The Final Word on The Last Story

The Mercenaries 

After years designing games Hironobu Sakaguchi had arrived at a crossroads at the start of the production process for The Last Story.   “I just felt like I was at a slightly different point from everyone else. As if I was surfing alongside the others, but had ended up riding a different wave from the one I should have aimed for,” he admitted to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.  “This project came about just at the moment when I was becoming aware of this,” Sakaguchi added.  “That’s why, if I'm honest, I feel a real sense of gratitude towards this game.”

Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi
Image courtesy of Nintendo

His first game as director in 18 years,  The Last Story is not a typical Sakaguchi game.  “We knew that we wanted something that differed from the way things had been done before. We wanted to express the game world and story in a whole new style.”   The result is a more modern take on the Japanese RPG, with elements borrowed from western RPGs such as branching decision points.  That said, The Last Story is not an open world exploration role-play[ing] game. It remains a story-driven game in the classical Sakaguchi style. “I’ve always attached great importance to the story,” he noted   “It was no different with this title.”  

Sakaguchi however did go in different directions in the structure and focus of the story. The game is an episodic fantasy with many chapters that can be played out of order, bound by an overarching narrative of war, friendships, intrigue and betrayal.  The game offers a vignette of events at a crucial turning point in history at a place called Lazulis Island and the player is dropped in-media-res with a band of mercenaries on their way to meet the island's powerful Count.  The game alludes to a wider world where a human empire won a decisive victory against a another race of humanoids generations ago at a high cost. This is a world in which Lazulis Island is a key player, but only just a player.  Yet the story remains focused on the island and its surroundings. The world-spanning Final Fantasies are condensed into a single city of Lazulis, a city worthy of a massively multiplayer on-line game.  While it does not share the world maps of other Final Fantasies, it is in a way a far more intimate and richer game than any of Sakaguchi’s previous efforts. Quests abound, storylines interweave, and the winding alleyways and side streets all come together to create a living world.   It is this Majora’s Mask-esque familiarity with people and places that really works to the game’s favour.

Lazulis City Market

Despite having what may on the surface appear to be a typical RPG plot, it manages to engage in a way many other RPGs don't.  At its core, the game is a human drama as much as a struggle of the forces of good against evil.  Whichever side wins is less important than the person who wins the victory.   Virtues such as avarice, ambition, courage, love, temperance and honor can be found in nearly every character in the game.  The band of mercenaries the players lead are hired to fight in a racial war.  There are echoes of Chrono Trigger’s racial dichotomy of an oppressive human kingdom discriminating against non-humans.  The leaders of the land are torn between ambition and duty to protect the people, and in this tension the script weaves an excellent narrative and character arc as key characters sought to combine their ambitions, motivations and their duty to advance their own interests.   

While the turncoat or the morally conflicted character is not new to the genre, the way in which Sakaguchi and his script throws the players knee deep into this duality is fresh.  There are entire segments of the game where there are no good choices. And in order to proceed, the player must choose the lesser of two evils.  Making a less than desirable choice knowing the alternative is ruination of the kingdom.  In the back of the player’s mind, we know the decision is not right, but we are taken for a ride anyways. In the end, the script finds a way to extricate the hero out of the moral quandary. However, the tensions between doing what others expect of you and what you know to be right creates the core of the game’s narrative conflicts and plants seeds of an emotional journey that reaches right into the Epilogue, aptly titled "The Last Story".

This is a notable achievement for a game that is essentially linear with many dead-end choices.  Despite this, I rarely felt a decision was forced to serve the game, the decisions that progress the game serves the overall narrative arc and enriches the overall experience.  It makes the revelations  to come even more bittersweet.  It is also this play on human drama rather than a focus on lore or an overwrought mythos and backstory that makes this game enjoyable.  There's not a lot of high-fantasy babble and convoluted plot lines. The story is far simpler, but just as rewarding because of its emphasis on human drama. From Sakaguchi’s point of view, the fantasy setting is merely a vehicle for the story.   By giving the world at fantasy setting, it is “actually easier to bring out realistic human dimensions in a fantasy setting,” Sakaguchi explained.

It’s worth noting the top notch voice acting done for the English edition of the game. With a cast of BBC actors, the leads played by Jack Ryder (Zeal) and Alix Wilton Regan (Callista) fit the part with subdued neutral voices that almost anyone can identify with.  Kelly Wenham (Syrenne), Daniel Curshen (Therius), Nico Lennon (Dagran), Montserrat Lombard (Mirania) and Derek Riddell (Lowell) are perhaps the strongest of the bunch as the voices of the game’s supporting characters.  Wenham’s Syrenne is particularly well done as the peppy, ‘nothing will get me down’ party member that by the end of the game, I have grown fond of.  This also makes her moments of weakness even the more poignant.   The ancillary voices too are top notch. There’s variety and life in the sounds of everyday life in the city of Lazulis.  They curse when the player bumps into them while walking on the street. Later on, the same citizens will apologize profusely  and praise the player when the player has become much more well known.

Taking a cue from the real-time battle systems of Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII, Sakaguchi’s battle system blends the strategic with fast-paced action where it feels more like a hack-and-slash ARPG than a RPG.  “I would say it’s all about order and chaos” noted Sakaguchi.  “In battle, the side that manages to impose ‘order’ on the battlefield will secure victory. Or to put it the other way round, disrupting the ‘order’ of your enemy so it degenerates into ‘chaos’ is the key to victory. That’s something I wanted to express in the battle scenes in the game. But I didn’t want this to be achieved in a logical, methodical manner like Japanese chess. I was looking for a more intuitive battle system in which you can feel the flow of time.”

The result of this innovation is the emphasis on strategy and placement of enemies and kills orders that is more deliberate than the lock-on-target and whack away real-time battle strategies in the recent Final Fantasies. As a result, some have suggested The Last Story’s innovative battle mechanics is perhaps something the Strategy-RPG genre can look to in place of the deliberate and contemplative turn-based combat mechanics popular in the genre.

In an unusual move, Sakaguchi further emphasizes the flexibility of his battle engine by inserting an on-line multiplayer mode, allowing players to replay the game’s many boss battle with several other real people over the internet in a co-op mode or against each other in a deathmatch mode.  Winning reward players with special weapons and craftable materials that is otherwise unobtainable or difficult to obtain outside of the game’s story.  All loot earned can be used in the single player game.  With a New Game+ mode allowing players to carry over their levelled up characters, weapons and armor into a new adventure with more difficult enemies, there is a special demand for the rare craft materials that may only drop once in the entire game to power up certain armor and weapons to +99 ratings.

