TemjinZero

@jph89

See, I'm on the opposite side of the fence in that respect. You named a lot of the 1st party Mario games, but I play those only occasionally. For the 3DS I got Mario Kart 7, OoT remake, and the only thing I sort of want is StarFox 64 remake. I'm not too interested in Kid Icarus because as I mentioned, it's before my time so I don't know what the series is about, though I'm willing to try it out. As for many of the games you've mentioned, I'm not even aware of most of them, ie Fire Emblem. I never got into Fire Emblem though I do love Tactical RPGs, so maybe the 3DS one will get me. I'm a huge Pokemon fan, but you don't need a 3DS for black and white 2.

For Vita, I've got Uncharted, Lumines, Super Stardust. Thinking about getting BlazBlue: CS Extend, SFxTekken (already have the console versions, and by SFxTekken, I 'have it' cause I've already pre-paid for the thing) so if I like those enough, might buy for Vita. Looking forward to Gravity Rush, LoH: Zero no Kiseki (whatever they name it here), the Persona 4 remake as I never played P4.

If I were comparing launches. The Vita launch feels more successful because I've bought more games I want to play. In contrast, I picked up a 3DS 7 months after the fact and already own more Vita games than 3DS games. That's not to say that the Vita won't lose steam/momentum after the fact, but as a consumer, I'm more optimistic and have found more interesting products to buy from one over the other.

@Co consoles sell great, maybe the software does too. Sales numbers are one metric, customer satisfaction another.

The Wii is a spectacular success. The games aside from one release a year however are underwhelming.

The DS is an unrivaled success in software and hardware. Even now DS games are being produced that I'd love to buy.

Have you took a look at the upcoming 3DS releases? The most appealing game is most certainly Kid Icarus: Uprising. Kid Icarus however is waaaay before my time. Certainly the game seems interesting and worth a try, but I'm not exactly screaming to buy it.

There were also interesting 3DS games set out for Japan, such as Time Travelers, as well as that other game where they featured some cool positional cutscene... but no news of these for North America.

My issues with the Wii are the lack of software I want. This is finally being remedied by NoA giving in to release Xenoblade and The Last Story to NA so I can get a hold of 3rd party games without having to hack my Wii. Let's also keep in mind we are at the end of the Wii's cycle, as the Wii U was announced last year. Not being happy with having purchased a Wii until just before the next gen console is release to me is the same experience as with the PSP.

You can cite hardware sales as much as you like, and they're true. But those numbers will never tell you how happy customers are with their consoles. Game sales are much closer to such a statistic, though not fully representative either.

For one thing... high console sales can also mean super fragile consoles that break a lot and aren't being covered in their warranties. I've gone through 4 DSs myself.

On the other hand, for my Vita, I've got 3-4 games already, and I'm looking to pick up another in just a few months. As a customer, Sony is selling me things I want to buy. Cool. Nintendo isn't really doing that for me, so I just won't buy. However, a lot of people are happy about their Vitas and I'm sure there are a bunch of people happy with their 3DSs, but I certainly am not one of them. In fact, I'm not the only person in this comment thread to be more happy with the Vita than they were with the 3DS.

Can you really say Nintendo isn't making mistakes by not promising some of the spectacular titles they plan on releasing in other parts of the world here in NA? I'm STILL waiting for news.

I agree totally with the article. Memory cards need that price reduction, but otherwise, the Vita has had a strong start.

I didn't buy a 3DS until the LoZ bundle came out because I wanted a special looking 3DS. I hardly touch my 3DS now. Even when I do, sleep mode drains so much power, it feels like the thing can never leave the charger. Even then, I've had difficulty finding 3DS games I like. OoT remake and Mario Kart 7 are great but now the 3DS finds itself in the PSP's position... when I wanted a PSP, I wanted PSOne games portable and by the end of the PSP's life, I did get that.

With the 3DS, feels like the only appealing games to me so far have been the remakes. Unfortunately, I'm not a Mario fan, so I didn't get the new Mario game which I'm sure is great, but there's been no appealing software. Plus, the online store, albeit improved, is still crap.

