Topics

1

Nintendo Gaming / SCEE denies stealing motion tech. Steals non-gamers.

« on: June 03, 2006, 09:46:02 PM »

http://games.kikizo.com/news/200606/010.asp

Quote
"We've had a positive reaction to the controller and obviously some people have asked if it's a last minute thing," Sony's European boss, David Reeves, told trade paper MCV. "It's not - it's been planned for around two and a half years."

So then, what was the Bananarang? A red herring?

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"If you have a device that includes 50 or 55 patents, you can't reveal it, as someone will try to file a patent to stop it. We have already had some positive feedback on it from publishers."

So they didn't tell us about the Dual Shake because they didn't want someone to steal it, LOLZ.

Also probably an attempted jab against Immersion. Hey Sony? Where's your rumble?

Quote
"The name of the game is not market share, it's how fast we can grow the industry - our ambition is to grow 15 per cent a year on hardware and software if we can," Reeves told MCV.

"We want to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years. Whether we have 40, 50, or 60 per cent market share is not that important."

Sony's trying to steal the non-gamers now. LOLZ.

And with a $600 PS3, they're gonna be really lucky if they end up with 40% marketshare, even if the non-gamers don't show up in droves on the Wii like Iwata thinks.


Edit: Looking at the math, Sony wants to double the industry over the course of the next gen, and then they want 50% of it. Which means they don't expect anyone to buy the PS3. They aren't as dumb as they look.

[Babelfish]

2

Nintendo Gaming / Six million Wiiis at $250 apiece?

« on: May 25, 2006, 02:06:03 AM »

Bloomberg Japan

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Originally posted by: Babelfish
As for Wii 20000 5000 Yen or less

The forest benevolence ocean special duty which interviewed in Osaka 20000 5000 Yen or 250 dollars or less made ? thing clear concerning the price prospect of Wii.

Quote
Originally posted by: Babelfish
As for the present term shipment quantity of game machine "Wii" for the next generation home of sale schedule 600 ten thousand units, as for number of shipments of the game software 1700 ten thousand are planned in December period.

Nintendo plans to ship 6,000,000 hardware units, and 17,000,000 games (almost three games per-person), through December?

FYI, the DS sold somewhere around 3 million units in Japan and America combined during it's first holiday season.

["They all say, 'We want to be perceived as strong, innovative, dynamic and caring.']

3

Nintendo Gaming / Where "Wii" came from

« on: May 01, 2006, 02:08:18 PM »

I'm sure we've all seen where Jonny mentioned in the Blah blah blah that Rick got a tip that "Wii" was made for Nintendo by the same naming firm that came up with the "Lexus" name for Toyota, right?

Well, here's a great article about these kinds of naming companies. It seems very relevant to this past week's news, and you'd hardly notice that it was written back in 1999.

http://salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/print.html

Here's some quotes.

Quote
The exercise got off to an unpromising start. NewCo executives volunteered that they wanted the company to be perceived as strong, innovative, dynamic and caring. "We've done this process with hundreds of companies," Redhill says wearily. "They all say, 'We want to be perceived as strong, innovative, dynamic and caring.'" And therein, it seemed, lay the problem. Though top NewCo executives had avowed their intention to be different, to change the paradigm, to think outside the nine dots, "the qualities they were aiming to project were in fact common currency," Redhill sighs.

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Michele Lally, global marketing director for Reuters-Dow Jones Interactive, recently renamed Factiva, is grateful to her naming company, Interbrand, for helping her stand out in a world of Factevas and Actevas. She has sought refuge in, as she puts it, "the semiotics of the letter i." "Have you seen our letterhead?" she asks. "We do the i as a biacron. An i with a circle on top. Or 'the bubble,' as we call it internally." Lally herself is bubbling over with enthusiasm for the bubble. "The brand circle denotes infinite possibilities," she says. "We very much hope that bubble, that icon, will come to symbolize business information in airport lounges worldwide."

Ron Kapella, head of Enterprise IG, seems to be pursuing a similar tack with Naviant, an online data-mining company. Eager to distinguish his brainchild from its sound-alike cousins Agilent and Navigent, he, too, has honed in on the letter i. "Notice that the letter i is exactly in the middle of the word," he says. "Notice also that it has a circle over it. An i with a circle over it is the international symbol for information. It's a visual symbol we've created. Consumers will come to associate it with endless inspiration, endless possibility."

Unless, that is, they associate it with googly eyed teenage girls who dot their i's with hearts and smiley faces. And indeed, among some companies, a backlash against the naming companies has taken hold. For some, the fact that they came up with their names all by themselves, without recourse to professional help, has become a point of pride. "I love our name," Jeff Mallett, president and CEO of Yahoo, recently told an industry newsletter. "It's fun, irreverent and consumer-focused. And it wasn't conjured up by Landor, or some huge naming agency."

It's this sort of chutzpah that makes the namers at Landor see red. "The Internet is filled with arrogance," says Amy Becker coldly. "You might have a provocative, fun name. But do you have the basis for a lasting brand? We still don't know how compelling a brand Yahoo will be 10 years from now. I sense a real missed opportunity."

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Bachrach recently completed a renaming project for MacTemps, a specialized talent agency that provides print production experts who are proficient on Macintosh computers. Bachrach didn't much care for the name. "It didn't function well," he says. "It didn't suggest a brand." Bachrach thought he could help. "What MacTemps needed," he says, "was a name that was aggressively novel, shockingly different. A name that grabbed the perceiver by the throat and shook him."

Bachrach and his team of constructional linguists rose to the occasion. They presented MacTemps executives with their recommendation -- Aquent. Aquent? "It doesn't mean anything," Bachrach cheerfully explains. "But if it did mean something, it would mean, 'Not a Follower.'"

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Lu Cordova, president of TixToGo.com, is among the CEOs who roll their eyes at this sort of hubris. "Let's face it," she says. "We know who's in these big naming companies. We went to college with some of them. They say they're experts at this and experts at that. But they're really just our peers. They don't have any special mystical powers."

