Despite what was listed in the official European Nintendo Downloads press release, F1 Race Stars Powered Up Edition will not be releasing on the Wii U eShop this week. Codemasters, the game’s official developer and publisher, confirmed the news. The company hopes to ”confirm timings for F1 Race Stars very shortly”.
Dreamfall Chapters, a new 3D adventure game that was successfully funded through Kickstarter, will be coming to next-generation consoles.
Lead developer Ragnar Tornquist told Eurogamer:
“We are preparing to go to consoles, without officially announcing anything. We are keen on getting this game to as many people as possible. The game works extremely well in a TV/couch scenario – it’s a perfect game for that. We’re building a game that has cross-platform technology anyway, so I think the chances are extremely good that we’ll land on one or both of the next-gen consoles.”
Tornquist additionally noted that there are hopes of getting Dreamfall Chapters on Wii U. It really comes down to the console’s ability to handle the game – there’s a chance that it won’t be powerful enough, though discussions are ongoing with Nintendo as well.
“We are also in dialogue with Nintendo. We’re going to be looking at it. We can’t make any promises because the the Wii U, it’s underpowered compared to the next-gen consoles and PC obviously – I don’t think that’s a secret or Nintendo would get upset at me. We’re going to look at getting the game running on Wii U and then we’ll make decisions depending on how that goes and what we see the market possibilities are doing. Like I said, we don’t want to exclude anything, so we’ll try anything.”
When the Wii U launched, Miiverse users could only write messages up to 100 characters in length. That limit has been increased with a new update to the social network today. Going forward, all Miiverse members can create notes that are up to 200 characters long.
Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai revealed an interesting nugget about the Animal Crossing Villager in his Famitsu column posted this week.
According to Sakurai, the character was previously considered for Brawl. However, he was removed “in the planning stages because he wasn’t suited for battle.”
“A lot of people understood Mega Man, but they kept asking me ‘Why did you go for the villager and the Wii Fit trainer?’, Neither of them are fighting characters, certainly. In fact, we had previously removed the villager from Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the planning stages because he wasn’t suited for battle.”
This week’s Japanese software sales are as follows:
01./00. [PS3] The Last of Us
02./01. [3DS] Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
03./02. [3DS] Friend Collection: New Life #
04./00. [PSV] Kami Jigen Idol Neptune PP #
05./00. [3DS] Kuma-Tomo
06./05. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf #
07./04. [3DS] Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
08./00. [3DS] Sayonara Umihara Kawase
09./00. [PSP] Storm Lover 2nd #
10./00. [PSP] Ro-Kyu-Bu! Lost Secret
11./08. [PS3] Terraria
12./06. [PS3] Resident Evil: Revelations
13./11. [WII] Taiko no Tatsujin Wii: Super Deluxe Edition #
14./00. [PSV] Winning Post 7 2013
15./03. [3DS] Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter: Albatross no Tsubasa
16./10. [3DS] Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission
17./07. [3DS] Shin Megami Tensei IV #
18./13. [3DS] Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Best Price!)
19./12. [3DS] New Super Mario Bros. 2 #
20./14. [3DS] Mario Kart 7
The latest Japanese hardware sales from Media Create are as follows:
3DS LL – 28,281
3DS – 14,988
Vita – 13,422
PS3 – 9,816
Wii U – 5,329
PSP – 5,091
Wii – 1,234
Xbox 360 – 282
For comparison’s sake, here are the hardware numbers from last week:
3DS LL – 29,533
3DS – 17,602
PS3 – 10,872
Vita – 10,664
Wii U – 5,983
PSP – 5,651
Wii – 1,461
Xbox 360 – 397
Eurogamer gathered up quotes from a whole bunch of folks at EA, who talked about the company’s dwindled Wii U support. One of the more common points discussed concerns the system’s poor sales and overall status at the moment. If things were to turn around, EA would be more willing to support the system.
DICE was also approached to comment on the lack of Battlefield titles on Wii U. The studio noted that bringing the series to Wii U “is a technical problem at its core because the Frostbite engine is not designed to run on that hardware, and the hardware is quite different from the next-gen consoles and the previous gen consoles.” But like the EA executives, DICE mentioned that it would be open to working with Wii U if its situation can improve.
Head past the break for the full commentary from EA and DICE.
