Wii HD

[Dannon]

What is the biggest selling game on the Wii? what do most games companies do when a competitor has a very,very successful idea?

If Nintendo were concerned, they should have brought back concept approval and stopped the flood of tat at source, but then they wouldn't get all that money from manufacturing all that tat either

I'd like to think that the big reveal at E3 will be the reintroduction of the Seal of Approval....deep down I know it's not going to happen

[Smoothy]

The "Seal of Approval"? That didn't involve quality control you know.

[Liquid Myth]

The "Seal of Approval"? That didn't involve quality control you know.

What was the "Seal of Approval" if you don't mind me asking? All I remember was a bit of a hoo-hah over Codemasters doing some reverse-engineering trickery in order to release Micro Machines/the Game Genie on the NES.

[Jack]

I think it was quality control - since they made the carts, you could only get approval for three games a year, unless it got a high score in Nintendo Power. Something like that, it was in that Game Over book.

[ras el hanout]

Explain Superman then!

[Smoothy]

I think it was quality control - since they made the carts, you could only get approval for three games a year, unless it got a high score in Nintendo Power. Something like that, it was in that Game Over book.

That's not quality control. It's a licensing system. If it was quality control, it would've stopped the dross that came out on the NES, Super NES and Gameboy (and there was plenty).

What was the "Seal of Approval" if you don't mind me asking? All I remember was a bit of a hoo-hah over Codemasters doing some reverse-engineering trickery in order to release Micro Machines/the Game Genie on the NES.

And this is why. If you weren't licensed, you didn't get the logo (obviously), so it was clear who was "approved" by Nintendo and who... wasn't. Here, the implication was that if the company wasn't licensed, then Nintendo doesn't want you to buy their dodgy software that "might" break your system.

[Professor Puzzles]

It was quality control in the sense that the game was guaranteed to play on your system without breaking or mucking something up, not that the actual game was a good one.

[Super Craig]

It was quality control in the sense that the game was guaranteed to play on your system without breaking or mucking something up, not that the actual game was a good one.

Exactly.

[gone fishin]

It was quality control in the sense that the game was guaranteed to play on your system without breaking or mucking something up, not that the actual game was a good one.

That's not strictly speaking true, when Nintendo first launched the whole Seal Of Quality thing, it was to try to protect the NES from suffering the perceived same fate as the Atari 2600- being flooded with shite. Part of the problem was Atari losing their court case to Activision (who then became the first 3rd party to develop for the 2600)- but Atari essentially had no security protection in the 2600, so anyone could make a game for it. The utter turd that flooded the 2600 (not helped with Atari releasing shite like ET and Pacman) just added to the "video game crash" of the early 80s.

Nintendo decided this couldn't happen, so they released a tight licencing system (Where you could only release a certain number of games a year- plus you weren't allowed to release them on any other system) and the NES had the added security protection to stop "unlicenced" publishers from releasing anything on the NES.

But after a while... the seal really just became a method of control and it didn't stop the NES from having utter shite released on it- however by that point the video game crash was pretty much forgotten about.... So yes, the quality control system eventually just became like an ISO 9001 stamp. It didn't have any affect on the actual quality of the product, just that it would work.

[MK-1601]

It did involve quality control (in terms of crashing, and also strict censorship), and the limitations imposed on third parties were ruled fantastically illegal.

[Sonic.Mirrorz]

I'm thinking this isn't nintendos xbox competitor it's there response to sonys ngp.

[Keyboard Koala]

I'm thinking this isn't nintendos xbox competitor it's there response to sonys ngp.

[Nnooo]

FYI the Nintendo Seal of Quality is now applied to all licensed software and hardware made for Nintendo platforms and it means that Nintendo, themselves, have run said software and hardware through their internal testing process and determined that it:

1) Works as described on said system

2) Complies with all their internal testing criteria

3) Does not do anything which would lead to shortening the lifespan of your hardware (or the software) or otherwise break or make to look broken your hardware

I think the subject of whether to let game X be on your platform or not is a hard one. If we look at Apple they have a 'we don't care attitude' with ever shifting goal posts (IE your game/app was fine but now we have changed the rules so it's not). With Nintendo there are much stricter rules (which they rarely change and if/when they do previously approved titles are unlikely to be removed from sale) and much higher costs to develop for. This means that anyone making software for Nintendo systems already has a burden of cost to try to ensure that the game is of at least a reasonable quality (firstly to pass the Nintendo test and secondly to recoup the cost of development).

The unfortunate thing with software is it is really hard to tell up front if your game idea is going to be any good or not and if they took a hard line then it might exclude true innovation or quality games. If they went further and asked for prototypes or could cancel games part way through production then they would lose developer support.

Personally the reason I think we see few games making the best use of Nintendo hardware is because:

1) To get the best out of Nintendo hardware you need to put a lot more time and effort in. By this I mean in the current gen they were the only ones with motion control (to start with) so to use their hardware well you had to invest time which would not pay off on any other platform.

