MARIO MOBES: Nintendo hooks up with DeNA, births NX gaming system Nintendo and DeNA have joined forces in “a business and capital alliance” to bring the Japanese gaming firm's beloved characters to smart gadgetry. There will also be a new hardware system which Nintendo brands as “NX”. Although details of this are sketchy, it’s aimed at the mobile phone space. While Nintendo has previously …
"Nintendo...Follow my 5 step program to get back the "adults"
1) Take the original Mario game
2) Change nothing
3) Port to mobiles
4) Charge 99p
5) Profit"
Ignoring points 4 and 5, this already exists with emulators and the touchscreen crontrols are always awful. Borderline unplayable. Definitely unenjoyable.
I want to be excited about this news but the last decade has removed the will required.
"Ignoring points 4 and 5, this already exists with emulators and the touchscreen crontrols are always awful. Borderline unplayable. Definitely unenjoyable."
The emulators are illegal at worst and not built with touch screen in mind at best. When you get a company that knows how to build a game then touchscreen works very well, but emulators are a problem because they are usually just ports of the PC version of the emulators, so rarely work on phones in the way they were intended.
As an example of a working port GTA San Andreas is a fantastic game to play on the iPad and the touch screen and accelerometer control IMO adds to the game rather than takes away from it. Nintendo can easily make Mario work on a touchscreen phone, they have the money and the skills to do it right if they want.
Remember that the original Mario was on the NES which had a D-Pad and 4 buttons, 2 of which were start and select! which is easily done on a touch screen without it being unplayable or unenjoyable.
You can try and save the interface for touch, but there is no way you are going to be able to play something like Mario Brothers on a touch screen with enjoyment. You think only 6 buttons, easy...but then you realize just how hard it is to replace a directional pad.
Besides, am I allowed to watch the game while I play it, or is Nintendo suing for that now? Nintendo's main audience has been children for ever. Once they started sending DCMA take downs to little kids recording their games to share, well fuck Nintendo. "Nintendo, we hate kids and free marketing. (Just let us die!)."
Sega offed before Nintendo, it's Yoko "Nintendo" Ono.
I want this, I want it lots. I would _love_ to be able to play the Zelda games and the early Final Fantasy games on my phone or tablet with some kind of online save file.
For me, the touch screen controls don't give enough feedback for actual platformer gaming, but for RPGs, it'd be amazing.
I'd start looking for jobs with more of a commute to give me gaming time...
I've always maintained that Nintendo going third party would kill them since I've always felt that Nintendo work better when they're developing their own games on their own hardware. However, from what I've seen of this so far, it appears there is potential for them to make this into something really good. If Nintendo make a truly cross-platform experience and stay true to their word about making games optimised for each different type of device then this could be awesome. But knowing Nintendo, it's as if they're always intentionally a couple of steps away from perfection.
It's without doubt that Nintendo has needed a response to the mobile games industry since handhelds simply aren't going to be around forever, I'd be surprised if we see a dedicated successor to the 3DS. However, the type of response that people have been calling for, for Nintendo to just publish their games on the Play Store and App Store, that definitely would be a bad move for them because it just brings down their status.
As for them publishing older console titles to mobile devices and/or PC, I'm really not too sure if they're going to do that since they must be well aware by now of the breadth of emulators available for these platforms, the mass availability of old console game ROMs and the fact that there really isn't much more Nintendo could do to offer a better experience than that already offered by using emulators. Maybe offering achievements and online play for old retro titles could give a Virtual Console service on Android/iOS the unique edge it would need to make it worthwhile, but as I said earlier; Nintendo always seem to intentionally keep themselves a few steps away from perfection.
Sony were working along the right lines with the Xperia Play - smart enough to look like a normal mobe when shut, with the slide out physical controls for gaming, Perfect form factor for this sort of thing. The problem was that it came to market in a period of massive growth and advances with mobile chipsets - by the time it was on the shelf, it was already obsolete, and Sony weren't really pushing their own content on the thing beyond the odd PS1 port.
Imagine if a similar device came to market now, with Nintendo's name on it. Something along the spec of a Moto G - not exactly pushing billions of pixels, but still far in advance of the 3DS, and more importantly much cheaper to produce and sell than the premium devices. Give it the gamepad slider and actually bother to make content for it. Make sure it has an "adult" looking SKU, along with the usual Nintendo propensity to ship billions of different colours. Suddenly you're looking at a massive chunk of the 25-40 market that grew up playing NES and SNES games, who would be happy to blow through Super Mario World on the train on a device that isn't as obviously game-consoley as a 3DS. Give it simple touch screen, match-3-esque shit as well to keep the Candy Crush crowd happy. Hell, if they get Monster Hunter on it you can guarantee a 90% adoption rate in Japan at least.
It's not going to play out like this, though. It's going to be yet another pocket rectangle of screen, just like all the others, that's going to bomb because there's nothing to distinguish it from every other mobe on the market other than the Nintendo logo.
Yet when you feel a little sorry for the kid who got a Wii-U for Christmas rather than a Playstation 4, it may be too late.
To be fair, that kid got the better deal, I've had every games console since the NES (yes, including the Panasonic 3DO R.E.A.L.) and a fair few from before yet this generation I've only picked up a Wii-U.
It's the only actual 'console' out there, where the other two are just crap PC's, I have a fairly decent PC so I can just wait for a port of everything sans exclusives...of which I can't name one off the top of my head nevermind want.
It's also the console with the games I've enjoyed most last year, the re-release of Zelda and Mario 3D World both beat GTA5 (which I actually purchased my second PS3 for, having left my first in the UK when emigrating to Aus). I'm still playing Mario to-date as the Mushroom World levels are a lot of fun and a challenge to boot - and after that I've got the 2D Mario game to try.
Nintendo would do well if the media stopped slagging them off because they don't make shitty FPS games, there's a lot more to gaming than FPS - or fancy graphics that push up the development cost of triple-A titles, so bagging on a console that limits fancy graphics seems counter intuitive. But then what do expect from a reporter who can't copy check his own work:
The deal sees Nintendo take 10 per cent of DeNA and DeNA take 1.24 per cent of Nintendo as part of the deal. That the 16 year old mobile gaming company is worth 12 per cent of one of the industry giants is a reflection of just how much Nintendo has lost out by avoiding the mobile market.And that's not the only error in there, just the most glaring..
Agreed. We also use the Wii U most by a long shot.
As for the games being for kiddies, have any of you actually tried Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze? I bought it for my daughter but it's way too hard for her and even I struggle with it. Good thing I like a challenge and the gameplay is fantastic.
We got the kids a WiiU, mostly so they could play Disney Infinity on it - it's an awful experience, constantly throwing up warnings about there being too much on screen at once. I don't know whether to blame Nintendo or Disney for this, but I hear it plays really well on the PS4. The news that Splatoon will not have 4-player, split screen mode, suggests to me that the WiiU really is underpowered. Which is a real shame.
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