The Vita on the other hand? I bought it without games as well. The next day, I picked up Uncharted (physical copy, because 3.3GB is too hefty to download) a 32GB card, and I'm looking to nab Lumines, Super Stardust, and I'm already excited about future releases like Gravity Rush and Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki (WHICH HAD BETTER COME OVER). That and all the PSP games I haven't finished yet because I had slowly transitioned my collection to digital.

I have to admit, I'm not looking forward to anything on the 3DS... and that might be because of the lack of announcements of games. Might also do with NoA not bringing over some spectacular stuff from Japan, the same issues the Wii suffers from. I think Nintendo is really in need of some retrospective because I don't think they really know what they should be doing to capture markets/demand.

@handgunVShelicopter

YESSS... PLEASE. You guys have to at least commemorate the passing of the torch with one last good ol' Joystiq podcast! :(

I'm kinda sad we'll never get to hear Chris, Luddy, and Justin on the same show ever again. :(

@TemjinZero

Ack... lagged double post. I'm sorry! T_T

@DjiegoMoz

Boring combat is right. As compared to previous FFs, yes, it was worse in every single aspect.

In previous FF games, I found though I liked having battle settings on Active for the fast-pace, I actually more often switched the settings to 'Wait' so that I could treat the games with ATB gauges more turn based and think out moves more properly and react to battle situations as they changed.

FFX was great in that sense being full turn based for me. I enjoyed the character switching and specialization for handling enemy types and it made the game's battle system really fun and I used every character evenly, unlike other FF games where I pick my favorite team and go.

13's battle system was a bunch of mashing X. That or wishing I hadn't learned so many low level abilities that cluttered the battle menus up so badly it took so long to get to the command I wanted, and then died because I was fumbling around the menu. After 40 hours, I got tired of spamming X and just enabled remember cursor position and left it on auto-attack because that was more effective than me looking for the attack. I eventually started falling asleep while in combat due to combat being heavily dragged out with ridiculously high enemy HP values.

You can't really say that's good game design when it's more thoughtless than ever.

@DjiegoMoz

Boring combat is right. As compared to previous FFs, yes, it was worse in every single aspect.

In previous FF games, I found though I liked having battle settings on Active for the fast-pace, I actually more often switched the settings to 'Wait' so that I could treat the games with ATB gauges more turn based and think out moves more properly and react to battle situations as they changed.

FFX was great in that sense being full turn based for me. I enjoyed the character switching and specialization for handling enemy types and it made the game's battle system really fun and I used every character evenly, unlike other FF games where I pick my favorite team and go.

13's battle system was a bunch of mashing X. That or wishing I hadn't learned so many low level abilities that cluttered the battle menus up so badly it took so long to get to the command I wanted, and then died because I was fumbling around the menu. After 40 hours, I got tired of spamming X and just enabled remember cursor position and left it on auto-attack because that was more effective than me looking for the attack. I eventually started falling asleep while in combat due to combat being heavily dragged out with ridiculously high enemy HP values.

You can't really say that's good game design when it's more thoughtless than ever.

Uh. No. More frequent releases isn't the problem.

Developing and releasing better games. Squeenix should try that for a change with the Final Fantasy series. 13's issue has very little to do with when it came out.

You could release a FF game in the middle of July, and people will still buy it like hotcakes.

A game not being that good will review like crap no matter when you release it or how much of it you stuff down people's throats.

Hearing this kind of news really just rubs me the wrong way, it's like they have no idea what FF13's issues really are. >_>

Yes, you are saving the world every single time.

Let me put it this way, would you rather NOT be saving the world? Perhaps Mail Delivery guy JRPG seems more enticing.

I like that you've spent most of your analysis on the characters, and i think that's good.

It can be exceedingly difficult to create a story that doesn't revolve around saving the world, as it's just so easy to fall back on, but putting the overall goal of saving the world as part of the issue is more difficult. The scope of the game becomes rather limited. What greater thing is there to do other than saving the world? Saving a cat from a tree branch?

The issue more or less revolves around stories not scaling down well, you could be an everyday sorta hero character, and while that has some appeal, you're not opening up design space to do 'epic' things in game.

Given a choice, I think most people would choose to save a world than save someone's pet. Going further, the guy saving the world is probably saving the guys who can save peoples' pets.

INAFUNE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!