Today it was announced that Radical Entertainment, creators of the Prototype franchise, have been closed down. According to Activision (their parent company):

Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.

The original Game Boy came out in 1989. About six years later, Nintendo released a type of revision with the Play It Loud! campaign, featuring different colors for the system. A year after that gamers got their first real revision of the thing, the Game Boy Pocket, which finally allowed gamers to cease walking around with a gigantic grey brick.

The Game Boy Advance came out in 2001, and close to two years later gamers were given the Game Boy Advance SP, which added a much needed backlit screen.

The Nintendo DS came out in 2004, and sixteen months later we got the DS Lite, which featured a brighter screen, an Apple-inspired design, and a considerably worse d-pad.

So really, I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that last night Nintendo announced the 3DS XL, sixteen months after the release of the 3DS. Truly, last night was almost inevitable, Nintendo would eventually release a redesign of the 3DS, they always do. And this time, there seemed to be some reasonable issues to fix. The battery life, for one, isn’t the best. And I wish they would do something about the “ghosting” effect some games have when the 3D is on high, but I understand they would need a better screen in order to fix that. And finally, many gamers are really into this idea of having a second analog stick. So certainly, one could see Nintendo coming up with some redesign once 3DS sales started to slow in order to pick up steam for some holiday season. If we were going by history, that would have been the third holiday season, as both the DS and the GBA were allowed two holiday seasons before some revision came through to render them obsolete. And no, this isn’t an article bashing the idea of system redesigns. From a business perspective, after two holiday seasons the sales of the systems may begin to slow, so throwing something new out there to entice new consumers and lure in some upgraders makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense, is putting out a redesign for a system’s second holiday season, and lying to the consumer before doing it.

First, let’s talk about where the 3DS is right now. It came out to a rocky launch, but anyone with any sense could tell you why as it had three major issues (in order of relevance):
1. There weren’t any AAA games with widespread appeal early on.
2. Most gamers were content to wait for the inevitable redesign.
3. The price was too high.

At the time, I felt all Nintendo needed to light a fire under the 3DS was one good holiday season. And they certainly delivered by releasing Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, and Star Fox 64 3D prior to the 3DS’s holiday season. But Nintendo apparently did not trust their holiday line-up, so a few months after the 3DS launch Nintendo panicked over slow stales and slashed the price by $80. A dramatic move I felt, but it did take care of two of the three issues holding the 3DS back.

Since then, the 3DS has surged. Its competitor, the Playstation Vita, isn’t remotely on the same planet (similar to the competition between the DS and the PSP really), and the 3DS has even broken records set by its wildly successful predecessor.

And looking ahead to this holiday season, I saw no indication that the 3DS’s success was likely to diminish. The 3DS is set to receive a (berserker) barrage of quality titles for the remainder of the year, and with New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the horizon, it seemed to me that the 3DS would be a run away success this holiday season.

Which brings me to my first issue with the 3DS XL: Why now?

The 3DS was in no way shape or form in danger of having some type of slump between now and 2013. With a new Kingdom Hearts and New Super Mario Bros. 2 coming out soon, it’s inconceivable to me that the 3DS would have slacked in sales in the coming months. So I fail to see how the release of a redesign could help drive sales. People would have bought New Super Mario Bros. 2 in droves regardless of there being a new 3DS model, so putting out a new model on the same day seems a bit pointless. And really, from a business stand point, it’s kind of dumb. If they were going to buy the system anyways, wouldn’t you want to sell more of the original model before rendering it obsolete? Wouldn’t you want more people eager to upgrade to the new version? Yes, big games have been timed with redesigns inthe past (Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire came out with the GBA SP in the U.S.), but the GBA had had two holiday seasons to establish itself before then. The 3DS itself has had one, and had one more good holiday season looming ahead. The 3DS would have sold like hotcakes without a redesign release, so why waste the redesign now?

So that’s my issue from the business perspective. From the view of the consumer, the 3DS XL in itself has little reason to exist. For instance, consider the DSi XL. It came out as the final gasp of the DS line, and while the DS Lite and the DSi brought worthwile additions to the DS system, the DSi XL was about as relevant as the Game Boy Micro. Not to bash the DSi XL or the GB Micro (certainly not the GB Micro), but both redesigns felt more like something that hardcore fans would gobble up and weren’t really there to drive sales like the DS Lite (or GBA SP). Yes, the 3DS XL adds two hours of battery life and it has bigger screens, though in my opinion the 3DS XL looks like a goofy child’s laptop and less like a sleek portable gaming machine (unlike my slick aqua blue 3DS). And that’s it. That’s all the 3DS XL adds: bigger screens and two extra hours of battery life. For me, it just doesn’t seem worth it. The GBA SP was an obvious and much needed upgrade over the GBA. The DS Lite was considerably better than the DS (outside of the awful d-pad). The 3DS XL is… there for people who can’t see well and travel a lot? I just don’t see the market. Well, I do, and that brings us to…

