You may have heard the news that Nintendo’s stock is on the rise, up 11% in one day after they announced their third party support over the next couple of months via a press release. Don’t excited though: Japanese stock-buys aren’t suddenly loving the company again. The cause of the jump seems to be a shift in value of the yen against the euro, meaning that anyone exporting products from Japan to Europe will be seeing an increase in gains for the time being.

That’s not to say that people might not be suddenly on board with the Big N again or that the increase isn’t substantial (it’s the biggest jump since 2008), but chances are that this is more of a financial-jargon reason than anything we should be invested (pun) in as gamers. As Renegade Kid’s Jools Watsham put it:

Thanks to Captain N for the tip.

Via Nintendo Life

Warren Specter talks next generation, Wii U, etc

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

Warren Specter’s latest game was Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, and it wasn’t terribly successful either critically or commercially. The esteemed game designer has been very quiet recently, likely deciding what he wants to do with his future in the industry, but just yesterday he spoke out about various topics, the most interesting of which was his opinion on where the industry is going:

“Prediction is a fool’s game. It seems likely that success will come less than usual in the pure gaming space and more in the home entertainment space. And there, the consoles are going to be up against some stiff competition. But it seems likely that the multi-purposeness (is that a word?) of the consoles will be enough of a differentiating feature to keep consoles going for a while, at least.

The biggest risk associated with consoles, at least to me, is that they’re frozen, hardware-wise, while mobile platforms – phones and tablets – will continue to get more and more powerful. I mean, where do you think the iPad or Kindle Fire or Surface or whatever will be in 3 years? 5 years? It’s crazy to think about. And the consoles will still be right where they were in 2013 or whenever they come to market. That’d be a little scary to me if I were a console manufacturer.”

– Warren Specter

I think he hits on a really important point: Speculation is useless. Listening to folks five or ten years ago about talk about the gaming industry, they get more or less everything wrong, and yet we consider them “experts”. Take Michael Pachter for example: That guy said it doesn’t matter if he’s wrong, and he’s said he essentially makes stuff up when he’s predicting things. It’s a silly market niche without a doubt, and I’d argue that it’s more fun to speculate for imagination’s sake than for actually being taken seriously, since… well, you can’t take speculation too seriously!

Via Nintendo Life

Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi is no longer Japan’s richest person, currently in 13th place

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi has $2.1 billion in the bank, but unfortunately that’s no longer enough to keep him on top of Japan’s ‘Richest People’ list. Due to Nintendo’s falling share price, Yamauchi has dropped to “only” 13th place on the list since he still owns more shares of the company than anyone else. After running the company for 55 years he’s probably wondering where things are headed, but I’m guessing he has more a say in the goings-on over at NCL HQ than a lot of folks.

Via NintendoLife

Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert share stories, bid farewell to LucasArts

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

LucasArts has, unfortunately, been shut down. Despite the fact that the company had been on technological life support for many years, it’s sad to see it go, and few people are taking it as hard as Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. The two guys worked for LucasArts way back when the developer was doing things like Grim Fandango, so their memories are definitely more nostalgic than most of ours:

“Even though part of me felt this was coming, I’m still, somehow, shocked. I never thought that Lucas would actually shut down. I feel badly for all the talented people there. LucasArts was my first job in the industry. And sad to see all that history go away. And all that concept art. I’m going to be dumpster diving behind their offices for a while to see if I can find any old Full Throttle concept art.”

– Time Schafer

“It’s hard for me not to be sad. I haven’t worked there since 1992, but it was still home to me. I grew up there. I learned just about everything I know about designing games there. I became a real programmer there. I made lifelong friends there. Eight of the most memorable and influential years of my life were spent there. I would not be who I am today without Lucasfilm Games.”

– Ron Gilbert

Gilbert went into much more detail in a blog post he wrote up, so if you’re interested in hearing more about the way things worked at LucasArts way back when, or if you just want to reminisce alongside Ron, check it out at the link.

Via ShackNews

Suda51 says he used to be an assassin, which is why he likes using them as characters

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

His words, not mine:

“I think going back to the core essence, I used to be an assassin and that really reflects on what kind of games I want to make. [Laughs] I’m sorry, that’s me just being jetlagged. When you defeat an enemy, that equals death. If defeat equals death and you’re thinking about the fine line between living and dying, to express that in an action-oriented game an assassin makes it much easier to express that.”

– Grasshopper Manufacturer’s Suda51

Well, that’s certainly a Suda-like thing to say! But of course he was joking, and I’ll admit I’m not sure I follow his reasoning for using assassins over other types of characters fully, since it sounds like a non-assassin would be equally as effective in expressing the fine line between life and death… his games are great though, so I’m just going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume I’m missing something!

Via Siliconera

GBA emulator briefly available for iPhone via “Awesome Baby Names” app

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

People like putting copyrighted material onto the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad– that’s not terribly surprising on any given day. What’s surprising about the story we have today is that our perpetrators hid the copyrighted material inside of an app that helps you generate names for your baby called “Awesome Baby Names”.

The app has since been removed, but while it was up users could pay $1.99 for it, and if they knew the secret tapping combination the emulator would boot up and give you access to many of the GBA’s best games in ROM form. Reports are that it wasn’t a very good emulator, however, citing control issues and graphical glitches all around that made it not terribly fun to play.

Via PocketGamer

EA senior producer says he “heard” that Assassin’s Creed IV is being made by “nearly 1000 people”

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

It is true that seven studios are contributing to the development of Black Flag, but as far as the number of specific people is concerned, Ubisoft won’t say. They’re staying silent on the issue (as they say they always have), which does poes the interesting question of how much the game will have to sell to turn a profit for Ubisoft.

Via Gamespot

Former Gamestop VP sentenced to 51 months in prison for defrauding the company of $1.7m

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

Frank Olivera used to be the VP of corporate communications and public affairs for Gamestop, but recently it was found that he had been stealing money from the company and transferring it to a fake company he had created (“Cloud Communications LLC”) before transferring it to his personal bank account. The total amount stolen added up to over $1.7 million dollars, which is, according to the courts, enough for him to be sentenced to 51 months (just over four years) in prison.

On top of that, he must return the stolen funds and an extra $134,651 in additional costs.

Via Eurogamer

ESRB changes marketing requirements, details

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

“This policy addresses cross-marketing of games, not bundling products together. The fundamental goal is to ensure that the cross-promotion of products is appropriately targeted. In doing so we may consider a variety of factors including the nature of the product, audience composition of the media vehicle being used, the intended audience of the game, whether registered users are of a certain age, whether an age-gate is employed, etc.”

– ESRB Statement

– Publishers and developers can now create “General Audience” trailers for M-rated games that won’t require an age gate to watch
– If one of these is made, it must begin with a four-second statement reading “The content of this trailer has been approved for a general audience.” with a green background, similar to what you see in a movie theatre before previews
– M-rated games can now be marketed alongside lower-rated games, if the two games appeal to the same audience (ie. you can put a God of War pamphlet inside of the Uncharted game box)

Via GameInformer

Spin the Bottle targeted for May

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

KnapNok plans to release Spin the Bottle on the Wii U eShop in May. No specific date, unfortunately, but it’ll be available in just a couple of months.

A new teaser for Spin the Bottle was released earlier today. Watch it here.

Source