Ponkotsu

More software - and as much of a variety of software as possible - always goes without saying. But trying to tackle Sony and Microsoft by following what they're doing definitely isn't the way forward, considering how much money both companies lost this generation and how relatively few games actually made money on their platforms. Narrowing the market with a lot of divisive 'hardcore' and 'casual' rhetoric pumps up insecure gamers' egos, but it doesn't win generations or create real relevance with the mass market.

We're already seeing a pleasantly surprising amount of major western support pledged now, especially compared to the Wii, now that the Wii U's on a hardware level that the bigger western developers and publishers prefer. Continuing to court the strongest third party support they can pull in all regions is definitely vital, but it's less a matter of focusing on the 'hardcore' as it is a matter of continuing the Wii and DS strategy, like they are with the 3DS - all kinds of games for everyone, all styles of gameplay and every habit. Reggie's already emphasized that they're going to be reaching out to an even wider audience than with the Wii, which is just what we want to be hearing, frankly - it's as Iwata emphasized at E3 last year: 'wider and deeper.' A wider range of experiences for more people than we even saw this past generation, and even deeper and richer experiences of all sorts for all.

We'll undoubtedly continue to see plenty of traditional or 'core' support from Nintendo, with a few more new IPs thrown in there - probably both internally developed and by side developers they own like Monolith, as well as effectively third party studio games that Nintendo publishes, backs, and owns as first party releases, like Mistwalker's The Last Story and Ganbarion's Pandora's Tower - along with plenty of mass market audience or 'casual' titles of all sorts, with some sequels and new IPs there too, plus plenty of things to get the mass market online and keep people going online daily for, to socialize and more. The 3DS is already delivering more on the promise of fresh daily content to look forward to on the system than the DS and Wii did, and it looks like that's only going to continue to improve, while the Wii U should be even more impressive in that regard right out the gate - more social and lifestyle software in general is always a plus. We'll undoubtedly see plenty of 'bridge' games too, which appeal to both the 'core' and mass market audience, much like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 3D Land, and so on.

Expanding on what they've dominated with is absolutely the right path - after third parties burned themselves with Sony and Microsoft this past generation, it's up to them to get on board with the market leader and get themselves back into more sustainable shape again with proper aggressive support and actual marketing.

Lovely indeed. Seeing urban Tokyo footage like that makes me want to see open-world games in urban Japanese settings on the 3DS and Wii U, and makes me think more about the environment in my Miitropolis concept, though the world in that would be a bit more tailored to fit the Miis. But then, as the We Ski games, Go Vacation, and Fishing Resort have shown, it's very possible to build comparatively 'realistic' and gorgeous landscapes that very cute, cartoony characters fit into comfortably too. All about making sure the color schemes and designs mesh together well and feel natural, and ideally that there's a good working atmosphere in there.

Things like this also make me curious - in a similar vein as Miitropolis - to see just how Nintendo's going to build up the world of the Miis further and what else we're going to be able to do within it on the 3DS and Wii U this new generation, looking at all the work that went into Wuhu Island and on a slightly lesser scale, the small island focused on in the original Tomodachi Collection on the DS in Japan, with its little slice of Mii civilization. The sky's the limit, potential-wise. And between what we've seen of the Wii U so far - and this tech demo was built, as others have noted, on a lower power development kit last year, while it's known that dev kits have gotten significantly more powerful in post-E3 iterations - and how much the 3DS has already evolved in less than a year, we should have a lot of surprises and fantastic things to look forward to between the 3DS and Wii U this year. A few last Wii software surprises would certainly be welcome, too - especially thinking in the line of getting The Last Story and Pandora's Tower in North America too, and any new firmware or download software updates for the Wii in its final year, considering how long it's been. We know Hulu Plus is coming, but that's about it so far. It'd be great to get a Wii-to-Wii U transfer tool that works as well as the 3DS transfer software too, to ideally allow us to transfer over all Wii save files, friend codes for online Wii games (Allowing us to actually move our locked online save files), along with our Virtual Console and WiiWare games with ease. Taking the improvements the 3DS's Virtual Console Handheld emulator design has made, one would hope we'd see an update to all the Wii Virtual Console emulation software too, allowing for save states/suspend points, like the 3DS. Multiple ones would be welcome, and/or perhaps an easy user login system for each individual console so multiple people could play a VC game at a time with their own separate save states, perhaps with their personal Mii attached to easily see which save file is whose.

Thoughts, at any rate. However it's rendered, this is definitely one impressive little tech demo. It makes me want to see more footage of the whole environment, weather, day/night, seasons, and so forth - like with that bird tech demo - and some good open-world urban Japan exploration come to the system globally. The Wii saw relatively few ambitious atmospheric open-world titles, but among them are some absolute gems. The Wii U's clearly capable of some amazing experiences in that vein, and I'd love to see that pushed, personally, along with some similar efforts on the 3DS. Worlds that make you want to be there can definitely make you want to keep playing a game much longer.

I already weighed in on my thoughts on potential PS4 and 720 reveals anytime soon in the later parts of a post I just made in the recent Mii thread: http://thewiiu.com/t...dpost__p__52024

As I pretty much summed up, the next generation is Nintendo's to lose. The industry's been horribly battered by the PS3 and 360's devastating development costs and the utter lack of a mass market audience to make the average PS3/360 game profitable, while most third parties visibly tried to abandon the Wii starting a couple of years ago, killing the one console that was acting as a cushion for their routine PS3 and 360 flops until then.

Conversely, Nintendo's already stated that Wii U development will be possible for lower cost than the PS3 and 360, keeping the smaller devs and reasonable budgets from being shut out - it's very possible we'll see games that can make good money on less than a million copies sold, where the PS3 and 360 budgetary requirements didn't allow for that.

The Xbox line's been around for a bit over a decade now, with no actual net long-term profit to show for it, only billions in losses across both the Xbox and Xbox 360. Microsoft's entire venture into gaming hardware has been financially catastrophic for them. Similarly, the PS3 is the biggest financial catastrophe the video game industry has ever seen - not even the Dreamcast lost the king of money that thing has. It ate the PSX and PS2 profits, and the PSP has in no way acted as a cushion for the net losses the PS3 has represented for Sony, where even many of their attempts at major first party blockbusters crawl their way to a million copies sold at best and don't come close to making money.

People have a bad habit of pretending both Sony and Microsoft have infinite money cushions in their other divisions that they can use to weather neverending losses, and try to shrug off the reality of each company's positions within this industry. The Vita's off to a terrible start, Sony visibly not having learned any lessons from the PSP or PS3's problems, and neither Move nor Kinect ended up drawing a notable mass market audience. Move was pretty much dead on arrival and never had real public or Sony customer interest, and the novelty of Kinect burned out quickly. Neither were the 'threats' to Nintendo they were thought to be. Third parties bet heavily on Sony and Microsoft over Nintendo all throughout this generation and were burned horribly for it, and still haven't adapted to that either and continue to push unprofitable development. You'll casually hear people insisting that the PS3 and 360 either 'beat' the Wii combined, or that there was 'no winner' this generation, and that all three companies are 'fine.' In reality, Sony is a financial wreck, their loss strategies in gaming having devastated them post-PS2, and the rest of the company is in rocky enough shape that they're going to need to make some drastic internal changes sooner or later in order to remain viable. No company can continue to go on for the long term with their current financial trajectory in gaming - along with their other troubled divisions - nor the billions in debt they have sitting on top of them. As for Microsoft, they just axed the Zune last year over its general failure to be a profitable venture. With only billions in losses over a decade to show for the Xbox line, and repeated failures to broach Japan or the mass market, it's hard to bet on the shareholders keeping the Xbox line alive for too much longer.

And as things stand, Nintendo's in a much better position to begin a new generation - in no way in the kind of rotten financial shape their competitors or mos third parties are these days - where Sony and Microsoft are caught between a rock and a hard place. Making smaller jumps forward to match the Wii U won't differentiate them or give them much of an advantage - and they'll still have the disadvantage of launching later - on top of enraging their respective audiences, which are vocally demanding huge leaps forward again with new 'premium'/'luxury' consoles like the PS3 and 360, essentially demanding a generation of even bigger financial catastrophe. Taking the PS3 and 360 route again with their new platforms will only drive development costs - when PS3 and 360 costs on average were far too high, especially without a mass market audience for either console, their respective audiences instead buying a very narrow selection of particular western franchises and ignoring virtually everything else, hurting the Japan side of the industry especially - further skyward and basically create an environment where virtually nobody could make money. We'd see even more third parties dying or desperately merging together after massive financial blows than we did this generation, and costs of that level would ultimately represent a very nasty exit from the industry for both Sony or Microsoft - and their exit in general seems to loom nearer on the horizon than most want to realize, preferring to pretend that the industry's current Sony and Microsoft centric financial crisis is nonexistent, as many gamers do, out of sheer brand preference and loyalty, forgetting that they're talking about businesses here, and that survival is inevitably paramount unless they want to see a whole new industry crash.

