Nintendo has finally got in touch with the developer of Bob’s Game about receiving a dev kit to finish his project. But unfortunately for him, Nintendo stated in a letter that they are unable to offer Authorized Developer status to him at this time. In the letter, Nintendo mentions that the company “looks for relevant game development experience” in addition to looking “for secure business facilities, sufficient equipment and staffing, financial stability and other attributes that would distinguish the developer.”
Full letter after the break:
No other DS game offers as much value on a single cartridge!
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 5, 2009 – Atlus U.S.A., Inc. today announced that it has secured the North American publishing rights from European developer and publisher Nordcurrent for 101-in-1 Explosive Megamix™ for Nintendo DS™, a collection of 101 addictive mini-game types including: puzzles, sports, racing, cooking, shooting, balancing, juggling, and much more. There is practically no end to the fast-paced arcade action!
Players of all ages will have hours of fun earning gold coins by successfully completing challenges and spending their tokens to reveal dozens of exciting new games, striving to unlock more and more each time. Simple to play, these addictive and unique games will keep players engrossed in activities such as shooting hoops, completing puzzles, sticking sushi, shooting paintballs, dodging fish, and more.
The website for the Metroid Prime remake (New Play Control! Metroid Prime) opened its doors today, yet an image on the main site has been the focus of Metroid news today. On the page, a little snippet can be seen towards the bottom and reads “Another Side Story” with Japanese text underneath. At this time, it’s completely unclear what this side story is. It could be something specifically relating to the Japanese Metroid website, or perhaps something else entirely. However, it would be kind of ridiculous to jump to the conclusion that this is a new game. You never know though, right? Guessing aside, the confusion should be cleared up shortly as the image also says that the side story is “coming soon.” Even if this side story is unrelated to a new title, it should be interesting to fans nonetheless.
VC
Clay Fighter – 800 Wii points
Sonic Chaos – 500 Wii points
Thanks to Jos3 for the news tip.
More details from the translated investors Q&A with Satoru Iwata have been released, specifically about how when Nintendo announces products that aren’t established properties (like Mario and Pokemon), marketers do not typically have positive reactions.
“When we announce that a new ‘Mario’ or ‘Pokemon’ software is developed, marketers of Nintendo products all over the world naturally look forward to the launches even when they do not know the contents of the game. On the other hand, when we make a presentation to the same people about software which has had no previous track record and no name recognition, their reactions are not positive for most cases. I am not trying to offend our people in overseas marketing companies at all, and actually, their attitude is quite natural. If one is presented with two products, and the successful sales of one of them is guaranteed, and if they have to anticipate allocating a lot of resources to sell another, it is only natural that people have higher expectations for the one guaranteed to sell.”
I suppose that this does make sense when you consider the situation for marketers. Naturally, it will be much easier to market a new entry in the Mario series over a game like Disaster: Day of Crisis. Though, hopefully marketers understand that you can’t just lay back and continue to do what has been successful in the past, otherwise opportunities can be missed.
“I am imagining that launches of DSi overseas will be in the first half of the next fiscal year. As for change on production ratio of DS Lite and DSi, I would like to cite a historical fact that in Japan, DS Lite was more expensive than the original DS but the total demand converged on DS Lite very quickly. But in Europe, it did not happen so fast and these two had been sold together side by side for a long time. And in the Americas, as the total momentum of DS was very weak then, we had to set the price of DS Lite the same as the original. As a result, the demand converged on DS Lite early on. This time, considering the current foreign currency exchange rates, there is no possibility of selling DSi overseas with the same price as DS Lite at all. There will have to be a difference in price. With this price difference, I think that the DS Lite and DSi will be sold side by side in the Americas and in Europe, but I will not be able to comment on their ratio today as we have not announced the prices and we will have to see how people react to the announcement.” – Satoru Iwata
“We are actually working on U.S. and Europe-originated Touch Generations products, which may have a smaller demand in Japan than overseas. I can not tell if it will go well or not at this moment. I think one or two of these initial trials will reach the market within this year. If they actually flourish, I think our strategy will have to take the next step.” – Satoru Iwata
Personally, I never expected the price of the DSi to be the same as the DS Lite. With that said, I thought the price would be slightly lower than $180. Iwata’s words seem to indicate that the rumored $180 price tag will end up being the price that Nintendo announces for North America.
“I agree that Wii Music, as of now, has not achieved its true potential. On the other hand, I feel that “Wii Music” is a software that elicits largely two extremely different reaction from consumers. There are people who highly appreciate it and those who do not appreciate it at all. Usually for other software, if there is a fair amount of people who evaluate the software positively, the appreciation level of that software becomes slightly skewed toward a positive note, but on the other hand, if a number of people evaluate it poorly, the overall reaction to the software is bad. For “Wii Music,” the impression seems to completely depend on each individual player. It is unfortunate that “Wii Music” was not immediately appealing enough to some consumers, but it simply might have not been the right game for them.” – Satoru Iwata
“Currently, I think that the appeal of “Wii Music” has not yet been fully conveyed and accepted by those who could be interested. We do not like to think that we failed with Wii Music nor that we should abandon sales support. If we had approached “Brain Training” with that mentality, the software would have not achieved the current sales situation. The first week unit sales of the original “Brain Training” in Japan was just around 45,000. We should not have the attitude that a game does not have sales potential because the first week or first month sales were small.” – Satoru Iwata
Nintendo hasn’t exactly failed with Wii Music, but I don’t think the game has performed as well as the company may have initially hoped. Compared to Wii Sports and Wii Fit, Wii Music just doesn’t seem to be garnering as great a response from the public and critics.
