“LOVEFiLM” app now available on Wii U (UK)
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Wii U | 0 comments
The UK-based Netflix-style streaming application “LOVEFiLM” is now available for download on Wii U for those of you who live in the wonderful land of Europe! You do need to have a paid account to actually access any of the content, but without one you’re still able to browse through all of the movies and shows to salivate over what you’re missing, and then convince yourself to buy a subscription.
Or, hey, you could always get one of those “free trial” things. That’s a great way to try something for free!
Nintendo is already planning for the future of Wii U, and won’t let titles dry up
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments
“We’ve got a very strong line-up, lots of titles and activities aimed at Christmas, but we’ve already got plans for Q1. Lots of new titles like Monster Hunter, but also repromotions and things like that. We definitely want to maintain momentum in Q1 – that’s our focus right now.” – Head of Consumer Marketing (and new-kid-on-the-block) James Honeywell
“Nintendo always makes sure it launches games throughout the year. We don’t really focus particularly on Christmas. We’ve got a strong line-up all the way through the year. We always have the marketing to support that. We have plans to take sampling all the way through the year. For us, it’s not just about launch, it’s about building momentum and maintaining that over a long period of time.”
The more I think about it, the more amazed I am at how many amazing new Wii U games we’ll be getting over the coming months. The Wonderful 101, Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, Wii Fit U… the list just goes on! And that’s not even talking about what’s coming next holiday! My guess is the next Smash Bros.…
RUMOR: Wii U eShop (Europe) won’t let you buy adult-oriented content before 11PM
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments
A user on neogaf appears to have figured out why people were having purchasing issues with Assassin’s Creed III and ZombiU on the Wii U eShop the other day: Nintendo of Europe may be (and probably is– it’s just marked as a rumor as a formality) restricting the times you’re allowed to download or view games that are meant for older audiences, in this case the two aforementioned games.
The user in question is from Italy, and the story we published a few days ago applied to the greater European area, so it’s pretty safe to say that this is just Nintendo being overly-protective in certain respects!
Assassin’s Creed III was originally going to let players scalp enemies, but it was cut after history said that never happened
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Wii U | 0 comments
Assassin’s Creed III is a pretty positive and honest representation of the Mowhawk people, according to members of the tribe and historians who study it. A big reason for this is because Ubisoft brought on a man named Thomas Deer, who is a cultural liaison officer working for the Kahnawake Language and Cultural Center, to help make sure they didn’t misrepresent or include anything offensive, false, or demeaning about Mowhawk culture in the game.
Originally the game allowed players (who play as a Mowhawk tribesman) to scalp enemies, but according to Deer that never happened in the particular tribe that the game represents. So they took it out!
Activision executive says smartphones and tablets threaten the 3DS/Vita market
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
“It is a challenging market, and challenging in a number of ways. From a gameplay immersiveness standpoint, from price point and business model standpoint, I mean it’s $40 for some of those games and you can get great experiences – not necessarily comparable experience, but great nonetheless – for seven dollars on a tablet. Our relationships with Sony and Nintendo are important and we continue to support them by creating games on both [Vita and 3DS] platforms. Beyond that the market’s going to speak ultimately as to the viability of those products.” – Activision’s Vice President of Mobile Development, Greg Canessa
Well, I think the market is speaking fairly strongly on the issue! The 3DS just recently surpassed the lifetime sales of the Gamecube (yes, after just two and a half years being out), it’s halfway to meeting the lifetime sales of the SNES, and two-thirds of the way to meeting the N64’s lifetime sales. On top of that, it’s still outselling the original DS on a week-to-week basis!
Vita isn’t doing so hot, but I think the 3DS’ performance alone speaks to how healthy/unhealthy the portable gaming market is.
