1) Nintendo release date: October would be nice, but to say that Nintendo has always sucked at E3 because they don’t tell us pricing and release date? I remember from the launch of the 3DS, that they used E3 to gauge how much they could sell it at, so there’s that and you could even argue that showing us the games and new features is keeping the show relevant to gamers. Also, my lack of caring about the released date is just my perspective since I know I’m getting it. I am a little curious as to why we haven’t seen the release date though. My initial guess is that Nintendo deciding to implement two game pads is a last minute feature and they are trying to squeeze out as much time as they can to get those working at their best. The reason I think this is because at E3, or at least around that time, they said that the game pads would run at half their frame rate if there were more than one connected, because the console itself processes the display.
2) JRPG’s: Pachter says that ported games are always a profit deal, but that’s not the trend I’ve noticed. The reason I believe that we almost didn’t get Xenoblade and The Last Story (the latter being fantastic) is because even if it only takes a couple hundred thousand dollars, they aren’t, say, Final Fantasy. Without the concerted effort of people who really wanted these games, I don’t think either game would have had much media attention. I know this because other JRPG’s that have come to the US didn’t and were received from “meh” to “suck” (Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World and Arc Rise Fantasia respectively). But at least we all got a crash course in foreign economics!
3) Paid Exclusives: Not much for me to say on this one. It makes sense and I guess I applaud Microsoft for taking risks like that. Even though it sucks for us that don’t own an Xbox, it only sucks because we don’t have it, which while kind of valid, probably isn’t valid enough to make Microsoft stop getting more money.
