii) will never get made because they released it on Wii (already made their $4.99) and would have to implement their mass discount policy for games purchased through Wii-U. Why go through all the trouble to make 99 cents on a popular title that fans want? This is probably why we're seeing so many obscure titles making their way to the virtual console. It's more a case of "what haven't we re-released?" versus "What do our customers want?". I suspect we'll see more NES releases that most people don't want, very little in the 3rd party re-releases and next to nothing in the SNES/N64 catalog that's already been released under Wii or up for HD remake consideration.

I really think people aren't thinking clearly on this one. Their seems to be this misnomer that Nintendo has abandoned the Wii remote system and that's just not correct. Not only does the Wii-U come with it's own sensor bar, they went ahead and built a second sensor bar right into the gamepad (surrounding the video cam). I can play Wii remote games on the gamepad by itself without a TV. The inclusion of this functionality, the expansion of it to the gamepad and the additional functionality and freedom from hogging the TV are all additions to Nintendo's Wii-U. Unfortunately, the gaming industry is more focused on the gamepad as a touchscreen than Nintendo's preservation of Wii functionality.

Most Wanted is an awesome game on the Wii-U. I'm really surprised to hear it did so poorly. I'm kind of indifferent to this new Rivals title, to me Most Wanted has everything you'd possibly want. If you haven't picked up Most Wanted do it now while you can, it's absolutely worth it.

@kinkofer FYI: Nintendo has capped the console operating system to 2TB (for now). They capped the 3DS at 4GB at launch, but now that OS has been updated to officially support 32GB (64GB might work). Just throwing this out there, because from what I've read now (all 3TB test have failed, even with partitioning).

What a load of crap. It's like they're saying their Windows 8 apps store is the wild west of the internet where they have to sell whatever gets uploaded (ripoffs, malware, password hack software, it's all welcome) until told otherwise. As Microsoft is the sole distributor of these apps they should be held accountable for everything they green light / authorize for sale through their Windows 8 app service. The idea that they have to wait for external approval is utter nonsense. What they're really doing is desperately trying to pad their pathetic app numbers and if it hurts an Xbox competitor it's all the better. Ninetendo should just sue Microsoft outright for distributing illegal software. Microsoft IS the key component here, if it wasn't for them none of these games would have hit the market.

Well I don't mind it really. I just started playing Pokemon for the first time (Black 2) about 2 months ago, so all this mega-this and mega-that is quite frankly over my head.

Can a developer really be blamed for Nintendo's lack of multiplayer infastructure and policy? I just can't see the logic of blaming a developer for not designing a feature that's barely supported by the hardware manufacturer. Sure you could blow your development budget on multiplayer, but a single development change on the Nintendo side of things could undo all your hard work. Until Ninetendo starts investing and defining it's own multiplayer infrastructure, I really can't fault developers for ignoring it.

Some people need to know a little more about supply and demand. I'm 100% sure that both X and Y have awesome new sprites. Why? Because it's an ideal way to manipulate sales. Prior to this announcement version "Y" was hands down the runaway success. These leaves Nintendo holding a bucketful of version "X" they can't give away. If you embed highly appealing pokemon you can manipulate sales solely on what you leak. If you can't decide, then Nintendo has you exactly where they want you. These players are most likely going to get both games. Marketing 101...

I wish they'd fix the Wii-U store. The 3DS store is so much better. It beats the Wii-U's billboard style of limited options. Oh... and add SNES's Zelda - A Link to the Past to Wii-U and/or 3DS.

@Snkfiend I'd like to double that... this guy really "fills in a lot of blanks", like why EA hasn't done anything creative in a decade.

I find it kind of laughable to be honest here. EA has been recycling the same gaming garbage year after year. They just release a VERY recycled "legendary" FIFA 14, another battlefield and Sims on tap... Did the guy ever stop to think that trend of sequels and recycling content is driving gamers away to find new experiences through other media (e.g. tablet gaming). EA is again, lost in the woods. No swapping at the executive level will free them from being the worst company in the world two years running. http://www.dailytech.com/Quick+Note+EA+Wins+Worst+Company+Award+for+Second+Straight+Year/article30325.htm

Releasing it all the same day is soooooo overrated. Why not do the Zelda thing and release the game for download.... tomorrow?

I'm just not seeing the appeal of this game. I have the PC version and the Wii-U version of the Unlimited game. Based on how that plays what's the point of summoning an uncontrollable DC SuperHero?! If you could swap out Max for a DC hero then you might have something here, otherwise.....?