Rayman Legends originally started out as a Wii U exclusive. But when the platformer launches later this summer, it will be coming to four different systems.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot explained to GamesBeat that the company was concerned about potentially poor sales on Wii U. Guillemot said, “we didn’t want those creators to wind up in a position where even after making a fantastic game, they didn’t sell well enough.” In order to make additional versions and improve the Wii U version, Ubisoft made the decision to push the game’s release back.

Nintendo’s first free-to-play game is Steel Diver, multiplayer confirmed

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Nintendo is bringing back the 3DS launch game Steel Diver in the form of a free-to-play game.

Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed the news to IGN, and also revealed that multiplayer will be included. Platforms are unconfirmed at this time, however.

“There is something we’re doing with the Steel Diver idea that I think is going to open things up with that game… It’s going to be very fun. We’re exploring from a perspective of where we can take that from a multiplayer standpoint – it’s going to have this four-player battle mode that I think is going to be very interesting. It’s something that we’re hoping to be able to show relatively soon.”

The new free-to-play Steel Diver game could introduce a membership or micro-transaction type of free – nothing is decided currently. IGN reports that “Miyamoto stressed that his team was focused on balancing how a pricing model would affect the entertainment value of the final product, which ultimately would be available in a packaged form as well.”

Source

Kamiya estimates 20 hours of gameplay for Wonderful 101, would be happy to see Bayonetta in Smash Bros.

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

The Wonderful 101 will not be a short game. Far from it, actually.

Although director Hideki Kamiya and his team at Platinum Games are striving to create a game with a lot of replay value, there is a ton of content waiting for players who only plan on experiencing The Wonderful 101 once. Kamiya estimates 20 hours of gameplay for a “normal play session”.

Miyamoto says is was challenging to move Pikmin 3 from Wii to Wii U, making Pikmin accessible, difficulties with portable Pikmin

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

Nintendo confirmed Pikmin 3 way back in 2008. The game is finally coming out in a few weeks, several months following the Wii U’s launch.

Shigeru Miyamoto told Polygon recently that he had hoped to bring Pikmin 3 out sooner, but doing so wouldn’t have been so easy. It’s true that the title started off on Wii, but moving it to the Wii U was more difficult than people assume.

“I did want to release it sooner. One of the big challenges was that I think that a lot of people, they hear the name Wii U, and because it shares the Wii name, the assumption is, ‘Oh, it would be very easy to take whatever was on Wii and just move it to Wii U.’ But in fact, the jump in a hardware standpoint, both from the development structure and the chipset within the system, it was such a dramatic change from what we had with Wii that development of the game, we had to recreate it to move it over to Wii U. So that was one of the challenges.”

Video: “Mario and Luigi at the Nintendo E3 2013 Booth”

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments

Miyamoto wishes Nintendo could have done more with Zelda II

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 1 Comment

Shigeru Miyamoto considers Pikmin 3 to be one of his best games. What about his worst?

Although he won’t say it’s bad necessarily, Miyamoto told Kotaku: “I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.”

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever made a bad game, per se, but a game I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.”
“When we’re designing games, we have our plan for what we’re going to design but in our process it evolves and grows from there. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, unfortunately all we ended up creating was what we had originally planned on paper.”
“I think specifically in the case of Zelda II we had a challenge just in terms of what the hardware was capable of doing.”

As far as what Miyamoto would have liked to do with Zelda II, he said:

Iwata on software delays, says highest-quality products needed to keep maintain consumer trust

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

It has been made clear that Nintendo was unable to deliver all of its intended software for Wii U on time. Nintendo has cited a number of reasons for development days, such as the difficulties in making the jump to the HD era. It’s also true that more time than usual was needed to bring some 3DS content to market.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata also pointed out during the Q&A portion of Nintendo’s E3 2013 analyst briefing that the company must polish its games to the highest level. With the popularity of games on smart devices and other recent trends, Iwata feels that “it is becoming increasingly more difficult to have consumers understand and appreciate the value that a particular game offers than ever before.”

Putting out the highest-quality products is therefore essential. Nintendo feels the need to “improve and re-polish any game that we feel is still lacking in quality.” If Nintendo were to release poor software, consumers’ trust could be lost and the brands of popular franchises could be damaged.

Iwata discusses Nintendo’s free-to-play plans

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Nintendo has some free-to-play software in the works. What exactly the company has planned is unclear, but we do know that it will have nothing to do popular franchises such as Mario and Pokemon.

Putting out free-to-play software provides Nintendo with “greater flexibility in terms of how we offer our products to consumers and how to monetize them”, president Satoru Iwata explained during an E3 2013 analyst briefing. However, Iwata warned that unbalanced such software “could result in some consumers paying extremely large amounts of money, and we can certainly not expect to build a good relationship with our consumers in this fashion.” Balanced and reasonable free-to-play games are needed so that Nintendo can maintain “a favorable long-term relationship” with consumers.

Iwata estimates that we’ll be seeing Nintendo’s first free-to-play title this fiscal year.

E3 2013 – Nintendo booth tour

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments

Austin put together this neat little booth tour video from this year’s E3. Watch it below!

Mario Kart 8 team on anti-gravity idea, Miyamoto’s reluctance to include Miis, scrapped drill idea, more

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

Nintendo’s Hideki Konno and Kosuke Yabuki divulged a number of intriguing tidbits about Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart in general while speaking with MTV Multiplayer. The two discussed the origins of the anti-gravity idea, how Shigeru Miyamoto was very reluctant to make Miis playable, an abandoned idea for drills on karts, and more.

As always, you can find the full responses after the break.