Nintendo Everything

The Nintendo CSR Report 2015 was recently published. In the digest version, there’s a big focus on amiibo, including a few interviews.

One portion of the report features an interview with Nintendo’s Masaki Amano. He spoke about the challenges faced in developing amiibo at one point, noting:

Nintendo has developed a variety of game systems such as Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. However, amiibo development was extremely challenging because we couldn’t use our existing knowledge at all and had to proceed through everything by trial and error.

For example, when we make a game system we usually make a mold of each part by cutting the metal directly from 3D data using a drill or some other tool. For a figure, however, you use almost no machinery at all to make the mold, and do everything by hand instead. For amiibo, we started by creating a master. We then took this master apart to consider how to easily coat colors or create each mold. Link, for example, has 24 separate pieces.

We took a cast of the first mold by pressing clay into each part of the master and then coating it with silicon. Finally, after repeatedly duplicating the mold with harder substances, we used iron to create a metal mold. Although we could not apply our existing knowledge or experiences, we learned along the way as we pursued absolute quality.

That wasn’t the only notable element from the Nintendo CSR Report 2015. We also get a look at how Nintendo tests amiibo for safety and reliability. See the image below.

Rodea: The Sky Soldier was originally slated for a September release. However, in June, NIS America said that the game would be shipping in October instead. Now it may have slipped to November.

Last Wednesday, I received an email from Best Buy stating that Rodea: The Sky Soldier’s launch date had been changed to November 10. I didn’t make too much of it at the time, since one retailer isn’t enough to make any sort of conclusion about a delay. But other prominent retailers like Amazon and GameStop have since modified their listings to this date as well.

Obviously we still don’t have a confirmation about what’s happening with Rodea: The Sky Soldier. These could be retailer mistakes, or the game may have been pushed back for a second time. We’ll try and see if we can get a response out of NIS America.

Thanks to zanmadyne for the tip.

The folks over at Giant Bomb published another video from The Swindle with 23 minutes of footage. You can watch it below.

The Nintendo CSR Report 2015 has now been published. You can find it in full here, and the digest version here.

The digest version of the CSR Report has a message from Satoru Iwata, as well as several interesting interviews about amiibo. We’ve broken the report down into the gallery pages below.

Courses uploaded by the community in Super Mario Maker will feature different difficulty labels. For the most part, this is chosen dynamically as more players try out the level. As an example, if a course has only been completed 10 times out of 150 attempts, you’ll probably notice that it’s in the hard category.

This isn’t the only way that a course in Super Mario Maker will earn its difficulty label. Engadget reports, “user-created levels are also vetted by Nintendo moderators to determine level difficulty before it’s available for anyone to download.”

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The New 3DS version of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth suffered from some issues at launch. For example, users encountered invisible enemies and music that randomly stopped playing.

It’s true that The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth did recently get an update on New 3DS to address the game’s technical bugs. Unfortunately, however, a new and major problem has cropped up. We’re hearing that a glitch was added with the latest update that crashes the game and forces players to reboot their system every few minutes. Let’s hope Nicalis comes out with another patch soon!

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Update 2 (8/2): Bumped to the top. NIS clarified on Twitter that the publisher meant early 2016 (thanks Shinun):

Update: Bumped to the top. NIS America made the news official now, confirming a release window of Winter 2016.

Atlus is publishing The Legend of Legacy in North America this fall. Thankfully, we now have confirmation that the 3DS RPG is heading to Europe as well.

A listing on the USK reveals that NIS America is handling The Legend of Legacy in Europe. That shouldn’t come as a major surprise given how NISA has teamed up with Atlus many times in the past!

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A couple of days ago, SEGA Sammy posted its latest financial results. There was a downturn during the first quarter of FY2016, though the company’s gaming division performed a bit better.

Here’s a full breakdown of SEGA Sammy’s latest financials:

– SEGA Sammy (parent company of game publisher SEGA) said that gains in its gaming unit could not offset overall losses
– Revenue of ¥52.9 billion ($425 million)
– That’s down 41.2 percent compared to last year’s number of ¥90 billion ($723 million)
– Profit: ¥7.9 billion ($63.5 million) loss for the quarter
– That’s down sharply from a profit of ¥5.1 billion ($41 million) during the same period last year
– The poor results were attributed the downturn to a number of factors, including the economy
– SEGA said the gains in digital games for smart devices in Japan were not substantial enough to offset the “shrinking” packaged game software business
– SEGA’s gaming division (Entertainment Contents Business) did better than the company as a whole
– Entertainment Contents Business posted net sales of ¥41.9 billion ($336 million)
– That’s up 4.1 percent compared to last year
– Operating loss of ¥739 million ($5.9 million) during the period
– This number was better than the ¥1.4 billion ($11.2 million) loss during the same quarter last year
– In the packaged game business, SEGA sold 1.83 million games “in spite of the lack of sales of major titles”
– No specific sales figures for any SEGA games

Thanks to Jake for the tip.

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Capcom has uploaded another couple of Monster Hunter X weapon videos. Below you’ll find trailers for the one-handed sword and dual blades.

Update: Even more videos added.

We have three more videos showcasing footage from Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. Each one has been posted below.

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