Nintendo Wii’s friend code approach to on the web multiplayer in games like Mario Kart has been a massive let down. It doesn’t give us the ability to make a pals list or even see what games our close friends are playing. Thankfully, it looks like Nintendo is lastly catching up with Xbox Live and PSN, as Satoru Iwata confirmed the infrastructure is currently in spot for a new “Nintendo Network” in the course of a current investor presentation.

“Unlike Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which has been focused upon particular functionalities and ideas, we are aiming to establish a platform exactly where a variety of services available by way of the network for our buyers shall be connected through Nintendo Network service so that the business can make complete proposals to customers,” said Iwata.

The new service, which will be available for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, will permit “competition and communication” between players and will also act as a source for paid DLC. On the Wii U players will also be able to develop a number of user accounts on a single console.

One more exciting bit of info mentioned for the duration of the presentation was the idea of full retail game downloads. Nintendo hasn’t stated whether or not this some thing they will do for certain, but Iwata did reveal that they now have the potential to do it. Retailer relationships and SD card storage limitations would have to be considered just before a choice is produced.

The new Nintendo Network need to launch by the finish of the year, in time for the new Wii U console, but its nevertheless not clear no matter whether the two will launch at the same time.

[Nintendo through Joystiq]

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Tags 3DS, nintendo, Nintendo Network, wii u

MTV Multiplayer

The Nintendo Wii U was reported final night to have built in communications technology that could lead to substantial applications.

Studying the ins and outs of the Nintendo Network and the reveal of a new 2D Mario game on the 3DS had been the main bits of data thrown about after final nights Nintendo investors meeting. However, there was a lot more news going about than just these intriguing tidbits! Nintendo president Satoru Iwata also detailed the Wii U’s built in communication technology and what it could possibly be utilized for with the console.

Far more and much more data keeps coming on the Wii U

Iwata had this to say on the built in NFC technologies:

Iwata- ”By installing this functionality, it will turn out to be attainable to produce cards and figurines that can electronically read and write information via noncontact NFC and to expand the new play format in the video game world. Adoption of this functionality will enable a variety of other possibilities such as employing it as a signifies of producing micropayments.”

While NFC is not quite so large in the United States it is quite huge overseas. This technologies is built into smartphone’s overseas and was really not too long ago utilised in the video game Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. This sort of technology could be employed for a lot of factors related to the figures from Skylanders. Think about a new Monster Hunter title or Pokemon game exactly where figures or guides you acquire in the real globe come with special codes you could use in game. Rather of having to type stated codes in you could just location it in front of the Wii U’s camera and it would be able to read the info and download whatever content material the code had for you.

This NFC type of functionality is just beginning out but could effortlessly turn into a lot bigger in gaming with camera’s being built into most of our hardware now. For now we can only guess as to what the NFC functionality might be used for. Maybe we will get a lot more details relating to this at E3 or even sooner.

Source: Game Informer

By Jordan Bayes on 27 January 2012

3DS Buzz

After months of long petitioning, Nintendo finally confirmed that they will be finally releasing Monolith Soft’s latest Wii role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles in the North America continent.

Released on June 10, 2011 in Japan, Xenoblade Chronicles wasn’t shown in this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo as ”Nintendo of America wouldn’t let them (Nintendo of Europe) because they didn’t want to show products they aren’t planning to sell.” Following Nintendo of Europe’s claim, fans of the games in IGN’s Nintendo Wii forums initiated their campaign “Operation Rainfall” with Xenoblade Chronicles as one of the three games demanded to be released in North America along with the other RPG games The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower.

Nintendo of America on their Facebook today finally responded by initially uploading images of characters from Xenoblade and now confirming that the critically acclaimed game will be arriving on Apr. 2012. The North American version will be ESRB rated T and will feature the same interface text and voices as the European-localized version of the game.

Make sure to check out the confirmation trailer here!

Platform Nation

The GameStop listing that revealed Xenoblade Chronicles coming to the United States also lists the long-awaited Mario Party 9 for a March release. We already know the Xenoblade Chronicles listing was legitimate so hopefully this means we will all get our Mario Party fix this March.

My Nintendo News

Wii U publication Wii U Daily is reporting that the specifications behind Wii U are extremely similar to those found in the Xbox 360. The publication claims it obtained the information from a Japanese developer who is currently working on porting a PlayStation 3 game to the Wii U. Nintendo themselves have yet to confirm Wii U specifications.

• Quad Core, 3 GHz PowerPC-based 45nm CPU, very similar to the Xbox 360 chip.
• 768 MB of DRAM “embedded” with the CPU, and shared between CPU and GPU
• Unknown, 40nm ATI-based GPU

My Nintendo News

Nintendo of America has posted a number of Xenoblade Chronicles images on its official Facebook page which basically confirms that the company is going to release the game in North America after all. To further back up this claim I posted a GameStop listing for Xenoblade Chronicles which is due for release April 3rd 2012. Great news for the US.

Tip: Christopher Heartnet

My Nintendo News

Famed Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has told Nintendo Power that gamers should expect big things from the next iteration of the Zelda franchise which will be on Wii U. Aonuma obviously wouldn’t go into too much detail but he did say that the next Zelda will challenge the series conventions. What would you like to see featured in Zelda Wii U?

“Skyward Sword is a title where we took aim at all the conventions of the Zelda series. While that may have been difficult, I think that confronting those challenges resulted in something that has a great deal of value. When it comes to Wii U, we’ll obviously want to add new elements that take advantage of the capabilities of the platform. I think using that as a lens through which we once again challenge the conventions of Zelda is more important than just making another Zelda game. With that in mind, please expect big things from the Zelda series to come!”

My Nintendo News

Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime has told Reuters that the company doesn’t want a repeat of the Nintendo 3DS launch fiasco when it launches the Wii U sometime after April 2012.

“The initial price on the 3DS was also too high, something that Nintendo will be careful about this time around.”

“We had to go back and reduce the price of 3DS and we certainly don’t want to go through that when we launch Wii U.”

My Nintendo News

The latest edition of US gaming publication Nintendo Power reveals that the long-awaited Rhythm Heaven Fever is coming to North America sometime during February next year. The game is currently available in Japan and will be available in Europe early next year.

My Nintendo News

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has exclusively revealed that the recently released Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has sold over 535,000 copies since its U.S launch on November 20th making it the fastest-selling Legend of Zelda game ever.

My Nintendo News