Official Wii Thread

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Fri Sep 16, 2005 10:51 pm **Post subject:**

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spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:36 pm **Post subject:**

Emoboy posted this article over at fh, its a long but interesting and imo quite accurate summary of the gaming industry and company policy contrasts and motives

http://lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos ... ategy.html

Geezus · **Posted:** Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:13 pm **Post subject:**

spudthedestroyer wrote:

Emoboy posted this article over at fh, its a long but interesting and imo quite accurate summary of the gaming industry and company policy contrasts and motives

http://lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos ... ategy.html

mmjjeah...browsed over it - disagree with most of it... :wacky:

IMHO - right now ,nobody knows where things will go - so both producer and consumer play it save..... nintendo is making a desperate strategy change....will it pay off or will it be it's final nail ? Who knows ? I don't but neither do you or the third guy reading this....

Also ,there's a far deeper mechanism here, regarding what makes people tick and buy product 'X' ....
this is not confined to videogames ..... but also movies & music....

I mean...... what the hell is rock music still doing in the 21st century ?

Seriously why do some tastes last and others not ? the example above , rock music somehow became more of a habit and thus now part of a culture... no sense in it....but then mass psychology does not take it's cue from sense :wink:

...

Oh, I gotta stop myself :matrix:

karstmobile · **Posted:** Fri Sep 23, 2005 2:54 am **Post subject:**

Geezus wrote:

....but then mass psychology does not take it's cue from sense :wink:

...

Yeah, it just gets it from tv... :lol:

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:45 am **Post subject:**

Quote:

IMHO - right now ,nobody knows where things will go

That article is analysis of the past history of the software industry and then puts that forward as justification for the decision, i don't think anyone knows where its going to go. Right at the end it says what it depends on, and its quite correct, if nintendo can make some killer apps for this new input device and convince people like me it works.

You don't think its correct? What issues don't you agree with, come on... throw us a bone on what you agree/disagree with. I'll start off.

I thought the seperation of the specific company strategies, for example valve, and id catering only to a tiny spectrum of gamers (hardcore fps fans only), or square (hardcore specialised rpg fans), and companies like EA catering to a wide spectrum was accurate. i thought the destinction between the strategies of microsoft, sony and nintendo was spot on, particularly about microsofts strategy its been operating.

I thought the summary of nintendo's straying away from the genres it created was also spot on. It explains the lack of direct clones of any game it does (although zelda did it once, and mario did it once), and the way that each sequel in the franchises like zelda and mario are radically different from the ground up.

I also thought it summed up why nintendo's name is like dirt to 'hardcore' and 'selective' (or whatever they called them) gamers is right too. Mainly because of the above, how they don't really follow up after they get the killer app and then just make something different, whereas square belts out refined sequels in final fantasy for example (who, by the classification the article lays out, only appeals to 'hardcore' gamers weened on the franchise).

Whilst i don't agree its fully applicable, i think as a rough model it works rather well in explaining what specific companies are doing in the market place. What they've traditionally done, and where they are going. For example, the comments on microsoft i think you'll agree do have a point. They are going after select types of gaming audiences, for example, with all the fps arising, its becoming more and more evident.

I also agree about profit margins in relation to generations, generation one of a software direction is always more profitable of when a highly polished game is needed when the franchise matures (and when nintendo drops out traditionally).

You not agree with any of that? How do you think that the gamer userbase and the way certain software companies work differs?

I also don't agree with this entirely, i think desperate is a bit sensationally in this context. I think they are desperate to succeed, but the strategy change is none existant, the hardware and the area of HCI its going down is, but its consistant to the same nintendo strategy (simplify and innovate, don't commit to expensive polishing and try and make something new at a lower cost but a higher profit margin... ie. gamecube was a simplification, although it wasn't innovative).

Quote:

nintendo is making a desperate strategy change....

I don't think its particularly a strategy change because its exactly what they've been doing for 20 years. I do think they are more desperate this time because it will hit them harder.

But as the article points out, the hardware is what makes them nintendo, they can't exist as much like sega (who's image is really none descript now, they have nothing to really represent the quality of the company anymore) because they need the radical hardware changes to make their killer apps in the first generation and move on. You can see exactly this with the nes, snes, n64... although not really the gamecube, that was the the first time their hardware didn't really offer anything new or exciting. The virtual boy may have sucked, but that was a radical change, just like this new revolution dealie is trying to be, so its not like its a strategy change for nintendo, they've always done this stuff (dpad, shoulder buttons, analogue sticks, rumble packs, etc.)

aka. I agree with most of the article, and i agree with nintendo's philosophy (which also makes a great business model), i just have trouble putting faith in this particular implementation of the philosophy.