Taking all that into account, it's hard to imagine Sony or Microsoft gaining any new ground this next generation, given that neither company is shaking up their leadership or general design philosophy - and stand to lose what they have if they don't adhere to their very conservative design focus, even though what they have isn't sustaining either company in gaming, nor their third parties - and rushing (As they are visibly reacting earlier than planned) to try to put out successors to compete with Nintendo (As they're visibly worried about what the Wii U represents now) won't likely yield competitive or postive long-term results either. In many ways, this forthcoming console generation is Nintendo's to lose - a matter of keeping game and hardware prices low, marketing aggressively and effectively, bringing out bigger guns earlier for the mass market, ideally bringing in a lot of social media elements to expand into online socializing for friends and family with their gaming to go with the usual local, and making sure they don't botch the new control setup and lose the huge Wii audience by slumping back into a focus on tired old traditional controls on the new tablet after they gained such a huge audience with what the Wii remote and nunchuk represented in game design and overall hardware accessiblity.

We're not seeing a real change in thinking - or understanding of how to cater to the mass market at all - at either Sony or Microsoft, and their fortunes have hardly been financially rosy in the industry. Likewise, third parties have pushed themselves into a corner where they pretty much need both lower development costs and a larger, much more diverse audience with the mass market than the PS3 or 360 can even deliver together with multiplatform releases. We're already seeing the 3DS effectively disrupting the Vita - which has little support to speak of and fell on its face right out the door so far - and even picking up PSP-style support from third parties with brands and games no one expected to see Nintendo to finally start getting. We're already seeing a lot of expected Sony and Microsoft support headed to the Wii U this year now, thanks to the big software reel we saw with the system's unveil at E3 last year. At this point, if Sony or Microsoft attempt to unveil new consoles for release anytime soon, whether they try to do something close to the Wii U or try to launch 'premium' or 'luxury' consoles again, however much online hyperbole you'll inevitably here from Sony and Microsoft brand fanatics, neither would be launching into a good position - especially if they really are rushing to try to fight with Nintendo more directly. Neither company is moving forward from a remotely financially healthy position in the first place now, and the era of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo is more likely than not already at its twilight. Sooner than later, we're likely to see a new generation beginning with Nintendo's own systems evolving in newer and even more forward-thinking dierctions after the 3DS and Wii U, with new rivals that are not Sony or MIcrosoft, with those two likely inevitably turning back into third parties - as both once were - and enjoying financial success in gaming again as software-producers. A healthier place for both companies and a better deal for gamers, in many respects.

Considering how beloved the Miis are, they should definitely stick around, but all the more improvements they can make to them, the better. They should be central in our online identity - just as we have a Mii set as our personal identity on the 3DS too - and they should definitely make sure that they retain the kind of charm they have now and the same level of creativity in design.

Going for an ultra-realistic push and basically trying to follow Sony and Microsoft - which went off a cliff together financially in pursuit of the so-called 'hardcore' - would be one of the biggest mistakes Nintendo could make. As would be a full on refocus away from the Wii remote, nunchuk, and motion controls that made the Wii so popular this generation - they've already confirmed they'll still be used, which is a first positive - to instead fixate on a return to 'traditional' game controls with some basic touchscreen enhancements with the new tablet controller. We've seen for some time now how traditional controls and increasingly conservative adherence to them - as we've seen with Sony and Microsoft - lead to inevitably unintuitive and intimidating controllers with too many buttons and a distinct lack of real progress in gameplay design.

Refocusing on the so-called 'hardcore' and trying to follow Sony and Microsoft's current self-destructive path with a return to traditional controls over forward-thinking ones - and even the Wii U unveil trailer focused on trying to find forward-thinking ways to use the new tablet controller as opposed to the same old - would be the worst turn Nintendo could take going into this next generation. The 'hardcore' can complain about Nintendo all they want, but appealing to the mass market is far more important with a broad variety of games, gameplay styles, and visual styles, as well as appealing, accessible controls. Rather than pursuing the PS3 and 360's destructive, conservative path, the Wii U definitely needs to follow a path much like the 3DS is - pursuing 'core' gamers more aggressively, certainly, and working on getting the third party support that the Wii earned but never received (Hence the awful financial state much of the video game industry is now in, the average PS3 and 360 title these days not making a profit, where a small number of major western blockbusters actually do each year), but essentially continuing the spirit of the Wii and DS going forward and retaining their mass appeal while working to bring the competition's support on board.

We're already seeing this with the 3DS visibly taking off in the mainstream now with more mass market titles hitting and the 3DS functioning as not just a successor for the DS, but the PSP as well in Japan - the only region where the PSP ever actually took off. The 'core' or 'hardcore' audience and 'casual' or otherwise mass market audience are in no way mutually exclusive as they're often treated. DS game sales and even Wii game sales - as little credit as they ever get for the fact that 'core' games made money far more consistently on the Wii than PS3 and Xbox 360 - proved this, as did PS2 software sales (Though the system suffered a relatively low attach rate despite its massive market penetration, in clear part due to the average person's discomfort with how clunky and unintuitive the Dualshock controller was - a clear example of the traditional controller becoming too complicated for the mass market. Simplicity is always important in controller design - the Wii in particular reminded of that.), and the PSX, SNES, and NES. The mass market is always the most important market, and it wasn't until this generation that we saw the industry trying to artificially divide itself while sneering at so many of its potential customers in the process with all the 'hardcore' and 'casual' nonsense we've heard this generation.

So, in summation, what Nintendo needs to do is not to 'focus on the hardcore,' but simply work themselves and with third parties to absorb an even larger audience from the competition again - like they are with the 3DS - but to continue to focus on the same mass market appeal the Wii and DS have enjoyed and figure out new ways to keep the mass market engaged. And making bolder use of Miis in all sorts of games and allowing people to socialize more online through them - as in my Miitropolis idea in a previous thread on this board - would definitely be a good leap forward to take with the huge leap they're preparing to take with their online services this year. The Miis should be an evolving concept, and the more they can be used to appeal to the mass market audience that loves them, the better.

Nintendo pulled off mass market motion controls where Move was pretty much dead on arrival and Kinect saw very mixed results and less than a full year of real mass market interest. Nintendo pulled off the only avatar system that really endeared itself to the mass market and saw meaningful extensive use this generation with Miis, where avatars were a largely unwanted feature on the 360 and Home didn't exactly take off in any big way on the PS3 either. Going into this next generation, as with the DS, Nintendo has the brand advantage and a good impression on the mass market all around - we've already seen that Sony hasn't learned anything from their mistakes with the Vita's dire opening, and Microsoft hasn't exactly demonstrated that they have any understanding of how to make money in the industry either, with the Xbox brand a little over a decade old now and still without any actual profit to show for it, and only a very narrow audience. Both are launching into next generation without a hint of understanding how to appeal to - or any real evident respect for - the wider market after their cynical attempts to draw their interest with Move and Kinect this generation didn't take long to go south, and they're caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of hardware design: PS3 and 360 game development was simply too expensive, demanding far too many millions of dollars in investment per game and game sales that both platforms' narrow audiences could not keep high enough to make the majority of games profitable, with very few types of games actually seeing the 1.5+ million copies sold needed on average to break even, let alone turn a profit.

Similarly, the Vita's facing the burden of raising costs dramatically on both developers and customers at a point at which much of the industry is absolutely battered by all the money lost across the PS3 and Xbox 360, as they attempted to work with Sony and Microsoft respectively to force customers away from the Wii, with financially catastrophic results instead. The industry as a whole isn't in a good position to start supporting a very expensive new portable - as we're seeing with incredibly little proven Vita support - let alone one with extremely little audience. Sony and Microsoft are under incredible pressure from their current followings to launch new consoles that take another gigantic leap forward in hardware power, ensuring many billions in losses for both companies and another huge surge in development costs, the likes of which the industry cannot afford when it couldn't even afford the PS3 and 360's costs on average this generation. Thus, all the developer collapses we saw this generation, as well as all the mergers, and the financial reports with many companies formerly thought to always be healthy crumbling internally and laying off tons of employees thanks to the losses incurred through Sony and Microsoft support that few had the wisdom to halt. This generation became a losing war of brandname loyalty and 'hardcore' identity nonsense fought against the mass market and sustainable budgets - hence the average Wii game actually making money, and for a long time, Wii development being used to finance big budget PS3 and 360 flops. When that stopped happening and most third parties tried to drop the Wii entirely over the past couple of years, developer and publisher bottom lines fell through the floor as they still failed to actually make money on most PS3 and 360 releases.

