NPD puts preparations in place to begin tracking digital sales later this year
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
Digital sales are becoming increasingly important to the video games industry. Yet, since its inception, the NPD Group has not typically included any of these figures in its monthly reports.
Plans are now in place to change that. NPD hasn’t set any sort of date, but hopes to begin include digital sales in its reports – which will include global sales as opposed to just US sales as is the case with its retail data – later this year. Market research firm EEDAR is on board to make this possible.
David McQuillan, president of the Games group at NPD, told GamesIndustry:
“We fully realize that the market needs the same level of information for the digital categories as exists for the physical business today: SKU-level POS. The progress on that effort up until recently has been slow and frustrating at times, but today I am very happy to share that the pace of progress has changed recently. NPD has formed a leader panel to track digital POS sales of full game and add-on content downloads. It is an important and critical step toward that goal. Leader panels are often formed as a precursor to a formal launch of a POS tracking service.
“We couldn’t agree more with ESA; full market transparency, including digital is incredibly important to the health of the industry.”
“The NPD games leader panel is currently comprised of nine leading games publishers. The initial focus will be on full-game downloads and downloadable content for consoles, PCs and portables. We aren’t at liberty to say who is participating at this time, since we are in the beta (proof of concept) stage.”
“The plan is to have digital POS sales integrated into our US new physical POS retail sales data to enable more efficient analysis for our clients. The timing of when that will happen has not been finalized.”
Ubisoft says the Wii U pioneered a tablet interface on consoles, but they’re focusing on the PS4 and XBO for second-screen experiences going forward
Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 5 Comments
– Ubisoft managing director Nicolas Rioux
The irony of the situation notwithstanding, it would be pretty unfortunate to see Ubisoft’s next gen games skip the Wii U, but perhaps even more troubling (politically) to see the games hit the platform but skip out on the tablet-integration interface. Given that the Wii U is the only console that actually ships with such a device installed, common sense would dictate that it’d be easiest to develop such extra features for. Unfortunately, the case is such that making an iPad app means you’ve covered the PS4 and XBO in one swipe, whereas developing something separate for the Wii U Gamepad requires additional resources.
Such has been the situation with Nintendo consoles for a while now– their unique architecture is designed the help Nintendo stay in the game, but it’s a bit of a turn off for third parties.
Video: Reggie says processing power doesn’t matter, games are most-important, more
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 12 Comments
Capcom won’t be at Gamescom 2013
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
Capcom will not be at this year’s Gamescom, according to an official statement from the company. A representative put it succinctly: “We’re not attending gamescom this year.”
You may remember that Capcom did attend Gamescom last year. In fact, the company held a press conference so that it could highlight its slate of games.
Club Nintendo Elite rewards news coming soon
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 4 Comments
A new Club Nintendo year was ushered in today. That means rewards will soon be revealed for members who reached Gold/Platinum status.
Just when will we be hearing news regarding this year’s prizes? Very shortly, apparently. An image posted to the main Club Nintendo page mentions, “Thank you to our Elite members. Gifts are coming soon.”
Nintendo has typically sent out Gold/Platinum rewards at the end of the year. I imagine that will be the case once again this year.
Club Nintendo Japan adds stylus pen set
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 1 Comment
A new reward has landed on the Japanese Club Nintendo site today. For 180 points, users can receive a special stylus pen set for use on the 3DS or Wii U GamePad. Each order comes with two white/black pen variations.
Iwata’s investor approval rating dips to 77.26 percent
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments
Satoru Iwata’s investor approval rating has taken a fairly sizable hit.
Last year, Iwata’s rating stood at 90.60 percent. It has now fallen to 77.26 percent – a little more than a 13 percent dip.
Iwata is the only Nintendo executive with an approval rating less than 90 percent. In the past, it has been as high as 96 percent.
[Feature] Justifying the existence of the Wii U Gamepad, and why the device already speaks for itself
Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, General Gaming, General Nintendo, Wii U | 22 Comments
Author: Austin
Coming out of the vacuum that was the E3 show-floor, the last thing I expected to hear out of the gaming press was that Nintendo needed to “justify the existence of the Gamepad”. But alas, that is indeed what I heard! Writers weren’t terribly coy with their impression that we’ve yet to see a truly exceptional experience on the Wii U that couldn’t even remotely be done anywhere else, and they– by their count– certainly didn’t see anything like that at E3 this year.
Neglecting experiences like ZombiU or Nintendo Land (which is an understandable and deliberate oversight), they might be right: We haven’t yet seen a game that both uses the Gamepad in a truly creative way and manages to pass the level of critical acclaim that many people are looking for. But here’s my question “why is that what the Gamepad needs?”
Microsoft executive thought company owned Donkey Kong following Rare purchase
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 8 Comments
In collaboration with Nintendo, Rare worked on a number of Donkey Kong games, including Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64. It’s perhaps due to the studio’s strong involvement with the series that a Microsoft executive thought that the company owned the IP following its acquisition of Rare.
Former Rare staffer and Conker’s Bad Fur Day director Chris Seavor revealed on Twitter:
@IOnEI_Falcon Here's a true story.. When Rare was first bought by MS a group of execs came on a tour.. One of them noticed the Donkey Kong.
— Christopher Seavor (@conkerhimself) June 16, 2013
@IOnEI_Falcon ..Posters everywhere and said.. 'Hey that's great.. We own Donkey Kong right ??' ………/massivesigh
— Christopher Seavor (@conkerhimself) June 16, 2013
Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first franchises, so it’s kind of hard to believe how out of the loop this Microsoft executive was!
Pokémon Company is holding “Pokémon Game Show” expo in Japan
Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
Apparently Pokémon is big enough a brand to warrant having its own exposition/convention in Japan this year, as the Pokémon Company has set up a large-scale event called “Pokémon Game Show” to showcase games like Pokémon Tretta, the trading card game, and Pokémon X/Y, the latter of which will be playable for attendees.
The show will take place in Tokyo at ‘Tokyo Big Sight’ on August 17th and 18th this year. More info to come.
