While Nintendo is no stranger to price cuts, a markdown of $80 on the 3DS was unprecedented for them in such a short time span. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has expressed concern that the sudden drop could have an ill effect on Wii U momentum, in the sense that early adopters that felt burned by the 3DS reduction may hold off.

To remedy this, Nintendo is making strides to ensure that early adopters are treated well, as it outlined in its Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors program.

Our decision of the price markdown this time has a side effect that, at the launch of the Wii U, people may feel that the price might drop in the near future if they wait. Nevertheless, we have decided to cut down the price of the Nintendo 3DS as we consider it as a necessary decision now. What we will be able to do to recover the consumers’ trust before the launch of the Wii U is very important to us.

A price on the Wii U will be announced sometime after March in 2012.

While Nintendo has been extremely scant on details for its ‘flexible’ Wii U online network, word from NoA president Reggie Fils-Aime suggests the company is taking an open approach. Instead of being bound by terms of a central, unified network, Nintendo is allowing third-parties to run their own services.

“So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we’re going to welcome that,” Reggie told Forbes.

He added, “We’re going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third party publishers.”

Beyond that, Reggie did not delve into specifics. One looming question is whether the third-party services Nintendo is allowing will run on top of the Wii U’s online suite, which at least would allow for a unified login handle.

Presumably there must be some degree of basic integration, otherwise we’d be at a loss to see how this approach differs from how the PS2 tackled online.

The recent Wii U announcement has generated an ample amount of interest from third-party publishers and developers, even those that completely skipped the Wii due to its lack of horsepower  – like Valve. Turns out, Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer Bethesda is also watching the Wii U closely.

Company vice president Pete Hines told UK trade site MCV that while the firm isn’t ready to make any commitments, Wii U support is being considered — provided the tech specs are a “good fit.” Hines was keen to note that the firm is not willing to make compromises for the sake of releasing on another platform. more »

One of the highlight announcements at Nintendo’s E3 2011  press briefing was the revelation that a new Smash Bros. title was being planned for Wii U. Excitement quickly waned when Nintendo said it had no further details to share. As it turns out, we may be in for a long wait. Not only is Project Sora still assembling a development team, due to outstanding commitments it hasn’t even begun thinking about the title yet, says project lead Masahiro Sakurai in a recent Famitsu column:

Right now, we’re devoting all our manpower to working on Kid Icarus. We’ve got no plans whatsoever — we’ve got two new games out in the open when there’s no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I’m not sure it’s the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members.

Sakurai also chimed in on the decision to embrace cross-platform play between Wii U and 3DS: more »

While Valve has always admired Nintendo, the company remains distant from the Wii for an obvious reason, the lack of power under the hood. Has the recent Wii U announcement piqued Valve’s interest? You betcha. more »

Although it just recently received its public unveiling, Nintendo’s main man Satoru Iwata revealed in an interview with industry site Gamasutra that the underlying concept behind Wii U dates back to 2007, almost immediately after Wii was released.

Iwata said the company mulled over various ideas, one of which described a dual-purpose approach — having the Wii U controller work in tandem with the console, but also as a standalone system. In the end – presumably for cost reasons, it decided to leave all the processing guts in the console itself, with the controller simply receiving images through wireless connection. more »

While Nintendo has been rather coy regarding its online plans for Wii U, president Satoru Iwata reportedly told investors at an E3 Q&A that the company is aiming for flexibility. The service will be adaptable to the desires of third-parties, says Iwata:

So, I think that, going forward, the question is really to what degree Nintendo can create a more flexible system for its consoles.

And, what we found at this point is that, as we discuss the online structure with different publishers, the things that the different publishers want to do are in fact seemingly rather different. Our current direction is how we can take the desires of the third parties and create a system that’s flexible enough to enable them to do the types of things that they might want to do.

It’s notable that Nintendo is trying its best to win third-party devs over, given that many have expressed frustration with the company’s current online approach. Here’s hoping concrete details aren’t far off.

Thanks, Gamasutra.

While we know Nintendo’s Wii U touts a ‘proprietary’ disc format for games, a question looming is if it will be able to playback DVD or Blu-ray media from the same drive. According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in a recent Q&A session, the answer is no, citing cost concerns over patents: more »

Sales tracking firm NPD Group has released its hardware and software sales analysis for the month of May 2011, which marked the lowest month of sales in the industry since October 2006. NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier blamed the decline on a “light slate” of new releases. Only 42 new titles were introduced this May, compared to 58 in 2010 and 72 in 2009.

Sluggish showing in terms of gross video game sales aside, this month was hardly a somber one for Microsoft. Xbox 360 unit sales were up 39 percent year over year, totaling 270K for the entire month. Microsoft’s Major Nelson also stated that 360 took the number one spot for May, which leaves Nintendo’s Wii trailing behind for yet another consecutive month, despite a recent price cut.

See the full breakdown of hardware and software sales below. more »

Once a PC-focused studio, the middleware wizards over at Crytek developed CryEngine 3 as a way to ease the process of developing across multiple high-definition platforms — namely PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Given the Wii U is also HD-ready, it’s not surprising to see Crytek pledge its support for the 2012-bound platform. CryEngine for Wii U is “definitely” in the works, according to company frontman Cevat Yerli. more »