Messages

1301

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 169

« on: November 09, 2009, 11:18:23 PM »

Yeah, you may want to take that "Reviews Editor" out of your sig.  LOL

[There may be a new type of hero coming in the future.]

1302

TalkBack / Activision Files Drum Hero Patent

« on: November 09, 2009, 12:32:58 PM »

There may be a new type of hero coming in the future.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=20281

 Activision recently filed a patent for the name "Drum Hero" in a filing with the U.S. State Patent and Trademark office.    

Filed on October 30, the patent covers the following:    

"Toys, hand-held games with liquid crystal displays, musical toys; action figures and accessories therefor; arcade games; coin-operated video games; electric action toys; handheld unit for playing electronic video games; electronic toy drums"    

With Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and Band Hero already released by the publisher, a Drum Hero title isn't too much of a stretch.  While this may be a simple case of Activison protecting the name should they ever want to use it, it could also signal plans to expand the franchise.

1303

General Gaming / Re: Anyone have Midway Arcade Treasures 2?

« on: November 09, 2009, 12:16:48 AM »

Well, you'll always have Pit Fighter. *cough*

This is your time to rise and become the Primal Rage master!  Figure out the moves!  IT IS YOUR DESTINY

1304

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 169

« on: November 08, 2009, 03:18:25 PM »

The controller isn't bad at all, actually.  Your wrist/arm/shoulder does get fatigued after playing for a few hours in a row, but you can say the same thing about the Wii's motion controllers too.

BTW - If anybody has any specific technical questions about DJ Hero, let me know.  I want to make sure I don't leave anything out of the review.

1305

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 169

« on: November 08, 2009, 02:48:28 PM »

Here are the lyrics, since I rap them WAY too fast for them to even be intelligible.

Yesterday I got a package in the mail
Sent by by Mike Gamin, also known as Pale
Typically the Wii games we get are epic fail
But this was DJ Hero, my gaming Holy Grail
I gotta say the box was smaller than I thought it'd be
Most Guitar Hero boxes are monstrosities
Opened up the packaging with velocity
Read the game manual? Against my philosophy
First thing I wanna see is the controller
Mixer and turntable, just a little smaller
Slot in the mixer to hold the Wii Remote
Plug it in, close the lid and you're good to go
Start up the game, hittin' the tutorial
Grandmaster Flash makes sure that you know your skills
I gotta give'em props for authenticity
Real DJs check your hip-hop history
I do my thing and I learn what I got to
Do my first set? There's no reason not to
At first the crossfader was a little stiff
But then I worked it in, and then I got swift
Control the mix with the fade and effects dial
Hit Euphoria and score by the pile
But the coolest new feature is the Rewind
Backspin and play a section one more time
And the records in the mix are fantastic
New songs mixed with old-school classics
But the price point on this is kinda drastic
So empty out your wallet or put it on your plastic
For DLC, since I'm older than a Sleestack
You know I'm waiting for that Run-DMC pack
3 bucks a song, not sure I really need that
I'll trade in Dirt 2 just to get the fee back
But if you like rap, here's the game to get
And if you like DJs then you're good as set
Guitar Hero fans probably won't even regret
I'll say it right now: best music game yet

Dear God.  Jon does know that you can't spell Crap without "rap" right?  That was painful.

Yeah, painful if you're a Sucker MC

1306

Announcements / Carmine's AIM Account Hacked

« on: November 08, 2009, 02:28:16 PM »

I've received word that staffer Carmine Red's AIM account has been hacked, and that whoever hijacked the account is contacting people on his buddy list and asking for money.

IF YOU RECEIVE AN AIM MESSAGE FROM CARMINE ASKING FOR MONEY, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON MONEY.

If anything, try to pull some information out of them, or get some information about them (IP, for example) out of your AIM logs if you can.  You could also see if you can get a physical address or email address out of them.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 167

« on: November 08, 2009, 07:45:36 AM »

It was actually 1962, please and thank you.

