Satoru Iwata told investors at a financial results briefing earlier this week that Nintendo does not believe “cloud gaming is the future”. Although he acknowledged that it has its advantages (and disadvantages), Nintendo is “trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone.”
An unofficial translation from the meeting reads:
“There are things you can do with cloud gaming and there are things you cant do. We don’t agree that cloud gaming is the future and we are trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone. Unified platforms are for us not platforms that are one but rather platforms that have the same development architecture. This also means that there could be more platforms.”
Shigeru Miyamoto, who was also in attendance, spoke about the challenge of creating new development environments for Wii U and 3DS:
“We needed to create new development environments for Wii U and 3DS unlike Wii which reused the GameCube architecture. We are unifying our development teams to accommodate this challenge and minimize the losses while preparing the shift. I think handhelds and consoles will coexist as the aim is different.
Level-5 has big plans for Fantasy Life in 2013. Despite releasing the game last year, new content is coming to the Japanese title in the future.
Players can look forward to online play, a level cap raise, brand new quests, world changes, and more through DLC. Pricing and release date information for the downloadable content has not been announced.
Earlier today, Nintendo posted a transcript of the company’s financial results Q&A from its investor’s meeting. It isn’t available in English just yet, but a few sections have been unofficially translated online.
One topic concerns new games for Wii U. An investor asked Nintendo about the timeframe of new software the company has presented as of late, and also requested information regarding the development structure.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that his company is “not thinking about a long timeframe.” Some of the newly revealed titles will be released from mid-2013 up through the end of the year. Iwata added that there is additional software coming towards the end of the year that has not yet been announced.
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Activision seems to be making preparations for a new Skylanders announcement.
On Wednesday, the publisher registered the domains SkylandersKaosAlliance.com, SkylandersNanoForce.com, SkylandersSuperForce.com and SkylandersSwapForce.com.
The Skylanders IP has resulted in annual releases for Activision. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure launched in 2011, followed by Skylanders Giants last year. You may remember that Activision announced Giants nearly a year ago today. It was officially revealed on February 7, 2012. Could an announcement for a third Skylanders be just a few days away?
When Nintendo published Iwata Asks: Fire Emblem: Awakening in Japanese last year, a few interesting tidbits were translated from the discussion. For instance, we heard that an idea for a new Fire Emblem set in a modern world was thrown around, as was one concept for a title set on Mars.
Now that the Iwata Asks is available in English, we have the full English translation and relevant portion from the discussion. Read on below for the excerpt.
There were a surprising amount of Resident Evil games released in 2012. Capcom published Revelations in late January, Operation Raccoon City in May, and closed out the year with Resident Evil 6 in October. Don’t forget: The Mercenaries also launched in June of 2011.
The amount of titles released during the past couple of years may have been a bit too much, according to Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata:
“I think certainly looking at the last year or two, there probably were a few too many. I think we learned last year that putting on a lot of titles would not necessarily win over gamers. At the same time, I don’t think we should just stagger them out artificially because that’s the solution to the problem we have. We should always start by asking how do we make the games better. And if the solution to making the games better is to have a more staggered release than we’ve had recently then that’s something we’ll do. But we’ll do it for that reason and not just for flipping what we’ve done already.”
Resident Evil fans can look forward to one more entry this year, though it’s updated version of the 3DS title Revelations.
Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios will be “announcing something special” for Injustice: Gods Among Us next week. Fans can look forward to a “first glimpse at a new character’s game play footage” on Monday.
The official Injustice Facebook page teases:
“We’re announcing something special on Monday. Rumor has it you’ll get your first glimpse at a new character’s game play footage. Tell your friends.”
Look forward to the update in just a few day’s time.
Read all about the development of Fire Emblem: Awakening and more in the latest entry in the Iwata Asks series. Satoru Iwata conducted a chat with staffers from Intelligent Systems and Nintendo employees who worked on the game. The discussion can be accessed here.
