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[PantherLotus]

Lapsed, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite posters in these threads. Sound, level headed, and informed, without an apparent bias. Well done. Keep up the great work.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

what can we expect from Square Enix on Wii, from a Square side of things.

when is Crystal Chronicles due?

anyone wanna guess how it sells compared to GameCube Crystal Chronicles?

 

[cvxfreak]

It should sell better, given that SE fans will have more incentive to buy the game thanks to DQS's presence on the Wii, and the Wii's inevitably larger fanbase and probable online play.

 

[Brak]

Lapsed, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite posters in these threads. Sound, level headed, and informed, without an apparent bias. Well done. Keep up the great work.

I'm pretty gay for Lapsed, but seriously ...no.

 

[PantherLotus]

what can we expect from Square Enix on Wii, from a Square side of things.

when is Crystal Chronicles due?

anyone wanna guess how it sells compared to GameCube Crystal Chronicles?

Square recently went on record for saying that they intend on increasing support for the Wii.

Known games in development:
1. FFCC
2. DQS

 

[CoolTrick]

Lapsed, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite posters in these threads. Sound, level headed, and informed, without an apparent bias. Well done. Keep up the great work.

Lapsed is great, like his posts a lot, but he obviously is very pro Nintendo.

 

[Link]

It should sell better, given that SE fans will have more incentive to buy the game thanks to DQS's presence on the Wii, and the Wii's inevitably larger fanbase and probable online play.

Not to mention that they won't have to find three other people with GBAs. Plus it's online.

 

[cvxfreak]

Not to mention that they won't have to find three other people with GBAs. Plus it's online.

I wonder if they'd require the DS for the game...

That said, having never played FFCC on GC for more than a few minutes, what did the GBA screen actually do?

 

[PantherLotus]

Lapsed is great but he obviously is very pro Nintendo.

Is he? I might have been wrong. Regardless, I've noticed his long ass posts lately and they've been mostly readable. That is awesome in my book and should be commended when some of these can't even troll without ****ing it up.

Regardless, let's talk more about Square Enix on the Wii. What other titles will they bring besides a couple side stories?

 

[ethelred]

I wonder if they'd require the DS for the game...

That said, having never played FFCC on GC for more than a few minutes, what did the GBA screen actually do?

It was actually pretty useful. It allowed you to manage your character better by displaying all his information in a separate screen. Pausing the game is disruptive in a real-time multiplayer game.

Regardless, let's talk more about Square Enix on the Wii. What other titles will they bring besides a couple side stories?

A couple more side stories.

Like, a FFXIII side story.

 

[CoolTrick]

Is he?

Is the sky blue?

 

[Link]

Is the sky blue?

Technically? No.

 

[PantherLotus]

A couple more side stories.

Like, a FFXIII side story.

http://www.cubed3.com/news/6729/1/No_FFXI_on_Wii,_FF_Anniversary_Projects_on_Nintendo_Systems,_Chrono_Update_and_Much_More!

 

[PantherLotus]

And I just learned that Chocobo =





wait for it






Chocolate Balls.


:lol :lol :lol

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I wonder if they'd require the DS for the game...

Considering there's a separate DS Crystal Chronicles game, I don't see that.

That said, having never played FFCC on GC for more than a few minutes, what did the GBA screen actually do?

In multiplayer it was pretty cool. You could use it to alter your current command setup without mucking about on the main screen or view which items you've got, but the main purpose was for forced communication amongst your team. Each player would be given some unique piece of information. Maybe one can see where a map is, and another can see information about enemies. So you'd need to share this information to progress best.

Single player, it did nothing. In fact, for some crazy reason it wouldn't even LET you control using a GBA for single-player, even though it would feel more normal to do so if you were used to multiplayer.

 

[Roders5]

And I just learned that Chocobo =





wait for it






Chocolate Balls.


:lol :lol :lol

Just put 'em in your mouth and suck 'em

 

[Terrell]

Wouldn't kill you to try it.

