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StarTopic Nintendo General Discussion |ST8 May 2022| Prime Real E-ST8

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SirArthur said:
Yeah, they had a great thing going. Layton was successful, Yokai was very popular. But in this business, burning bridges will cost you a lot.
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And Nintendo doesn't have use for those Ips. Pokemon is on the Pokemania level again. Why do they have to invest in Yokai? Sony... well, we know that isn't their style. Maybe Bandai?
 
storres said:
And Nintendo doesn't have use for those Ips. Pokemon is on the Pokemania level again. Why do they have to invest in Yokai? Sony... well, we know that isn't their style. Maybe Bandai?
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Nintendo has use for Inazuma Eleven, but L-5 can’t even finish the development of a single Inazuma game since 2013 and even if they do it it would release in PS5 so the SKU can sell 4K copies in Japan and kill the chance of Nintendo publishing it on the West. A good Inazuma Eleven game nowadays published by Nintendo would sell easily 2.5-3M WW.
 
Blue Monty said:
Nintendo has use for Inazuma Eleven, but L-5 can’t even finish the development of a single Inazuma game since 2013 and even if they do it it would release in PS5 so the SKU can sell 4K copies in Japan and kill the chance of Nintendo publishing it on the West. A good Inazuma Eleven game nowadays published by Nintendo would sell easily 2.5-3M WW.
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Nintendo could easily expand Mario Striker or use it to fill that void. Either way, FIFA, for better or worst, is selling good on the Platform.
 
I was thinking of making a thread on Era about how I think the Halo franchise (and many of its fans) are too conservative on where the series should go but I'm afraid the thread would become hostile real quick lol. I just see a lot of Halo fans talk about how certain games don't look or feel like Halo, even to the point with nitpicking how the armor and architecture look. The 343 games certainly have a different art style than the Bungie games, but it's THAT different. When Halo 4 was announced, I just had high hopes that the series would move away from the Covenant, Forerunners, even the Halo rings themselves. It's a series set in space which is just ripe for telling all sorts of stories and exploring all new planets and species.

For all the talk about how some Nintendo series don't have change the formula, they honestly do change things often do change things a lot. Before a new Zelda game is revealed, we are excited to see what the art style will be because it's something we honestly don't know at the time. Even with the Mario series, while the game share a common baseline style, they regularly change up the themes and focus of the games. Mario Odyssey is more different than 3D World than Halo 5 is to Halo 4. I think part of being a Nintendo fan is getting excited about finding out how a new game looks and plays. What the story is going to be. I think it's also the reason why there's so much discussion by some people by online about Splatoon 3 looking too similar to previous games because we have been conditioned to anticipate more significant changes with new installments.
 
storres said:
Nintendo could easily expand Mario Striker or use it to fill that void. Either way, FIFA, for better or worst, is selling good on the Platform.
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Inazuma Eleven covers a different spot in Switch lineup than Strikers or Fifa do, sport game+jrpg style of games are something really rare and unique this days and Inazuma Eleven is still a beloved franchise with history in Nintendo platforms. I think an unique style of game that’s part a loved franchise with history in Nintendo platforms is the type of game Nintendo publishes . I’m not saying to buy Level-5 to get IE btw that would be dumb just that if Level-5 made a new game the smartest decision for both parties would be for it to be exclusive and published by Nintendo in the West.
 
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storres said:
I'm buying two copies.
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I bought way too many copies of Xenoblade 2

  • 1 standard physical base game
  • 1 special edition physical base game
  • 1 digital base game
  • 1 standard physical Torna
  • 1 digital Torna
  • 1 DLC pass (which includes Torna in the base game)
 
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storres said:
And Nintendo doesn't have use for those Ips. Pokemon is on the Pokemania level again. Why do they have to invest in Yokai? Sony... well, we know that isn't their style. Maybe Bandai?
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I could see Bandai, I dont think current sony cares about those IPs. In regards to Nintendo they really dont need them. But saying "they have pokemon so" i don't think really matters. Cause they are very different games, its like saying Nintendo does need Kirby because they have Yoshi. There is a level of similarity but they cant carve their own audience.

Outside of that, Layton seems the most useful for nintendo, like the recent brain academy quietly did a million plus in like 3 months, thats insane. So it has potential
 
SirArthur said:
I could see Bandai, I dont think current sony cares about those IPs. In regards to Nintendo they really dont need them. But saying "they have pokemon so" i don't think really matters. Cause they are very different games, its like saying Nintendo does need Kirby because they have Yoshi. There is a level of similarity but they cant carve their own audience.

