Nintendo Wii U/3DS general discussion

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 21, 2014 21:49:12 GMT -5 gurpwnder said:

You ever think that Nintendo's next handheld will be a cellphone that's focused on games? Rather, I should say a handheld gaming machine that can also make phone calls?

It could be. They have a very strong handheld market.

[JACK-2]

I thought of the samething too. A nintendo phone or a peripheral for your phone that is nintendo based.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 21, 2014 22:47:32 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

I thought of the samething too. A nintendo phone or a peripheral for your phone that is nintendo based.

Would it be able to compete with other phones on the market.

[JACK-2]

If the apps are up to par then sure.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 21, 2014 23:00:03 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

If the apps are up to par then sure.

It's odd but although a phone targets a larger base, I'm not sure a "Nintendo" phone would be so mainstream. It seems like more of a niche item.

[JACK-2]

It depends on what it can do. I think a peripheral would be better than an actually phone.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 21, 2014 23:04:25 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

It depends on what it can do. I think a peripheral would be better than an actually phone.

A peripheral to an entire system?

[JACK-2]

To a smart phone that allows you to play their games.

[gurpwnder]

Aug 21, 2014 23:01:32 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

Aug 21, 2014 23:00:03 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

If the apps are up to par then sure.

It's odd but although a phone targets a larger base, I'm not sure a "Nintendo" phone would be so mainstream. It seems like more of a niche item.

Think about it. The Playstation Vita has received minimal support from Sony, so Nintendo's only source of handheld competition is from cell phones. When you get down to it, almost everybody in today's society has a smart phone (I swear, it's like people can't function without them) and games on smartphones are about a few dollars. That's going to be tough to compete with when you have a machine that costs 300 bucks, and 50 per game.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 21, 2014 23:34:19 GMT -5 gurpwnder said:

Aug 21, 2014 23:01:32 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

It's odd but although a phone targets a larger base, I'm not sure a "Nintendo" phone would be so mainstream. It seems like more of a niche item.

Think about it. The Playstation Vita has received minimal support from Sony, so Nintendo's only source of handheld competition is from cell phones. When you get down to it, almost everybody in today's society has a smart phone (I swear, it's like people can't function without them) and games on smartphones are about a few dollars. That's going to be tough to compete with when you have a machine that costs 300 bucks, and 50 per game.

I haven't paid as much attention to the Vita lately. It's a shame that Sony makes handhelds with potential but doesn't follow through with it.

That's my point however. Smartphones are so saturated and ever growing. Lots of features, lower costs, and games are super cheap. I don't see the majority of the population getting a Nintendo phone and paying such a high amount of money just to play games on it when these little apps people make often sell like wildfire. Could Nintendo make it a successful model?

I don't see a large chunk of the population buying it, mostly fanboys but that's just me.

[gurpwnder]

Yeah, the Vita was such a nice handheld. It was so comfortable to hold and it was so powerful. It's a shame they didn't give it more games. I wonder why they didn't port some old PS1/PS2 faves onto it?

I think Nintendo will bounce back next gen. The Gamecube sold poorly compared to the PS2, but the Wii outsold the PS3. The PS4's owning the Wii U, so maybe they'll give us something interesting next gen.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 24, 2014 1:00:41 GMT -5 gurpwnder said:

Yeah, the Vita was such a nice handheld. It was so comfortable to hold and it was so powerful. It's a shame they didn't give it more games. I wonder why they didn't port some old PS1/PS2 faves onto it?

I think Nintendo will bounce back next gen. The Gamecube sold poorly compared to the PS2, but the Wii outsold the PS3. The PS4's owning the Wii U, so maybe they'll give us something interesting next gen.

They did good in the fighter category though.

Playstation dominated every gen except for 3. The reason that 3 did so badly especially at the beginning was because of its high cost and the fact that the launch was weak compared to the other gens. Wii did better due to the low price and targeting a different base. It wouldn't have beaten X360 and PS3 fighting the same battle it did because it was weaker and had worse 3rd party support. Interesting though the worse spec systems tend to do better.

