NEWS | Week beginning July 13th | Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Passes Away, Five Nights at Freddy's 4 announced & Fallout Shelter makes $$$

Good evening guys,and welcome back to another news round-up! Let's begin!

First up, the President and CEO of Nintendo, Saturo Iwata, has passed away. Iwata passed away on July 11th 2015 due to a Bile duct growth.

Thank you...

Iwata began life in the video game industry creating and developing games. The first game he developed was a Baseball game for HP calculators in the early 80's, which only displayed numbers and figures.
He then joined HAL Laboratory in 1983, creating lesser known games and arcade ports. However, in 1993, HAL promoted Iwata to President of the company. HAL and Nintendo soon become closely linked under the leadership of Iwata and HAL soon started making exclusives for Nintendo consoles, with the most notable release being fighting game 'Super Smash Bros' in 1995. Iwata soon joined Nintendo in 2000 as Head of Corporate Planning. Two years later he became President of Nintendo.

Iwata holding a new 3DS

After joining Nintendo in 2002, Iwata's impact as President started to increase. Nintendo were trying to recoup costs after the disappointing sales of the GameCube, and Iwata thought the Nintendo DS was the thing to get them back on track. At launch, many did not feel that the DS had the power to compete with the likes of Sony and the PSP, with the handheld-console being very chunky and under-powered. However, the DS went on to become the second-best selling console of all time at the time, coming only second to the PS2. Same thing happened again in 2005, when Nintendo released the Wii. Again, many believed it did not have the power nor capability to compete against the Xbox 360 and PS3. Again, the Wii outsold both consoles, becoming the best selling
console of all time.

Iwata affected all of our lives. I'm sure most of you guys owned a DS or Wii at some point, owning games like Nintendogs, Brain Training, Super Smash Bros, Super Mario Galaxy, etc, etc. Iwata oversaw possibly Nintendo's most successful period ever. Iwata said in his GDC 2005 keynote:
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer."

He was a true gamer, like all of us.
Thank you, Saturo Iwata.

Next up, Scott Cawthon, developer of the Five Nights at Freddy's series has released a reveal trailer for Five Nights at Freddy's 4.

On Monday, Cawthon released a trailer for the new Five Nights at Freddy's game on his YouTube channel, and to be honest, it looks like every other game, except, you're in a house. You see some lights, a long, dark hallway, some animatronics that are out to kill you and stuff you in a suit. Pretty standard stuff for a Five Nights at Freddy's game. In my opinion, the trailer is poor and unappealing, much like how the series has become.

Spooky stuff?!

The first Five Nights at Freddy's game was only released on the 8th August 2014. It was something different and unique, and probably why it caught the eye of many gamers. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was released November 10th 2014. Just three months after the first game. It didn't really change or add much, but it was a sequel that everybody wanted. Then, March 2nd 2015, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 was released. Again, very similar to the previous two, and now we can expect to see a fourth game in the series. Cawthon has managed to squeeze and push out 4 Five Nights at Freddy's games in just under a year. Now is it just me, or does it seem like Cawthon is trying to squeeze as much money and attention out of this series as possible?

Five Nights at Freddy's 4 is scheduled to release 8th August 2015, a whole year after the first installment was released. Expect a game very similar to the first three...

Here's the trailer if you haven't already seen it:

Finally, Fallout Shelter, the free mobile game that Bethesda released last month, has managed to earn $5.1 million in just two weeks.

Bethesda's Game Director Todd Howard announced that Fallout Shelter would be available to download as soon as Bethesda's E3 conference last month, which turned out to be one of the most viewed gaming livestreams ever, with over 20,000 people tuning into their Twitch stream, which no doubt helped raise a few extra dollars!

Bethesda making $$$!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Fallout universe, Fallout Shelter is a game that allows players to take control of a 'Vault', which is an underground home that shelters inhabitants from the nuclear holocaust that has plagued the world. You take control as an 'Overseer', controlling who lives in your Vault, how the Vault runs, how the Vault functions, etc, etc.

The most impressive thing about these figures is that the game is currently only available on iOS devices, meaning all those millions of dollars have been raised by Apple users only. Fallout Shelter is currently in development for Android and is expected to be released on Android devices in August. Nice work Bethesda!!

Check out my YouTube
channel!

And that's another week of gaming news done and dusted. What did you think of it? How much will the gaming industry miss Satoru Iwata? Are you looking forward to Five Nights at Freddy's 4? Have you played Fallout Shelter yet? Let me know in the comments down below!

Just more quick thing before I sign off, have you checked out my new YouTube channel yet? I released my first video on Thursday evening, so check it out if you have some free time!

https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnorsLetsPlayChannel




Anyway, that's it from me this week! See you guys next week, and as always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)