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Last Story Designer Has High Hopes for Wii U and JRPGs
Takuya Matsumoto, lead designer of the upcoming Wii-exclusive The Last Story, voiced his opinion on Wii U being a future home for JRPGs. He reported to Siliconera, “I feel that the Wii U’s interface, as with other tablet devices, works best for browsing and arranging information.” Matsumoto went on to say, “One merit is the ability to use a touch screen to directly manipulate information, such as looking up a monster’s weak point or, like with a car’s GPS, as a tool to understand battlefield conditions on a sub screen.”
Takuya’s comments weren’t exclusively aimed at the concepts of accessibility and organization in JRPGs, though. “Also, I think that things like saving information gathered during gameplay, adding to your own character’s memories and experiences, and sharing with other players via Wi-Fi and the Miiverse will become an experience typical to the Wii U,” Matsumoto explained.
It’s nice to have such a powerful name advocating for Wii U as a primary platform for Japanese RPGs. As an enthusiast of the genre, and of course the Wii U, I sincerely hope this is the case.
Source: Siliconera
Capcom Reveals It Has Some Good Stuff in the Works for Wii U
If it has seemed like Capcom’s been unusually quiet about its involvement with Nintendo’s upcoming box, it’s because it has been. At least, that is until today when they cryptically said something about this topic, without saying anything at all. That seems to be a trend with eastern developers (see: just about everything Square-Enix’s PR department has ever released). Capcom’s Christian Svensson had this to say about the subject: “Some good stuff is coming and I’d love to tell you more… but for now, I have to keep it a surprise. Sorry.”
Source: Capcom Unity
EA Producer Talks Wii U, FIFA’s Graphics and Online Friends List
EA’s come under fire by fans over the past few days, after revealing that its Wii U iterations of Fifa and Madden won’t exactly be on par with their PS3/360 counterparts. In an interview with EA’s FIFA 13 Wii U Line Producer Matt Prior, this was addressed. Prior, in response to a question about the graphical capabilities of Fifa on Wii U, said, “…they are on par [with 360/PS3] and there are a couple of features that we have been able to graphically enhance. It’s not going to be miles ahead, but two things we have improved just in terms of the fidelity and quality are the pitch. If you have a look at the pitch texture there’s a lot more detail in it and we’re working on that as we speak to hopefully improve it even further.
One of the common complaints is the crowd, and if you look at the crowd on the Wii U it’s double the resolution. We had limited resources in which to improve, so we wanted to make sure we got the biggest bang for the buck, if you will. Obviously the pitch is something you’re staring at like 90 percent of the time when you’re playing, so crowd and pitch were two areas we focused on.
With new hardware, one of the challenges is—unlike PS3 and 360, where you’ve got a game, it’s finished, it’s done, and you build on top of it next year—we don’t have a game. So we have to build that foundation, and just like building anything, you need a solid foundation that’s stable on which to build.”
When asked about online play, Prior reacted with, “A friends tab that’s always there in the front end on the [Wii U GamePad] so you can tap it, you’ve got a list of friends, (which pulls from) the friends list from the Wii U console. You can tap an invite to them, or you can tap a message to them. Obviously, touch screen messaging is much better than the 360 Live virtual keyboard where you’re moving it up and down. …we really want to connect friends and allow people to game with friends as easily as possible.”
Source: Nintendo World Report
