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+--- Thread: Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today (/showthread.php?tid=6988)
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 1st September 2016
And in it, a bunch of stuff was announced and shown
- Super Mario Maker is getting a 3DS conversion. It looks similar, but sadly has somewhat broken online support -- the only online modes ar the 100 Mario Challenge or pre-selected levels Nintendo allows, you cannot type in a code and play any compatible stage. There is no excuse for breaking Mario Maker like this; yes, I'll surely get this as I really want to play Mario Maker, but it's a bad version of the game! Nintendo's excuse basically sounds like it is 'but you can share levels locally', but as someone who does not live in Japan, who cares? Outside of Japan we need online support, not near-useless local trading and StreetPass. I've never used StreetPass and doubt I ever will. This isn't the first time Nintendo has released 3DS games with somewhat broken online support, either... it's incredibly frustrating to see them not care about people who don't live in Japan, which is the message they send with moves like this. There is no technical reason for the 3DS version to not be allowed to play any compatible stage! I could understand if some levels wouldn't work because of the lesser hardware, but that is a very solvable problem.
- The best Nintendo DS game, Picross 3D, is finally getting its sequel Picross 3D 2 released in the West. I've been waiting for this! Sadly, while Europe and Japan get this game as a physical release, NoA continues being annoying by releasing this digital only. I'd REALLY rather have a physical copy of this instead of having to make room on a Micro SD card... :( Everyone else gets it on cards, Nintendo! Why not us? Getting it in some form is far better than nothing, of course, but still that's disappointing.
Additionally:
- New 2.5d Pikmin game coming to 3DS next year; it looks fun, like Pikmin but crossed with a platformer.
- Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World announced, for early next year. It's a port of the Wii U game, with some added levels starring Poochy the dog.
- New Pokemon of course
- The New 3DS XL has a new color available in the US
- There are also some new mini StreetPass games. I don't care much.
- And this was announced several days ago, but 5 3DS games and a couple of Wii U games have been added to Nintendo Selects, which means lower prices for those titles. None definitely interest me though, I think.
(Oh yes, and it sounds like the 3DS will probably be supported into 2018, so it's not being discontinued soon, as far as game releases go.)
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - Dark Jaguar - 1st September 2016
Heh, well I expected that. Nintendo supports each of their handhelds for a good long while. I think the only "clear cut" from the previous generation was with the transition from Gameboy to Gameboy Advance. Heck, even when the Color was going strong, there were still non-color GB games coming out in droves.
Remember the original DS? Nintendo initially claimed they were going for a "3 pillar" strategy, positioning the DS as an "alternative" to the Gameboy. I recall everyone looking at the DS and thinking it was bizarre, stupid looking, and way way too big. The moment it proved to be popular though? Yeah, Nintendo began phasing out the Gameboy Advance "pillar", and aside from the micro remodel, that's where the Gameboy "line" died. (Of course, in reality the Gameboy line just got renamed. There never was any "3 pillar" plan.)
I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing something similar this time. If their new NX console (which, remember, they have yet to even officially announce) is what it's claimed to be, it's going to be primarily a portable (I'm calling it now, it won't be backwards compatible with the Gamecube/Wii/WiiU line, but it'll be fully backwards compatible with the DS/3DS line). But, if it bombs unexpectedly, they don't want that to hurt the 3DS line, so they'll keep supporting it for now. I predict this though. If the NX takes off, just you watch those 2018 titles turn into NX games in later announcements.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 4th September 2016
Yeah, you're probably right -- if the NX really takes off, 3DS support will probably end sooner than the current plan. On the other hand if it doesn't, 3DS support will be extended. Both fit right in with past Nintendo actions. That would make sense.
Quote:Heck, even when the Color was going strong, there were still non-color GB games coming out in droves.This isn't really true, though. There were indeed a lot of games that supported both color and B&W, but there are VERY few B&W-only releases from after the GBC's launch; developers almost immediately switched over to dual-mode games. I presume you're thinking of all those dual-mode games, but since they also support the new system that's a slightly different thing I think. And after the GBA's release, Nintendo pretty much completely stopped releasing first-party GBC games almost immediately. The only first-party GBC games released after the GBA's launch are Western launches of a couple of games that released in Japan earlier, something that disappointed me at the time for sure. On the other hand, the GBA had major releases for several years after the DS's launch. I liked that a lot more than the short GBC lifecycle...
