Nintendo's Iwata Confirms Big Games This Year 120
1up has comments from Nintendo's President Satoru Iwata, as he spoke to investors earlier this week. When asked about the possibility of hardcore games coming to the Wii before the end of 2007, Nintendo's president assured gamers and moneymen that Mario and Metroid are coming this year. "It will be from around the end of this summer to the end of this year. We will then launch a new title of Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption although the last one is primarily for the [American and European] markets. These will be the key titles for the period ranging from the summer until the holiday sales season of this year, and I think we will be able to cater to the specific needs you mentioned."
Hurray! (Score:1)
Re:Shortage of consoles? (Score:5, Insightful)
ObFuturama (Score:3, Funny)
Not just consoles (Score:1, Interesting)
The console is great, the games have thus far been great, so I can't complain. But this shortage of hardware is a real pain in the ass.
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http://www.amazon.ca/Nunchuck-Controller-Nunchuk-
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Thanks again! I guess those hardware problems are temporarily solved.
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Re:Not just consoles (Score:4, Informative)
For a few days after that, www.wiihunt.com was reporting that stores around here had them, but they were gone in less than a week, and now we're back to having none anywhere in the state, as far as I can tell.
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Now the actual systems themselves - that's a different story...
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Now the only people I've heard of getting a Wii had to go into Walmart. The nearest one I know of is in a bad neighborhood and I probably wouldn't
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For your friendly neighborhood Meijer stores, it's Sunday. Go to any of the three Meijer stores in your area and they usually have one in stock for most
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In Berlin, Wiis have reappeared at major electronic stores just recently.
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The problem is that the "revolutionary" control scheme gets old very very fast. After a week or so, we went back to Guitar Hero 1+2, which me an my SO have been having much more fun with. Several of my friends who also owns Wiis (There's no shortage of them here in Denmark) are facing the same issue, and most of them have sold theirs.
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But anyways, I am glad that these games are coming out, but im not getting my hopes up in any way. I am going to wait patiently and play my ps3 (actually top rated ps2 games, since i beat all the ps3 games i wanted)/PC and wait for the reviews to come out.
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Calm down, Yes, there aren't many games worth playing now, and when you play a lot you finish them really fast. The problem is that third party publishes didn't invest in developing for the Wii earlier, so now we have to wait to get more games. I guess we'll have a mediocre first year and a half, before everyone gets their games done.
The control scheme is all but getting old. Yo
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Of course I was talking from my own point of view, and I realise that the controls might be perfect for some, but I guess that unlike you, I don't experience any resemblance of control in comparison to a mouse/keyboard. It might be because I have a big TV (I've heard that the Wiimote is more accurate on smaller TV's?), or it might be because I'm just too used to a mouse and keyboard, I don
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Re:Too Little, Too Late (Score:4, Informative)
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Don't be surprised, though. This one-year drought is typical of any console system. The same thing happened with the Nintendo 64 and the Gamecube, as well as the Playstation 2, and most any other system that has ever been released. This is because the first launch titles are the dip titles. It's when the developers all get ready to take a dip in the pool and see how the water is. Later, once they have an idea on how to develop for the platform and its capabilities they'll start taking advantage of
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aw (Score:1)
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Given how hard the Wii is to find in stores (at least where I live), it may take that long for me to get one.
Wiiiiiii! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see... Mario Sunshine, Mario Strikers: Charged (w/online play), Metroid 3, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Super Paper Mario is already out (I'm almost finished, great game). The Wii is looking better and better. Combine that with as the Wii ages 3rd parties will get better and better at utilizing the controls (for something other than a mini-game fest). I can't wait until we start getting good sports games with Wii controls (like Wii play but fleshed out controls and game play). Tennis especially. If they can get reading the racket right it should be great. How will they handle the next Madden? The last one got good reviews, now that they have a game or two under their belt let's see what it's like!
Meanwhile, the 360 and PS3 have games here and there that look interesting, but neither seems to have nearly as many games that I'm looking forward to. And most of those (God of War III, Bioshock, etc) are not exactly breaking new ground in controls, they are just refinement of some of the games we have had for a long time (beat-'em ups, FPSes).
The DS also produced some really quirky and fun games (like Yoshi's Touch and Go, for example). I can't wait to see more of that kind of stuff on the Wii. How about porting the new Sam & Max games or other adventure games? How about a Phoenix Wright title?