Cordova learned this the hard way earlier this year, when she sought out a new name for TixToGo, a popular online booking, ticketing and reservations service. After several months of probing and crunching, the naming firm she'd hired came back with a strong recommendation: YourThing.com. "The first 10 people we mentioned it to all said, 'It sounds like your, um, thingy," Cordova says drily. "So we said, whoops, OK, that one's gone."

4

Nintendo Gaming / Tecmo's first game revealed (online anime-style golf)

« on: February 14, 2006, 11:47:42 PM »

Japanese press release.

http://www.tecmo.co.jp/company/sc0401.htm

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, popularity online game ' and golf kapok ' announcing the game conversion for home
The Nintendo Co. new model machine "revolution (tentative name)" to entry first feature

It's supposedly an existing PC game series called "Pangya" made by a Korean developer. You can see some screenshots of the PC version here:
http://www.pangya.jp/fan_screenshot.aspx  

[Victor Ireland]

5

General Gaming / Working Desings is gone.

« on: December 13, 2005, 02:10:07 PM »

http://www.workingdesigns.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118916

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Originally posted by: Victor Ireland
There's no easy way to say it, so I just will. Working Designs is gone. All the staff has been laid off and the office is closed and has been for some time. Yes, the website is still here, and I am going to do my best to keep it tucked away somewhere on the 'net so it doesn't become an illicit domain. (Of course, some of the haters may be of the mind that it's been illicit all along, heh!).

When Working Designs shifted their translation/publishing business to the PSX from the Sega Saturn, Lunar 1&2 provided the biggest success in WD's history.

But when they tried to take on the Arc the Lad series, SCEA said they'd only be allowed to do it if they did all three games all at once, and charged the price of 1.5 games, because (even though the games were made by Sony) they weren't up to Sony's high standards. WD took a major hit financially because of it.

Sony did the same thing to them again on the PS2 with Growlanser Generations.

Of late, WD has been working on the PS2 version of Goemon, an early-PS2 game somewhat known for bad graphics, but despite WD's attempts to polish the game up, Sony refused to allow it on the PS2, cancelling it, and ending WD's run in the videogame industry in the process.


There's probably something to be said for WD's formerly-small niche of anime-style and strategy RPGs becoming crowded, forcing WD to make-do with the "less shiny" gems, but in the end it was Sony holding the knife, and Victor Ireland seems a little bit resentful. If you read between the lines, he's basically telling people to choose the Xbox360 over the PS3.

[Which kind of storage medium do you think the Revolution is going to use? Since I've read great things about Sony's Blu-Ray disc.Richard, 16]

6

Nintendo Gaming / Rev to feature 12GB custom discs?

« on: December 01, 2005, 02:49:06 PM »

From the latest Revo-Europe (formerly Cube-Europe) mailbag.

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Which kind of storage medium do you think the Revolution is going to use? Since I've read great things about Sony's Blu-Ray disc.
Richard, 16

The Revolution will initially use a proprietary disc standard developed between Nintendo and Panasonic. It uses 12 gig capacity discs. However, with a hardware attachment planned, it is quite possible more DVD standards will be supported in the future.

It's possible that this may have been a typo, since Nintendo said they're going to use 12cm discs. But he does say "capacity" specifically. Or maybe it was a misunderstanding.

Either way, it does seem likely, since you can cram in more storage with custom discs than you can with the standard ones (GameCube notwithstanding). Sega managed to get 1GB out of CDs that were 700MB at the time. DVD9 (Xbox360's format, and the Rev's previously leaked/misquoted/rumored format) has just under 9GB, FYI.

7

Nintendo Gaming / Touch de Rakushou! Pachislo Sengen: Rio de Carnival

« on: August 17, 2005, 03:18:07 PM »

Touch de Rakushou! Pachislo Sengen: Rio de Carnival official website.

"Pachislo Sengen" (or "Pachislot Sengen") is a series of casino games from Tecmo. There have been three of them on the PS2 in Japan.

"Pachislo" refers to pachinko and slot machines, popular in Japanese casinos. "Sengen" means proclamation, or announcement. "Rio de Carnival" is an extra mode that was added, where you play blackjack against a sexy dealer named Rio. "Touch de Rakushou!" was added for this DS version, and near as I can tell means "Touch for Easy Victory!"

Basically it's a casino game, but your objective is to win sexy pictures of the girls at the casino, since you can't exactly win money from a videogame.

This DS version appears to have done away with the pachinko and slot machines, and is just sticking with blackjack, since Rio apparently turned out to be the game's most popular character in Japan.

Touchscreen mini-games include a "spot the differences" game as an image scrolls by on both screens (demonstrated in flash form on the website), and card/photos you can "scratch" to reveal, like those instant-win lottery tickets.


If you're interested, you're probably going to have to import this one, as it seems extremely obvious that this game will never appear in America, especially not on the Nintendo DS, despite all of Nintendo's "Touching Is Good" advertisements, because they were just a mean lie...  

8

General Gaming / MS takes aim at the Rev's "virtual console" idea

« on: July 29, 2005, 01:49:53 PM »

Supposedly from the latest issue of GamePro.

Quote
A REAL Arcade...
Coming Soon to a Lving Room Near You

Of those of you that own an Xbox right now, how many use Live Arcade? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah, I thought so. You have to buy a hard-to-find disc to even accesss Live Arcade then you have to pay between $10 an $20 to play some rinky-dink game like Dig Dug. Yawn. That's all about to change, though: The Xbox 360 will have Live Arcade intergrated right into the box, and it willl pop right up on the home page dashboard; hit a button, and you're in like Flynn. You dont even need an Live account...or a credit card to browse, buy, and play freely. But will there be anything worth playing? We're breathless with anticipation. We got the inside scoop from Greg Canessa, group manager of Xbox Casual Games, who says that while the lineup has not officially been set in stone yet, there will be a wide variety of titles and styles, from quirky independents to big names to spiffed-up retro classics from consoles of a bygone era. The Atari 2600, TurboGraphix, Sega Saturn and even the Dreamcast were mentioned. Dare we dream? Next-gen Live Arcade sounds like the real thing.

