Because I intend to watch the press conferences, I made a list of when each conference starts, along with a link to each live stream.
May 31, 2011
April 14, 2011
Gamers have been waiting years for Nintendo to finally release its Wii successor, and Game Informer has heard from multiple sources that the company will unveil it at E3 this summer if not sooner.
It’s about damn time.
February 26, 2011
The first shipment was approximately 400,000 units.
December 28, 2010
An expertly written ten-page article on the most influential game designer of all time.
Miyamoto has said that his main job at Nintendo is ningen kougaku—human engineering. He has been at the company since 1977 and has worked for no other. (He prizes Nintendo’s financial and creative support for his work: “There’s a big difference between the money you receive personally from the company and the money you can use in your job.”) He has never been the company’s (or his own) boss, but it is not unreasonable to imagine that Nintendo might not exist without him.
September 29, 2010
Most excited for the upcoming Professor Layton and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, of which the latter looks to be quite the graphical showpiece.
July 30, 2010
I don’t usually comment on business-related news, but this article is completely wrong in more ways than one.
The problem isn’t so much that the 3DS won’t be a unique gaming experience, it’s that the device, and with it, the gaming experience, is built around an antiquated business model popularized over 20 years ago by Nintendo and the Gameboy. With the Gameboy, Nintendo created a model centered around the release of a new generation of hardware every five years or so and by the sales of expensive software titles over the life of the device.
I guess the author of this article missed the fact that the Nintendo DS is the top-selling handheld console of all time, with some 128.89 million units sold (see the financial highlights PDF). The net loss reported last quarter has nothing to do with an “antiquated business model” – it’s simply an indicator that the DS is reaching the end of its lifespan, something that is quite natural in the console industry. It’s a perfect time to launch a new product like the 3DS which, judging by the response at this year’s E3, will be phenomenally successful.
That model worked in the past, but not in today’s market. The app-store model has unleashed a wave of innovative new games (36 thousand at last count) from hungry developers looking to free themselves from the long, expensive and highly restricted development cycles associated with traditional console gaming. In comparison, Nintendo’s process is the mobile game software equivalent of the Soviet Union: too much control, artificially inflated prices, too little choice.
This choice quote is infinitely more absurd than the first one. Of the 36 thousand “innovative new games”, a minuscule percentage can actually be described as innovative. And while standard pricing ranging from $1 to $2 may be successful for some developers, to claim that DS and future 3DS games are doomed because of Nintendo’s business model would be a blatant lie.
I’m not even going to touch the “too little choice” argument.