General Nintendo

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Nintendo is beginning to send out invitations for their E3 2011 press conference, and the notice confirms that the event will kick off at 9 AM PDT on June 7. Like last year, the conference will be held at the Nokia Theater. Expect Reggie Fils-Aime to take the stage, as well as Satoru Iwata and possibly Shigeru Miyamoto. Start counting the days… we’re officially five weeks away from the unveiling of Project Cafe.

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Nintendo has taken a fairly big step forward by implementing a one-code friend system for the 3DS. But there’s no question that the company still has much work to do when it comes to online functionality with their systems. Satoru Iwata discussed that issue at a financial results briefing last week, and addressed the topic of developing products internally.

The policy “Jimae-shugi” (doing things by one’s bootstraps) you mentioned has two aspects: it is a great honor to succeed in a business by making the best use of our own unique strengths, but on the other hand, it is a shame to fall behind the times clinging to it. I believe that it is the key to Nintendo, which develops both hardware and software in-house, to create new experiences which have been neither enjoyed nor requested by consumers, and let them say, “This is the very thing I have been wanting to play” once they have actually tried it. The more we depend on outside resources for this point, the more strength Nintendo will lose. It is vital for Nintendo to reinforce this point and cultivate developers inside the company. I hope that Nintendo is continuously considered as a company which is particularly good at such a thing, and I will make efforts for this.

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Satoru Iwata’s GDC speech gained quite a bit of attention, though not for the right reasons. His words were misinterpreted and taken out of context, but his presentation set off mobile developers. At a financial results briefing last week, Iwata was finally given a chance to defend himself. You can check out his response below.

First of all, regarding my presentation at GDC, we have posted my entire keynote speech on our websites, but I am very disappointed with one thing.

Many reports said that I talked about a conflict between the quantity and the quality of video games, which made me think that reporters should have at least written an article after reading through the full text of the presentation since we have posted the Japanese translations of the entire keynote speech. I have never mentioned the conflict between quantity and quality at all. Some articles based on this misperception even said, “Nintendo hard hit by video games for smartphones and social games, and criticized them as low quality” but, again, I have never said such a thing at all. The only message that I had hoped to convey at GDC was, since my keynote speech was dedicated to the game developers, that, without carefully trying to preserve the value of the games we develop, the digital distribution revolution could very easily depreciate their value, which might make all of us have a hard time.

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

This information comes from Nintendo’s financial results briefing, which took place last week…

“Regarding the format you referred to as ‘tablet’ which has a certain big screen and allows users to directly touch it, when we look at it from the viewpoint of ‘developing software which uses a touch screen,’ I think it is an interesting device if it creates an experience that is in line with the trend created by Nintendo DS. On the other hand, we have never abandoned the + Control Pad and buttons for our game systems because we think these functions are advantageous when creating highly reactive games. In this meaning, I do not think Nintendo hardware will take on any of the current tablet forms as they are without buttons, to make our game devices. However, this is only when we consider tablets as game devices and, for other purposes, I think tablets are very interesting, and they are a form of hardware that will continue to grow.” – Satoru Iwata

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

It’s pretty much a well-known fact that third-parties haven’t been able to find success on the Wii. Sure, a few titles have performed beyond expectations – such as Just Dance – but on the whole, third-party releases just haven’t sold well.

Satoru Iwata was asked to comment on Nintendo’s inability to attract third-parties for the Wii at the company’s financial results briefing last week. Iwata explained that poor sales of previous games was a factor, as was the console’s graphical limitations and competition among other platforms. He also said that Nintendo is interested in cooperating with software developers for the Wii’s successor and admitted that third-parties are important to maintain the market.

