Information Update // Noticias Nuevas - Nintendo 3DS & PSVita

Information Update - Nintendo 3DS

1.- We’ve heard lots of contradicting reports from developers regarding the graphical capabilities of the Wii U over the past few days, and no one seems to be able to give us a definitive answer. Nintendo of America has decided it has had enough and has issued a statement to Yahoo stating the following:

More After the Break...

“We do not focus on technology specs. We understand that people like to dissect graphics and processing power, but the experience of playing will always be more important than raw numbers.”


Sega is apparently busy rebooting the Sonic franchise after it was revealed earlier last week that the company has suffered huge financial losses. The rumour stems from TSSZwho state that the much-loved franchise could end up taking the Skylanders route with collectible figures providing a new form of interactive entertainment. Here’s what they have to say on the matter:

• Sonic Team and Sega are looking to better monetize Sonic
• Potentially “massive” and “total” reboot
• Sega and Sonic Team are “committed” to the reboo
• Speed, platforming, and surreal environments will remain
• Sonic and Dr. Eggman’s rivalry will continue
• Both characters may undergo a makeover
• Everything else is up in the air and may see radical changes, including Tails
• May birth a new universe and characters
• New gameplay methods and gimmicks
• Zones would be massively expanded and become their own world
• Zones feature individual levels masked as missions
• Idea likened to Burnout Paradise
• Includes a brand-new engine
• Photo-realism is of no concern
• May aggressively pursue a collection model as part of the reboot
• Targeting the young audience that enjoys physical collectibles
• May require physical emblems and collectibles to unlock special features
• SEGA inspired by Skylanders’ success
• Physical toys and collectibles may have an interactive component with a new cartoon series
• May offer classic characters in-game as DLC

2.- Amazon France has listed Animal Crossing 3D with a September 28th release date. Of course this could be a placeholder date, but since we haven’t had any release dates for the game thrown around for a while, let’s just hope and pray that this is the real deal. Nintendo will likely announce the release date for Animal Crossing 3DS at E3 in June.

Hirokazu Yasuhara, a games industry veteran and one of the game directors for the early Sonic titles has joined Nintendo. Nintendo and Yasuhara have both confirmed the move, but neither will reveal what his new position is within the Kyoto based company. Yasuhara has told press that he will be working at Nintendo of America in Redmond, Washington.

Nintendo of America has released a story based trailer for Pokemon Conquest which is known as Pokemon + Nobunaga’s Ambition in Japan. Nintendo announced earlier today that the game is coming to North America on June 18th. Nintendo Europe has yet to announce a release date for the game, but I assume we should get it around the same time.


Activision has confirmed that the forthcoming Men In Black: Alien Crisis will utilise the not-often-used Wii Zapper peripheral. Men in Black will be released on the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on May 25th, which is precisely the same day when Men in Black 3 will be available to view in glorious 3D in cinemas.

IGN has managed to get hold of a leaked correspondence from a GameStop manager which states that the Wii U will launch in North America on November 18th. You may remember that a leaked internal email from a large Japanese retailer had the launch penned for November 18th but the source for that was disputed by Kotaku. We should hear an official launch date for Wii U at this years E3 event in June.

3.- EA managed to beat the Bank of America to be crowned the worst company in America. Readers of The Consumerist were told to vote earlier this week for the worst company and the finalists were Bank of America and EA. EA won. Here’s what John Reseburg, EA’s senior director of corporate communications had to say about the matter:

“We’re sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco and weapons companies are all relieved they weren’t on the list this year. We’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide.”

‘Key’ developers have told online gaming publication CVG that Wii U games look as good as their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 counterparts, but the console struggles to compete against the platforms in other areas. The sources claim that graphical quality won’t be a problem, but key areas such as the CPU power could see the console having difficulty managing complicated physics and AI.

“Assumptions that Wii U games will look like ‘up rezzed’ current-gen titles with better textures aren’t quite right. They’ll look just as good, but not better,” one developer told CVG. “You shouldn’t expect anything special from a graphics point of view,”
“We’re still working on dev machines but there have definitely been some issues [in porting PS3/360 games],” our source said. “It’s not actually a problem getting things up and running because the architecture is pretty conventional, but there are constraints with stuff like physics and AI processing because the hardware isn’t quite as capable.”
The same source concluded, bluntly: “I suppose you don’t need sophisticated physics to make a Mario game.”

The teaser website for the mystery project between Capcom, SEGA, and Namco Bandai has been updatedwith a countdown clock. The clock is set to end next week, so it’s safe to assume we’ll probably get concrete details about the game at that time. For now though, we’ll just have to wait.

Ubisoft has announced a cartoonish farm simulator game known as Funky Barn 3D for the 3DS. It has the usual functions of a farm simulation game, with the focus being on raising animals, being strategic about your infrastructure, and managing your budgets. But it’s just done in a “funky and frenzied” way. I think I’ll pass on it myself, but if you’re interested, there’s screenshots after the break.

Nintendo has launched mario.nintendo.com, a website that focuses on all the games that feature Mario. If you’re wanting your Mario-fix, but reckon you haven’t played everything there is to play, it’s worth a look.

It seems, at least according to the ESRB website, that there are three Ninja Gaiden titles coming to the 3DS via the Virtual Console. The games are Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom. We’ll have to wait and see, of course, but there’s been plenty of news shared by the ESRB in the past, so I wouldn’t see why this is any different.

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Mister Gaga