 Nobuo Uematsu (Left) Hironobu Sakaguchi (Right)
Image Courtesy of Nintendo

In The Last Story, Nobuo Uematsu reprises his role as the composer to a Sakaguchi epic.  While many of the compositions are ‘typical’ Uematsu fare, the overall soundtrack is quite well rounded.  The main theme "Toberu Mono (Those who Can Fly)" is sufficiently sweet to evoke the right sort of emotions.  It’s the kind of melancholic theme Uematsu is famous for and compares favourably to "Theme of Love" (Final Fantasy IV) and "Melodies of Life" (Final Fantasy IX).   

Uematsu’s best work in the soundtrack is a piece that is played near end of the game, likely forgotten in the shuffle to get to the ending for some, and for others, in the depths of an emotional  gut punch.  A piece titled "New Days", an extended version of  a violin piece called "Bonds", the music serves as the bookend to a narrative journey.  Starting with a minimalist piano, it builds to a crescendo before receding back into a melancholic end.   "New Days" is a theme about moving away and moving on to new beginnings where old bonds end.

Uematsu affirms his unique approach when speaking about The Last Story. “For this title, I put aside the rulebook...my priority was to create a certain atmosphere... The music isn’t there to help explain or underline what’s happening on screen. Rather, it exists as another kind of sound effect. There is a unity between the persuasiveness of the images and the power of the music, and I think they fit together in a very natural way.” On the subject of the soundtrack, Sakaguchi adds, “I feel that The Last Story itself changes as you listen to the music. That’s the power of Uematsu-san’s melodies. It’s not simply that the music is beautiful, it’s also the fact that his humanity comes across in them. They are instantly recognisable as his songs.”

Although parts of the game could have used some extra polish – There is a broken (though not game-breaking) quest in the mid-point of the game involving a chase through the city streets – The Last Story is a dazzling and beautiful game with a solid core of humanity.   Unlike Sakaguchi’s previous efforts, there is no massive marketing machine and brand solidarity to power opinion to the near unanimous praise his previous games enjoyed under the Square-Enix banner.  But as a long-time fan of Sakaguchi’s games, I feel The Last Story stands as one of his most unique and emotionally powerful works, even if it may not be his best. 

The Last Story is Sakaguchi’s period in the long sentence of a genre he had popularized globally in the 1990s—The extravagant story-driven fantasy opera with archetypal leads, damsels in distress, heroic arcs and mythical beings.

The Last Story (Wii) is published by Xseed Games in North America and Nintendo in Japan and Europe.

With under one month to go before the Wii U's debut, messaging remains an issue.

Where is the hype?

That must be one of the most common refrains heard across the interwebs from people in the know scratching their heads about Nintendo's sluggish movement.

Expanding on the Google Trends analysis done a few weeks ago, searches for Wii in October 2006 climbed 27% from September when Nintendo officially unveiled pricing and launch details. In contrast Wii U searches from September 2012 (also the month the revealed launch and price details) is down 50%.  Similarly, Wii + Nintendo searches were up 35% in 2006; Wii +Wii U + Nintendo searches are down 22% from September.

Granted this isn't a fair comparison given there are two two weeks to go in October and we know the marketing will ramp up closer to the end of the month.  The Wii U demo kiosks for example finally started appearing in stores yesterday.

However, the bigger question remains as to how exactly Miiverse, Nintendo Network and it's on-line system will work.

At last month's price and release date announcement in New York, Nintendo of America's Bill Trinen let it slip that more details on Miiverse will be revealed closer to launch.  How thorough a presentation and how close to launch remains an open question.

Nintendo is expected to release financials October 24th, so one may expect news to come out around that time, but this is not guaranteed.  The scope of the clarification expected also remains a mystery.  Will it be a dinky video showing Miiverse working with Super Mario Bros. U or will it be a detailed hour-long Nintendo Direct explaining all the features of the Wii U, from Miiverse to the expected accounts system that will be tied to it?

No one knows, and the silence is killing the hype.

The issue Nintendo faces now is with a lack of information on their on-line modes, Nintendo Network and Miiverse, the rumour-mongers are starting to control their message with negative hype-killing stories such as:

No Elite Pass for CoD Black Ops II - Suggesting sup-par on-line modes when a major 3rd party has given up on trying extra monetization on their biggest franchise, at least for this year.

Wii U voice chat being supported but not through the GamePad's Mic -  While the extra tethering to a Wii U GamePad might be a little bit annoying, this opens the question of whether cross-game chat would be supported or would players be limited to certain games?  No answer so far.

On those two questions that are 'important' to some 'core' gamers, Nintendo basically just outsourced their Wii U PR to an Activision rep and the editorial slant at Kotaku and the various media outlets who picked up the story. No official word from Nintendo, just lots of negativity from core gamers already fearing the worst.

While Nintendo of America may not be able to 'fix' some of these problems, as it is possible even Nintendo themselves isn't quite sure on how to solve some of them, the fact that they are letting others control their message this close to launch is troubling.

So how about it Nintendo?  What exactly is going on with your on-line infrastructure?  When will we finally get to know all the features we're being asked to buy in a month?  Is this another 6 month wait for a proper on-line system like we had with the 3DS? Friend codes again? Accounts?

So many questions. So far, zero answers.

New Super Mario Brothers 2

New Super Mario Brothers 2 for the 3DS is a joy to play.  While its DNA is very much rooted in the same New Super Mario Brothers (NSMB) game that debuted on the Nintendo DS six years ago, there are enough differences to warrant the purchase.

Interestingly, I had purchased the original NSMB on the DS, got to around world 5 and got bored of it and stopped.  It didn’t  grab me  despite being the first true side-scrolling Mario entry in a long time, though I suspect my MMO addiction at the time also took its toll.  The same thing happened with NSMB Wii. I bought it feeling obligated to due to the high praise from reviewers, but felt that it probably wasn’t for me given that its strengths were in co-op multiplayer mode.

So what made NSMB2 different?  The coins.  It’s a neat little gimmick, but the one million coin goal and the coin rush mode is an incredibly potent hook. It forced me to complete the game in the ‘story’ mode (doing so gives you a free gold flower in the coin rush modes- an invaluable advantage) and in the process it made me appreciate the tight and imaginative level designs. Coin rush is mind-numbingly addictive.  Hearing the clanging of coins and watching the coin counter grow is intoxicating, not to mention the sense of achievement when I clear a streetpassed coin rush challenge and beat someone else’s frighteningly high coin total.

