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Yamauchi Puts the Game Industry In Its Place
los furtive writes "John Ricciardi of Video Senki has a great interview with Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, his "absolute favorite" for the same reason Castro is his fav head of state: "They're both firm as a rock on their issues, and they're both just so goshdarn sincere, you know?""
The last thing I heard was that Nintendo told Square to stuff it.
I'm interested; could you post a link?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Obligatory AYBABTU comment
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Brighter & Gorier may sell well, and certainly the modern gaming consoles are a good deal more impressive than the Atari 400's, numbers-wise, but I'm not seeing the content.
Worse, with all sorts of patents and copyrights blocking development of software by 3rd parties, what we have is the monopolistic, power-crazed attitude that most Free Software/Open Source advocates know and hate, because THAT destroys innovation far more than co-operation ever could.
Is it "News for Nerds"? Unquestionably, yes. So would a nuclear war. Does that mean we should be supporting or encouraging it's neolithic attitudes? Nope.
IMHO, the best thing that could happen to the games industry would be if a bunch of (REAL) hackers got together, threw a truly spectacular console together, and wrote a killer game for it, under the GPL.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes, and the US Government does so much better. If they keep it they will undoubtedly invest it in a $400 claw hammer or a $500 toilet seat.
If you aren't smart enough to keep your own money out of goofy investments, then that is your problem, not mine. I want my money back!
Nintendo has catching up to do?
http://ign64.ign.com/news/30185.html
Suuuuure.
Nintendo knows what they're doing. If the games don't appeal to you, that's fine. But it's clear that they can attract customers.
When the second Zelda for the N64 released, it sold more copies than currently available PSX2s in North America. I think Sony needs to rethink their strategy. Not only are the games not much fun, but they can't even get the hardware to the consumer so that they can play the good games that *do* exist.
Actually, best thing that could happen is if a bunch of real hackers got together, use a truly mediocre console (like the Playstation or Gameboy) and wrote a killer game for it, under the GPL.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your intent, spectacular sound and graphics do not a great game make. A great game is a great game, and the sound and graphics are nearly irrelevant.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
http://www.planetstarsiege.com/allyourbase/
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I couldn't follow his logic there. I couldn't follow why ports would lead to a hardware war -- quite the opposite I'd think, and then he says [correctly] that systems are secondary, and games primary.
If games are primary isn't it best if they are ported to all platforms to defray production costs?
Redundant?? no way! this will never stop being funny! And where the all are the "All your base are belong to us" T-shirts?
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Well - we've been taking lessons from them on how to create a "Bubble Economy", at least.
The NASDAQ hit a two year low yesterday in case you weren't looking.
Most tech companies are posting big profit warnings. Lucent appears to have fundamental financial problems. Motorola is laying off a ton of people. These things do not a collapse make, but it makes Greenspan's warnings of "Irrational Exuberance" hit a lot closer to home.
The bubble burst in Japan a decade ago, and they still haven't really recovered. The similarities, especially in real estate over-valuation, are kind of scary.
love,
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Please, there's no need for such mysogynistic language if you don't want to be written off as a troll.
First, the word "Kairetsu" doesn't translate to "conglomorate". The word roughly means "low-revenue startup business". There is NO FUCKING WAY GE would be considered a Kairetsu. VA Linux is even too big to be a Kairetsu.
Perhaps she was thinking of the word "Zaibatsu"?-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
You, sir, are quite uninformed.
To summarize the article I read, Nintendo said that Square could go to hell.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
until they read "Game Over: Press Start To Continue." Excellent book on the history of Nintendo. Don't count Nintendo out; the N64 was a failure, yes. By Nintendo standards. Any other company would have considered it a fantastic success.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
But cartridges are right out, due to cost, time to manufacture, and limited space.
Then why did Nintendo choose cartridges for Game Boy Advance (a portable 32-bit console that's about as powerful as Super NES), even when GAMECUBE uses a DVD-like medium? Why is the Neo-Geo Pocket Color cart-based instead of CD-based like newer Neo-Geo consoles? Answer: Cartridges don't skip when the game is played in a moving vehicle on a bumpy road. Cartridge reading hardware is cheaper (handheld consoles MUST be inexpensive to be attractive) and doesn't break as easily (remember early CD consoles?).
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
To be honest, I don't recall ever seeing a 2D game on N64. Was the hardware not capable of it??
You've obviously never played Mischief Makers, Yoshi's Story, Kirby 64, or The New Tetris. You can do a 2D game in APIs such as OpenGL/Mesa3D, Direct3D, and whatever the N64 and GAMECUBE consoles use; simply draw each sprite as a quad. A few of the later Super NES games with Super FX (notably Yoshi's Island) used this technique.
And $90 for a cartridge didn't turn my crank either.
More like $50-$70 for a cartridge. And million-seller "Player's Choice" games were marked to $40 anyway.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think Nintendo just resents the hell out of the fact that they're continually being forced to invest in designing and marketing new hardware. Remember how much they dragged their feet on the SNES and the N64?
