With the Super Mario Galaxy games, it was the first time we saw Nintendo truly taking advantage of a live orchestra. Super Mario 3D World, the company’s latest 3D platformer, will be receiving similar treatment.
Destructoid managed to obtain confirmation from lead composer Mahito Yokota that many tracks will feature a live performance.
He told the site:
“There are naturally a lot of tracks performed live. We’re arranging the music with a big-band feel, taking advantage of a full horn section with trumpets and saxophones.”
Nintendo’s latest financial results are in. The company did just about what most had expected – the Wii U struggled, but the 3DS continued to perform very well.
Here’s the full overview of Nintendo’s performance:
– 300,000 Wii U consoles sold in the three month period to September 30th
– That’s double the 160,000 sold in the prior three months
– Wii U has sold only 460,000 worldwide in the six month period to September 30th
– An average of 76,666 units a month worldwide
– Lifetime Wii U sales are 3.91 million
– Nintendo not likely to reach its nine million sales expectation by the end of its 2014 financial year
– Pikmin 3 and Zelda: Wind Waker HD did not significantly boost console sales during the six month period in which both games were released
– Nintendo’s net sales: 196.5 billion yet
– Loss of 23.2 million yen
– Nintendo statement: “The Wii U hardware still has a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits”
– Nintendo blamed the loss on a markdown in the US and Europe, plus advertising and research/development for Wii U
– Animal Crossing: New Leaf has sold 2.49 million units worldwide
– Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D all showing “steady sales”
– Global 3DS sales: 3.89 million for the period
– 27.38 million games sold during the period
– 3DS has now sold 34.98 million units worldwide since launch to the end of September 2013
– Nintendo not revising its forecast for the 2014 financial year even with the loss and Wii U’s poor sales
– Pokemon X/Y “showed extremely strong initial sales, further propelling the popularity of the system”
– Wii U: “we attempt to concentrate on proactively releasing key first-party titles towards the coming year in order to regain momentum for the platform”
– Nintendo pointed to Wii Party U and Super Mario 3D World
– Wii U will be offered “at an affordable price by bundling software with the system”
– New promotional activities for Wii Fit U
– Nintendo also hopes to improve digital revenue and hardware profitability for both Wii U and 3DS by reducing their manufacturing cost
You can find Nintendo’s full financial results here.
For the release of Bravely Default: For the Sequel, Square Enix is preparing a set of drama CDs known as “Reunion Festival”. Japanese fans will have access to an all-original script starting on December 25th, which is about “bringing the important people back together for a celebratory meeting”.
CD buyers will also receive a special download code for four costumes. These include a Dimensional Officer suit for Tiz, Bunny Bravo costume for Agnes, a Dukedom Civil Officer Apprentice outfit for Edea, and a rather odd piece of garb for Ringabel.
Nintendo tends to make use of various art styles with the Zelda games. We’ve seen approaches that have been realistic, cel-shaded, and even impressionistic.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker most definitely introduced the biggest change in the series. No one saw the cartoon-like visuals coming, and the style initially caused quite the uproar. It’s in part due to Wind Waker’s original reception that it seems as though Nintendo will be more cautious with art styles in future Zeldas.
Eiji Aonuma, speaking with GamesTM this month, said the development team “will be a bit more careful in the future” with regard to the visual direction of Zelda entries. That being said, Aonuma would be willing “to break new ground again” if an approach was created that would appeal to the developers and players.
Aonuma told the magazine:
“We encountered an awful lot of problems from the drastic leap we took with Wind Waker. I think we will be a bit more careful in the future, but if we find a new approach that not just the developers, but also the users would enjoy then I think we will want to break new ground again. But we haven’t found such an approach yet.”
Thanks to joclo for sending this our way.
Nintendo has announced the 2013 Japanese Club Nintendo Platinum rewards. Members who reached the status this year will receive a download code for Advance Wars: Day of Ruin as well as a calender.
Advance Wars’ inclusion as a reward is particularly noteworthy. Nintendo never released Days of Ruin in Japan, but is now doing so through Club Nintendo.
Platinum members can download the title as a DSiWare title starting today. Nintendo will also allow all Japanese Club Nintendo users to pick up Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for 800 points beginning in May 2014.
The following is an excerpt from the latest round of Iwata Asks about the development of Wii Sports Club. Specifically, these quotes relate to the game’s online functionality (Miiverse included) and how the team (including folks from Namco Bandai, who helped the game along) tackled various issues that they came across:
“When we thought about how we want people to have fun with Wii Sports on the new hardware, the Wii U console, there was no way, given the expectations, that we couldn’t prepare online gaming. So as we began development, we set online gameplay of Tennis — the representative sport of Wii Sports — as our first goal. [We wanted to] pour our energy into how we could make [online gaming] fun.”
“In a typical online game, the information of the button presses are sent to your opponent, and the inputs are synchronized between the players, but for this game you have to send complex information from the gyro sensor and accelerometer of the Wii Remote Plus controllers, in addition to information from the buttons, which was a brand new challenge.”
– Nintendo EAD Takayuki Shimamura
Specifically regarding Miiverse:
“So we thought about how [Miiverse] should work. But if we were to simply implement Miiverse to a sporting game, the winners would probably write cheerful comments like ‘Yay! I won!’ But I bet the losers would hardly write anything at all, like ‘Oh I’m so frustrated I lost.’ We were concerned that Miiverse would become a cruel place. We also thought many people who play Wii Sports would have never played competitive games online.”
“Everyone has a hometown or someplace where they live, so we thought about setting it up in a way as if at first you join the sports club in the area where you live, and if we made sports clubs for the various states and provinces, each of the regions could compete.”
– Nintendo EAD Takayuki Shimamura
NIS America will bring Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl to Europe, the company announced today. A release is planned for 2014.
Atlus launched Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl in North America earlier this month. The game originally hit Japan in late June.