For the first time, the industry's getting ready to move into a new generation wherein the industry as a whole is in very rough shape, in no way enjoying the surplusses the PS2 era ended with. If Sony and Microsoft launch the incredible powerhouses their followings demand, they would be too expensive for both developers and customers - much as we're already seeing with Sony's Vita falling on its face right out the door - especially taking into account the awful state of the global economy. Gaming platforms are in no way sustainable as 'premium' or 'luxury' items, like Sony and Microsoft have tried to make them, and the financial catastrophe this generation has been for pretty much everyone but Nintendo and the few companies more focused on supporting them has made that very clear. After a straight decade of billions in losses with the Xbox line so far, one has to wonder how much more Microsoft's shareholders will take before the product line is eventually ended - much like the Zune was last year - and in Sony's case, between the PS3 eating the PSX and PS2's profits and the PSP in no way subsidizing the rest of their losses (The company has more debt than they're bringing in money by miles), it would be incredibly foolish to launch a PS4 anytime soon with the current state they're in, and the Vita's visible trajectory.

If Sony and Microsoft try to launch another pair of huge-leap-forward 'premium' consoles like the PS3 and 360, we're going to see third parties devastated further and more companies go out of business, while surging development costs set virtually impossible to meet sales requirements for profitability.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has made clear that while the Wii U will be more powerful than the PS3 and 360, they're designing it to keep development on lower budgets than on the PS3 and 360 viable, and to allow a place for small companies to continue onward on consoles, where the PS3 and 360 shut them out. At this point, the next generation is pretty much Nintendo's to lose so long as they continue to learn from both their own mistakes and those of the competition, forging their own path forward with the 3DS and Wii U like they did with the DS and Wii. Affordability to both developers and customers is vital, as is avoiding the ridiculous image bickering over nonsense like 'casual' and 'hardcore' labels. We're already seeing a surprising number of major western PS3 and 360 titles slated for the Wii U this year, many developers and publishers visibly eager for what Nintendo's powerful new platform represents in contrast to Sony and Microsoft - the possibility of a huge HD console that has a definite good shot at being the market leader this next generation too, allowing a lot of the kinds of games made for the PS3 and 360 this gen to find a full-on mass market audience at last with Nintendo. As for the rest of the third parties, it's largely a matter of letting go of the 'casual' and 'kiddy' nonsense they tried to cling to with the Wii while the PS3 and 360 were burning them and refocusing on where the market actually is - just as we're seeing with many titles expected for the PSP and Vita audiences instead going exclusively to the 3DS now. If Sony and Microsoft try to launch new consoles in 2013 or 2014 that aren't premium, but a slight jump ahead to try to match the Wii U's hardware, they'll inevitably arrive too late to compete or make much of a difference, and they'll see their own respective audiences furious that they didn't push the graphical ceiling as high as they could again, suicidal cost to developers be damned. Going into this next generation, both are in a significantly worse position than Nintendo, just as we've seen playing out with the new portables already.

The new generation is, in many ways, Nintendo's to lose.

Relevant news!

In a pleasant turn of events, Nintendo surprised us all with the addition of an achievement system to the StreetPass Mii Plaza in the megaton update that finally arrived after the week's delay. 78 accomplishments, as they're calling them, to get between all sorts of StreetPass tag goals, Find Mii and Find Mii II, Puzzle Swap, and the new StreetPass Map.

They don't connect to the Activity Log, and there isn't any means of displaying accomplishments to friends to compare progress yet, but it seems like these are things that would be implemented in the future with a 3DS connection to your username and profile when that sort of thing is setup for the Wii U next year.

And with the Wii U launch many months off and plenty of time for additional huge 3DS updates in the meantime, it's very possible that they could work on setting up a username system and rudimentary profile to start sharing accomplishment stats and so forth on. They could expand Club Nintendo into your standard Nintendo online profile and presence, or come up with another site like Pokemon Global Link and have you connect that with your systems and Club Nintendo for your unified Nintendo online presence, which would in turn connect with anything like Pokemon Global Link and third party services like EA Origin and Steam in the future.

With accomplishments in the StreetPass Mii Plaza now - the name of which I suspect may have come from the 'daily accomplishments' listings on the Wii message board - and achievement systems popping up in more and more first party games like Freakyforms, it'll be interesting to see if they start releasing updates/patches to retail games, Virtual Console games, DSiWare games, the AR Games, Face Raiders, or anything like that to start adding accomplishments to those (Or variations on the system by other names, as commonplace as 'achievements' are by that very name in games on Nintendo systems now, or 'titles,' or 'trophies' as in Freakyforms' case, and 'accolades' in Dragon Quest IX's), and then perhaps a means to start collecting and viewing these stats together in a more organized manner (Perhaps through the Activity Log, as I've previously suggested) as they move toward putting these stats up on an online profile and giving us a means of sharing and comparing this sort of collection, accomplishment stat, and overall progress data with friends in the future.

This is a bold, interesting move on Nintendo's part now, as we've been hoping for, at any rate. This update's been a pretty big leap forward for the system, and it seems like there may be more plans for Nintendo Zone in the next year now that it's a standard channel feature. SwapNote should be out any week now, too. It'll be interesting to see just what else Nintendo has up their sleeve in the coming updates in 2012, especially considering that accomplishments are a surprise addition to the update after the delay, as simple and rudimentary as their display is, as a simple list with lots of mysterious ones, lighting them up as you earn them and keeping a tally of your total. The "Congratulations!" messages with confetti and your Mii waving when you earn one are satisfying, at any rate.

Considering that Kinect's sales have trended notably downward after last year's holiday season and developers have been anything but confident in backing it, support having largely slowed to a trickle, it's probably a safer bet to make than not that Kinect's fifteen minutes have already passed. It was pretty much just a much more hyped, much better marketed EyeToy in the end, with all the meaningful limitations. It was never the threat to the Wii or Nintendo that it was played up as being - much like Sony's Move - and its mostly very poor software sales pretty much say it all.

In regard to Zuperman, at this point, the vast majority of what we've seen for the Wii U at this point have just been definitive version ports of major western violent titles, as Nintendo finally starts getting more of the third party support to appeal to that market. We definitely haven't seen much for the Wii U that will attract female gamers yet, but knowing Nintendo and their own statements, there's no question that those games are going to come. The Wii U was unveiled prematurely at E3 this year as a result of the leaks, and we're probably only going to see something of a trickle of information until the final unveil at E3 2012 before launch sometime next year. I suspect we'll see far more for a wider market then. But yeah, while Nintendo's going to be able to cater much more strongly to the 'core' market with third party attitudes visibly changing around the Wii U - and even the 3DS having one of their fastest growing libraries of T and M-rated games Nintendo's ever seen early in a platform's life - they're not going to cater solely to that audience either. They're open about their efforts to cater to girls and women just as much as boys and men, and they're more successful than any other major company in the industry. It just comes down to the fact that at this point, we've still seen very little of what's coming to the Wii U in concrete terms.

The Wii U will be significantly more powerful than the PS3 and 360, as we know - though they've also made it clear that it's being designed to be less dangerously costly to develop for than the PS3 and 360 have been, considering the insane amount of money the industry's lost betting on those systems, where most games simply don't sell well enough to recoup the massive development costs - but it isn't going to simply be a Nintendo response to those. It'll have stronger third party support than the Wii, taking into account all we've seen so far, but they're not about to abandon the very successful strategies of the Wii and DS, just as they aren't with the 3DS. It's all about appealing to as broad an audience as possible, and the competition largely shot themselves in the foot between their platforms' dangerous development costs and their willful pigeonholing of their audience - going after an extremely narrow 'hardcore' audience has translated into a very few major franchises making money and most games turning into painful financial blows to their parent companies.

