It’s official: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds will be available in North America in November. Meanwhile, the European release will follow later in 2013.
Bayonetta 2 may very well run at 60 frames-per-second when the final game ships. Platinum Games’ Hideki Kamiya said on Twitter that the team will “do our best” to reach that mark.
We’ll do our best. RT @horrorkraut: Hi, can you tell us whether Bayonetta 2 will run smoothly with 60 fps? The first one on 360 only had 60
— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) June 13, 2013
Hirō Isono, known for his work on Secret of Mana, passed away on May 28. A memorial service was held on May 31.
Speaking with Polygon, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime acknowledged the importance of supporting used games. At the same time, Fils-Aime believes that creating a product with high replayability can dissuade consumers from trading in their titles.
“We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetize their games. They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content. Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less. So for us, we have been able to step back and say that we are not taking any technological means to impact trade-in and we are confident that if we build great content, then the consumer will not want to trade in our games.”
Some fans are disappointed that Retro Studios is working on another Donkey Kong Country game. Some hoped Retro would return to Metroid. Others wanted something new from the studio entirely.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime defended the decision to have Retro work on Tropical Freeze in an interview with Kotaku.
Check out this exchange between the two:
Kotaku: There was mixed reaction to what Retro would be working on. Some reaction was: I wish they were making another Metroid Prime.’ Some reaction was: ‘I wish Nintendo would just let them do something new.’ We all agree that they’re an extremely talented studio. To those who are disappointed to see them ‘simply’ making another Donkey Kong Country, you would say…
Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America: You know, what I’m eagerly looking forward to is reaction from the Best Buy demos that have been going on today. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is one of the games they’re getting to sample. My bet is that the fan who actually plays that game is super-excited, because, absolutely the team is excited. They’ve done a lot with Donkey Kong Country. All of the things they wished they had done in Donkey Kong Country Returns they put into Tropical Freeze. And so they make great games. I’m glad the fans recognize that. And it’s going to be up to the team to decide what they want their next project to do, obviously [while] working with [Nintendo producers] Mr. Tanabe and Mr. Takahashi in terms of getting directions.
You know, Nintendo’s blessed to have over 30 franchises. When you step back and think about it, and you look at all the games we’ve created, we’ve got over 30 franchises. Every time we launch a game there’s always that fan who says, I wish it was…
Having the Wii U Deluxe Set priced at $350 could be a tough sell for Nintendo moving forward. Sony will be launching the PlayStation 4 later this year, and is only $50 more for what you could say is a much-more involved piece of technology.
There is one important point to note, according to Nintendo of America senior director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta. Scibetta mentioned in an interview with Shacknews that the Wii U Deluxe Set comes with a game whereas the PlayStation 4 does not.
Scibetta said the following when asked if Wii U can be competitive priced against the PS4:
“Well, you do get an included game with our Deluxe 32GB SKU. You automatically have software to enjoy right out of the box.”
“We believe our value proposition is right for both our 8GB and 32GB models. With the software that’s coming out between now and 2014, we have the software to power the hardware. We had a good launch, but as we’ve said before, we’ve had to hold some titles back from the first half of 2013 to the second half and that was for quality reasons.”
Nintendo of America senior director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta says that “the relationship is great between Nintendo and Electronic Arts.”
But when pressed further and asked what makes their relationship “great”, Scibetta would only note:
“You’ll have to ask EA when it comes to any future announcements or future product plans. I don’t want to speak for them.”
As far as overall third-party support for Wii U is concerned, Scibetta admitted that the console needs to sell so that external companies can reach a large audience:
“Third parties want the same thing that we do, which is the install base to grow so they have a larger audience to sell their games to. We feel that’s our job to help drive that install base, and we haven’t had the software so far in 2013 that’s going to do that. But we’re confident between now and the holiday and again in 2014, we do have the software that’s going to grow that install base. And when that happens, we think that Wii U will be a far more attractive platform for third parties to want to publish on. The same thing happened on Nintendo 3DS that we think will happen on Wii U, which started off slow, but when the software came around, the hardware sales came. We’re looking for the same dynamic for Wii U.”