Microsoft technically had Live Arcade long before the Rev was announced. But the Rev's system has been generating a lot of excitement (in the lack of other news), and going after other consoles is more what Nintendo had in mind, so it's pretty easy to say MS is at least taking a cue from Nintendo.

Nintendo will have NES/SNES/N64 and (full) GCN compatibility in the Rev, as well as apparently going after the Genesis.

MS will have (limited) Xbox compatibility in the Xbox360, and they're going after the Atari 2600, TG-16, Saturn and Dreamcast.

(Sony has teh BBQ sauce. )

Personally, I think this is a blow to Nintendo (and now the Rev has nothing else special "going for it" that we know of), but that it's not surprising, because emulation is nothing new, or particularly exclusive. Also, I think this is a good thing, because there seemed to be no way Nintendo was interested in the TG-CD, Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast (because they're all disk-based), and I think there's a lot of potential in those systems. Also, some competition hopefully means that Nintendo will get off their butts and make this thing happen, rather than endlessly debating about who gets a percentage of what.

9

Nintendo Gaming / Sigma Star Saga (and Shantae Advance) Hype Thread

« on: June 19, 2005, 02:50:48 AM »

"Sigma Star Saga" for the GBA is the latest original game from Wayforward, the people who made "Shantae" for the GBC. It's an action-RPG with side-scrolling-shooter elements.

Small companies are cool, and the success of this game could directly affect the chances of Shantae Advance finding a publisher, so I figured giving it a thread is the least I could do.

For those who haven't read it, here's some scans from the Nintendo Power a few issues back (issue 191) where Sigma Star Saga was the focus of a 4-page Epic Center article.

Page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4.

Then if you want, there's also this sidebar (from issue 193) where NP plugs both Sigma Star Saga and Shantae Advance, and an advertisement that Namco took out in the same issue.

Enjoy!

10

Nintendo Gaming / Factor 5 jumps ship. Swims over to Sony camp.

« on: May 22, 2005, 01:14:23 PM »

CNet's news.com

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In the wake of the consoles' unveiling, some developers are already leaning toward one platform.

"I was shocked by how powerful the new consoles are," said Julian Eggebrecht, president of the San Rafael, Calif.-based game development company Factor 5. "They should really free our development."

Eggebrecht said his company--which developed "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" for Nintendo's GameCube--would create games exclusively for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3.

The choice boiled down to performance, Eggebrecht said at E3 in Los Angeles. His company has worked with Microsoft's Xbox 360, but found PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell chip offered more processing power. The additional performance allows the gang at Factor 5 to more easily simulate the real world for a better game experience, he said.

Marin Independant Journal

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Factor 5, best known for the "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" series, has an even bigger announcement. After years of working exclusively with Nintendo, the San Rafael studio is signing on with Sony to develop two original titles for the just-unveiled PlayStation 3. It also has created a non-interactive demonstration that Sony is using to show the system's capabilities.

"It's a huge step up," said Factor 5 President Julian Eggebrecht of the PS3. "It's quite crazy, with production values so high."

As production costs skyrocket and publishers become less willing to pursue original ideas, Eggebrecht said, the opportunity to work with Sony was inviting.

"What's great is that Sony stepped up to the plate and said, 'Hey, we believe in you guys, so why don't we do something original together?'" Eggebrecht said.

[1UP: It's been a long time since Dragon Quest was a really popular series in the U.S. Do you think it can reclaim its former popularity with Dragon Quest VIII?]

11

General Gaming / Yuji Horii - Dragon Quest interview

« on: May 21, 2005, 04:42:56 PM »

1up.com

It's mostly about the Level-5 developed Dragon Quest VIII, but since it's an E3 interview, it also deals with America and localizations.

Quote
1UP: It's been a long time since Dragon Quest was a really popular series in the U.S. Do you think it can reclaim its former popularity with Dragon Quest VIII?

Yuji Horii, Dragon Quest creator and director: We started a fresh label, it's called Dragon Quest now instead of Dragon Warrior, to make it like rebuilding Dragon Quest. That's what we're doing with this one.

1UP: Why did they decide to change the name? Is it to unify the name between territories and reduce confusion?

YH: Up to now, it was more of a legal issue. We weren't allowed to use the words "Dragon Quest," but we finally solved that rights problem and now we can use it.

Quote
1UP: How many of the Dragon Quest off-shoot games have you presided over? Do you involve yourself with those?

YH: Yes, I'm involved. I preside over the Torneko games.

1UP: Which one do you think is the most satisfying? The most recent Torneko game that came out in Japan, that was really cool. I'd like to see them over here, but I'm not holding my breath, either.

YH: Of the projects, I like Torneko, but the Slime Morimori series, I really like that one as well. I'd love to release it here, given the chance.

12

General Gaming / Xbox360/PSP Connectivity

« on: May 18, 2005, 02:33:45 AM »

The Xbox360 will be able to connect to any USB storage devices (like digital cameras and mp3 players), and can trade stored files back and forth.

In Microsoft's diagram explaining it, they specifically show a PSP.

So much for the "MS hates/feels threatened by Sony, and would team up with Nintendo on the GBA/DS in a heartbeat if it could take Sony down a notch" theory.

Could it be that MS fears the Rev?

[Metal Gear]

13

General Gaming / A bucketload of Metal Gear games announced for Sony

« on: May 18, 2005, 01:58:54 AM »

Probably disappointed by the lackluster sales of MGS3, Konami is releasing "MGS3: Subsistence" (note, not Substance) for the PS2. It's MGS3 with some extra features, of course.

Most notably, it comes with English-translated ports of the MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. So much for Kojima and Konami's very-public refusal to ever revisit the past. Personally, I was always hoping this would happen on a Nintendo console (the DS would be perfect for them), but, as we all know, Konami is Sony's b!tch.