I grew up every bit the Sega fan you were, and one of the reasons I like it is because it brings back a lot of the style I felt the Dreamcast had. And the VC is shaping up really nicely.

It's a shame that Wii can't bring back the Sega games that Dreamcast had.

... which brings me to something Lapsed said.

I wasn't around for Sega's last console (so I could totally be wrong on this), but I suspect the Wii was very much influenced by the Dreamcast. As you said, the style is similiar. Don't both controllers hold memory? Both consoles have a web browser (so does the PSP and PS3, but it is odd that a Nintendo console would embrace it).

I think that the Dreamcast shares more similarities with Nintendo's strategy in its game library.

Space Channel 5: simple, quirky, fun (it's like playing Simon... only with PVC skirts, hooker boots and boobs)
Samba de Amigo: simple, quirky, fun
Chu Chu Rocket: simple, quirky, fun
Cosmic Smash: translating the pick-up-and-play nature of arcade games to console
Guruguru Onsen: the predecessor to the DS' Clubhouse Games (though I prefer Guruguru due to the avatar creator and the graphical presentation)
Phantasy Star Online: nice features, easy to play Diablo clone

The trend here is that many or all of the franchises introduced on Dreamcast up until the end of its lifespan were created as fun games that aren't really all that time-intensive and easily picked up and played. In this one fact, that's where I see ALL of the similarities between Dreamcast-age Sega and current-age Nintendo. Sega's only mistake is that they created all these games that casual gamers would love but wouldn't woo hardcore gamers, yet the hardcore gamers were who Sega was specifically marketing its console towards. PS2 comes in with games that appeal to GAF and the "hardcore-chic" set, Sega tried to make games to the demographic it had been marketing to and... it floundered. Had Sega actually marketed its first-party titles to the lapsed or non-gamer demographic, they may have ended up a lot more successful than they were when they exited the business.
The major difference is that Sega made its "non-games" far less blatant by wrapping them in GAF-wooing audio-visual presentation (or as much as these games would allow).
Needless to say, the industry might look a lot different had Sega realised that you CAN market to the casual and lapsed gamer market.

Lapsed, concerning your 'Nintendo aims to sell to everyone' argument, doesn't seem a bit suspect when Nintendo itself appears completely unprepared for the massive DS success in the first place? They can't produce enough DSLs, they can't keep up on cart production, causing games to have wonky print runs, they even had a plastic game case shortage at one point.

I mean, what they say doesn't seem to match up with what they planned for.

I think they knew this would happen, but I think they weren't prepared for it to happen so QUICKLY. Y'know, more of a slow ramp-up rather than a giant surge of sales activity that doesn't let up? Such a sudden spike in demand for a video game system is actually unprecedented in this industry. And as well, opening new fabrication plants to cope with demand is not an easy endeavor by any means.

 

[Cheesemeister]

Actually, uhm, M-06 has been out since last August.

I thought it looked familiar. You can see it right there on the list I cited: http://eg.nttpub.co.jp/cgi-bin/calendar/calendar.cgi

 

[VietBitter]

Lapsed is an intelligent poster, just because he talks alot on Nintendo's success thus far, that it means his pro-Nintendo, they have been successful. Such a turnaround in the gaming industry isn't such a shock, look what happened in the N64-PS1 era.

 

[Deku]

Well Lapsed obviously isn't an impartial observer, Few on GAF can claim to be one. And he obviously supports what Nintendo is doing with the Wii and DS. But it's hard to argue with his analysis.

 

[osyrus]

When can we expect the unveiling of the next DS redesign?

 

[Deku]

When can we expect the unveiling of the next DS redesign?

A week before N-Gage Next is unveiled.

 

[Chris Michael]

http://www.cubed3.com/news/6729/1/No_FFXI_on_Wii,_FF_Anniversary_Projects_on_Nintendo_Systems,_Chrono_Update_and_Much_More!

