The Wii U’s poor sales performance is hardly news anymore, but last month’s arrival of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 brought Nintendo’s predicament into sharp relief. Sony and Microsoft touted their new machines as the best- and fastest-selling consoles in November, respectively, whereas Nintendo simply chose to tell the world that Wii U sales were up 340 percent on the previous month. Given that October figures were said to have been around a dismal 50,000 units, and that November includes Black Friday and the release of the Wii U's biggest and best game to date, Super Mario 3D World, the statistic is less than reassuring.
PlayStation platformer Astro Bot impressed former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé.
Oh yeah it’s certainly a special one. I think Astro Bot 2 is gonna be a big one, the one for the books as they say.
I also hope Team Asobi expandes thanks to the massive success of Astro Bot and works on another IP, they are just too good.
"I also hope Team Asobi expandes"
That's kind of a double edged sword for me. On one hand it would be good for Team Asobi. On the other, Sony shut down and laid off all the other devs at Japan Studio. It would just kind of piss me off that they shut down the rest of the studio only to now build it back up after screwing over those devs.
They probably should have kept Japan Studios, they could really use them now that they realised they need to revitalise some old IPs, or make something other than Live Service/GaaS.
They recentered japan studio around asobi because some of the main staff left after sony wanted to increase their budgets to make bigger aaa games, I thought this was well known.
They need to give us a PSVR2 version.. the first one is still glorious to this day on PSVR
I think Astro Bot outdid Odyssey in terms of pace and level of interactivity immersion it gave.
I mean look at how many charming animations they make for each of the 300+ Astro Bots in the game scattered around at crash site home base, just the sight of that alone never fails to give you a huge smile and joy.
Astro Bot is also the first ever platform game I played that never made the post-game activity felt like a boring drawn out collect-a-thon challenge mode feel and was actually still as fun as main game to collect them and played them all throughout.
Even Odyssey felt like a collect-a-thon in post-game after credits rolled.
Agreed honestly. Odyssey’s mechanics/gameplay wise was the best Mario’s been. But the moon collecting became hella tedious down the line.
I'm fine with collect-a-thons so long as there is an actual platforming challenge to overcome in collecting the thing. Those are fun. I feel like Odyssey had such a mix of interesting to collect moons compared to just moons on the ground you grab -- they could have done a lot better.
Astro Bot and Odyssey both shine for different reasons. I agree with you on the interactivity immersion of Astro Bot -- but the skill wall of Mario's move set, for me, makes it a bit more interesting as a platformer and game to speed run through.
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Easier said than done. Plenty of imitators of successful games out there. It rarely stands on its own.
That's not easy though. If you remember during 360 days mahy tried copying halo and especially gears of war and came up short
The best game that did anything remotely close to Gears, was the incredible game Binary Domain.
It's true! Sony literally took the very best of what Nintendo did and put their own take on it. I have acknowledged that, but Sony fans act like Sony came up with it all on their own. It's hilarious! I'm going to get a bunch of down votes for being honest. Astro Bot, is AMAZING, but come on now! Hey, I don't care, Astrobot is a fantastic game, and I replay it, because it's fun.
Yeah, just like how Nintendo saw the Outfoxies and were inspired to do Smash Bros...
OH WAIT...if we go by your logic then Nintendo just copied them, right?
There was even a couple of kart racing games out before Mario Kart, I know you may like to believe different but even Nintendo found inspiration or weren’t the first to do something, they just put their spin on it and did it better.
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Reggie writes: "@thegameawards is the biggest global entertainment event of our time, now shockingly bigger than @NFL's Super Bowl. Well done, @geoffkeighley"
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It’s such an akward show. I watch it to see if there is any good reveals. Some great ones this year but that’s not always the case.
to be fair, the superball is mostly watched in america. not the world.
but this year was really good. but damn was it a long damn show. especially in europe
We watch Superbowl here in Europe as well.
And this years TGA wasn't much longer than earlier years, and the runtime was exactly the same amount of seconds here in Europe as any other part pf the world, even if it was in the middle of the night 😏
thats exactly why it felt so long. it was also 15 mins longer.
superball eint being watched in europe. maybe in the uk and even that, hardly.
@gold_drake
It's not 'superball', so wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know we watched it also from Europe.
I live in Sweden and haven't missed a Super Bowl final in years.
I can guarantee you most countries has access to NFL, just like NBA and NHL.
Straight facts. Also the rest of the world has no interest watching a 3 hour game where the ball is in play for only on average 11 minutes.
And this is coming from someone who does watch highlights of NFL regular season and the entire superbowl. Its just not that great a game. Its biggest problem is the guaranteed possesion, stop/start nature of play and lack of laterals that could open up the game more like rugby union or rugby league.
yea and ppl who say "oh its being watched in europe" forget that the superball starts really really late at night for us and goes into the early mornings.
but yeh. people dont know what they dont know.
The way that was calculated was misleading. The Nielsen ratings are not straight forward. Length of viewing was way longer on superbowl. Game awards were basically just watched during the windows where there were game announcements.
When ex-President of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aimé, showed off a portion of his N64 collection on social media, we suspect he probably wasn't anticipating a wave of offers from potential buyers.
Why should he sell his collection? It's his collection if he wants to sell then that is his decision maybe he wants to save it as a nest egg or pass it down to his kids. That's like asking the AVGN to sell his giant collection plus the Nintoaster. Or like asking Jay Leno to sell his car collection. Collectors like to brag, show off, and explain the history or the rarity. Be lucky Mr. Ex Predisent even gave you a glimpse of his collection.
I think it great he shows off his collection it shows that despite the criticisms he got he really wasn't just a suit and truely loved the games and that really shows in the fact that he still talks about Nintendo years after departing the company we need more Reggie and less matrck in gaming
Quest 64, I brought that dumpster fire day 1.turned me into a die hard square enix and PS fan.Gawd that game was horrible.
it was fairly busted too once u had a certain lebel of earth magic haha otherwise yes. dumbsterfire ha
huuuge potential tho
they will definitely if they get a chance to put out a new console learn from the wii u
question is when can they put out a new console? can't be for a few years as the wii u is their 'next generation' console to compete with ps4 /Xbox One, so they have to see it through and not upset current owners.
Nintendo are stubborn but I hope Nintendo learns from this
by the way great read from theverge kudos
the Wii_U name doomed the device.....many people still think its just a tablet for the wii.....Nintendo underestimated the uninformed , which happens to be their number 1 market
BTW that Reggie picture is nightmarish
And if that ends up being true, I will not support Nintendo's next console either.
Well that's a loaded assumption. Only 100,00 behind the PS4 this week and currently performing above the PS3 and PS Vita, and it's a failure?
the photo is creepy.. reminds me of Lavander town and it's music while looking at this picture.