1308

Announcements / Re: Server upgrade 11/8

« on: November 07, 2009, 09:29:16 PM »

That's 11:59 Pacific.

1309

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 168

« on: November 07, 2009, 05:25:33 PM »

I have a solution. Jonny should bring back ole Mavus or whatever his name was and let him do the segment.

I believe you mean Brufus.

1310

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 167

« on: November 06, 2009, 09:01:48 PM »

See there, I had no idea that Jon was a fellow inductee into the Milon Club.

Yeah, I played the hell out of that game during the summer of '89, I believe.

1311

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 168

« on: November 06, 2009, 05:45:29 PM »

I'd have to defer to Greg to explain that.

As for the commercial, we're going to work on it a bit.  Our goal was to make it as short as possible, but I can see how it comes of sounding forced.  My fear is that discussion will turn into a pointless three-minute convo about stuff that most people don't care about, since they actually read the site.

1312

TalkBack / Re: TALKBACK: NWR Round-Table 3: 500 Copies Sold

« on: November 06, 2009, 10:59:49 AM »

Seems like Nintendo is really pushing to help 3rd parties on the marketing and publishing side of things since it's hard to make the money back on on the games from Japan alone.

If by "3rd parties" you mean "Square Enix, and Sega when they make a big-selling sequel featuring Mario in which Nintendo has a vested interest".

1313

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

« on: November 05, 2009, 06:08:03 PM »

Damn, now I feel like I missed something.

1314

TalkBack / Re: Iwata: Declining Wii Sales in Japan Not Healthy

« on: November 04, 2009, 05:54:29 PM »

I just figured that I'd save everybody the trouble, since I'm going to wind up locking this thread eventually anyways.

LOL

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TalkBack / Re: Iwata Looks to the Kindle for Future Handhelds

« on: November 04, 2009, 05:48:56 PM »

Nintendo would cut a deal on that with them, and they incorporate that into the cost of the unit so that they could recoup it over time.  Hell, if Amazon can make it work, Nintendo sure can.

If it pushed the price of the handheld out of their sweet spot, they simply wouldn't do it.

1316

TalkBack / Re: Iwata: Declining Wii Sales in Japan Not Healthy

« on: November 04, 2009, 05:43:22 PM »

Somebody has to say it...

NINTENDO IS TEH DOOMED

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TalkBack / Re: Demand for DJ Hero Below Expectations According to Analysts

« on: November 04, 2009, 12:50:49 PM »

Any DJ worth their salt gets Tech 12's.  If you're getting Vestax decks I'm shunning you, and if you're getting a pair of Geminis I'm punching you in the face.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Unveils the Nintendo DSi LL/XL

« on: November 04, 2009, 12:49:33 PM »

The PSP is really the only system Sony's made that you can say that about.  The slimline PS2 was nothing different from what every console maker has done with every console since the Atari 2600 - release a smaller, cheaper version as costs went down and components got cheaper and produced less heat.

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TalkBack / Re: Q&A with Prince of Persia Creator Jordan Mechner

« on: November 04, 2009, 12:46:37 PM »

Morari, champion of maintaining an open mind.

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TalkBack / Re: Iwata Looks to the Kindle for Future Handhelds

« on: November 04, 2009, 12:45:37 PM »

I would personally prefer that they not bother with this.  I don't find using Wi-Fi to be a problem at all and if the cost of the hardware has to go up to accomodate this, well, then I'm just paying more for something I don't need or want.  Thought that's just me and others might find this worth the money.

Why not do what the iPhone does: be smart enough to switch between 3G and Wi-Fi dynamically?

By the time this handheld comes out, 3G is gonna be cheeeeeap.

You can get unlimited data on iPhone/BlackBerry for about $85/month (cell service+data) in the U.S. right now.  And I'm sure you can deals on that to bring it even lower.

