Nintendo Europe may have given away the release date for the Nintendo 3DS in Europe after they accidentally published the release date for Paper Mario 3DS on their website.
Nintendo Europe accidentally posted a March 25th 2011 release date for Paper Mario 3DS on their website, leading European gaming publications to speculate that this is the actual release date for the Nintendo 3DS in Europe.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has spoken honestly to online gaming publications about the price point for the 3DS.
Whilst Nintendo have yet to give a specific price point or release date for the 3DS, Iwata did confirm that the technology residing within the machine inevitably costs more to produce than the technology powering the DSi.
“I have to refrain from talking specifically about the price point. What I can confirm is that, in terms of the production costs, it will cost more than the costs for the Nintendo DS today. Having said that, we believe we will produce enough value worthy of the production cost. We do not think we have to sell the products below cost.”
- Satoru Iwata
Nintendo have revealed a sleek new look for both the game cards and the game card cases for the recently unveiled Nintendo 3DS games console.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has informed Japanese business publication Nikkei that he’s closely monitoring the 3D TV market, and depending on consumer uptake, 3D could well be a prolific feature of the Wii’s successor.
“If you display a 3D image, the image quality becomes extremely bad, so we’d probably do it with the next system”, he said. “We’re thinking that the timing should be once the 3D television adoption rates crosses the 30% mark. We’re looking at the adoption trends.”
- Satoru Iwata
Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 3DS won’t simply be 3D ports of the classic Nintendo 64 games, but will instead feature new ideas to improve upon the existing formulas.
“Of course if all we were going to do was to port them over to 3DS we’d have a load of old games with 3D visuals. So we’re talking to the teams and coming up with ways of adding new ideas to the games.”
He also went on to say that the old games could be easier to play in 3D. “When you’re playing a game in a full rendered world it can be very difficult to judge the distance. With jumping up at question blocks in a Mario game, for example, 3D makes the game easier to play, while we are also coming up with new ideas too.
“The other thing that’s very important is that because it’s the same system for everybody, developers don’t have to worry about who has which TV and things like that.”
- Shigeru Miyamoto
Zelda series director Eiji Aonuma has spoken to online gaming publication CVG and informed them of the mysterious storyline that players will encounter once they play The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
“The final scene of our E3 trailer saw Link diving off a cliff into clouds – a very memorable scene,” he said. “That’s a very important point in the story this time around. Link is a young man who’s born and raised in this floating land – Skyloft. It may sound an interesting place to live, but Link doesn’t think about it like that.
“However, one day an incident reveals there is a land beneath the clouds. This other world is ruled by evil forces. It’s very dangerous. But Link is forced to go into it.
“One of the driving parts of the story is that Link has to travel back and forth between Skyloft and this other land. The thing that leads Link down is the subtitle, the Skyward Sword. The mysterious figure in the artwork we released last year is the Skyward Sword. When it’s leading Link or advising him it will take on this appearance.
“You’ve probably realised this already, but the Master Sword is very important. What exactly is it? That’s something you can maybe imagine for yourselves. Actually, I’ll go and tell you right out: The Skyward Sword becomes the Master Sword. Sorry about that.
“Sky or skies is also very important to the game. These clouds that surround these beautiful vistas is very powerful and that’s one of the reason we’ve implement the graphics style that we have. I really like this art style a lot. It only took one step in the approval process to get the okay from Mr Miyamoto!
“There’s still some work to do, a lot of polish, and when we’re finished we’ll find a nice harmony between graphics and gameplay.”
- Eiji Aonuma
Nintendo’s E3 specific website has revealed that the company are working extremely hard to bring some more classic unannounced franchises to the Nintendo 3DS:
Nintendo:
The highest rated video game of all time Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the critically acclaimed StarFox 64 are both making a stunning reappearance on the Nintendo 3DS complete with overhauled 3D visuals. Nintendo clearly loves us all.
Nintendo decidedly conquered E3 during today’s highly anticipated press conference, with the Japanese games company showing off a plethora of top class software and some extremely innovative hardware.
Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS games:
Nintendo 3DS: (via Kotaku)
Key games in development:
Edit: More games announced by Nintendo
Fansite Zelda Informer claims to have insider knowledge regarding the next instalment of the highly awaited Zelda game for the Nintendo Wii ahead of its expected reveal tomorrow at Nintendo’s E3 press conference.
- Zelda Wii’s official title is “The Legend of Zelda” without a subtitle.
- The game’s setting is said to take place several hundred years before the events of Ocarina of Time, revealing how the Master sword came to be.
- The girl in the Zelda artwork previewed at last year’s E3 is called “Zordiana”, and as expected she plays an important role.
- Seamless dungeons – smooth graduation. There will be dungeons with no bosses, and bosses with no dungeons. The first “dungeon”, an ice level, is said to be playable at E3.
- The hookshot is also used, but unlike past zeldas it won’t pull a player immediately towards a selected target. Players can swimg with the hookshot (like the grappling hook from Wind Waker).
- The control for bow and arrow is said to be similar to the one used in Wii Sports Resort.
- There are two levels of difficulty put in by Aonuma. Miyamoto didn’t want this option included, however there will be a normal mode for regular players, and a “Hero” mode with harder enemies and no “Super Guide” feature.
- Sometimes you have to “draw” a specific symbol on a door with your sword, to open it.
Edit: Fake, here’s the real deal – Zelda: Skyward Sword
