Wii U Message Board older than one year ago

John Pleasants has left his post as co-president of Disney Interactive, the New York Times reports.

"It was a collaborative decision to do what's right for the business at a time when we have clear momentum," Pleasants said of the decision. "It's complicated to have co-presidents. It doesn't seem to make sense as a long-term strategy."

"I will tell you that it's a bit of a mixed thing for me," added Pleasants. "I would have also been happy to stay on. I would be misleading you if I said I wanted to leave."

Pleasants' responsibilities will now be shouldered by Jimmy Pitaro, the other co-president installed alongside Pleasants in 2010. During their co-tenure, Pitaro largely focused on Disney's official web presence, while Pleasants headed the gaming side of things, most notably the launch and promotion of the company's kid-friendly sandbox game Disney Infinity.

Despite his desire to stay on with Disney, Pleasants leaves the company in a good position. He claims that during his tenure, Disney's mobile gaming division flourished, and that while the company reported losses of $300 million the year Pleasants and Pitaro were hired on, Disney Interactive's most recent financial reports show a $16 million profit, largely due to strong sales of Disney Infinity.

I shouldn't like to be in Batman's shoes when he has to face enemies like this in Batman: Arkham Origins. That is just truly horrifying.Read more...

The guy who brings you Brawl in the Family every week in Sunday Comics wants to bring you a video game—on Wii U even, if his Kickstarter meets a stretch goal. Tadpole Treble is a rhythm game that Matthew Taranto and his brother, Michael, have been working on for a couple of years. It's already halfway toward its goal. Learn more here.Read more...

Capcom has taken the DuckTales anthem to heart and rewritten history in the form of a patch for DuckTales: Remastered, a Capcom Unity post detailed this week. The patch's keystone is the new Quick Cinema mode, an option that unlocks after players complete the game (yes, even pre-patch completion saves work for this). Once activated, the option will let players skip "most of the cutscenes" in Remastered.

The rest of the patch will focus on more minor fixes. Those include a tweak to Scrooge's pogo attack to make it more reliable, as well as a few adjustments to address various glitches and freezes. This patch will also be applicable to the $19.99 physical versions scheduled for treasure hunts on the Xbox 360, Wii U and PS3 this Tuesday.

Allowing players to skip cutscenes will address one of the major problems Danny had with the game, writing in our review that Remastered's "focus on dialogue has a detrimental effect on DuckTales' underlying design."

The release of Disney Infinity drove a 107-percent increase in fourth-quarter revenue for Disney's Interactive division, the company revealed in its quarterly financial report.

Disney notes that its Interactive division took in $396 million in revenue during the quarter ending September 28, 2013. Disney Interactive's revenue totaled $191 million during the fourth quarter of last year.

"Improved operating results for the quarter and year were due to increases at our console games and Japan mobile businesses," the report states. "The increase at our console games business was primarily due to the fourth quarter release of Disney Infinity."

The bounceback follows up on Disney Interactive's $54 million operating income loss in the second quarter of 2013. Disney Infinity represented a significant risk for the division, as parent company Disney passed on the opportunity to produce games based on the Iron Man and Star Wars franchises in order to focus on Infinity's development.

During a conference call this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that more than one million Disney Infinity Starter Packs were sold across all available platforms since the game's release in August.

There's a little something for everyone on the Nintendo eShop this week. The Wii U picks up Wii Sports Club (the epitome of "for everyone"), the original Toki Tori and the Virtual Console release of Wario's Woods.

The 3DS also takes a trip to Wario's Woods, and it gets the eShop version of Kid Icarus: Uprising (which probably doesn't include that handy stand, for obvious reasons). If you're feeling a little more creative, you could try KORG M01D, a fully-featured music synthesizer program that lets you share your songs with other 3DS owners. You can even save the MIDI to the SD card so you can transfer it to a computer.

And it wouldn't be a new week on the eShop without a sale on an Atlus game or two. From 9 a.m. PT on November 11 through 9 a.m. November 18, both Etrian Odyssey 4 and Code of Princess will be $10 off.

Can't blame her, honestly. Marth, the Hero-King and swordsman of Fire Emblem, is quite the looker, if you can look past the headband.Read more...

For a game so impossibly beautiful, it always seemed strange that Project Cars was headed not just for the PC, but dated hardware like the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's less weird now, then, that those old machines will no longer be seeing the game.Read more...

I don't think this was made in the 21st century. I think time travel was involved. I think somebody found a way to go back to the 1980s and took a copy of Wind Waker with them. It's the only explanation I can think of as to why this fake tips VHS is so perfect.Read more...

Post-credit cutscene from the end of Batman: Arkham Origins. Story spoilers ahead.

