i guess something has to be good about the game if it has sold as much as it has.... I have never been a fan i wouldnt take a free copy. God just watch it is going to be minecraft and they will be all proud about it.

Minecraft is a mirror.

"It was about the entire indie game industry. Actually it probably applies to the AAA industry as well, or at least all the mid-sized studios kicking about that make AAA quality games but without the marketing budget that defines the AAA industry. All developers are in the same boat. All developers are having to deal with this problem – the problem of having worthless customers. I’m not even sure why there’s a pretence that we even have customers any more: they – you – all belong to Valve. We are unable to issue a refund for our games. We have no way to directly contact a customer after they’ve bought a game from us. But that’s ok, because you can get games for a dollar now, eh>?"

So now that we have concept art confirmation of the obvious fact there will be a Nopon town:



we can also reasonably deduce with more certainty that the other native races to Mira will also have home towns.



So My bet is the Nopon home city is going to be in the jungle continent to the west of Neo LA.
That hostile alien races home city is going to be in the black iron area to the far north, that technology is theirs.
The pizza loving aliens town will be in their massive cruise ship.

And maybe the blue goatface guy has a town full of his people as well.

If the gaming Gods love me they wont let that happen. Minecraft and rockband would piss me off thoroughly.

Not that I would buy it but would prefer ANYTHING over minecraft and rock band

Minecraft is awesome.

What Sakurai is talking about is completely different than what is now being discussed, he was simply talking about valves well done UI, and in fact, those aspects hes mentioned, the Eshop very overtly attempts to emulate.

However, it seems some members here are in dire need of some serious truth bombs, about the 'choice' in sales and humble bundles, straight from the mouth of the devs which you are stuffing your words into, the things their pr wont let them say:


"And lastly, the worst, most hideous truth at all, and there’s a bit of history behind it.

You are worthless to us.

What? Did he just say that? I? Your horsing customer? You just said your customers were worthless! Wii you!!!!11!1!! I’m never buying anything from you again! I’m even going to uninstall all your games you ignorant self-important beige quilt! How dare you speak to me, your customer, like that?

Woah there, inflamed of Tunbridge Wells. Let’s just rewind a second and analyse that statement for a moment. How did we get here? Let me count the ways.

Once upon a time, back in the early 2000s or so, games would sell for about $20 or so. Some developers did really well at that price point – I mean really well. Most of us didn’t do that well, and made beer money, but we carried on making games anyway because that’s what we liked to do, even if nobody wanted them. When we got a customer we were able to treat them like royalty. Apart from there not being that many of them, twenty bucks is a pretty reasonable chunk of money and you should damned well expect it to work properly. Of course, 99% of the time, when things didn’t work it was just because the customer had rainbowty OEM drivers that were simply broken. (Interestingly I don’t ever hear of people taking their laptops back to the shop – which remember cost $500 or more – and yelling at the salesmen for selling them something that didn’t work). So what would happen was we spent a not insignificant proportion of our time – time which we could have been making new games in and thus actually earning a living – fixing customers computers. Note that we weren’t fixing our game. We were fixing customers computers for them. It’s a pretty tedious affair. When the same problem turns up 20 times in a day (or even, during a sale, 200 times), and the answer is always the same, that’s the very definition of tedium. So we jokingly used to say that we sold you a game for a dollar and then $19 of support. That’s actually pretty close to accurate when you work out the time spent fixing someone’s computer for them. We relied on enough sales going through without problems to come out on top slightly, though the reality was that we never actually did.

Then Steam came (and to a lesser extent, Big Fish Games).

Things changed fast. So fast that in other industries it would have been seen as a cataclymically disruptive event. The upshot of it is, within 5 short years, the value of an independent game plummeted from about $20 to approximately $1, with very few exceptions. Steam is great! You can sell loads of games! But only if they’re less than $10. Technically Valve don’t actually dictate the prices we charge. Actually, they do. Utterly. It’s just not talked about. In fact technically, I don’t think anyone’s allowed to talk about it.