PS1 FF's (remakes... maybe using the FFIII engine? it'd be especially cool for FFIX) on DS plz.

 

[osyrus]

A week before N-Gage Next is unveiled.

:lol

 

[Farmboy]

Increasing production is not pressing a button of 'high speed'. It costs money and time to ramp up production. It costs money to keep a large inventory. Nintendo has increased production (such as the DS), but they appear to increase it incrementally. Nintendo will never flood the market with hardware except right before a holiday season (or Pokemon release). And, after coming from the Gamecube, it is going to be a while to ramp up production of Wiis.

You hint at the most important reason why ramping up production isn't as simple as it sounds: the ebb and flow of demand, meaning that it is simply bad business to have production geared towards preventing shortages purely for the short periods where demand peaks. Nintendo would seriously hurt their profitability (which as you rightly, if rather obviously, point out is what is most important to them as a business) if they built new factories only to have them spinning their wheels during the periods that aren't launch or Christmas.

Of course, many of the problems can be solved by planning ahead, overproducing when the demand 'ebbs', so to speak (obviously, you can't do that at launch time, since you'd want to get your product out the door as soon as possible). And one could argue that Nintendo hasn't gotten the knack of this, especially when they can't seem to meet demand for the DS even when its incredible popularity has been apparent for well over a year now. But this is hard to do, as the videogamesindustry is a dynamic business and prospects change fast. Nintendo tends to err on the side of caution here, and as you point out: after their miscalculations with GameCube (where production actually had to be halted after demand had been overestimated), you can't really blame them for that. It's the financially sensible thing to do.

 

[jesusraz]

Square Enix support on Wii? Well, given they are still negotiating with Nintendo about online infrastructure, I'd guess FF: CC's online status isn't a given just yet and the Mana MMO rumour is just that at the moment.

Oh, something I forgot to include in the interview, for those interested - the reason FFI, FFII and FFIII haven't appeared in their original form as either Famicom Mini games, VC releases or as a bonus with FFIII on DS is because the company's having trouble finding all of the original data, which was spread across disks...

And I just learned that Chocobo =

wait for it

Chocolate Balls.

:lol :lol :lol

Oh how we larfed and larfed! I was under the impression Tanaka-san had been involved in the creation of Chocobo, but it was just Koichi Ishii...rather than just end the question, he gave me the possible reasoning behind the name. Really friendly guy - thoroughly enjoyed interviewing him

 

[Ikael]

Lapsed, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite posters in these threads. Sound, level headed, and informed, without an apparent bias. Well done. Keep up the great work.

I'm pretty gay for Lapsed, but seriously ...no.

He seems biased towards Nintendo strategy and mentality, not Nintendo itself. If Nintendo would have release a graphical powerhouse at 600$ and Sony a small affordable console with waggle, his "company of choice" would have been Sony without any doubt, me thinks.

 

[justchris]

You hint at the most important reason why ramping up production isn't as simple as it sounds: the ebb and flow of demand, meaning that it is simply bad business to have production geared towards preventing shortages purely for the short periods where demand peaks. Nintendo would seriously hurt their profitability (which as you rightly, if rather obviously, point out is what is most important to them as a business) if they built new factories only to have them spinning their wheels during the periods that aren't launch or Christmas.

Of course, many of the problems can be solved by planning ahead, overproducing when the demand 'ebbs', so to speak (obviously, you can't do that at launch time, since you'd want to get your product out the door as soon as possible). And one could argue that Nintendo hasn't gotten the knack of this, especially when they can't seem to meet demand for the DS even when its incredible popularity has been apparent for well over a year now. But this is hard to do, as the videogamesindustry is a dynamic business and prospects change fast. Nintendo tends to err on the side of caution here, and as you point out: after their miscalculations with GameCube (where production actually had to be halted after demand had been overestimated), you can't really blame them for that. It's the financially sensible thing to do.

