The latest Nintendo Investors Meeting has come and gone, and thanks to our friends at neogaf we’ve had a steady stream of Q&A translations that show Nintendo has been doing a little future proofing and isn’t quite ready to give up on the Wii U.
It seems Nintendo is trying to get some third party assistance, if not with games directly then with the production of assets and cut-scenes to help speed up their ability to release games of Nintendo quality in a prompt and swift manner. Miyamoto also claimed that a lot of the growing pains from their first experiences with new developmental techniques are behind them, and now that they have a better base of knowledge there should be far less delays than previously experienced. This is great news because a large problem with the Wii U was the crippling delays of first party titles when the system was already suffering from a lack of third party support.
In addition to this, we can expect more derivative and spin-off games. For example, re-purposing assets from Super Mario 3D World to create Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker with a much shorter development cycle. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the new Mario Kart 8 engine and anti-gravity concepts could be reworked into a certain high speed, futuristic racer either. There’s also Hyrule Warriors. It seems Nintendo is opening up to second party collaborations with their legendary franchises. Many developers would give various assortments of body parts to get their hands on The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Star Fox, F-Zero, or maybe even the holy grail itself: Mario. Koei Tecmo and Bandai Namco have been shown willing to jump aboard, getting hands on with the The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, and Super Smash Bros. franchises on Wii U.
Third parties may not want to port their games to Wii U for good reason, Nintendo fans do seem almost unwilling to support third parties at this point, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. If third parties are allowed to release Nintendo games on the Wii U, they just might be willing to help the struggling console out. Even if that fails to draw enough aid though, the ground work has been laid. If third parties won’t make games for Wii U, Nintendo will just release more of their own.
But wait, there’s more! The mysterious amiibo was brought up yet again. With its release looming on the horizon Nintendo has been extremely tight lipped on its implementation beyond Super Smash Bros. We know amiibo will play a role in Mario Kart 8, Mario Party 10, Yoshi’s Wooly World, Hyrule Warriors, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and now (possibly) Animal Crossing. How will they be implemented? No clue. Tight lipped as ever and choosing to remain vague, Miyamoto only said that they’ll be used in interesting ways to extend the life of games.
The real news regarding amiibo is that they will take many forms and not just the figures we know now. There are plans for card-based amiibo and amiibo figures of variable size. At E3 they said they could make an amiibo as big or as small as they wanted, and now it seems they’re doing just that, providing amiibo-family items at several price ranges. Unfortunately we’ll likely have to wait until next year before Nintendo fills us in one what exactly these new ones will do.
There were more things mentioned, such as the new QoL product, but to sum up the important gaming related points: Less delays going forward, more Wii U titles expected next year, more spin-offs incoming, the Pikmin franchise is not dead and the short films may come to Wii U, amiibo will totally do something, eventually come in several shapes and sizes, and the much maligned region locking may or may not be removed going forward.
As of this writing, the official translation has not been posted. However, if there’s anything that’s been missed, feel free to let us know in the comments section.
