Well, it looks like the time has come… and sooner than I originally anticipated. I think it’s time to disconnect the forum and main site. Some important aspects can’t be fixed until that connection is broken, so now’s as good a time as any!
The forum’s news sub-board will still exist. When everything is finished, I’m considering opening it fully so that anyone can post a topic. If it becomes superfluous or you guys think it’s silly, I’ll remove it.
No exact timetable for the disconnect since I have a lot of items to take care of beforehand, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up as to what our plans are. What we’ll likely end up doing is implementing Disqus for comments going forward. It works well enough on GE, and a lot of people already have accounts since it’s a widely-used comments system.
Thoughts, complaints, or anything else? Post in the comments, forum, or send us an email!
Time for another stupid video! Nintendo president Satoru Iwata makes a few “announcements” in this Nintendo Direct Mini.
Pencil Test Studios has become an official Wii U developer, the company has announced on Facebook. It was reported yesterday that Nintendo of America had expressed interest in the developer’s title, Armikrog.
Pencil Test’s Facebook message reads:
“We’re getting some love from Nintendo… Pencil Test Studios is now a licensed Wii U developer.”
Armikrog probably won’t make its Kickstarter target of $900,000. Only four days remain and a little less than $300,000 will need to be raised before then. Still, with Pencil Test now having a Wii U dev kit, perhaps there’s a chance of Armikrog coming to the eShop regardless.
Disastercake’s RPG, “Soul Saga”, has a chance of landing on Wii U. The game will head to the eShop if a $105,000 stretch goal is reached on Kickstarter.
Mike from Disastercake already has a few ideas in mind as to what the team could do on Wii U:
I’m not exactly positive how I will deal with it exactly yet, but I think I will be adding a lot of the GUI (graphical user interface) on the Wii U controller, clearing up the space on the TV to look more like a movie. I think it’s great to have lots of screen real estate, and game designers have been struggling to find ways to get the GUI out of the way of the pretty graphics for a long time.
[In the game] the player has a Steampunk styled smart phone for communicating with other people in the game world, so that menu GUI would be able to find a good place on the controller. So if the player gets a text message while roaming the world, the Wii U GamePad will start to vibrate and make a noise. Or, if the player has an incoming call it will also vibrate and ring and display the caller’s portrait on the GamePad like it was a smart phone. The player can then answer the phone to initiate the conversation, or just hang up on them if they want to dodge that call.
More information about Soul Saga can be found on the Kickstarter page here. At present, the title is roughly $35,000 funded. Disastercake is looking to reach $60,000 within the next 22 days.
Thanks to Ken P for the tip.
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D is selling about as well as the original Wii game did in Japan.
Data obtained by Media Create puts the title at 104,569 units sold in its first week. To compare, Donkey Kong Country Returns sold 163,310 copies in its first week on Wii.
Sell-through rates for both versions are very, very similar. Donkey Kong Country Returns originally sold through 56.63% of its shipment while a rate of 54.34% was achieved on Wii.
That should mean Nintendo initially shipped 288,380 copies of the original Donkey Kong Country Returns. On the other hand, 192,434 copies were probably shipped for Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D.
G-Style is cooking up a new downloadable title for the 3DS eShop known as “Zombie Bowling”. It’s due out in Japan next month. An overseas release hasn’t been announced, but there’s a decent chance that Zombie Bowling will also come to North America and Europe.
Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines has once again commented on the company’s stance towards publishing titles on the Wii U as well as handhelds. These are platforms that Bethesda hasn’t supported, having dedicated most of its resources to Sony and Microsoft consoles.
Hines said:
“There’s a decent list of stuff that you don’t associate with us. We don’t have any games on Facebook. We’re not heavily into mobile. Here and there we’ve done some stuff. We did a little free Dishonored thing. We did the Rage thing, which was John [Carmack] going, ‘hey, I can get this to work on that, it’ll be fun.’ But in general, month over month, year over year, we don’t have stuff that we’re developing or talking about.”
“We don’t have anything announced for Wii U. We don’t have anything announced for the handhelds. Are there opportunities that could come up there that could make sense and be the kinds of things we would want to do? Absolutely. But what we have going on right now doesn’t fit with that.”
“Other platforms that we’re not doing anything for, we’ll wait and see. I would never say never. There are a lot of talented folks doing a lot of cool stuff, and maybe opportunities arise, or maybe somebody internally says, ‘hey, I have this great idea to do this thing on this platform.’ If that makes sense and it feels like something Bethesda would do, okay. But we’re not just going to bang a round peg into a square hole. That’s not how we work. It doesn’t make sense for us.”
Hines shared a few words about Bethesda’s lack of Wii U support yesterday as well. You can find those comments here.
