I think it's true that they failed to keep momentum by continually releasing killer app titles -- they launched with Zelda and Wii Sports, Galaxy was GOTY quality in 2007, SSBB carried the early load in 2008, but the rest of '08 was forgettable for first-party titles, and that carried over to this year.
Combine that with a recession that knocked sales down for everyone and the natural sales slide from a console being out for a few years, and you end up here.
NSMB and...
I'd say it's more likely to be pushed back. Just like Twilight Princess.
TP was nearly finished a year ahead of time, but Nintendo pushed it back a full year to implement motion controls so it could launch with Wii.
This new Zelda has been in development FOREVER -- I seriously doubt it took a full team of Nintendo devs just to bolt on IR/pointer for projectiles and imprecise sword motion controls over that year-long delay. That would mean this LoZ has been in devel...
To be fair, Nintendo DID wait a long time to do something like make the Gameboy go color.
But on home consoles, they've been right there in the thick of things. They just usually haven't rushed their tech. The SNES launched two years after the Genesis. The N64 launched about two years after the Playstation.
It makes sense that Nintendo has waited for HDTVs to penetrate the market. When the Wii launched, you could still buy SD/tube TVs at Wal Mart. You can't anym...
Game development cost is an interesting point. According to EA, Wii games only cost 25% to 33% as much as PS3/360 games.
http://www.joystiq.com/2009...
Making an HD console is cheaper now, as the technology has come down in price. But the price for making games for one hasn't -- you have to employ more people for art creation and graphics tech, and skil...
Yeah, I somehow doubt Nintendo would like to minimize SMG2 and Other M. You don't step on your big gun IPs.
Plus, there's Motion+Zelda and Retro's secret project yet to be released. Combine that with Sin and Punishment 2 and Pikmin 3, and there's no way they could fit all of those games into next year PLUS launch a new console.
I'd say we probably won't even see Zelda until 2011. Maybe by that time Nintendo will try to do what they did with Twilight Princess -- la...
oobob -- To a large extent, modern gaming exists because of Mario, so yeah...it's not the smartest thing to say. But I'm trying to be charitable, lol.
I completely agree with you on the morality of certain games. What is so "mature" about killing hundreds (thousands?) of people/creatures in a sci-fi shooter with a flimsy plot? I've never understood that.
A game like NHM is a strange exception. I honestly think of it as a flat-out satire.
-- The sa...
RememberThe357 -- She implied being "insulted" by playing Mario Galaxy from an adult's perspective. That's an argument on intellectual maturity.
R&C is as "adult" as a movie like Star Wars. And Mario has never been about the story. It's about the gameplay and always has been. As an "adult gamer," I can say Galaxy had some of the best level design and gameplay this gen.
She probably didn't mean for what she said to come out the wa...
I wouldn't call it "stupid." Misguided, yes. But not stupid.
Somewhere, at some point, "mature" gaming came to mean guns, blood, bouncing breasts and swearing. But if we're using that standard, modern horror movies are more "mature" than North By Northwest or Citizen Kane.
But if anything, a game like Ratchet and Clank would be analogous to Star Wars -- strange creatures, robots, futuristic weapons, etc. You wouldn't call SW "ad...
Feeling "insulted" while playing Galaxy?
What, playing some of the best platformer level designs yet created is..."insulting"?
A lombax and a robot with outlandish weapons out to save the universe versus a plumber in space...she's actually trying to call one of these "mature"?
They're videogames. Incredibly good ones that have fun with the genre and medium they're on.
She can go read Tolstoy for her fix of &quo...
[EDIT: Xander-RKoS beat me.]
In brief: NSMB, FF:CC, Silent Hill, RE:DC and the COD4 port will all be released before the end of the year here in the U.S. And Muramasa, Extraction and the Prime Trilogy were recent releases, too.
We'll get Other M, NM2, SMG2, RS2, MH Tri, and Sin & Punishment 2 next year.
...the Wii has been through some lengthy game droughts, but now isn't one of them.
"Like its predecessors, and Demon's Souls, my other personal obsession of this year, Monster Hunter Tri involves an awful lot of dying. It's your wee hunter against boss monsters a hundred times his size, and understandably he doesn't usually come out of it without a scratch. The core of the game is still about facing up to the impossibly powerful foes and, eventually, after many, many tries and with a lot of skill, overcoming them. It's still the tough bastard of a game that we know and...
The new wheelie and crash-to-cool-off game mechanics will make for some interesting online matches.
I hope Nintendo does this type of vintage update thing with some of their other games. I'd buy an old school, top down Zelda with improved visuals to make the wait tolerable for the next console LoZ.
*Spoilers* (Although I don't know what Zelda fan hasn't finished the game.)
Agreed. Midna was an annoying character at first. But by the end of the game, you wanna kick Ganondorf's ass for (what it appeared to be at the time) killing her. No voice acting, but you still end up caring about what happens to the character.
That's why I don't really care about voice narration in the next LoZ.
Now a fully orchestrated score...that's another matter.
Twilight Princess had a decent story, IMO. Would voice acting for Midna have made a huge difference? I don't think so.
I'd be all for a Majora's Mask-esque storyline, though.
EVERY game developer "clings" to established IP. They stick with proven sellers. Nintendo just happens to have been around longer.
Y'know how many dedicated console Super Mario platformers (not mini game compilations and mascot games) there have been so far? 7 games. In 24 years.
[We'll get 2 more soon, so you could change that to 9 in 25 years.]
Console Zeldas? Also 7 games. In 23 years.
Console Metroids? 5 games. In 23 years.
<...
Sorry. I look for any excuse I can to talk about Other M.
I'm kinda divided with RS2. I'll already be getting NMH2 on day one. If RS2 isn't at least 15+hours, I may just rent it. This needs to be a AAA title, not merely solid.
Arius -- I honestly wasn't too hyped for the game at first. But then I kept going back to the E3 trailer, and the more I watched, the more I liked what I saw.
This has the potential to be a watershed game for Nintendo. Not only for being the last of their "big 3" to go third person/3D, but the added plot and voice acting are a really, really big risk. We saw aspects of that in Corruption, but this will exponentially expand on that. This is big N's gift to the "...
re: "some do dislike it for a good reason. We want high quality HD games from Nintendo of great classic remakes -- is that so hard?"
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Maddens Raiders -- Well, there is also a market for low-cost, low-budget retro games. This is a WiiWare title, and a neat idea, IMO. Nintendo has truly skimped on their online offerings in this area. This is a step in the right direction.
Plus, Nintendo has pretty much always put gameplay and budgetary cons...
The first game sold what, 400,000 copies?
I wonder how well the sequel will do. Will it launch better now that it's an established IP?
First day purchase for me.
rockleex -- Are you reading the same article that was posted? The one that says this:
"It does seem that Iwata has a positive outlook for the Wii, though, thanks to the September price drop. According to a Reuters report from the press conference, Iwata said of the decision to lower Wii's sales targets, 'With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time.'"
That's not saying it was in...