Epic Mickey

 

Warren Spector has revealed that upcoming Wii title Epic Mickey was originally planned as a multi-format release.

According to the Official Nintendo Magazine, Spector said that the decision to make it a Wii exclusive meant that they could deliver the best possible game they could.

“The reality is that we started Wii development in 2008, but before that we were a PC, PS3, and 360 title.

“It’s burned in my brain – [Disney Interactive boss] Graham Hopper pulled me into my office one day and said ‘What does it take to deliver on the goals we have for this product? And I said, well, you need enough time and enough money to be competitive. And it’d be awfully nice if we could focus on one platform.

“At that time we were talking about a Wii port and I was begging people – no, we can’t just port to the Wii, it’s not going to work. It needs to be its own game. A lot of the design ideas just won’t work on the Wii, we need to give the Wii its dues. Graham looked at me and said ‘What do you think about a Wii exclusive?’ And I went ‘Holy cow – yeah!”

Epic Mickey sees players control Mickey Mouse as he attempts to restore harmony to a cartoon wasteland.

 

Royal Mail loses Amazon contract

Amazon has ended its contract with Royal Mail to deliver parcels weighing more than 500 grams.
Royal Mail has lost a crucial contract with its second largest customer, the online retailer Amazon, as a wave of strikes threaten parcel deliveries in the busy pre-Christmas sales period.

The news comes on the eve of a national strike announcement by the Communication Workers Union that is likely to bring the simmering industrial dispute to the boil and further disrupt deliveries across the country.

But a backlog of undelivered mail has worried customers, particularly small businesses and internet retailers who argue that the unpredictable nature of the strikes has led to a collapse in reliability. The loss of this business will be a severe blow to Royal Mail, which was relying on the growth of online shopping to compensate for the decline of its letters business due to rising email use.

Customers of eBay have already been particularly vociferous, claiming the strikes are causing damage to small businesses that suffer negative feedback and lose their online reliability ratings.

Amazon.co.uk has cancelled its long-term contract to use the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams and will use a rival service, Home Delivery Network (HDN), which also delivers for Tesco and Argos.

Two years ago Royal Mail lost a smaller Amazon contract worth £8m to deliver second class parcels during the last national strike, but fought hard to win the business back, claiming improved industrial relations. Losing the new, bigger contract will exacerbate the operator’s financial woes, which lay behind its need to cut staff, but more worryingly sends a dangerous signal to other suppliers about Amazon’s faith in the network during the crisis.

Royal Mail declined to comment.

Olympic Games 2016

Olympic Games 2016 host city decision day! Chicago is OUT, Tokyo is OUT, but who will win the double-headed face-off between Madrid and Rio?

What are your thoughts ?