Mistwalker Announces Two RPGs for the DS 68
Mistwalker studios, the studio headed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, has announced they are hard at work on two RPGs for the Nintendo DS. One is a portable version of their just-released-for-360 title Blue Dragon, while a second title called AWAY: Tsuresarareta Hitobito has few details attached at this point. "Little is known about the title outside of the fact that it's being developed by Artoon. They are notable for having Naoto Oshima--character designer for Sonic and Dr. Robotnik--on board. The only hint about the game is the subtitle, 'Tsuresarareta Hitobito,' which means 'kidnapped people'--strange considering the release date of January 31, 2008 is quickly approaching." Great news for RPG-loving DS owners, who can add these titles to the stack with Dragon Quest IX . It's also an interesting example of a primarily Microsoft studio creating content for a Nintendo console, which coincides with rumours of Viva Pinata for the Wii currently in the works.
I'm surprised... (Score:1)
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Though if it ever changes, I think it'll work out pretty well. Not really sure what kind of MMO Nintendo might create (with Mario, Link, a
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Well, I guess that leaves me with only one option. Down with MMO's! Who's with me?
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Not only that, but if there is one thing that all MMOs have in common, it's patches. Patches to add content, patches to fix exploits, or just balance changes. It's the method that they use to help ensure people keep paying for a subscript
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Nintendo has traditionally stifled the idea mass-communication on their systems
Nintendo never stifled the idea of mass-communicating, only YOUR idea of mass-communication, which doesn't work with a larger demographic like the one Nintendo always targeted.
Thus the friend codes on both the DS and the Wii
Only people that never used any of Nintendo online services would say such a nonsense. There are several high profile Nintendo games that don't require any friends code at all to play against others. Only when some kind of communication is required, they require friends code.
This probably keeps maintaining game network costs to a minimum as well. So building/maintaining even a simple MMO infrastructure is more than likely out of the question, as Nintendo seems rooted in not having subscriptions to play online
That's wrong of course. Nintendo doesn't make a MMO becau
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So, my idea of communication is pretty spot on
Compared to your broad definition it is, but reality is different from utopia, and Nintendo has to deal with reality. The only demographic annoyed by their online friend's code, is the hardcore one coming from PC, which for the most part don't even want or own a DS and a Wii (that's my opinion, not a fact), but love to bitch about their online.
With the friend code lock in, you can't really even say 'Good game' to random people. Unless I've missed something.
You missed that you can. The friend's code is there especially for that: make sure that both parties actually want to be friends, before allowing higher relationshi
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I have many fond memories of Ragnarök online. It was a mostly empty game world but it had interesting game play. Like secret of mana with more character types. I hope the Ds iteration will preserve that game play but maybe populate the world more. I could take or leave the MMO component. Having
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It is not empty at all anymore, and is still being enhanced and developed.
They just added another area recently. If you say it was empty, I guess you played the beta only.
It sure enough is not empty now.
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It was a long time ago that I played. Not beta but early in it's offering. I didn't find that there was too much making me stay so I left.
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But instead, we get more micro-game collections, and confused platformers bewildered how to handle a stylus.
I want Civ. I want Starcraft. Diablo. Master of Magic. Battlefield.
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X-Com, yes I want that one.
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There's Age of Empires III, too, isn't there? Some RTS like that, IIRC.
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Nintendo is a Japanese word meaning "wasted potential"
Nope! Or was it a joke? My joke detector is broken then.
Consider that, with a pointing device, internet support, and a seperate screen per player, the DS is ideal for almost every smash PC hit for the past decade or so. It's why I bought one - I saw Metroid Hunters demo and thought "PC gaming on handheld!".
Seems like the western developers still didn't understood that.
But instead, we get more micro-game collections, and confused platformers bewildered how to handle a stylus.
We get much more than that actually.
I want Civ. I want Starcraft. Diablo. Master of Magic. Battlefield. X-Com. Populous. Battlezone.
Your small list is a perfect example of what happens: western devs have very BAD support for the DS. The DS is mainly supported by japanese games.
Isn't that amazing? Most of the hits on the DS are eastern devs games, the western devs still don't support this handheld console properly.
They support the PSP way more, which is dragging them down, but I wo
PC games ARE on the DS (Score:2)
It's worse than that (Score:2)
The DS is *made* for diablo, starcraft, etc. Where are they???
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This would sell a billion copies.
