yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyo

Really cool

This has actually made me want to go and check out Shovel Knight. Good job Nintendo and Yacht Club!

I hope all this good news is leading up to a big announcement of Minecraft on Wii U with amiibo support

@DBPirate
And the 3DS too! And amiibo! The potential is amazing

They might be testing the water, if this sells well on Wii U then maybe we'll see a full version of the game and Wii U and 3DS?!?!?!?!?!

I was so excited about my N64 and played every inch of Super Mario 64 when it came out - but Mario Kart 64 was a disappointment. I tried hard to like it, but ultimately I found it a boring, actually quite melancholy experience.

The flat, featureless tracks, odd electronic organ music in a minor key, and the easy difficulty curve meaning you would race for what seemed like days with no other players in sight - the 4 player multiplayer mode with NO MUSIC!?

It was everything super mario kart and successors like mario kart Wii were definitely not - it was eventless, dull, no fun.

@sub12 I'll check it out, thanks!

@sub12 I'm really not happy with my PS4 - maybe I'm getting too old for gaming. Any titles you'd recommend?

Would y'all stop saying this is download only - the patent mentions internal memory slots - physical games could come on SD cards, or cheaper still, those mass produced 3DS cards nintendo makes

Fast loading, quiet, huge storage. Win.

This is gonna sell a tonne of pokemon amibi!

Wonder why they didn't announce this at E3?

I'm going to buy my first ever amiibos (amiibi?) for super mario maker - come on Sonic!

@opeter
Price cuts are only useful as an incentive for buyers who are on the fence, I don't think there's enough demand for Wii U's - Nintendo are better off maximising profit off every unit till it's time to roll out NX

Twitch? What's that?

In the UK, the Youview box (made by Alan Sugar off of The Apprentice) is quite a cool idea - it was maybe what tvii was trying to emulate

Basically it's a TV guide that you can scroll backwards with, and if you click on a show that's already ended it links you immediately to a version of that show on the appropriate online player, all automatic

I think like Miyamoto said, by the time Wii U came out they had underestimated the rise of tablet computing - and it figures they did the same with the kinds of services tablets and set top boxes can now offer

No harm in innovating and trying something though.

This is great news, because believe it or not I don't have this game yet - so I'm looking forward to giving it a try to see if I like it

You never know the circumstances, as @zeldagaymer93 says it could have been the final straw in a series of events. My girlfriend works for a tech company (who cannot be named) with a very strict privacy policy - they know they rules, if they talk about it outside of work, they get fired

Anyway it's still sad to see someone lose a sweet job, especially these days

It's a title I'm going to be playing a lot I reckon, and will keep coming back to, so it's download for me. Planning on getting Zero Mission, Xenoblade and Starfox this year too, but will go physical for those as they will have a limited lifespan.

Really looking forward to this game, not fussed by the special edition, but looking forward to October 30th regardless!

I always thought it was 'Arwing'

@IceClimbers
I respectfully disagree, but thanks for your comment

I was always critical of Nintendo's move to "core" gamer in this generation - but this does help explain their rationale to me, especially now that we know the price point was largely out of their control due to the weak yen

I still wish they'd launched with art academy, and something like "wii touch-sports" or "pad-pilotwings" to sell us on the gamepad. Nintendoland was a poor effort.

I've just realised I've never bought a game after playing the free demo. Isn't that weird?

Yeo!

@TeeJay
I think (just my opinion) that Mario Maker was Nintendo's response to fans who wanted a minecraft style creation-game on the gamepad

Let's be honest, if the decision to skip Minecraft for Wii U hadn't happened, we wouldn't have this game. So, in the immortal words of Falco Lombardi, "perhaps I should be grateful."

LOL, the final screenshot.
"Who's excited about Smash Bro Tourney?"
"I'm somewhat excited, but it'll probably be a bunch of ^!@£*"

The haters didn't take long to get going...

Are these the first two official announcements for NX then?

@GiSWiG You're right, this is why people who say Nintendo should develop for other platforms have no idea what they're talking about

Another thought on Miyamoto - there's the assumption out there in the world that as a creative genius, perfectly formed games just fall out of his head. I study at art college, and I can tell you that's not how genius works. Miyamoto classics are a direct result of how well he manages his team.

Look at a game like Pikmin (which is essentially a personnel management sim) and you can see a highly functional, systematic approach to good game design

Miyamoto was also instrumental in the design of the Wii, one of Nintendo's biggest successes and had been pushing the company to design a controller that just used one button for the previous decade (ie. the wii remote)

He knows a lot more about how to manage a video games company than we casual observers give him credit for

@MrGawain @fortius54
Good analysis!

Aonuma would be perfect, his personality is likeable and similar to Iwata and he is an excellent project manager, with a creative mind.

