Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 10 Comments

The folks over at Reddit have secured additional details about GameStop’s amiibo pre-order event taking place on Saturday. If you missed out on the news previously, this will be your chance to reserve a 3-pack containing R.O.B., Duck Hunt, and Mr. Game & Watch.

First, here are some general details:

• Pro membership is required once again for the 1-hour early event.
• You can buy membership Saturday morning.
• There is no restriction based on when you became a Pro member.
• The price for the 3-pack is officially confirmed at $34.99. It is currently $99.99 in the POS but will be adjusted prior to the event.
• Minimum deposit is confirmed for $5, nothing more.
• On Thursday, stores will receive their store-specific allocation numbers.
• Stores will be displaying their allocation numbers on signs at their entrances. (Sound familiar?)
• Generally speaking, stocks will be put up the night before, when the last employee leaves for the night.
• 1 Retro 3-pack per customer.

Some other interesting tidbits:

• There are a total of 6 SKUs up for reserve on Saturday, including the 3-pack. (So 3-Pack + 5 Individuals)
• These additional SKUs may be Gannondorf, Zero Suit Samus, Olimar, Dr. Mario, and 30th Anniversary 8-Bit Classic Mario.

We also have the following information about returning your Pro membership:

• If somebody is planning on getting PUR Pro simply to pre-order and then return it, they are entitled to the return.
• The web site does list the 7 day return period, even though it does not list reasons required for a return. (This is why your mileage may vary)
• The employees are definitely going to say anything they can for you to keep it.
• In the end, it will most likely require the current manager on duty.
• While the majority of employees do not know how to properly return memberships, somebody will figure it out.
• Returning Pro membership brings you back down to a regular member, it does not remove you from the PowerUp Rewards program entirely.
• If you do decide to try and return your membership, please wait until later on in the day or the following day as to not hold up the line for your fellow amiigos.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii | 13 Comments

Chris Pranger, who works at Nintendo Treehouse, appeared on the latest episode of the Part-Time Gamer podcast. Pranger shared a few interesting details about his position his position as well as working at the company as a whole.

You’ll find a summary of information from the podcast below. For the full discussion, visit this link.

– Nintendo’s media policy has recently changed regarding employees being more open about talking about their work but not spoilers or anything
– He is the voice of the first level boss in Star Fox Zero; also working on the game
– Talks about NOA using employees as voiceovers for fun and cheap work
– Nintendo has a game library where employees can check out games for all systems in order to be well-versed in gaming; this is how he played Bioshock Infinite
– Sakurai kills himself for his games; he is very sensitive to fan feedback
– Localization costs a ton of money and often the vocal minority of fans who want a game localized isn’t a large enough consumer base to justify the localization costs
– The original Xenoblade is an example he gives of this
– Nintendo of Europe ate the cost on that project

Source, Via

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 10 Comments

Last week, rumors surfaced about GameStop potentially holding an amiibo pre-order event on August 8. This has now been confirmed.

Those who stop by GameStop on Saturday will have the opportunity to reserve a new 3-pack. R.O.B., Mr. Game & Watch, and Duck Hunt are being included in the bundle.

GameStop will be opening its doors at 9 AM. Consumers will need to put down a $5 minimum, and there’s a limit in place of one per customer.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 82 Comments

Examiner recently spoke with Scott Moffitt, executive VP of sales at Nintendo of America. One of the topics the two sides discussed was how Nintendo uses fan feedback and looks at industry trends.

Moffitt told the site:

“We like to be different, unique and tend to march to the beat of our own drum. I would never say we’re blind to the outside world, but we listen to our game fans a lot. We’re always curious to [see] their reaction to new games like Splatoon. We don’t use them as our sole inspiration but we certainly like to hear what they are saying, enjoying and appreciating about a game, in addition to what they would like in future iterations of that game. We take a broad look and always pay attention to what is going on beyond our walls with trends, but it starts with listening really carefully to our gamers.”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 29 Comments

Nintendo and Rare formed a tight relationship in the 1990’s. At one point, Nintendo held a 49 percent stake in the company. But in 2002, Nintendo as well as Rare co-founders Tim and Chris Stamper sold their stakes, and Microsoft took control of the game developer.