Um...OK? (Score:2)
Let me start by saying if anyone ports good RPGs to the DS, I will buy them. I love RPGs and I love my DS. (I am a non-philandering geek who does business travel. Enough said.)
So: call me crazy, but didn't Blue Dragon get rated rather poorly for the 360? What is the business case for them porting a mediocre-selling title?
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Contact? The first six Final Fantasy games? Pokemon? Mario & Luigi (though quite a few people prefer the GBA version)? What about half-sim half-RPGs such as Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, LostMagic, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Harvest Moon? Do those all suck?
A rather significant portion of those aren't DS games. All of the Final Fantasy remakes except Final Fantasy III, several iterations of Pokemon games, the first Mario & Luigi, the Fire Emblem games, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Harvest Moon are all Game Boy Advance games.
Yes, they work on the DS courtesy of backwards compatibility. But when one of the dozens of different versions of the GBA can be had for significantly less money than a DS or DS Lite, that's a relatively minor point
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There are a lot of really good RPGs for the GBA. There are a couple for the DS, don't get me wrong, but the selection is much more limited in comparison.
WHAT?!
I may not like all of them, you may not like all of them, but even discounting the numerous huge RPG that are coming to the DS, and only counting those already out, there are far more than a couple of them. Of course, not all of them are released outside of Japan yet (I've tried to put them on end of the list). That's because the devs support for the DS comes mainly from eastern devs.
And I won't even count Action/RPG, which I do not consider as RPG.
Let's go into list wars:
Narnia
Children of Mana
Heroes
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More to the point, there are a fewer great RPGs for the DS. Yeah, this is subjective, but few of the games you've listed have gotten the kind of positive critical reviews of games like Golden Sun, Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, to say nothing of the Final Fantasy remakes. The Lunar DS, Nar
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The key phrase was "in comparison." Compared to the GBA, there are considerably fewer RPGs for the DS. Plus, if you're counting the Mana games, you're not really excluding action/RPGs. :-)
So you're comparing the library of a not yet 3 years old console with one which is more like 6+?
Is that a joke?
The mana games I'm counting are not action/RPG. One is tactical RPG, and the other have several elements of traditional RPG. These are not the old mana games. These I didn't include.
More to the point, there are a fewer great RPGs for the DS. Yeah, this is subjective, but few of the games you've listed have gotten the kind of positive critical reviews of games like Golden Sun, Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, to say nothing of the Final Fantasy remakes.
Which is why I specifically said that you may not like them, but they are still RPG. ..." clan.
I see you are in the "game X don't count because
Sorry, but actually, the DS already has more critically acclaimed games, l
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So you're comparing the library of a not yet 3 years old console with one which is more like 6+?
Golden Sun came out in 2001, the same year as the GBA. Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis in 2002. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance in 2003. Most of the highly regarded GBA RPGs came out fairly early in the system's life cycle. There's no reason that the DS, which is rapidly approaching its third anniversary, shouldn't be able to boast an equally impressive library. And yet, it really doesn't.
Which is why I specifically said that you may not like them, but they are still RPG.
Which is why it's entirely irrelevant to the issue I was discussing.
The issue was the number of "really good" RPGs for th
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But then came this:
It sold well, sure, but doesn't appear to have been received all that well by gamers
Which is nonsense of course. If it sold well, that's because it has been well received by gamers.
Reviews are no indication of how well a title has been received by gamers.
If you want to talk popularity of RPG between GBA and DS, like I said, you can refuting it now is a matter of opinion, but after this huge DS RPG winter and after DQ IX is released, there just won't be any wondering as to which of the DS or the GBA
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Which is nonsense of course. If it sold well, that's because it has been well received by gamers.
Not so much. It's an indirect indicator, at best. It's actually a much better indicator of how well a game has been advertised. Word-of-mouth advertising is a big part of advertising, and that is pretty closely tied to how well a game is received, but there are too many other factors to draw a direct relation between how many people bought a game and how many people actually enjoyed a game.
Reviews are no indication of how well a title has been received by gamers.
Again, not so much. They're very far from perfect, of course, but at least they are directly concerned with the actua
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the fan/player ratings are pretty much all within a few points of the other, which suggests that they're at least roughly accurate
No, that's not true at all. That supposes that most buyers go to Internet review sites and rate the games they bought. That's just not true at all, especially for the DS, which has lots of casual gamers that don't even know what these sites.