In hindsight, I probably didn’t give the original NSMB on the DS and NSMB Wii a fair shake (pun intended) , and this is where I fundamentally disagree with critics of New Super Mario Brothers 2.  While all three games shares a common DNA and all had tight well designed levels, NSMB 2 isn't just a rehash.  The original was the kick-off to the franchise. The Wii game was multiplayer centric.  This entry on the 3DS is aimed squarely at a gamers’ need to achieve, to get the high score and to find everything.    Coin rush isn’t just about randomly getting coins and clearing a level on a small time budget, it’s about earning coins efficiently.  Do I jump around near the beginning to grab the floating coins and hit the blocks?  Or do I skip those and rush right in spend my time gabbing higher yield but more difficult to grab gold medallions instead?  The coin rush mode introduces rationing and scarcity of time, highlighting trade-offs and opportunity costs to maximizing the amount of coins one can collect in each carefully crafted level.  Coin rush also rewards repeated play and familiarity to the randomly selected levels used in coin rush.  Knowing each of the three levels in a coin rush inside and out is also crucial to getting the highest coin totals as collecting each of the three gold medallions yields exponentially more coins, and the 1up Mushrooms in the standard game turn into golden mushrooms that reward 50 or 100 coins in coin rush mode.

Revisiting  the DS original, it becomes plainly clear that  NSMB on the DS is several steps behind NSMB 2.  In the DS original Mario has fewer power ups and moves, the visuals are full of pre-rendered, pre-baked sprites to keep a consistent visual look on a more limited hardware, and the game doesn’t even scroll or animate as smoothly.  New Super Mario Brothers 2 in comparison had fluid animations, better quality artwork, including a neat use of the 3D slider to interpolate depth-of-field backgrounds, and power ups that I enjoy, especially the gold fireflower.

It is true that the leap from NSMB to NSMB 2 isn't in the order of say going from Super Mario Brothers to Super Mario Brothers 3, and that is a legitimate complaint for those who felt discouraged that Nintendo insisted on keeping the same (even if improved) aesthetic style on the 3DS.  But to me, that’s not a rehash, there’s enough there for it to be considered a true sequel.

If there is one thing I would knock it is how the streetpass system works.  While there is plenty of room to store streetpassed Coin-rush levels and even favourite streetpassed levels you like to avoid them being overwritten. Each player only has room for 1 coin-rush pack that they can share with others via streetpass.  Want to show off your high coin run on a relatively easy Mushroom Pack (stages randomly selected from Worlds 1-2)? Need to use your one slot for streetpassing.  Want to show off your leet skills on a difficult coin rush challenge? Need to use your one slot.  Want to show the guy you streetpass every morning you beat his 13,000 coin total? Need to use your one slot for streetpassing.  Also, outside of your one save slot for streetpassing, there’s no way to save and archive interesting and fun coin rush packs the game creates for you unless someone else you streetpassed sends it back to you.  I wish there is a more robust option here, perhaps three slots to allow players to  save a selection of coin rush stages. That said, it is a minor quibble.  If you can streetpass someone daily or even weekly, there’s plenty to do in terms of beating other people’s coin rush records.

New Super Mario Brothers 2 is a great game and one of the finest platformers out there today. It is also a game that knows its platform very well, playing to the 3DS’ unique features, including 3D, while avoiding its weaknesses, including 3D.   Each level is no more than three to five minutes long, and coin rush modes randomly string three of these levels together.  I’m amazed by how well the game works around rationed time.  If I have 20 minutes here or there, I can do a quick coin rush or two and before I know it, my time is up.  

Fun Fact: World Wide coin total sits at 184 billion and counting, updated every few seconds.   

Nintendo's Virtual Problem

When Satoru Iwata first introduced the idea of playing perfectly emulated old games on the then codenamed Revolution console, I was amazed by the simplicity and brilliance of the idea.   I remember thinking to myself that in one fell swoop, Nintendo could have the entire Mario library accessible to their fans on their next-generation hardware.

Virtual Console concept introduced at E3 2005

"We are redefining the term backward capatability," Iwata boasted at Nintendo's E3 2005 when the idea was first introduced.  "We have designed the revolution to be a virutal console capable of downloading 20 years of Nintendo content," he added to much applause and fanfare.  Then he dropped something of a pie-in-the-sky goal for his vision. The [Wii]  is "technically capable of playing virtually every Nintendo console game ever created."

It was an amazing insight, and in 2005 that was an incredibly progressive idea.   With the introduction of the Virtual Console service on the Wii in 2007, early barometers of its success were promising.  There were a crush of games and I was able to explore entirely new platforms from the rapid addition of TurboGrafx titles, ranging from Bonk to Sim Earth, Ys and Military Madness (Nectaris).

While fans naturally clamoured for releases of favourites like Megaman, Final Fantasy titles, Sonic, Mario and more Mario, early on, there were also  real attempts by large publishers to release era specific titles that may not have been on many wishlists. This included KOEI’s suite of Super Nintendo strategy games such as Ghengis Khan II and Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV and even the heavily niche open-world exploration sim Uncharted Waters: New Horizons.

However, something happened between the service's early success and the following years when releases in the service dwindled to a crawl.  This shift started by the appearance of restricted releases to only a few a week, sometimes no releases at all.  It led to a kind of skewed economics, a rationing of slots, that led to increasingly selective releases.  Third party publishers on the services selected their best selling games and increasingly the diversity found initially began to recede. Fewer selections lead to fewer returning customers to check out what’s new and the service stagnated.  This undoubtedly lead to a downward spiral of diminishing downloads leading to fewer releases to funnel downloads to even fewer games which in turn lead to even fewer downloads and interest.

Speaking personally, after the initial rush of releases in 2007 and outside of a few select event releases such as the Import Sin and Punishment release, I just gave up checking because it’s not worth  waiting a week to find out next week’s release  of one VC game (on a good week) is yet another game I didn’t want to play.

This trickle down, top down approach is even more evident on the 3DS eshop service.  Not only are we being asked to re-buy Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda (again) to pad the available selection of 3DS virtual console games, third party support has been lukewarm and where support exists, they inevitably dig for their better selling GameBoy titles and stop there.  While the Wii’s Virtual Console store had at least a launch phase to accrue an impressive and diverse starting library, the 3DS VirtualConsole selection in contrast is being choked to death with draconian release of the week practices.

The following are things I feel Nintendo can explore to help better their Virtual Console service:  

Treat virtual console as an investment rather than a cash cow – Yes, VC downloads have high margins. Rather than approaching releases by asking “how much can we make right now” the focus should be on“how much can we make in longer term” ;  This would shift the focus from curated limited release of Virtual Console content to a more flexible strategy of building a community of repeat customers who come back again and again because there’s something new and worth checking out every week.  