Also, Konami is working on "Metal Gear Ac!d 2" for the PSP. Despite the fact that MGA wasn't exactly the bestselling title on the PSP that Konami was hoping for. But MGA2 is a cel-shaded card-based stealth game now, which should fix everything...

And of course, Kojima's retirement has been revoked for the tenth time in a row, as he's now making Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3.

14

Nintendo Gaming / Help UbiSoft decide what to call "Lunar Genesis"

« on: April 30, 2005, 01:34:38 PM »

UbiSoft has revealed to LunarNet that "Lunar Genesis" for the DS is a prequel to the Lunar series, set 1000 years before the events of Lunar 1.

They're also letting LunarNet run a poll over which subtitle for the game people like the best, and they'll presumably take the results into consideration.

The options are:

Ashen Dawn
Dark Skies
Dragon Song
Scarlet Sun
Shattered Dawn

The names look like they suggest that they'll deal with whatever it was that happened to the "Blue Star" that caused Althena to move the population over to it's moon, "Lunar". Two or three of them look like they're trying to work a "DS" into the game's name.

The poll is only open for the weekend, and closes on monday morning, so if you're going to vote, you'd better be quick about it.

[Launch Lineup- 6/10-]

15

General Gaming / GameFAQs deleting "negative" PSP Reader Reviews

« on: April 16, 2005, 01:13:51 PM »

The Video Game Ombudsman

People on GameFAQs have recently been noticing that PSP Reader Reviews with any hint of negativity in them have been getting deleted, and people have been speculating on a CNET/Sony GameFAQs-takeover conspiricy.

A guy named Chris Buzan decided to test things, and wrote this deliberately "good but negative" review of the PSP.

Quote
Dubbed many things by the media, including a portable PS2 and the iPod of gaming, Sony set expectations very high. Did they deliver? Well that depends on how much you like Spider-Man 2 and Sony’s backlog of first part games I guess. No Ratchet and Clanks or God of War’s here, although a port of Gran Turismo 4 is on the way. No, instead they opted to go ahead with some of their older standbys such as Wipeout, Twisted Metal, and the 989 sports line (Which I‘ve never played personally, but I‘ve also never heard anything good about these games). While these games are still good, they hardly represent the best Sony has to offer in my eyes. If you’re already a diehard fan of these games though, then this is a definite must-have. Third parties once again make up the majority of noteworthy titles for a Sony system, with titles such as Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Acid, although I don’t have any interest in either. Personally, I bought my unit because of all the hype around Lumines, which I can attest to being a very good game, although lacking much “Meat”, as in value beyond trying to improve your high score and a small puzzle mode in which you build objects out of the blocks.

The screen is big and beautiful, but the system design is highly overrated and smudges at even the lightest touch. Unbelievably, I actually have a dead pixel on my screen. It’s in the upper-right corner and it doesn’t get in the way during gameplay, but when I was watching Spidey 2 it became pretty distracting. And correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this thing basically look like a GBA? Anyway, video playback is rock solid, as I’m sure you’ve been told numerous times already (But yeah, right now SM2 is the only movie available). MP3 playback is good too, but this thing will hardly compete with the iPod. The storage medium is Sony’s expensive memory sticks which range between 32MB to 4GB (The upcoming Memory Stick PRO). Compare that to the 20GB and 40GB versions of iPod and you’ll see my point. One can store a few songs while the other can store an entire collection. Sure, PSP can do other things, but aside from gaming there are simply better stand-alone devices out there. Yes, it does many things, but it’s a jack of all trades, and master of none. There was one pleasant surprise though, and that was the battery life, which so far hasn’t been an issue at all for me.
=====
Launch Lineup- 6/10- It has it’s rudimentary “killer-app” (Although it‘s no Halo as in being a true must-have in my opinion) and a few other noteworthy titles, although I wouldn’t recommend any of them myself.

Future Lineup- 3/10- Pretty slim pickings for the rest of the year. Sony made the launch very top heavy, leaving very few interesting games to be launched later in 2005. When Hot Shots Golf is the bright spot on a release calendar, you know you have problems. GTA might turn my opinion around, but currently nothing is known about it.

Battery Life- ?/10- As mentioned earlier, it hasn’t been an issue.

MP3 Playback- 5/10- It gets the job done, but the memory sticks are an unattractive medium for me, and it doesn’t curb my desire for an iPod any.

Movie Playback- 8/10- Good quality (Aside from distracting dead pixels which appear on some units), but the selection of movies right now is lacking if I do say so myself. If you’re playing your own stuff then you’ll be A-OK though.

Aesthetics- 4/10- I’ll probably be lynched for this, but I really don’t like the way this thing looks. The screen is big, but I’d say that it might.

Value- 4/10- $250 for a handheld (Even with extras) and $40-$50 for games seems ridiculous to me. If you’re looking into buying a PSP, I strongly recommend holding out for a non-Value Pack option unless you have a lot of disposable income.

Overall- 5/10- It has some decent media functions, but the outlook on games is less than stellar. Coupled with a crippling price point and load times, and you have a somewhat disappointing system on your hands.

Note that this is actually the second version of this review. There were two that were deleted. The first version contained some comments like "You'd basically be paying 300 dollars to play a puzzle game" which were rejected by GameFAQs as being false (since the PSP is $250, not $300, even though Chris was including the price of Lumines), so he rewrote/deleted some things to make it more favorable to them, and it was still deleted.

This Video Game Ombudsman site was contacted by someone claiming to have been the one who deleted the review, who offered a bunch of nonsensical reasons for it's deletion. "The review contains blatantly false information, and is on the verge of being a joke review, obviously making it at a minimum a troll review." "Now, while the PSP is an Mp3 player, it isn't comparable to the iPod. Just like comparing the Ps2 or Xbox to a Toshiba or Panasonic DVD player is taboo, applying the same to the PSP via the iPod is forbidden in the same degree." "As a small side note, the mention of slim pickings for movies available is laughable at best. Did people blame the Ps2 when DVDs were a new breed of entertainment? No, they blame the movie studios and DVD release corporations."