There are countless examples of a huge difference between the score these sites give to games, and their popularity. The DS training or mini games are the perfect examples of that.
it still suffers from the fact that it took considerably longer to reach that point than the GBA
Which can be explained by the fact that the DS dominates in game sales far more than the
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That supposes that most buyers go to Internet review sites and rate the games they bought. That's just not true at all, especially for the DS, which has lots of casual gamers that don't even know what these sites.
Which is why it's only roughly accurate. But it's also the only even vaguely reliable metric we have, short of going on and individually surveying everyone who bought a particular game. I'm really not trying to be tyrannical on this point, and I'm not even really arguing your point. But, again, such reviews at least directly speak to the quality issue where most other methods of measuring popularity (like sales figures) do not, and we can at least make a meaningful comparison within that limited framework.
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And again, you may not like these games, but they are still RPG that some people may like.
Comparing a 6+ years old console library to a less than 3 years one is stupid anyway, especially when one is from a previous generation, and this stupid argument which already doesn't hold (because of various Pokemon, FF III, Tales of, FFXII,
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You're wrong of course, all of these games I cited have been released.
Since we're talking in English, I'm thinking of games released in English.
Read again what I wrote, the clearly separated end of the list are the games released in Japan only for now.
No, you had games in both sections that are not released in America yet.
Comparing a 6+ years old console library to a less than 3 years one is stupid anyway
It is when you're debating between getting a used gameboy for $60 or a DS for $130. Anyways, the DS library hasn't been growing nearly as fast as the GBA's did. Let's compare GBA games released in the first 3 years to the first 3 years of the DS. Only counting good (because I'm not listing every one) GBA RPGs released through 2004 (using IGN), we have:
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Your list separates the different versions of Pokemon while mine doesn't, which is on purpose I'm sure.
Besides, I didn't count any Harvest Moon, because if I had, that would make at least 2 more games.
You're adding ports to, while I didn't. You're counting games like Mario & Luigi, while I didn't do the same for the DS.
This just shows that if this is true or not is a matter of opinion, which will not be anymore in 6 months.
I don't understand what your point is, but if it is that RPG fans are
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Your list separates the different versions of Pokemon while mine doesn't
Yours did, too.
Besides, I didn't count any Harvest Moon, because if I had, that would make at least 2 more games.
There's only been one Harvest Moon released for DS, unless you count Rune Factory, which you already did.
You're adding ports to, while I didn't.
FFIII and Xenosaga aren't ports?
I don't understand what your point is, but if it is that RPG fans are starved more than on the GBA at the same relative time after launch, I could agree one year ago, but can't now.
Agree with me or not, but the GBA was better for RPGs than the DS is now. In raw numbers it released more RPGs faster, and it had better ones. I'm been trying to play Contact right now, and the game just sucks. There's hardly a storyline, the combat system sucks and isn't really RPGish, and it's too focused on being "quirky". I played Lunar Dra
en_GB games work in the US GBA (Score:1)
No, you had games in both sections that are not released in America yet.
Were any of them released in Europe before the United States? For example, the GBA games Kuru Kuru Kururin and Payback (not RPGs) are out in Ireland and the United Kingdom, but they probably won't see an official release in North America until after I'm dead. Still, the North American GBA and DS play Irish/UK GBA games just fine.
It is when you're debating between getting a used gameboy for $60 or a DS for $130.
As opposed to a used DS? Besides, this factor of 2 difference is still much smaller than the factor of 4 or 5 difference between a new PS2 and a new PS3.
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Were any of them released in Europe before the United States? For example, the GBA games Kuru Kuru Kururin and Payback (not RPGs) are out in Ireland and the United Kingdom, but they probably won't see an official release in North America until after I'm dead. Still, the North American GBA and DS play Irish/UK GBA games just fine.
Not on his list, though there is a Tingle RPG in Europe that hasn't been to the US (yet?) but it doesn't look all that good.
As opposed to a used DS?
Yeah, that was probably unfair, but I didn't know the price of used DS off the top of my head.
Besides, this factor of 2 difference is still much smaller than the factor of 4 or 5 difference between a new PS2 and a new PS3.
Yeah, but I didn't tell anyone to get a new PS3.
