Welcome back to a thoughtful Nerds Without Pants! Patrick had a smarty pants Stage Select topic, so we enlisted the smartiest pants person we know: Mike Fallek of the Hackthought Podcast. What follows is comedy, heated debates, and the debut of the Patrick Leap? Listen and find out, Pantsless people!
Join the Nintendo Fun Club Toady!
Come look into our crystal balls as we attempt to look into the future and predict E3. No, wait, come back! I promise you that this is an entertaining pre-E3 edition of Nerds Without Pants. We decided to dream up some wild (but plausible) wishes for the Big Three, and then do a reality check and talk about what we think will actually happen. Before that, Consumption Junction!
One rather hilarious trend I've seen in discussions about sales figures and financials is the comment that "Nintendo hardware sales have dropped continuously ever since the SNES came out." It conveniently ignores the Wii, which sold more than the Gamecube and N64 combined and is far ahead of the PS3 and 360 in sales. In a gaming community that will pick apart even the smallest numbers to prove a point, the way they ignore the Wii's higher hardware/software sales and profits is quite fascinating. It says a lot about just how emotionally invested people are in financial figures, and the way they'll twist and contort around stats they don't like to protect their world view.
Yep, more ranting about Nintendo stuff. I tend to do that a lot here, LOL.
The next round of console wars are upon us! With the big three companies--Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft--on the board with their new machines, it's time for people to pick sides and see who comes out on top. No matter which machine you're backing, it's worth looking back at how each company has handled their systems in the past. Since Nintendo came onto the scene first, we'll start by going back in time and checking out how they marketed their machines. From the NES to the WII U, PixlBit's got ya covered!
Where to start? Nintendo hardly had any major hiccups back in the day but the most notable was is sticking with cartridges for the Nintendo 64 which had to turn off publishers. It definitely impacted their relationship with then Squaresoft and how it helped Sony spiral their console in a household name. The two biggest mistakes that Nintendo has made continuously is sticking with undesired formats by sticking with cartridges and not moving to dvds. The other is not being aggressive with a competitive online gaming network.
Even though they seldom get the chance to prove it, Gamefreak—famous for making the mainline Pokémon games— can also innovate in genres quite different from their meat and potatoes product. So, when it was announced that they would be creating a downloadable rhythm game for the 3DS, there was good reason to get excited. Thanks to the recent release of a demo in the eShop, anyone who wasn’t already psyched up for HarmoKnight can find out why the rest of us are counting the days until its release on March 28th.
Up until yesterday, Nintendo and Amazon were in an unspoken and unannounced feud. For months, the online superstore has not stocked or sold Nintendo hardware directly, but today the cold war appears to have ended. Amazon is now offering the Nintendo 3DS XL, a previously unavailable item, directly from their warehouses.
With the deluge of games being released all year long, none of us can complain about not having anything to play. But therein lies another problem: trying to keep up with all of the great games out there. The big releases with primetime TV ads are hard to miss, but it’s easy to overlook the little guys that can be just as, if not more fun than their bigger AAA cousins.
I broke two controllers while playing Mega Man II as a kid. Specifically, I broke two NES controllers playing Heat Man’s level in Mega Man II. Even more specifically, I broke two NES controllers while doing the “Hell Blocks” portion of Heat Man’s level in Mega Man II. That particular stage summed up perfectly what the words Nintendo Hard really meant to me. You needed patience, quickness and the ability to predict the future. It also didn’t hurt to have a couple of extra controllers lying around the house, you know, just in case.
Nintendo of America announced today that Scott Moffitt will assume the role of Executive VP of Sales & Marketing, effective immediately. In this role, he will be reporting directly to Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime, who also once held the same position.
