Nintendo has confirmed one additional detail about Bayonetta 2.
The game will have some functionality tied into the Wii U eShop. In the final game, players will be able to purchase weapons and abilities through the store.
More information about this feature will be shared in the future.
Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune has once again expressed happiness about Mega Man’s inclusion in the next Smash Bros. games. He told Destructoid: “I’m really happy for that! It’s great! And hopefully they’ll put Yaiba in it in the future!”
That comment naturally led to another question: could Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z come to Wii U? “Yeah, no, not right now”, according to Inafune.
In North America, there aren’t a whole lot of 3DS XL colors to choose from. Heck, the white variation still hasn’t made its way to the states. There certainly aren’t many options available, especially compared to Japan.
But Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime provided a logical explanation as to why more variation can be seen in Japan, and why fewer colors are put out on store shelves:
“It really comes down to the nuts and bolts of how we manage our SKUs at retail, and how we do it in a way that’s effective for us and effective for our business partners. You’ve visited retail in Japan. One of the key differences in Japan is that the hardware is that it’s behind the counter. It’s not out and about. So in that type of construct, you can have a lot of inventory behind the counter. It’s a lot easier to support multiple colors. In our [North American] market, it’s all out there on the shelf. When you visit our retail, if I had to try to have 25 different SKUs out there, Wal-Mart would kill me. So what that means is that we have to be more selective and more knowledgeable in how we handle different SKUs.”
One way in which Nintendo of America has started to mimic the Japanese market is with the limited release of the special system variations. Fire Emblem, Pikachu, and Animal Crossing handhelds have all come out this year.
“We are taking a page out of the Japanese playbook with these very limited-edition unique hardware options. We started with Fire Emblem. We did Pikachu. Now, obviously, Animal Crossing. What we’re seeing is that if we do this right, we can have a more limited quantity, have it sell through in a fairly short period of time, and use that as a way to satisfy the consumer’s desires to have a range of different SKUs and some special hardware.”
Game developer Peter Molyneux took some time with GamesIndustry International the other day all about Nintendo, and he outlined some of the things he feels the company is doing right, as well as some of the things they’re doing wrong.
You know what Nintendo did – this is a fascinating thing – Nintendo created gamers by the software they made. They created millions of gamers with Donkey Kong and Mario – they were the birth of gamers. That exact same thing is happening on this platform today. Millions of new gamers are being created almost every month, and they’re being created with titles not from Nintendo, not from Microsoft, not from Sony, not even necessarily from Activision or EA. They’re being created by companies like Supercell and Rovio. They’re the ones that are bringing and creating new gamers. And now there are millions of people interacting with franchises, which Nintendo won’t even touch, which seems a shame to me because Nintendo are brilliant about bringing people into the industry, and I think their hardware is starting to get in the way of that.
I caveat all of this by saying that they are a factor more intelligent than I am, and they’ve probably got a plan, and you should never underestimate Nintendo. We’ll probably be sitting here in a couple years saying, ‘Oh that’s what they were doing’.”
– Peter Molyneux
I must admit, sometimes I feel the same way as Molyneux! Occasionally it feels like Nintendo is using their hardware in ways that are simply “different” rather than “better”, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but perhaps their focus could be better shifted to incremental improvements to gaming while bringing in more people with games themselves.
That being said, I think the Wii U is a perfect example of an incremental improvement, rather than something different for the sake of different’s sake. I have a feeling Peter disagrees with me on that point! And he also said that the Wii U is a reaction to Microsoft’s SmartGlass, which is somewhat troubling and shows that perhaps he isn’t paying as close attention to the timeline of the industry as he should be!
Because of how the Xbox One will be implementing certain policies, the topic of used games has come up often in recent weeks. IGN asked Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata for his thoughts in a recent interview.
For Iwata, the best approach is making a game that people won’t want to sell.
“The best possible countermeasure against people buying used product is making the kind of product that people never want to sell. Taking as an example Mario Kart or Smash Bros., even though you might think, ‘I’ve done enough with this,’ you’ll still have second thoughts. ‘Wait a minute. If one of my friends comes over, I might need this again.’ You’re never going to want to sell these games. That’s something that always occupies our minds. We need to make software that players don’t want to sell.”
“We’re competing with each other in terms of who’s creating the most fun games. Unfortunately, however, as I saw the reports dispatched from E3 this year, they’re pretty much occupied by talk about which machine is more friendly to used games, or which machine is $100 cheaper than the other. I’m sorry that we’re missing the most important discussion – about video games.”
Iwata also said that he never thought about implementing anti-used games measures or “typing down” any Nintendo system with restrictions.
