General Nintendo

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

During Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, an investor told president Satoru Iwata that he believes Animal Crossing: Wild World “was not so well appreciated” in the west in terms of sales. This isn’t so, Iwata said.

Wild World sold at least five million copies overseas. This may not seem like a huge figure compared to Japan’s success, “but there are already some core fans of the Animal Crossing series overseas too.”

Iwata explained:

You mentioned that the reception of “Animal Crossing: Wild World” was not so good overseas. The sales of this game have reached no less than five million copies overseas. There are few companies whose result of selling more than five million copies of a product is considered not up to scratch. It is true that the sales figure overseas, meaning in the U.S. and Europe, is relatively small compared to the fact that the number of sales has surpassed five million copies only in Japan, but there are already some core fans of the Animal Crossing series overseas too. When we announced “Animal Crossing: New Leaf” through our Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation, many consumers worldwide viewed it on the Internet and we received a lot of requests from overseas consumers who wanted to play it as soon as possible. We would like to first promote the attractions of this game to such a core fan base.

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Nintendo will soon be unifying its console and handheld divisions into one entity. By doing so, the company “would like to integrate software development methods, operating systems, and built-in software and software assets for each platform so that we can use them across different machines.”

Satoru Iwata also teased an interesting scenario during Nintendo’s financial results briefing last week. He said: “if we manage to integrate our platforms successfully, we may in fact be able to make more platforms.”

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

We posted a paraphrased version of Satoru Iwata’s comments on cloud gaming, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to post the full (and official) translation. You can find his remarks below.

The term “cloud gaming” is one of the words we have lately heard so often, but I would like people to understand that there are certain things that cloud gaming cannot achieve. A cloud is an attempt to process information online on a server, as opposed to doing so on individual machines in the hands of the users. What this implies is, since the time to transmit data over an Internet connection is never negligible, there is always some latency before you receive the result of your input. Of course, there are types of games on which delays have no effect. In such instances, it may perhaps make sense to have an input means as well as the ability to display images at hand and let all the information be processed on a server. On the other hand, for some highly interactive games, action games in particular, the time required to reflect the push of a button on the screen is critical and the frame rate (the number of times a screen can be updated in a given second) determines the fluidity of the movements. This means that there are some types of games that can be put on the Internet and others that cannot. By the laws of physics, it always takes some time to transmit data, and given the current level of Internet technology, there is bound to be some latency during the processes of a server receiving data, producing images instantly and sending them back. There are many things that cloud gaming cannot do by design, but this fact has not been communicated well to the public, and I find it strange that many people claim that cloud gaming is the future.

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

At the moment, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate is a 3DS exclusive. That could change in the future, however.

MercurySteam producer David Cox revealed to CVG that all of the game’s assets were made in HD. That includes the textures, levels, and models. But to have everything fit on the 3DS, the team shrunk things down. Cox said that MercurySteam does “have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere.”

“We created everything in high definition – all the textures, all the levels, high-poly models, everything – and we kind of shrunk it all down into the 3DS. Then we lost bones from characters, you know, we dropped the resolution of the textures and everything to make it fit. At MercurySteam we have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere.”

This new information begs the question: could we ever seen an HD version of Mirror of Fate? Cox is more than open to the possibility:

“Absolutely, yeah. We would consider it. We want as many people to play it as possible. Obviously we have an exclusivity deal with Nintendo right now though and they’ve been very supportive of the product.”

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Hedgehog Day is done and over with. The holiday for Sonic fans took place yesterday, but SEGA didn’t make any new announcements about its classic franchise.

That being said, it does sound like SEGA is cooking up a few things for the Blue Blur this year. The company teased on its blog that it has “got some great stuff coming up this year, but we’re not ready to talk about it just yet.”

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata fielded a few questions about Capcom’s new HD version in an interview with Nowgamer. Kawata commented on the game’s new aspects, why it’s being brought to consoles, and more. There’s general talk about the Resident Evil series, too.

Head past the break for the full Q&A.

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Satoru Iwata told investors at a financial results briefing earlier this week that Nintendo does not believe “cloud gaming is the future”. Although he acknowledged that it has its advantages (and disadvantages), Nintendo is “trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone.”

An unofficial translation from the meeting reads:

“There are things you can do with cloud gaming and there are things you cant do. We don’t agree that cloud gaming is the future and we are trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone. Unified platforms are for us not platforms that are one but rather platforms that have the same development architecture. This also means that there could be more platforms.”

Shigeru Miyamoto, who was also in attendance, spoke about the challenge of creating new development environments for Wii U and 3DS:

“We needed to create new development environments for Wii U and 3DS unlike Wii which reused the GameCube architecture. We are unifying our development teams to accommodate this challenge and minimize the losses while preparing the shift. I think handhelds and consoles will coexist as the aim is different.

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Activision seems to be making preparations for a new Skylanders announcement.

On Wednesday, the publisher registered the domains SkylandersKaosAlliance.com, SkylandersNanoForce.com, SkylandersSuperForce.com and SkylandersSwapForce.com.

The Skylanders IP has resulted in annual releases for Activision. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure launched in 2011, followed by Skylanders Giants last year. You may remember that Activision announced Giants nearly a year ago today. It was officially revealed on February 7, 2012. Could an announcement for a third Skylanders be just a few days away?

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

There were a surprising amount of Resident Evil games released in 2012. Capcom published Revelations in late January, Operation Raccoon City in May, and closed out the year with Resident Evil 6 in October. Don’t forget: The Mercenaries also launched in June of 2011.

The amount of titles released during the past couple of years may have been a bit too much, according to Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata:

“I think certainly looking at the last year or two, there probably were a few too many. I think we learned last year that putting on a lot of titles would not necessarily win over gamers. At the same time, I don’t think we should just stagger them out artificially because that’s the solution to the problem we have. We should always start by asking how do we make the games better. And if the solution to making the games better is to have a more staggered release than we’ve had recently then that’s something we’ll do. But we’ll do it for that reason and not just for flipping what we’ve done already.”

Resident Evil fans can look forward to one more entry this year, though it’s updated version of the 3DS title Revelations.

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Onimusha and Dino Crisis have been dormant for many, many years (we’re not counting Onimusha Soul, by the way!). Fans have occasionally requested the return of both series, but Capcom isn’t heading in that direction for now.

Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata, who was involved with both franchises in the past, noted that “it’s more important for us to focus on creating new IP as we move forward.”

He said:

“Capcom has obviously never shied away from bringing back our older IPs to new generations, but I do think it’s more important for us to focus on creating new IP as we move forward.”

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