Headline RePLAY – 6.14.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The Wii U’s design almost didn’t make it, Nintendo’s new console will support free-to-play and the ASA rules on Mass Effect 3 ending complaints.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata admits that they almost “gave up” on the idea of having a second screen for the Wii U; one of the console’s main selling points.   

According to The Telegraph, the original idea for the second screen was so a player can continue playing so it can free up the television for something else—it almost didn’t make it.

“Sometime during that final discussion we almost gave up on the idea of the additional screen,” Iwata told The Telegraph. “This was due to our concern over the expected high cost, it may not have been feasible to create this and sell it a reasonable price point for the consumers.”

Nintendo, however, never gave up on the second screen idea and once costs were noodled out, decided to tie the additional screen to the TV. “From that we discussed how we could use that additional screen. Like asymmetric gameplay and using it as a touchscreen device to change how people interact with a TV set.

“The touchscreen is just one foot away from you, so you can read small letters easier and input letters more easily,” he explained. “And then you have the big TV screen ten feet away, which has its own advantages, in that it can be viewed by many people simultaneously.”

|Source: The Telegraph

Nintendo is going all-out to reach out to many developers as they can for the Wii U, case in point: in a Q&A today the publisher announced that the console’s architecture will support free-to-play gaming; another first along with supporting digital distribution and DLC.

“With respect to the Wii U system, when we began working on it, one of our goals was to have a variety of purchase options and additional e-commerce options available at its launch,” said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. “And because of that, we have prepared a Digital Rights Management system. We have designed the system from a technical standpoint to allow developers to freely take advantage of things like free to play and micro transactions.”

Does this mean that Nintendo will also be making F2P games? Iwata demurred, saying, “We would like those who highly recognize the value of the products we have created to play them. What I am trying to say is that we are not considering introducing a free-to-play game if the game itself is not suitable in that fashion. I have no intention to deny every possibility of free-to-play.”

|Source: Nintendo Life

In contrast to the unofficial stance of the U.S-based Better Business Bureau, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) declared that EA did not mislead gamers on claims that the player could affect the outcome of the story.

Although the ASA understands that consumers may feel differently, it ruled that Mass Effect 3’s story were “thematically quite different,” and the three ending choices in addition to the extent of how much the endings were influenced by the player’s “Effective Military Strength” score is enough to rule that EA’s advertising did not mislead the public.

|Source: Gamasutra