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TalkBack / Re: TALKBACK: NWR Round-Table 3: 500 Copies Sold

« on: November 04, 2009, 11:04:25 AM »

None of those big PC developers (Infinity Ward, Bethesda, BioWare, etc.) care about developing on Wii.  The platform doesn't really allow them to do what they want to do with 3D, and the whole waggle deal wouldn't be their forte anyways.  Bethesda has mentioned it, but nothing serious ever came of it.  Heck, they even dumped the PSP Elder Scrolls game, so that shows you how much they care about developing on older hardware.

1322

TalkBack / Re: TALKBACK: NWR Round-Table 3: 500 Copies Sold

« on: November 04, 2009, 10:47:07 AM »

All I'll say is that Nintendo has long had a chilly relationship with third-parties.  This isn't something that just happened.  It goes all the way back to the NES when Nintendo was bullying third-parties so that they would play by their rules.  They've been pushing around third-parties for more than 20 years, so they aren't going to stop any time soon.  This has to be part of the reason for third-parties are not "playing ball"...Nintendo has never played ball with them, ever, really.  Nintendo always done their own thing, and if third-parties like it, fine.  If not, that's fine too.

Nintendo has never been an innocent victim here.  They've chosen to put themselves on a very profitable island.

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TalkBack / Re: Iwata Looks to the Kindle for Future Handhelds

« on: November 04, 2009, 09:03:14 AM »

To anybody that pooh-pooh my Kindle reference in that roundtable a while back, you just got served Iwata-style!

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TalkBack / Re: TALKBACK: NWR Round-Table 3: 500 Copies Sold

« on: November 03, 2009, 11:34:53 PM »

What sucks is that even if they did, it'd likely be done by the B-Team...the A-Team is surely already working on Resident Evil 6 (or is that 666?).

1325

TalkBack / Re: TALKBACK: NWR Round-Table 3: 500 Copies Sold

« on: November 03, 2009, 09:10:11 PM »

Isn't that most of the Wii's fanbase?  And that isn't sarcasm either.

Think about it: Person A buys CoD4, loves it and recommends it to all his friends. Person B buys The Conduit and is underwhelmed by it, if he even talks about it it's probably about the disappointment. If you want a fair comparison try finding similarily crappy or niche games on the PS360. E.g. how much did Infernal: Hell's Vengeance or Legendary sell?

What games sell by word of mouth?  Nintendo's, because they're the best on the system.  "Hey, have you played Wii Fit?"  Yet somehow I doubt these words have ever been uttered by anyone, anywhere outside these forums: "Hey, have you played Zack & Wiki?"

And? They didn't care about the graphics hardware last gen and everybody said they'd always be loyal to the market leader. Now it's suddenly a "rule" that graphics matter more than marketshare.

Last generation they didn't have to make any sort of graphical choice.  The PS2, Xbox, and GameCube were all in the same graphical ballpark.  If you chose to make a PS2 game it wouldn't have all the visual bells and whistles that it would on Xbox and GameCube, but it would look comparable.  The best-looking game on Wii is Super Mario Galaxy, and if you take a game in a similar genre on, say, PS3 - Ratchet & Clank, for instance - the difference is noticeable and obvious.

That's a ton of assumptions. What I mean with "demand" is that they'll say "I won't buy this because it lacks X". Of course graphics are nice to have, I'm not going to refuse to buy a game because it's pretty but would RE5 on the Wii make many people think "it's not pretty enough, I will not buy it"? Non-gamers are impressed by awesome graphics just as much as anybody else but they weren't gamers before because it wasn't the ugly graphics that turned them away, it was the game underneath.

I think you would definitely have a lot of people not buying it because it's "identical to RE4".  From a visual, perspective that is.  RE5 is the same as RE4 gameplay wise, so what other hook is gonna be there?  IR control?

On average HD games cost 2.5 times as much to develop so the same return on investment would require selling 2.5 times as many copies as it would on the Wii. You say RE5 would sell less on the Wii but would it sell 60% less? Also how many people would decide to buy it because it has better controls on the Wii? If the number of sales lost to weaker graphics minus the number of sales gained through better controls is less than 60% of the sales of RE5 on the HD systems then making it a Wii exclusive would have made it more profitable.

