Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

Satoru Iwata addressed Nintendo’s network policy during the company’s investor meeting last week. This is another topic that we covered fairly heavily last week, but the official translation has now arrived. You can find it below.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

One investor asked Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to explain the Nintendo Web Framework during the company’s investor meeting last week.

He did just that, responding:

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii | 0 comments

The launch of the Wii Vitality Sensor is “pending”, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said.

Nintendo has been developing the accessory for a number of years, which was first announced during its E3 2009 press conference. Unfortunately, the Wii Vitality Sensor hasn’t performed up to expectations. It may work for 90 percent of consumers, but that’s simply not good enough.

Thus, Nintendo hasn’t “been able to launch it as a commercial product because we could not get it to work as we expected and it was of narrower application than we had originally thought.” In order for it to release, Iwata said: “We would like to launch it into the market if technology advancements enable 999 of 1,000 people to use it without any problems, not only 90 out of 100 people. I actually think that it must be 1,000 of 1,000 people, but (since we use the living body signal with individual differences) it is a little bit of a stretch to make it applicable to every single person.”

Iwata’s full statements from Nintendo’s investor briefing Q&A held last week:

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 2 Comments

Third-party support for Wii U was one topic discussed by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during the company’s latest investor briefing Q&A.

Iwata noted that even though some overseas developers may not be creating titles for Wii U, “other big publishers have made all of their main titles available for the platform.”

In order to regain third-party support, Iwata reiterated the need to improve Wii U momentum with first-party releases. Second, Nintendo would like to see a third-party title break out on the console. Although there were quite a few third-party games to choose from at the Wii U launch, “most of them were converted from other platforms and therefore could not enjoy brisk sales. As a result, some software developers have become pessimistic about Wii U.”

Iwata also restated something that we’ve been hearing over the past month or so. Regarding third-parties, Iwata said there are “more key titles to be announced by them”.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii | 0 comments

A series of new games hit the StreetPass Mii Plaza – in Europe and Japan – as downloadable content last month. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently said that these new mini-games came out because the company felt 3DS users would be itching for new content inside the app.

Iwata also drew comparisons to Wii Play: Motion. Much like that title, the StreetPass Mii Plaza games were created by individual developers. Also, had the model been in place and digital distribution saw a rise in popularity, Wii Play: Motion could have been considered as a DLC-type package.

Iwata additionally confirmed a fairly impressive stat: sales of the new StreetPass Mii Plaza games have already exceeded 200,000 digital copies.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata tackled a question regarding Virtual Boy games on the 3DS during the company’s most-recent investor meeting Q&A. This is something that we posted about last week, but we now have the official translation.

Iwata’s statement reads:

I cannot talk about any unannounced products on occasions like this, but Virtual Boy is a game console Nintendo launched in the past that allows players to experience a 3D world in black and red only by just looking into it. It was not a commercial success, but some say that it was an attractive and extremely unique product by the standards at that time. I believe your comment is that we should take advantage of our software assets from Virtual Boy and I would like to take note of that advice for the future.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii, Wii U | 0 comments

During the last hardware generation, Nintendo was known for its unique control schemes. The Wii introduced motion controls. The DS provided dual-screen gameplay.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata spoke about the company’s approach to new control types at a recent investor briefing Q&A. His comments came in response to one attendee who expressed disappointment in how these new schemes contributed to the creation of fresh experiences.

Iwata said:

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments

At the Japan Expo in France earlier today, Level-5 announced the European release date for Inazuma Eleven 3: Lightning Bolt/Bomb Blast. Both games will be available on September 27.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Donkey Kong are just a few of the well-known names that we seen from Nintendo regularly. But some fans and critics have called for the company to make something new and come out with never-before-seen IPs.

In Shigeru Miyamoto’s opinion, it makes sense to rely on Nintendo’s well-regarded series. He also believes that the likes of Nintendogs, Brain Age, and Wii Fit are all new franchises because they offer original experiences. While most may not see it this way because they lack a symbolic character, Miyamoto said that these titles “are actually contributing to our sales.”

Also, it is sometimes said that Nintendo has recently had no new franchises. At E3 this year, some said that Nintendo is always showing the same series of games, but this is because we mainly featured the characters from our franchises in our exhibition booth. There were six featured areas of our franchises in our booth, including Zelda, Mario and Donkey Kong, and the visitors were able to take commemorative photos with these characters. Considering that visitors will not enjoy less well-known franchises in such areas, we did it in this way, which resulted in such a criticism, I think. On the other hand, I think it is one of our advantages to have such franchises. When some young in-house developers come up with an idea of a new franchise, I say that creating a new character does not necessarily mean creating a new franchise. In my view, a new way of playing or new use of media is necessary for a “new product” and creating a character is not the first thing to do. In this sense, “nintendogs,” “Brain Age” and “Wii Fit” are all new franchises. Few people see it this way because these games have no symbolic “character” like the existence of Mario, but they are actually contributing to our sales. I would like to continue developing video games with the view of entertaining a wide variety of people including the existing video game fans. Thank you so much for your support.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 5 Comments

The Wii U is Nintendo’s first attempt at HD development. As such, the transition to making these types of games hasn’t been smooth.

Shigeru Miyamoto said during a recent investor Q&A that the switch to Wii U development – HD visuals and all – “requires about twice the human resources than before.” Nintendo “may have underestimated the scale of this change and as a result”, which caused games to remain in development longer than expected. Miyamoto now feels that Nintendo is just about past some of these initial difficulties, however.

When it comes to the scale of software development, Wii U with HD graphics requires about twice the human resources than before. Please allow me to explain that we may have underestimated the scale of this change and as a result, the overall software development took more time than originally anticipated just as we tried to polish the software at the completion phase of development. However, we are almost out of this phase, and we are also trying to create something unique utilizing an easier development approach called “Nintendo Web Framework.”

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