Podcast Stories

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

Nintendo hasn’t said much about the new 3D Mario action game and Mario Kart title for Wii U. Both were mentioned briefly during a Nintendo Direct a few months ago, but other than that… nada!

Despite the silence, could these two anticipated titles be coming to market this year? An inclusion in Nintendo’s financial results announcement seems to point in this direction.

“Based on the strong lineup of upcoming software titles for both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U systems, Nintendo expects to return to Operating Income profitability by the end of the current fiscal year. During the next several months, Nintendo expects to launch new titles in the Mario Kart (Wii U), Super Mario Bros. (Wii U), Wii Fit (Wii U), Pikmin (Wii U), The Legend of Zelda (Wii U and Nintendo 3DS), Mario & Luigi (Nintendo 3DS) and Pokémon (Nintendo 3DS) franchises. These games, along with titles from Nintendo’s third-party publishing partners, will help drive hardware momentum and introduce new audiences to the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS platforms.”

The new Mario and Mario Kart games will be playable at this year’s E3, so they must be fairly far along in development. It’d be pretty crazy to see both of them in the same year, though.

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

The Wii U is struggling in the marketplace right now. In order to improve the situation, Nintendo is planning on releasing more software for the system.

That makes sense, right? When you have quality software and games that people care about, that should lead to some increase in hardware sales.

Nintendo noted in its latest financial report that it will be launching “key Nintendo titles from the second half of this year through next year in order to regain momentum for the platform.” The company will also look to “improve the sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software” through Miiverse. Finally, improving hardware profitability is another goal, which will lead to reduced costs.

For the “Wii U” system, launched in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, there were some delays in software development that resulted in intervals between new software title releases at the early stage of this year. Taking this into consideration, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, we plan to concentrate on proactively releasing key Nintendo titles from the second half of this year through next year in order to regain momentum for the platform. Nintendo strives to improve the sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software to as many people as possible through our new network service called “Miiverse,” which offers an environment where people can empathize with others and share their gaming experiences. We also strive to reduce costs to improve hardware profitability.

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

Amongst the sales numbers and fancy infographics, Nintendo’s recent board of directors meeting also resulted in a number of planned changes to the company’s management. Most notably, the current chairman and CEO of Nintendo of America, Tatsumi Kimishima will be promoted to General Manager of Corporate Analysis and Administration Division and General Manager of the General Affairs Division. With none of the other board members set to assume his former position, President Satoru Iwata will be taking over his roles and responsibilities.

This is all pending shareholder approval and we won’t know for sure until the company’s Annual General Meeting in June.

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

edit: Wow that is the perfect thumbnail.

I decided to revisist Ocarina of Time this week because there were some cool glitches, and also people keep telling me to do more Zelda games. So here’s another one! Enjoy, faithful NintendoEverything readers.

Artwork courtesy of Andrew Nixon. :]

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

No matter how much it may sell, analysts will still call gloom and doom upon the 3DS. At the end of the day, these people feel that the portable can’t compete with mobile devices.

iOS is often one platform often brought up in 3DS comparisons. Both are portable. Both offer an array of digital content. But whereas tons of games may be available on the App Store, Nintendo of America’s sales VP Scott Moffitt sees the 3DS eShop as an area of higher-quality.

“With software, as with most things, there’s a distinct difference between quantity and quality. The website 148apps.biz recently calculated that there are currently 139,000 different games actively available on the [Apple] app store. One hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Huge number. That number is way too big to wrap your head around, so I try to think about it this way. If I wanted to spend just fifteen minutes sampling each one of those games, I’d be at it non-stop for four years. That’s a ton of caffeine. Obviously there are good games available for mobile platforms. But the point is, the Nintendo 3DS has a record of quality that’s hard to challenge.”

Moffitt added: “Nowhere else in portable gaming is high quality found so frequently.”

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

Nintendo has a lot of Zelda content in the works currently. There’s the Link to the Past follow-up for the 3DS, a remake of The Wind Waker for Wii U, and a brand new title made from the ground-up for Nintendo’s console.