Then CJayC, the founder/admin of GameFAQs, wrote in to the Video Game Ombudsman, saying that he doesn't know who that other person was (perhaps one of the people who complained about it), but they have no authority and aren't the ones who pulled the Reader Review, as only CJayC and one other guy can do that.

He explained that the reason it seems that negative PSP reviews keep getting deleted is because GameFAQs doesn't read every review, they just respond to complaints. And the PSP fanboy crowd on GameFAQs has been whining the loudest.

He said nothing about what merited this review's deletion (aside from the presence of complaints), but he did say that he deletes reviews like this that "bash" the PSP all the time, and that people are making too big of a deal about it.

 

16

General Gaming / "Conker: Live and Uncut" loses the "Uncut" part...

« on: April 13, 2005, 02:42:29 AM »

"Conker: Live & Reloaded"

IGN Xbox

Quote
Originally Microsoft had called the remade game, Conker: Live & Uncut, but wisely changed the name because this is not in any way an uncensored version of Bad Fur Day. In fact, the N64 version actually had some un-bleeped swearing. Sure, the F-bomb was always censored, but every now and then a s--- would get through, which made things even funnier. Here, Microsoft has upped the bleeps as almost nothing makes it through safely, not ever "twat," which I didn't even know was considered a curse word by even the most modest of people.

LOL!

Oh and, there's other stuff in the IGN preview.

Conker's like... the most graphically-impressive Xbox game IGN has ever seen... and like... Rare spent all of their time on the graphics and the Xbox Live online multiplayer. Stuff like that.

17

General Chat / Gaming-Age Forums get flushed down the crapper

« on: April 03, 2005, 10:00:54 PM »

Apparently the Gaming-Age forums got hacked yesterday.

Someone got into an "administrator" account, started granting/revoking moderator privelages, started levelling/lifting bans on people, and generally messed with as much as possible.

The admins think they know who did it (a forum regular), and based on the pattern of destruction, they think that he/she was pro-Nintendo, and had emotional conflicts with a number of anti-Nintendo people on the forum.

The admins eventually got things under control again, but in an act of defiance/vengeance they've decided to adopt a new policy of blatantly trolling against Nintendo, and banning anyone who remains pro-Nintendo, or has a problem with their attitude.

Personally, I've never posted in the Gaming-Age Forums. I signed up once a long time ago, but then I got banned for no apparent reason, before I even made one post. I kind of liked to lurk there anyways, since it seemed like a lot of quality posters and unemployed industry insiders were inexplicably drawn to that forum.

By the looks of things, it'll probably be dead in a couple of days.

18

Nintendo Gaming / Castlevania Interview

« on: March 24, 2005, 12:22:25 AM »

There's a slightly-old interview with Koji Igarashi on 1up.com.

Nothing too shocking. Igarashi considers Curse of Darkness on the PS2 to be his real baby, and Castlevania DS is just a side-project.

Curse of Darkness will have experience points, because that will attract girls to the series. This coming from the guy who struck Castlevania Legends from the "official" Castlevania history because it had a female protagonist, and thinks that adolescent males are turned off by that prospect. He also apparently didn't like Maria being a playable character in the legendary "Dracula X: Rondo of Blood", but he was able to dismiss it as a "joke".

Most of his personal time and his division's funding is going into Curse of Darkness.

The character designs for Castlevania DS were just contracted out to some anime production company, rather than being drawn by modern Castlevania mainstay Ayami Kojima, because he wanted her to focus entirely on Curse of Darkness for the PS2, and not be "distracted" by Castlevania DS. And it's just the character designs that are coming from this nameless generic anime company. The game won't feature any Dracula X-style anime scenes, or any other anime influences.

He doesn't think that the "Castlevania series" and the GBA were ever really a match for each other anyways, so he's not concerned that Castlevania DS might be missing what has become one the more "vital" elements of the series. He's hoping that the anime character designs in Castlevania DS will attract children to the series.

Oh and, the sound quality in Castlevania DS should be better than it was in the GBA games.

19

General Gaming / Soul Calibur 3 = PS2 exclusive

« on: March 21, 2005, 10:28:09 PM »

According a scan floating around the net that's apparently from the latest issue of GamePro (it's the May issue, not April), "everybody" agrees that Soul Calibur 2 was a big disappointment. Apparently the thing that everybody hated the most about it was that it was multiplatform.

So, Namco is now redeeming themselves by making SC3 a PS2-exclusive! Umm... yay?


FYI, according to the latest NPD numbers, Soul Calibur 2's sales break down like this:

Soul Calibur II (GC): 789,964
Soul Calibur II (PS2): 736,372
Soul Calibur II (Xbox): 529,190

Multiplatform Total : 2,055,526

And I really don't know, but someone on another forum claimed that SC2 bombed on the PS2 in Japan, and that it was actually GCN>Xbox>PS2 over there. Does anyone have any reliable numbers for that?

Either way, I do think the game itself suffered a little by being multiplatform, but it was mostly that the GCN/Xbox versions were dragged down by the inferior hardware of the PS2, because the producer wanted to keep things "level", so the PS2 version wouldn't look bad (which it did anyways).


Anyways, I have two thoughts.
1: Moneyhats!
2: GamePro sure does suck.

[Lunar]

20

Nintendo Gaming / "Lunar Genesis" for the DS!

« on: March 17, 2005, 06:36:21 PM »

UbiSoft just announced their current release schedule, and dropped something of a bomb, mentioning that they're coming out with "Lunar Genesis" for the DS, in America, sometime in "Q2 2005" (which would be in July-Sept of this year).

This is apparently that "Ru Na" game from Marvelous Interactive (makers of the Harvest Moon series) that was previously mentioned on Japanese release lists.