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Nintendo was *so* paranoid about this stuff that they released a cartridge system and further crippled their games and their development--and people still dumped the ROMs
Actualy, it had a lot more to do with the fact that their hardware was still pretty exspensive at the time compared to sony or sega's. They didn't want to spend the money on whole mechanical system for a CD-ROM
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
in the 1980's: IBM figured they could make billions by making better hardware (i.e. PS2)
:P
Do you mean the IBM PS/2, or the Sony PS2? Your sentance really aplies equaly well to both
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Right here
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Approximately two million copies, I doubt the developer gets more than 10%, that's $200,000.
If the games were being sold for $1...
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
That's because a lot of people are only impressed by the gee-whizz crap. I think Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most playable games ever, I was on it for 2 months straight, and one of my friends reckons it's crap because the graphics aren't as good as PC graphics, despite the playability.
However, he is a part owner in id, so it's fair to assume he knows a bit about the business side of the game industry.
Hm, it seems he and Fidel DO have something in common after all. Both are power-hungry vengeful megalomaniacs.
BTW, my spamproofing is that way because that's my surname. Really.
What's the relevance to Nintendo? I dunno, you didn't mention them either.
I'm sure I saw a link to the story on here once. Probably about a month ago come to think of it!
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
"Venture capitalists, in particular. That's why these people are pouring money into the field right now.
Q: Because they don't know how difficult it really is?
Y: Right. They give money to people that really should be unemployed, and they in turn round up some friends..."
Does this sound like any web board you guys have heard of?
Metal Gear Solid has incredible, state of the art graphics. Sure the game was more complex then Pitfall, but did that make it bad? Of course not. It was a fantastic game. Now it wasn't good because of the graphics, it was good because it was a tight, well told adventure. The graphics were just the metaphorical icing on the cake.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 are another example. They are just instant classics and for pure fun factor they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Mario Kart and Metroid. Both are as addictive as crack, and incredibly fun. Despite throughly beating the hell out of Tony Hawk 2 15 times, I still go back and play around in the free skate mode because it's just raw gameplay. Sure, there's pretty graphics too, but I don't keep coming back becuase of the polygon count in the skaters.
Again, old Atrai games are fun. But don't write off any game made in the past ten years just because there's a handfull that are style over substance. There's plenty that are a solid combination of both.
-Jeff
-Jeff
I like to play with Shiny Objects and Yarn.
The Japanese capitalist system is not really a free market at all in fact. There are only a dozen Kairetsu, which between them control some 95% of the Japanese economy, and do so with the backing of the government. They do not directly compete, operating in a cartel like manner, and are anything but free.
One can see this corporate culture affects how the Japanese do business - they needn't be innovative, and according to our values the entire shebang should collapse, but the fundamental values of Japanese society keep it afloat and ensure it is a success.
It is amusing to note that in the west we assume that Low taxes + Free sink or swim market + no regulation = economic success. Japan breaks all these rules, with a stifleing amount of regulation, huge tax rates and amazing economic performance.
We could still learn a lot from the Japanese, which is why interviews such as this one are very useful.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
I loved the 8-bit NES. And even the SNES had some really cool games on it.
Metroid, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy 1-3 (american), Mario 1-3, at least some of the Zelda games, Castlevania, Mega Man...
And look at where they've gone. Nintendo dropped the ball on Metroid and Mario; in the meantime, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, and Mega Man are on Playstation.
And Zelda? Well, I heard the new ones were decent 3D remakes of the original, but that's it.
Why buy a game system that has like two or three decent games?
No, I think Nintendo has a LOT of catching up to do before they can start talking about how other people don't know how to write games, or function in the gaming industry.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Attitudes like yours really irritate me. When a developer spends their time making a game that will run on multiple platforms two thigs happen.
First the game is limited by the technology of the least innovative platform minus the performance hit of any abstraction layers etc... Second, lots of time is spent making the game work on other platforms instead of paying attention to details, and the details can make or break a game. This is why almost all games that are developed with more then one platform target to start with usually suck.
A perfect recent example of this is Oni. Oni is a great concept for a game. The gameplay is good too. But the details aren't there. The sound can get distorted or latent, when people fall down the stairs they land horizontal instead of at the slope of the stairs, the clipping sucks, they didn't spend enough time choosing their textures... The list goes on.
One last point. The console industry isn't the computer industry (yet). Lets hope it doesn't become the same. Let's look at why: The PC industry started off by making varied and innovative hardware. Then, when IBM clones came out hardware innovation stopped in the consumer space, and we've been stuck with the same outdated underdesigned hack of a hardware platform in the mainstream for the last 20 years. Now, in 2001 you have the console gaming industry with some really new and innovative hardware archetectures like the PS2 and the Gamecube. Do you really think that the software will benifit from having to run on such varied hardware? No, it wont, so what will happen is that all of the future game systems will have to be extremely similar in order to compete in the market. There won't be any innovation in the console hardware industry anymore.
It's ok if you can't get every game for every console. It's ok if you end up with more then one console. In the end there will be a larger variety of game types and amazing hardware out there. That would be great!