Shibata is very likely, super qualified, but personably I don't find him as warm. His Nintendo directs were a bit dull. He will probably get the job but I would prefer somene more instantly likeable. Maybe that's just me.

The last few investors meetings, Iwata brought along Miyamoto and deferred to him on a few company management questions. We can never know for sure, but I think Iwata was grooming Miyamoto as a future CEO. He has said he is thinking about retirement and is less hands on with development now. I think he would be a good choice as an interim CEO for 5-10 years as they restructure. Big changes would be easier for the company with a familiar face in front.

Tsunekazu Ishihara, the head of the Pokemon company, is another possibility

I doubt nintendo have spent all this money and effort building up the eshop & Virtual console including Wii download titles, just to scrap it all in 2016. They've already confirmed the Wii U will be part of the unified framework. Which leaves the following options:

• They're not using AMD after all
• They've worked out a way to run the Wii U environment on AMD
• NX is something totally different and is not backwards compatible

I hope it's the 2nd option

The radio app seems really interesting, good to see more apps coming to the Wii U

I was totally shocked to hear the news this morning, I thought as we all did that he had recovered from illness, and he was so active till the end with no sign that he was unwell. I looked forward to every Nintendo Direct and Iwata Asks, I found him likeable, warm and entertaining. It's strange, I genuinely feel like I have lost a friend today.

I'm really excited to see what they come up with and I'm hoping at least one of those five will be something genuinely innovative and not all of them candy-crush style button mashers

Controversially, I did not like this game when it came out. I felt the emphasis was on gimmicks rather than fun and exploration (which Nintendo recovered with the perfect 3D land/world series).

The mega mushroom power up was the perfect example - you are encouraged to smash up your toys instead of play with them, a weirdly "un-nintendo" moment...

Is it compatible with the Wii remote?

I played Ocarina through again last summer on the Wii VC and found it just as every bit stirring, engaging, even emotional as when I first played it way back in 1998.

One thing that annoyed me though was the classic controller button layout made it a nightmare to play some of the ocarina songs. But you can't have everything.

Yokoi is often blamed for the Virtual Boy, but we now know that it was a prototype rushed to market to fill the gap between SNES and N64 - I don't think it was ever designed as a serious system. He was an inventor and innovator, but it was a bad decision by management to release something that wasn't a finished idea.

Anyone who's seen Jurassic park knows that chickens and dinosaurs are distant relatives anyway

ps - I wonder where Mario Kart video replays will go? Is that for the play journal?

If they could speed up the loading time, and include 'a post instantly to miiverse' option without having to load up the page, that would be swell

Don't you mean 2nd JULY? Not 2nd June?

@Ash1189 If nintendo haven't done a standard multi-year multi-platform contract with third parties on the eshop then it's major facepalm time....!

@Ash1189 @CreativeWelshman

I used to think so too, but then Microsoft announced Xbox 360 discs will now be compatible natively with Xbox One. I dunno how they do that, is it just an emulator? But if Microsoft can do it, Nintendo can also run Wii U games (and all the VC stuff) on an x86 chip too.

Even if it's not x86 - what's really important for developers is what game engines it can run, and system RAM. Studios love the PS4 because it has 8GB of RAM (compared to Wii U's 1GB). Match that and Nintendo are off to a good start.

@PinkSpider No man, I think the eShop is here to stay and if you buy it on Wii U it'll work on NX. Well. It better be. Or I'm kickin butt!!

@Ash1189
I dunno, NX coming out mid generation as it is, it could feasibly match PS4/XBone and still be affordable. All they need to do really is put more memory in and ramp up the GPU. They might even do something radical like replace the DVD drive with a micro SD card slot to keep costs down.

Forced gimmicks... I dunno, I liked the DS. Wii was a terrible controller for third party action titles (Godfather: Blackhand... erugh...)
I think/hope it'll be a compromise, not as gimmicky as the Wii, maybe DS-ish level of innovation.

Excellent news that Nintendo are focussing on making NX affordable and innovative. That was the magic formula for Wii and DS's success.

Very pleased that the most recent retail games, Yoshi and Splatoon have been £35. Great price!

It's a good game, I actually to had to put it down after a week because it was too graphic. Hitting zombie granny over the head with a cricket bat till her skull cracks, getting killed from nowhere then having to find and kill the zombified version of yourself to get your stuff back.... Gross...

A lot of people are disappointed by the lack of new games announced, including me..

EXCEPT: Super Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero and Xenoblade X - 3 games I will buy in release day this year that I am super excited about. Will buy my first amiibo too (hopefully) if I can get my paws on a the 8-bit Mario.

I only bought Mario Kart on Wii U and AC Rogue on Xbox 360 on release day last year, so that's saying something.