How Nintendo is approaching the development of these projects – and Zelda overall – is rather interesting. Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen discussed the process with Kotaku, commenting that “They kind of shuffle people in and out, so they’ll sort of have their core group, but then they’re bringing new people in and out, so that helps bring in fresh ideas.”

“They kind of shuffle people in and out, so they’ll sort of have their core group, but then they’re bringing new people in and out, so that helps bring in fresh ideas. Each of the different games will have their main lead director, or maybe depending on the game, they may have two…Generally the way that the Zelda team operates is they may have one or two people who carry over or take the lead, but they do a lot of kind of jumping in and out in terms of moving from handheld to console, or vice-versa.”

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

Through a series of images posted on Facebook, Nintendo has officially confirmed the Wii U Virtual Console lineup for North America.

Eight games in total will be made available at launch. Six are from the NES catalog while two, F-Zero and Super Mario World, are from the SNES library.

Here’s the lineup in full:

NES

Balloon Fight
Donkey Kong Jr.
Excite Bike
Ice Climber
Kirby’s Adventure
Punch-Out!!

SNES

Super Mario World
F-Zero

A number of these games – such as Balloon Fight and Kirby’s Adventure – have already been made available through the Virtual Console Trial Campaign.

Nintendo hasn’t said when exactly the Wii U Virtual Console will be launching, but recent speculation has indicated that Friday will be the day.

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

Last week’s Nintendo Direct contained a lot of exciting announcements. We found out about a new Yoshi’s Island for the 3DS. There was news about a new Mario Party. And, of course, a brand new Zelda game set in the Link to the Past world is making its way to Nintendo’s portable.

These were all great titles, but a bit unsurprising. What was surprising, however, was Nintendo’s announcement that EarthBound will be available later this year on the Wii U Virtual Console in both North America and Europe.

When asked what took so long for Nintendo to re-release EarthBound in the west, Nintendo of America’s PR Marc Franklin said:

“(Laughs) We did the Nintendo Direct in January, and Mr. Iwata announced to the Japan market that (Mother 2 was releasing on Wii U Virtual Console). People saw the reaction to that announcement in the United States and the reaction was very, very…well, they wanted to see the game. It brought up a lot of desire to see the game. So we finally found that it was the right time to bring it out. There’s a lot that goes into the decision of when to bring a game to market, it’s not as easy as saying “OK, well, let’s bring a game to market,” push a button and there it is. The time was right, and what’s most important is that we’re all excited about it. There’s a lot of fans within Nintendo just as there are outside who are just as eager to play the game. We’re just happy that it’s coming and we’re happy that the fans are excited.”

And Franklin said the following when asked if anything has changed:

“The game is going to be representative of Earthbound. In terms of anything else, we don’t have much more to announce right now. But since it’s coming through Virtual Console, you can expect to get a Miiverse community going and be able to play it off TV on the GamePad, which is pretty cool.”

Source

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

Update: Our guess was correct, somewhat. Rogers has now clarified:

The ever-reliable Emily Rogers has tweeted a couple of interesting notes regarding future features for the eShop and Virtual Console. Rogers wouldn’t say much, but did tease that “There may come a time in the future when owning both a Wii U and 3DS will become beneficial.”

Perhaps Nintendo could be working on a cross-buy option for Virtual Console titles? As in, if you buy one VC game on the Wii U, you’d get its counterpart for free (or at a reduced price) on the 3DS and vice versa? Just a guess!

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

A few big titles came out on Nintendo platforms last month. Arguably the most significant was Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which launched on both the Wii U and 3DS.

In roughly three weeks, Ultimate moved somewhere between 100,000 and 130,000 copies on both platforms. The 3DS picked up 60% of the game’s sales while Wii U picked up the other 40%. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is now 13th all time on NPD’s Wii U lifetime software chart.

Other NPD estimates include LEGO City: Undercover (more than 100,000 copies, but less than Ultimate on Wii U and 3DS), Need for Speed: Most Wanted U (less than 10,000 copies), and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate (around 30,000 units).

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