Messages

1201

Nintendo Gaming / Re: People Need To Stop Bitching

« on: June 13, 2012, 02:17:03 AM »

Uncle Bob, another thing about your list that is probably off is that you are probably counting casual games like Wii Play/Fit/Sports/Music, Link's Crossbow Training, and so on, as well as ports or collections such as NPC Pikmin 2 or Metroid Trilogy. I don't think those should be counted as new games. If you take all of that out where would your stats stand then?

I appreciate the effort you put into it and it is very interesting, but as you yourself said its not accurate.

1202

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Why did Nintendo make the Wii[U] a carbon copy of the Wii?

« on: June 13, 2012, 01:39:01 AM »

Having the Wii U being so closely associated with the Wii would have made more sense a few years ago when the Wii was still very popular. I think we all know sales and consumer interest in the Wii has declined over the last few years.  Its not 2007 anymore. The Wii fad is over.

1203

TalkBack / Re: Wii U Pro Controller Set to Release with Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 11:29:26 PM »

I just tested and neither of the classic controllers have click sticks
They better flip the button layout if this is to replace the classic controller as only 2 confirmed vc consoles(the n64 and incoming gamecube) use analog sticks.

Its also for original WiiU games. Its not a mere Classic Controller replacement.

1204

Nintendo Gaming / Re: People Need To Stop Bitching

« on: June 12, 2012, 02:26:07 PM »

Saying the N64 and GCN also had software droughts and somehow suggesting that makes it okay that the Wii also does isn't a valid argument because these are also Nintendo consoles. Plus the NES and SNES didn't have droughts at the end of their life span. Both the NES and SNES were supported well after the release of their successors... I don't know what the last SNES game was, but the last NES game was Wario's Woods which came out in 1994... a full three years after the SNES launched.

You are right that the Wii isn't the only Nintendo system to suffer droughts, but I don't think the N64 or GCN should be off the hook for their droughts either. But that was then, and right now we are in the present.

1205

Nintendo Gaming / Why did Nintendo make the Wii[U] a carbon copy of the Wii?

« on: June 12, 2012, 02:17:58 PM »

This has been discussed to some extent in other threads, but I think this is serious enough that it warrants a thread of its own. I'm just going to go ahead and list off all the things that are going to confuse, frustrate, and anger consumers these holidays:

1) First off, we all know the name is extremely similar to that of the last console with the only difference of course being the "U", but Nintendo takes that even further than it needs to be by making the logo the same design and color and in addition tacking on the sky blue symbol thing which doesn't stand out very well on the white background. If consumers even notice that baby Blue  thing they might not even know what the hell it is, and would probably just assume it refers to the tablet controller and not the Wii U being a brand new console.

2) The console looks almost exactly the same as the Wii! The same default white color and everything. Maybe the dimensions are a little different and the edges are a bit rounder, but the Wii U pretty much looks identical to the Wii U. There's no way it could possibly look this similar on accident. I can't think of any other console in the history of gaming which looks so blatantly identical to its predecessor. Did the PS2 look anything like the PS1? Did the Gamecube look like the N64? Did the Dreamcast look like the Saturn? You get my point. Until the Wii U no console maker has ever made a console so identical in appearance as the last.

3) Now we are slowly starting to get pictures of Wii U game cases, and guess what? They are the same white DVD cases that the Wii uses! As if the name, logo, and console all being so similar wasn't bad enough the game cases also have to look the same? WTF?!

4) All the old Wii accessories are forward compatible with the Wii U. This is going to add more fuel to the confusion. If a consumer sees a commercial showing off a new Wii U game and the commercial shows people using Wiimotes what are they going to think about that? Wiimotes are something everyone associates with the Wii. The fact the Wii U will also be using them is just going to mess with people's minds. The same goes for the Balance board and zapper and so on (albeit to a much lesser extent since fewer games support them).

So you take all of these factors (plus God knows what else) and combine them, and you have the recipe for a "perfect storm" of market confusion this holiday season. If the Wii U is anywhere near as popular as the Wii was it will be flying off the shelves and sold out and hard to find, but the old Wii consoles will still be on stores, so can you see how someone is going to confuse the two and grab a Wii even though what they really wanted was the Wii U? And what about the games? Some grandparent who doesn't know any better might see NSMB U or Pikmin 3 or whatever this holiday season in the white case with the "Wii" logo on it and think to themselves that this will be a great gift for Little Jimmy because they know Little Jimmy has one of those Wii things... but then Christmas comes and Little Billy can't play it.