Well, maybe Nintendo expected the Wii to perform like the DS, which is to say, sell decently for a year before rising to heaven. Then the populace went and threw their timetable all off, and now they need to debate how quickly they're going to try to catch up, so they don't overestimate future demand.

 

[verplant]

How does the Wii compare with the DS performance 2 years ago??

And WTH happened to this page?

http://www.briv-inlinehockey.de/forenbilder/nds/

This is the old url of my page. you can now find it here: http://www.n-games.de/ds/portal.php and here: http://www.n-games.de/rev/portal.php

 

[Parl]

PlayStation 3 was doing fine until Nintendo got a headshot with the Wii; any remaining "sales spikes" from now on are nothing more than little corpse spasms.

Spoiler

But Sony can respawn. Maybe they can be LUDICROUS.

 

[AlphaSnake]

Technically? No.

:lol :lol

That was good. Hahaha.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Oh, something I forgot to include in the interview, for those interested - the reason FFI, FFII and FFIII haven't appeared in their original form as either Famicom Mini games, VC releases or as a bonus with FFIII on DS is because the company's having trouble finding all of the original data, which was spread across disks...

That seems completely goofy, considering any of us could find and download the ROM which is basically what would be needed.

 

[Yoshi]

They'd have to recompile it though to gain access to the source code..

 

[LanceStern]

You know it's amazing that DS demand has not let up since December 2005.

It's unprecendented how many DS's are getting picked up. Whtether it be a slow week, a dead week, a fast week etc for any system, the DS will STILL sell at such a high volume and keep producing software that has longe rlegs than an ostrich.

The DS will soon have 4- 4 million sellers in Japan near the top 10, ludicrous. 2 of them were released in 2005 and still sell absurd amounts and hover in the Top 15 (you can bet on a week without many new releases, AC and BA2 will be back IN the Top 10), and 2 were released last year near the middle-end of the year and have still hit 4 million extremely fast (Mario and Pokemon)

I can't help but be elated at how well Nintendo is doing. And this is just JAPAN. Let's not talk about Europe, where they hit 10 million DS's sold in such a fast amount of time (It think 3 million were sold from Oct - Dec alone, crazy) and Nintendogs has hit 5 MILLION there. When's the last time a game hit 5 million in Europe?

US, surprisingly, is the slowest to catch onto the DS in terms of software and hardware and sales. But now even they are starting to move the GBA crowd to the DS, and titles are reaching the high end of sales (Over 3.5 million for Nintendogs and almost 2 million for Mario)

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

They'd have to recompile it though to gain access to the source code..

Why? We could run FFI on a GBA emulator today. At worst they might want to hack the ROM a bit to change a copyright year or fix a line of text?

 

[Galactic Fork]

US, surprisingly, is the slowest to catch onto the DS in terms of software and hardware and sales. But now even they are starting to move the GBA crowd to the DS, and titles are reaching the high end of sales (Over 3.5 million for Nintendogs and almost 2 million for Mario)

Don't forget that these days finding a DS in the US is about as easy as finding one in Japan.

 

[Barf_the_Mog]

Well, the USA really didn't fully commit to the Nintendo DS until the "lite" launched. I honestly think we could see monthly sales of the system split relatively evenly between all major territories. Something like; Japan 38%, Europe 32%, North America 30%.

 

[oldie-newbie]

Can someone explain me why I can't find Media Create Sales for Dec 11-17 and previous weeks (november and beginning december) when I search with "Media Create" or "Media Create Sales" words ???

 

[argon]

Here's 11/27 - 12/3: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132600&highlight=media+create

 

[LanceStern]

Can someone explain me why I can't find Media Create Sales for Dec 11-17 and previous weeks (november and beginning december) when I search with "Media Create" or "Media Create Sales" words ???