The Wii continues to be a very interesting system, and as it hits its stride better (remember the first year or two of the PS2?) things will only get better.
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It's too bad they didn't add somethin
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Re:Wiiiiiii! (Score:4, Informative)
By the way, it IS true that the accelerometers provide three degrees of freedom, exactly the number you need for full rotational specification; unfortunately only two of them are actually rotational, the third is actually a translational DOF (more or less). And you can't even really use the spatial location very well because the accelerometers only provide 8-bit acceleration data, so it's hard to use this to integrate up from acceleration to position data. All of this explains why a lot of the stuff people had expected to see so soon are still not happening - the thing doesn't quite give you true locatability, it stabs at it and leaves it up to the game developers to figure out ways around the limitations. You might be right that they will eventually figure out some way to make swordfighting games, but the point is, they won't give you quite the amount of control that you have with a real sword.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting controller nonetheless, I'm just sour because I had hoped for a perfect one with true 6 DOF locatability; I guess I'll have to wait for the next generation for that one...
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Whenever I look at the Wii I kind of get a déjà vu, I already played all those games or their prequels on the Cube, adding a bit motion control here and there is all nice and good, but where are the new games? I mean the completly new ones, not the franchise recycling that is going on here. So far I see only Disaster Day of Crisis and Project HAMMER, but they lo
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SuperPaperMario is not the same as MarioGalaxy, but MarioGalaxy is the same as Mario64/Sunshine and SuperPaperMario is the same as PaperMario. Beside, even if the gameplay is completly different, having the same characters in each and every game does get extremely boring, especially when you already had those characters around for 20+ years.
### The Wii has some awesome-looking titles coming that aren't Nintendo's main ser
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Halo Wars
## Now FireEmblem isn't bad, but its not a title that needs the Wii, it already played fine the last three times on GBA and Gamecube
Well I suppose that take Halo 3
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Halo is a universe with a complete story, each game shows you a piece of that story. Its interesting because you want to know how the story goes, its interesting because it fits together. With Mario or Zelda games on the other side you don't have that, each game is a reset and starts from scratch, you have a few common elements here and there, but it doesn't connect, the story of Mario1 isn't continued in Mario2. You don't play a Mario because you want to know how the thing continues, but becau
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Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's hoping. I would love to see the initial genius behind the Wii followed up by some solid long-term investment.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The PS3 won't make a Comeback in 2008 (Score:2)
Then slowly as the ps3 gains traction along with cost reductions in manufacturing and increasing tech availible for the ps3 you'll see the ps3 come back in 2008 as a dominating system.
A failing console making a comeback after being almost two years on the market is something that - as far as I can remember - has never happened in this business, and I don't think it will ever happen. The reason is simple:
If a console starts to lose ground, developers start to abandon it. The console will see less exclusives, and the cross-platform games will be shoddier on that console. Hence, its appeal to consumers will decrease, which will make it fail even quicker, decreasing the chance of a comeba
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Multi-platform here means Xbox360, PS3 and sometimes PC, but not Wii. What the Wii gets aren't the big titles, but the spin-offs and gaidens, the FF:Crystal Chronicals, the RE:UC rail shooter and stuff like that. Those titles aren't exclusive because the Wii is dominating, but simply because nobody would care for them on the other platforms. So far I couldn't name a single potentia
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They sure could, but who would buy that thing? The current hype is focused mostly around Wii Sports and the controller, in two years it will be old stuff by then and I doubt that the same crowed that bought into the current hype will go to buy a Wii HD, since the normal Wii already does everything they expect from a game console. To keep up with the XBox360/PS3 the Wii HD would need to have substantial more power then just a Wii with HD capabilities added on, it wou
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If the Xbox360 wouldn't be so damn buggy I would have already bought one, but with news about disk scratching and red rings of death
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Nintendo is still selling GBAs as well as DSs. GBAs are great for kids.
"Wii HD would need to have substantial more power then just a Wii with HD capabilities added on, it would need to be a completely new machine build from scratch, which in turn would mean that WiiHD games wouldn't run on a Wii, which in turn would mean that the Wii won't ever get a decent amount of good games since it was to short lived."
Why? The Wii uses a member of the PPC fa
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Wrong, the Wii is not in the same league as PS3 and XBox360, it will not be able to do a things that use huge crowds like AssassinsCreed or DeadRising, things that make use of physics engine will be impossible as well. Sure, sometimes you might be able to scale stuff down, but often times you simply won't be able to do that. Processing power can be very relevant to gameplay and the Wii just hasn't enough to keep up.
