Nintendo dropped its financial briefing today and while most of it is a long, hard look at a possible recovery for the ailing company, they managed to throw in a few crumbs about upcoming games. Biggest of all is the announcement that Mario Kart 8 will release for Wii U this May. That's certainly the most anticipated game for the console besides Super Smash Bros. so the news that Wii U owners won't have to wait much longer is a welcome one.
Nintendo is of course still figuring out how it can salvage things after its disasterous year, with President Sartoru Iwata taking a 50 percent pay cut and the board members earning less as well. There's a bunch of possible directions for the company to win back the hearts of its audience in this briefing - offering discounts to people who buy more games a year? Working to solidify the relationship between Wii U and 3DS? Focusing on (uh) improving people's health and quality of life?
But one interesting tidbit for gamers is the plan to release Nintendo DS games on the Virtual Console. How would that work? Simple- you'd use the Wii U Gamepad as the lower touchscreen of the DS, with your TV replacing the top screen. That's pretty ingenious and there's an absolute ton of classic games on the Nintendo DS that most people would love to see resurrected. Castlevania, Advance Wars, Phoenix Wright- so many great series that could otherwise never be replicated.
Another big feature for the Wii U is the fix to the GamePad and the addition of a Quick Start Menu. This will allow you to load games on the Wii U GamePad without going back to the console menu. It seems like a simple change but since it takes forever for the menus to load to switch games this will be a welcome change.
So what do you think, can these changes fix Nintendo's problems, or are they in too much of a rut to get out? Mario Kart 8 will certainly be a highlight of their year but then again Nintendo's alway been good for one or two amazing titles a year. How much longer can they continue along this route?
