Square Enix has a couple of new “Blood Masque” domains under its built. On January 29, BloodMasque.com and BloodMasque.net were both registered.
We’ve never heard of Blood Masque prior to today. Is it a new game?
Satoru Iwata has been Nintendo’s corporate president and CEO for over a decade. But if the company can’t reach a goal of 100 billion yen in operating income for the next fiscal year, Iwata has hinted that he may be willing to step down.
Iwata noted during an analysts’ meeting earlier today:
“We feel greatly accountable for this severe outlook. …we plan to actively release our key titles for Nintendo 3DS which could potentially lead the markets this year.”
Iwata was later asked how he would take responsibility if the goal is not met. In response, he said:
“Please understand that [achieving it] is my commitment.”
Nintendo Download (1/31/13, North America)
Not a bad lineup of games! I’m frankly amazed that we’re getting a Wii U eShop game and demo in the same week.
This week’s Nintendo Download includes the following featured content:
Nintendo eShop on Wii U
Puddle – Winner at the Independent Games Festival 2010, Puddle is a game that finds players guiding a puddle of fluid through 49 challenging and diverse levels by tilting the environment left or right. Players must also take into account friction, gravity and temperature, and use various types of liquids to navigate the unique environments that include burning passageways, carnivorous plants and electric currents.The Cave – Demo Version – The Cave is a new adventure game from Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert and Double Fine Productions, the award-winning studio behind Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. Assemble your team of three from seven unlikely adventurers, each with his or her own unique personality and story. Descend into mysterious depths to explore many different locations, including a subterranean amusement park and a medieval castle, not to mention a fully armed and ready-to-launch nuclear-tipped ICBM. The Cave awaits.
XSEED is localizing a new Japanese 3DS title for North America. This summer, gamers can get their hands on Rune Factory 4.
Natsume has traditionally localized the Rune Factory releases in North America. In the past, Natsume has almost always handled the games’ publishing duties in the states.
Source: XSEED PR
Nintendo of Europe is preparing a limited edition bundle for LEGO City: Undercover. Initial copies will come with a copy of the Wii U title and a Chase McCain minifigure.
Consumers in North America will also be able to get their hands on the item. As previously announced, those who pre-order Undercover from participating retailers will automatically receive the minifig.
In other news, Nintendo of Europe confirmed that LEGO City Undercover: The Chase begins is “coming out later in 2013”.
Source: Nintendo PR
Nintendo’s upcoming restructure is a massive undertaking. A single development department will be created from a nearly 300 combined employees. But the payoff will be worth it.
As noted by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to investors, in 2012, “we also started a project to integrate the architecture for our future platforms.” Nintendo won’t be integrating its handhelds and consoles, but it hopes to “integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform.”
The benefits of restructuring also extend directly to gamers. Once the new division is in place, Nintendo will be able to “avoid software lineup shortages or software development delays which tend to happen just after the launch of new hardware.”
Nintendo’s next-big thing for Wii U is Wii Street U. The upcoming app, now set for a mid-February launch, will allow users to take advantage of the GamePad to tour areas straight throughtheir living room.
President Satoru Iwata believes services such as Wii Street U “will help people widely understand the unique value of Wii U and increase the number of people who are interested in Wii U in a family and eventually lead to a bright future of this console.”
Wii Street U as well as other functionality like Miiverse and Nintendo TVii are primarily built on HTML5 and web technologies. As a result, Nintendo has “been able to deploy various services for this console with less in-house development resources in a more timely manner than our previous platforms.”
Iwata has also said that, in GDC in March, Nintendo “will show you some of our efforts to expand the range of software developers.” Talk about Wii Street U’s development environment (and “some VOD services”) can be expected.
Much like the 3DS, Wii U is experiencing a rather high Internet-connection rate. Speaking with investors during Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, president Satoru Iwata said the ratio is up to 74 percent. Nearly three out of every four systems have already connected online.
“The Wii U is a game console you can enjoy most with the Internet connection and the current Internet-Connection ratio is 74%, which means that almost three of four consoles have been online already. This is clearly higher than the previous hardware system we released. We will continue to inform our consumers about the advantages of using the Wii U consoles online to further increase this ratio.”
Nintendo announced a completely unexpected title during last week’s Nintendo Direct: Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem. Atlus and Nintendo are bringing the two legendary franchises together on Wii U.
During the Nintendo Direct, Satoru Iwata briefly talked about the rise of console development costs and the need to strengthen its lineup through partnerships. Iwata once again spoke about this subject during Nintendo’s financial results briefing today, stating that the company is “willing to actively cooperate with software developers to produce something new beyond the traditional licensing business.”
Iwata said:
