kris1206

I wish!

Super Mario Sunshine is my favorite 3D Mario platformer. I don't know if they'd ever actually do a sequel to it, but I would be happy if they did because I'd love to see the return to the less linear Mario platformers. Sunshine was actually a nice balance, you had the regular levels which were all open-ended, but then you had the Secrets which were more linear. As much as I enjoyed the Super Mario Galaxy series, I'd much prefer to have open-ended levels.

If they were to make a sequel, I definitely want it on the Wii U. It'd be a really pretty theme to introduce Mario to HD.

If they worked alongside Retro than it might possibly work.
Loved DK64, not my favourite game but definitely left some great memories

It might not be a great idea but you and i, and probably the whole world will not stop people who own wii u's facebooking! So rather than nintendo forcing people to put down there wii gamepads so they can use facebook on there i pads/ i phones etc ( and potentialy lose out on a mini game sale ) why not just include it? For a large amount of people Miiverse WILL only be a social networking site while ur playing it will NEVER  overtake facebook or twitter.

Won't the internet browser be able to access twitter and facebook....

4GB. Revelations in question uses 4GB.

But Nintendo isn't hiding the specs. I asked, and they said they have them. But they haven't gotten round to publishing them because they are too busy with Pikmin 3, Star Fox Onslaught, Donkey Kong Country Returns 2, Kid Icarus Uprising, Animal Crossing 4, Super Smash Bros. Frenzy and Mach Rider Unchained...

Wait, hang on...

WHOOPS! YOU SAW NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

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.

I've seen comments from the Sony CTO basically stating that their future plans are still focused on putting out really beefy, cutting edge hardware. Considering how badly that burned them with the PS3 - the biggest financial disaster in the history of the video game industry - and how badly that's working out with the Vita, it's safe to say at this point that Sony's future as a gaming hardware player is rocky to iffy at best.

Based on Sony and Microsoft's continued performances and unchanging philosophies in gaming hardware in the face of failure, I suspect we're going to be seeing a very different gaming industry in terms of hardware and major players by the end of this decade. At this point, the days of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are visibly nearing a point of unsustainability, and when the Playstation and Xbox brands take their leave, it'll be Nintendo facing an even more complicated situation with Apple and potentially Google and other competitors as the face and structure of the video game industry continue to evolve and alter - it'll be up to Nintendo to remain as sharp and adaptable as they are now to keep their leadership position. Given that they're the only major player in gaming hardware that's entirely dedicated solely to video games and gaming devices - as opposed to simply having that as a mere division of a much larger electronics megacorporation - they're the only one with much real history, perspective, or vision when it comes to the medium as anything more than a simple feature on an electronic device. Their size, sharp leadership - which kept them in fantastic financial shape with careful management and hardware design even in their decade in last place in hardware - and focus as a smaller, dedicated company has been nothing but an advantage to them in this industry that the megacorporations can't touch. Losing them would be catastrophic to gaming as a whole.

That said, the future's only going to get more interesting, the 3DS is going to keep evolving as we get more firmware updates - December's huge one was just the start - features, and all sorts of games, and we haven't even really seen the tip of the iceberg with the Wii U yet. Exciting times ahead. Not so much for the present competition, though, going on their failure to react or adapt to failure and their increasingly clear visible lack of understanding of why Nintendo is as successful as they are now, or how to reach out to - let alone respect - the mass market audience.

Super Mario on Wii U should be the epitome of all Super Mario Bros. games. With the dawn of 1080p HD graphics, the world can be larger than ever before, and the textures can be photo-realistic. I do love a traditional cartoony Mario game, but I believe that Super Mario Wii U should be the Twilight Princess of the Mario series. Mario would appear like he did in Brawl, and the Mushroom Kingdom would appear darker than before. I'd also like to see an improvement in water physics so when Mario jumps into a lake, it makes a realistic splash. An open world game like Super Mario Sunshine would be the best way to handle it, but with a bigger world than Delfino Plaza.

Here's an example of how I want the game to be, using my own idea for the game's intro:

Mario is asleep when he suddenly hears a knock at the door. He gets up to find Toadsworth covered in rain water and panting heavily. He explains to Mario that the Koopa Army is attacking Toadstool Castle, and that he is the only hope for them. Mario immediately dashes out into his front yard, where a pipe is seen at the end of it. This area is for Mario to get used to the controls, as he can run around the entire yard, change the camera angle, and even jump onto the roof to find a secret item. The rain pounds on the swaying grass as Mario leaps into the pipe and is spat out in the middle of a war-torn field. This field lies in front of Toadstool Castle, which is about 50 feet away at the moment.

Mario begins to run, but is suddenly met by a wave of Goombas and Koopas charging at him. This is where Mario learns how to attack enemies, similar to how he does in most games. As Mario runs through the long field and finally reaches the castle, a large black beast made of dark matter bursts through the stone walls. In one of its hands is Princess Peach, and in the other hand, surprisingly, is Bowser. Apparently, Bowser was kidnapping the Princess when the monster suddenly appeared through the floor and grabbed them both. The monster is enormous, and it opens a dimensional rift which sucks it inside. The player gains control of Mario again at this time, and is left free to explore the environment (consisting of everywhere he's previously been) before leaping into the portal and beginning the adventure inside this creature's mysterious dimension.

It's clear that they are definitely hiding many things about the Wii U, and I think I know why:

They won't be able to release before next E3.

If you think about it, this is a huge issue. Sony and Microsoft, hearing that Ninty's making a new console, are going to try and 1-up them at the big event, and drop sales before the console even launches. Nintendo is using this to their advantage, to counter MicroSony.

This bad publicity from the lack of information is going to keep the Wii U stuck in everyone's mind. People remember negative thought much more easily than positive ones. People will spread rumors, good and bad, speculate, write blogs, ect. ect. Then, come E3, people are going to forget about the Wii U for a minute and watch the unveiling of something MicroSony wants them to think is awesome, and worth skipping the WiiU for.

Next comes Ninty's conference. They watch the conference, with no mention of anything U. Some 3DS things here, Zelda thing here, opinion on the game industry there... then comes the end. The restless reporters, who want nothing more than to find out about the U, get bombarded with amazing specs, outstanding games and great innovation. 90%+ of their doubts will have turned out to be false! Nintendo will have effectively absorbed all the splash damage from MicroSony and generated at least some hype! Plus it will be that much harder to spread seeds of distrust about U, simply because people will find it harder to justify their doubts.

Of course, it won't go that smoothly. Lots of people will keep questioning Ninty, and many non-gamers will be even more confused. But it will prevent MicroSony from stealing the WiiU's thunder. And that's all that counts.

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