Outside of that, Layton seems the most useful for nintendo, like the recent brain academy quietly did a million plus in like 3 months, thats insane. So it has potential
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Yokai will arrive on the platform either way, my point was, if it's something that Nintendo will pay to promote or not.
 
Bandai Namco doesn't buy companies almost ever the only major acquistion in Bamco lifespan it's D3 and that was during the 'golden age' of JP industry consalidation. Don't expect it to buy L-5, like Nintendo it prefers to have a lot of long-term partners that make Bamco games
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
Huh? The game sold 180'000 units in the first 8 days in the US and was the 4th best selling single SKU. It obviously wasn't a massive seller because almost nothing on the Wii U was. But whoever was celebrating TF's "failure" at the time was full of shit. I honestly think you're letting your negative experiences as a DK fan within gaming communities colour your perception of what the public at large things about the brand. But I see that there's no changing your mind.
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Ngl, the little nasty comments from 2013- 2014 still live rent free in my head here and there 😂. Perhaps something inside me wishes the public at large had made more positive online engagements during that time so I and a few others didn't have so much burden defending the game on the front lines of the internet discourse. But I don't blame anyone from not engaging in that drivel. I don't like engaging in it either, but the fan in me had to do something.

Seems I was wrong about the sales, but I will stand by my original stance the brand's experimental identity hurt it in the 2000s amongst the mindset of the gaming populace, and that the brand would've been in a better place if Nintendo had properly handled it better. Otherwise, I don't believe I would had to defend it as badly as I did during those days. I mean, a game can still sell extremely well and still have this weird sense of loathing from gamers.
 
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Blue Monty said:
Bandai Namco doesn't buy companies almost ever the only major acquistion in Bamco lifespan it's D3 and that was during the 'golden age' of JP industry consalidation. Don't expect it to buy L-5, like Nintendo it prefers to have a lot of long-term partners that make Bamco games
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They could do a CyberConnect type of deal, a partnership like you mention
 
I'm not much of a DK fan, but the amount of butthurt when DK TF was announced made me go like "seriously people, are you guys fore real?"

In the end Tropical Freeze is a wonderful platformer, but I was more taken aback by how reviewers were even writing off this game with "well its not Metroid isn't it?"
 
SirArthur said:
They could do a CyberConnect type of deal, a partnership like you mention
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Bamco doing a partnership with Level-5 while could happen they would prefer it to just do it for the Ni No Kuni games only, which is what they are already doing nowadays, Level-5 isn't the type of studio to do licensed games and contract work.
 
Blue Monty said:
Bamco doing a partnership with Level-5 while could happen they would prefer it to just do it for the Ni No Kuni games only, which is what they are already doing nowadays, Level-5 isn't the type of studio to do licensed games and contract work.
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I totally forgot Ni no kuni is not their ip. I take back what I said lol. And looking at cc2 most of their bandai publish games are licensed.
 
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Sadist said:
I'm not much of a DK fan, but the amount of butthurt when DK TF was announced made me go like "seriously people, are you guys fore real?"

In the end Tropical Freeze is a wonderful platformer, but I was more taken aback by how reviewers were even writing off this game with "well its not Metroid isn't it?"
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Eurogamer's review of Tropical Freeze will always stick with me. Journalists were reviewing the game as if it had to rescue and justify the system's fate, or even Nintendo's position as a platform holder:
The likelihood, then, is that people who played DKC Returns will find Tropical Freeze a little uninspiring. It's a superior game - it looks nicer, it's easier to control on the GamePad than it was on the Wiimote, and there's slightly more to do - but like a lot of Nintendo's recent sequels, that doesn't feel like quite enough. The craftsman has turned in a damn fine table, for sure, but the chances are you already have a table.
-snip-
DKC is becoming another Nintendo series where quality grows and importance shrinks with each faithful new instalment. Not all Nintendo's franchises have fallen into this pattern, but games like Tropical Freeze make me wonder whether they all eventually will, turning up to be damned by praise that appears fainter with every passing chapter.
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Turning in a much improved game over the previous entry wasn't enough, because the game isn't important? And despite making better games each time, that deserves less praise? What?