The DS does have good reasons to get it, for instance it has resurrected the adventure genre on consoles. Hotel Dusk is a really amazing game, and there's other great games in other genres depending on what you like. And even though i
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Do GBA games count? My all-time favourite game is Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES. One of the first games I bought for my DS was the GBA port of that game. I also bought the GBA ports of Mario 2, Mario 3 and Super Mario World. I actually own more GBA games for my DS Lite than DS games at this point. I never owned a Gameboy Advance, but I really enjoy the fact that the DS is backwards compatible with it.
The only DS games I own at this point are
Nothing new here (Score:2)
I'd be a little more surprised if they started releasing games for the Wii. Not shocked, mind you: I'm old enough to remember when Mattel, Atari, and Coleco used to release
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MS Game Studios and Nintendo (Score:2)
The general response was that they prefer working with MS, partly because their work/life balance is better in that MS has the money to look after it's employees and that on a technical level MS' development platforms were nicer to work with. However, at the
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It's not suprising to me therefore that Rare is possibly intending to port Viva Pinata to the Wii, after all MS clearly isn't opposed to letting it's studios work with Nintendo, Rare's roots are with Nintendo and it's something the staff seem happy to do.
They mostly do that to help leave the PSP behind. It's completely useless, as the DS don't need them. But if they can make money in the process...
Likewise with Mistwalker, whilst they may be a primarily Microsoft dev studio I'd imagine their situation is pretty similar to that of Rare's.
No it's not, Mistwalker is an independant studio, and is not owned by MS AT ALL. They are bound by contract maybe for their first games, but that's all.
I think it all reinforces the view that Microsoft doesn't actually see the Wii as a particularly direct threat to the 360 as they have sometimes mentioned in the past because of the different target audiences of the two consoles and because for those willing to pay the price of a PS3 they can instead get both a Wii and a 360 in the process neither harming the sales of one or the other.
Huge pile of nonsense and delusion, added to flawed logic.
The Wii is a direct competitor to the XBox 360, which is exactly why these games are not developed for the Wii, but for the DS, which is the one not in d
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I dont think its a bad idea at all, people will be more likely to take a $30 chance with a console they already own than a $360 chance on one they dont. If they like Mistwalkers games they will be more likely to take the big plunge later.
I say they won't.
Bear with me, but this Blue Dragon game on DS is nothing. Nothing compared to the Dragon Quest IX juggernaut that is coming.
People won't buy a XB360 just because they liked a game with the same name on DS. If one thing, this will validate that Mistwalker can make RPG for consoles less powerful than the XB360. So naturally, people will wait for these games on the Wii, not on XB360.
All the flaws of the XB360 in Japan won't go away for one game. That's assuming the game will be good, be notic
NOT NEWS: Archaic Sealed Heat (Score:2)
Is there a reason (Score:1)
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Except if your "nearly all" doesn't include Metroid, Fire Emblem or Zelda (even Wii Sports). Which would be stupid.
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Guess you are a troll then, I should have seen you coming from a mile away.
Just say you don't like the neo-whatever Nintendo style, or go all the way out saying you don't like the look of anything Nintendo does, and we'll understand. That's your right after all, and then I can answer your question: there's no reason apart from your tastes and poor image culture.
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I have owned several gameboys, starting with the black and white, than the GBA followed by the folding GBA, which was a huge improvement. I have not replaced it because I have seen no compelling DS games.
I used to enjoy games like Castlevania; however, I grew bored with the side scrolling "jump" games. Metroid is tempting and it shows
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So, is it just that the dev packs make this style of characters unusually easy, is it that about 75% (number based on your sample) of the authors of nintendo games like that style, or is there some other reason... not a troll, a question
I told you already: you have poor image culture. You see exactly the same thing (cartoon like characters) where there are actually many different styles.
That's like me saying I don't like all the games that have grotesque characters that try to mimic reality (uncanny valley).
Final Fantasy Spirits Within showed that people don't like "realistic" looking characters (uncanny valley again). So perhaps that's just a matter of the devs seeing what people prefer to se, to, you know, sell more games.
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but then again, consoles are usually for the casual or recreational players. but still, actually this makes it hard for me to accept ninendo as well
Get your facts straight! (Score:2)
Just because their first projects released were exclusive XBox 360 titles does not make them a MS studio.
That's why it's no surprise they went the way of the DS, as their projects failed as expected in the japanese market, and they will never make a good name for their studio, if they go on developing exclusively for XBox 360.
That's because their core audience is japanese, and they have to cater to them.
Is it just me (Score:2)