SteelAttack said:

Robio, there's a Harvest Moon game available on the eShop for the 3DS, any good? It's also discounted!

Is it A Tale of Two Towns? If so, avoid it like the plague. It was a cheap quick 3-D remake of a DS game, and in the process of porting it over to the 3DS they made it buggy as hell. THere's a couple game-breaking bugs in it. They may have been patched, but I don't think so. Just stay away from it.

Nintendo Financials for Q3 is out.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=759731

So from what I can tell they lost less money this quarter than last quarter but they expect a giant loss in Q4 because they will be buying tons of stock.

Wii U sales are at 5.8 million shipped worldwide.

;">Pokémon X & Y is at 11.61 million units in 2013 alone
;">The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds sold over 2.18 million
;">Animal Crossing New Leaf did a further 3.52 million units
;">Mario & Luigi Dream Team Bros sold 2.00 million units
;">Super Mario 3D World & The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD have both sold over 1 million but they didn't give exact figures

Wii U still trailing way behind GC. 3DS is selling worse this year than last year.

Nintendo will have their address today at 8pmEST.

Dvader said:

Guacamelee is amazing. But it, play it. It's Metroid with a luchador.

I hear ya, but it stinks to high heaven of indy.

SteelAttack said:

That was awesome Vader, glad you enjoyed the gig.

Same. Live music is always a learning experience.

So this whole only playing games on weeknights after work has so far been 0-3.

Too tired etc...

Shit.

Apparently you treat alcohol the same way I treat everything.

EA results:

Year-on-year, the company's Q3 revenues for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games dropped from $566 million to $425 million -- 25 percent -- yet next-gen games generated only $24 million for the company. Revenue for PC games was slightly up (13 percent) and overall console game revenues were down 22 percent overall, year-on-year.

GameStop say sales of new software took a hit during the same period, as sales of next-gen titles were unable to offset the downward trend in current-gen game sales.

"Next-gen games generated only $24 million for the company."

Dvader said:

So I was at a Motley Crüe mini concert. This was my first ever rock concert. Rock isn't really my thing, most of my knowledge of Crüe comes from Crüe Ball (the genesis pinball game , so great) and that most of the band banged Pam Anderson.

But it you know what watching a rock band play live is pretty amazing. You appreciate the musicianship much more. It's just them , no stupid lip singing, no shitty autotune, just guys rocking out. And they sounded amazing! This is kicking off their fair well tour where they play their hits. The crowd was hyped, there were tons of rocker chicks and dudes around, it was badass. I feel more manly just being there.

Nice, you started out with a softer band. Now, you need to go get your face blown off by someone like Amon Amarth (they have a stage show with viking ships and everything...its awesome) or Megadeth or someone like that.

Live is where rock/Metal music cannot be beat imo....because then its all about the playing, the energy, the musicianship. What sucks is these days there's not as many good shows because most of the good bands are older, or stopped playing. And most of the good bands ARE the bands that have been around awhile because frankly, they came from a different time when the music industry wasn't so fake.

I'm so thankful I grew up in the 90's and got to see Pantera so many times....they were the best metal band I ever saw live still to this day. Their live energy could NOT be topped by anyone. I saw them turn entire hockey rinks into mosh pits. I laso saw Joe Satriani in his prime, amazing guitarist. Steve Vai, same. Rush, Sepultura...Morbid Angel...on and on. Iron Maiden is still a great band to go see too, even though they're much older now. Always had the best stage shows.

Dvader said:

GG you act like there is no history of the wii, as if that never happend. The wii was the best selling console with mostly abysmal numbers for core third party ports.

And Wii was the console which sold the highest total number of units of software. And certain publishers made megabucks off of it. The problem was that the industry wants sales concentrated on a small number of yearly released titles. Wii software could be insanely profitable. And you're acting like Wii never happened too. Acting like it didn't blow away the competition and come out as the winner of this so-called "race". For any follow up system to something as succesful as that, it should have had great support right out of the gate. But you have to plan for support which is why Ubisoft added Splinter Cell Blacklist, Assasins Creed 4 and Watchdogs to their Wii U roster. It's also why Warner keep annoucing Lego and Batman games for it and why they release stuff like Injustice. Sure support from both of those publishers is likely to dry up - I called it at E3 2013 when two of Ubisofts biggest new games skipped the system and no new 3rd party U games were announced.