### There is no underlyi
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Now for the ugly truth about the PS3. It never was meant to maximize profits for the game publishers. The PS3 is a way to get Blue-ray into peoples homes. It is also a way for Sony to get into the online media business. Playing games is just a cover for Sony Entertainment's agenda.
The Wii is cheaper to develop for than t
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The Wii isn't for casual gamers, it's for everyone, many different demgraphics and psychographics. Nintendo has been saying this over and over again, but quite a few hardcore gamers, like yourself, think that every time the word "everyone
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The money comes from players interested in buying your games, not from the consoles sold. You have to keep in mind that the Wii isn't up to the XBox360 or the PS3, but against the XBox360 *and* the PS3. Many of the next-gen games are for XBox360 and the PS3, but not for the Wii, since it just is to slow to run them, which means that you have 6mio Wii customers vs 13mio PS3/XBox360 customers. Now guess where the money flows. The Wii might continue
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I don't know if the Wii will over take the 360 but at the current rate of sales it might. The Wii doesn't have to beat the PS3 and the 360. It just has to make Nintendo a lot of money. And it is. I just don't see sales of the Wii going down or the sales of the PS3 going up. Take a look here http://nexgenwars.com/ [nexgenwars.com] the Wii is lagging the 360 by that much. If Wii sales keep up at this rate it will equal or surpass 360 by n
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Well, as a gamer I care if a console will get good games and little else. When it makes money for Nintendo, fine for them, but that won't guarantee me good games. As said, for a third party developer it is important where the potential customers are and so far you have 13mil on the XBox360/PS3 side, since porting between those two consoles is relatively easy, and 6mil on the Wii side, since porting between XBox360/PS3 is never going to lead to satisfying resul
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You must be a real Sony fan or a real Nintendo hater. I was a big fan of the PS3 before it shipped. I wanted a Cell to program so bad I could taste it. I actually thought that idea of Apple going for Intel was stupid
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Actually I would love to develop for the Wii. The controller opens up new possibilities for games while the 360 and the PS3 are more about eye candy.
Yes the 360 and PS3 are very different critters. Most of the people that post with such authority on how easy it is to port software and or deliver bug free software have never written a line of code or used any system but and X86 or maybe a PPC.
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Even with all their differences they are still a lot more similar to each other then compared to the Wii. A PS3 simply can do XBox360 style graphics and a XBox360 can do PS3 style graphics, a Wii can't do either of that. Sure the engine programmers will have quite a bit of work to do to get the different architectu
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They can say it as long as they want, that doesn't make it any more true. Just look at the lack of online offering and serious lack of third party support (Assassins Creed, Bioshock, AlanWake, etc.). I have been a loyal Nintendo customer for 15+ years, the Wii has right now however nothing in terms of games that I would be interested in. Why that? Because I have played all its games last year when they where available on other Nintendo platforms. A game
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Note, I've never been suggesting that the Wii could ever come close to looking as good as the PS3, but games made for the PS3 could be ported just fine... they'd only have "Wii level graphics", which for the person who bought the Wii, is obviously JUST FINE. I can't think of any reasonable situati
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Anything that involves shaders is impossible on the Wii, it simply lacks the hardware support for that. Sometimes you might be able to get similar effects done, but when you have build a whole engine around certain assumption of what a GPU can do you can't just port it to a hardware that doesn't have those features. Its not just a matter of more pretty or less pretty, but a different way of doing the engine, doing the
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It's Nintendo, I think that's the least of our concerns. Unless you don't like Nintendo's offerings, in which, well... we're just gonna dissagree in terms of game style.
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It's sorta like saying Curby's Canvas
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Neither do I, the problem however is that hardware is still what is driving this industry. After 3D graphics came around, 2D was dead, almost instantly, not because it was bad, but just because it no longer was the trendy thing to do. Today you have the physics engines, crowed AI, HDR lighting, shader and all that stuff, they are less of a change then 2D -> 3D, but they are still new things to ex
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Sony and Microsoft are in bad possitions, right now. They've invested in systems that have no less than a 7 year lifecycle (o
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I don't see how that relates to the point I was making, namely, that a console usually can't make a comeback after failing for a year.