The thinking needs to move beyond just Mario and marquee mascot titles of the era.  Yes, a lot of people love those games, but those don't add depth to the service.  Virtual Console is currently a one-note service for many people, a place to get legitimate copies of Mario and Zelda games, but not legitimate copies  of hundreds of other titles that they grew up with.  To achieve the critical mass needed, the number of games releases must increase, niche titles will be part of it, and third parties must be involved.

Virtual Console as a loss leader – The question for Nintendo to ask is  "what can Virtual Console bring to the table to help us sell more 3DS units?"  Given the early success of VC on the Wii and the continued support by fans who own Nintendo platforms, the answer is quite clear.  The Virtual Console service can do a whole lot to make the 3DS value-proposition a lot stronger to a broader swathe of the public.

• To foster this active community of purchasers,  a lot of games need to make it on to the market while at the same time making it as riskless as possible.  Third parties must be given a risk free way to release as much of their back catalog as possible and monetize even their most obscure niche products without fear of not being paid. One option is to allow publishers to sell the first several thousand copies of a game at 100% share of the profits to encourage publishers to release  a broad selection of titles, not just their top selling game of 1994.  

• As part of the Virtual Console initiative Nintendo should spend money tracking down owners of games that may be in ownership limbo because the publisher and developer are no longer in business and if possible find a publisher or publish it themselves.  (A game on my personal wishlist is the fantastic  1993 console port of Gremlin Software’s Utopia: The Creation of a Nation; easily one of the best strategy games on the Super Nintendo) or Square USA's  western developed ARPG Secret of Evermore,  a moody and atmospheric gem in the rough with impecabble writing from Square's US localization team.

• Spend the money to get special emulators for FXChip titles and esoteric hardware that may only be supported by one game so those games will also have a place on the service.

• Finally, don’t treat the Nintendo 64 like a premium platform.  It’s a 15 year old console, and the N64 titles available on the Wii VC does the N64’s third party library a great disservice. 

Under-appreciated at the time, a popular pick for Virtual Console  by fans

Tap into Nostalgia – Yes, we know it’s a ROM dump but Nintendo doesn't have to treat it as such.   Tie in the Virtual Console service with Virtual Nintendo Power or Virtual EGM Virtual Famitsu, and Virtual GamePro to allow players to relive their childhood in sync, with the appropriate issue made available with each game purchase, for a small fee.

Create a  virtual ‘rental service’ that so many of us used as children and use it to the advantage of the service. Make it a place where players can spend 99 cents to try any VirtualConsole title for 24-48 hours without being stuck with buyer’s remorse while having the option for say one week to pay the price difference to 'upgrade' to a full purchase.  Not only does this generate a cashflow that can be plowed back into servicing the Virtual Console, it allows players to try before they buy and converts full access to Virtual Console content into a kind of in-app purchase.  This also allows Nintendo to justify charging the relatively higher prices for ROM dumps of nostalgia.   In the current environment of smarthphone apps, easy access emulation of classic games, and free games, the calculus is free/ 99 cent app download vs. A $3.99 download of a 15 year old game, the calculus is often not  in favour of the 15 year old game.

Treat Virtual Console as a Platform instead of a Brand -  Nintendo may not have thought that far ahead in 2006, but in 2012 they’ve had six years and millions in profits from the Virtual Console downloads, not to mention billions in income from the Wii to chart a course for the future of the service.

Virtual Console should be a platform that sits inside Nintendo consoles and portables.  Like itunes, or Amazon's Kindle downloads, Virtual Console should be seamlessly accessible across all capable Nintendo devices.  Gamers gave the DSi a pass because we knew it wasn’t powerful enough, but the fact that the 3DS eshop and Wii shop continues to have segregated  libraries and storefronts is a major hindrance to sales.  We are now at a point where someone could conceivably own the same marquee Virtual Console games multiple times. This blatant anti-consumer practice has not gone unnoticed.  A common refrain from many who used to own a Nintendo DS or Wii is to complain about the loss of their digital downloads when they traded it in or upgraded and how much better (insert smartphone here) is at managing their downloads.

This pattern of compartmentalization by platform appears to be repeated again with recent hints that while transferring Wii Virtual Console purchases to the Wii U is possible, they must be limited to running in Wii mode when run on the Wii U, ruling out the possibility of playing Virtual Console games on the Wii U GamePad while the TV is freed up.   The obvious question to ask is why do we need to run an emulator of an old Nintendo console on an emulation of the Wii hardware?  Why can't we run it directly off the Wii U?

More importantly for Nintendo, all the neat Miiverse connectivity social togetherness that cost millions of dollars in research and development to implement for the Wii U will be turned off when your users are playing these emulated version of old games on a Wii environment.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to have these games run natively on the Wii U so someone can post on the Miiverse how much they still love playing Super Mario Bros., post a screenshot of their 'hard-core' accomplishments and high scores or to ask for help from the community? 

Nintendo's Virtual Console remains a compelling and brilliant concept.   Despite their competitor’s best efforts to copy the service, they cannot match the depth and nostalgia factor Nintendo has with the first fififteen years of games between the NES and N64, or the 20 years of Gam Boy/Color’s library of titles.   This is a significant competitive advantage that is difficult to copy short of buying Nintendo, and this can be used by the company to parley customers of the Virtual Console service into regular and loyal customers to their digital stores.

The ball is in Nintendo’s court.  With the Wii U and their new DLC infrastructure, the door is open to not only patch their existing slate of Virtual Console games to run natively on the Wii U, but to relaunch the service, rebrand it not ONLY as a platform for nostalgia but as a repository for gaming history.  This will bring more games to the service AND gamers willing to spend $2 to $5 on a whole variety of titles back to the table again.

It took the slow painful decline of the WiiWare and DSiWare for Nintendo to figure out demos and featuring games matter in digital stores.  I hope it doesn’t take them another generation of atrophy to figure out that having a seamless Virtual Console ‘platform’ that offers a vast selection of games that is portable across  all Nintendo platforms and accessible everywhere is where they need to be.   

Google Trends Analysis: Wii U search volumes shows strengths and weakness

In a recent article on istocktrader.com, Rich Bieglmeier performned a Google Trends analysis and concluded that while Wii U likely will not repeat the success of the Wii, it is likely to do well based on search results, predicting 2 million Wii U sold by the end of 2012 and 3.5 million by March 31 2013 (the end of Nintendo’s fiscal year) ; Nintendo’s own forecasts on estimated a combined 10.5 million Wii branded consoles will be sold between April 2012 to March 2013 with many commentators assuming a 50/50 split, putting the number closer to 5 million.  In contrast, Nintendo sold through 6 million Wii consoles by March 2007.

