City of Heroes - by Nintendo?

[detour]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-03/can-open-game-development-save-nintendo?campaign_id=yhoo

An excerpt appears below:

While the sales slump can be blamed in part on smartphones and tablets chipping away at the $58 billion global market for traditional video games, it's also due to a dearth of must-play titles from the company that created Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and the Legend of Zelda. To change that, Nintendo is doing something once unimaginable for a Japanese company: crowdsourcing game development to a network of 1.8 million programmers, including part-time hobbyists, to boost the size of its library. The company has allied with Unity Technologies, a San Francisco-based maker of software used largely to adapt casual smartphone and tablet games to various platforms. "As digital business expands, there will be even more opportunities to do business with small, independent software developers," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in a presentation at the E3 show.  That's quite a reversal for a company that's been fanatical about policing its development licenses, partly by filing lawsuits against companies that sold games for Nintendo's consoles without approval.

Well, if they're looking for money-making opportunities, City of Heroes did.  And this is a great win/win:  we get our game back, and Nintendo has the potential to reach whole new players through CoX that might not have played other Nintendo games! 

I figure, the worst they can say is no, right? 

[Des_Tructive]

This sounds like a case for TF Hail Mary!

[Omega Mark V]

Well, this gives me a chance to finally ask Nintendo to save CoH.

Unless I did already. *checks email*

EDIT: Nope,  I haven't. So, the question is: Do I send an email now or wait for all of us to do so at the same time for more effect?

[Joshex]

I retract this comment, my villainous side sees how I might be able to use this for personal gain..

[Omega Mark V]

Just saying, I've played Nintendo consoles since the NES and I haven't ever really seen the problems that you have posted, Joshex. EDIT: Disregard due to redaction.

The only things recently that have bugged me are rehashed series games (a la mario), a lack of launch titles, and the weird way they sold their recent Wii U (8gb basic system that hardly has memory on it after the 4gb os partition, compared to a Wii U with much more space).

I think its a good thing that they're reaching out to indie devs. They definitely need some third party games, and definitely need some fresh ip's.

Not to mention, if Nintendo would get CoH, it'd be better than not having CoH back. I'd personally like to wait and see how the Google/next sales pitch goes before asking Nintendo.

[DrakeGrimm]

Say good bye to our dark stories, our heart-rending plot lines, our moments of thrills and our moments of chills. Our darkest moments, giving way to some of our brightest triumphs, will be gutted to create a "family friendly" title above and beyond what we already had.


I want my City back, but not at the cost of its soul. Nintendo would white wash the heart of our home to appeal to a wider audience and maintain their idiotic obsession with capturing the family-friendly casual market.

[Absolute]

EDIT: Fine, deleted my quote/response since Joshex removed his original comment. No hard feelings.

On another note, I don't think Nintendo would ever pick it up. If they wanted an MMO, they would have created a Pokemon MMO and have all the money in the world by now. I think it's pretty clear that they don't want in the MMO business (because seriously, a Pokemon MMO would dominate the market).

[DrakeGrimm]

Haha, Nintendo is inserting gay rights propaganda into their games in a secretive fashion? I would love to see examples of that. I've at least tried the newer nintendo games and think, if you have to actively search for the smallest clue that it's there, it probably isn't.


On another note, I don't think Nintendo would ever pick it up. If they wanted an MMO, they would have created a Pokemon MMO and have all the money in the world by now. I think it's pretty clear that they don't want in the MMO business (because seriously, a Pokemon MMO would dominate the market).

If ever there were a 'shut up and take my money' product, a Pokemon MMO would be it. @.@

[Joshex]

I retract this comment.

[Kyriani]

I retract this comment.

As well you should considering it was downright delusional.

[MakoMako]

[First part of post deleted, as Joshex deleted his own.]

Really, we're in no position to be choosers. Not even remotely. And I think this constant argument over what company to reach out to has really clouded our judgment.

We are beggars, right now. Not choosers. If Nintendo steps up (Which it likely won't, since the concept of comic book style super heroes isn't quite understood by Eastern developers) I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. We simply can't afford to.

[Joshex]

to tell the truth, nintendo will be releasing a Super hero game.

showing they do have an appreciation for it, however it's heavily cartoony and has no customization.

http://www.e3.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-wonderful-101/

[Xieveral]

Nintendo doesn't do PC or cross platform. If they were going to pick CoH up it would be for their system only.

