Nintendo talks indies on Switch – quality over quantity, focusing on new games, more
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch eShop | 8 Comments
Gamasutra published a new interview with Damon Baker, head of partner management at Nintendo of America. Baker hosted the company’s Switch Nindies Showcase presentation earlier this week. During the chat, Baker talked about how Nintendo is focusing on quality over quantity and targeting newer games as opposed to ports with smaller developers.
We’ve rounded up some excerpts from the interview below. You can read Gamasutra’s full piece here.
More: Damon Baker, interview, top
Niantic trying to determine best approach for trading in Pokemon GO, won’t be done through the internet
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 3 Comments
Pokemon GO is still missing a key feature from the main Pokemon games: trading. It should be added via an update in the future, but Niantic still has some work to do before it’s ready.
Speaking with Polygon at GDC, senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura confirmed that trading won’t happen through the internet. He also indicated that the team is still trying to figure out the best way to handle the functionality. Failing here could “easily kill the game.”
Nomura said:
“[Trading] won’t be through the internet. You shouldn’t be able to exchange your Pokémon with someone who is 100 miles away from you. … The person needs to be in your proximity.”
“I wasn’t really thinking of trading as a way to solve the local area spawn issue. That was more, we have a couple Pokémon that only spawn in a couple regions, and that was the hope, that some Pokémon you have to know someone or find someone who lives in certain regions and meet and exchange. We don’t want to just have that be an online game that you can just exchange virtually.”
“We’re still trying to come up with an answer [to trading] that makes sense so it doesn’t kill the game. If we fail this, we can easily kill the game.”
More: interview, Niantic, Pokemon GO, top
Suda51 on why The Silver Case’s DS port was cancelled
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News | 1 Comment
The Silver Case is being revitalized on new platforms. However, some of you may remember that a DS port was planned many years ago. Sadly, it never came to fruition.
Game Informer caught up with Suda51 recently and asked about why the plug was pulled on The Silver Case for DS. He explained to the site:
“One reason was the issue of an English localization. We wondered if a game with this much text could be localized correctly to be able to bring it to the West.
Another reason was the quality of the port. We actually had a full, working version, but we just couldn’t figure out a way to make use of the DS’s main feature, the dual screens. Since we were working on several other games on the time we just didn’t have the energy to figure it out. We actually thought about just handing the DS version out at Tokyo Game Show for free, but even that would have cost a lot of money, so we couldn’t even do that either! Unfortunately, we then had to cancel to the project.”
More: interview, Suda51, The Silver Case
Video: Reggie speaks about Switch’s support of Unreal Engine 4
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos | 19 Comments
At Epic Games’ GDC press conference today, a pre-recorded video aired from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. Reggie spoke about Switch’s support of Unreal Engine 4, and how the compatibility between the two allows for new developers to make “high-quality” games for Nintendo’s new platform. for The full clip is attached below.
More: interview, Reggie Fils-Aime, top
Miyamoto and Aonuma on training the next generation of Nintendo devs
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 35 Comments
Update (2/28): Here’s the embed from YouTube:
Original (2/27): The next piece of content stemming from Game Informer’s month-long coverage of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is now online. In today’s feature, the magazine spoke with Shigeru Miyamoto and series producer Eiji Aonuma about the younger generations of game developers within Nintendo.
For now, you can watch the interview on Game Informer here. We should have an embed option from YouTube within a couple of days.
More: Eiji Aonuma, interview, Shigeru Miyamoto, top
Koizumi on Switch’s initial vision, using more well-established tech, Joy-Con colors
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch | 62 Comments
Game Informer now has its own interview up with Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi. The two sides chatted about Switch with a few questions and answers. Koizumi talked about the initial vision for the system and how long it’s been since the plan was put in place, the technical side of things, and Joy-Con colors.
We’ve picked out these excerpts below. You can read the full interview on Game Informer.
More: interview, Yoshiaki Koizumi
Zoink “looking into” Fe for Switch
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch eShop | 3 Comments
Zoink already has a couple of games lined up for Switch. We can look forward to the just-announced Flipping Death as well as Zombie Vikings.
Aside from those two projects, Zoink is also working on Fe in partnership with EA. When asked about a Switch version, Zoink CEO and creative director Klaus Lyngeled said, “We are talking about a Switch version and looking into it, but it’s a little too early to say.”
More: Fe, interview, Klaus Lyngeled, Zoink Games
Thoughts on Switch from third-parties
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch | 31 Comments
Polygon published a pretty big feature on Switch today. The site has a ton of comments from third-parties (and other industry members) about the new system, including general thoughts, why they’re supporting it, and more. Suda51, Capcom’s Yoshinori Ono, and SEGA’s Takashi Iizuka are just a few of the people who participated.
We’ve picked out some highlights from the piece below. You can find a ton of additional comments in the full article here.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild director on breaking series conventions, developing the world, more
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 46 Comments
Over the past couple of weeks, Famitsu and 4Gamer both conducted interviews with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. A lot of what was said has been covered extensively in previous interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto and series producer Eiji Aonua, but there were still some noteworthy excerpts. This was also one of the first times that we actually heard from Fujibayashi about the game.
According to Fujibayashi, the developers’ main goal was to break conventions, but they weren’t sure how far they should go to do so. During development, they took a look at what was core to Zelda games, and decided it was the sense of relief you feel after solving a puzzle. So with that as a base, they tried bringing dungeon gameplay to the field, and field gameplay to the dungeons. Puzzles were created with certain solutions in mind, but left open to the possibility of being solved by using other methods. They tried to fix the parts of puzzle-solving people found boring while keeping the interesting parts intact, and changed anything they saw as “standard” to be “nonstandard.”
Nintendo on Zelda: Link to the Past – scrapped idea, working with SNES, Master Sword importance, more
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 5 Comments
It’s not often that Nintendo talks about past Zelda games. Right now, all eyes are focused on Breath of the Wild. But in this month’s issue of RetroGamer, the magazine caught up with Zelda: A Link to the Past director Takashi Tezuka and script writer Kensuke Tanabe to look back on the classic game.
Most of the comments we have are from Tezuka, who talked about the game’s structure, scrapped idea, and more. Tanabe also chimed in with Tezuka at one point to talk about the advantages of working with the SNES at the time.
Head past the break for a rundown of Tezuka and Tanabe’s comments.
