Today on Headline
RePLAY: A Zelda game made by Retro Studios is not ruled out, Nintendo’s new
paradigm with handhelds and Ubisoft’s faith with the Wii U.
The quest to find out what Retro Studios is secretly working on continues, and this time it ventures into interesting
territory: can they be working on a Zelda game?
“Retro is very busy
right now, but I’m afraid I can’t say exactly what it is that they’re very busy
[working] on,” Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN’s Richard George,
immediately shutting down that line of questioning like Nintendo President of
America Reggie Fils-Aime did.
When asked about the
prospect of Retro working on a Zelda game, Miyamoto did not rule out the
possibility. “In terms of them working on a Zelda, it’s not out of the
question, certainly, for them to work on an entire Zelda game amongst
themselves.”
“Traditionally I think
that the Zelda team has always had a close contact with anyone who’s working on
a Zelda game. If you were going to have that happen in the US at Retro, that
would be kind of difficult for them to be able to coordinate,” the developer
explained. “Certainly they’re too busy for that sort of thing right now. It
would probably require me to be involved to a great extent as well, so I would
have to get over quite a bit too. I’d probably have to live in Texas… [laughs]”
Not a Zelda game at
this time either, then. The search goes on!
|Source: IGN
Nintendo is (in)famous
for releasing new revisions on a handheld within a year of each other to extend
its shelf life—just look at the DS with the DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL variations,
for example. Except with the 3DS Nintendo may instead be looking towards a future
generation.
“I really feel like I’m
satisfied with the 3DS hardware as it is,” Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN, when asked
about the recent Japanese newspaper Nikkei report of a 3DS XL, and if Nintendo
had similar plans. “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.”
|Source: IGN
Despite all the
rumblings on whether or not Nintendo can make lightning strike twice with the
Wii U, Ubisoft boldly gambles on the next-gen console’s success.
Ubisoft CEO Yves
Guillemot predicts that the demand for the Wii U will be “strong,” so much so
that he expects Nintendo to manufacture 5 more million units within the first
six months of the system’s launch.
“Generally, that’s
what [Nintendo] does,” Guillemot told Reuters. “The number can be more, it can
be less… they are always limited in the number that they can build.”
The Ubisoft CEO dismissed
speculation that investment in the Wii U is “risky” because games that are
launched with a new system “sell well.”
“It’s easier at the
beginning of the console cycle to astonish people and bring them new experiences
than at the end of the cycle,” he explained. “So the risk that is seen as a big
risk by many is actually the contrary.”
|Source: Reuters
