At GDC, Nintendo announced that their eShop would arrive at the end of May, bringing with it access to DSiWare, the 3DS's Internet Browser, Virtual Console titles from older systems such as the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, and TurboGrafx 16, remastered classic games with added stereoscopic 3D effects (I assume from a wider variety of systems), the solution for transferring your DSiWare titles from your DSi or DSi XL to your 3DS, and a 3D Video Service from Nintendo featuring movie trailers, game trailers. game screen shots, and other content such as comedy shorts and music videos. All of these sound great, though I wish at least DSiWare access was available sooner. It sounds like Nintendo might hand-pick the content (outside games and movies), which might mean the comedy is all fairly tame, among other things than may pertain to types of content not mentioned.
Nintendo spoke again of a Super Mario title made specifically for the 3DS, being developed by the same team responsible for Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. I wouldn't necessarily expect another Super Mario Galaxy because of that. For some reason, I still consider Super Mario 64 a better game than the first Galaxy (haven't tried 2), despite the sheer variety in Galaxy. I've tried pinning down what it is, and I think it has to do with simply having fully connected environments. Flying around in space is neat, but it all feels more clever when the stars are contained in the same environment. From the first screens of the game it seems like it won't be like Galaxy. For me personally, I hope it isn't another Galaxy title, but I think there is value in the design philosophies behind Galaxy so I hope those carry over.
Nintendo is collaborating with AT&T to set up 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States that the 3DS can freely (and for free) connect to for use with the 3DS's internet connected features such as SpotPass. The hotspots will be placed across the country, though between you and me, I doubt I'll ever come across any of them unless I deliberately travel to one. Definitely not as prolific as 3G, but I'm sure it will be great for the thousands of people that walk around big cities.
I need to find a good run-down of the actual speech from Nintendo President Satoru Iwata to see if there were some interesting or thought provoking words, but it seems like there were a healthy number of announcements, maybe more than many people expect from Nintendo at GDC.
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Iwata's keynote was pretty interesting but those announcements were pretty unexpected! A new Mario 3ds game, netflix 3ds, and the portable Nintendo Channel info sounded great and the Zelda remake 3ds game looks to be a 2 games in one deal with a Nintendo rep announcing that Master Quest will be included as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso I want to know what you guys think about what Iwata said about social networking gaming and the value of gaming? I thought the talk was focused on the big time developers/publishers since it's really too risky to fully support the app store over dedicated video game device (360, PS3, Wii). I mean it would be great to pay for a Super Mario Galaxy game for a dollar but for some reason that just doesn't bode well with me
I need to find a transcript or something of his speech, because I haven't heard/read it yet. Sounds like he might have made a comment about facebook game type games that some people didn't like very much. I'll get back to you when I find something on it.
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