Imagine the nightmare that retailers and Nintendo are going to have to deal with because of people returning Wii U games they thought were Wii games. Imagine the chaos Nintendo's tech support is going to have to deal with from frustrated and angered consumers over how they were deceived.

And yet, all of this could have easily been avoided if Nintendo had only made the name and appearance of the console more distinctive. Mark my words, there will be much market confusion going on this holiday season.

1206

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 09:30:11 AM »

He admitted that he ordered N64 to be difficult to program for in an effort to repel less talented 3rd parties.

But to be fair, the quality of the software the N64 was impeccable. You can't argue with the results.... the N64 had a load of really incredible A++ software. Then again, the N64 also had Superman 64, so apparently Yamauchi's effort wasn't fool proof, but I can at least appreciate what he was TRYING to do.

Maybe if Iwata had done something like that with the Wii it would have locked out a lot of the shovelware like Chicken Shoot, Elf Bowling, and other horrible crapware like that.

They all responded with a giant F-you.

In the case of the developers of those games I just mentioned I would just say "good riddance". If you scrapped away all the casual crapware that the Wii was buried in and just left behind the polished gems then maybe many people's opinion of the Wii would be more favorable.

1207

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What game series do you think won't be coming to the Wii U?

« on: June 12, 2012, 08:30:15 AM »

I understand that it costs money to publish a game and manufacture the discs and all that, and then ship it off to retailers, but the eShop eliminates 99% of that cost. Sure, you have to port the game to be able to run on the hardware (and on the Wii U that should be easy due to sharing the same architecture), but once you have the port ready it costs you virtually nothing to upload it onto the eShop. You don't have to spend money on the manufacturing of discs, or anything like that. You just upload it once to the server, and that's it... then it just prints money for you from then on out.

All companies are interested in making a profit, and if they can make a quick and easy buck by uploading last gen titles on the eShop why the hell not? They might not sell all that well because they're old games, but here's the part you need to understand: they don't need to sell well! The only cost is the minimal cost of porting and tossing it on to the eshop. The game is already made, and you don't need to open up a production line in a factory to make discs or anything like that. It couldn't be any cheaper, so why the hell not?

1208

General Gaming / Re: Now is a good time for E3 to change.

« on: June 12, 2012, 08:20:22 AM »

They should pick some rural backwater hick town somewhere in the middle of nowhere to host E3 even if its just for one year. That would put that little town on the map and mean more to those banjo playing hillfolk than it could ever mean to someone in a place like San Francisco or wherever, where things like that are common and routine.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 08:03:55 AM »

From what I heard Yamauchi liked to tear people down and was a real asshole so he was probably more like Steve Jobs than Iwata is. Iwata seems like a friendlier guy who is more willing to listen to suggestions and feedback and whatnot.

But like him or not, Yamauchi delivered results, so his hard ass take no bullshit attitude seems to have paid off at least some of the time....although, yeah, he did have a lot to do with driving 3rd parties away from Nintendo, and that's not good. But Iwata's softer stance hasn't managed to win them back either, so its hard to say who is more to blame. What would probably be best for the company is for it to be run by someone who is more in the middle and neither too soft nor too hard.

1210

TalkBack / Re: Wii U Has 8 GB of Internal Storage

« on: June 12, 2012, 07:53:50 AM »

And I was saying it would be much easier for console games to come on flash memory cards instead of fragile discs. There are 32 GB (and larger) cards, so it wouldn't be a huge problem.

Except in terms of cost.

Game systems already come with internal flash storage, so why not use that same type of storage for the game media? It's more reliable and faster than discs.

What part of an optical disc being only about 10 cents worth of plastic do you not understand? Flash memory is superior in a lot of ways, but it costs more, and unless its a handheld it makes no sense to use flash memory. The reason its used for handhelds is because the disadvantages of an optical drive are a really big deal and so the extra cost is justified, but on a console which is plugged into a wall and doesn't need to be so small it can fit in someone's pockets the negatives of optical media don't matter so much, so in those cases optical media wins out.

Older consoles used cartridges because optical drives either hadn't been invented yet, or were too cost prohibitive. But from the PS1 onward the cost of optical drives came down enough that it made sense. It still doesn't make much sense for a handheld, and that's why aside from the PSP we will probably never seen an optical drive based handheld ever again.