It says a lot about attitudes towards Tropical Freeze being partially defined by attitudes to Wii U that some outlets really reassessed it when it launched on Switch, including a (importantly) different writer at Eurogamer:
And Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, with its challenge and its craft, its energy and its ingenuity, feels like nothing less than a display of pure mastery over the 2D action genre. That might not be as exciting as when Retro Studios brought Samus Aran into the third dimension with Metroid Prime, but it's an achievement that in its own way is just as remarkable. More remarkable still is how Tropical Freeze sits comfortably alongside the greats of Nintendo, that venerable master of the 2D action genre.
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Of course, these are two different opinions from two different people, but I've always thought of it as an interesting - if partial - reflection of the way discourse around Tropical Freeze shifted over time. At announcement and release, it was somehow reflective of Nintendo being out of touch and not ambitious, and turning out quality games wasn't enough for people; once Switch was on the market and Nintendo had justified their standing in the eyes of critics, the game can be celebrated as one of their finest ever platformers (which, given Nintendo's legacy, is high praise indeed).

Personally I loved Tropical Freeze from the start (hue hue hue). I'll always remember the cold February weekend I blasted through it for the first time, and it was a joy to go back to on Switch.
 
storres said:
DK doesn’t have a hurt reputation, it's just need it's expandong moment. The series doesn’t have that much leeway yo grow, imo. Same thing happen to Kirby. It's time for that 3D moment.
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I'd only disagree in that Kirby, after Return to Dreamland, has had a pretty consistent string of releases, complete with a number of good to great 2D outings, while DK hasn't had anything new in almost a decade since TF.

I think the most important thing for most DKC fans, beyond just getting another one, would be just the restoration of more elements and characters. Seeing K. Rool back in another game would likely be just as hype inducing as another well-done 3D migration.
 
MisterSpo said:
Eurogamer's review of Tropical Freeze will always stick with me. Journalists were reviewing the game as if it had to rescue and justify the system's fate, or even Nintendo's position as a platform holder:

Turning in a much improved game over the previous entry wasn't enough, because the game isn't important? And despite making better games each time, that deserves less praise? What?

It says a lot about attitudes towards Tropical Freeze being partially defined by attitudes to Wii U that some outlets really reassessed it when it launched on Switch, including a (importantly) different writer at Eurogamer:


Of course, these are two different opinions from two different people, but I've always thought of it as an interesting - if partial - reflection of the way discourse around Tropical Freeze shifted over time. At announcement and release, it was somehow reflective of Nintendo being out of touch and not ambitious, and turning out quality games wasn't enough for people; once Switch was on the market and Nintendo had justified their standing in the eyes of critics, the game can be celebrated as one of their finest ever platformers (which, given Nintendo's legacy, is high praise indeed).

Personally I loved Tropical Freeze from the start (hue hue hue). I'll always remember the cold February weekend I blasted through it for the first time, and it was a joy to go back to on Switch.
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Ha, you echoed my thoughts completely with that Eurogamer review, wanted to use it as well. Normally EG is one of the few I will read in regards to reviews, but this was one of the rare moments where I felt a complete disconnect with them.

You know, the Wii U was not greatest machine in Nintendo’s tenure as a hardware builder, but some people let their opinion on it (good and bad) influence their views of certain games. But with DK TF, it was so bizarre to see reviewers devolve into pouty children because they weren’t getting a certain game which did not exist at the time anyway.
 
TreIII said:
I'd only disagree in that Kirby, after Return to Dreamland, has had a pretty consistent string of releases, complete with a number of good to great 2D outings, while DK hasn't had anything new in almost a decade since TF.

I think the most important thing for most DKC fans, beyond just getting another one, would be just the restoration of more elements and characters. Seeing K. Rool back in another game would likely be just as hype inducing as another well-done 3D migration.
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I meant after Star Allies, it really needed a change
 
Now that I think it, Bamco console gaming division maybe be the company most similar to Nintendo in the industry, of course there are a lot of differences but it's the closest, both in how diverse it is and how it works.
 
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Wii U had some top tier 2D platformers: Tropical Freeze, Rayman Legends, Shovel Knight, Yoshi Wooly World. I saw it as a plus. 🤷
 
Level-5 is a fascinating company because it feels like they haven't been able to catch a break since 2017 but they're still trucking along somehow with seemingly 300 employees (according to their official website). Catalog sales can't be that high so this means
1) they're getting enough money from licensing and merchandising
2) they had big cash reserves
3) they got outside investors willing to give them money
or a combination. The question is really how long they can last on this. Ni No Kuni 2 was a moderate success but we don't really know what kind of deal they have with Bandai Namco to publish it outside of Japan. YW4 saw a huge decline from 3 and no Western release. Megaton Musashi was a massive bomba (also no Western release). Inazua Eleven looks like it's in dev hell. Ushiro is ???. It's hard to imagine them lasting any longer but I also thought they wouldn't make it past 2020 and then 2021. Yet here we are. 🤷‍♂️

With the benefit of hindsight I think ca. 2018 was the point when Hino should have changed course. Their publishing efforts as well as the attempt to launch another multimedia franchise with Snack World were both busts. It also became increasingly clear that the kids' market had become way too risky to stake your entire business on it. Losing that partnership with Nintendo (or maybe walking away from it) definitely didn't help but I think there's more pressing underlying issues with how they do business.
 