Emails to UbiSoft have apparently revealed that by "Lunar" they mean Lunar Lunar, as in, the RPG series produced by GameArts.


The "Untitled GameArts RPG" mentioned on Japanese lists is still apparently something else entirely.


Edit: Games Are Fun link.  

21

Nintendo Gaming / Probably fake pic of a Rev development kit

« on: February 23, 2005, 03:19:54 PM »

This is proportedly a picture of a Revolution development kit, snagged with a hidden camera.

Someone brightened it up to reveal more details.

I think we all know that this could very easily be bogus, but it could probably just as easily be real. As if we'd know. Or it matters. But, I figured some of you would enjoy it.

22

Nintendo Gaming / New RPG coming from Mistwalker

« on: February 03, 2005, 04:18:20 PM »

RPGFan

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original Final Fantasy series creator and longtime Square producer, retired from SquareEnix and formed his own company "Mistwalker".

His first project has apparently been announced in Japan as a strategy RPG for the Nintendo DS.

The artwork on the game is being handled by another longtime Square veteran, Hideo Minaba, who only recently gained some fame with FF Tactics Advance and the upcoming FFXII, and has also split from SquareEnix to go freelance.

23

NWR Feedback / Revolution and the future

« on: January 22, 2005, 09:17:26 PM »

I was just thinking, we (by which I mean "you") should probably set up a "Revolution" forum, sometime before all the insanity of E3. Sure, it'll be a deathly slow board for a while, since all we have are a few meager rumors, but it will pick up, and it'd probably be easier to set it up now than to set it up later and have to sort all the Rev-themed threads into it. Plus it'll keep PGC cutting-edge.

And, while we're on the subject, does PGC have any "plans for the future"? Specifically, I'm thinking about the name. "Planet GameCube" is gonna start sounding weird eventually. Are you gonna "pull a KFC" and start referring to the site as "PGC" in the future? Or can we expect a name change? Possibly when the Revolution's name seems a bit more finalized? Maybe after E3? It's not unheard of, I mean, you used to be Planet N-2000. You don't have to be just "Planet GameCube" forever.

I'm sure you/we could come up with a bunch of good new names, and you could let us vote on them, or maybe you could just surprise us.

At the very least, can you just change the color scheme of PGC? Purple has been getting dull for a while now. And make the "Revolution" board. Thanks.

[Steve Kent blasts Nintendo, 7 rules for fixing nintendo]

24

Nintendo Gaming / Steven Kent "Pulls an IGN"

« on: January 10, 2005, 02:37:47 PM »

I saw this on the Gaming Age forums. Supposedly it came from a free section of the Videogames Transmedia webzine, but I can't read PDFs on this computer. So I'll just quote what was on Gaming Age.

Quote
Steve Kent blasts Nintendo, 7 rules for fixing nintendo

What Nintendo needs to do

In this generation of console wars, GameCube came in third. Game Boy
Advance is obsolete. The initials DS may be short for ‘Definitely
Struggling’ instead of ‘Dual Screen’ if Sony launches PlayStation
Portable (PSP) at a reasonable price next year.

Nintendo, the company that re-launched and re-defined the video game
business, has been battered in the console business and looks like it
might be ripe for wreckage in handhelds.

The Situation:

As Microsoft entered the console wars, a lot of people asked, “Can
the market support three competitors?” The answer seems to be,
“Yes, but the guy who comes in last always dies.”

In 1986, Atari tried to compete with newcomers Nintendo and Sega. It
didn’t work and Atari wisely chose to sit out the 16-bit generation
before committing corporate hari-kari in the form of Jaguar.

In 1989, Sega and NEC started the 16-bit generation with Genesis and
TurboGrafx. Nintendo entered two years later, knocked NEC out of the
way; and the U.S. market never saw another NEC console again.

Sony did the same thing to Sega in the next generation. Sega Saturn
came in third place—not including 3DO and Jaguar. Sega did come back
with Dreamcast, but no company that has come in third has survived the
next generation.

4 In the current market, Nintendo has come in third place.
Could Nintendo follow in the steps of Sega, 3DO, and Atari and go
software only? With its many great franchises, Nintendo would be quite
the hit as a third-party publisher. Only, isn’t that what people said
about Sega?

The truth is that the Atari of today bears almost no relationship to the
Atari of the eighties. The Atari of old was cut in half. Both halves
have been sold and resold. The company currently known as Atari is
really a French company called Infogrames.

After a long fight, 3DO ceased to exist. Sega, the company that once
boasted it would supplant Electronic Arts as the number one independent
publisher, never lives up to its potential. Without hardware to
support, former console makers seem to give up their competitive drive.

So is Nintendo going to go the way of Sega and Atari? The short answer
is, ‘No.’,” says John Taylor, managing director and analyst for
Arcadia Investment Corp. “Sega made a bunch of missteps. Sega had to
deal with 32X, Sega CD, and a bunch of peripherals that confused
consumers, ate up resources, and distracted management.”

Granted, Nintendo has not released anything as notorious 32X, though
Virtual Boy came close. On the other hand, with Game Boy Advance SP
(Nintendo of America plans to discontinue the original GBA) and DS
running side-by-side, the company does have two systems confusing
consumers, eating resources, and distracting management.

And this muddle appropriately happens as Sony prepares to launch PSP.
“On the console side, it’s harder to imagine where Nintendo fits in
now than it was 12 months ago,” says Taylor.
When asked, the clerk at a GameStop store in Hawaii said that his store
had sold out of PlayStation 2 and Xbox. “We still have GameCubes in
stock.”

