Nintendo (Wii, DS etc)............................

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While recent sales of the 3DS haven't been great I'm still shocked and slightly confused by Nintendos decision to slash the price of it by as much as 40% after just a few months on the market.

Boy, those 3DS sales sure fell off a cliff. So much so that Nintendo has instituted one of the swiftest and deepest price cuts for a handheld in recent memory.

The 3DS only went on sale earlier this year for $249, but as of August 12, it'll be slashed all the way down to $169.99. That's...wow.

http://kotaku.com/5825495/nintendo-3ds-gets-sudden-massive-price-drop

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Apparently rumours and the early pics of Nintendos add-on for the 3DS were real.  I must admit the early pic looked so bad I though it was a photoshop fake, but it's real alight.

Definitely not a good time to buy a 3DS then as a redesign with the extra joypad mustn't be far away.  Bizarre.


http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/13/nintendo-3ds-bizarre-circle-pad-attachment-coming-to-japan-dece/

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Looks like the WiiU Pad has had a slight redesign and dropped the circle pads in favour of proper analogues.  I'm not a fan of circle pads so this is definitely a good thing.

The acres of plastic around the screen seems to have increased too which I would guess makes using the touch screen in games which also use the other controls a touch awkward.

http://kotaku.com/5911747/image-suggests-wii-u-controller-will-have-true-analog-joysticks-not-nubs

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Last year Nintendo made the mistake of just showing the Wii U Gamepad on stage and not the console leading a lot of people to assume it was a peripheral for the original Wii.

A year later and it appears they made the same mistake again and people are still confused.

CNN have revised the article after a flood of complaints, but this is the original text....

(CNN) -- Will Nintendo's forthcoming Wii U controller breathe new life into its aging Wii console?

Hard to say at this point, but the Wii U is a solid accessory that will bring a fresh element to Nintendo gaming.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/05/tech/gaming-gadgets/wii-u-demo-e3/

Lots of people that bought into the original Wii aren't seasoned gamers who read tech news so you can guarantee mass confusion.  The name doesn't help.  Expect a repeat of the stories of people trying to put 3DS games in their original DS.

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First UK TV ad for the Nintendo Wii U.

It's different from their recent approach which has been to fill ads with celebrities playing endless games of Mario, although they are still clearly aiming for a certain, non traditional gamer audience.

One thing, it sounds like they've hired the guy that does the JML voiceovers  (for people outside the UK, JML specialise in the cheapest gadgets money van buy)

Wii U - First UK TV advert	powered by Aeva

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Hmm.  So the WiiU has full parental controls, like the other consoles, to stop kids accessing adult content whether games or videos.  For the other consoles manufacturers this is enough, but not for Nintendo when it comes to buying content from the WiiU eStore ...

Dear customer, we would like to let you know that Nintendo has always aimed to offer gameplay experiences suited to all age groups, observing carefully all the relevant regulations regarding content access that are present in the various European countries.
We have thus decided to restrict the access to content which is unsuitable to minors (PEGI) to the 11 P.M. - 3 A.M. time window

http://kotaku.com/5966659/in-europe-you-can-only-download-mature+rated-wii-u-games-at-night?tag=wiiu

That's right, even if you have an adult account you can not access adult rated games on the eStore except between 11pm & 3am.  It's like they don't want adult games on the system or your money.

[TheKhakinator]

Read about it. Stupid stupid stupid. If you're trying to get rid of your console's kid image, and put a shitload of effort into it, shoot a memo out to the rest of the goddamn company telling them not to screw up.

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Read about it. Stupid stupid stupid. If you're trying to get rid of your console's kid image, and put a shitload of effort into it, shoot a memo out to the rest of the goddamn company telling them not to screw up.

It does seem to go against everything they should be trying to do.  Shake the kiddy image? No.  Encourage download sales?  No.  Attract more 3rd party developers?  Nope.


Nintendo have always been a bit paranoid about this sort of thing though.  It's on of the reasons they stuck with the awful friends codes when everyone else had moved to individual account based systems.