As much as the industry is hurting right now - and as much as it should have focused on the Wii over the PS3 and 360 this generation - the Wii U, like the 3DS, looks to be designed to offer a panacea to the widespread financial pain. High-end software with lower development costs, and a focus again on the extremely broad audience - and continued use of the motion controls, with the Wii remote and nunchuk rightly not going away, vital as they are in providing accessible controls to the wider market that can't stand the clunky, increasingly outdated Dualshock-style controllers - to provide a much healthier place for development. On top of which, of course, the 3DS is turning into the last inexpensive retail platform to develop for as the DS and PSP fall away. What lies ahead after the 3DS is going to be a difficult question to answer, too, given the industry's need for mid and lower-tier developers to be able to get by without the multimillion dollar budgets the PS3, 360, and now Vita all call for - and many Wii U games will undoubtedly have too, though not as rigidly - and that a lot of these companies wouldn't be able to get by in sinking to the lower market of download-only titles, which tend to exist in a much more unreliable place in gaming in terms of mass market purchasing, and also suffer from most customers simply being unwilling to pay more than 99 cents for a download-only game. The industry and gaming as a whole will be much worse for it if we see the mid and lower development tiers budget-and-company-size-wise disappear, leaving us with only a mix of downloadable games and big multimillion dollar blockbuster efforts, which often end up being unfortunately overly conservative and unoriginal by design. The industry needs the freedom that comes with mid and lower budget titles to take risks and keep things fresh with more exciting, newer titles.

Whoops, got off on a tangent there again. Hah.

In the least, it's undoubtedly a given that it's going to have the largest number of female gamers. Iwata talked about the gender breakdown of the Wii and DS userbases fairly recently - one of them had a close to 50-50 split, and the other actually had slightly more female users. So Nintendo does have a very established track record of appealing to women and girls than any other major industry player, and as they've noted that the 3DS userbase is presently mostly male, they're openly focusing on appealing more to women with the platform, too. It's definitely a safe bet that the Wii U will be just as focused on that as all their other recent platforms. It doesn't hurt that the competition is largely single-mindedly focused on testosterone and 'realistic' violence-driven games above all else, either.

Third parties have actually complained about losing money over a lack of region-lock in the past too. These days, I tend to look at region lock - and its introduction in the 3DS, as disappointing as that was - as a matter of appeasing third parties. I can live with it if it means more support, and the 3DS is definitely seeing a fantastic rush of that at every turn these days, especially compared to the region-free Vita, which shares most of its library with the PS3 and has virtually no exclusives that will move hardware. I pretty much look at it as something of a somewhat-necessary evil these days, and I'm expecting the trend to continue with the Wii U, as much as I'd love region-free Nintendo systems.

In the end, if I want to import games, I'll just have to import a system, and I can live with that if anything comes out that misses North America that I can't stand the idea of missing. If anything, I'd just like to see their upcoming online network integrated in all regions, with North American, European, Japanese, Australian, and all other regions' players' profiles, stats, and so forth shared on a common network. And more quirky WiiWare/Wii U Ware/DSiWare/3DSWare titles from Japan making it west - along with, ideally, more import Virtual Console releases, and a general revival of the VC with more regular releases (Which I don't expect to see much of until after the Wii U launches), with more work put into getting a lot more of the smaller name and niche NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis, Neo Geo, Turbo CD, arcade, and N64 games on the platform, considering how many hundreds of worthwhile games those systems are still missing. I'm hoping to see the likes of the Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast on the VC - I'd love to finally have another shot at buying and playing Shenmue after missing out back in the day, if not outright Wii U or 3DS rereleases of the first two games and a final game to end the series from Yu Suzuki on either platform - and expecting we'll see the Gamecube on there too. (Just as I'm looking forward to the Game Gear and Turbografx 3DS VC support and I'm hoping to see Neo Geo Pocket Color and Virtual Boy support in time.) I'm just hoping the new Virtual Console platforms don't drown out or otherwise stymie a new flow of games to the Wii VC's platforms still missing huge numbers of good and great games.

A giant wall of text... What are you, an RPG? :3
Good read though

I just might be!
Professional writer, actually, so coming up with lots of long, winding posts full of neverending thoughts is pretty much second nature to me, haha. Glad you enjoyed, at any rate - I try to make my posts worth reading.

I've given some thought to open-world Nintendo games myself. It might be a little challenging to get the mass market to latch onto a number of concepts for them within traditional franchises, but it's certainly not impossible - though hard to say if Nintendo would go for such a design at some point. But we have actually seen some open-world games from them as is.

The entire Legend of Zelda series is pretty much built on huge open worlds to explore, with lots of sidequests, collectibles, and so forth, and elements like atmosphere, day/night cycles, weather, and so on playing larger roles in more recent installments of the series. They're less sandbox titles than just full open-world action adventures, though, with plenty of side content.

Fantasy titles in a vein not dissimilar to Yakuza, which itself is basically a modern day brawler adventure/RPG franchise set in a fictionalized take on Shinjuku with tons of side activities and quests to distract yourself with when not working on the main story - a bit of a tighter experience by design in terms of focus than its older sibling, Shenmue, which is more outright open-world adventure, exploring and conversing to advance the plot with lots of side activities to do. Given that Sega has a history of seeing their games not sell so well outside of Nintendo platforms post-Dreamcast (And especially this generation), it would make sense for them to bring Yakuza over to Nintendo platforms (Considering that it's hard to justify continually backing the PS3 with that series when it hasn't made money there all generation and stopped after the PS2, even the PSP Yakuza game getting quickly drowned out on charts since it dropped around the same time in Japan as Pokemon Black and White.), and to at least port over the first two Shenmue games and give Yu Suzuki a decent budget (As they certainly could on something like the 3DS or Wii U) to viably make a third and final installment to complete that series.

Mega Man Legends 3's cancellation was made all the more tragic by that it was an open-world title as well that, like previous games, would have had plenty of things to explore, see, and do on the side before its cancellation. The franchise was largely rejected by the PSX audience back in the day, where alternative takes on Mega Man were not widely accepted, but in more recent years, the Mega Man fanbase pretty much consolidated on Nintendo portables with GBA and DS Mega Man releases routinely doing well. Legends 3 could have potentially outdone its predecessors, made money, and opened the door for remakes of the first two games and the Misadventures of Tron Bonne, but unfortunately, it's looking like Capcom's trying to simply put Mega Man behind them now.

Word has been that Retro Studios was interested in making a sort of open-world Metroid game as well, based less around the usual simple, straightforward approach to the franchise, but more on letting you actually be more of a bounty hunter with Samus, going to outposts, taking jobs, then flying to different worlds and so on to track down your quarries and defeat them for payment. In a sense, almost like a sci-fi Monster Hunter. (In line with Narcidius's Monster Hunter-esque dragon slaying idea on the previous page. Nintendo even had something not dissimilar in terms of content on the Wii in Zangeki no Reginleiv, which had you battling it out with, giants, dragons, and other monsters across huge Dynasty/Samurai Warriors style maps, over-the-top fantasy arcade brawler style. Sadly, where Sandlot's Earth Defense Force games made it west despite dismal sales in all regions, Zangeki was kept in Japan after it sold poorly there too, as Sandlot's niche, awesome arcade games sadly have a history of. I'm still hoping Nintendo will give some of their titles a shot in the west yet in the future, on the 3DS or Wii U, after their first party Nintendo-published Wii and DS games stayed in Japan.) Unfortunately, Sakamoto shut that idea down, as he didn't want to see Samus portrayed that way, despite her entire history of essentially being this silent, deadly bounty hunter character. Of course, we saw what his thinking led to with her controversial portrayal in Other M.

Skip's Chibi-Robo games - especially the first one on the Gamecube - have been open-world surreal adventure games too, with a small amount of lightweight action, but after the first game and its park-restoration sim DS sequel largely went ignored in the west, the third adventure game on the DS stayed in Japan. The Wii's Captain Rainbow and Gamecube's Giftpia were in similar veins, too, and also stayed in Japan in the end, despite early plans to localize Giftpia that fell through. There are some elements of that in their release of last year's Snowpack Park on WiiWare, though that game's primary focus is still on penguin collection through a variety of little games.

As RPGs go, Opoona on the Wii also thrived on a beautifully designed, ridiculously indepth original world that made you want to explore every nook and cranny and rather wish you could set foot in the whimsical, lovingly crafted vast setting yourself, for reasons not dissimilar to how inviting Animal Crossing's world is, despite how unambitious the scales of towns and the city have been in that series so far, with no game in the series even having surpassed the animal population limits of the original N64/Gamecube game yet, when you'd think they'd want us to have larger towns with more animal neighbors, more interaction depth, and much more to see and do with each successive sequel - in the least, it's looking like the 3DS game is going to get that series back on a less conservative track, and hopefully the inevitable Wii U Animal Crossing will be even more ambitious. As for Opoona, Koei didn't back the game in any region, so its sales were fairly lackluster despite its brilliance, so at this point, I'm just hoping ArtePiazza will get additional shots at making more RPGs in its vein, with similar amounts of effort, love, and brilliant scale of design and imagination. Hopefully with more atmospheric and memorable Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtracks. I'd definitely buy spiritual successors or anything like that from them on the 3DS or Wii U - it'd be a shame to see them vanish back into making little more than scattered download titles and Dragon Quest remakes. Especially considering that while their Dragon Quest remakes are top quality, we've seen nearly every title in the series remade now, and they've proven their brilliance when they make their own RPGs already. It'd be a shame to waste that talent and potential when they could be establishing their own identity, much like Level-5 has.