Ozzie said:
What. The. Hell.
This freaking game man...
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what the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?????

This is possible????

Man, with all the weird shit I've been seeing in this game posted on social media last year I can like replay this game and play a whole different game than I did the first time lol
 
storres said:
I meant after Star Allies, it really needed a change
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And on that much, I'd agree.

Just that I didn't believe 2D-DK is in quite the same boat because we haven't seen enough of him in the last decade!
 
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storres said:
The only one that could've seen some value in Level 5 was Nintendo, and Level 5 decided to go multiplat. This wound/death is self inflicted.
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Is that what actually happened? I admit to not following closely, but have they floundered in the Japanese market? They started as a PS exclusive developer, and the Layton games, which were their cash cow in the west, got hit by the primary designer dying in 2016, at the same time that the Switch was about to kill of the DS, and while I know Ni No Kuni went multiplat, that series was always Bamco published.

Nintendo rarely buys studios, I think a Level-5 without multiplat/Bamco money goes the way of Alpha Dream, not the way of Next Level Games.
 
oldpuck said:
Is that what actually happened? I admit to not following closely, but have they floundered in the Japanese market? They started as a PS exclusive developer, and the Layton games, which were their cash cow in the west, got hit by the primary designer dying in 2016, at the same time that the Switch was about to kill of the DS, and while I know Ni No Kuni went multiplat, that series was always Bamco published.

Nintendo rarely buys studios, I think a Level-5 without multiplat/Bamco money goes the way of Alpha Dream, not the way of Next Level Games.
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Level 5 even took a nosedive in Japan
 
oldpuck said:
Is that what actually happened? I admit to not following closely, but have they floundered in the Japanese market?
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Heavily, the biggest downfall of any publisher ever in Japan we are talking about a company losing over 90% of the market share in less than 3 years.
oldpuck said:
Is that what actually happened? I admit to not following closely, but have they floundered in the Japanese market? They started as a PS exclusive developer, and the Layton games, which were their cash cow in the west, got hit by the primary designer dying in 2016, at the same time that the Switch was about to kill of the DS, and while I know Ni No Kuni went multiplat, that series was always Bamco published.
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You are ignoring that when the DS released they jumped ship to Nintendo and didn't look back, and that during the DS-3DS era outside of Ni No Kuni games and DQVIII they were a Nintendo only developer with all their games published and treated as 1st party output by Nintendo in the West, that's something any independent company in Japan would dream off. What happened is that after YW3 Level-5 made a bet and that bet was go all-in mobile games/multiplatform and bet against Switch success they had 0 games prepared for it when it released compared to the 3ds/ds situation , making all their games multiplatform or mobile and not taking part anymore in the deal they had with Nintendo thinking that would give them more success in fact YW4 was going to be published by L5 in the West, the bet didn't work and now they are in life support.
 
So Xbox is having some outrage and it’s preventing me from playing any digital games I own.

Man I hate this part about digital gaming. Especially since the games I want to play don’t have a physical copy.
 
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Re: Level-5 -- Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I'd say was Hino's motto. Too bad it didn't work out, but I can see where they were coming from. Maybe shouldn't have done an 180° on Nintendo exclusivity, though, instead steadily expanding to mobile while keeping the good base they already had. Too much venturing in that case.
 
Sadist said:
Level 5 even took a nosedive in Japan
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Blue Monty said:
Heavily, the biggest downfall of any publisher ever in Japan we are talking about a company losing over 90% of the market share in less than 3 years.
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Yikes. I genuinely wasn't aware, that's why I asked
Blue Monty said:
You are ignoring that when the DS released they jumped ship to Nintendo and didn't look back, and that during the DS-3DS era outside of Ni No Kuni games and DQVIII they were a Nintendo only developer with all their games published and treated as 1st party output by Nintendo in the West
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Not ignoring - just the multiplat move seemed to start with Ni No Kuni, which was the franchise that Nintendo was leaving them on their own for. It seems pretty clear that Level-5 blew it, I'm just not convinced that, knowing Nintendo's history, they would have stepped in if Level-5 had tanked while staying exclusive.