Then came the Humble Bundle and all its little imitators.

It was another cataclysmically disruptive event, so soon on the heels of the last. Suddenly you’ve got a massive problem on your hands. You’ve sold 40,000 games! But you’ve only made enough money to survive full-time for two weeks because you’re selling them for 10 cents each. And several hundred new customers suddenly want their computers fixing for free. And when the dust from all the bundles has settled you’re left with a market expectation of games now that means you can only sell them for a dollar. That’s how much we sell our games for. One dollar. They’re meant to be $10, but nobody buys them at $10. They buy them when a 90% discount coupon lands in their Steam inventory. We survive only by the grace of 90% coupon drops, which are of course entirely under Valve’s control. It doesn’t matter how much marketing we do now, because Valve control our drip feed.

Where does this lead us to?

You are worthless to us.

Where once you were worth $20, and then you might have become a fan and bought another 4 games off of us for $20, you were worth $100. We only had to fix your computer for you once, as well, so the next four games amortised the cost of the initial support. If we were lucky you were a gamer and already had drivers and liked our stuff and bought the lot. Sometimes you’d tell your friends and maybe one of them would buy a game from us.

But now?

Now you’re worth $1 to us. If you buy every one of our games, you’re worth $5. After Valve and the tax man and the bank take their cuts, you’re not even worth half a cup of coffee. So, while we’re obsequiously polite and helpful when you do contact us for support, even if it’s just the same old “please install some actual video drivers” response, you really should be aware that you are a dead loss. Even if you buy everything we ever make again. Even if all your friends buy everything we ever make again. You just cost us money. Not just fictitious, huge-piles-of-filthy-lucre indie-game-developer who made-it-big money. All our money. We barely scratch a living, like most indie game developers. You quite literally cost us lunch because the shop sold you a computer with broken software on it."

It's supposed to be a picture. The whole thing is that the exposure is screwing with what color people see the dress.

I just felt like seeing what people saw it as, considering it exploded all over the internet in a few hours.

Its not screwing with what color people see the dress as, the over exposure changed the color of the dress from the real life blue and black, to white and gold for the image, the same as using a paint tool in a photo editing program would, or switching to image negative colors would change the colors used.

The dress is black and blue, but the colors in the image are white and gold. The difference in which one people decide to use is as simple as this:

Best suggestion Ive heard was minecraft.

Holy crap thats an over exposed shot. Either that or the sun itself is touching down behind the dress.

I guess its supposed to be a gif, but nothings changing, so all I can see is the white/gold dress in front of the super nova.

A Nopon story translated from Xenoblade X site.

https://docs.google....kQXyFBaLm6g/pub

Looks like the Monado truly was the beginning of the world.

Pretty much confirms a tangential relation to the original Xenoblade for me.

"A sound argument. It embodied the sacred teachings passed down from the ‘hom hom’ of Nopon legends--"If man will not work, he shall not eat."

"Sooner or later, Tatsu had planned to leave the caravan behind. He dreamed of slaying a wicked god accompanied by sidekicks."

Mass effect, ie failed star flight for the morbidly mentally lazy who refuse to use their mental facilities, and babys first dues ex are 'hardcore'.

This industry is screwed.

You might be able to use Decalgirl to make a skin. Hardly the same, especially if you have an LE, but it's something. -shrugs-

https://www.decalgir...ight-adjustment

Anyways, NoE decided to make the Xenoblade faceplates available to their consumers.

Meanwhile, in the territory that sold over half the worldwide Xenoblade units all by itself, over twice as much as the next closest region which is now getting the faceplates, theme, and new 3ds with a dpi over 92, NoA continues to huff its own farts.

Seems to be about right. Ha! Zelda U 1080p 30fps?

Pretty positive its going to be 720p 30fps.

Oh I was about to get you... that was a quick edit. So what will a main line game lets assume metroid by retro will look and play like on wii u in 2016. I know you don't have the ability to see the future but just best case.