1211

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 04:58:43 AM »

What if Miyamoto ran Nintendo?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: What game series do you think won't be coming to the Wii U?

« on: June 12, 2012, 04:46:46 AM »

Old third party titles will be sold on the Wii U eShop to help the Nintendo fans play catchup with eveyone else.

No they won't. That would be a waste of resources. If you want those games, buy a PS3 or 360; they are definitely worth it in terms of exclusives.

I think you are both half right. I don't think every third party game will show up on the eShop, but at the same time there's not going to be none at all either. The answer is somewhere in the middle: there will be some. Exactly how many that will be is impossible to predict.

And as far as it being a "waste of resources", its not... companies like EA are notorious for milking their games to death over as many platforms as possible. I think the fact they are bringing ME3 to the Wii U is solid evidence the same is going to happen with other games over the eShop.

It also helps that the WiiU architecture is so similar to that of the 360. This will making porting the old games over easy and inexpensive. I don't know what it costs, but if there is a profit to be made it will be done.

Why buy a $249.99 PS3 or $149.99 360 (plus a hard drive) to play these exclusives if they are coming to the WiiU anyway? Many people only own one console, so having these games come to the Wii U would be a great opportunity for them to catch up on these that they missed by only owning a Wii these last 6 years.

Since this is a Nintendo fan site I don't think anyone (that should go double for the Staff, btw) should be telling people "the Wii U is not for you", or "buy a PS360 instead". If you can get all your gaming needs done on one system then its better that it be a Nintendo system.

1213

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 03:44:17 AM »

Reggie just sees this as another job to him. He has no loyalty to Nintendo or passion for gaming. In the past he worked at Pizza Hunt and VH1, so what makes this any different? This is just his current job, and tomorrow he could move on to something else.

What we need running the show is someone who is actually passionate about gaming and loves what they do. When people are passionate about their jobs they will do things better than someone who just sees it as another pay check. That's why Reggie needs to go and someone more passionate about Nintendo and gaming needs to take his place.

1214

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zombi U, I'm warming up to it

« on: June 12, 2012, 02:19:12 AM »

The more accustomed to a piece of hardware and the more time you've spent working with it, the more you'll be able to get out of it.

In the case of the PS3, the multiplatform games it does get were built on the 360 and they just get the ports of that. Developers don't care about learning every nuance of the PS3 and mastering them fully. They take the 360 game they've made, shoehorn it into the PS3 until it works, and call it a day.

The reason why Naughty Dog utilizes the PS3 to its fullest isn't that they know the hardware better per se, its because their games are built for the PS3 from the ground up and aren't 360 ports.

1215

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What game series do you think won't be coming to the Wii U?

« on: June 12, 2012, 01:10:29 AM »

I think Battlefield 3 probably won't be coming to WiiU. If it was going to EA probably would have announced it at E3. That said, I think it would have made a lot more sense than the ME3 game they DID announce.

1216

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What game series do you think won't be coming to the Wii U?

« on: June 12, 2012, 12:54:44 AM »

If the Wii U is closer to the PS360 than the PS420 then it might actually help to extend the life span of the PS360. PS420 development might end up being very costly, or maybe the consoles will see slow growth due to cost or whatever so game developers may choose to stay where they are, and maybe the games the PS420 does get for the most part may just be the same game more or less that the Wii U gets.

That's how it was during the PS2 era where development was centered on the PS2, and then if those games ended up ported to the GC or Xbox they tended to just be ported as they were rather than enhanced to take advantage of those system's greater power.

1217

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 12, 2012, 12:40:57 AM »

History shows that there shall always be 3 Videogame Platform holders.

Only if you consider recent history. Sure, in the NES era there was the Master System and some other things, but their level of market share was negligible. Then in the 16-bit era it was a neck and neck race between the Genesis and SNES. Sure there was the Turbografix-16 and the Neo Geo and so on but these had such minuscule market share that they were non-entities.

Its only been within the last 10 years or so that we've seen it being a 3 way race, and arguably during the PS2 era it wasn't really even a race considering the PS2's 90% market share. So some might argue that its only been from 2006 that its been a 3 way race.

1218

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What game series do you think won't be coming to the Wii U?