This is a conservative estimate by most measure.  While actual shipment numbers are unknown, 

He based his analysis on comparing ‘peak 2006’ and current search results for the search terms Wii, Nintendo, Wii U.    The analysis was relatively vague, only concluding that the numbers are down significantly from 2006.  

It also raises a number of questions.    How is the trend moving comparing search volume to major events around the Wii / Wii U, both had E3 reveals and a September price/launch announcements?  How has the search volume trended in the months leading to E3 and immediately after it?

In the spirit of analysis, I have done my own analysis using Mr. Bieglmeier's work as a starting point.  I found his use of the 3 search terms Wii, Wii U and Nintendo to be adequate and appropriate in capturing a wide swath of searches so I will be using the same three terms, with  modifications for this study.

Methodology

Time scale: 2004-2012, September

Search Terms: Wii, Nintendo, Wii U

This may seem counterintuitive but there are significant overlap between these terms (see below). As will be shown later, Wii has experience significant growth as a brand compared to Nintendo itself.  It is also worth noting that while it does not rank in the United States,  Wii 2 is a related search term for Wii U on a global level, at #8.

Top 10 related terms for each of the 3 terms

Wii:  Wii games, Nintendo, Wii Nintendo, Wii game, Wii cheats, Wii fit, Wii 2, Wii Mario Kart, Mario Kart, Wii Play

Nintendo:  Nintendo DS, DS, Wii, Wii Nintendo, Nintendo games, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, 3DS, Nintendo 3DS, DSi Nintendo

Wii U: The Wii U, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo U, Wii U release, Wii games, Wii U games, new Wii U, new Wii, wii U price

With this in place, I ran my analysis for both the United States and the world.  Our focus will primarily be on the United States, although global search volumes are included as its own chart as well.

Below is a chart showing search volume (with 100 = December 2008’s Wii search term)  comparing 2006 and 2012 (see Note at the end of the post for more information).   There are differences of note.  E3 in 2006 was held in early May, instead of June.   The Wii brand was announced in a letter from Nintendo in April 27 2006, prior to that it was simply known as the Nintendo Revolution.  I have included Revolution’s search volume rating of 2 in April and 1 in May into the Wii tally.  After May 2006, Google trends show Nintendo Revolution search petered out to 0.

Search Trend USA - Click to Enlarge

Search Trend Global - Click to Enlarge

The Analysis:

The E3 Bump

Wii/Revolution search volume went from 4 in April 2006 to 12 in May 2006 during E3 a 275% spike.   Comparatively Wii U searches went from  1 in May 2012  to 4 June 2012; a 400% bump but significantly softer overall due to the lower search volume in the month prior to E3.

There are a number of mitigating factors in play

• The Wii branding was announced in late April 2006 causing a lot of disdain and confusion among gamers and interest in the press
• Wii U numbers are obfuscated by searches in the ‘Wii’ category.  Note that Wii jumped from 12 in May 2012 to  18 in June 2012. 

Could we attribute this jump simply to more searches for Wii related software at E3?  Considering the dearth of Wii specific games and announcements that seems highly unlikely.    If we strip the increase in Wii searches and apply it to Wii U,  we have a combined volume of 10 in June.  Still below 11 recorded in 2006. 

September Conference Bump

Wii search volume went from a 7 to 12 in 2006, or 170% increase between August and September 2006.  In 2012, Wii U’s bump went from a 2 to a 6, a much more impressive increase but softer overall due to a much lower August volume.  We should also consider a number of factors.

• September figures are still provisional. As of this writing, data collected had about one week left in September.
• Wii search results jumped from 15 to 18 in August and September.    
• While it is possible September just happened to be a month where Wii searches occur, this seems unlikely.  Wii search volumes have traditionally dropped 4 to 5 points between August and September (return the school season) in every year it has been on the market (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011), excluding 2012 where it spiked to a 18 from 15.
• This spike in Wii searches provides strong circumstantial evidence that Wii U as a search term under reports searches for the Wii U by the public.
• If we generously assume true Wii searches remain flat at 15 between August and September,  we can apply the 3 points gained to Wii U.  Giving as an overall  (provisional) result of 9 points.
• 9 points is still below the 12 reported in 2006, but I strongly believe that this is a fairly conservative estimate.  If we assume a modest dip of 3 points in true searches for Wii related products between August and September,  we would instead apply 6 points for the Wii U and the Wii U bump would be tied with the Wi in 2006.

Wii is the new Nintendo

An interesting trend is the creep of the Wii to replace Nintendo.  In a similar way PlayStation became a brand synonymous with Sony, Wii is now a much more popular synonym for Nintendo.

Note the reversal between 2006 and 2012.  Our datapoints in 2006 show Nintendo leading much of the way until Wii took off in searches around October.   The inflection point was infact October 2006. That was the last time Nintendo as a search term lead over Wii.  Since then Wii related searches have lead the way.

Pausing for a breath or continued decline?

The trend-lines also show unquestionably a decline in Wii and Nintendo related searches every year since 2008.  Nintendo as a search term is at an all time low.  At an 10 rating in September, it is lower than  the 13 rating recorded in September 2004 when the Google Trends app started tracking.  All years since have seen a higher search volume for Nintendo.

Interestingly at a combined state, overall searches for Nintendo + Wii is comparable to 2006.  Combined search volume for Nintendo +Wii and its related terms (note some overlap so there is double counting) was 29,  in 2012, combined Nintendo + Wii + Wii U is 31.

However, reviewing the intervening years between 2006 and 2012, The combined search volume is running behind Septembers in 2009 (37 points), 2008 (44 points) and 2007 (40 points).  It however beats Septembers 2010 (27 points)  and 2011 (25 points).

The launch of the Wii U will no doubt see increased volume searches for the next six months, but it will be interesting to see where Nintendo is trending over the next few years.

Conclusions:

• There is strong correlation in the movement of the Wii search term along with Wii U related events
• Basing purely on just the Wii U search term, Wii U awareness is much lower comparative to Wii in 2006, how much lower is open to debate.  Our estimate, conservatively is it is running 25% behind the Wii at the same time six years ago based on our estimate of a search volume of 9 for the Wii U in September vs. Wii’s volume of 12 in 2006 for the Wii.
• Wii U awareness is significantly more elastic than Wii, showing considerable growth in interest during E3 and the Nintendo September conference spiking 400% and 300% respectively, compared to 275% and 170% for the Wii.  
• A plausible conclusion could be that this elasticity will bring Wii U search trends inline with Wii in 2006 when the marketing ramps up.  
• Related to the observation is also the hypothesis that there are many dormant Wii owners who haven’t touched their Wii in a while but may become interested and search for Wii U when they hear news about it.  This could explain the correlation between Wii and Wii U searches because these owners may simply type in Wii, Wii 2, Nintendo Wii, instead of Wii U specifically when searching.   How successful Nintendo is in convincing them the Wii U is worth $299.99 is a question for sales charts to answer.
• The real proof of how well Wii U will emulate the Wii’s success and how this observed elasticity in search interest will carry them through to the fall in terms of generating public interest will be in the months of October/November and December.  These the months Wii searches have spiked in every year since 2006.   In recent years, these peaks have become increasingly less tall.  If we see a substantial ramp up in 2012, similar to 2006, it is possible to speculate that Nintendo may have succeeded in their goal and our hypothesis of dormant interest in Wii being reawakened could be proven.