Some may wonder why Nintendo never ended up acquiring Rare. This is something that confounds Tim Stamper as well.

“I’ve no idea why they didn’t do that,” he recently said to Develop. “I thought we were a good fit.”

No matter who purchased Rare, Stamper did feel that change was necessary at the time. As he explained:

“The price of software development was going up and up with the platforms, and Rare works really well with a partner. We were looking for someone to help broaden our horizons.”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 12 Comments

The Nintendo CSR Report 2015 was recently published. In the digest version, there’s a big focus on amiibo, including a few interviews.

One portion of the report features an interview with Nintendo’s Masaki Amano. He spoke about the challenges faced in developing amiibo at one point, noting:

Nintendo has developed a variety of game systems such as Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. However, amiibo development was extremely challenging because we couldn’t use our existing knowledge at all and had to proceed through everything by trial and error.

For example, when we make a game system we usually make a mold of each part by cutting the metal directly from 3D data using a drill or some other tool. For a figure, however, you use almost no machinery at all to make the mold, and do everything by hand instead. For amiibo, we started by creating a master. We then took this master apart to consider how to easily coat colors or create each mold. Link, for example, has 24 separate pieces.

We took a cast of the first mold by pressing clay into each part of the master and then coating it with silicon. Finally, after repeatedly duplicating the mold with harder substances, we used iron to create a metal mold. Although we could not apply our existing knowledge or experiences, we learned along the way as we pursued absolute quality.

That wasn’t the only notable element from the Nintendo CSR Report 2015. We also get a look at how Nintendo tests amiibo for safety and reliability. See the image below.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 7 Comments

The Nintendo CSR Report 2015 has now been published. You can find it in full here, and the digest version here.

The digest version of the CSR Report has a message from Satoru Iwata, as well as several interesting interviews about amiibo. We’ve broken the report down into the gallery pages below.

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments

A couple of days ago, SEGA Sammy posted its latest financial results. There was a downturn during the first quarter of FY2016, though the company’s gaming division performed a bit better.

Here’s a full breakdown of SEGA Sammy’s latest financials:

– SEGA Sammy (parent company of game publisher SEGA) said that gains in its gaming unit could not offset overall losses
– Revenue of ¥52.9 billion ($425 million)
– That’s down 41.2 percent compared to last year’s number of ¥90 billion ($723 million)
– Profit: ¥7.9 billion ($63.5 million) loss for the quarter
– That’s down sharply from a profit of ¥5.1 billion ($41 million) during the same period last year
– The poor results were attributed the downturn to a number of factors, including the economy
– SEGA said the gains in digital games for smart devices in Japan were not substantial enough to offset the “shrinking” packaged game software business
– SEGA’s gaming division (Entertainment Contents Business) did better than the company as a whole
– Entertainment Contents Business posted net sales of ¥41.9 billion ($336 million)
– That’s up 4.1 percent compared to last year
– Operating loss of ¥739 million ($5.9 million) during the period
– This number was better than the ¥1.4 billion ($11.2 million) loss during the same quarter last year
– In the packaged game business, SEGA sold 1.83 million games “in spite of the lack of sales of major titles”
– No specific sales figures for any SEGA games

Thanks to Jake for the tip.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Images | 12 Comments

Pokemon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages premiered in Japan last month. A trailer for next year’s movie accompanies the film, and we previously heard that a new Pokemon was shown during the video.

We now have the first images of the new Pokemon. It definitely looks like the blob that was shown in fan sketches. For the time being, it’s still completely unclear what this new Pokemon is about.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 2 Comments

The latest episode of Nintendo Minute has now gone live. This week, Kit and Krysta look at some of the previous DLC that came to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Check out the full video below.

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