Want to save a few bucks on Infinity Ward's unique blend of dog-wrangling and outer space cover-shooting? Newegg's eBay storefront currently has the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts on sale for $45 -- a significant savings over the game's MSRP of $59.99 on its first day of release.

Better hop on this deal while it lasts, though. While the eBay listing will run through Friday, stock is limited to quantities on-hand. Do it for Riley!

We're going in hot. Grab today's mega-release of Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox 360, PS3, and even Wii U for just $45 on its release day. Keep that wallet frosty. [Newegg via eBay]Read more...

Admit it. You would brave the undead-filled streets for some toilet paper, too. Zombie apocalypse? Pfft.Read more...

Toys R Us is apparently joining GameStop in bringing a new $200 250GB PS3 bundle to its Black Friday deals, going by scans of a flyer posted at BFAds.net. Like GameStop, the US retailer's bundle includes Batman: Arkham Origins and five-star offering The Last of Us.

On the Xbox 360 front, there's a 4GB system with Kinect that's also priced at $200. That bundles in Kinect Sports Season Two, Kinect Adventures, and an additional freebie in the form of another five-star current-gen game: 343 Industries' Halo 4.

Hopping over to the land of Nintendo, the new Skylanders Swap Force 8GB Wii U bundle (which incidentally features Nintendo Land) is going for $260 - that's a chunky $40 saving. There's also a Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon blue 3DS bundle that's down $20 to $150.

It's not just about battles between platform holders, though. Starter packs for Skylanders Swap Force and Disney Infinity are at each other's plastic throats too, both priced $37.49.

Then, just to remind us of the extensive current-gen library, Toys R Us is reprising its Buy 1 Get 1 for $1 deal from last year. That deal comprises 150 games as wide ranging as Saints Row 3, Sonic Generations, Halo Wars, Batman: Arkham City, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. If your eye is stuck on this fall's big name games, the retailer also has a Buy 1 Get 40 percent offer on all the video games. Take that, wallets!

Nintendo is easing out the full-fledged version of their super-successful Wii console. But, for folks in the market for a Wii machine without the U in the name, there's the Wii mini. It'll come with Mario Kart Wii, which seems slightly counterintuitive for a console without online functionality.Read more...

Puzzle platformer/telekinetic alien simulator Paradise Lost: First Contact is up now on Kickstarter, and unlike its creepy-crawly protagonist, it's hit the ground running. Asthree Works' debut game is fast approaching the halfway mark for its $70,000 goal, and that's after just three days of funding.

Paradise Lost turns players into Subject W, a pixelated life form that's trying to escape from an Earth research lab. It openly draws inspiration from a number of well-known series like Metal Gear, Castlevania, Metroid, and Oddworld, all of which is very much palpable in the first trailer. If those inspirations translate into being able to spawn miniature clones to turn off security cameras, or take on jets of fire by metamorphosing part of yourself into a flame-resistant shield, then I'm all for them.

Should it achieve funding, Paradise Lost: First Contact is set to touch base with Steam by December 2014, docking on PC, Mac, and Linux. At this rate Spanish studio Asthree may already be looking to a list of stretch goals that culminates in console versions. Get to the $200,000 mark and the game will come to PS4, PS3, and Vita, while $250,000 will unlock a Wii U version with GamePad-specific controls.

Wii Karaoke U is a service that's been available in Japan for a while, a built-in app for Nintendo's console that lets users play a basic singing game using their Miis. The game hit Europe last month, converted to a downloadable title, and the song selection is...interesting.Read more...

The PlayStation 4's internal hard drive is 500GB, and if you buy and start playing just two of its launch day first-person shooters this month, you'll already be using more than a 10th of the drive. Welcome to a somewhat different era of console gaming.Read more...

You're gonna live 'til you die in Call of Duty: Ghosts which, for millions on Tuesday, will be about 16 seconds after spawning.Read more...

Extinction, the horde mode replacing (or so it seems) zombies for Call of Duty: Ghosts will feature four classes specific to the mode, according to this post yesterday afternoon from the game's developer.Read more...

Death is no big deal in comics, especially when the protagonist is one so resolute, enduring and lucrative as Batman. The graveyards are more like timeshare opportunities, whether it's a hero or villain that's about to trade death for a well-timed resurrection some issues later. Handled indelicately, it can play like drama with a transparent veil, manufactured to extract what surprise and tension is left in an ongoing fiction that's subsisted over 70 years. We don't want these characters to go away, but we do need good reasons to stay.

