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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

Destructoid has revealed “Dot Arcade”, a new project from WayForward designer/director James Montagna. You can check out a few images above, and a summary of information below.

– Game is already done, rated by the ESRB, and approved by Nintendo
– Montagna is now deciding on a release date
– Programmer and composer Andrew Lim also worked on the game
– Began as a physical system prototype
– Started off as a wooden box with an 8×8 LED grid and a SNES controller plugged in

“We wanted to find some way we could share the dot games with the rest of the world, and Wii U seemed like the right fit. It was important that the experience emphasize the more intimate GamePad screen, but also beneficial to broadcast gameplay to others in the room on T… and taking it a step further, share scores with friends anywhere through Miiverse! So we started development on the collection of games, Dot Arcade.”

– 3 games included
– Mr. Snake, Dodge Club, and Rally Driver
– The games use the same 8×8 screen of virtual flashing lights to display the action
– Each game has it’s own “cabinet artwork” created by a featured guest artist like Jordan Canales and Jeremy Hobbs
– Dot Arcade may launch next month
– Plans for the series: “…secret extra cabinets for each game” and a plan to make “…Dot Arcade into something like a bit Generations series and introduce Dot Arcade Vol. 2 with three new games/featured artists… and so on, as long as there’s an audience with interest!”
– “The end result is a bit tricky to describe”
– “static screenshots don’t seem to do the games justice”
– Dot Arcade is “…the most raw form of video game — there’s no story other than what’s implied by the cabinet art, and there’s no real game graphics to speak of, just a focus on having fun manipulating an object on the screen. They’re entertaining in a way that’s shared only with the most vintage of video games.”

You can find a full report on Dot Arcade over on Destructoid.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 12 Comments

Chris Stockman, the design director of Saints Row 1, is said to have been making an open-world game for Wii U. The project was being made in partnership with Nintendo.

Unfortunately, Stockman’s title was cancelled one day before production kicked off. It’s unknown why this occurred, though Nintendo’s management apparently pulled out at the last minute.

All of this information comes from Unseen64’s Liam Robertson. The site consistently digs up information on cancelled game-related projects.

Source

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS, News, Wii U | 19 Comments

The latest Japanese hardware sales from Media Create are as follows:

Vita – 35,203
PS4 – 24,737
New 3DS LL – 23,466
New 3DS – 8,657
Wii U – 6,070
PS3 – 5,810
3DS LL – 3,343
3DS – 2,707
Xbox One – 1,381
Vita TV – 731

For comparison’s sake, here are the hardware numbers from last week:

New 3DS LL – 41,821
PS4 – 21,381
Vita – 10,901
New 3DS – 9,584
Wii U – 7,007
PS3 – 6,683
3DS LL – 4,126
3DS – 3,214
Vita TV – 588
Xbox One – 191

And here are the software charts:

1. [PSV] God Eater 2 Rage Burst – 234,180 / NEW
2. [3DS] Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D – 72,181 / 302,246
3. [PS4] God Eater 2 Rage Burst – 37,824 / NEW
4. [PS4] The Order: 1886 – 25,023 / NEW
5. [PS4] Dead or Alive 5: Last Round – 24,457 / NEW
6. [3DS] Yo-Kai Watch 2: Shinuchi – 17,738 / 2,497/462
7. [PS3] Dragon Ball Xenoverse – 12,211 / 72,838
8. [PS3] Dead or Alive 5 Last Round – 11,271 / NEW
9. [3DS] Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire – 11,256 / 2,525,177
10. [PS3] Samurai Warriors 4-II – 8,936 / 53,510
11. [3DS] Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate – 7,910 / 2,478,064
12. [3DS] Super Smash Bros. for 3DS – 7,860 / 2,157,653
13. [PS4] Dragon Ball Xenoverse – 7,239 / 54,442
14. [PSV] Otoko Yukaku – 7,083 / NEW
15. [PSV] Samurai Warriors 4-II – 5,223 / 28,742
16. [PSV] Hakuouki: Zuisouroku Omokage Hana – 5,154 / NEW
17. [WIU] Super Smash Bros. for Wii U – 4,881 / 592,794
18. [WIU] Mario Kart 8 – 4,603 / 921,092
19. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf – 4,595 / 3,923,419
20. [PSV] Fuuraiki 3 – 4,435 / NEW

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 18 Comments

A bunch of rewards are being added to Club Nintendo Japan over the next few months. The lineup is quite impressive, as items include the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack, lots of t-shirts, and more.