Why lie Nintendo? I know, it’s a silly question, because everyone already knows the answer. You lie because you wanted people to buy the regular 3DS. Remember back in August of 2011? When Reggie was quoted as saying:

“The form factor, we believe, it quite strong and quite positive. We have nothing else to add at this point in terms of other form factor changes or other color changes beyond the Flame Red that we’re announcing today.”

Or how about these past few days, where we have been treated to articles such as this one where Miyamoto says:

“I really feel like I’m satisfied with the 3DS hardware as it is. I feel like it’s the best for this generation. What we’re thinking about right now is probably going to be for a future generation of handheld.”

This article was posted last week.

My issue is that, since before the 3DS launch, Nintendo has gone out of their way to express their pleasure with the 3DS design and lead everyone on to believe that they weren’t going to bother with a revision. And why is this an issue in my mind? Because of issue #2 of why the 3DS launch wasn’t very successful. I cannot even begin to count the number of people who have commented that they would be waiting for the 3DS redesign before getting one. I had hoped Nintendo would prove them wrong and not bother, because if they did that, I felt it would bode well for the launch of their next handheld.

And really, there were only two issues most people had with the system: no second analog and a lousy battery life. But the second analog issue is an awkward one, because Nintendo generally doesn’t make games that would utlizie it, and I couldn’t see them making a version of the 3DS with one built in because that would virtually force us early adopters to buy the system since games would inevitably be designed with the second analog in mind. As for the battery life, I always felt it was negligible. I generally play my 3DS at home though, and if I take it out it’s only to get StreetPasses, so personally I’ve rarely run into the battery life being an issue. Of course, the only issue that got fixed was the battery one, and even then it only adds two hours, which isn’t that much better all things considered. As for the second analog stick, ironically Nintendo has just screwed over that crowd, because the Circle Pad Pro obviously isn’t going to work with the 3DS XL, so either you’re going to have to buy the CPP XL or Nintendo just won’t bother making one, rendering the 3DS XL completely worthless to the people demanding a built in sexcond circle pad.

So that brings us to the point of the article: Why is the 3DS XL a mistake?

For one, I don’t think it adds enough to 3DS design to be relevant. It’s a goofier looking handheld with a longer battery life and larger screens, nowhere near as significant as what the GBA SP and the DS Lite brought along. Also, the timing is just bizarre and I feel the added sales from the new model won’t have much of an impact over what the system would have sold anyways. And so, we combine these ideas with the big one: Nintendo has just ensured that their next handheld launch will be abysmal.

Seriously, how many people are going to buy the next Nintendo handheld at launch? Why would you? Just wait for a little over a year and ignore their promises of “we like the current design”, and you can buy the better version when it comes out! Yes, Nintendo has done this twice now (GBA and DS), but both of those redesigns were warranted, and in this case, there didn’t seem to be much that needed to be added to the 3DS. Now ,we see that Nintendo will throw out redesigns with negligible upgrades just for the hell of it.

And if the next handheld does worse than the 3DS at launch? Then what? More price drops? Will that entice you knowing the next version is around the corner? A killer holiday line-up? Will that pull you in?

Mind you, I’m not upset about the redesign. I think it looks too goofy for me to want to give up my 3DS. But I do think this is a big mistake on Nintendo’s part. It’s too soon and considering the holiday line up Nintendo was heading into, I doubt the 3DS XL is going to make a difference as far as sales go. In my opinion, Nintendo has done this simply because a lot of people have been proclaiming that they’re waiting for the redesign. So for Nintendo, it’s a matter of, “OK, we’ll make a redesign, and get these guys to buy a system we’re largely happy with and maybe get some upgraders along the way.” Really, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But my concern is that, now that Nintendo has proven the “wait for a redesign” crowd right, they’re going to have even bigger issues with their next launch. And this leaves me wondering how bad a Nintendo handheld can do in its first few months without Nintendo simply pulling the plug. Because if everybody is waiting for the redesign, then who is going to buy the original to keep it alive long enough for there to be a redesign?

Skylander Giants coming to 3DS.

Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed is coming to 3DS. Features Danica Patrick.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask coming in November. Also, one downloadable puzzle a day for a year for free!

Bandai Namco will be working on new SSB for 3DS/Wii U.

