Shin’en is planning two new games for the Wii U. While details about both are being kept under wraps, the studio’s Manfred Linzner has confirmed that one of these will incorporate online play. It’ll be Shin’en’s first title with network play, according to Linzner.
“We are working on two new Wii U games currently. One of them is our first game with network play.”
No matter how much it may sell, analysts will still call gloom and doom upon the 3DS. At the end of the day, these people feel that the portable can’t compete with mobile devices.
iOS is often one platform often brought up in 3DS comparisons. Both are portable. Both offer an array of digital content. But whereas tons of games may be available on the App Store, Nintendo of America’s sales VP Scott Moffitt sees the 3DS eShop as an area of higher-quality.
“With software, as with most things, there’s a distinct difference between quantity and quality. The website 148apps.biz recently calculated that there are currently 139,000 different games actively available on the [Apple] app store. One hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Huge number. That number is way too big to wrap your head around, so I try to think about it this way. If I wanted to spend just fifteen minutes sampling each one of those games, I’d be at it non-stop for four years. That’s a ton of caffeine. Obviously there are good games available for mobile platforms. But the point is, the Nintendo 3DS has a record of quality that’s hard to challenge.”
Moffitt added: “Nowhere else in portable gaming is high quality found so frequently.”
Video games do have health benefits upon occasion, and the latest scientific study surrounding our favorite hobby took people with lazy eyes and pit them against Tetris, the beloved puzzle game that is constantly being pinpointed for mental and physical health benefits. It turns out that simply playing the game for a set amount of time each day actually improved the condition in 18 adult patients more effectively than what had been used prior as treatment for the issue.
Next up, researchers want to see if the game-based treatment would help in children as well, preventing the onset of a condition that would last their entire lives. Let’s hope the results are positive!
Nintendo has a lot of Zelda content in the works currently. There’s the Link to the Past follow-up for the 3DS, a remake of The Wind Waker for Wii U, and a brand new title made from the ground-up for Nintendo’s console.
How Nintendo is approaching the development of these projects – and Zelda overall – is rather interesting. Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen discussed the process with Kotaku, commenting that “They kind of shuffle people in and out, so they’ll sort of have their core group, but then they’re bringing new people in and out, so that helps bring in fresh ideas.”
“They kind of shuffle people in and out, so they’ll sort of have their core group, but then they’re bringing new people in and out, so that helps bring in fresh ideas. Each of the different games will have their main lead director, or maybe depending on the game, they may have two…Generally the way that the Zelda team operates is they may have one or two people who carry over or take the lead, but they do a lot of kind of jumping in and out in terms of moving from handheld to console, or vice-versa.”
I must admit, the documentary looks like it takes itself a little bit too seriously for my taste, at least based on the video above. Still, I think he makes a good point: Zelda has managed to challenge and foster our imaginations more effectively than arguably any other piece of art I’ve ever consumed, and at least in my case, it’s an experience only matched by a few other games– and maybe some books or movies here and there.
Certainly something worth making a documentary about!
“After shipping Conviction, there were a lot of people who said the fans didn’t like Mark and Execute. But when we looked at our broader feedback – we do surveys through Uplay and get thousands and thousands of players – the people who rated those new features the highest were actually players who played at least two games in the series before. So in fact it was the opposite of what the data was telling us.”
– Ubisoft Toronto boss Jade Raymond
You can read the rest of a really interesting interview here. It basically says that– while some players see the series as being “dumbed down”– Ubisoft will be going for a game that you can play stealthily or action-y, depending on what you enjoy. It’s a way to expand the audience without sacrificing the core gameplay that hardcore players like in Splinter Cell, but chances are we’ll be looking at more of an action-stealth game than a purely stealth game. Think the Resident Evil 4/5 change vs. Resident Evil GCN‘s “hardcore horror” vibe.
Through a series of images posted on Facebook, Nintendo has officially confirmed the Wii U Virtual Console lineup for North America.
Eight games in total will be made available at launch. Six are from the NES catalog while two, F-Zero and Super Mario World, are from the SNES library.
Here’s the lineup in full:
NES
Balloon Fight
Donkey Kong Jr.
Excite Bike
Ice Climber
Kirby’s Adventure
Punch-Out!!
SNES
Super Mario World
F-Zero
A number of these games – such as Balloon Fight and Kirby’s Adventure – have already been made available through the Virtual Console Trial Campaign.
Nintendo hasn’t said when exactly the Wii U Virtual Console will be launching, but recent speculation has indicated that Friday will be the day.
NetherRealm Studios has become known for its work on Mortal Kombat over the past few years, but the studio just shipped a brand new fighter: Injustice: Gods Among Us. Could the newly-released title turn into its own franchise? With any luck, director Ed Boon hopes it’ll happen.
Boon told GameZone:
“We are keeping our fingers crossed. You know, we would love to do other versions of… [he gets cut off] Yes, that would be a great thing.”
Would you like to see additional Injustice-related games?
The first two Batman: Arkham games have been single-player-focused affairs. Warner Bros. Montreal will apparently be mixing things up for the third entry, Batman: Arkham Origins, with at least one multiplayer mode.
Kotaku reports that “during at least one section of multiplayer, you play as a member of Joker or Bane’s gang while trying to take down Batman and Robin.” Possible playable and customizable villains include Killer Croc, Deadshot, Firefly, Black Mask, Deathstroke, and “some kind of Electroman character”, the site’s source says.
One of Kotaku’s sources has allegedly confirmed that Origins will indeed feature multiplayer, but wasn’t able to confirm specifics.