Those on Club Nintendo Japan will be able to nab the following rewards over the next few months:

3DS game card case – February 26
Fierce Deity puzzle – March 5
Various shirts (Zelda, Bloober, SNES, Game & Watch, more) – March 11
Wii Wheel (Mario) – March 11
Wii Wheel (Luigi) – March 11
Wii Wheel (Yoshi) – March 11
Wii Wheel (Peach) – March 11
Mario Paper Model – March 18
Nintendo Sound Selection Mario & Peach – March 18
Matching Card Game – March 18
Mario Kart 8 soundtrack – end of April
Nikki’s Travel Quiz – end of April
Dot Mario tissue cover – end of April
Pouches (Animal Crossing, Mario) – May

You can find photos of the different rewards in the gallery below.

Source

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 3 Comments

Several characters models from an unannounced Disney Interactive game have appeared online, via the online profile of 3D artist Cari Mayle. The game is coming to the Wii U, but it’s unknown if other platforms will be receiving it as well. We know that the project is a fantasy game of some sort… and not much else!

Source, Via

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in New Nintendo 3DS, Rumors | 22 Comments

If you plan on playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, you should be aware that the game apparently lacks the Japanese dub. The original Wii game allowed players to switch between the Japanese and English voices. Just to be safe, we’ll try following up with Nintendo of America to confirm that the situation.

Source

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 5 Comments

Mr. Iwata, how do you think the demand for entertainment will change from now on? Earlier you mentioned consumer behavior, and the way consumers collect and receive information has changed. For the last few years, I think that for the overall entertainment industry, various key trends have transitioned. I would like to know how you think the ultimate demand is changing.

I think that the demand itself for entertainment is increasing rather than decreasing. Now that smart devices are a means of entertainment consumption for a number of consumers, I think the total time and consumption of entertainment is increasing. However, the tough issue for this platform is that the platform holders are not so interested in maintaining the high value of the content and instead feel that the cheaper the content, the better or even that the content should be free. On this point, I can empathize with Mr. Kawakami, the chairman of DWANGO Co., Ltd., as he often uses the expression to describe the situation of the content for smart devices with “the eggs are on sale at the supermarket.”

In the music and video industries, they made more profits by selling content before, but, because of the digitalization trend, it has become much more difficult to make profits by just selling the content. For example, artists whose CDs sold over one million copies in the past can sell less than one-tenth of them now. It is said that whether they can maintain the revenue or not now is up to the number of people who attend their concerts and other events. Consumers spend money on one-time events like concerts, but once they have regarded as a norm that they can digitally obtain content free of charge, we cannot easily change their minds regarding content value. As for video content, once services offering a library of tens of thousands of videos for only a few hundred yen per month become mainstream, DVDs will not sell as they did in the past. I have heard a Hollywood movie producer say that profit structures for movies have changed, and it is difficult to expect profits from selling DVDs.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 36 Comments

My question is about the company’s internal marketing structure. It seems that New Nintendo 3DS has had a good launch in the U.S. and Europe, but focusing on the year-end sales season, I get the impression that Nintendo could have done more. For example, Nintendo may have had more of the chance if the launch of New Nintendo 3DS in the U.S. and Europe was in time for the year-end sales season, or Nintendo could have struck more of a balance between handheld devices and home consoles because home consoles tend to perform weakly when handheld devices are strong. I believe Nintendo plans to provide new services and diversify its business, but I would like to know specifically how you plan to change the marketing structure, or if there is no need to change it, do you think that your current sales and marketing structure can keep up with the changes that you explained in this presentation?

I think that each of our activities, whether it is product development, marketing or providing constantly evolving services, has unique issues it has to address. For example, if developers tended to think that even though they had created good products, incompetent marketing team members were the cause of poor sales or if, on the other hand, the marketing team members thought that the products were not selling well because the developers had made unappealing products, then we would be seen as a bad company with a culture in which everyone tends to lay the blame on someone else. Since such an organization should never exist, I have been encouraging everyone internally to first consider what more they themselves can do. A company is a group of people, so it is impossible to completely eliminate these kinds of opinions in challenging circumstances, so I repeatedly make this kind of remark internally. This is not something I would usually say externally, but I thought I should share this internal message with you today.