As Wii open-world games go, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is a deeply underrated title, too, with a relatively short and straightforward central plot allowing the game to be sped through - not unlike Opoona - with a ridiculous number of things to explore, see, and do with hundreds of medals to earn on the side. The game doesn't achieve its full potential as a sort of a Crystal Chronicles steampunk take on the likes of GTA and so on, but I'd love to see that style of gameplay continue in the Crystal Chronicles universe alongside the multiplayer-oriented action RPGs, since like a fantasy Mega Man Legends, it's already brilliant and has the potential to become even greater with more time, effort, budget, and ambition.

I've commented before, too, that after seeing how good they managed to make the Urban Champion 3D Classics update look, I'd love to see Nintendo reimagine the franchise - much like they have with Kid Icarus, and would be wonderful to see with StarTropics, perhaps turning that into a new successor to the Mother/EarthBound series - as an answer of sorts to the likes of Yakuza, roaming a big open world city and battling it out with various thugs to try to restore peace to the city, not unlike Streets of Rage as well. Even a sort of brawler or brawler RPG spinoff of F-Zero where you explore the huge sci-fi city or cities showcased in the series' sci-fi universe as Captain Falcon and hunt down criminals could be a lot of fun. And we've seen a number of impressive urban city settings in various Mario Kart games - and there's a big city in Wario's own universe, as showcased in the WarioWare series - but we've never gotten to explore these sides of the Mushroom Kingdom or anything else outside of these franchises. It'd be interesting to get to. As it stands, the only open world brawler RPG take on anything we've got coming for a new Nintendo platform now is the remade of the original Kunio/River City NES/arcade game, Renegade, which is now 3DS bound, with a new updated take on the main story mode to infuse the RPG style elements of River City Ransom - which in turn inspired the likes of Kenka Bancho and Yakuza, which would be wonderful to see on Nintendo platforms, and getting western releases - in addition to the classic full arcade-style run through the game. With any luck, that will follow the usual trend we've seen in recent years and it'll get a quiet western release from the likes of Aksys, though it doesn't exactly push the 3DS's hardware capabilities, using basic 3D backgrounds for the environments and the 8-bit style 2D sprites like paper cutouts for all of the characters, maintaining the old school Kunio/River City vibe.

Level-5's upcoming Time Travelers on the 3DS is apparently going to be an extremely ambitious title too, with massive open environments to explore confirmed, potentially at least some of which will be in a modern Tokyo-esque setting from the looks of things, as well as potentially in the devastated future. It's unclear what the game's exact setting framing will be like at this point, but a western release is a lock since Level-5's made clear that they want the game to be a huge million-plus selling hit and are investing heavily in that, and we should be seeing a new full trailer and fuller reveal for the game very soon, with Level-5 World coming up in Japan next month. Their seemingly Animal Crossing-esque Fantasy Life seems to have a rather open world setting too (Not unlike its predecessor, the London Life RPG in Professor Layton 4 on the DS, which comes out soon), and their soon-to-be-released-in-Japan Girls' RPG: Cinderelife seems to have an at least partial open world with a cute, modern urban setting. The kind of setting that could be neat to see explored in any other RPGs or adventure games from them on the 3DS or Wii U in the future, perhaps with a less gender-exclusive design focus. As it stands, with all of their excellent first-wave 3DS games to be released in the coming 6-8 months or so, aside from the already confirmed Professor Layton 6 for the 3DS, hopefully we'll see them at least announce their second wave of 3DS games at the event next month with some more big, ambitious titles, considering their already excellent support for the system and strong investment so far - which has already visibly paid off, with Professor Layton 5 being one of the biggest 3DS hits to date in Japan, and that'll be coming west next year, no doubt.

Auzzie Wingman's already mentioned my own Mii-based social networking concept in Miitropolis, of course, so I don't really need to say anything in that regard that hasn't already been said.

And finally, as a comical response to the likes of GTA, Nintendo's invested directly in Travellers' Tales and we've got Lego City Stories due out as a Wii U launch title and another strong 3DS title to look forward to in the platform's second year of life as a complete Nintendo exclusive - which makes plenty of sense, considering that much like Disney games, Sega games, and quite a few other properties this generation, the Lego franchise hasn't really sold well outside of Nintendo platforms this gen and doesn't have a profitable audience elsewhere - so I'm really looking forward to seeing how both versions of that game turn out, as they look to be Nintendo's biggest direct investment in a non-Zelda open world property to date. I'm curious to see whether they'll try to get any GTA titles - I'm not a big Rockstar fan myself, though I'm interested in trying the Wii version of Bully, and certainly recognize that getting their support would be a major western support gain - in the future, or if Nintendo will try to find their own responses. In general, I've always liked the idea of big, ambitious open-world gaming, having grown up playing old school PC RPGs of crazy-huge scale like Ultima and enjoyed many RPGs and adventure games in the past with massive settings to explore and immerse yourself in. I'd love to see Nintendo and third parties backing Nintendo continue to explore that sort of game design and build even more of an audience for it - even Xenoblade, which will hopefully see North American release yet, has one of the largest and most ambitious settings for any game this generation - while still ensuring that there's no lack of tighter and more focused experiences for everyone not interested in open-world gaming. It'd be great to see Nintendo explore that kind of game design beyond Zelda more frequently. And I've been playing the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter game as of late, and while the game itself is a fairly mixed bag, even it serves as a solid example of the kind of intrigue a well-designed open world is capable of with its huge Hogwarts for you to run through and explore rather thoroughly, with a major focus being on hunting down huge numbers of secrets all throughout the massive school.

I would like to see third parties finally start to take Nintendo's mass market audience more seriously - the much stronger 3DS support over that for the visibly extremely troubled Vita is a positive sign, and we're getting a lot of good lip service for the Wii U so far, which just needs more followthrough after too many companies treated the Wii's routinely profitable mass market audience like 'inferior,' second-class gamers compared to the routinely very unprofitable PS3/360 audience - and bring more ambitious open-world games to both the Wii U and 3DS. And I'd like to see more of the open-world game design focus explored as a concept with adventure games, RPGs, brawlers, and more rather than just focusing on rehashing the Rockstar formula of primarily focusing on crime-based somewhat tongue-in-cheek game design. While GTA has made the significant mark on gaming - and open-world gaming in particular - that it has, there's no reason we shouldn't be seeing much more done with ambitious open-world concepts than merely following in GTA's footsteps. And with the lighthearted and undoubtedly solidly designed comical spoof it looks to be, Lego City Stories seems to be a step in the right direction in terms of overall response.

My take: Rambling, sometimes redundant, written while a bit on the mentally exhausted side. Enjoy whatever sense you can make of it, haha.

I think it's kind of inevitable at this point. Nintendo's been playing at the idea for a while, despite what Miyamoto and representatives have said. Even on the Nintendo Channel, they made a point of introducing our own small gameplay stats section displaying our collection and playtimes of all the games in the database - which unfortunately is still missing a lot of VC, Wii disc, and WiiWare games - and letting us check out that information in displayed stat lists, in addition to awarding games various medals based on voted user ratings. These features have evolved respectively into the Activity Log on the 3DS with crowns to earn for multiple things for 3DS and DS games and the eShop's star-based game ratings.

For a while, even Metroid Prime Hunters actually had a site set up where we could link up to display our stats on a profile card online, so Nintendo has dabbled in a card system like Sony and Microsoft's Live and PSN cards. And NintendoWiFi.com used to be a Nintendo online gaming hub website displaying various online play stats and your own library of games played online when you logged in, too. Nintendo had dedicated things like this in the past before they stepped things back when they should have plunged ahead. They're finally starting to plunge ahead now.

At any rate, I envision the addition of achievements to the 3DS Activity Log through a firmware update, adding pages for those for each game, building on the little crowns based on gameplay session and time stats that we can already earn as sort of mini-achievements. Something similar on the Wii U would make sense, with connections to profiles on third party online systems too. Ideally, even when you're offline, you'd be able to earn achievements - sending everything to the Activity Log - and then synch your stats through the Activity Log to your online profile when you go online. Word already is that the Wii U's online is supposedly going to be able to do everything the PS3 and 360's online can, and it would make sense to make achievements a standard. Third parties have already confirmed achievements outright, and I suspect we'll be able to view those on our Nintendo online profiles when linked to third parties' services, bringing all our data conveniently together. But it makes complete sense for Nintendo to have their own central system for their games and for third parties to easily work with, though it certainly sounds fine for them to be optional if third parties would prefer not to have any.