2) They make the tools they need to do the job they need it to do. Microsoft are an OS company so the tools you get with 360 are driven by the underlying OS (the same with Apple) so Microsoft and Apple make sure things like Xbox live and the dashboard etc are all OS calls and developers can't fiddle with them. Nintendo is not an OS driven company so some things can be harder to do which again puts people off using all the power of the machine.

3) A lot of games companies want to make generic games to push out on multiple platforms so to them using specific platform features adds cost, time and risk which means they often resort to lowest common denominator. If you look at how many games make really good use of XBox live there are few (Halo and the COD franchises probably use it the best AFAIK).

4) On Nintendo platforms you have Nintendo games to compete with which as we all know are really high quality. Whereas on other platforms, particularly 360, you don't have that competition.

5) Finally with the Wii the titles that sold really well were family style games from Nintendo so most developers took the "that sells lets copy it" mentality they apply to all platforms (see the sheer number of FPSes on 360) and made heaps of family party games. Unfortunately until the people making the business decisions at publishers and developers stop trying to make "me too" games and start trying to at least differentiate themselves then we will keep having this problem.

All platforms suffer and will always suffer from crap unfortunately. It is Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony and Apple's choice to make it so easy to develop for their systems that the minimum standard is great. The easier it is for all of us to make games on a platform then the more likely, in my opinion, we are to support all of that platforms features and make exciting games. If it takes me 6-9 months and a lot of cash just to get the game running then adding WiFi, complex motion controls, connect 24 support etc are going to be much harder to justify.

[Nespresso]

Iwata Strongly Hints at Improved Online

The official translation of Nintendo’s recent investor meeting contains a glorious tid-bit from Iwata that sounds like a strong hint at an improved online system, which could tie in with previous rumors.

Iwata believes that the future of the Wii “could have been different if Nintendo had made better partnerships with outside companies in the field of network services.” He believes that Nintendo was obsessed with “Jimae-shugi,” a term meaning self-sufficiency. Iwata believes Nintendo was trying to be too self-sufficient, and this hurt them.

According to Iwata though, “we have already put ourselves back on track,” sharing that Nintendo “would like to clearly differentiate what is our true strength from what we can basically do by ourselves but can be done better by more skillful outside specialists in order not to fall into that trap again.”

Meaning, Nintendo is bringing in outside help to work on the network services, aka the online system for their next console. And that can only be a good thing, I think.

Iwata finishes his answer with this gem:

You may be aware of some features which I am implying now in relation to the future developments of Nintendo 3DS and Wii’s successor system that we announced yesterday. I am sorry I cannot say anything more specific today.

It sounds like something is on it’s way, but we’re just out of the loop. I don’t want to get over-excited one again for a mind-blowing online experience, but this is the best evidence of that happening we’ve probably ever received. Let’s hope for the best!

[Alex W.]

Quite frankly getting over-excited about a competent online experience seems a bit premature, much less a mind-blowing one.

[mushashi]

The translated Q&A does seem to drop a few hints about Nintendo strategy going forward for Cafe, well at least the company admits Nintendo will have to offer a better place for third parties to do business, Super Famicom redux :

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/110426qa/index.html

Can I understand that you would like to draw in third parties proactively?

Iwata: I would not use the term "draw in" third parties, but I hope we can create a market that is attractive to third parties. The end result might turn out to be the situation you call "drawing them in," but I do not use such words as "draw in" or "enclosure," as I do not like such expressions.

However, Wii is good in some areas but not in others, so especially for games like "Call of Duty," the Wii version sold pretty well, but the unit sales were very different from the versions of other platforms, and I assume that one of the reasons is the issue with the graphical representations which you mentioned before, and also, the consumers who like that kind of game will have other platforms at home as well, which led to this result. Of course, we would like to cooperate with software developers for Wii's successor, and as I am repeatedly saying, I don't believe Nintendo can carry out everything alone. I am saying that we are responsible for building up the market, but I don't think that Nintendo can maintain the market alone; We are aiming for creating a situation where software publishers will be willing to cooperate.

Next, regarding the subject of overseas, there was an era in the past, which was until the time of PlayStation 2, when games made in Japan sold well all over the world. However, I think that, over the past three or four years, the presence of Japanese software developers has become relatively small. Nintendo is doing what overseas software developers do not do, so Nintendo's software is selling relatively well also in foreign countries, but for the software oriented to enthusiastic game players, such as "Call of Duty," the ones created by overseas developers are more mainstream in the overseas markets. In addition, because the expressions in games are becoming more and more photo-realistic, I imagine that the cultural differences in acceptance have started to be reflected more clearly. I think this is the reason why western users tend to prefer software created overseas than software from Japanese software developers.<

Of course, Nintendo will continue to run a business by creating Nintendo-like games, but we will not be able to meet the various tastes of consumers by only doing this, so I feel that it will become necessary to reinforce the development resources in the foreign countries. Therefore, I hope we will be able to show you something like that at E3.

[SharkEnergy]

Of course, Nintendo will continue to run a business by creating Nintendo-like games, but we will not be able to meet the various tastes of consumers by only doing this, so I feel that it will become necessary to reinforce the development resources in the foreign countries. Therefore, I hope we will be able to show you something like that at E3

Be interesting what they intend to show that will bridge the "COD" gap - previously they have tried and failed to do this with mediocre stuff like Geist and Red Steel - and it hasn't worked. Sounds like they think they have a better plan this time.