Art Academy game is coming to 3DS. Learn how to draw!

Kirby’s 25th Anniversary game coming in September.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 will feature DLC Gold Rush stages.

Fire Emblem will be coming out in 2013.

Wario Land is coming to the eShop in July.

Soon you’ll be able to submit 3D photos online to a Nintendo website.

Pokemon Black/White 2 will be coming out on DS this Fall.

http://www.nintendo.com/nintendo-direct/archive/06-21-2012;jsessionid=7A82B82BA800A8EB6A824D76449EF4ED

Microsoft kicked off their press briefing by going straight for the throat and leading off with the Halo 4 live action teaser followed by a campaign CG cut scene and then actual campaign game play.  Most shows MS leaves that juicy morsel for later, but I liked how they went straight for it as it’s what everyone wanted to see.

No one to introduce or speak to the games features, 343 lets the videos speak for themselves, though I’m sure there will be a lot more info later on in E3.  The game is looking great and thus far 343 seems to be living up to Bungie’s previous titles in the series.  The proof will be in the pudding later this year when Halo 4 releases on November 6^th.

Don Mattrick, President of Interactive Entertainment, takes the stage, and thus starts the industry/sales pitches, back patting and hopes for applause.  He announces proudly that the Xbox 360 has moved from number one in sales for North America to number one worldwide.  It would seem that Nintendo’s Wii has officially lost steam.  My guess is that MS is still trailing in Japan given that any western console is received poorly there; a fact they did not touch on of course.  Don also clearly stated MS’s goal, to have all your entertainment in one place.  Let’s see how they plan on delivering on that goal now shall we?!

Splinter Cell Black List campaign footage is shown next.  The series seems to have gotten a much needed kick in the pants as the game looks and appears to play much better than the last title, Conviction, did.  The game takes place on the Iraq/Iran border and Sam now has command of 4^th Echelon and can call in aerial strikes while in combat.  The game seems to mix its long standing stealth game play with a healthy dose of gunplay.  A great scene that proves the point that even Splinter Cell is better with Kinect has Sam hanging over the ledge of an area a guard is patrolling when the player literally calls the guard over and the proceeds to yank and throw him over the side.  The cinematic feel is strong, being carried by an amazing game engine and superb character animation.  Old school fans of the series will be glad to hear that single player, coop and one of the series true gems, spys vs mercs, will all be included when the game releases spring 2013.

Next up is EA sports and their plug for Kinect.  Fifa is shown first and sports the ability to use Kinect voice commands to perform player substitutions, change formations, and to trigger specific moves on offense and defense.  Madden is up second, (when does Madden ever take a back seat to Fifa?), and similar commands are shown for it.  Fifa is scheduled to drop in fall 2012, while Madden has the less nebulous release date of August 28^th, 2012.  I’ve never been a big fan of EA or Madden (see the killing of the 2K football series by Visual Concepts for my major qualms), but seeing how they have made it “better with Kinect” and added another new feature you’ll learn about further down the page, I may just have to drop my disdain long enough to pick up a copy. 

A cut scene for Fable The Journey flashes across the stage.  This Kinect only entry for the franchise reminds me a lot of Child of Eden in that you are dual wielding using both arms.  This was a short video montage of cut scenes and game play, both screen and player footage.  It was a pretty short video and left you with more questions than answers.

Phil Spencer, head of MS Studios, saunters up on stage and makes the case to gamers why they should care about the 360.  Halo 4, Fable…. Blah blah…. Oooooh look! 

 The Gears of War Judgment trailer kicks in just in time to shut up Phil before people start rolling their eyes.  The ending of Gears 3 left us wondering if we’d ever get another game, though the series sales figures always provide reassurance, and we are not likely to be disappointed with this prequel set around Baird and the events of E-Day. 

The Forza Horizon trailer follows showcasing an open world environment located in Colorado.  Driving fans only need to lug their lead foots around till October 23^rd, 2012, when they can plant them firmly on the gas pedal of their favorite rides.

Yusuf Mehdi, head of marketing and strategy, steps up to bat and delivers a bolus of information regarding TV, movies and music content.  Basically all the non-gaming aspects of Live.  Bing search/voice recognition is being added for 12 different countries.  Nickelodeon, Paramount movies, Machinima, and Univision are the big additions as well as dedicated sports content for the NBA and NHL.  ESPN is also expanding its presence online with more channels and live shows.  Xbox Music is also announced with support for the 360, PC’s and Window’s 8 tablets and phones, making me wonder what is happening to the Zune marketplace and if the Zune device itself will continue to be supported.

