Believe it or not, we’ve already been given a first look at Bayonetta 2.
Nintendo produced a new behind-the-scenes video for its Nintendo Direct presentation in January, and showed a very brief snippet of a monster at the end. That one second of footage was produced in real-time, according to director Yusuke Hashimoto.
Hashimoto tweeted a few days ago:
“The monster that appears at the end of the Bayonetta 2 ‘making-of’ video is done in real-time on the Wii U (the first in-game footage?).”
Hashimoto later tweeted that the developer video’s music is one of the new songs included and Bayonetta 2.
Last but not least, producer Atsushi Inaba also confirmed on Twitter that a ROM check on Bayonetta 2 has been completed. Good news, I suppose!
Death Inc. is yet another Kickstarter project that could make its way to Wii U. Developer Ambient Studios is only working on PC, Mac and Linux versions at present, but it sounds like a release on the Wii U eShop could be possible.
An Ambient spokesperson said the following when asked about a Wii U version:
“A Wii U version would be amazing! First thoughts on this are (bearing in mind I’m at home, so I can’t talk to any of the programmers right now) is that we’re building in Unity. I have no idea whether the engine supports that platform nor the additional work that would be involved in getting it to work. If however, it does and the kickstarter is successful and the game is well received, then I would love to take a look into doing this. It’s a great idea!”
Just what is Death Inc.? It’s a strategy game that has you playing as the Grim Reaper, who is looking to spread the bubonic plague. Ambient is made up of former employees from Media Molecule, Lionhead and Criterion – a nice selection of talent!
Of course, before Ambient Studios can proceed with Death Inc., the indie dev needs to meet its Kickstarter goal. £23,024 has been raised thus far. A £300,000 total needs to be met before March 6.
Namco Bandai has shared its third quarter fiscal results. In the report, the publisher outlined new sales of titles released in recent months.
Below you’ll find figures for Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Tales of Xillia 2, and more.
Worldwide releases
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (PS3/360/Wii U) – 1.35 million units
SoulCalibur V (PS3/360) – 870,000 units
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations (PS3/360) – 660,000 units
Japan-only releases
Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3) – 500,000 units
Run for Money (3DS) – 450,000 units
Taiko Drum Master 3DS (3DS) – 410,000 units
Yet another round of Kid Icarus: Uprising AR card packs are available in Japan. Two more rounds can be bought from Nintendo’s online store starting today – volumes 17 and 18. Packs cost 263 yen each.
One could argue that Trine 2: Director’s Cut is among the best games of Wii U’s launch lineup. That begs the question: could we ever see the first Trine on the console?
The short answer is no. Frozenbyte vice president Joel Kinnunen recently said that bringing the first Trine to Wii U “would be quite a bit of work” because the game “is based on our older technology”. Kinnunen wouldn’t rule out the possibility completely, but don’t count on a port/remake happening anytime soon.
“…it’s unlikely. Trine 1 is based on our older technology, so something like this would be quite a bit of work. Who knows what happens in the future but we’re not working on any Trine 1 related things at the moment, and have no plans either. Sorry!”
Digital Foundry has put together a comprehensive piece outing new technical details for Wii U. The information was deciphered thanks to reverse-engineering photos provided by Chipworks.
We’ve posted a few Wii U spec bits below. You can find Digital Foundry’s full report here, but if lack knowledge of hardware like us, you won’t understand most of it!
– Wii U GPU core: 320 stream processors, 16 texture mapping units, 8 ROPs
– GPU: close match to the Radeon HD 4650/4670
– Defecit in the number of texture-mapping units and a lower clock speed
– 550MHz clock speed
– “GCN hardware in Durango and Orbis is in a completely different league”
– RV770 does have 16 TMUs at 550MHz and texture cache improvements
– This puts it past Xbox 360’s Xenos GPU
– It’s 1.5 times the raw shader power
– 1080p resolution is around 2.5x that of 720p, so it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing any complex 3D titles running at 1080p
– Some Wii U ports may be disappointing tecnically due to Wii U’s 1.2GHz CPU
– Nature of the second and third banks of RAM is currently unknown
