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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?""
>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
I disagree, the Nintendo 64 is doing FINE in sales, you don't see them folding camp like Sega did do you?
Another thing-- you SEVERLY underrate Zelda 64 (and Nintendo's other games for the N64). "And Zelda? Well, I heard the new ones were decent 3D remakes of the original, but that's it."? While I haven't played Majora's Mask, the Ocarina of Time kicked ass, you'd be a fool to say that game was 'just a remake'. Sure, the gameplay shares a lot of it's roots with the original top-down games, but it's a sequel, were you expecting a complete overhaul?
I think what he said was DEAD on-- the industry as a whole is becoming too engrossed in 'ooooh pretty'-gee whiz graphics and not with good content that involves the player. Some of gamings biggest hits weren't successful because of their presentation, but because the gameplay was ENGAGING. (Enter: Tetris, Pac-Man, etc, etc.) Exceptions of course exist, but not on the console platforms (the original Quake on the PC naturally being a break-through title) generally. If any company has a grasp on the gaming industry as a whole, it's Nintendo. Unfortunately, Nintendo just wasn't as good as Sony with courting 3rd party developers to their console. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in here that would say the PS1 was technically superior to the N64, except for the lack of a CD-ROM..
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
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."