 Nike + Kinect Training looks to take the fitness games to a whole new level.  Its also the first fitness game for Kinect that looks worth a purchase to me.  Nike has been working with athletes for years to improve their performance and now they are bringing all that training wisdom to your 360.  Like many other workout games you will get assessed and then have a personal workout program designed for you.  Phone reminders and real online workout buddies will keep you motivated and their universal measure/unit called “Nike fuel” will allow you to compare yourself against friends and foes alike when the game releases during the holiday season later this year.

Marc Whitten, head of Xbox Live, takes the stage to introduce a very subtle yet pretty intriguing idea called SmartGlass.  In a nut shell this is all about integration and connectivity using devices you already own.  Your smart phone and tablet can now be connected to your TV and 360 in new and wonderful ways that are designed to enrich your existing experiences.  Most of this stuff has been around before in various guises from various providers.  Watching a movie on your tablet then transferring the viewing experience to your home TV mid way through watching.  Using your smart phone as a remote control, yadda, yadda, yadda.  It all seems nice and I can see myself using it occasionally but nothing that gets my inner gamer excited.  That’s when they showed the game functionality.  Being able to call, and modify football plays while the other player can’t see reminds me of the heady days of NFL2K1 on the Dreamcast and using the VMU in a similar fashion.  Other game applications are neat but hardly essential, such as using a tablet to connect to Halo Waypoint to learn more detailed information about an in game object you just sighted with your reticule.  Probably the biggest part of Marc’s talk came last when he announced that the entire internet, via Internet Explorer, would be coming to the console.  This has been something MS has been adamant about despite consumer sentiment.  They did not want the Xbox to be seen as a computer hiding in a console shell.  This time around their reason was related; and mentioned that the living room was no place for a keyboard at which time he showed how you could use your cell phone to navigate web pages.

 Crystal Dynamics show cased a high action sequence from the new Tomb Raider game.  The reboot to this series and putting it back in the hands of Crystal Dynamics has served Lara Croft well.  The sequence shown starts off with Lara tip toeing around using a bow and arrow to kill off enemies while traipsing around a canyon.  The sequence shown could have been taken out of any action movie and was amazing to watch.  Much like Splinter Cell, Tomb Raider looks very cinematic, very polished, and has great character animations.  This looks to provide Uncharted fans with something at least as good if not better for the 360.

Phil Spencer is back out to introduce three new Microsoft Studios titles.  Trailers are shown for Ascend New Gods, LocoCycle and Matter.  Only gameplay footage shown for the three is for Ascend New Gods.

 Ascend New Gods looks to be a great hack and slash adventure game with a good sense of scale to the worlds and enemies.  Not to mention plenty of carnage and blood splatters.

LocoCycle’s trailer showed no gameplay and just spouts off accolades of the lococycle, so who knows whats up there.  But given Twisted Pixels track record I’ll take them on faith for now that the game will be fun.  

Matter was intriguing in that it seemed like a bastard love child of Tron and Portal with Gore Verbinski as the doctor in charge of delivering the baby.  Only a CG cut scene was shown with no gameplay so this is still a bit of a mystery.  It is a Kinect title and should be launching in 2013.

Easily the weakest of the games presented, Capcom shows off Resident Evil 6.  Maybe its that I have never been able to really enjoy the series given that I am a run AND gun type yet the controls have traditionally been extremely limited when it comes to moving and shooting at the same time.  This game looks to break that trend with much less restriction.  In the end though what am I supposed to be excited about?  Drop in, drop out gameplay?  Meh, that’s been around since last gen.  This game needs a reboot similar to what Tomb Raider just accomplished to get me to pay any attention.

Wreckateer, a Kinect based Live Arcade title, looks to be a mixture of Boom Blox and Angry Birds.  Basically another reason to get off the couch and use your Kinect.  This game has you firing a catapult at various cartoony looking medieval structures like castles and such.  The ordinance can then be guided using Kinect and much like Angry Bird there are different types of ordinance such as the flying shot, which after launching, you spread your arms wide to deploy wings and you then proceed to fly the shot to its intended target.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone introduce South Park, The Stick of Truth.  Obsidian has done a great job of recreating the exact “crappy” look (hey it was Trey and Matt’s words not mine) of the show in the game.  The goal was to make the game look just like an episode of the show and they have succeeded.  This game looks to be following the trail of other recent successes like Castle Crashers.  Combine the game play of castle Crashers and the cannon of South Park and you’ve got a winner. 

