Podcast Stories

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

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Game publishers and developers shove nonsense into our faces a lot, and most of the time we just say “Yea, that’s cool. It makes sense.”, even when it doesn’t.

Well, I feel like I don’t want to take that anymore. At least for today.

Author: Austin

I wouldn’t be writing this feature if the response to last night’s quote from Gearbox regarding why Borderlands wouldn’t be coming to Wii U was different. If bloggers and pseudo-journalists had called them out and said “Hey, you know what, that reason makes absolutely no sense!”, I wouldn’t be furiously (okay, not furiously– that’s a word to make it seem more exciting) typing away right now, anxious to tell you all why this is a bunch of baloney.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Random, Wii U | 0 comments

I suspect a few of you have seem this already (I noted it in the end of my feature last night), but in case you hadn’t heard how crazy things got towards the end, here’s the deal: The cardboard cutout of the Wii U Gamepad (above) had bids upwards of $90,000 over the last couple of days before being removed by eBay administrators for some ridiculous reason like “This is stupid” or “This is a piece of cardboard. You can’t charge this much for it.”.

While the lister won’t be getting rich quickly off of this hilarious mockup, he’s probably pretty happy that things went as far as they did. I wonder if anyone has gotten an interview with him yet…

Via Joystiq

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

New Super Mario Bros. U features a few playable characters. You can control Mario, Luigi, Toad, and your very own Mii. Peach, however, is not playable.

Explaining the move, game director Masataka Takemoto said Peach wasn’t made available to players since she would likely have a different set of moves and animation. But in the New Super Mario Bros. series, the team wants all players to be on equal footing.

“In Super Mario Bros 2, Princess Peach had her own unique moves and animation. In this series, we want all the players to have the same moves and animations as Mario, and Princess Peach isn’t suited for that.”

Source

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

Nintendo sold more than 1.2 million hardware units during the past week, according to NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Breaking things down more specifically, over 700,000 consoles were sold. Wii U came in 400,000 units sold while the Wii moved another 300,000 systems.

Regarding Wii U’s performance, Reggie said that the console’s limited stock impacted sales. He noted that the company “is essentially sold out of retail” and when stock is replenished at stores, “they’re selling out immediately.”

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

Update 2: Bumped to the front page with the following from Andy:

“I think I might have figured out part of the problem. When I first got my Wii U going after the day 1 update I plugged in the external USB drive I had hoped to use to download digital titles. The first Nintendoland and NSMBU updates were downloaded and installed while the drive was plugged in. I didn’t think much of it at the time because they are disc titles for me, I didn’t figure any data would be getting sent anywhere but the system. After a few days I unplugged the external USB drive to save power. It was shortly after that I was alerted to two more game updates for NL and NSMBU respectively. It was after those updates that the save data vanished. If other users mention save data wipes it might be helpful to learn whether they were using disc-based titles or digital ones and if an external drive was plugged in at the time. I really hope this helps!”

Update: Austin is here to add that he just talked to someone on Miiverse who said that their ZombiU save was deleted after an update. The start of a pattern…? I hope not!

Nintendo Everything reader Andy Holland tells us that all of his New Super Mario Bros. U save data was wiped following an update ran by the game today.

Andy says two updates have been automatically applied for him thus far. The first did not cause any issues. The second one, however, did.

Andy has since contacted Nintendo. We’ll let you know about any major developments about the situation.

It’s possible that this is an isolated incident, so don’t freak out just yet!

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

Borderlands, one of Gearbox’s strongest IPs, has yet to land on the Wii U. What would it take to get the franchise on the new console?

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told GamesMaster that Borderlands isn’t on the system since the team has not yet thought of “a natural, obvious, ‘OMG, I want that for what the Wii U brings to the table’ feature.”

“We get asked if there is going to be a Wii U version of Borderlands, and the reason why there’s not is because we couldn’t think of a natural, obvious, ‘OMG, I want that for what the Wii U brings to the table’ feature.”