In Batman: Arkham Origins, we see a younger grimace beneath the cowl, years before Arkham Asylum became a surprising trap assembled by the Joker and Rocksteady Studios. Warner Bros. Montreal has the difficult task of following Rocksteady's brilliant Arkham City sequel, and they've chosen to go back to Batman's early years on the job. If there was any mystery as to who lives and who dies, it's doubly undermined by the story's nature as a prequel.

That isn't to say it's poorly composed - Batman is beset by assassins on Christmas Eve, an ideal crossroads for psychopaths like Deadshot, Deathstroke and Harmfist (maybe not that one), and a good start for a conspiracy that gasps to life with every faceoff. Batman's killer night is a bit too eager to fall back into old patterns, however, with the Joker soon broadcasting taunts from an unending supply of televisions. The critical path through Gotham City is feeling worn, even if tread by different, younger actors.

Last week, we asked the Joystiq community how it felt about downloadable games. This generation brought with it a new wave of downloadable games, and the upcoming Xbox One and PS4 are pushing downloads harder than ever. Even the handheld space is getting in on the action, with the recently released Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies being available exclusively as a download in North America.

Among current platforms, it seems that PC players are the most comfortable with the concept, with 84 percent of respondents saying they purchase downloadable games on PC. That's perhaps not too surprising given the popularity of services like Steam, GOG.com and Desura. The balance shifts as we move down the line, with almost 72 percent purchasing downloadable games on consoles like Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U, while only 62 percent of respondents download games on handhelds like the 3DS and PlayStation Vita.

The reason for not buying a downloadable game was split between two choices. 39 percent prefer to have a physical product, while 38 percent think downloadable games should be cheaper than their retail counterparts. Meanwhile, 12 percent worry that their games might disappear if services like Steam, XBLA or PSN ever shut down. A small number of respondents, 7 percent, worry about games not transferring to the next generation of consoles (spoiler: They won't). Very few, only 3 percent, are concerned about the cost of hard drives and memory cards.

Commenters also shared their opinions, offering more nuanced points of view that are tricky to convey in a static poll. This is one of the biggest questions of this generation - on consoles in particular - and people have lots of reasons for making the choices they do. You'll find some of these opinions after the break.

Here's a cute little video from Nintendo, showing some guys building a replica of Wind Waker's Windfall Island out of sand. Such craft! Such whimsy! Except...Read more...

Batman infiltrates the GCPD morgue and Bane's headquarters.

Batman battles Copperhead in Sionis' steel mill.

It happened! The Male Wii Fit Trainer is in Sakurai's latest Super Smash Bros. Wii U screenshots. Of course he's not necessarily a new character—could be a move- or item effect, a stage element or simply an alternate costume—but this does open up whole new possibilities in fan art.Read more...

Those that pick up a brand new copy of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will notice that the game comes with a Uplay Passport, Ubisoft's version of an online pass. While the passport typically grants access to online sections in the game, in the case of Assassin's Creed 4 it also unlocks small pieces of social content.

Game Informer reports that the online pass locks away the game's fleet management system, in which players add vessels they board in the game to their fleet and send the ships out on missions to earn additional money. Players with second-hand copies of the game that don't plunk down $10 for a Uplay Passport are unable to manage their fleet, and since real-life friends are able to provide assistance to fleets, the management system is not an offline-only aspect of the game, even though it falls into the single-player campaign.

We've contacted Ubisoft for comment on the game's Passport and will update as we learn more.

The fun, rich single-player campaign of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is more enjoyable and less tedious if you play the game with an active online connection. Without a connection, multiple valuable features are not available.Read more...

Apparently it's not just time and history that evolves in the Assassin's Creed games, but the NPCs' artificial intelligence too, as YouTuber cchrist1000 sadly experienced during his ACIV session.Read more...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution actor Elias Toufexis, who provided the gravely voice for hero Adam Jensen, told convention goers that he'd been hired by Ubisoft to play the lead role in Far Cry 3, only to be replaced later. As X360A reports, Toufexis claimed he'd recorded voice work as Far Cry 3 hero Jason Brody, work that would never be used after his starring role in Human Revolution.

"In fact, I shouldn't say this," Toufexis told the MCM Expo crowd over the weekend, "But there's a game called Far Cry 3 which I'm sure you guys know, where I had played Jason Brody. I played him for two years, did the voice and when Deus Ex came out they replaced me because they were nervous that ... 'We don't want people playing this game and thinking of another game.'"

In a world where the prolific Nolan North exists, that seems an odd turn of events. Clearly Toufexis never asked for this, but he was philosophical about how things worked out.

"It's justifiable," Toufexis concluded, "It's understandable, but my normal voice is what I used for that character too. So now it's like I'm losing work because Jensen is so popular."