Asked why he still had GameCubes, he stated that it was fine for a
certain audience. “Xbox and PlayStation 2 are better for 15- to
30-year-olds. Most of the people who come here are between 15 and
30.”
The clerk said that DS was ‘awesome, but hard to find.’ “We only
get six in per week.” He suggested that I reserve a PSP, though he
could not say what the price would be.
Calls to game stores in Washington, New York, and California produce
similar results—though the clerks are seldom as friendly.
So this is the situation. Nintendo has been marginalized in the
console business. It will shortly face a most significant challenge its
portable business. Nintendo needs to make some fundamental changes.
The following are steps Nintendo must take to prosper over the next 18
months:

1. Abandon the ‘belle of the ball’ mentality.

Nintendo needs to abandon its former “star of the show” mentality
and start acting like a company that knows it’s in trouble. The good
news is that the Kyoto-giant has greatly improved one of its biggest
weaknesses—third-party relations. The bad news is that Nintendo’s
console sales are so low that even though they feel welcomed, many
publishers are not sure they want to jump on board with Nintendo.
“Nintendo has done a better job of working with third-party
publishers,” says Taylor. “The third parties aren’t worried about
the business model so much as they are about the GameCube’s market
potential.”
In other words, fewer people own GameCube, and those people seem to buy
less software than PlayStation 2 and Xbox owners.
Part of the problem is that Nintendo has abandoned the principles of
service that made it such a force.
Nintendo is notably more harsh than Microsoft or Sony in its handling
of smaller publications and fan sites. Right now, Nintendo needs to
cultivate allies and advocates. In a society filled with opinion
leaders, i.e. the Internet, Nintendo must court influential fans.
Along this same line, Nintendo needs to acknowledge the competition.
Nintendo executives say that DS and PSP were made for different
audiences. The truth is that when customers walk into Wall-Mart or
GameStop with $200, they are going to compare DS and PSP and choose one
over the other.
And these annual shortages… what’s with that? Nintendo has a
shortage of DS units. Do they think that is chic? They had similar
shortages after the launches of GameCube, N64, and Super NES. You would
learn how to manage inventory by now.
There is no logical reason for Nintendo to waste this window of time
before the launch of PSP. Yet here we are. With PSP supposedly
launching in three months, Nintendo is excitedly telling the press how
they cannot keep up with demand for DS.
Why in the world are GameStop and Electronics Boutique stores, arguably
the most influential chains in gaming, only receiving six DS units per
week? They should be saturated with DS systems.
The Nintendo of old, the one that sold approximately 100 million NESs,
simply tried harder. In the early days, NCL president Hiroshi Yamauchi
personally courted third-party publishers. Nintendo of America
president Minoru Arakawa met with store owners in New York and promised
to buy back unsold merchandise and helped set up a few store displays.
In order to regain market share, Nintendo needs to return to its former
Avis mentality. It needs to try harder.

2. Forget the bottom line.

In 1990, Nintendo and the NES owned 93 percent of the U.S. console
business. In 1994, the hottest year for 16-bit, the Super NES commanded
approximately 48 percent of the U.S. market and ruled in Japan. By the
end of the N64 generation, Nintendo was down to 33 percent of the
American console market. With GameCube, Nintendo is down to
approximately 15 percent.
That is a nearly steady drop of 50 percent from one generation to the
next.
The typical Nintendo response to this is something along the line of
their console business always remaining profitable. It’s a good and
persuasive response. Even as Sony strangled Nintendo in all three world
markets in the last year of the original PlayStation, Nintendo managed
to make money with N64 while Sony leaked like a sieve.
The problem is that if Nintendo’s share of the market keeps getting
smaller, the next generation will not be profitable.
There is another danger, too—people perceiving Nintendo as a company
that does not care about its customers. Granted, companies are only out
for themselves, but that does not mean they need to come across that
way.
A few years back, Nintendo defined ‘connectivity’ as meaning,
“You buy a $150-console, a $99-portable, a $10-cable, a $49-console
game, and a $29-portable cartridge.” That definition of
‘connectivity’ sounded awfully self-serving.

3. Know your market and stick to it.

“You could argue that Nintendo still has a defendable position with a
certain demographic,” says John Taylor. Taylor sees that demographic
as the youth market, but the research does not necessarily agree.
Recent surveys showed that the most desirable games for fourth and
fifth graders were “Halo 2” and “Grand Theft Auto: San
Andreas.” Most 10-year-old boys want whatever games their big
brothers want. What few 10-year-olds want is to look uncool.
“Wario” games are not perceived as cool.
The Hawaiian GameStop clerk identified PlayStation 2 and Xbox as
systems with games for players ages 15 to 30. He could not come up with
a target market for GameCube, even when pressed. All he would say was,
“Most of our customers are between 15 and 30.”
As N64 faded and GameCube launched, Nintendo sent out the message that
it was not just for kids. The problem is that none of the adult games
that followed, “Conker’s Bad Fur Day,” “Perfect Dark,”
“Eternal Darkness,” and the “Resident Evil” series, sold well or
drove hardware sales.
Here, the analysts and experts disagree. Some people say that Nintendo
needs to cultivate its position as the manufacturer of family-friendly
video game systems. “Nintendo cannot compete with Microsoft and
Sony,” said one reporter. “Nintendo is like a company.”
Others say that Nintendo can indeed change its stripes. “Look at
Cadillac,” says Taylor. “It used to be the car your grandfather
drove in the suburbs. Now, with its change of image, Cadillac is the
high-prestige car for urban drivers.”

4. Americanize, Americanize, Americanize

The bottom has dropped out of the Japanese video game market. It
shrank by one-third in 2001 alone. Japan, which bought the least
hardware and the most software in the past, was the most profitable
market in games. Now that the drop has occurred, North American is the
most lucrative market.
Only one Japanese company made it into the U.S. market’s top 10 games
of 2003—Nintendo. Nintendo had four games in the top 10—two of
which were “Pokemon.”
“Cute,” “Fluffy,” and “Funny,” words that describe so many
of the best Japanese games, just don’t appeal the way they used to.
American audiences are into speed, action, violence. Americans like 3D
adventures and first-person shooters. These are not big genres in
Japan. Sports, other than soccer, are huge in the United States.
Sports, other than soccer, do not sell well in Japan.
Nintendo has one shooter—“Metroid Prime.” The company has
abandoned sports.
“Nintendo needs to develop a Western-centric development network,”
says Taylor, and he is right. The problem is that with the admirable
exception of Retro Studios, Nintendo seems content letting second-party
partners like Rare and Silicon Knights slip away.