Kind of like open source, i agree with the philosophy, but open source doesn't mean it always works.

Whilst i don't think the article is picture perfect and everything conforms to the image it paints out which is simplified, the article is clearly meant to be very general, and i think it makes sense for it.

Just interested to know exactly why you disagree with most of it (you can't leave people hanging like that! :mrgreen:

That's like walking into a lecture on quantum mechanics and going "no sir i disagree" then walking out ). I appreciate it might require a bit of writing but i love games so would like to hear people's 2cents.

if not i'll just call you a sony/microsoft fanboy, or that you like to make nintendo's name dirt and make them seem like they have no history of this kind of change, or call you a communist, or something until i hit a nerve and force a response out of you the hard way. :mrgreen:

I could always dig up a relative of yours and hand him over to zod too :wacky:

PC_Arcade · **Posted:** Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:48 am **Post subject:**

Ars Technica wrote:

You've all seen the curious Nintendo Revolution controller, but what about the Revolution console itself? No official information has been released, and we don't really expect to see it soon, but it's Friday, so a little rumor-mongering is in order.

A Factor 5 employee who goes by the name "Han Solo" claims to know the Revolution's specs, and has leaked them (middle of page 3). Why listen to some guy trapped in 1977? Se?or Solo, as I'm sure he's known to his Spanish-speaking friends, proved worth listening to when he nearly nailed the Xbox 360 stats before the official details came out. That said, we can't treat this as reliable information, but it may prove to be good fodder for a Friday evening console war. Or maybe, just maybe, Nintento and Sony fans will join hands and sing songs about the merits of a market with more than one player.

If you're the kind of person who hates rumors, then... why are you still reading? OK, with that out of the way, here we go.

The brains of the console are rumored to be a single dual-threaded IBM "custom" PowerPC 2.5 GHz CPU, with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (L3 cache is rumored). The system will also sport a Physical Processing Chip (PPU) with 32MB of dedicated RAM, while the CPU itself will saddled up next to 512MB of system RAM. The custom ATI GPU solution is rumored to consist of a RN520 600MHz core, backed with 256MB of RAM and "32 parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines." While the output will theoretically be capable of putting out 1080p resolution (higher even, at 2048x1268), Solo says that HD support has not yet been decided (which fits with Nintendo's own comments).

I'm not particularly inclined to deeply assess how such a configuration would stack up to the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but Solo wrote that he thinks it "would be on par with Xbox360, though PS3 could have an edge in the CPU area. In the GPU area the Revolution beats PS3, and technically would match Xbox 360."

Nintendo may have the right idea. As publishers demand more and more games go cross-platform, a single-core system that's easy on developers may be the best way to ensure plenty of cross-platform support, without burning too much money on console architecture that may only be used for exclusive games. While we expect to see exclusive titles for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, most titles will be cross-platform, and will not necessarily take advantage of the multi-core optimizations for the Xbox 360, or Sony's Cell architecture. Keep in mind that Gabe Newell recently said that the Xbox's CPU performs like a 1.7GHz P3 on unoptimized code.

Perhaps I was preparing myself for a letdown, or something truly abysmal, but these specs don't look too shabby to me. Of course, specs alone can't define how fun a console is or how developer-friendly the various tools will be. However, for a company that seems to really want to downplay polygon counts as a way to measure a console, these specs aren't exactly anything to apologize for.

Don't write Nintendo off just yet, those specs are OK, combine that with their whole retro thing and IMHO it could do quite well

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:07 am **Post subject:**

Always love a good rumour. Makes sense that it will be more powerful than nintendo let on. Remember how nintendo handled the gamecube? they didn't pimp it, whilst sony kept going on about 100million polygons per second all the time (or whatever the quote was), nintendo always said "it didn't matter" and then they finally said 9 million polygons a second... which was a huge understatement.

They always seem to try and shift focus from the hardware, but its not really been significantly underpowered in the past, so its got a point.