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - Dark Jaguar - 5th September 2016
Yeah I'm thinking of the "duel mode" games. I consider them basically no different than "Super Gameboy" mode games a few years before that, in that they're playing it safe. Very few Gameboy duel mode games really made full use of that duel mode either. Even Pokemon Yellow ended up using the coloring scheme of Red/Blue (that is, Super Gameboy coloring). Basically what I mean is that a lot of developers didn't go all-in on GBC support, opting instead to hedge their bets to make sure everyone with the older model wasn't left out. All things considered it wasn't a bad way to go. Most gamers saw the GBC as just a remodeled Gameboy anyway, and not worth shelling out full price when their Gameboy worked just fine. The Gameboy Advance was a different story, clearly being a major update over the previous model.
Come to think of it, when the 3DS came along it ALMOST got treated the same way as the Gameboy Color by the public. Many thought it was just a DS with a 3D screen, not worth shelling out money for. It took a while before it became clear that the 3DS was a substantial power upgrade over the DS. Nintendo mistakenly didn't make that clear in the initial advertising for the product. Fortunately that course was corrected in time, but to this day many people still think the Wii U is just a Wii with a tablet. Nintendo needs to make it clear when a new generation comes along that it is more powerful than the last. It may seem obvious, but many won't even realize it's a new generation until they are told it is. Hopefully they'll make that clear when the advertising for the NX comes along. If they ONLY advertise it as a "portable you can hook up to your TV", history could very well repeat.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 6th September 2016
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Yeah I'm thinking of the "duel mode" games. I consider them basically no different than "Super Gameboy" mode games a few years before that, in that they're playing it safe. Very few Gameboy duel mode games really made full use of that duel mode either. Even Pokemon Yellow ended up using the coloring scheme of Red/Blue (that is, Super Gameboy coloring).Well, Pokemon Yellow is probably one of the most minimal uses of GBC coloring around; most games use more colors than that. Still, it is true that since a dual mode title has to work on both systems, it can't get the most out of the GBC -- you can't design your game with the twice-as-fast CPU in mind, for example, or the added RAM either. The GBC is not exactly a powerful system, but the backwards compatible games are even more limited than color-only games because of that. For some examples, if you compare Wario Land 2 to Wario Land 3, you can see the (visual) improvement in the second one, which goes color-only. The Zelda Oracles games also show this versus Link's Awakening; LA is the better game, sure, and the Oracles games run in the LA engine, but there are added graphical elements you won't see in LA DX. Etc.
Quote:Basically what I mean is that a lot of developers didn't go all-in on GBC support, opting instead to hedge their bets to make sure everyone with the older model wasn't left out.If you look at game releases, the first year of the GBC saw mostly dual-mode games, but after that developers started switching over to color-only for the most part. So a lot of dual-mode games released in late '98 and then in '99, but after that you see more color-only titles releasing. Nintendo itself went mostly GBC-only after '99 for example. The very short life-cycle of the system obscures this, since there was such a short turnaround between the GBC and GBA, but it did happen. Even so, though, there were at least some backwards compatible games releasing in both the US and Japan into 2001; the last backwards compatible US release is Dragon Warrior Monsters 2. Japan's last backwards-compatible title is later than that. But they were definitely the exception by that point.
Quote: All things considered it wasn't a bad way to go. Most gamers saw the GBC as just a remodeled Gameboy anyway, and not worth shelling out full price when their Gameboy worked just fine. The Gameboy Advance was a different story, clearly being a major update over the previous model.You think? I thought that the GBC was quite popular and successful, and after its release the original GB or GB Pocket quickly got less and less common, at least among people who still actually played handheld games... people my sister or younger cousins who loved Pokemon in '98-'99 but never did get a GBC (or GB Pocket either) were out there of course, but looking at game releases, the GBC has a surprisingly large library considering its relatively short life. The original GB lasted much longer, but it had some very weak years through the mid '90s, while thanks to Pokemon that was not an issue with the GBC...
