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Here is a response I wrote for Game Zero about the whole "Nintendo is gonna fail" stupidity... back in 2000... still relevant.

The Future of Console Gaming: Part 2 - The Five Year Plan

Nintendo has a solid release formula that they have followed for 30 years. The only variation has been the introduction of the DS as an experimental platform. It ended up being so successful that it really demanded they drop the GBA mid life cycle. I keep a running review of release dates here over on the Game Zero magazine site.

Look, I think this is a statement that is being made to frame expectations on a DS sequal, and handle potential attacks on the Wii as well.

As you can see here I have been tracking the release cycles of all of the Nintendo platforms, and Nintendo has some pretty strong behavioral trends built up over the last 30 years.

Historically, a new console is release every 5 years and a new hand-held ever 10 years, with experimental platforms and incremental upgrades in-between (Virtual Boy, DS).

If the DS becomes the new "handheld" line as many expected but Nintendo has denied then it's in for a 10 year life cycle. Note that they still have not identified the DS as an upgrade/replacement for the GBA line which still commands some sales (GB Micro, etc...), so they're going to be careful not to cannibalize any remaining sales in that market.

Also, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft or Sony takes a direct attack on the Wii as literally being beefed up GameCube hardware in as a marketing attack since it has taken off so well. Unfortunately for them the Wii is strong with every other demographic of consumer, and if this does happen, I don't see it getting them far outside the gaming press.

You've got to step back and take a look at the big picture of what is said and the greater context of other statements and general behavior.

Granted Nintendo is slowly making changes structurally since Iwata took over as would be expected, but this is also a company that has been in business for over a hundred years, so they're internal culture and business strategies are clearly working for them to some degree.

Also, I think the Wii has yet to hit it's stride yet in development exploitation of it's features. Given that it's really lost a year of ground here, it could be that Nintendo is actively assessing the idea of letting the hardware dev cycle slip by a year or two with the Wii. Additionally, they're probably also trying to assess how to expand DS sales at the critical 6 year mark when normally they would be issuing a mid-level system improvement that doesn't effect platform compatibility (eg, GameBoy Color).

Oh well, I'm just rambling, it's all good.

Here is how I called in 2002 and I'm sticking with my statement!

You can read the whole post there, but in short I closed with: "While I hate to see a core group from Nintendo go over to the hands of the soulless boys and girls of Microsoft... deep down I almost hope that Rare actually continues it's pitiful slide into the hole of mediocrity and takes MS with them... but that would be hoping for to much I guess."

Or you can read one of my many posts on the subject on this very site.

Maybe that's actually playing out as predicted? Who can tell. The facts of the matter are that Microsoft got screwed in the purchase.

Bryan

Ironically, I feel the same way about the PS3. The Playstation controller is based on the SNES design , and in the PS1 era they had the analogs bolted on mid-life. It's a 10 year old design that is suited best for 2D games, not 3D. This is why I wasn't upset for the Wii Classic controller. It is a superior design for the retro titles that are pretty much 2D prior to the N64. For the N64 games, I use a wavebird.

There is a reason why Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sega put the analog in the primary position. For 3D games it offers superior control in a position that's comfortable. (IE: That's where it belongs.)

I frequently like to point out whenever someone likes to state that Microsoft bought Rare to hurt Nintendo, that they're smokin' crack. Bad 2'dolla ho crack at that.

Rare was on the decline with Nintendo internally when Microsoft bought them. My understanding is that Nintendo was happy with the deal because they got to hamstring Rare onto Microsoft as a sinkhole. You can read my on-the-spot rant from 2002 here for my true feelings about the matter. :)

I just keep pointing this out so it sticks in people's minds and helps scuttle the FUD and speculation when Nintendo is going to release this or that system down the line.

It was nice to see Reggie actually put some back-handed validation onto a 30 year trend.

Bluray vs HD-DVD is MUCH more similar to 3DO vs CD-ROM particularly regarding the corporate groups behind each technology. The major difference now being that hardware engineering is so flooded devices are already spec'd able to play both HD-DVD and Bluray on the cheap (hardware-wise).

If you doubt me, read this review from February 1993.

Reform your analogies, compare one or the other to 3DO and the result is the same. Bring up Betamax at your own peril.

Carry on.

that the Cell will be "cheap" compared to other supercomputers? (yeah, I know I can't really compare a chip with a supercomputer, but you get the idea). Not to mention more energy efficient (which in the case of HPC also saves money to a point where it's significant, right?).

And when I say cheap, I mean: "so much cheaper we can use the savings to hire a real programmer to do the optimizing for us, and then buy some extra processing power on top of that! And throw a party!"

slightly offtopic: Half a year ago I interviewed Peter Hofstee, chief architect of the Cell, for the student union for physics, mathematics and informatics of the university of Groningen, the Netherlands (he studied at our university and did quite a few things for our student union). The interview was actually going to be about him and his career after his study, but when I got to the point of "what are you doing now?", it automatically centered on the Cell chip as he just finished designing it. Most of the jargon was lost on me (studying physics myself), though he sounded very enthousiastic and convincing. However, it appears someone who does understand what he's talking about had an almost identical interview recently. The advantage I mentioned above is something I quite clearly remember from that interview. DodgeK

As you requested...

The Women of E3 article from the 1995 show. :P

Keep kicking devlopers in the nuts until they stop making games like this. 99.9% of the time nausua is caused by a crappy in game camera implementation. Either it's too jumpy, or the fisheyed aspect used to "make the world look bigger" is at fault. My wife and two of my co-workers suffer from this. While alot of games are no problem, there are others where the camera implementation was so bad that they're running from the room to puke after a few minutes.