[Opinion] ‘New Super Mario Bros. U’ has a hard mode called “collect all of the star coins”, and it makes the game incredible
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Wii U | 2 Comments
Author: Austin
A couple of months ago I wrote an article called “What has happened to 2D Mario games? (And how to “fix” them!)”, calling on Nintendo to return the sidescrolling plumber to his magical roots with one simple change; not by copying that which made older titles great, but simply by increasing the difficulty, thereby forcing you to spend more time with the game and form stronger memories of individual levels. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Well, despite my high hopes for the game, it appeared as though New Super Mario Bros. U was still the same old New Super Mario Bros. (the irony of which is not lost). Which isn’t to say it’s bad– after all, Nintendo always nails the technicalities of platforming to perfection– but simply that it’s still not as memorable as entries like World and 3. Going into the game, this is what I was expecting, and I was more than fine to play through another good-not-great Mario title with solid platforming and a few standout moments. Instead of just going through it willy-nilly though, I decided to take the approach that I would complete the game as I went, which is to say that I would gather all three “Star” coins in every level of a world before moving onto the next.
The consequence of this is that the game is no longer good– it’s great! If you read not past this point and you’re a seasoned Mario player, please consider following in my footsteps and playing to completion. You will likely enjoy it a whole lot more. If you want to hear more of why this works, read on!
Video shows a guy replacing the Wii U Pro Controller’s thumbsticks with Xbox 360 controller thumbsticks
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments
The most interesting part of this is that you get to see the insides of both controllers!
[Theory] Nintendo made rounded discs and a separate Wii channel for the same reason: Piracy prevention
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Rumors, Wii U | 4 Comments
It seems odd that Nintendo would choose to force you to boot up a separate channel altogether if you want to play Wii games/old downloaded titles on the Wii U, doesn’t it? After all, every prior backwards-compatible Nintendo console just lets you play previous-generation games in the same way that you play the proprietary games on the system. Even 3DS puts your DSiWare titles on the main menu, as though they’re eShop games.
So why the change?
Well, I have a theory. You know how Wii U discs have rounded edges? At first I thought that was just a nice little touch to make people enjoy touching the sides of their games more (which admittedly did happen), but after a real examination of it I came to the conclusion that it was probably done to prevent piracy. After all, if you illegally download a pirated Wii U game onto an regular disc– no matter how good your Wii U hack or homebrew channel is– the console will just say “Hey dude, this disc doesn’t have rounded edges! It must not be a real Wii U game!”, spitting it back out and thus preventing you from pirating Wii U games. At least until someone gets a workaround.
But wait!, I thought, If it can’t read “regular” edge’d discs, how will it read the good ol’ Wii discs!?
Thus we begin to understand why Nintendo might have put in a separate channel for Wii games. When you open up the channel, it tells the system “Okay dawg, reboot yourself and drop the whole ‘No Reading Regular Disc Shapes’ thing for a bit.”
Then when you go back into “Wii U” mode, it turns the safety check back on.
Just a thought. And I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case! Anyone else come to different conclusions?
Here’s a Podcast – Episode 18!
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast | 0 comments
The “Here’s a Podcast” mascot, ladies and gentlemen!
News, what we played, and the complaint corner all make their regular returns. On top of that, we discuss ZombiU vs. Resident Evil Remake, whether Wii U games have to use the Gamepad in novel ways (or if they can just be “regular” games), and then list our top four weirdest business decisions by Nintendo.
Despite a myriad of technical issues, I’d be willing to bet that this show is out best so far! There was no one thing in particular that made it amazing, but energetic discussions (and some really hilarious anecdotes!) made this one a podcast for the record books! Enjoy!
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Nintendo UK’s James Honeywell: We hope Wii U is as successful as Wii, UK launch stock is less than US
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Wii U | 0 comments
“We hope to live up to the same kind of success with the Wii. As you can see, people are really excited about it. Time will tell.” – Head of Consumer Marketing at Nintendo UK, James Honeywell
I think anyone who makes anything hopes that they’d be as successful as the Wii! Except maybe Apple. Apple wants to be way more successful than that.
Honeywell went on to briefly talk about Wii U stock in the UK:
“The US has been a fantastic launch. Obviously that’s a much bigger market, and so they’ve got more stock, but we’re hoping for the same standard of success here in the UK.”