But still, yes, the GBA obviously was a much bigger update, and I'm sure plenty of people did just wait for a GBA instead of getting the GBC. But at least in the US the GBC did sell well; from the numbers I've seen I think it did best in the US, actually.
Quote:Come to think of it, when the 3DS came along it ALMOST got treated the same way as the Gameboy Color by the public. Many thought it was just a DS with a 3D screen, not worth shelling out money for.Good point, that was a problem for quite some time for sure.
Quote:It took a while before it became clear that the 3DS was a substantial power upgrade over the DS. Nintendo mistakenly didn't make that clear in the initial advertising for the product. Fortunately that course was corrected in time, but to this day many people still think the Wii U is just a Wii with a tablet. Nintendo needs to make it clear when a new generation comes along that it is more powerful than the last. It may seem obvious, but many won't even realize it's a new generation until they are told it is. Hopefully they'll make that clear when the advertising for the NX comes along. If they ONLY advertise it as a "portable you can hook up to your TV", history could very well repeat.Yeah, we'll see. Since the NX will surely again be dated hardware they can't sell it as "the best new tech", but they do need to do a much better job of making it clear that it is a real new platform. If the rumors that it won't have backwards compatibility are true that could go a long way towards that, so long as people see it as a noticeable upgrade from previous Nintendo systems anyway...
(Oh, and I REALLY hope that the rumor that the NX will be region-free is true. I won't expect it to be true until it is proven, but it'd be awesome.)
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - Dark Jaguar - 6th September 2016
I didn't mean to say Nintendo should claim the NX is the best tech out there. I mean they need to make it clear it's the most powerful NINTENDO handheld they've yet released. That's a solid claim.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 7th September 2016
Sure, but the 3DS was the most powerful Nintendo portable released up to that point, and the Wii and Wii U were the most powerful Nintendo consoles... but because Nintendo abandoned the power game after the Gamecube, they've never focused on that in their messaging for those systems as they once did. It surely is harder to convince people to buy a system on power grounds when it's nowhere near matching the competitions' hardware power... but they need to do something, or else they could have the Wii U or 3DS issue again. So yeah, as you were saying, it all depends on the messaging. I really hope they can get the balance right between focusing on whatever the system's "gimmicks" are and making it clear that this is a new and more powerful system.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - Dark Jaguar - 7th September 2016
Yes, I know, but they don't need to make it the focus. They just need to SAY THE WORDS at some point in their advertising. That's what was missing. All they need is a short quick line in their commercials saying "with the new X processor, it's more powerful than the 3DS". The rest of the commercial can focus on the features they really want to push, but they MUST have at least one line making that point clear, or they risk confusing people into thinking it ISN'T a more powerful system than the last.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 11th September 2016
Okay then, yeah, I agree with that.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - Dark Jaguar - 12th September 2016
Look at it this way. Apple's iPhones are hardly the most powerful cell phones on the market when they come out. That tends to go towards some ridiculously powerful high end android phone. However, they ALWAYS make the point during EVERY iPhone announcement that it's more powerful than the last iPhone.
Nintendo's new 3DS-focused Direct was today - A Black Falcon - 25th September 2016
Sure, but to be fair, has Nintendo ever not mentioned power at all in a new console announcement? That Wii U announcement had some tech-demo stuff in it that clearly was beyond the Wii's capabilities for example, which made the whole "people don't understand it's a console and not an addon" thing really hard to figure out, it took only moments for me to realize it was a console. But anyway, they clearly need to do a better job than that in terms of making clear what the system is, you can't have that kind of confusion starting out, but presuming they do do that, I think the issue more is that they're releasing hardware far behind the competition so they can't focus too much on power because it obviously doesn't hold up. But yeah, I agree, they should point out its capabilities in the announcement. Given how far Nintendo has gotten away from anything like that over the past 12 years or so I'm not really expecting them to do so in the detail they should, but it'd be a good idea.