Limitations:

• September data is only provisional as the study was conducted with about 1 week left to go in September
• Several search terms that could be significant to Nintendo such as Nintendo TVii do not yet have enough data to be recorded in the trends, although the search term TVii does record a correlation back to Nintendo TVii in Google Trends.  Either case, this ‘casual friendly’ feature would be something we want to pay attention to in coming months to see how well it trends  as a search term in conjunction with Wii U’s rollout in November.
• We remain uncertain how closely correlated Wii U is with Wii in terms of search volume.  

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.

*Note: Google Trends numbers are normalized and thus fluctuate depending on search term used and time scale.  The numbers by themselves mean little without context.  In our search trend context,  a number of 100 means search volume equals the highest volume experienced between the search terms. In this case, as you’ll note in the peak right in the middle of the graph,  100 = Wii on December 2008.

A number of other Decembers came close, most notably the search volume for Wii in December 2007, with a figure of 92, or 92% of 2008’s peak.

Symphony of the Goddesses

Last March I attended The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses concert organized by Nintendo and Jason Michael Paul productions.  Based on the Zelda 25^th Anniversary concert last year, the Symphony of Goddesses concert features a revised and expanded set list.

As a fan of the Zelda games, I had booked my tickets the first day they went on sale for the Vancouver event.   I was so eager I missed Nintendo’s late (by several hours) release of the discount code for the tickets, but no matter, I was going to see a world class orchestra play Zelda music in one of the most beautiful concert halls in North America from one of my favourite game franchises.

As the weeks drew closer I fretted over the event itself.  Would it be weird to walk into city’s storied Orpheum theatre in casual business attire?  Would my 3DS and smartphone  be out of place?  Were the costume players going to outnumber everyone else? 

All my worrying ending up being mostly about nothing.  The 2,800 seat theatre was packed to capacity with 20-somethings, lots of families, husband and wives, and couples and a core of high quality costume players with really top notch costumes.  I was particularly struck by a mother and son pair who sat a row infront of me, the son was no older than twelve.   After the symphony, I wondered what the mom thought about the music and felt a little bit jealous my parents weren’t as involved in my hobby when I was his age.

At 8 o’clock the conductor Eímear Noone appeared on stage to applause as she launched into the E3 2010 Zelda medley.  As the theme ended to applause Ms. Noone explained this was to be a true symphony -- an overture followed by four movements and we had only heard the overture.  In hindsight, it was a great decision to focus on just four Zelda games with a few medleys  allowing the concert music director and arranger Chad Seiter to go places with the music the more generalized game concerts could not in the nearly two hour symphony.

After the medley, the night’s programme  continued with a dungeon theme medley and Kakariko Village theme medley (to much applause and laughter at the visuals of the chickens attacking Link) before moving into the night’s first movement, The Ocarina of Time. Opening in media res, child Link is thrown to the ground as Ganondorf hurries away after Impa set to blaring horns announcing impending danger.  Then a moment of pure poetry.  Nothing really prepares you for the feelings of nostalgia tinged with awe when the screen fades from black to a familiar landscape framed by moon-set with Link riding into frame as the symphony plays the opening notes to Ocarina of Time.  The air was eclectic throughout the first movement and the well behaved audience only broke the silence in cheers as the twelve-minute long tour through the Ocarina of Time ended with a few notes teasing Majora’s Mask.

The second movement was The Wind Waker. The piece is the same as the one in the 25^th Anniversary CD.  It has been years since I last played the game and yet the final battle with Ganon  splashed accross on the giant screen  still looks like a painting in motion.  The character faces full of emotions – sadness, fear, anger, delight.  It reminded me how the Wind Waker is still the most emotive Zelda game and it still looks great all these years later.  At this point it became clear that each movement would essentially be a summary of each game’s plot arc split into three disctinct phases.  Introduction, Zelda and Link, Ganon and the final battle.  

The end of the Wind Waker set was followed by a short intermission and the 2^nd half of the symphony opened with Great Fairy’s Fountain to ease the audience back in.  This is followed by the 3^rd movement, Twilight Princess.  Similar to The Wind Waker, the composition follows the track found in 25^th Anniversary CD.   The Twilight Princess movement was by far the most choral intensive pieces, and visually, it stands in stark relief from The Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time.  It also differed in that it included an edited version of the  game’s epic ending sequence.  The scene where the twilight princess goes back to her realm and the mirror shatters was the highpoint for me as the chorus and music soared.   Twilight Princes was the darkest movement in the symphony, the darkness to Wind Waker's light. 

  

By this point I was at the edge of my seat as I knew the 4^th moment would be the last.  How could then end this symphony? What will it be?  I didn’t have to wait long.  Storm clouds appeared on the screen.  Rain.  lighting.  The audience gasped.  A Link to the Past. 

The movement followed the narrative of the game with original renditions of its many themes and leitmotifs.  By the time the orchestra paused on cue before the horns blared out the Dark World theme, I was on an emotional high.  What followed next would take me back to the past, to that twelve your old kid playing on my Super Nintendo.  The piece of music known to many simply as ‘Credits Roll’ was re-imagined in true symphonic form as the ending theme to the symphony.   Of all the ending themes, this was the perfect one, aurally, thematically and emotionally.   A sad melodic score that had often been overshadowed by the pomposity and grandiosity of other Zelda scores,   I have always felt it was the best ending theme to any Zelda game, Koji Kondo  at his best.  Like many in the 90s, I did what gamers did if they wanted to save something for posterity.  Plugged in the VCR and taped the ending.  I must have reran credits roll tens of times back then, just to hear the soothing melodic score.  It was something I only occasionally revisited in the intervening years, but its reappearance that night was a fitting reminder of a game that I love so much.

After the 4^th movement, conductor  Eímear Noone  rushed off stage to a standing ovation, only to re-appear a few moments later.  She motioned to the symphony to play one more song and with that, the audience got twenty more minutes of music.  Gerudo Valley, similar to the anniversary CD track, was the first encore piece played, followed by a very special fan request, Majora’s Mask.  The audience erupted into applause with this piece.   The encore was capped with a surprising entry, Ballad of the Windfish from Link's Awakening, the only portable Zelda to be featured.   A soft contemplative piece, it was a piece Ms. Noone noted was ‘philosophical’ and reflective. 