Consoles now are having a lot of issues that they didn't have 15 years ago, especially now that you have the PC and handheld market getting bigger.

[JACK-2]

So, right now for the holidays after I finish my semester I plan on getting Smash Wii U and Bayonetta 2. I already have Smash 3DS, I can do a review on that if you so wish for.

[JACK-2]

Nintendo has a new President:


Satoru Iwata, who died in July, led the gaming company for 13 years.

Two months after the passing of its former CEO, video gaming giant Nintendo has announced who will take the company’s helm.

The Japanese company announced Monday that Tatsumi Kimishima, a former banker and a longtime Nintendo director, is the choice to take over as CEO in the wake of the July death of Satoru Iwata, who led Nintendo for 13 years. Kimishima had most recently been serving as the company’s Managing Director after previously spending seven years as CEO of Nintendo of America.

Since Iwata’s passing, Executive Directors Genyo Takeda and Shigeru Miyamoto have steered the company, with most speculation centered around Miyamoto — known for creating classic Nintendo franchises such as Mario, Donkey Kong, and The Legend of Zelda — as the presumptive pick to be the next Nintendo CEO. Instead, it will be the lesser-known Kimishima, who joined the company’s Pokémon subsidiary in 2000 before becoming a Nintendo director two years later.

Kimishima now has to fill the large shoes left behind by his predecessor, Iwata, who passed away at the age of 55 due to a bile duct growth after having led the gaming company through one of its most successful periods as just its fourth president and CEO. Iwata’s legacy at the helm of Nintendo will likely be the Wii console system, which sold more than 100 million units.

The next step for the company will likely be mobile gaming, as Nintendo looks to launch a handful of mobile video game titles within the next two years. While the company has shown reluctance to enter the mobile gaming realm in the past, Iwata said in March that Nintendo would develop games featuring some of its classic characters through a partnership with smartphone game maker DeNA.

Meanwhile, as Nintendo’s most famous character, Mario of Super Mario Bros., celebrates his 30th anniversary this week, the company has recently received a boost from the online gaming, led by the success of online shooter Splatoon.



fortune.com/2015/09/14/nintendo-kimishima-ceo/

[JACK-2]

BTW, is it okay if I do a review for Skyward Sword on this thread? Because I wanna streamline everything I post on this thread.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Sept 16, 2015 9:40:30 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

BTW, is it okay if I do a review for Skyward Sword on this thread? Because I wanna streamline everything I post on this thread.

I would prefer it on the review board to keep it organized. I made a comment section to cut down on the mess in review /respect threads and so that it stays on topic.

[JACK-2]

Star Fox, Zelda And The Wii U's Lost Year

This past April, I wondered out loud about the chances of Star Fox actually managing to make it to the Wii U in 2015. We’d heard practically nothing about the game at that point, getting only a mere glimpse of it at E3 2014, and with Nintendo ’s history of first party delays, it seemed like it would be tough to hit that holiday 2015 window with so little revealed so far.

Then came E3 2015, and the June event was practically centered around Star Fox, now Star Fox Zero, with a promised holiday release. Fans breathed a sigh of relief, as one major Wii U title, The Legend of Zelda, had already been delayed into 2016, but at least Star Fox would make the cut.

But not so, it turns out.

Nintendo has officially delayed Star Fox Zero to 2016. Shigeru Miyamoto made the announcement himself on Facebook, saying that while the game could be released on time, they wanted to polish it further:



“We have been developing Star Fox Zero for Wii U with the aim of releasing it this year,” Miyamoto said. “Although we felt that the development had been progressing well, we now believe that we will need a little more time to work on areas such as the unprecedented discovery that we want players to experience in the game by using two screens, and further polishing the level designs and perfecting the tone of the cut scenes. While we have already reached the stage where it would be technically possible to release the title in time for the year-end holiday season, we want to polish the game a bit more so that players will be able to more smoothly grasp the new style of play that we are proposing.”

While it’s not unprecedented that Nintendo would delay a first party release in order to ensure its quality (in fact it’s practically expected), it’s turned 2015 into something of a lost year for the Wii U as what were supposed to be the two biggest games of the year are now both delayed to 2016 between Star Fox and Zelda.