“Regarding your analysis that cooperation with third-party software developers didn’t go as well for Wii as it went for Nintendo DS, there actually are some arguments which attribute the reason to the system’s ‘performance,’ but in terms of ‘performance,’ Nintendo DS did not overwhelm other devices by its performance. However, it proposed what other devices could not, and that value was recognized, and as a result the software sold well, which is the most important point. Unfortunately, there are very few success stories of third-party software in Japan on Wii. This lowered the motivation of the software developers, and at a time when these software developers should have been running their businesses on the platform with the biggest installed base, this wasn’t the reality. On the contrary, in the U.S., several titles sold well. Not only ‘JUST DANCE,’ which I introduced today, but for some titles, such as ‘Guitar Hero,’ even if the titles were released for multiple platforms, the Wii version sold the most, and in such a situation, the developers did not completely lose motivation for development on Wii. However, Wii is good in some areas but not in others, so especially for games like ‘Call of Duty,’ the Wii version sold pretty well, but the unit sales were very different from the versions of other platforms, and I assume that one of the reasons is the issue with the graphical representations which you mentioned before, and also, the consumers who like that kind of game will have other platforms at home as well, which led to this result. Of course, we would like to cooperate with software developers for Wii’s successor, and as I am repeatedly saying, I don’t believe Nintendo can carry out everything alone. I am saying that we are responsible for building up the market, but I don’t think that Nintendo can maintain the market alone; We are aiming for creating a situation where software publishers will be willing to cooperate. As for commenting on such things as the performance, I already stated in the beginning that I would not mention any specific plans. Thank you for your understanding.”

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

This information comes from Satoru Iwata…

“Whenever we make a new game console, we’ve done it without throwing away buttons and the directional pad. The reason for that it’s better to have them, because buttons and directional pads benefit gameplay response. Taking this into account, Nintendo isn’t planning on completely ditching buttons, nor is Nintendo thinking of taking tablets as they are today and implementing them in a game console.”

You can count on seeing a number of buttons on Project Cafe’s controller… 8, in fact, if rumors are to be believed.

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii | 0 comments

Isn’t it nice to see a Zelda game grace the cover of Nintendo Power once again? I’m not too sure that the magazine will have anything new on the title, but it should be an interesting read nonetheless. Perhaps we’ll see Skyward Sword on a cover later this year…

Thanks to Jake for the tip!

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

This information comes from Renegade Kid’s Jools Watsham…

“I just sent off some Mutant Mudd assets to a magazine for the reveal. The issue hits newsstands the first day of E3. Am I excited? Yes!”

Well, this is pretty exciting! We now know with 100% certainty that Mutant Mudds is back. We just have to wait roughly one month to find out what Renegade Kid is doing with the project.

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

If interested, you can also watch Satoru Iwata’s presentation in English here.

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Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, Rumors, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

Update: Andriasang has confirmed some of the information posted below, so it looks like most (if not all) of the points below are the real deal.

There seems to be a bit of confusion about when Nintendo’s last conference took place and what information was shared at the event. While the news below looks very legitimation, take the details with a grain of salt for now. Only one source has provided details from the conference so far, so it’s difficult to confirm that everything is completely accurate.

– No Kid Icarus: Uprising until after summer
– Nintendo interesting is adding more platforms to the eShop in addition to Game Boy/Game Boy Color
– Excitebike (3D Classic) apparently will be offered in Japan for free
– Nintendo still working on Wii Vitality Sensor
– Challenge with the sensor is that its easy to make it work for 80% of people, but difficult to make to make it work for 99%
– Nintendo needs other companies to succeed on the 3DS
– Nintendo still planning their own titles around third-party games
– Made decision on Wii successor announcement because of logistics for getting people to E3
– Nintendo still wants a surprise at E3 with their new console
– Iwata admitted that Nintendo has relied to much on its own, won’t do everything on their own from here on out
– Expect to see something about the above at E3
– Iwata: 3DS not meeting expectations following second week of sales
– Iwata believes the earthquake in Japan had an impact on sales, but isn’t the only factor
– European/US sales lower than expected
– Nintendo “need to make efforts” to improve sales
– Pokemon Black/White has sold more than previous versions globally in the same time frame
– More talk of Nintendo saying that Project Cafe is a new concept/structure for a console
– Nintendo will still be pushing the Wii
– Nintendo releasing one Wii title every month to push the console’s performance
– Nintendo realizes they must provide incentive for people to use StreetPass/system updates
– Because of this, free content such as classic games will be offered
– Nintendo feels that gaming is better with buttons, so you won’t see a machine without them
– Nintendo will accommodate social networking services in games, but won’t see Nintendo games on non-Nintendo hardware

Source 1, Source 2