Adding some achievements to channels and so forth could be nice rewards for fully exploring and using each channel too, earning little knickknacks for your profile for paying attention to the help cat in the Wii's news and photo channels, the parakeets in 3DS Sound, a little shopping bag character achievement or pin of some sort for eShop activity as a little thank-you, and so forth. I've elaborated on linking achievements into potential virtual Mii world content over in my Miitropolis thread, too, of course.

As it stands, while Miyamoto himself has voiced a personal distaste for achievements and Nintendo argued for why they didn't want them in the 3DS, numerous Wii and 3DS games have in-game achievement systems - including first party Nintendo releases and first party backed games (Including major games they invested in like Monster Hunter Tri and Dragon Quest IX - I suspect X will have hundreds of accolades to earn too) - and given that they've already gone as far as to do everything but outright make a centralized system for them on an online profile, I'd say it's more or less already inevitable, especially after how far they went with them in Sakurai games even last gen like Smash Bros. and Kirby's Air Ride. (And these games predated achievements as a standard system, no less. Nintendo had them before anyone else.) I wouldn't be shocked if Kid Icarus: Uprising had an achievement grid to fill out for things too, as that's another Sakurai game. And with achievements a standard feature everywhere but Nintendo systems and frequently adopted in every way - even by Nintendo themselves - but for the online profile and central system to collect them in, it makes complete sense to finally add them on the 3DS to further counter the Vita and patch them into previous physical release games, channels including the StreetPass Mii Channel, AR Games, 3DSWare releases, and possibly DSiWare and VC games.

So while Nintendo's talked down achievements, they do have a very visible history with them in the past decade. We're going to be seeing a central profile system of some kind comparable to the PS3 and 360, already confirmed, and third parties have already confirmed that we're at least going to see centralized achievements through their own services linking up with Nintendo's, if not an outright centralized one. For the sake of convenience, simplicity, and delivering a feature people have been asking for since its unveiling elsewhere - that has made repeated appearance in Nintendo titles, and even games like Star Fox 64 3D have medals to earn, just as Mario Kart has trophies and license stamps - it makes sense to just go ahead and connect all of these things together on our upcoming centralized Nintendo profile and to bring them to the 3DS rather than making us wait another generation before they hit Nintendo portables.

They can give us a centralized eShop account too, connecting everything together with our shops' purchase records with Club Nintendo - assuming that the new online system isn't going to be an outright expansion of Club Nintendo itself anyway - and give us all of these stats to collect and grow on our profiles through the 3DS and Wii U's respective Activity Logs, perhaps also carrying over at least the basic stat displays for Wii and DS games - like we've seen with DS games in the Activity Log - to show what basic playtime/session crowns we've earned for those too, as a way to display our Wii and DS game collections on our profiles as well and see what our friends have.

Ubisoft has already confirmed progress/completion percentage bar displays for Ghost Recon Online on the Wii U, too. It would be pretty great to see something like that for other games, too, as Waller pointed out. The more content there is to earn and display between online social elements and actual game content to flesh out our online profiles an dmake them very much into our own personal Nintendo gamer records and spaces, the better. That sort of thing only encourages people to spend more time interacting online, and to appeal to a mass market audience, you want to go ambitious and pleasant there - give people every reason to keep coming online.

I've enjoyed achievements and so forth myself on sites like Kongregate, in Wii and DS games that have them - Crystal Bearers being a blast to collect medals in, and I'm working on titles in Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes at the moment - and on Steam. So seeing them as something to collect and to potentially earn play coins and Miitropolis service-type content with for a virtual Mii space would be ideal and an addictive additional thing to do. But options for those not into these things are key. As others in this thread have already addressed, it should be easy to shut off any sounds or displays made or to regulate them to the Wii U tablet screen or, as suggested, a convenient Home menu display when suspending a game as so to make it easy to either turn off achievement notifications entirely and otherwise keep them from being intrusive for those bothered by that.

Medals and Coins - as others have noted - seem like very likely candidates for the little meta-objects to collect. I could see the Crowns we've also seen prominently as of late in Nintendo games and channels also being a likely candidate, with bronze, silver, and gold. Accomplishments could be a bit of a longer shot, though they used that terminology quite a bit on the Wii U message board when displaying what we did on the system that day. Such a listing on the Wii U could showcase what we earned that day too, potentially divided up for each user by Mii/account.

Now that Nintendo's more fully embracing and focusing on online, with a huge leap forward confirmed coming on the Wii U and the 3DS's online still an evolving work in progress as they release updates and build up its functionality some more, it just makes sense to get the addition of a centralized achievement system across the Wii U, 3DS, and future platforms to give us a little something else to collect and display on our forthcoming new online accounts. They should be incentivizing customers to go online every day with tons of stuff to earn, and working on updating their software and already available content - including the free built-in games like the AR Games, Face Raiders, and StreetPass gaming - to give us little rewards for our online profiles too. Starting us off with earning things through free software could act like a gateway drug, in a manner of speaking, to get players hooked on earning things and getting them on their online profile. Likewise, my feeling is that whatever simple, mass appealing packed-in Mii games that will likely come with the Wii U should also have online play and a major goal with the system should be to try to get every user online as soon as possible after hooking the system up, and the same goes for the 3DS as they flesh out its online features more. Trying to get people into playing games like Wii Sports online with faraway friends and family while voice-chatting on day one would be an ideal goal for the system.

At any rate, a list of Nintendo platform games I'm aware of that include various achievement systems of sorts:

Wii games: Adventure Island: The Beginning (WiIWare. A straight-up achievement list filled out as you play and earn them.), Ant Nation (Also WiiWare. A full list of 203 history entries to learn as you hit various milestones while playing.), Baroque (Baroque titles), Bonsai Barber, Data East Arcade Classics (Classic arcade games with achievements and Mii-based on-system leaderboards. SNK's arcade collection on the Wii has achievements too.), Dawn of Discovery (Achievements for each map/chapter), de Blob (Numerous medals per stage), Dragon Quest Swords (Titles earned as you level up and get stronger), Dragon Quest X on both Wii and Wii U (Just like IX, which had over 360 accolades to earn), Elebits (A ridiculous number of odd little things to unlock through accomplishments tracked), Endless Ocean: Blue World, Epic Mickey (The pins are essentially achievements for various accomplishments as well. Rewards for fully exploring the world and taking every path you can in each run.), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, GoldenEye 007, MadWorld (I seem to recall this having some sort of achievement challenge system.), Jett Rocket (Achievements all across the WiiWare game.), Mario Kart (Has effectively always had achievements through earned trophies, but they've only been adding more challenges, license stamps, etc. in more recent iterations to give you even more achievement-like content to earn.), Mega Man 9 and 10 (Challenges), Metroid Prime 3 / Trilogy (Medals galore), Monster Hunter Tri (Various little awards earned for major milestones and accomplishments on a little menu.), NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (Little achievement icons earned for your dream journal stat menus), Onechanbara (A fair amount of unlockable progression is pretty much achievement-style), Opoona (Basically all the 50+ licenses you spend much of the game earning as sidequests and a few required quests are an in-game achievement system for earning things and doing everything there is to do in the game world.), Pop (As well as its DSiWare counterpart Pop+ Solo. All have medals to unlock and display to friends.), Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes (Titles), all the Sonic games I've played so far in some form (Including Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing), Spyborgs (Medals), Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Every episode is loaded with stats and achievements to earn and load up on on a fun little display to encourage you to fully explore and do everything possible in each episode.), Super Smash Bros. Brawl, more recent Super Mario games have been slapping crowns all over everything to indicate completion for an achievement system of sorts in icon form - the first Galaxy even encouraged us to take screenshots of our stats and send them to friends to compare stats like we would on an online profile on Live or PSN. It's a wonder they removed that in Galaxy 2 and haven't done more to encourage that kind of stat sharing and comparing yet.), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (The absolutely massive challenge grid.), Tetris Party/Deluxe (Achievements to earn in both the WiiWare and physical Deluxe releases of the game.), Trauma Team (Medals to take on with challenges in the postgame), Wario Land: Shake It! (Challenge icons on every stage), We Ski / We Ski & Snowboard (I suspect both Go Vacation and Fishing Resort will have them as a big component too), Wii Sports (Medals), Wii Sports Resort (Stamps in addition to medals), Xenoblade Chronicles (Has an absolutely massive in-game achievement system, the likes of which could very easily set a trend in first party adventure and RPG games.), Zack & Wiki (Largely in the form of ranks and titles to advance through as you play and earn points, while there's an insane amount of unlockables and treasures to collect, displayed in books a la achievements)