With that, my most awesome night at a symphony came to a close.  The crowd slowly thinned out of the auditorium.  Many remained in the lobby chatting, streetpassing, buying Symphony of the Goddesses T-shirts and posters. I checked my 3DS one last time to clear room in my streetpass plaza for my final round of streetpasses (I  got over 70 hits without trying) and walked towards the train station, poster and t-shirt in tow.

The Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses: 

With the Vancouver Film Orchestra  and Vancouver Chamber Choir

Conductor:  Eímear Noone

Composed by: Koji Kondo 

Arranged by: Chad Seiter

3 Reasons Wii U is not the Wii and 3 Reasons it may not matter

With reports of brisk Wii U pre-orders, part of the launch narrative for the Wii U will undoubtedly to compare it to the Wii.  However, since the Wii U's reveal in E3 2011, Pundits, gamers and analysts alike have often taken the extreme route, declaring the Wii U deficient and a failure.   The reasoning are as follows:

First, the Wii U GamePad is not as quick an easy sell as the concept of waving a remote to mimic movement.  Many also pointed out NintendoLand, the game Nintendo has tasked to show off the Wii U is more tailored towards Nintendo fans (with its many attractions based on popular ‘core’ Nintendo franchises) than it is about gaining the casual market

Second, Smartphones, tablets, and the incumbent HD platforms pose a different threat than the overwhelming but singular threat Sony posed in 2006.  Sony by late 2006 had already stumbled badly with the PlayStation Portable and the PS3 was marred with a high price.  In 2012, the tablet market is as healthy as ever, and the best selling console in America is the Xbox 360. 

Lastly, there’s the view that Nintendo may be in a strategic quagmire and is uncertain of where to go.  Some have described their Wii U strategy as ‘confused’.  While I don’t agree with this assessment the point stands until proven otherwise.  According to this theory, Nintendo will ultimately have to choose between its traditional Japanese market  where it remains very strong, and ‘the west’ with its insatiable appetite for technology.  Wii U might work in Japan where the only HD console of note is an anemic PS3, so goes the conventional wisdom, but it won’t stand a chance against the PS4 and Xbox720.  So strong is this view that  industry analyst Michael Pachter’s believes that the Wii U is priced ‘too high’and will need a price cut in 2013.

These aren’t bad arguments against the Wii U per se, but they are often, though not always, made in bad faith.  That said, it remains overwhelmingly safe to assume that the Wii U is unlikely to repeat the Wii’s miraculous run in 2006.  However, there is a large gulf between repeating Wii’s fairytale success as the fastest selling console in history and failing to catch on.  Further, the Wii U could well follow the more traditional trajectory of a market leader, where it gains control of the market after its late competitors fail to gain enough of a critical mass to pose a serious challenge. In that case, all bets are off as the Wii U could well  outperform the Wii on a lifetime basis.

Here are three other reasons why despite the arguments against the Wii U following in the Wii's footsteps, it may not matter in the end.

12 months is a long time in politics, and also in gaming...

The headstart of the Wii U, currently estimated to be in 12 month range could be a significant hurdle for Sony and Microsoft to overcome.   While this lead time is often explained away with the likelihood that the Wii U will be outmatched technically, it remains that case that the Xbox 720 and PS4 are still 12 to 18 months out and there’s no guarantee either  competitor will go for technology that requires years of subsidies before breaking even.

The big 3 console manufacturers face an interesting dilemma over power. They can double down and incur the financial costs and risks of doing so with no guarantee the other two competitors will go for parity, or they can go more conservative, focus on social games, digital, indies, and infrastructure for their new walled gardens beyond the disc business.  In a way, this is a bit like a game of chicken between giants.

Sony, the player most likely to go for pure power based on its pedigree and early rumours of PS4’s development, is in no position financially to shoulder the burden of another $599 home console sold at a steep lost, and Microsoft seems more interested in copying Nintendo and creating its own walled garden than leapfrogging them.   What we may end up with are more powerful platforms  that will be in the same general power range of each other even if one console is seen as being significantly more powerful than the rest.

The Wii U GamePad works

Since its 2011 reveal, the Wii U GamePad has been lambasted as being ‘behind the curve’ and not being sufficient to compete with mobile technology. At E3 this June, Microsoft’s Smart Glass, an attempt at bringing a second screen into play with the Xbox 360 ala the Wii U, got almost as much press as the Wii U re-reveal a few days later. Prompting Engadget to opine whether it had rendered the Wii U obsolete. “Nintendo was just beat at its own game,” wrote Engadget’s Brian Heater. “Where the original Wii's innovative gameplay saw competitors playing catch-up with their own motion controllers, Microsoft has introduced an added feature to its existing platform that will go head-to-head with the Wii U at launch.”

Mr. Heater’s position was not rare.  In contrast to SmartGlass, Nintendo showed a universal TV remote application and allowed third parties to show off-TV play with the GamePad and for its part demoed  light usage of the pad in NintendoLand demos and the expected use of the screen for maps and inventory.   While the universal remote aspect of the Wii U GamePad received some praise , the asymmetry of Nintendo’s subdued reveal of the GamePad played into the narrative that the Wii U was already behind.

From Universal Remote to Nintendo TVii

Other commentators offered a more nuanced take on Smart Glass, with Gamespot’s Peter Brown noting that while the technology looked ‘legit’, it lacked the unity of purpose the Game Pad offers in terms of having both a screen and controls in one unit, and that it would be a hassle trying to juggle a smartphone/tablet and a gaming controller making two-screen gaming with SmartGlass impractical. Mr. Brown summed up his thoughts by pointing to the Achilles heel of the whole SmartGlass project, writing, “It's unlikely that developers will be wooed into making SmartGlass-only games as the hardware it lives on can vary greatly between users. We'll see support for SmartGlass within games, but it will likely remain optional.”

It was not until last week that Nintendo decided it was time to reveal what they really were planning. The universal remote functionality shown at E3 was nothing more than a preview. Far from being behind the curve, Nintendo had thought about most of the functionality Microsoft will try to offer with SmartGlass. Furthermore, they proved the speculations correct with a convincing two player split screen demo of Call of Duty Black Ops II showing the 2nd player playing one screen of the split screen entirely on the GamePad while another played on the TV. Both demos were clearly very far along and displayed the kind of things people had imagined would be possible on the Wii U but had seemingly, for a few months at least, been stolen by Microsoft.