That leaves the “biggest” Wii U games of the year as probably Splatoon and Mario Maker, both great games, but a long way from blockbusters. Last year, 2014 produced Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros. and Bayonetta 2, but I don’t think either Splatoon or Mario Maker are on that level. Star Fox could have been, and Zelda would have been, but now? It’s clear Nintendo needs to work on its production schedule.

I get a lot of flak for being consistently hard on Nintendo, but it’s only because I want them to succeed and I’m tired of watching them play minor league ball. They’re not even in conversations any more when we talk about the PS4 vs. Xbox One console wars, because that’s how much of a non-factor the Wii U has become. The console has been lapped by the PS4 and even the Xbox One has outsold it, all of this despite having a year’s head start on both. And it’s downright painful to compare its 10 million sales to the Wii’s 100 million sales last generation. That’s not a decline, that’s a base jump.



While it’s true that the PS4 and Xbox One probably only have 1-3 truly great exclusives in a given year, much like Nintendo, the problem is that the Wii U is practically only exclusives. So while PS4 might have Bloodborne and a sleeper hit like Until Dawn in 2014 as its biggest/best exclusives, they also have The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid 5, Arkham Knight, Black Ops 3, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Destiny: The Taken King, Mad Max, Rainbow Six: Siege, etc, etc, etc. The same goes for Xbox, but swap out Halo 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider for the exclusives instead.

But when the Wii U just has its small pile of exclusives, it only has that pile. Meaning you’re essentially buying a console that might play two to four great games in a year, depending on your interests. With zero third party support, 90% of the catalog that makes the PS4 and Xbox One’s rosters robust is completely inaccessible to them.

If that’s the model you want to have, fine, but in that case you had better figure out a way to get more of those must-have exclusives out in a given year. If the Wii U had Splatoon, Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero and The Legend of Zelda out in 2015 like they originally planned, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and I would be praising Nintendo for having far and away the best exclusives line-up out there for the second year in a row.

But while Sony can delay Uncharted 4 and Microsoft MSFT +0.00% can delay Quantum Break into 2016, they have a dozen other big name games playable in 2015. Nintendo has no back-up plan, and its two biggest games of the holiday season are going to probably be Xenoblade Chronicles (a relatively niche title) and Mario Maker (a game I’m enjoying more watching on YouTube than playing). That’s not good.

While many have speculated that the Zelda delay to 2016 means that the game is going cross-platform with the NX, Twilight Princess style, that almost can’t happen with Star Fox Zero, given how much the Wii U gamepad is being integrated into the experience. Though I suppose we don’t know enough about the NX to say for certain the gamepad is going away. But in that case, two huge Wii U games might not even end up on the Wii U as a primary platform because of these delays.

I can’t pretend that Nintendo’s handling of the Wii U, from the hardware itself to its software release schedule, has been anything other than a disaster. The brand is an industry icon, yes, but they really need to do a hard turn with the NX and realize that you can’t sell a console based on a couple games a year, especially when delays are always a huge possibility (nay, probability) in their production schedule.

The NX should not be searching for some new gimmicky way to play games. It should exist as a console that gives Nintendo a healthy games library with actual third party partnerships to bolster an excellent first party selection. Otherwise, consoles like the Wii U are the best argument for the death of the dedicated gaming box, which costs hundreds of dollars to play only a few worthwhile games a year, at best.

Follow me on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Tumblr. Pick up a copy of my first sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, which is now in print and online.


www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/09/18/star-fox-zelda-and-the-wii-us-lost-year/

[JACK-2]

The only big titles Nintendo had this year were Splatoon and Mario Maker . 2014 was a much better year: Mario Kart Wii U, Super Smash Bros. Wii U and Bayonetta.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I heard a bit about the new system from someone at gamefaqs some months ago. He was talking about it costing like $2,000 but I find that hard to believe.

What have you heard?

[JACK-2]

Alot, some people say it's one console that will replace their handhelds and consoles. They say it will be all digital and that some games like Zelda Wii U have been cancelled for the NX.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I heard it might use cartridges. If so that's interesting.