DS games: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Hundreds of medals to earn for various accomplishments), Aura-Aura Climber (Dirt cheap first party Nintendo DSiWare game - has achievements to earn as you play and replay it.), Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol, Dragon Quest IV (Titles earned for your battle records that change as you play), Dragon Quest IX, Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan and Taiko no Tatsujin (These music games tally up scores and various earned things to take you through ranks), Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (The Rupee Goods collected and displayed in Tingle's attic are functionally a treasure-based achievement collection system rewarding you for fully exploring the game world, as they're hidden and tucked away in all sorts of places and gained for various story and sidequest accomplishments and milestones.), Kirby Canvas Curse (250 medals to earn), The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Big Plays earned online are essentially online-only achievements.), Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times (Various achievement titles are bestowed upon you on your profile when you get evaluated by the principal weekly based on various actions and accomplishments that week or over the whole course of the game.), Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (Numerous pages of adventure log to fill with achievements and indepth obscure stats), Peggle: Dual Shot (Trophies earned for various major accomplishments and special imagery unlocked filling in the trophy screens' relief to chart and reward progress through Peggle and Peggle Nights.), Prey the Stars (Over 100 challenges to complete), Retro Game Challenge is basically driven by them, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, both Spectrobes games (In game achievement badge systems, that used to even have online Disney profiles to link to online to display).

3DS games: Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Samurai Warriors Chronicles (A few little icons to unlock), Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Pilotwings Resort (Basically driven by little unlockables and earned points), 3D Classics: Urban Champion (Grade titles), BlazBlue Continuum Shift II, we'll undoubtedly see awards back in Monster Hunter Tri G, Tetris Axis is likely too (It's by the same team that made Party), AR Fishing (At least, counting the crowns you earn in the fishing journal for completionism), Star Fox 64 3D (Medals), Dream Trigger 3D (Challenges), Shinobi (Has already confirmed achievements), Super Monkey Ball 3D (Medals), and Zoo Resort 3D (Formerly Animal Resort) looks to have a visible medal system with 4 tiers of those to earn too. It would ceratinly be ideal to update all of these games to let them connect their achievements to the Activity Log and an online profile, to display progress and so forth, and to potentially be able to bring that to other 3DS games without them - as they could certainly benefit - and set up the framework for future 3DS games to easily link into this system.

(Quick edit here on November 16th!) '3DSWare' games: Freakyforms has achievements too, with a full 24 grid, and from the looks of the site, that Hirari Sakura Samurai action adventure has its own 24 achievement grid. Wouldn't be shocked if Dillon's Rolling Western, Pushmo/Pullblox, and other '3DSWare' first party games had them too. Perfect for SpotPass updates to display your earned achievements to an online profile in the future whenever the 3DS is tied in.

And there's probably even more than I'm aware of - more than the ones listed above - to earn in various games. It makes sense to finally let us have a profile to attach these things to.

At any rate, if Nintendo will finally just take that next step and commit to a universal achievement system for our new profile across the Wii U, 3DS, and on into the future with their next consoles and portables down the line, it'll be one less thing for a lot of people to complain about, and a welcome addition for something else to collect and fill our profiles with. Ideal for all sorts of scavenger hunts and easter eggs! Two things Nintendo has a long established history of as well.

@lemonline: Reggie's also gone on record insisting that they'll have a system that outdoes both Live and PSN. They've already got a basic centralized online system with friend codes as is - odds are, they're not going to abandon having some sort of centralized infrastructure and simply make us log in to a ton of different separate third party online systems, which may or may not have their own respective online fees. The only people who've made more controversial statements who've led to speculation that Nintendo's somehow going to take a huge leap backward with their online are figures in the company who aren't actually involved in the development and design of their new online service.

Third parties are leading the development of their new online system - which Nintendo themselves will be using - and we've already had things from single usernames to achievements and so on confirmed. Odds are, we're going to see something akin to Steam or PSN - but likely closer to the former in its complete openness - where we have a single central online username and identity with a personal Mii as our online face and our stats tied to it, then that account would be tied in to any separate external online services and tied together with EA's Origin and other companies' respective services - Steam itself possibly among them, as Gabe Newell and Valve have taken an interest in the system too - so we'd only have to log in to our online Nintendo account to play anything, socialize, or check our stats and so forth. So far, we've only been hearing good things from third parties, which doesn't exactly lead me to believe that Nintendo will be giving us something even more archaic - especially given their own now open commitment to significantly improving their online to be more competitive - while third parties are merely talking about their own separate services when praising the Wii U's online. At this point, if we can be confident in anything, it's that the Wii U's online will be significantly better than anything we've seen from Nintendo before, and through firmware updates, the 3DS will likely see some significant improvements yet too, as incomplete as its online system is as of far.

@StreetPassWanter: Not bad ideas at all! There's already some light Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Collection elements at the heart of the Miitropolis concept, and I was thinking that some clothing and accessories unlocked from playing certain games and doing certain things in the game world like spending a coin currency earned through interaction of all sorts would be a great addition, but allowing for some personal customization and the social spreading of those like in Animal Crossing would certainly be a welcome element. Some light Mii racing - and perhaps a car or go-kart vehicle or some kind of public transportation like trains or subways to get around the city when it gets too large to easily cross on foot (Though some simple teleportation would also be an ideal addition for users who didn't want to go out of their way to go places on foot or by vehicle, just to keep everyone happy and the experience as convenient as possible for all users.) - would be a fun addition too for another light activity. Perhaps nothing too robust as so to compete with Mario Kart directly, but kind of like the likes of the simple, popular Family Go-Kart Racing on the Wii Shop Channel, with a few tracks, regular racing events, and a variety of things to win for participating or winning races with friends and strangers online. More lightweight little online activities to do with friends and earn things for your virtual space through is always a nice idea, at any rate, though some things could also turn into sort of demos for more robust "WiiUWare" games of sorts to download and potentially connect with Miitropolis

Lord N: Glad to hear you were able to get through the excesses of text alright. There's definitely no question that Nintendo's online has a history of being horribly archaic and inconvenient, as fun as their games have usually been once you actually jump through the hoops to play them. I'm confident that we're going to see a significantly improved online experience from them this gen, though - the single friend code, improved eShop (Though that's still in no way lacking in things that couldn't be improved with future updates, and they probably will be, considering how many times they revised and improved the Wii Shop Channel over the years too.), notably more DLC, SpotPass getting more use than StreetPass so far, pretty well-designed friend list with cards to exchange, etc. have the 3DS off to a good start, though it still obviously has a long way to go and a lot of features it needs and will hopefully see most if not all of in time - between the improvements we've seen on the 3DS so far (Even an online game as ambitious as Heroes of Ruin is on a whole other level from anything we got on the DS, and we're going to see that before the 3DS even finishes its first full year on the market! And the first year is pretty much always one of the roughest in terms of game support for any company or platform.) and everything we've been hearing about how far the Wii U is coming from the Wii.

People have a bit of a nasty habit of always assuming the worst of Nintendo, where the competition frequently gets a free pass on any kind of criticism, as well as - as we've seen in the news this past week - assuming every negative rumor is unquestionably true. Not the best mindset - Nintendo's definitely not to be unwary of given their shaky at best history with online, obviously, but there's no reason not to be optimistic, either. It's not as though it's exactly hard for Nintendo to significantly improve their online features, offerings, and overall structure after the DS and Wii, and the 3DS is much easier to improve through firmware updates in more meaningful ways than the Wii was with its much more rigid internal menu structure. Just because Nintendo's failed to live up to gamers' expectations for online in the past, it doesn't mean they're guaranteed to always be that way, as I've seen many continually assume on numerous forums these days - that kind of thinking is about as wise as thinking Nintendo's 'rightful place' in the industry is being dead last or becoming a third party, or assuming that companies like Sony and Microsoft are utterly invulnerable. Stranger things have definitely happened in this industry than Nintendo fixing their online, and at this point, I don't see any reason not to be optimistic. People just need to keep making noise, I think, so that both Nintendo and the third parties working on their new online infrastructure can ensure we'll all be happy with it. I'm just hoping that - as largely incomplete as the core of the 3DS's online service still visibly is - we'll see them make sure they release a major firmware update for the system next year so that while shifting from it using friend codes to our new username isn't likely, we'd at least be able to link it to our new Nintendo usernames for stat tracking, achievement sharing, and various online social functions aside from the expected eventual instant messaging and general connectivity with the profile system launching with the Wii U. There's no point in making us wait another generation to get that kind of support on their portables - especially with what the Vita will be offering in that regard - and I don't think Nintendo's likely to make us wait that long, considering how quick they've been to bring significant new features and content to the 3DS so far this year, particularly in response to its sales struggles between the price point and distinct lack of major mass market titles that distinguish the platform as its own thing, rather than a handheld N64/Gamecube - growing pains every portable has seen post-GBA.