And so you're back to the kiddy argument. Back to 2001? BTW UK chart track does include digital sales and PC sales of Rayman Legends was still 1% and seeing how the percentages were similar, yet even more stacked in the U.S.A charts in Wii U's favour the PC figure is probably quite similar.

"Everyone knew the wii u wasn't as good an idea as the wii, no one expected super sales though no one expected a complete bomb either"

You act like was all commonly accepted knowledge by everybody, we didn't know how it would perform and yes, we didn't expect it to be a complete bomb either, I agree. And yet support of it from the very start was under the assumption that it would be a complete bomb from day one - even when its 5 month sales were exactly in line with what PS3 and 360 acheived. That's what ZERO support from most companies indicates, that hurts confidence too and that impacts development and sales. And once again, from a tech standpoint you're coming from a relatively weak knowledgebase with your assumptions about the systems power, when there are PCs on the market already more powerful than PS4 and XB1 and yet last generation skus of most games are still being released. You're also not putting into context that Wii U has a modern featureset and there are relatively few features the Wii U can't handle or fake in some way. Wii Us' GPU is several GPU generations ahead of PS3 and 360. The games can work but they might not look as good as PS4/XB1 etc. But that's why developers build scalable engines.

They would still run and still look good. How did the competition make their consoles more appealing to third parties? By upping specs? That's it? They made them more PC like, but that's something you can look at in hindsight now, not something you could see back when Wii U was in development. Prior to Xb1 and PS4 most consoles were custom hardware - PS2 and PS3 were exotic bitch hardware to develop for, yet still received support because developers had confidence that things would improve. There's no such benefit of the doubt given to Nintendo.

"So either they can return to the normal gaming scene or remain with horrible third party support."

So your insight is that if they just returned with a high spec machine that would right all wrongs and fix everything? I really hope you've thought about that issue in more detail than that

Dvader said:

gamingeek said:

BTW, Ubisoft pegged a Wii U version of a multiplat at $1 million. Maybe it's more for other companies, who knows?

Not talking about ground up exclusives like Zombi U but a version of Splinter Cell for instance or Assasins Creed 4 is $1 million per port.

Not factoring in other costs, distribution royalties etc to make that one million back at $48 a copy, means they would have to sell just over 20k to make that back, roughly.

Of course this doesn't factor in server costs for online components.

The actual dev take is about half of that so maybe about 40k which is what those third party games are struggling to achieve. So what's the point.

Yeah I don't think so. I think COD will be the indicator, they have like 35 people working on Wii U skus of it. I think Activision is one of the cheapies out there and they release crap like Goldeneye Legends multiplatform and they're bringing more Spiderman games to Wii U as well. Also note most Wii U ports are outsourced to c-teams in countries with much lower wages like people in Shanghai or eastern europe. The wages and property costs aren't the same as a USA or UK A-team, so it's easier to acheive a profit because of that.

Interestingly Lego City sold more than Pikmin 3 in NPD and that's a 3rd party game, isn't TT Fusion owned by Warner Bros?

Anyway I'm not trying to bust your balls or anything. I'm just trying to get you to add context to your posts. You have this habit of summing up issues in one line, or a few sentances, that are vastly more complicated than that. As someone who reads 10x as much as most gamers in general I've got news stories and interviews popping in my head from the 33'000 updates I've posted and I've read twice as much as that. So when I see something skimmed in shorthand with no qualifications or context it gives me a headache.