John Ricciardi of Video Senki has a great interview with Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, his "absolute favorite" for the same reason Castro is his fav head of state: "They're both firm as a rock on their issues, and they're both just so goshdarn sincere, you know?""
Well, all of those words are in English, they just don't amke any sense in that order....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Yes, you're right; there's not nearly enough innovation in games today.
The problem is that innovative games don't consistently outsell "me-too" games. Software publishers are very cautious folk, with good reason -- in any given year, 10% of the PC games make 90% of the profit.
Consumers vote with their wallets. If publishers aren't rewarded for supporting innovative development houses, then innovative games won't get made.
He's got some good points, especially about how much time and money it takes to make a game today. That is killing the PS2. If a developer doesn't have a blockbuster with a PS2 game, they lose money. That's one thing that Nintendo is doing with the GameCube, making it easy to program for. Maybe XBox will be easy too, since it's basically a PC.
I also like his comments about ports of games to other platforms. While this makes a lot of sense to developers, in the end, if all games are out on every platform, there is really nothing to differentiate them. Nintendo has always had strong 1st and 2nd party developers who can assure exclusive games. Microsoft is trying to do that by buying lots of companies, but how much of the stuff that they do will be exclusive to the XBox? Won't most of it get ported to the PC as well? Sony has had a great relationship with Square, but most of the games for PlayStation are made by 3rd party developers, and are usually ported to other platforms.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Attitudes like this irritate me. Why focus on the hardware when, really, all the interesting stuff is in the software? Contrast to the computer industry in the 1980's: IBM figured they could make billions by making better hardware (i.e. PS2) when all the money turned out to be in the software (i.e. Micro$oft). It seems to me that hardware is becoming less and less relevant, it's the software that will really drive innovation in the games industry, especially if cross-platform console games start to get developed en masse. Nintendo's attitude of "if you want to play a Nintendo game, you must buy a Nintendo system!" seems really backwards.
[Off Topic]: on an unrelated note, what the hell is with the page layout in this article? Why display only two or three questions and answers on a page, and then provide a link to the next page? Why not just put the entire interview on one page? I hate when web sites do that!
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www.scorbett.ca
Mr. Yamauchi keeps stressing the one point that I constantly gripe about. Video games are not about the graphics. They're about the gameplay. The most recent game console I own is a SuperNES, and I have no idea in which closet it now resides. I've been too busy playing my Atari 2600 games to bother to dig it out, but I might get the urge to play Zelda again some day. Oh, the days when graphics didn't mean squat, and it was all about the fun factor! Rock on, Mr. Yamauchi!
This is not a Fugazi
>Half Life made net profits of just over $200,000
Uh, no. Half Life made FAR more than that.
The top titles still bring in lots of money, but if you don't get a hit, you probably won't recoup your development money.
John Carmack
Can someone explain to me how President of Nintendo=Ruthless Communist Dictator. Maybe I missed something in the interview.
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
As I was ready the comments made by Mr. Yamauchi (someone who's been in the game industry longer than some of you have been alive), I realized in a lot of ways, he's very right in some of his views. I disagree slightly with the "multiple porting" thing, but his point about games and technology was dead on.
I'm not one of those "the old days were the best", but there's something to be said when the Gameboy sells about 50% of all console products, even though their graphics are hardly state of the art. Too many developers seem to feel the need to include "super-cool anti-aliasing triple buffered coolness", then come up with a game like Oni, which had some cool ideas, but obviously fell short in the gameplay area. (Hello? Keyboard map and mouse control?)
You can tell which games are the best, because their not just made to make money (I'm not so naive to believe that game developers don't want to make money), but you can sense they're a labor of love as well. No One Lives Forever doesn't have an "advanced" of a game engine compared to Quake 3, but for the story and humor it crushes the other FPS in the competition. Thief and Thief II, a pair of the best games developed for the FPS market, were hacked on for not having a highly developed graphical engine, though the gameplay (especially with Thief II, when it reached near perfect status) couldn't be faulted.
The most recent example is in Final Fantasy IX. Now, I know some people have heralded it as the second coming in console games. Yes, the graphics were pretty (Princess Garnett - oh, yes.) Yes, the music was nice. But the story got lost by the second disk, the random battles became so tedius that I just about pulled my hair out, and the final end battle was as exciting as the Richard Simmon's Chest Shaving Competition.
As for his other comments - will the gaming industry slow down? Well, with the rest of the economy, I'm sure. Then again, after the mistakes already made *cough*Daikatana investors*cough* in giving funds to new gaming startups, we'll to see if investors will be so willing to part with their cash in the future.
In the meantime, I'll just keep my eyes open, and play the games that I think are fun.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Most game companies are just "me too" companies.
I see my limited history of gaming like this.
1980's : Mario brothers and a decade of rip offs.
Early 90's : Street Fighter II and 5 years of rip offs.
Late 90's : Wolf3D/Doom and a decade of ripoffs.
Now I know there were other great games during these times, original ones too, trust me I've played them. But this is how I have seen the gaming industry "progress."