« on: June 12, 2012, 12:19:51 AM »

I think it would be easier to compile a list of games the Wii U WILL be getting versus a list of games it won't. Basically, the list of games the Wii U won't be getting is every game ever made minus the ones it does get.

At this point we only know the launch titles anyway (plus some that will come soon after). Our knowledge is very limited so any list isn't going to be very accurate at all.

1219

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U

« on: June 11, 2012, 11:34:55 PM »

As the largest Japanese company, it boggles my mind to hear concerns over Nintendo's strategy.

I swear, if the vocal minority had their way, they'd want Nintendo to go third party and develop for NextBox. Why? So they don't have to buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games.

And these are supposedly long time fans of Nintendo.

I'm the opposite. I want Sony and Microsoft to go third party so that I only need to own a Nintendo console and they would have a monopoly on the market and thus have all of the games... just like they did back in the golden age of the NES era. I want that era to return.

1220

General Gaming / Re: Now is a good time for E3 to change.

« on: June 11, 2012, 11:04:00 PM »

Maybe Nintendo Expo.

They should call it "Nintendo Land".

1221

TalkBack / Re: Wii U Has 8 GB of Internal Storage

« on: June 11, 2012, 11:01:52 PM »

The flash memory cards used in current handhelds are not the same thing as old-school cartridges.

QFT. The old school cartridges were basically circuit boards, so they were a lot more expensive to manufacture. The newer stuff is just flash memory which is a lot different.

And as for why optical media isn't used in mobile devices I think that's pretty obvious. Optical drives require a lot more energy (meaning they drain batteries faster), take up more space, and can be screwed up by the device being jolted.

1222

TalkBack / Re: E3 2012 Round-Up

« on: June 11, 2012, 10:54:29 PM »

Overwhelmed by all of the E3 news, games, and content? We got your back.

What about those of us who were underwhelmed? Do you have our backs as well?

1223

Nintendo Gaming / Re: People Need To Stop Bitching

« on: June 11, 2012, 10:31:40 PM »

And the ironic part about this is that you always harken back to the good old days of the SNES... except Nintendo was smaller then and had fewer teams. You get more core games now then you ever did 20 years ago. It's pretty unfair to complain about what you're presently getting is you ask me.

Regardless of what Nintendo's output was 20 years ago, the market has grown dramatically since then. The problem is Nintendo's output hasn't been able to keep pace with the growing market. Sony and Microsoft on the other hand have been able to do that on their systems. I don't know if Sony/Microsoft 1st party output exceeds that of Nintendo's 1st party output, but I do know that 3rd party output absolutely certainly does. There's the problem.

Maybe Nintendo's 1st party output isn't any worse than it was 20 years ago, or maybe like you said its even better than that... but 3rd party support has declined dramatically on Nintendo hardware starting on the N64 onwards, and any growth in output from Nintendo's 1st and 2nd parties (if any) has not been able to offset the loss of third party support.

Back in the SNES era if Nintendo didn't keep a healthy games lineup going it wasn't a big deal because there was ALWAYS 3rd party titles coming out. You never felt deprived. That's my point. And for me the reason why E3 was such a disappointment is because 3rd party support wasn't there. The only company that seems to be fully on board is Ubisoft, and I applaud them for that, but unfortunately they were the only ones.... everyone else is offering token support at best. EA for example is one of the largest 3rd parties, yet all they had to offer was Mass Effect 3? That's it?

This is the reason for the disappointment in the Wii U. Its not a case of moving goalposts. The goalpost has always been about the games. This is what matters most about a console... things like confirmation of two gamepads and things like that were nice, but nothing matters more than games. Where were those? That was the goalpost and no one except Ubisoft came through.

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TalkBack / Re: Wii U Has 8 GB of Internal Storage

« on: June 11, 2012, 10:07:34 AM »

Its hard to find anyone over the age of 2 that can't plug in something to a USB port with minimal instructions

http://www.hark.com/clips/dbyhvsvjpw-what-is-a-paperclip

1225

General Gaming / Re: E3 2012 Memes

« on: June 11, 2012, 10:00:11 AM »

Someone should have saved that single piece of confetti.

I would have paid a lot of money for it.

Maybe someone did? Who knows?

I think its really funny and weird that just a single piece of confetti fell. You'd think it would be more likely that either nothing would fall or a little would fall, or it all would fall... but just one single piece? That's really weird.