Harmonix steps up to present Dance Central 3.  Not much new compared to the last two installments from what I can tell as they don’t say much about the game.  Basically new songs and new dance moves.  They dress up the whole thing with a live performance from Usher, who also worked on the game.  In the end it’ll be a solid game, but with all three releases coming so close together, I feel as if Harmonix may be making a mistake in taking too close a page to the music game genre.  You’d have thought they would have learned from that but apparently not.  I see consumers burning out much quicker with the dance games though as there are no new instruments to add here… only songs and moves.  And that’s why they should have taken some time off and just focused on DLC.

The finale was saved for Call of Duty Black Ops II.  Fitting as it releases a week after Halo 4 on November 13^th.  Once again gamers will have to choose which series to pour their hard earned money and precious time into.  Or they can just double down and go with both.  Lately the CoD series has been suffering from a bout of Maddenittis; releasing a game every year with little innovation.  This time around TreyArch seems to have turned the dial to 11 though.  Its hard for me, a huge fan of all things Halo, to get too excited though given the return of the Master Chief, but I know that fans of the series are stoked.

And the show ends….

Pikmin 3 is coming out for the Wii U. Hardcore gamers everywhere had mixed feelings of joy and rage, as now they must accept the inevitable need to own a Wii U console.

Nintendo is making a “Pro Controller” for the Wii U. It looks like an Xbox360 controller.

You can watch a video on the Wii U tablet specifics here:
http://e3src.nintendo.com/wiiu/

Nintendo also announced New Super Mario Brothers Wii U, which will allow you to see people’s scores/comments/whatever from the world map it seems. Interestingly, the gamepad will be able to be used by another player to place blocks. Reggie stated that this was to assist in “speed runs”, which seems to further their intent to focus on speed runs which seemed to sprout with Super Mario Bros. 3D Land.

Mass Effect 3 will be a launch title for the Wii U. No one knows why.

Very little was given about the 3DS, as it will have it’s own conference tomorrow night. We did get to see Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Paper Mario: Sticker Power, and New Super Mario Bros. 2, the latter of which seems to be placing an emphasis on coins, or rather, a multitude of coins. Many are already whining about this even further increasing the amount of lives they will have by an order of magnitude.

Ubisoft also showed off some upcoming titles for the Wii U, including a new title called ZombieU. This seems to be a zombie apocalypse title that utlizes the gamepad for a more immersive experience.

And in closing, Nintendo unveiled Wii U launch title Nintendo Land, which will be a virtual theme park based on Nintendo and will feature and plethora of mini-games in order to help gamers “appreciate the gamepad”. Admittedly, Luigi’s Ghost Mansion seemed kind of cool, if a bit derivative of Pac-Man Vs. .

The other games included are:

”

Donkey Kong’s Crash Course: Using the GamePad’s motion control, players tilt the controller to guide a fragile rolling cart through an obstacle course that resembles the original Donkey Kong arcade game. This single-player game lets other spectators watch the action on the TV and offer advice about how to pass the next obstacle.

Luigi’s Ghost Mansion: The player with the GamePad is a ghost (invisible to others) who is trying to capture up to four humans armed with flashlights. The ghost must sneak around the environment by staying in the shadows and try to catch them one by one. The humans can work together to revive fallen comrades before the ghost catches everyone. If all four humans are caught before they are revived, the ghost wins. But if they are successful at shining their flashlights on the ghost long enough to reduce its hit points to zero, the humans win.

Animal Crossing™: Sweet Day: The player holding the Wii U GamePad controls two guards who are in charge of safeguarding a candy orchard from a group of candy-loving animals. Up to four other players, using the Wii Remote controllers to control these animals, must work together to outwit – and outrun – the guards. The game ends when a combined total of 50 pieces of candy are collected, or when the guards catch any one of the animals three times.

The Legend of Zelda™: Battle Quest: The player with the GamePad is an archer who can aim and shoot arrows using the screen as a view finder. That player is joined by up to three others who wield Wii Remote Plus controllers like swords. Players work together to take on a variety of enemies in a world that looks like a cloth version of a game from The Legend of Zelda series.

Takamaru’s Ninja Castle: Based on an early Famicom game available only in Japan, this single-player game turns the GamePad into a launcher for ninja stars. Players swipe the controller’s touch screen to take out an ever-growing army of ninja attackers, earning more points for consecutive hits. Moving the GamePad around at different angles enables the player to take aim in an intuitive fashion.

Seven other attractions will be announced at a later date.”

And that about wraps up Nintendo’s Wii U presser. Check back tomorrow for comments on the 3DS one!

You won’t be disappointed.

So take that you pansies that always selected Maka Wuhu!

The update is available on the eShop and starting 5/16/12 players will be required to have it to play online.