Everybody read up on how nintendo plans to do a normal pad too, or rather the pad acts like the VDU in the dreamcast pads:

(ign mockup based on what nintendo have said, supposed to be similar)

PC_Arcade · **Posted:** Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:36 am **Post subject:**

Works for me

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:38 am **Post subject:**

lol, i dunno, i think the big bit pointing out looks silly, but i'm sure nintendo will come up with something.

But that also means you can point the pad round too :mrgreen:

People like joytech are going to have a field day plugging in all sorts of devices :lol:

I just remembered the RE4 chainsaw, now just imagine a chainsaw you can swing around :lol:

Everyone's going to look really daft using this thing, espeically at drunken parties.

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:15 pm **Post subject:**

Yeah, I gotta say that controller looks really fucking weird on it's own without the extension at the bottom.

Mind you, just cos it is diferent does not mean it will be shit, just gotta keep an open mind on these things.

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:28 pm **Post subject:**

PC_Arcade, one thing baffles me about that info you posted.

Factor 5 has left nintendo, remember the articles about them moving to sony (see the ps3 thread).

It makes little sense that they'd know anything about what nintendo have planned hardware wise unless they haven't left them afterall. However, i thought it was pretty clear factor 5 was sony exclusive this next generation?

Geezus · **Posted:** Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:49 pm **Post subject:**

Ahh... so they had a backup plan ready :wacky:

?

Couldn't they have just built in some gyroscope mechanism into a conventional in the first place ?

@ spud - concerning that article , I don't want to drag this way off topic which it inevitably would , but summarized (and I'm cutting corners myself here ),what I meant with "most of it" was as a whole construct ; that the man does have a theory consisting of several internally consistent postulates , individually sounding fair and dandy and all , but the whole package as a whole (if not by that much) missing (IMO failing to describe) reality...as in "what going on exactly"....

The man does use a lot of vaguely defined , blurry concepts....( those that he does define he does so by dragging in other concepts open for interpretation) consequently ,one can twist and modify those definitions to whatever consistency would require it ...

If I could interrogate the man and put the thumbscrews on his concepts tighter and tighter demanding a more exact definition I'm sure I'll catch him with a internal contradiction sooner or later ...

Also, some of the mechanisms he describes are rooted deeper and wider than he , as you so elegantly suggested , quantified it :wink:

Now look what you made me all type :evil:

and to end it with some no-brainer speculation :

* First of all I must confess that I jumped the gun believing the initial vague surfaced specs to be "reliable" :oops:

*

But ehmm , those specs look pretty out there - especially if N wants to stay below a $300 pricetag....

Also , I got this from chewbacca's wife who I was bangin' the other night ( :mrgreen:

don't tell him :mrgreen:

) , Nintendo has instantly regained the trust of all the major 3rd party devellopers ! They all can't wait to venture in another commercial succes story :wacky:

Let's see how long it takes for some pervy jap to come up with a "sexual intercourse " simulation game - :mrgreen:

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:54 pm **Post subject:**

lol, you haven't watched the trailer, the "dentist" could very well be him anal plugging someone. :lol:

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:54 pm **Post subject:**

another mockup :lol:

PC_Arcade · **Posted:** Tue Oct 18, 2005 12:40 pm **Post subject:**

MaxConsole wrote:

The Nintendo Power Hotline (425.885.7529) says that When Nintendo?s new console, codenamed Revolution, arrives in the later half of 2006, everyone will discover the meaning of all-access gaming. Could this be a marketing gimmick to throw competitors off ? We doubt it, looks like the Revolution is set for a second half 2006 release.

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 4:08 pm **Post subject:**

A bit more on there being a regular controller too:
http://megagames.com/news/html/console/ ... cean.shtml

Quote:

It's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, claims an old saying and it seems that Nintendo agrees. Most of us would seem to think that anyone using the phrase has a pretty small ehm...boat but we may never find out how Revolution's schooner compares to its rivals, according to a Nintendo executive.

Senior director of marketing for Nintendo Europe, Jim Merrick, in an interview with a Dutch gaming magazine said, Regarding the specifications, we will probably never 'release' this information as we feel that it is largely irrelevant. While some of our competitors enjoy comparing specifications, it has little or nothing to do with how satisfied the consumers will be with the system and the games once they are released.