Contrasting this with Aliens: Colonial Marines, which will release on the Wii U next year, Pitchford said:

“But with Aliens, the first thing we thought was ‘Holy sh*t, I can have a motion controller in my hands!’ When it’s there in my lap it feels like I’m part of the movie.”

Thanks to joclo for the tip.

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

Despite being a developer at heart, Shigeru Miyamoto doesn’t spent most of his time making games. He reads and writes a whole lot of emails and makes phone calls instead.

“Actually, most of my working time is occupied by reading email, making phone calls and returning comments by email… I’m always trying to remind myself that even though something can be done digitally, I need to have face-to-face contact with others.”

Going in a completely different direction, we have a few words from Miyamoto regarding third-party support. Here’s what he had to say about that topic:

“It’s a matter of how seriously they commit themselves. Our mission is to approach developers, and if they’re willing to commit to experiences only available on Nintendo hardware, we are more willing to help. Each developer has his or her own ideas and we really encourage the differences.”

And this post wouldn’t be complete without a bit of a strange story from Miyamoto’s trip to Spain.

Miyamoto ended up getting stuck in a bathroom following a door lock malfunction. He was about to meet two members of the royal family, so to guarantee his prompt arrival, the door was hacked down with a crowbar and he was escorted away by police.

Source

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

Below you’ll find a comprehensive listing of download sizes for Wii U games. Retail as well as indie titles are included.

Nano Assault Neo – 81 MB
Chasing Aurora – 103 MB
Little Inferno – 114 MB
Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition – 525 MB
Scribblenaust Unlimited – 1378 MB
ESPN Sports Connection – 1645 MB
Game Party Champions – 1719 MB
New Super Marios Bros. U – 1733 MB
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013 – 1913 MB
Trine 2: Director’s Cut – 1941 MB
Nintendo Land – 2852 MB
Madden NFL 13 – 4840 MB
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge – 5443 MB
ZombiU – 5737 MB
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed – 5898 MB
Rabbids Land – 7383 MB
EA Sports FIFA Soccer 13 – 7490 MB
Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two – 7522 MB
Darksiders II – 9574 MB
Sing Party – 12 GB
Just Dance 4 – 15 GB
Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper – 16 GB
Assassins Creed III – 17 GB

Source

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

Speaking in an interview with CNN, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime proclaimed that “third-party games like Call of Duty look dramatically better on our system.”

Reggie was asked about the specs of Wii U, keeping in mind that Sony and Microsoft will likely release new consoles with higher specs in a year or so. To this, Reggie said: “The specs are quite different from our competitor systems.”

Here’s the response in full:

“Well first off, I have to correct you. The specs are quite different than the competitor systems. Much more graphically intensive. If you do a side-by-side comparison, you would actually see that third-party games like Call of Duty look dramatically better on our system. And then in terms of what competition’s going to do in the future, we’ll see. We know that based on our own development, this two-screen gaming experience really is the next innovation that consumers are gravitating to. It’s selling extremely well here in the Americas. Already stocks are quite low in the marketplace, we’re rapidly replenishing. And so for us, certainly consumers are deciding that the innovation is well worth their investment.”

When it comes to games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, an analysis done by Digital Foundry states that the Wii U game “matches the look of the Xbox 360 game and thus gives it an edge visually over the PlayStation 3 release, but unfortunately it comes up well short in terms of performance”. The publication specifically cited a poor frame rate with the Wii U version.

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Podcast Stories, Reviews, Wii U | 0 comments

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The ‘Call of Duty’ series may still be about intricate stories and engaging characters after all.

Author: Austin

A lot of people make fun of Call of Duty for being mindless, repetitive nonsense that too many people buy into when there are way better games out there that they could be playing. Hell, whenever I need a game to be the faceman of the excessively high-octane, testosterone-fueled trends that permeate gaming culture today, I turn to Activision’s inhumanely popular first person shooter franchise. It just seems… “right”, somehow. And yet, after playing Black Ops 2 extensively over the last week or so, I can’t help but feel as though I need to clarify something:

Treyarch is now exempt from the criticisms that apply to the Modern Warfare series.

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