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.”

Source

More: interview, Scott Moffitt

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.”

Source

More: interview, Rare, Tim Stamper

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.

More: Amiibo, interview, Masaki Amano, top

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.

Source

More: sales, SEGA

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.

Source

More: Pokemon

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.

More: Nintendo Minute

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

GameXplain has uploaded another comparison video for Smash Bros. In this latest one, we get to see how Hyrule Castle compares between the Wii U version and N64 original. Watch the video below.

More: comparison, Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, New Nintendo 3DS, Videos | 0 comments

There’s a whole lot of unboxing going on in the video below. We have another look at the Japanese Animal Crossing New 3DS XL, plus the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer NFC set, and cover plates.

More: Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, unboxing

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 5 Comments

Update 2: Back in stock again apparently!

Update: Now gone. It lasted a decent amount of time on Best Buy’s site!

The Dark Pit amiibo can currently be purchased on Best Buy’s website. Get an order in here. If it doesn’t work, try using this link.

More: Amiibo, Best Buy