With NintendoTVii Nintendo has also leafrogged Microsoft, Sony and captured an important position in the competition for the living room, upending the conversation over the coming rush to create proprietary TV boxes. It solves a convergence ‘problem’ that other players in the industry have been trying to solve for consumers with expensive hardware propositions by simply offering it as a catch-all free service for Wii U owners. And unlike SmartGlass, which still only exists as a demo with no firm release date, NintendoTVii and Black Ops II running splitscreen on a GamePad will be ready in November.

A clear lesson can be gleamed from this experience. Nintendo had played much of Wii U’s strategy particularly close to its chest and has chosen to reveal key functionality in stages even if it meant disappointing fans, at least for a while. With just under two months to go and at least one or two more pre-launch presentations likely scheduled, there’s no reason why the remaining unanswered questions in the form of its Miiverse social network, and online network infrastructure will be much different from our experience with the GamePad’s layered reveals.

The Wii U is designed for future growth

As more have become known, Wii U hardware has solidified as being at least a step ahead of current platforms. The arguments have tended to revolved around how big a step or whether it is infact a half step. While many details remain in flux, recent information have upended the convential thinking on the Wii U.

Rumours based on insider leaks have for a long-time speculated the Wii U would have at least 1GB or memory set aside for games as far back at the E3 2011 reveal. Subsequent tips from insider sources revealed another tranche of memory would be set aside for the operating system (OS).

Slide (in Japanese) confirming 2GB Total System RAM

Based on these leaks, it was rumoured prior to E3 2012 that at least 512 MB would be set-aside for the OS. While this was never confirmed at E3 in June, last week's Nintendo Direct from Nintendo President Satoru Iwata dropped something of a bombshell with Mr. Iwata confirming for the first time that 1GB is indeed what is currently available to launch games with another 1GB is being set aside for the syetem OS. At 2GB, the RAM is significantly higher than earlier consensus of 1.5 GB and landed on the high end of what many though Nintendo would be willing to budget for the Wii U. Furthermore, 1GB of ram set aside for the OS for a closed system such as a games console appear to be a little excessive. This is the same footprint a Windows 7 or Vista leaves in a modern PC, leading many to believe more memory will eventually be freed for game use or directed to other unaccounted functionality. By comparison, current HD consoles top out at 512 MB total RAM shared between games and the OS. A fraction of the Wii U’s total of 2 GB.

Another detail widely rumoured and corroborated with insider leaks note that the Wii U will include is a 3-core CPU supporting more modern out-of-order execution of instructions as opposed to the in-order CPUs found in the current generation of game consoles. Mr. Iwata also confirmed in last week’s presentation the Wii U’s graphics processor to be a GPGPU or a general-purpose GPU, which allows its processing power to be harnessed to do non-graphics related tasks. “This is useful for highly parallel computations such as physics engines” noted NintendoWorldReport when covering the announcement.

Between the generous amounts of reserve memory and significantly more modern CPU and GPU architecture, claims of the Wii U being about as powerful as current HD platforms have likely been widely oversold. From what we know, Nintendo hasn’t yet shown exactly what the Wii U can do, but it appears to be satisfied with letting the first wave of developers tinker and release HD games with slight visual enhancements over the current incumbents. In discussing Wii U  Firebrand Games’ Peter Shea told the Guardian, “There is still a degree of uncertainty about exactly what you can, should and must do with the Wii U, almost as if Nintendo is still working this out for itself, or not quite ready to show all its cards. Even though we have the hardware in house, we won't really know what it's all about until we see the first wave of first Party Titles, and see and play what Nintendo have been working on.” That said, a Eurogamer speculation piece based on insider sources published a week earlier suggested the Wii U features stronger than expected GPU with a weaker than expected CPU.

Given so much remains in flux and remans unknown, we can say that while the Wii U may not be the most powerful console released this generation, it also does not feel like the static console Wii became. There’s plenty of room for it to grow from a hardware perspective. Analysis and punditry based on hope that Sony will come out with a technological marvel in the PS4 for under $350 within 12 months of the Wii U seems highly speculative. Even Sony is claiming the PS4 may not ready for 2013, though true believers will also point out that Sony tends deny  everything until they are ready to announce.  That said, It may well be the case that Sony engineers need to wait for prices of their desired components to come down to ensure a sufficiently large gap has opened between themselves and the Wii U technologically while still coming in at a reasonable price at retail. And in those 12+ months, who knows what will happen. But one thing is for certain, the Wii U will be in the market racking up sales.

The Last Story –First Impressions

Five hours in, I can’t help but think to myself that The Last Story is very much the Final Fantasy game we deserve, but the game the Square-Enix has abandoned.   There are shades and echoes from previous Final Fantasy games everywhere for anyone who is familiar with the franchise. It plays and feels like Final Fantasy in all but name. The character archetypes pick up right where Hironobu Sakaguchi left off in Final Fantasy X.   Interestingly enough, the crest on The Last Story logo has a set of roman numerals around its edge numbering from I , II, III and ending in X. This would seem to imply that in Sakaguchi’s mind, this would be his 11^th single-player entry into the Final Fantasy series.

The castle town in Lazulis reminds me of San d’Oria in Final Fantasy XI and Alexandria in Final Fantasy IX, a bustling but quaint medieval town.  The game design borrows heavily from Final Fantasy XI and XII with a massive and beautifully rendered 3D world filled with NPCs and a really nice depth of field effect for objects , NPCs and allies.  There are open ended interludes between narrative segments to allow for questing, weapons upgrading and earning gold. So much so that there is a MMO feel to this offline game given all the NPC quests, looting and gear grinding to be had.   In fact, The Last Story has an on-line mode where players can play co-operatively and competitively. I haven’t it tried yet, but I assume gold and loot earned can be carried over to the main game.

The battle system isn’t turn based, but an evolved  RTB (real-time battle) system found in Final Fantasy XI and XII with a stronger emphasis on tactical combat and strategy.  As a result, the camera system in The Last Story can be a little jumpy because movement, use of the landscape can often lead the camera astray. I much prefer the more restrained ‘third person’ camera in  Final Fantasy XI and XII.

It’s a great thing Xseed was able to bring this title to North America, and they did it in style, complete with a faux-book jacket housing the Wii game and a slim but worthwhile artbook.  Pre-orders (I got mine via Amazon) also had a bonus CD included, with selected tracks from compositions by none other than Final Fantasy's Nobuo Uematsu.

From what I’ve seen, heard and played of The Last Story so far, it feels like the start to a wonderful game that harkens back to the golden age of Square RPGs in the mid to late 90s, much like the other late release on the Wii, Xenoblade.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.