Wii U hype time, will probably fall flat but I'm bored so:

Ideaman 4 months ago

A little bit of spontaneous info about dev kits, related to your post (and i promised something about them a few days ago if the last week news failed to deliver which wasn't the case):

The boxes are numbered and sealed by a large warning sticker that basically says that the "warranty" wouldn't be valid anymore if it was removed. It comes with legal stuff & clauses that would make people working on these dev kits liable for pursuits, actionable, if they are too curious and dismantle them to do some extensive reverse-engineering. Some of the specs are seen while booting the dev kits, a list (don't know if it's complete) is accessible in SDK, so people don't really need to dissect the boxes innards to know its specifics. And if they have access to SDK and warioworld, they are again under a legal frame that forbid them to do what they want with the info.


I even bet in this pre-launch period, that studios are accountable to Nintendo and must give some news, some proofs of their development on the system + Big N surely study extensively the background/profile of the companies who want to become licensed developers for their unreleased system, to avoid the cases that you are describing.


All these measures don't prevent industrial espionage, of course, and the "natural" spreading of information amongst the industry, especially from third-parties, with the studios staff turn-over, changes of positions, etc. So, there are other ways for Nintendo to counter this, with "inner circles" policy where latest revisions of their dev kits are reserved for first and second parties, some things are kept hidden to more distant studios, in terms of hierarchy and ties. To illustrate that, MAJOR aspects of the system (not hardware specs or DRC features in this case) still aren't known by BIG third-parties in this present day, i let you guess what they are.


It comes from another source that the ones i'm usually referring to when i give infos.

And then yesterday:

Ideaman said:

About the 13th September conference


The bottom part of the message posted 4 months ago is still relevant, for major third-parties.


Meaning they will discover huge aspect(s) of the Wii U the same time we do, probably during this conference. To my surprise, they are still left in the mist for important areas of the system to this date.


It could point toward different scenarios:


1) Those aspects (including online plan, the OS, the dashboard, etc.) will be innovative to an extent Nintendo wanted to keep those secrets as long as possible.


2) Nintendo were/are polishing all these points until very recently so they didn't have the time to implement them in the latest SDK, etc.


3) A combination of both (the likely one).

E X C I T E D

All the bold is his use, not mine

gamingeek said:

Going through all the recent Retro Studio hirings paints a picture:



- Two Vigil character artists


- One Vigil creature artist


- Uncharted 3 environment artist


- Black Ops level designer


- Borderlands and Rage lead artist


- Mythic and Bioware MMO engine engineer


- Out-of-core specialist


- Unit13 and InFamous 2 designer

Well this is great news that Retro is getting restocked with good talent. They lost a lot of people during the Wii days, and I think they are a very different developer now than they were in the Gamecube days. It should be real interesting to see what they do.

The problem with Rare was, they lost key talent who never seemed to get replaced.

gamingeek said:

Wii U hype time, will probably fall flat but I'm bored so:

All the bold is his use, not mine

I think we will see the pricing and launch games announced, and Nintendo will show off what features to expect on day 1, like online stuff etc.

I'd like to see a few more big games announced there, like Resident Evil 6 type stuff. But I doubt they will.

Analysts debate Apple press event impact on Wii U event

I'm going to make a bold prediction regarding this. If anything Nintendo will come out smelling like a rose because Apple, for the first time ever, is going to bomb at their conference. I have a feeling that 2012 is going to be the year that Apple fucks up or at the very least begins to lose their grip on the market and this conference will be one of the things that starts to turn public sentiment against them. The Samsung lawsuit that they just won has made people feel a little uneasy about them. Lots of designers are worried that the decision is going to effect a lot of design creativity. More importantly though, one thing that's known about the iPhone 5 is that is has a different sized docking port. So now everyone who has any kind of docking station for their iPhone is going to have to go get a new one. It's the little things like that which start to turn people off, and I suspect there will be other things like this too.

So when its all done and said with their conferences, the reviews for Apple's will either be negative or neutral and a good conference from Nintendo could get a nice bounce from that (because inevitably you'll see stupid articles with titles like 10 Things Apple Could Learn From Nintendo).

Hey, who is beating Bayonetta copies? I want mine finished as well.

Thanks.

edgecrusher said:

Hard to do after not playing it for so long. Good luck.

robio said:

Analysts debate Apple press event impact on Wii U event

I'm going to make a bold prediction regarding this. If anything Nintendo will come out smelling like a rose because Apple, for the first time ever, is going to bomb at their conference...

Regardless of the quality and substance of the two presentations:

• The Wii U will dominate gaming media discussion for the next two weeks. No problem there.  A few posers will try to wedge their Apple fetish into our gaming news, but they already do and no-one listens.
• The regular media, seeing the U for the first time, on the heels of countless tablet announcements from everyone from Amazon to Toys R Us will not be able to resist framing this as "Nintendo Gets Into the Tablet Market" or "Nintendo Looking for Comeback With Tablet".
• Having it a day after the Apple conference will just mean the regular media will care less about the details of Nintendo's conference because their brains only support 10 characters and those will all be used on "OMGiPhone5".
• None of this matters because this is just the start of the PR for Nintendo with the regular media. By Black Friday people will be crushing smaller people to get their hands on a U.

You are right about Apple this year though. The conference is already mostly shot with all the leaks.

-*-*-*-

Money Slot:

SteelAttack said:

Ass sigs.

Leo, Archie and Vader's Experience with Bayonetta:

The rest of us:

^ Meh cant fix that easily. Its readable though.