It’s a Done Deal, Disney Buys Nintendo! Star Wars Games Become Exclusives!
I can’t believe this! We heard this from our uncle who works at Nintendo of America. Bob Iger just struck a deal of a lifetime with President and CEO Satoru Iwata to purchase Nintendo outright! More on this after the jump.
As we previously reported, Iger and Iwata were in talks, we can now confirm the deal went through. The numbers are unknown at this time but from what our uncle tells us, the dollar amount was in the billions. That’s American dollars by the way.
Iwata decided it was time to sell due to the dramatic fall in Wii U and 3DS sales. With Disney backing the company, Nintendo will have exclusive rights to create videogames based on Disney-owned IPs including Star Wars, Marvel, Mickey Mouse and friends, Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. Nintendo will be formally announcing their sale to Disney at this year’s e3 video game conference.
Nintendo’s upcoming console, codenamed NX, is the brianchild between Iger, Iwata, and Apple’s Jony Ive. With Ive’s Apple background, he will be bringing the NX into the NeXt level of gaming, and the “Nintendo Illuminati” as our uncle calls them, plan to soar past Microsoft and Sony in the console wars.
The NX will be a hybrid console-portable gaming device that allows players to take their HD home console games on the road, something in which the Wii U failed. The entire console will be roughly the size of the Wii U’s gamepad and will connect to your your TV wirelessly via an HDMI drive similar to those of Google’s Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. It will be layed out almost identically to the Wii U gamepad, including the touch screen in the middle. The games themselves will run off of USB flash drive-sized cartridges and digital downloads via Wi-Fi networks or a 4G data plan if you have a Verizon or AT&T account. Extra controller peripherals will be the exact same as the Wii U’s pro controller and it will connect up to 7 controllers for 8 total players when synched to a television. If you’re wondering if the console will be backwards compatible, it will not, but you will be able to download all your previously owned Wii, Wii U, DS, and 3DS games to your device for free, but you will have to ship your physical copies to Nintendo and they will e-mail a download code directly to your NX device.
The NX, which is set to release spring 2016, features a great 1st/2nd party starting lineup including the recently delayed The Legend of Zelda, Marvel’s The Avengers: Civil War (the video game adaptation of Captain America: Civil War), an untitiled Super Mario platformer, Disney Infinity 3.0, Mario Party 11, Splatoon: Reloaded, an untitled Star Fox sequel, an untitled Mickey Mouse 4D platformer by none other than Shigeru Miyanito, which is said to use a new input device for added immersion, and a new Star Wars game set in the new canon universe, more on that in a bit.
Disney Infinity 3.0 will feature Mario, Link, Samus, and Pikachu as Nintendo representatives along with Star Wars: The Force Awakens characters: Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron, Han Solo, and Kylo Ren. OT and PT characters will be released at a later time. These will be the first launch of Disney and Nintendo’s Infinimiibo, but don’t worry, all previous amiibo and Disney Infinity figurines will be compatible with the game.
While it’s sad news that the sale will not include the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront, the Nintendo NX will have the exclusive title Star Wars: Shadows, a JRPG set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It is being developed by a collaboration between Monolith Soft and Square Enix. You know those figures of Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a stormtrooper circling the internet? Well those are indeed the character models for the upcoming game. You will be able to choose a side, Rebels or Empire, and create a character that will either work with Luke Skywalker to track down Boba Fett and save Han Solo, or work closely with Darth Vader to crush the Rebellion and take out one of his greatest rivals. Both story lines will be canon.
We will try to squeeze more info out of our uncle as this develops.