Sucks though. Some great games, and if they go under, Layton goes with them.
 
oldpuck said:
Not ignoring - just the multiplat move seemed to start with Ni No Kuni, which was the franchise that Nintendo was leaving them on their own for. It seems pretty clear that Level-5 blew it, I'm just not convinced that, knowing Nintendo's history, they would have stepped in if Level-5 had tanked while staying exclusive.
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Ni No Kuni II released in 2018 that was after they made the bet against Switch and the reason why it didn't even have a Switch SKU at launch, Ni No Kuni was picked due to being their only popular franchise not linked to Nintendo. Also for sure Nintendo wouldn't have saved them or will save them, it's just that they wouldn't be in such a bad position they are right now if they didn't decide to do it on their own and without taking into account Nintendo platforms where their userbase was.
 
Kirby, DK, Wario and Yoshi all had a sort of identity crisis during the GC/GBA era and the early Wii/DS era, with their development too busy on other projects (Yoshi and EAD), dissolved (Wario and R&D1), bought by another company (DK and Rare) or facing an internal crisis (HAL saw multiple projects cancelled and Sakurai leaving the company).

Those series saw some shallow new games (or spin-offs) outsourced to some by B-tier developers, like Artoon/Arzest, Suzak, Paon and Dimps/Flagship. To be fair, not all of those games were bad, mostly they were just... mediocre and soulless. Which is exactly what you don't expect from Nintendo

The only exception here was, of course, Jungle Beat, an excellent game developed by Nintendo EAD itself. Perhaps it departed too much from the Rare games, but the game itself was gold.

Retro taking care of DK re-integrating the best parts of Rare games, HAL coming back with Kumazaki at the helm and Good-Feel, in general, developing good Wario and Yoshi games (and an excellent Kirby spin-off) really rescued the reputation of those series.
 
Restarting Dread and I'd forgotten about the text dump at the start. The Space Warrior theme carries the sequence, but I feel like this is one aspect of the game that over-corrects for Other M. Spoken narration would be more effective to start.
 
Skittzo said:
The latter I think was the main issue. The Wii U had a plethora of 2D platformers and really not terribly much else. That was also the peak NSMB fatigue era.
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I'm both a 2D platformer fan and a WiiU apologist and even I'll admit this is accurate.

Barely Able said:
We talking the Labelle version or the rerelease for the movie?
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Labelle offc

Mr_No_U said:
Spending my Saturday driving around doing errands and listening to boomer (aka early 00s) music how about you
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Listening to a music theory breakdown of the Lava Reef Zone theme from Sonic 3K and no I'm not kidding

MisterSpo said:
Restarting Dread and I'd forgotten about the text dump at the start. The Space Warrior theme carries the sequence, but I feel like this is one aspect of the game that over-corrects for Other M. Spoken narration would be more effective to start.
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I'm pretty sure that opening sequence was deliberately very Super-ish. I never thought about it being a way to correct for Other M, unless you mean they're correcting for Other M by emulating Super.
 
I think Nintendo taking over Level-5 completely or a closer relationship (co-development instead of just publishing agreement) could have been beneficial to both parties in the long run but the stars never really aligned for it to make sense. When L5 was still successful they didn't really need Nintendo. After their attempt at publishing their games in the West failed and their sales declined there was still hope they could make it out by themselves. And now they're in the shitter and so are most of their IPs. There still seems to be some life in Ni No Kuni, not sure about the others. Personally, I just really wanted a new and improved Fantasy Life and it looks like I will never get that. Oh well.
 
Level-5 wanted to be The Pokémon Company, but failed to understand why TPC is so successful. Pokémon is still relevant because they actually plan things in advance, not just because they have an anime with the same title as the games they're making. Level-5 can't maintain a single franchise and still, somehow, wants to do two or three at the same time. Because of that, they now have entered a vicious circle that they can't get off. I really hope that they'd focus on what made them successful in the first place, maybe releasing a new Layton game on the Switch, but it won't happen because, as you have pointed out, Hino is too stubborn.

But I may be too harsh. Level-5 serves a purpose, after all : as long as they exist, there's at least one japanese publisher that Square Enix can look at and say "at least, we're not as badly managed as these guys".
 
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