[b00dles]

Red Steel was Ubi though wasn't it?

An actual FPS COD beater thing made by Nintendo would be a really really strange thing and might make me go all scanners.gif.

If anything it will be a paint gun game or something 'nice' the very idea of a game made by Nintendo with killing, explosions and Michael Bay type set pieces just doesn't sound right...

[therearerules]

Finally. CoD: Mushroom Kingdom.

[Harsin]

Don't Nintendo make these kind of noises before the launch of every console?

[Nespresso]

Don't Nintendo make these kind of noises before the launch of every console?

No, shut up. Battlefield 3 along with Starfox, Mario and Samus all on the same console? Confirmed.

[Mr Do 71]

Iwata believes that the future of the Wii “could have been different if Nintendo had made better partnerships with outside companies in the field of network services.” He believes that Nintendo was obsessed with “Jimae-shugi,” a term meaning self-sufficiency. Iwata believes Nintendo was trying to be too self-sufficient, and this hurt them.

They should collaborate with Microsoft, as they know how to do online.

[___]

Be interesting what they intend to show that will bridge the "COD" gap - previously they have tried and failed to do this with mediocre stuff like Geist and Red Steel - and it hasn't worked. Sounds like they think they have a better plan this time.

All but one of the COD games came out on the Wii this gen, and that one was down to Infinity Ward being snotty.

Very interested to see what "reinforce the development resources in the foreign countries" turns out to be, though

[Dude Ranch]

They should collaborate with Microsoft, as they know how to do online.

Thanks Legendary.

[scottcr]

What's all this about Nintendo Feel?

[BigShimmeryWall]

What's all this about Nintendo Feel?

[Major Britten]

Red Steel was Ubi though wasn't it?

An actual FPS COD beater thing made by Nintendo would be a really really strange thing and might make me go all scanners.gif.

If anything it will be a paint gun game or something 'nice' the very idea of a game made by Nintendo with killing, explosions and Michael Bay type set pieces just doesn't sound right...

Iwata isnt saying that Nintendo needs to make those types of games, just that Nintendo needs to get better 3rd party support and have 3rd party games that are successful on Nintendo platforms as CoD was on the 360/PS3.

To be honest Im not sure I like what Im hearing about Nintendo going out of their way and time their releases to please other publishers. Yes they need to improve that part but they shouldnt bend over backwards just to get some more games on their system. Companies like Activision, Ubi Soft, EA etc have no loyalties whatsoever and will put their games on whatever system can take them. The Wiis downfall (with 3rd parties) was that it simply wasnt powerful enough and the online structure was shit.

[Chosty]

If anything it will be a paint gun game...

The painball mode in Golden Eye was awesome. I know it was Rare, but still.

[Harsin]

Good news everybody, the Vitality Sensor isn't dead. I know you're all waiting on tenterhooks for it.

Nintendo has revealed that the Wii Vitality Sensor peripheral, first announced in 2009, is still in the works but a number of problems are delaying its launch.

CEO Satoru Iwata told investors during a Q&A (translated on Nintendo's website) last week that the gadget was still being worked on but required additional fine-tuning before it would be fit for launch.

"I imagine that you are worried about that because it hasn't been put on the market even though a long time has passed since it was initially announced," he said.

"This is a totally new type of entertainment, and there are large individual differences in the biological information of humans.

"For example, if it was acceptable that only 80 per cent of the users thought the result was natural, then we could propose this to consumers right now. However, we are aiming for a level of quality in which 99 per cent of consumers feel comfortable, and that is why this project is taking time to complete."

He went on to promise that Nintendo was still trying to get it right, but wouldn't commit to a launch window.

"I feel that this project has a lot of interesting potential, and we would like to continue this project without giving up," he continued, "but it is difficult to overcome this hurdle, so please understand that now I cannot clearly say when we will be ready to put this on the market.

First shown off during Nintendo's E3 event in 2009, the device will apparently clip on to your finger and somehow monitor stress and nervousness.

[mushashi]

To be honest Im not sure I like what Im hearing about Nintendo going out of their way and time their releases to please other publishers. Yes they need to improve that part but they shouldnt bend over backwards just to get some more games on their system. Companies like Activision, Ubi Soft, EA etc have no loyalties whatsoever and will put their games on whatever system can take them. The Wiis downfall (with 3rd parties) was that it simply wasnt powerful enough and the online structure was shit.

That's pretty much how the competition rolls, and is pretty much what separates Nintendo from other platform holders.

Do Apple compete to the same extent on their platform? they don't even make any games period.

Nintendo operate in reverse of their primary competitors, they design and make hardware to run their own inhouse software, which they then issue licenses to other companies to allow them to make games for as well to generate more money.

Sony and Microsoft, I would argue, do it the other way around. Their first party titles are more there to provide a reason for you to choose their platform over a competing one, but they are much more willing to provide marketing and other support to potential Licencees.