Go to www.neogaf.com/forum

Then go to Sales Archive and search there. They move them from this section because it's game discussion

 

[Cheesemeister]

Can someone explain me why I can't find Media Create Sales for Dec 11-17 and previous weeks (november and beginning december) when I search with "Media Create" or "Media Create Sales" words ???

Here ya go.

http://eg.nttpub.co.jp/ranking.html
http://www.m-create.com/jpn/s_ranking.html

01.

02.

03.

04.

05.

Media Create Sales 12/11-12/18
01. (NDS, Pokemon) Pokemon Diamond - 123573 / 2119848
02. (NDS, Pokemon) Pokemon Pearl - 97409 / 1766776
03. (NDS, Nintendo) Kirby Squeek Squad - 92173 / 557634
04. (NDS, Sega) Mysterious Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren DS - 88242 / 88242
05. (NDS, Nintendo) New Super Mario Brothers - 77761 / 3617021
06. (NDS, Sega) Love+Berry - 72841 / 608545
07. (NDS, Nintendo) Jump Ultimate Stars - 71339 / 349979
08. (PS2, Sony) Wild Arms: The 5th Vanguard - 70476 / 70476
09. (WII, Nintendo) Wii Sports - 69923 / 318473
10. (WII, Pokemon) Pokemon Battle Revolution - 67607 / 67607
11. (NDS, Nintendo) Common Knowledge Training
12. (WII, Nintendo) Wii Play
13. (NDS, Nintendo) Animal Crossing Wild World
14. (PS2, Sega) Yakuza 2
15. (NDS, Nintendo) 1000 Recipes
16. (NDS, Sega) Puyo-Puyo!
17. (PS2, Bandai-Namco) Gundam SEED DESTINY vs. ZAFTII PLUS
18. (NDS, Nintendo) More Brain Age
19. (NDS, Takara-Tomy) Naruto: Shinobi Retsuden
20. (NDS, Capcom) Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus
21. (PS2, Konami) Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 13
22. (PSP, Konami) World Soccer Winning Eleven 10: Ubiquitous Evolution
23. (NDS, Capcom) Mega Man Star Force: Dragon
24. (PSP, Idea) Maplus Portable Navigator
25. (NDS, IE Institute) Kanji Brain Test 2M
26. (NDS, Capcom) Mega Man Star Force: Leo
27. (NDS, Nintendo) Mario Kart DS
28. (PS2, Sega) Yakuza
29. (PS2, Hudson) Momotarou Dentetsu 16
30. (NDS, Nintendo) Brain Age

 

[Masklinn]

Lapsed is an intelligent poster, just because he talks alot on Nintendo's success thus far, that it means his pro-Nintendo, they have been successful. Such a turnaround in the gaming industry isn't such a shock, look what happened in the N64-PS1 era.

Nah, unless he says the opposite himself Lapsed is probably very pro-nintendo.

But he's also an awesome poster and doesn't let his likes and dislikes get in the way of objective analysis of the events.

That's a very rare skill he has, and I think Neogaf's lucky to have him, he clearly makes the board in general and the M-C threads in particular a much better place.

They'd have to recompile it though to gain access to the source code..

Nah they could patch the binary itself (that's what the TTDPatch madmen used to do before OpenTTD took over).

It's much harder than patching the source code, but it's doable.

Note: it's also what was usually done during The Beginnings (of computing), when the compile/test cycle was a major bottleneck (we're talking days/weeks of wait to be able to compile your source): the guys would work with the source until they were 'almost there', and then they would end up patching the binary for the last little bugs, and for the subsequent maintenance.

Which basically meant that, at the time, source code was often completely useless because the binary you were running didn't have anything in common with the source code you could find.

 

[oldie-newbie]

Go to www.neogaf.com/forum

Then go to Sales Archive and search there. They move them from this section because it's game discussion

Thanks to you and also argon and Cheesemeister. Unfortunately, I can't search in the Sales Archive section perharps because I am a junior member

 

[PkunkFury]

Nah, unless he says the opposite himself Lapsed is probably very pro-nintendo.