5. Keep doing what you do right

As angry and pessimistic as some gamers have become about Nintendo,
other insiders believe that Nintendo is doing many things exactly
right. “Nintendo is listening to a good mixture of customers and game
developers,” says Richard Doherty, research director of
Envisioneering.
Had Nintendo read the reviewers and bulletin boards, the Pokemon series
might have died two or three years ago. It didn’t, and Pokemon
“Ruby” and “Sapphire” both made it on to the NPD Group’s list
of the top 10 selling games of 2003. “Fire Red” and “Leaf
Green” are among the top sellers of 2004.
Many reviewers complained about the cel-shaded look of the new
“Zelda” game right up until the release of “Wind Waker.” Then
they proclaimed it. Now Nintendo is effectively breaking the
“Zelda” franchise into two separate lines with the ‘adult Link’
in games with more realistic graphics and the ‘young Link’ remaining
in cartoon-like cel-shading.
Despite all of the criticisms, Nintendo still manages to do many things
better than any other company in the business.

6. Stop with the mid-course corrections and hold to the basics

What did Sony and Microsoft do that was so brilliant with the launches
of their first console systems? Nothing. But even when things went
wrong, they kept to their game and that made a difference.
Saturn smeared PlayStation during the launch window in Japan. The
following year, N64 out-launched both of them. Sony did not falter.
Ken Kutaragi went right on making alliances, arranging exclusive games,
and building an empire.
Sony’s growth was insidious in Japan. First it was behind both
Saturn and N64, then it was behind only N64, then it ruled the market.
For two years after the launch of Xbox, people joked that Xbox should
be called the “Halo Delivery System.” But Microsoft remained
steady. Microsoft executives arranged exclusive deals with unlikely
partners such as Tecmo and Ubi Soft. Games continued to look better on
Xbox. More recently, Microsoft broke Sony’s stranglehold on online
support from EA Sports.
Sony may have sold more hardware in this generation, but Microsoft
ended the generation with the chic factor.
Sony has always said that it pandered to the Playboy crowd—not
meaning Playboy readers, but rather suggesting that sophisticated and
older demographic. Microsoft said it was going after a tech-savvy
crowd. Even when Sony executives publicly berated their counterparts at
Microsoft, both companies stayed the course.
And Nintendo? Nintendo has bounced around. First GameCube was the
safe system for kids, then it grew up and competed with Sony and
Microsoft, only to become a system children and parents could trust.
The same thing has happened with GBA. First GBA SP’s clamshell
design was to make it more adult-friendly. Then DS materialized, and
GBA SP turns out to have been a kids system all along.
Nintendo needs to pick a strategy and stick to it; and in no area is
that more important than in handhelds.

7. Either do Revolution right or don’t do Revolution at all

In the end, Nintendo is going to need to make a stand. Executives at
both Sony and Microsoft have made comments about Nintendo owning the
handheld market. Now Sony has invaded that space. Microsoft may still
follow.
Nintendo should make its stand with Revolution. To do this, Nintendo
needs to do a lot of things right from the start.

First, it’s time for Nintendo to discover the Internet. In Kyoto,
just like the rest of the world, people access to the Internet and for
more than a game of “Phantasy Star Online.” Nintendo executives
admit that not adding DVD capability to GameCube hurt them, it’s to
make the same admission with the Internet. People may not use Xbox
Live, but they want the option.

Next, it’s time for Nintendo executives to listen to what their
customers tell them. People like pretty graphics. People want the same
games with better graphics. Nintendo executives say they want
Revolution to be as revolutionary as DS. Fine, but make sure the
graphics are hugely improved.

Not everyone agrees with this. Richard Doherty compliments Nintendo
for not trying to “create a super computer in a $300 game box.”
This, he says, is what will separate Nintendo from Microsoft and Sony.
But if Microsoft and Sony are successful, that separation may not be
good.

The truth is that if good old “Madden NFL” looks better and plays
better on PlayStation 3 and NextBox, Maddeneers are going to buy those
systems. And, for the record, “Madden NFL 2004” was the best
selling game of 2003.

The best of all worlds would be for Nintendo to join forces with
Microsoft. Nintendo would handle Japan, Microsoft would launch in the
United States. Microsoft would make the box, Nintendo would make the
controller. Software would be shared.

Since that is not going to happen, Nintendo needs to launch on time
with good software and a strong proprietary library. If Microsoft
launches in 2005, Nintendo should launch in 2005 as well. Do not pull a
Dreamcast/3DO and come out too early, but do not allow the competition a
one-year head start. Contrary to what former Nintendo VP Peter Main
said in his final press conference, there is no benefit in coming last
to the party.
Finally Nintendo needs to have enough hardware at launch. Avoid
shortages—real or trumped up—and fill the channel.

Nintendo can still recapture much its former glory, even in this
competitive marketplace. If the Red Socks can break their 50-year
curse, Nintendo can break out. What Nintendo cannot do is continue to
make the same old mistakes and survive.

Personally, I think there are a few good points here and there. And a lot of crap. And a lot of crap that conflicts with the other crap, and starts a lovely crap-flinging stinkwar with itself. I don't know where to begin in finding faults with it. IGN would be proud. Mostly, my respect for Steven Kent just fell down a few steps, but this is telling of the situation that Nintendo is in, and the hurdles that they'll have to overcome.

25

Nintendo Gaming / First Castlevania DS screens and info

« on: December 31, 2004, 02:53:18 PM »

Games Are Fun has some scans from the latest EGM.

It's a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow.

"DS is a great portable for expressing 2D gameplay," Igarashi explains. "I've noted that the DS has better graphical capabilities than, say, the PS1, and it's up to us to push the limits of this new hardware."