I dunno, across PS3/360 RE5 pushed 4.4 million last I read, while RE4: Wii Edition pushed 1.5 million (Capcom figures from May 2009).  That's what, 65% higher sales?  I realize that RE4 is an old game, but you gotta think that a majority of people on Wii that likes that type of title picked it up.  RE5 is one game, but I think in this case Capcom made the right move.  I also think that RE5 got more buzz because of its graphics prowess, due to the fact that game media are graphics whores for the most part.

Noone ever gave a **** about what the grunts want, they do what they're told to do or they're unemployed. It's the managers who decided to make HD games, if the grunts happen to agree that's just a coincidence.

Wow, I hope you never manage any human beings, ever.  Yes, decisions are made by the suits, but if they team doesn't want to make Wii games they'll go elsewhere.  Besides, if you're paying a badass graphics programmer a ton of money, are you going to waste their talents making an engine for Wii?  Hell no.  You're going to put them where their talents are best put to use.  You'll put the second-tier guys on the Wii title, or the junior guys there so they can figure out what they're doing.  You want your best people doing the most difficult stuff.  This assumes that the project they're working on will make money, of course, but that's a separate issue.

I think development costs are a key part of the puzzle, but if your game won't sell, your investment only determines how much money you lose.  You can spend $1000 making something that sells for $100, and if you only sell 2 of them you've lost $800.  On the other hand, you can spend $3000 making something that sells for $100, sell 50 of them and make $2000.  Like I've always said, companies like GRIN going under isn't because they developed an HD game in particular; its because they developed a game that didn't sell.  The high development cost only ensured that they got castrated, instead of punched in the face.

They'd also incur an additional 150% cost increase on every game they develop and need a higher price on the hardware and a loss of GC backwards compatibility. Even if they had boosted the graphics a bit, they would still have been far behind the 360 (because the 360 was built to be sold at a loss even at its 400€ launch price, no way Nintendo could get close to that with the increased controller expenses and whatnot) and developers would still call it impossible to port and still throw PSP ports on it (the PSP is MUCH weaker than the Wii yet it is considered acceptable to port that way!). Additionally Nintendo would not have gained additional sales to make up for the reduced profit per sale (in part because the Wii sold at an unprecedented rate until Nintendo ****ed up with the whole user generated content mess and whatnot that led to a massive software drought). The Wii's sales limiter is still not the hardware but the software.

Nintendo was backed into a corner after the GameCube, that's for sure.  Their appeal amongst the gaming core was gone, so they had to go for a different audience entirely.  I'll concede you this point, since they had nothing to lose really.  Nobody really cared about Nintendo no matter what their games looked like, so more of the same was not the answer.

Almost every franchise out there had multiple iterations last gen so that's clearly not stopping them. Think about it, 3 GTAs, 3 Prince of Persias, 2 God of Wars, 2 Halos, 2 Devil May Crys and many more that I can't even remember. Sequels differ from the previous game in way more than just the graphics.

Yeah, but years after the fact?  All of those games were released within the same hardware generation and time window.  I refuse to believe that there's a pent-up demand for a Prince of Persia game on Wii that looks like a Prince of Persia game on Xbox.  In 2009 it would be completely written off and marginalized.

Didn't stop the DDR pads and all the other fitness peripherals. Also the "conflict of interest" and absorbing the risk is a non-sequitur, what exactly makes Nintendo more capable of absorbing that risk that's part of the Wii's design (instead of their company structure/strategy which any smart company could replicate)?

They can take that risk because they get money from both the hardware and the software.  They have money rolling in hand over fist from both ends of the platform, so they can survive if a risky game underperforms.  See Wii Music (not that it was an utter failure, but rather not a spectacular success).  Third-parties don't have that same luxury.

How does that compare to other systems? What about, say, Mirror's Edge?

Do you mean the underperformance of Mirror's Edge?  Not every Hardmaturecore game on PS3/360 is going to sell...such as Mirror's Edge, Bionic Commando, etc.  But I honestly think it's less risky, although hindsight is also 20/20.