Great games blog

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection has reached 5 million DS users

(Credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo said Wednesday that its Wi-Fi Connection service–which allows Nintendo DS users to play wirelessly against each other–has surpassed 5 million users.

All told, the video game giant said, users have initiated more than 200 million sessions, playing games like Animal Crossing: Wild World, Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters and others wirelessly.

And despite the attention paid to next-generation video game systems like the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, the DS is currently the best-selling system of all, having moved 470,000 units in April, according to NPD Group.

One thing a lot of people have bitched about after the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, are the graphics. With games like Gears of War, it was easy to be a little uninspired by what Halo 3 had to offer. Next-Gen recently sat down with Bungie’s Frank O’Connor to ask him about this, along with a few other questions about Halo 3. In response to the graphics, O’Conner had the following to say:

“We think that the final aesthetic look of our game will be judged at launch in September and in part based on the more intense single player spaces. We’re also focused on maintaining the Halo character and atmosphere in our visual design – we’re competing with ourselves, and not simply trying to match the aesthetic of other games. We think that folks will be happy with Halo 3’s graphical polish come September.

We have a long time to polish and iterate on the largely complete game at this point. We’ll be working on some big ticket items as well as making sure that the little details, like decorators and shaders are all in place. Lighting and atmospherics are going to be big keystones in our look and feel, and those really haven’t been shown except in multiplayer to this point.”

4 months isn’t a long time to be adding new graphical effects to a game - especially when they are entering the home stretch and trying to squash all the bugs and get it ready to ship. I guess we’ll find out in September if the graphics live up to expectations.

A featured article in the latest Official Xbox Magazine has revealed some new details about Unreal Tournament 3. Epic games has set the release date around October 2007, not September 3rd, and it looks like they are on track to release on time. Some of the new features mentioned in the article include 4 player co-op, confirmation of 18 new vehicles, and the inclusion of hover boards. Unreal Tournament 3 will also feature cross-play between the Xbox 360 and PC versions. When asked about the disparities between an controller and a keyboard/mouse, Epic Games stated that the controls on the Xbox 360 version are so good that half of the staff prefers the controller.

It may be time that Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada receives a new title.  Captain Obvious may be more fitting.

He has announced that Final Fantasy XIII won’t be seeing a release until 2008 - sometime after March, to be specific.  The company’s fiscal year ends in March, and FFXIII is not expected to be a part of it.

I feel this is barely newsworthy, because anyone with any sense could’ve told you that FFXIII wouldn’t be coming around for another year, anyway.  We’ll just wait - it’ll most likely be worth it.

It looks like the action/platform series Sly Cooper will be making at least two more appearances.  Featuring some sort of non-detailed connectivity between them, a Playstation 3 and PSP game are both in the works, and are planned to release simultaneously.

The PS3 game, Sly Cooper 4, will be a continuation of the series, and will be shown at this year’s E3.  According to the developers, “the graphics have been majorly overhauled and the gameplay will be more varied and focused this time around. We’re aiming for a fully interactive 3D world, with no loads and seamless interaction between settings and characters.”  Well that sounds nice.

As for the PSP game, information is limited, and by limited I mean…it’ll be on the PSP.

In today’s squeeze-everything-you-can-out-of-every-customer-and-every-property environment, it is refreshing to hear a company flat-out refuse to do business that way.  Valve software is adamant about not charging customers for downloadable content, and had this to say on the matter:

“You buy the product, you get the content.  We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers.”

“Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products.  Counter-Strike is number one and has been since ‘99 because we kept the game interesting, not because we tried to charge people more, and that’s come back in sales of Counter-Strike.”

In order to keep making money, post-release, Valve has been focusing on the use of in-game advertising to bolster revenue.  Microtransactions have no place in their strategy.