For those of you pissing on this guy as needing to "get his vision" checked... While that may be the case, most likely it's not. Some people are more suseptable to visual/motion issues than others, we're all NOT built the same. He may just have to be careful about the games he plays and realize that he has been excluded from enjoying a percentage of video games on the market by poor development practices or poor management decisions.

For some advice to game developers, check here... it's amazingly still relevant sarcasm.

I've already written to the editors, to fix the errors at the beginning of the article:

In the third paragraph, it is stated that PCC started off in 1995 on MPOG.COM, that is wrong. It started out on the web on GameZero.com in 1995. It only ran on MPOG for a short stint from mid-2000 to mid-2001.

And only the archives for the current storyline date back to 2000. For previous strips dating back to the start you need to visit the pre-2000, older archives on the Game Zero site at:
http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/comics/

Please see wiki for clarification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_City_Chronicl es#Basic_Chronology

Sigh...

As I've pointed out before, you can see Nintendo keeps a pretty strict schedual to platform upgrades.

It's 5 years per console, and 10 years per handheld, with some form of experimental system launched in between.

Check here to see the chart.

The very first regularly published web comic based on video gaming is the original incarnation of The Polymer-City Chronicles which ran through Game Zero magazine and can be read in the Game Zero comics archive. The strip dates from the week of March 13th, 1995. Prior to that the strip was running in the GZ print magazine. The current PCC site features the story arc since January 2000. For more chronology about PCC, you can read this post in his forum.

While there were some one-off comics that floated around the usenet that had video gaming punchlines, PCC was the first on the web dedicated to that theme.

And some people 10 years ago thought that ray traced games were going to be on LAST generation CONSOLES.

Quarterback Attack by Crystal Dynamics. This game failed in the market pretty much on two counts #1 came out at the peek of FMV hype, #2 was on the 3DO. But truth be told, when I played the game I was really pleased with the experience and wouldn't mind someone improving and expanding on the game with modern hardware. (note, I wrote that linked review but it includes screen shots if you want to see what the game looked like)

The actual name given to the third game in the Street Fighter 2 series is still up for debate. This screenshot shows some of the reason for the confusion, as well as this clear and understandable marquee. On the street in the Silicon Valley we refered to it as "Turbo," and GameFAQS has "Street Fighter II Hyper Edition" listed as "Street Fighter II Turbo" under the release data. People also refered to it as "Turbo Championship Edition."

There is one thing that isn't debated, the SNES home conversion was titled SF2:T. Thankfully, it said so clearly on the box. Likewise, Capcom USA had sorted out this mess by the time that Super Street Fighter 2 came out, calling it quite clearly "Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo" while Japan refered to it as "Super Street Fighter 2 X - Grandmaster Challenge"

While I won't get too much into Capcom Japan's weird naming practices, I will mention that Street Fighter II Championship Edition was, in the land of the rising sun, titled " Street Fighter II ' Championship Edition", with the ' pronounced "dash." Turbo was therefore refered to as "Street Fighter II Dash Turbo. If you look back at the first image linked above, you will see the dash.

So yes, the CPSI powered SFII (or SFII:TWW), SFII':CE, and SFII':T (or SFII:TCE or SFII:THF or TSFII:HF or SFII'T:HF). The CPSII was behind SSFII (or SSFII:TNC), SSFII:T, as well as SF:TM, SFA (or SFA:WD, SFZ, SFL), SFA2 (SFZ2), SFZ2:A, SFA3 (SFZ3). And MSHvsSF, XvsSF, and MvsC. That's a lot of Street Fighters thanks to the CPSII. (the CPSI did such legends as Final Fight and Strider, so it has its share of victories too)

I hope this clears that up.

The genesis/snes cart? That was an advertisement if I've ever seen one.

"You are looking down a deep chute, falling towards an irregular field of colored squares ...."

Is 3D Block for NES, 3D Tetris for Virtual Boy, or Geom Cube for PS1 close enough to what you want?

I know this are going to be a quick list:

Mentalhealth.com

NASA

Violence

I don't know about you but having two separate studies, one from a "University" in Japan, and one from NASA, I am more likely to choose the side that NASA is on! ;)

It does seem strange that the Japan one says it causes ADD and the NASA one says it cures ADD! WTF?

I believe I tried to tell this to everyone as late as november last year in an article I wrote at Game Zero.

Specifically:
"The bottom line here is simple. Microsoft wants to increase its profits, and make more money for its shareholders. The X-Box is the next step in their efforts. In order for all of this to work though, the X-Box has to be successful. In fact, not only successful, it has to become a "standard" in the market. Microsoft will be making their money first off of gaming software sales, then internet subscriptions, and then application subscriptions. The end goal being that you will hopefully use the X-Box as your videogame machine, cable TV box (akin to WebTV), family computer, and more. Don't be surprised when DVD functionality gets added along with possible TV buffering (akin to Tivo) features. I also wouldn't be surprised to see companies like AOL/Time Warner start offering X-Boxes at a steep discount to their cable customers as a "cable plus" system."

We'll end up being both the first video game magazine on the web, and the last ;p

To bad all of our writers got real jobs and we quit doing print. :(

On the plus side, I think we actually update more frequently than OMM... cough...

...I can't belive it didn't get linked to already, but don't forget the "The Polymer City Chronicles" which runs both at Game Zero and at MPOG.

gmezero writes "The second part of my article on The Future of Console Gaming is now available. This part is twelve pages and features overviews on the successes and failures of Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Atari. As well as projections on the future plans of all but Atari. " We had linked to the first article - the second is along much of the same lines, in terms of style.

http://www.ga mezero.com/team-0/articles/features/thumbs_up/inde x.html, please give it a read...

http://www.ga mezero.com/team-0/articles/features/thumbs_up/inde x.html, please give it a read...