Ultimately, we're just going to have to wait and see what we get, but I suspect that whatever we do, it'll be something evolving - as on the 3DS - and significantly better than the DS and Wii.

Yeah, it's been stated by at least a few third parties now at this point, I believe, that the Wii U will be able to "do everything the PS3 and 360 can." And at one point, Reggie did state that the Wii U would have an even more robust online service than Live or PSN, though his statements are typically best taken with a little salt, as their accuracy tends to vary. I'm looking forward to seeing what lies ahead, and hoping they'll make a show of this new ambition with some 3DS firmware updates sooner or later to show how set they are on making good on these intentions. It probably wouldn't be that tough to add something like achievements to the Activity Log at this point - with so few physical release, 3DSWare, and VC games out - to potentially update every game in those three formats to link up with it and to prep the Activity Log to eventually link up to a unified profile next year to share such information, with the potential of DSiWare games also getting updates to add them. It'd help to spur more digital content sales, at least, and provide a feature many have been asking for for years, which Nintendo themselves have implemented plenty of times now themselves, just short of finally giving us a unified system to link with and share with friends online - someplace to collect and view all these things together. And word has been that we'll be getting that with the Wii U. The 3DS certainly already has the framework in place, and if Sony can add trophies a ways into the PS3's life, with 3DS games being patchable and the firmware very updatable, it makes sense. Games with built-in systems like Street Fighter IV wouldn't take much work at all to connect as well.

I've seen it suggested in articles I've read before that Nintendo should consider implementing little achievements in every free app and channel they either have built in or release for free online, too, and that may not be a bad idea in terms of tapping into people's tendencies toward addiction to get them to get the most out of things like Face Raiders and the AR Games, as well as to fool around with apps like 3DS Sound and going out of their way to listen to the parakeets, or catch the help cats in whatever successors to things like the Photo and News Channels the Wii U may have. Emphasizing little hidden things and easter eggs has always struck me as a pretty delightful little way of drawing people in, and Nintendo does like giving us a lot of cute little mascot characters to interact with. Even on the eShop, we've got the little shopping bag mascot guiding us around. A little achievement pin for a profile with the shopping bag mascot just as a thank-you for shopping could be an effective encouragement for a lot of people to give the online shop a look where they may not otherwise. Same goes for things like StreetPass, having little things go on a profile for completing the little puzzle diorama images - which are practically trophies unto themselves - or finishing StreetPass Quest, and otherwise connecting with a lot of people. And of course, ideally, as I've mentioned, an achievement system's content might in some way extend into a virtual Mii world like Miitropolis, displaying collected figurines in Smash Bros., maybe a virtual shelf or rack displaying your Virtual Console collection with the original box art - which I'm quite glad they brought back on the 3DS and am hoping to see on the Wii U, along with the undoubtedly planned transfer of all Wii VC downloads to the Wii U - and so on, perhaps the actual systems in your VC library as well, from NES to NeoGeo arcade cabinet and more.

The more online social features and additional stat tracking, features, and metagames they can add to the links of the Activity Log, StreetPass Mii Plaza (Which they've already made clear they're going to continue building on), and things like the friend lists and potentially some kind of StreetPass-esque SpotPass metagames to play with online friends, the better. And as always, the sooner they can get a functioning instant messaging service on the 3DS, the better, too. They definitely shouldn't dawdle when it comes to more major updates and ambitious new features, both to expand their audience further by surprising skeptics and further give their current customers even more to play with and do. With word of a new Flipnote application coming this year and other updates planned, I suspect we'll see some more major surprises in firmware updates in the coming months, which new users will get to enjoy right out of the box as the latest firmware hits new units in the factories. But we definitely can't see improved online support and features soon enough, especially with Nintendo's own first first-party online titles coming later this year in Mario Kart 7 and seemingly Kid Icarus: Uprising.

In the least, I'm pleased to see SpotPass living a bit more up to the whole constant stream of regular new content ideal so far where WiiConnect24 didn't end up getting used to anywhere near its full potential and they didn't get nearly ambitious enough about the Wii's social online features or channel potential. Things like free downloadable content for Nintendogs, DOA, Samurai Warriors, and regular weekly updates for things like Nintendo Video are positive signs and definitely bring some nice little regular surprises.

Thanks for the nod in the news post! Here's hoping they go someplace really interesting with this. It's definitely time that they cover their online weaknesses. Achievements fall into the same issue - fun optional features, I've found in Nintendo platform games that have them, and fun for profile building on Steam, but nothing that makes or breaks a game platform or experience, for sure.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what the future holds for both the 3DS and Wii U in terms of online features and experience - it's definitely increasingly sounding like they're going much more ambitious places, with some real evidence for that. They just can't start launching features like this - however Miitropolis-like or not they may be - soon enough.

Agreed on the holographic storage, too - I'm looking forward to seeing how that's eventually integrated into future platforms down the line and how that will effectively resolve internal space limitations for download titles and save files.

The more ambitious Nintendo gets as they continue to move forward, cover their weaknesses, and sharpen their competitiveness even further, the better.

Not to just randomly bump this topic, but some news hit over the past weekend that ties into my thoughts in this thread.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2011/0190062.html

Nintendo has recently filed for a patent on a 'massively single player' game experience, where players would be able to exchange content and information online passively for a dynamic in-game world experience, while the core of your gameplay experience is primarily single-player, and you could only interact more directly with people you'd friended and chosen to actively connect with.

People have suggested largely that this is either a) something possibly Animal Crossing related or something virtual online Mii world related, like an essential Nintendo answer to Playstation Home, as Miyamoto himself has discussed. Hence, relevance in this Miitropolis thread.

While Nintendo's still largely been a bit quiet for comfort on the online functions and features front for the Wii U and 3DS - though we did get Netflix and Nintendo Video, as well as word of more Mii games and StreetPass Mii gaming content coming since this thread's initial creation - things like this show that Nintendo's quietly planning something interesting and very ambitious to catch up and easily compete with the competition's online features, as EA has recent given strong testimony to as well. Hopefully this will indeed lead to something in the vein of Miitropolis between the Wii U and 3DS.

Given the sudden, unexpected, rapidfire release of Netflix and Nintendo Video that we saw, as well as the continued growth of eShop content, I'm hoping we'll be seeing some more major 3DS online functions out of the blue sooner than later. Instant messaging, expanded friend list/profile content, eventually the ability to link our 3DSes - like our Wii Us - to a single online profile for stat and achievement collection, Nintendo social networking, compatibility with things like Twitter and Facebook, and more. Considering that a ton of social networking compatible features were just unveiled for the Vita at Gamescom, it definitely wouldn't hurt for Nintendo to get things like that going on the 3DS with sudden and unexpected patches over the coming months to cover as much competitive ground as they can. It probably wouldn't take much time or consume many resources to make such apps as is, though we can already use Twitter, Twitpic, Facebook, and things like that through the 3DS browser. Not sure about the likes of Foursquare, but that would certainly be doable.

As it stands, for all the 'later this year'/'later this summer' talk, Netflix and Nintendo Video made very sudden and welcome appearances, and the only updates we know for certain that are on the way this year at this point are eShop demos, which will be able to passively download to our systems while in sleep mode, and additional StreetPass Mii Plaza content. Instant messaging and video recording may come yet too, as there has been talk of those in-demand features as well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an Activity Log update to add a full additional page for each game when you tap on them to check out achievements, since given the system's current small library, it wouldn't be hard to release patches for all the currently available 3DS games to add achievements or connect existing in-game achievement systems (Like in Street Fighter, Samurai Warriors, Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions, Resident Evil, and more.) so you could track that sort of thing in the Activity Log and prepare the system for that kind of data collection to eventually be able to connect to a personal online profile in the future and upload achievement records and data there. Updates for DSiWare, 3DSWare, and Virtual Console releases to add such features could do a lot for replay value and overall sales, too, especially helping little titles like Gamebridge's awesome GO Series games. It'd be another feature people wouldn't be able to complain about Nintendo lacking, which seems like an inevitable coming standard on the Wii U anyway that they should get on enabling on the 3DS as soon as possible too. They've already created a thriving metagame environment with the likes of StreetPass connection gaming, and achievements, Miitropolis, and some kind of general online SpotPass passive connection metagaming with our friend lists would be ideal additions.

At any rate, not a mere idle bump - some concrete positive evidence here that Nintendo is up to something with their patents that distinctly connects with this idea. Pretty exciting.