Wow, did your cat piss in your
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It means that the PS3 is losing against the XBox360, not against the Wii. Which in turns means that Xbox360 lack of support in Japan is a huge issue. As you said, you can't win without Japan and the XBox360 is as far away as being a success in Japan as always, which means the PS3 is alone in its market segment there. This of course doesn't make the PS3 a winner, but you c
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I would also bet that the Wii will sell around 70-90 millions du
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If the Wii would be dominating Ubisoft would move AssassinCreed over to the Wii, Rockstar would port their GTA and Konami would bring you MetalGear4, while Square gives you FF:XIII and Capcom RE5. Fact however is: They don't, not a single of th
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Uhm, yeah, so far very little third-party games have had large dev teams. That's because devs have only started to move teams to the Wii during the last month
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As crappy ports maybe. As develop-from-scratch from the Wii, I don't think so, there is currently no indication for that and I doubt that there is even a large enough market on the Wii. Just because a bunch of casual gamers buy the Wii, doesn't mean that they want to play Assassins Creed.
### Finally, I think you don't quite understand how friend codes work.
I understand very well how they work. The sole reason they where inve
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My opinion: The Wii will be this generation's most successfull console, by far, selling at least as much as the other two consoles combined, and it will get all the good titles. Many A-List franchises will move to the Wii, just like Dragon Quest moved to the DS. The fact that, as of now, most big titles are scheduled to be on the 360 and the PS3 is an artefact of the last generat
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Furthermore, Zelda isn't actually doing badly in Japan (or anywhere else, for that matter). Zelda sold more in Japan than any 360 or PS3 game. I think that as of now, it sold 500'000 copies in Japan - which is quite a lot, considering that there are (I think) less than 2 million Wiis sold in Japan (not entirely sure on those numbers, though).
In the US, Ze
Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't seen a Wii on the shelf yet, so I'm just hoping that I can casually purchase one by the time these games come out. It may have nothing to do with titles competing with each other, but more to do with waiting until they've sold their current round of hardware and aren't engendering ill will by being unable to provide consoles. If I were the big N (aka, making a profit on console hardware), I'd want at least a million Wii's sitting on shelves and warehouse palletes before launching my sure-fire hits.
Basically, demand for consoles (in the absence of the hit games) should be satisified before the game increases console demand. Anything else would be lost sales. Claiming that the extra time is being used for debugging and quality assurance might just be PR smoke and mirrors.
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Not necessarily. I actually know someone who got bored of their Wii and sold it already. Shortages or not, it's better if current owners don't treat the Wii like Tickle-me-Elmo and throw the thing into a closet after a couple months. Or put another way: supposing the Wii remained sold out through 2007, I don't think it would be a good idea for
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Spider-Man 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I try to find random RL landmarks in the Spidey games. It's one of those little mini-games you do for no reason, like stepping on only white tiles.
Fighting has been pretty fun. Shake the remote, shake, push button, dodge... I'm pulling up six to eight hit combos.
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They don't like Metroid Prime in Japan? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Metroid Prime is an FPS series... (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've seen, the Japanese market is all about the platformers (such as the real Metroid games, and Castlevania) and RPGS - and the Metroid Prime series is neither. I don't have any figures, but if the Japanese had as big a hardon for FPS as they did for RPGs, the X-Box would be doing gangbusters over there.
And if you're getting your Japanese culture from Megatokyo, you're getting an unbelievably skewed perspective.
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Japan's reaction to Metroid has always been "meh," ever since the first game came out for the Famicom Disk System. It sells well, makes some reasonable lucre, but Japanese Nintendo fanbois tend not to mention "Metroid" in the same breath as "Mario" or "Zelda" as their North American and European counterparts do.
The Metroid Prime games are made by a studio based in Texas, so it's reasonable for these games to be released in North America first, but even M
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If they weren't unpredictably weird, they wouldn't have made Metroid to begin with.
But you wouldn't see a steady supply of Japanese video games/manga/live action centered around cookie-cutter female characters with similar personalty archetypes and wardrobes if it didn't hit a nerve with Japanese consumers. If there wasn't so much of it and if it wasn't so popular, you wouldn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned the high sch
A Better Title? (Score:1)
I'm not arguing its not newsworthy, it's great new for Wii players everywhere (unfortunatly I am not one at the moment), but its a little like saying 'Microsoft Announce Halo 3 for Xbox 360 this year'. I'm as excited as anyone to see where Nintendo are taking their innovation, but I fear people are getting a little over-zealous in their attitudes; lest we forget the real (and non-established) areas of gaming the Wii could take us i
Wii success. (Score:1)