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

Super Mario 3D Land is, thus far, having more success than Super Mario Galaxy. 3D Land sold through 8 million copies while Galaxy moved 7.66 million units through their first 13 months on the market.

Japan could be pointed to as the primary reason for Super Mario 3D Land’s success. However, 3D Land sold 1.85 million copies in Japan whereas Galaxy’s sales stood at 934,000.

Galaxy has sold slightly more in the west. But thanks to sales from Japan, 3D Land is outpacing Galaxy worldwide.

Source

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments

Amazon has Tales of the Abyss 3DS in stock for $30. It’s not extremely rare, but the game has been a somewhat tough find over the past few months. Plus, it’s a great game – I’ve played through the entire thing and would absolutely recommend it (though it’s not for everyone!).

View the product page here. Shipping is free.

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Videos | 0 comments

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

Cheesemeister has gone to the trouble of translating various bits from Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing Q&A. A few of the points are rehashed from quotes we covered earlier today, but there’s quite a bit of new stuff as well. Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto talk Pikmin 3, Wii U NFC, 3DS sales and overseas performance, and more.

• Iwata: Cloud gaming possible but introduces lag, therefore not suited to all game types, i.e. action.
• Iwata: Merger of home and portable console dev. groups not a move to 1 system, but sharing of dev. process, OS, pre-installed SW, assets.
• Iwata: If groups’ merger successful, it may instead allow undivided development to be applicable to more types of (Nintendo) devices.
• Miyamoto: Having 1 dev. environment would allow efforts to be concentrated on making more games rather than being lost on hardware support.
• Iwata: Some Animal Crossing New Leaf customers said on Club Nintendo surveys that their purchases were motivated by talk about it on Twitter.
• Iwata: “Asymmetric gameplay” wasn’t the best term to describe Nintendo Land, want to think of a better way to describe Wii U software.
• Miyamoto: Pikmin 3’s HD graphics are the most appealing part. Not forcing asymmetric gameplay, instead showing a map. Off-TV play enabled.
• Miyamoto: Pikmin 3 off-TV play can be thought of as GameCube-style gameplay in your hand. Wii Remote Plus’ gyro sensor can be used on TV.
• Miyamoto: I think that Pikmin 3 off-TV play is the freshest gameplay experience. Please look forward to it.
• Miyamoto: Pikmin, Bulbear to appear w/ Toho Cinemas logo before movie screenings. They’ll be shown in 3D for 3D movies.
• Iwata: WiiU NFC can be used w/ cards/figures for games, sharing data with arcade games, and in electronic payments. I want to recoup cost.
• Iwata: More than thinking about not achieving 100b yen operating income, it’s my job to think about how to achieve it.
• Iwata: For the 3DS, the point is to achieve the same kind of virtuous cycle in HW and SW sales overseas as in Japan by releasing good games.
• Iwata: For the Wii U, software will really start to arrive that communicates its appeal, and I aim to greatly improve its sales flow.
• Iwata: As for what I’d do in case of failure, I used the word “commitment”, so please understand what I mean.
• Iwata: If only the same number of 3DS systems sell next FY as this FY, software sales will be limited and the goal won’t be achievable.
• Iwata: Therefore I absolutely don’t think that the 3DS is meeting its sales potential overseas. It’s not due to external factors, but please understand that it’s because we haven’t sufficiently communicated the 3DS’ appeal as a platform of choice.
• Iwata: Expanding the sales of the 3DS beyond this fiscal year’s numbers is obviously our objective.
• Genyo Takeda: I don’t think that the Wii U CPU and GPU are imbalanced in favor of the GPU. It depends how you measure. GPU chip is bigger.
• Genyo Takeda: In modern CPUs, the math logic portions are rather small. In new PCs and servers, the CPUs may be big, but the logic is small.
• Genyo Takeda: It’s common for the surrounding SRAM cache memory in CPUs to be bigger. From that viewpoint, you wouldn’t see them imbalanced.
• Genyo Takeda: It’s a memory-intensified design. I can’t get into specifics, but I think it’s rather powerful.
• Genyo Takeda: As for the GPU, the tech is fairly mature and going in the same direction as competitors. Makers are used to prog. shaders.
• Genyo Takeda: The experience of other companies and Nintendo with shaders means that the difficulty with them early on has decreased.

Source 1, Source 2

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

The Wii U GPU was another item brought up by an investor at Nintendo’s financial results briefing earlier this week.

Developers have praised Wii U’s memory in the past, but some have wondered if the console’s architecture focuses too much on GPU. Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, and Genyo Takeda all responded to this topic at the Q&A session of Nintendo’s investors meeting.

Takeda’s comments were, perhaps, most enlightening. He admitted that the GPU is “more pronounced” than the Wii U’s CPU, but said those who claim the CPU is weak are incorrect.

Read on below for the full comments from Miyamoto, Iwata, and Takeda.

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

Satoru Iwata told investors at a financial results briefing earlier this week that Nintendo does not believe “cloud gaming is the future”. Although he acknowledged that it has its advantages (and disadvantages), Nintendo is “trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone.”

An unofficial translation from the meeting reads:

“There are things you can do with cloud gaming and there are things you cant do. We don’t agree that cloud gaming is the future and we are trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone. Unified platforms are for us not platforms that are one but rather platforms that have the same development architecture. This also means that there could be more platforms.”

Shigeru Miyamoto, who was also in attendance, spoke about the challenge of creating new development environments for Wii U and 3DS:

“We needed to create new development environments for Wii U and 3DS unlike Wii which reused the GameCube architecture. We are unifying our development teams to accommodate this challenge and minimize the losses while preparing the shift. I think handhelds and consoles will coexist as the aim is different.

Source, Via

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments

Level-5 has big plans for Fantasy Life in 2013. Despite releasing the game last year, new content is coming to the Japanese title in the future.

Players can look forward to online play, a level cap raise, brand new quests, world changes, and more through DLC. Pricing and release date information for the downloadable content has not been announced.

Source, Via

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

Earlier today, Nintendo posted a transcript of the company’s financial results Q&A from its investor’s meeting. It isn’t available in English just yet, but a few sections have been unofficially translated online.

One topic concerns new games for Wii U. An investor asked Nintendo about the timeframe of new software the company has presented as of late, and also requested information regarding the development structure.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that his company is “not thinking about a long timeframe.” Some of the newly revealed titles will be released from mid-2013 up through the end of the year. Iwata added that there is additional software coming towards the end of the year that has not yet been announced.

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

Activision seems to be making preparations for a new Skylanders announcement.

On Wednesday, the publisher registered the domains SkylandersKaosAlliance.com, SkylandersNanoForce.com, SkylandersSuperForce.com and SkylandersSwapForce.com.

The Skylanders IP has resulted in annual releases for Activision. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure launched in 2011, followed by Skylanders Giants last year. You may remember that Activision announced Giants nearly a year ago today. It was officially revealed on February 7, 2012. Could an announcement for a third Skylanders be just a few days away?

Source

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

When Nintendo published Iwata Asks: Fire Emblem: Awakening in Japanese last year, a few interesting tidbits were translated from the discussion. For instance, we heard that an idea for a new Fire Emblem set in a modern world was thrown around, as was one concept for a title set on Mars.

Now that the Iwata Asks is available in English, we have the full English translation and relevant portion from the discussion. Read on below for the excerpt.

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