It will probably be 720p, 60fps (thats the series standard, see no reason why it would change), look amazing, and have little to no AA.

You probably already answered this before but... what is your opinion on the lack of AA for most Wii U games.... and assuming the console will only get better we should see this not be an issue on Wii U in the future? Future being this year... next year? Or are we to assume nintendo doesnt think AA is a priority and they could care less thats why most games dont get it. I believe 3d world and captain toad are the only ones using some form of it right?

Ha, I thought you typo'd an A out from AAA, but you meant anti-aliasing.

They have some manner of AA, they use it in games like 3dworld, although its pretty hit or miss, sometimes it makes for a wonderfully clean image, sometimes some things are smooth and others arent, and sometimes nothing.

Honestly, I dont think Nintendo really cares enough about AA to use it in place of adding more effects.

I agree with that philosophy. I sit like, 12 feet away from my tv, I dont really give a poot about AA.

Hmm, not sure if I should pick this up or not. I only played about 6 hours of wii xenoblade I think and loved it which is why I'm cautious about this 3ds version because for a game of such quality like xenoblade I really want to play the best version.

Unless you go dolphin with the HD texture pack, its just preferences.

Xenoblade Wii:
Dual Audio (Japanese and english)
Higher resolution (480p woohoo)
Still a collectors item

Xenoblade New 3ds
In 3d
Portable
Beastiary with model viewer and drop list
Apparently better framerate according to Eurogamer.

Oh sure most of them don't care about that. But some do. If you ever read those graphics white papers or whatever they're called, you do come across companies who innovated on the way to their goal. I believe realtime ambient occlusion was first used in Crysis, for example. I don't know if they entirely invented the algorithm or not but I think they were the first to get it working. 
I also read one on how Valve invented a particular kind of improved motion blur for Portal 2.

Hows Crytek doing these days?

I do read them. Would you like me to cross reference my favourite journals and siggraph presentations with some of the greatest advancements in real time cg history with the list of studios who have been run out of business, or bought gutted, and liquidated to the point where its now just a name and has none of the original talent who made the breakthroughs by incumbent publishers like EA?

The people who care, the people who made the advancements are being run out of the industry. We now have a culture of 'devs' who wait on Direct X for graphical 'breakthroughs', because microsoft has succeeded in killing open GL (And NOT by being better, by being rich as Wii).

Wii U uses a console architecture. XBO and PS4 are just PC's with a custom OS. PS4 and XBO have diminishing returns. Consoles traditionally because of how they were designed games got better looking over time as they optimized better. PS4 and XBO being a PC you see what they have to offer now.
 
X86 machines they have need just raw specs because X86. Wii U is custom in every way so that every part is made to work with another making so it doesn't need the raw specs PS4 and XBO need. Wii U is built as a console. Wii U still can't produce games as good looking as PS4 or XBO but it's not far behind. It's no slouch. Some games we see on PS4 and XBO can run on Wii U fine but the real difference is 1080P on PS4 and 720 on Wii U.

Everything has diminishing returns.

Even though ps4/xbone are basically off the shelf pc's with a netbook cpu crammed into an apu, they are still closed systems, as opposed to actual pc's that can have thousands of different hardware and driver combinations games have to be compatable with. Which means they also have a lot of room for optimization. Although, it doesnt look like any AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA publishers got time for dat.

Crap out games, match parity for legal platform holder bs reasons, dont take any advantadges of system specific features, and simply tell the dumbasses who buy your games that the missing features, broken games, and de-evolution of game design, are modern features that are actually BETTER than the obsolete game design of games that worked as recently as metroid prime, and market it until you brainwash them into believing it. Just like Activision says they do.

Not really seeing how this is different for consoles than PCs. "Console architecture" is a completely arbitrary term. The improvements over time happen everywhere. Skyrim looked a lot better than Oblivion because of all of the graphical techniques they learned throughout the last generation. It looked better on consoles and it looked better on PCs. In fact, Skyrim runs on my PC a lot better than Oblivion does.
If anything, I'd think it'd be the exact opposite. PS4 and Xbox are going to increase in potential MORE than the WiiU because they can largely share a knowledge base with PC developers and therefore more pioneering techniques will be discovered for them.