But he's also an awesome poster and doesn't let his likes and dislikes get in the way of objective analysis of the events.

That's a very rare skill he has, and I think Neogaf's lucky to have him, he clearly makes the board in general and the M-C threads in particular a much better place.

He's also a Star Control II fan, and we can't have too many of those

which by the way, means he's not a hopeless nintendo fan, since he appreciates killer games that have never been near a Nintendo system

 

[LanceStern]

The 'it prints money.gif' is perfect because that is what Nintendo gets excited about. A 'it increases marketshare.gif' or 'it is getting non-gamers.gif' wouldn't be as funny because, while true, that's not what Nintendo's ultimate goal is. They want more profits, and they chose their business strategy not because it is 'winning', but because it is the most 'profitable'.

Increasing production is not pressing a button of 'high speed'. It costs money and time to ramp up production. It costs money to keep a large inventory. Nintendo has increased production (such as the DS), but they appear to increase it incrementally. Nintendo will never flood the market with hardware except right before a holiday season (or Pokemon release). And, after coming from the Gamecube, it is going to be a while to ramp up production of Wiis.

Nintendo isn't interested in making video games. They are interested in making money printing presses. Entertainment dollars are equal from both the gamer and non-gamer.

That's the only thing I disagree with.

 

[wazoo]

That's the only thing I disagree with.

But this is the truth, and it is true for all 3 too in my opinion.

That is because this fact that Sony is here for the money, and more money than the videogame market, than they added a BR drive and are risking to lose much marketshare in order to get the even bigger pie of the casual HD movie market.

That is because this fact that MS is here for the money, and more money than the video game market, than they entered this same market to defend the highly profitable PC market from Sony multimedia orthogonal vision.

The only point where I disagree with him if the presentation of Nintendo that the market is shrinking. The only shrinking market is Nintendo own marketshare for 20years.

 

[ethelred]

The only point where I disagree with him if the presentation of Nintendo that the market is shrinking. The only shrinking market is Nintendo own marketshare for 20years.

If you bear in mind that Nintendo's primary market is Japan, then no, it's very much correct that the market has been shrinking. Look at hardware sales since 1999:

1999: 08,680,000
2000: 07,375,000
2001: 10,725,000
2002: 08,850,000
2003: 07,810,000
2004: 07,440,000
2005: 10,060,000
2006: 13,870,000

Notice the difference in 2005 and 2006? Aside from the 2001 spike, the hardware market has been shrinking there... and then there was a massive turnaround.

Look at it in terms of software:

2004: 56,090,000 across 1019 games
2005: 55,430,000 across 1077 games
2006: 77,160,000 across 1240 games

See the difference again?

 

[wazoo]

If you bear in mind that Nintendo's primary market is Japan, then no, it's very much correct that the market has been shrinking. Look at hardware sales since 1999:

See the difference again?

I know what you did, but Sony thinks worldwide and whereas it is true that the japanese market is shrinking, both EU and US market are always expanding, and ps2 is on track to beat ps1 sales by at least 20% (if they stopped selling tomorrow)

 

[ethelred]

I know what you did, but Sony thinks worldwide and whereas it is true that the japanese market is shrinking, both EU and US market are always expanding, and ps2 is on track to beat ps1 sales by at least 20% (if they stopped selling tomorrow)

Be that as it may, you're flatly incorrect that the only shrinking is in Nintendo's own marketshare. Accept your error and move on.

 

[LanceStern]

It's not shrinking by what you've shown us ethelred.

I see hardware going down slowly after each new hardware release, then a new hardware release shows up and it increases and goes back down for a few years. Then a new one comes, the sales spike, then it goes back down for the next few years.

From what I've seen, it just GRADUALLY (and I mean REALLY SLOWLY) declines, but is brought back up by new releases of hardware.

Software wise though, it has been shrinking by your numbers. Thank God for the DS though eh?