To your question about our marketing issues, many of the people who are now leading the marketing teams have had the experience that products sell well if awareness is built through TV advertisements, so it is inevitable that they have a tendency to continue proven methods from the past. However, this does not mean that the managers of the current marketing division are being adamant and inflexible. On the contrary, everyone is conscious that they have to change. Recently, as you know, Nintendo has been taking new approaches such as making use of social media, utilizing our own direct consumer channels like “Nintendo Direct,” and digitally taking pre-orders soon after disseminating relevant information through “Nintendo Direct.”

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 6 Comments

Mr. Iwata, you continually stated that Gaming Population Expansion was Nintendo’s corporate strategy. However, it seems as though you have not mentioned it recently. If you have set a new strategic goal for the company, I would like you to tell us about it. I understand that when you started to discuss Gaming Population Expansion about 10 years ago, it was to ensure that people didn’t stop playing video games. What challenges is the company currently facing?

I aimed to talk about Gaming Population Expansion persistently, both internally at Nintendo and externally, until people thoroughly understood it. I would show the slides with the Gaming Population Expansion message on them whenever I made a presentation. I verbally used this term so often that even I myself was concerned whether the audience would be fed up with it. I did so because, as the leader of an organization, I believe that my message cannot soak deeply into people’s minds if I do not repeatedly convey the same message to the point that the audience are fed up with it. At some point in the past, I decided that I would dare to repeat the same message without worrying about people saying, “he’s been saying the same thing again and again” or “he must have forgotten that he has said that before.” Only after I had repeatedly talked about Gaming Population Expansion, people both inside and outside the company finally started to be aware of it even when I did not talk about it. On the other hand, for the last few years I have been wondering whether people inside the company have a clear image as to exactly how we could expand the gaming population. We could not show a significant difference to our consumers as long as we were repeating similar things that we had done with Nintendo DS and Wii. We released “Wii Sports Club” and “Wii Fit U” for the Wii U system, but they did not have the same strong impact that the original Wii versions had. Those who have tried these Wii U games know that we have actually realized a variety of new things, but at a glance, they look just similar to their predecessors. I realized that we would have to redefine our definition of video games in order to cope with this situation. When we were aiming to expand the gaming population, we were, in fact, also announcing that we would expand the definition of video games, and we actually made video games out of nurturing dogs, training your brain, playing sports by moving a remote control, and weighing yourself and exercising every day. I know I do not need to explain to you the games to which I am referring. So, even though we had been expanding the definition of video games, I recognized that we would need to expand this definition further.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

Please tell me your thoughts on the potential of the existing businesses. You have explained that you would regain Nintendo-like profits in the fiscal year ending March 2017. I would like to know the expected balance between the existing businesses, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and new endeavors, such as more active utilization of character IP and QOL. Based on the latest financial results, I presume that it would be difficult to turn a stable and significant profit from the existing businesses because Nintendo 3DS has entered the latter half of its product lifecycle and Wii U is expensive to produce. Would you give me some clues about your outlook for the fiscal year ending March 2017?

First of all, we have never thought that the future of dedicated video game platforms would be bleak so we should migrate to a new business area. On the contrary, we continue to consider what more and better we can do to attract consumers to our dedicated video game platforms or to have them understand the value of our platforms.

Following the generally accepted theory on platform lifecycles, it is natural for you to presume that the sales of Nintendo 3DS will drop X percent each year or we cannot expect a huge increase in Wii U sales. On another front, we have witnessed one single software title completely change the entire picture of our business many times. I believe one of the most impressive stories was the time when people thought the Game Boy platform was virtually over. However, a software title called “Pokémon” turned things around for the platform and ended up creating the biggest annual sales for Game Boy in the latter half of the platform’s eventual lifecycle. Therefore, we do not believe that the situation so far means that there will not be a bright future. However, we should learn from our experiences of not being able to perfectly respond to certain social changes such as changes in the way consumers collect and receive information.

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