Industry Chatter 10.11.2011

How about some Pachter, Wii and U to go with your day?

By James Stank. Posted 10/11/2011 19:04 Comment on this     ShareThis

We’re back with another installment of Industry Chatter. This week we’ve got Pachter predictions, Team Ninja and Wii U, and a new holiday Wii bundle. Read on and enjoy.

Wii U not quite “next generation”

In a recent interview with Industry gamers, Pachter says he’s not too sure where Wii U is going to fit in the market. This confusion stems from the fact that Wii U is only as powerful as current generation home consoles. “Developers have to contend with differences between the Wii U and current generation consoles, then have to figure out what to do with the controls.”

Pachter wasn’t too sure that the launch would be a smashing success, either. I’m sure the terrible 3DS launch may have something to do with it. “The [launch date] is still up in the air, and as far as I know, there are no significant third party exclusives,” he said. “Instead, we’ll see iterations of third party games already on the market, which is unlikely to drive significant hardware sales.” It’s true that third party games on Wii U probably won’t sell too well if they’ve been available on competitors’ consoles months before Wii U launches. Finally, Pachter outlines what he thinks a successful console needs at launch. “In order for the launch to be hugely successful…the console will need three things: a competitive price, compelling first party launch titles, and compelling third party launch titles,” Pachter said. “We don’t know if the Wii U will have any of these, so it’s quite difficult to predict a hugely successful launch.”

From what we know right now, he’s definitely right. We have no idea what Nintendo’s working on, and don’t know about any launch titles. There are the Wii series-esque games, but those aren’t going to sell consoles any more, and a new Zelda is out the window, so what is there?

Team Ninja wants to push Wii U to the limit

In an interview with VG247, Peter Garza, Tecmo Koei’s head of localization confirmed that Ninja Gaiden III is still being worked on for Wii U. “It is still there. It’s not being developed in parallel, but we do have the game up and running on the dev hardware. We’re still playing with control schemes to see what would be fun with Wii U, but it’s definitely there and it’s definitely getting worked on.” This should at least quell some of the fears that development had ceased, but when asked about how much they were pushing Wii U, Garza said, “That’s kind of hard to say right now because, like I said, we’re just getting it up and running now on Wii U. And we’re still finding out what the hardware can do and how to work with the hardware itself. Right now, we’re at a very early stage, so we can’t say that we’re pushing it to its limits right now. But I can tell you that the team being what it is is definitely interested in pushing the hardware as hard as it can.”

Of course that’s always the line about Wii U’s power. “We don’t know. We’re still getting into it.” In other words, not that much. I wonder what PS3’s limit is compared to Wii U’s. For all we know, they might be pretty close. Then again, maybe not.

There is a new Wii Bundle on the way

Hot on the heels of the new Wii arriving in Europe, we now have word that the non-GameCube playing Wii is coming to America this holiday season. This new black Wii will retail for the current Wii price of $149.99, and includes a copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii along with a soundtrack CD of Super Mario Galaxy. As always, a Wii Remote (Plus) and Nunchuk are included. The new Wii will sit exclusively on it’s side, and has no support for anything GameCube. So if you want to play Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime with a GameCube controller, you’ll have to find a different Wii.

So there you have it. Nothing too exciting, but one has to think that the closer we get to the end of the year, the more Wii U information will be revealed.

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