We all have computers but not all of us have or want a Wii U.

[houtex]

Yet.  Get me CoH running and I'll go buy one yesterday.   And I've *never* bought a console.  Ever.

/Only thing is the Wii U needs to let me use a PS2 bucklespring keyboard and a USB mouse, and then it'll be all golden.
//Unless theres them gesture thingies that I can set up and it be 100% accurate for me to use the powahs.

[Joshex]

Yet.  Get me CoH running and I'll go buy one yesterday.   And I've *never* bought a console.  Ever.

/Only thing is the Wii U needs to let me use a PS2 bucklespring keyboard and a USB mouse, and then it'll be all golden.
//Unless theres them gesture thingies that I can set up and it be 100% accurate for me to use the powahs.

The Wii accepted USB devices such as a USB keyboard, I don't see why it wouldn't accept a mouse. the wiimote was better with point and click than motion sensing, though point and click is typically used in CoH environments any ways. I am not sure of the sensitivity of the Wii U controller though I have been told it has a touch screen of it's own which may be addequate for certian things.

I tried to get paragon to develop a CoH version for the DS but the processor can;t handle it even in it's lowest graphics settings.

the Wii however was exactly equivalent to my old PC (I had the exact same graphics card and processor and memory amounts) it can run CoH pretty well. the Wii U has even more memory and such so no worries there.

[Lightslinger]

Just saying, I've played Nintendo consoles since the NES and I haven't ever really seen the problems that you have posted, Joshex.

The only things recently that have bugged me are rehashed series games (a la mario), a lack of launch titles, and the weird way they sold their recent Wii U (8gb basic system that hardly has memory on it after the 4gb os partition, compared to a Wii U with much more space).

I think its a good thing that they're reaching out to indie devs. They definitely need some third party games, and definitely need some fresh ip's.

Not to mention, if Nintendo would get CoH, it'd be better than not having CoH back. I'd personally like to wait and see how the Google/next sales pitch goes before asking Nintendo.

The Wii U's hard drive situation is actually pretty novel. They included a relatively small hard drive to keep costs low. The Wii U itself is underpowered but from what I recall the gamepad is pretty expensive.

Their solution? Use your own hard drive. You can buy any cheap external HD and plug it into the Wii U. (Disclaimer: I'm not good with tech specs so I'm sure there are some formats or types of HDs that won't work, but from what I've been told its very easy to buy pretty much any HD and use with your Wii U).

So instead of bundling the Wii U with tons of storage, they gave you a cheaper price point and a very easy way to upgrade. I personally like that solution.

And regarding the original topic of Nintendo being a hope...I'd say that's the farthest long shot yet.

Nintendo publishes for Nintendo consoles ONLY, that's their MO since day one and shows no signs of changing any time soon. Online stuff is hardly Nintendo's bag either, they are still to this day barely getting an eShop up and going and in their biggest titles online play is still not a guaranteed fixture.

The effort it would take to port CoH to the Wii U would be way too much to justify it. To fit Nintendo the game would need to be reworked from the ground up, that on top of porting an older PC game to a newish console that's already proving difficult to develop for.

[Surelle]

While it's exciting to think of Nintendo as widening its doors and vision for its console and that it could possibly help save both CoH and Nintendo, there's no one left at the now-defunct Paragon Studios to port CoH to console (it's a completely different language, but maybe the OP doesn't realize that).  And Nintendo sounds like it's expecting *other* developers to do all the work, not their in-house guys.  And I doubt they'd have much collective experience with PC MMO code anyway.  Plus, they'd have to find some way to convince NCSoft to sell the IP above and beyond all of that.

[SkyStreak]

I could see CoH working out well on Wii U.

Take all of the UI off the screen and put it on the controller?

Nice clean screen...

[Codewalker]

the Wii however was exactly equivalent to my old PC (I had the exact same graphics card and processor and memory amounts) it can run CoH pretty well. the Wii U has even more memory and such so no worries there.

Your PC had a 729MHz PowerPC processor and somehow ran Windows and COH?

[Captain Electric]

Nintendo can suck my bright red undies which are on the outside of my pants.

Atari 2600 and then we're talkin.