Mr. Merrick went on to say that many Nintendo Revolution games are being designed with the traditional controller in mind since the new design will not be compatible with all types of games. This option is there for new games that will be created, that are most suited to a traditional style of controller. We are not trying to say that the ‘traditional’ controller design is not valid, in fact Nintendo is responsible for most of the features that are found on today’s traditional controllers... Merrick explained.

In another interview, the busy, Mr. Merrick discussed the Revolution launch plans and he was pretty certain that the entire world will get Nintendo's new console within a four-month period. Taking into account Mr. Iwata's comments that Revolution will launch in 2006 but after April and Mr. Merrick's previous claims that he expects playable Revolution games at E3 2006, we guess that a fall 2006 launch window is likely.
Mr. Merrick also claimed that Nintendo will not release any Revolution game footage or images before 2006 claiming that pictures are not relevant when gameplay is the most important aspect of the game.

Geezus · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 10:12 pm **Post subject:**

Yeah , yeah , 'Big' N still talks the talk but can it walk the walk ?

It will take a lot more than mario 128 to make a comeback.....

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 10:37 pm **Post subject:**

Well for a ps2 fanboy, i doubt they'll ever make a 'comeback'. Same goes for a xbox fanboy. That is afterall the nature of a fanboy.

For anyone that's not into games, are into games but don't have allegiances, existing nintendo fanboys, or those with no hatred towards them it remains to be seen, personally I think its too gimmicky to return to a status of snes days. I think its clear they aren't aiming for the number one console spot if you meant comeback like that. If you meant comeback as in presence, the handheld market means they've not gone in 20 years, and remain one of the more profitable games companies. I don't think they'll be going anywhere even if the revolution fails, maybe its just me noticing this, but the sales of the gameboys alone means they can afford some of these ventures. On top of that, they seem to still have a huge profit margin on their games.

So I doubt even if the revolution fails they'll be going anywhere, once again it remains to be seen.

If you simply meant return to number one spot, that's clearly not going to happen, nor do they seem to be particularly aiming for that (of course they'd love it and all, but they clearly don't have the resources to waste so I don't think its possible even if that was their motivation). I don't think they 'talk the talk' as in bad mouthing the competitors anymore, they used to slate the PSX when the n64 came out.

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:45 am **Post subject:**

Happy Birthday Shigs
http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000570068304

Quote:

Shigeru Miyamoto, the gaming legend who single-handedly made Nintendo a household name and sparked the video game renaissance in the 1980’s, is officially his 53 years young as of today.

“Shiggy” Miyamoto has had a major impact on the industry as we know it; even the most professional journalists turn giddy at his presence. What do you think has been Miyamoto-san’s greatest contribution to video gaming?

Rare: Perfect Dark 0 could work on the Revolution
http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000303068291/

Quote:

Microsoft may be smiling from ear to ear with Kojima’s recent comments about the Xbox 360 hardware, but a Rare employee speaking to Eurogamer has given some love to Nintendo’s Revolution, as well. Multiplayer designer Duncan Botwood claims that Rare could actually port Perfect Dark Zero to Nintendo’s next-generation console:

Quote:

We could make it work, but there’d be some changes to the gameplay, I expect; the controller looks like it might lend itself towards a light gun style of shooting, which would be a fresh approach.

Those are some kind words which hint at Nintendo’s ability to keep up with the competition, in terms of technology. However, Botwood showed some skepticism for Nintendo’s new controller: “Most people don’t use TV remote controls constantly for a whole hour, let alone wave them in the air all that time.”

Take your TV remote and swing it around in the air for awhile - how long do you think you could do that in one play session without getting tired? What if you had your arm resting and just moved your wrist?

I guess that means Rare suck ass more than the xbox360 :lol:

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Mon Dec 12, 2005 10:40 pm **Post subject:**

Quote:

Most gamers looked at Nintendo's Revolution controller announcement with a bewildered look and a hint of suspicion, especially when its use in FPS games was mentioned.
Arena51.be, a website that comes in French and Dutch flavors, has posted a video on the video.google site of how Nintendo's controller will work with a game such as Half-Life 2.

The demonstration is rather impressive and by a quick look at it you can see how using the controller may have a steep learning curve while it looks as if it will give you more freedom of movement. It is, of course, too early to speculate on the comfort levels for long gaming sessions or how reliable this demonstration is but the answers to all those questions will have to wait until E3, 2006 when we will get to try one of those things.

For the time being have a look at the demonstration video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... pr=goog-sl

NB: mockup again

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