This isnt that likely of a scenario, because of the reasons I already stated, publishers have ZERO interest in actually forwarding the progress of game design and optimization. That requires talent, risk, and motivation. They are far happier to keep things exactly where they are, and use marketing to convince their brainwashed audience that crapping in their face is actually advancment, and anything else is backwards.

Aside from that, ps4/bone are in fact, closed systems, while the pc scene, is NOT. PC technology will continue to improve, utilizing the latest in its gpu/cpu technology (When its not a complete and absolute fraud, G*Glares at Nvidia*) however, these will NOT directly translate to ps4/xbone, as they will mantain the same processors for their entire lifespans, meaning THERE advancements will come from better utilization of THE SAME processors, in optimization, rather than advancements made possible by new hardware. In fact, the pc scene is ALREADY being held back by the underpowered ps4/xbone, as big name engine companies like epic already REMOVED their next gen lighting engines because ps4/xbone couldnt handle them, and they didnt want to be blacklisted by two huge partners making ps4/xbone look dated before they ever released.

Due to the nature of all consoles now having programmable pipelines, instead of Nintendo being stuck with fixed function pipelines, any new effects that can be approximated from pc to ps4/xbone, can in fact be approximated down to wii u, and even smart phones.

Thats the reason Nintendos games looks so damn good on wii u. Its not the instant dismissal favourite 'Art style'. Nintendo has INCREDIBLY high end systems they work with. Where do you think those ridiculously quality character renders and things they use for splash screens come from? These are things no ps4/xbone, or current home pc can do in real time. However, they take these advanced effects and approximate them into similar looking effects that CAN work on wii u.

How far thats going to go, depends on whos doing it, how good they are, and how much drive they have. Its becoming increasingly obvious, by the RIDICULOUS leaps wii u's been making already, that they have some seriously motivated people in that department. A human resource factor neither sony nor MS has in their corner (Ms never had them for gaming as msgamestudios has never been anything more than a transient quantity of bought 3rd parties, and sony is currently laying off all of their talent except santa monica and naughty dog). Which is why, Nintendo games get BETTER looking as they near release, and other studios get constantly whined at for 'downgradatons'.

Tingle is a caricature of Koji Kondo

Oh my God Tingle in hd.

Hes never looked more like Koji Kondo than he does now.

No really feeling it award?

I never had any issues with XB framerate on Wii. No hiccups no noticeable slowdown or anything. It was as solid as a rock for me.

There were no hiccups, its a solid 30 during exploration, but the slow down and speed back up was pretty much a constant occurance during battles, especially with characters like Melia, Fiora, or Ricky in the party.

Yeah, I bet with the 3ds's resolution, and how far out Xenoblade goes, that distant objects would be hard to recognize.

Not much of an issue for someone who already knows the entire game by heart, but could be a bit of an issue for newcomers.

Still completely worth it for me. Ive been wishing this game saw a 3d release on 3ds ever since those screens of Xenoblade came out with other wii games in 3d you could look at with the 3ds browser.

A steady framerate is a surprise though. The wii games framerate could be described as pretty much anything but solid.

Yeah, I just saw this posted on Vita sites. I'll almost definitely get it, although probably the Vita version, as it does tick a lot of my boxes.
The art style is great and the environmental design reminds of something like Final Fantasy tactics, which is a surefire way to grab my attention certainly.
My only negative so far is that the combat looks rather dull.

Looks like a great game for a portable system.

Thanks for putting this on my radar.

My main question about this is why on earth it's a Wii U exclusive. This would sell a hell of a lot more on Xbox.

Because Neither Sony nor Microsoft would touch it, because its Japanese, and is actually a game instead of a predictable rollercoaster ride.

Like Bayonetta 2, its either the game ceased to exist, or Nintendo published it, and it became a wii u exclusive.