Context to be added to the sales of multiplatform games on Wii U:

• A lot of games are ports, released months later, while the same game on other platforms has been reduced in price already
• Some products are undermined, or self-sabotaged by publishers like EA announcing a Mass Effect trilogy, whilst porting Mass Effect 3 on Wii U
• Many games are very publicaly shamed for missing feature parity
• Wii U skus are often released late in general, even if by a week or two. Hardcore gamers want games on day one and probably own a last gen system already. COD and Assasins Creed, even Darksiders 2 released late on Wii U.
• Rather than delay other versions to match up with a U release, they leave the U version as an afterthought. In perception terms, this hurts confidence too
• Games often do not take advantage of Wii U's unique possibilities. With a baseline of offscreen support, many games don't go the extra mile. Check out Deus Ex to see the kind of added value there.
• Many games are actually scaling back Wii U features like Batman Origins compared to City
• Ports are made by C-team developers not by the main teams, showing that it's lower priority - if gamers can see (team x) isn't taking it seriously why should they? Ubisoft Bucharest, Human Head studios, Demiurge, Straight Right?
• The priority is often given to other versions in the media, where are the hands on wii u skus or interviews for multiformat games? They're fairly far and few between and the emphasis is either put on 360 or PS4/XB1. Where is the enthusiasm and detail on Wii U skus? In one of the few cases where the opposite was true, Rayman Legends sold more than the rest combined on Wii U as a proportion.
• Games are often hidden and stealth released, announced months later on Wii U in some kind of bizaare guessing game. COD Ghosts was hidden in a Sex and the City - Will they? Won't they? Situation. Splinter Cell and Watchdogs were both announced months and months later on Wii U.
• C-teams games often perform worse on Wii U, not by much but enough to put people off and indicate that the publisher has given little priority to the port
• Especially when sites like Digital Fountry blow up minor frame rate differences as game ruining issues - they're not - take it from someone who's played the majority of new software in 2013 on Wii U
• Wii U as a new system has a launch system game price tax - where the same game is often cheaper to buy on PS3/360
• Many publishers release sequels to games unfamiliar to the Nintendo gamer - how EA expected part 3 of a trilogy to sell on Wii U is beyond my level of understanding - it's too ridiculous
• Previously exclusive games go multiplatform - Rayman, Deus Ex for instance. I'd like to see how Titanfall performs on XB1 if it was delayed then released on every other platform under the sun
• Paid advertising - Nintendo doesn't do this, whilst it has been confirmed that other companies contribute significantly to marketing spends on multiplatform titles. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or that Nintendo is holier than thou. I'm saying that when you see adverts for many multiplatform games Wii U is completely absent from them - bizaarely. I've seen plenty of Rayman adverts which only mention 360 and PS3.
• Publishers low ball shipments for Wii U skus leaving a paltry number of copies out in the wild, this has been confirmed by retailers
• This leads to the next problem, lower store prescence. How many stores have you gone into and found the Wii U shelf to be barren or 2 to 5 games wide? How can you buy a product that not's availible to buy? Not everyone shops online and this completely cuts out impulse buying, as well as confidence

All this is something that needs to be addressed, by Nintendo, by retail, by third parties. The sales of these games needs context.

I'm not saying Nintendo is blameless in all this, they did a soft launch and their marketing has been particularly shitty compared to the Wii/DS era. They also had their own problems with HD development and probably retricted the specs of the machine with regards to the size of the case/power draw/cpu clocks etc. And the system was probably somewhat limited by including backwards compatibility and of course the U gamepad adds $100 to the price. They also need to work long term on their developer relations which seem awesome to indies but lacking to some bigger developers.

Even at the end of this, EA only made $24 million off next gen games last quarter compared to the $425 million they made on last gen skus. And even then, they actually lost -$308 million for the quarter, a big decline on the $45 million loss this time last year. And this is from a company that has no Wii U presence. I imagine the budget for one of their big games is $24 million alone.  

DKC:TP ignores the Gamepad screen

This story is older than the sun, I posted it last year but Eurogamer are posting it as a new story today and trying to frame the news as some kind of evidence of how redudant the U pad screen is. Crappy journalism.

Oh gawd, now MCV is getting in on the act, must every bit of news be spun to a doom scenario?

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze shuns Wii U GamePad display

"Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U title Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze could be a sign of things to come on the console."

This news is ancient: Here's the story that was posted last year in 2013 a month ago:

http://nintendoeverything.com/tanabe-kelbaugh-on-dkc-tropical-freeze-games-delay-monster-games-worked-on-the-title-3ds-version-would-be-tough-much-more/

It was a huge Gameinformer preview