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Nintendo To Sell Old Consoles To China?
drfishy writes "An interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on IGN hints at the possibility of Nintendo entering the Chinese market with their products soon. The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games? How would this fight piracy?"
how i wouldnt mind buying a older nintendo, if it is 1/3 of the price....
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
The cartdrige systems are harder to pirate because it requires more hardware than a CD burner. That alone prevents casual copying of games.
They are using the older (N64 I assume) generation because it was the last cartdrige based system.
Doesn't matter how good the products are, if people want to pirate them, they will.
Now, if the packaging is sweetass, that's a different issue.
The Gameboy Advance is clearly based on the Super Nintendo. Given that many Chinese probably do not even have televisions, having an all in one unit like the GBA is probably a great idea. I doubt we will see the actual console as it once was, the unit will probably be very much like gameboy advance. Perhaps it will have a TV out or something of the kind.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
... cause it's so easy to copy a GameCube Game.
Jayysn
There is a war going on for your mind.
By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.
If Nintendo starts manufacturing old hardware again that will mess up the prices of used games in a big way. I we at the mall days ago and they has NESs for 40 bucks, SNES for 30 and N64s for an amount I forget, but cheap. They might have been cheaper than the NESs I dont' remember so well. Bit it was messed up! We've got like 3 NESs in the house. Well actually 1 physically here. I own one that is far away. We won one at a duck hunt tournament (people SUCK at duck hunt!) and my roomate's got one. We gave one to his brother.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. At that very same duck hunt tournament there was a guy who was collecting Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. He had so many he made a suit of armor out of them. However, he performed very poorly compared to us in the tourney. Apparently he collected so many that the price went from 15 cents to 95 cents a cart in his time. If nintendo manufactures more old Nintendo stuff wont that not work. I mean people can get carts for 95 cents they aren't going to pay more than that. And making more supply just lowers prices.
I'm fairly certain Nintendo will only be manufacturing N64 stuff if anything. They aren't that stupid.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Having lived in China for three years, I can assure you almost every Chinese household has a TV. Sets are cheap with a domestic 29-inch selling for around $US90.
A Hong Kong-based market research firm recently suggested television set penetration was around 92 percent on the mainland, compared with 42 percent for refrigerators!
All of the major consoles (inc XBox) are available in China as "grey imports". A PS2 sells for about US$200 and an XBox for about $US300. Pirate games galore and easily available for around $US2.50.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
We all know how much harder a 32mb prom image is to toss around the internet than a 640mb sorta-but-not-quite-ISO cd image.
GameBoy emulation on the Sharp Zaurus helps keep my sanity through certain classes <cough fake="true">English</cough>
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Well, given that he said "older generation hardware" that pretty much means that carts are a given.
However, all the old Nintendo hardware could be pirated - it's just more expensive and time consuming than it would be with any disc based medium. Also, almost all the common methods of piracy required special hardware.
Honestly, I think Nintendos largest concern is that releasing the GameCube there would result in massive piracy of the special mini-dvd format dics and the release of them to the rest of the world. Nintendo would hate nothing more than a stream of copied media coming out when they've worked so hard (and so far largely successfully) to keep GameCube piracy down.
to think about the children in underdevelopment countries. I'm sure my nephew in China will dump his PS2 once he could have given chance to taste the power of.....an old Nintendo. The Nintendo emulator on his dual Athlon-MP 2600 definitely can't compare to a real one. However Mr. Iwata must take into consideration whether there's enough electricity to power up one Nintendo there, because people are still using dynamo to power up lightblubs.
Exactly what parallel universe is Mr. Satoru Iwata living in?
The only real way I can see this fighting piracy is if they want to go back to cartridge based systems, but why not just make the products good enough that people will actually buy them.
I'm not sure, but is the implication here is that people only pirate games if they aren't good enough to buy? I can maybe see that if you're arguing a "try before you buy" attitude, but it's pretty clear that the people most interested in pirating games are going to do it regardless of how good it is ... in fact, I'd say a great game is more likely to be pirated by your average 15-year-old k3wl w4r3z d00d than a subpar game.
Hypocrisy disclaimer: I download MP3s and will generally not buy an album unless there are at least two (for bargain CDs) or three (full-priced discs) songs on a CD by that band I like. I would, however, gladly pay for those songs if they were available singly in a DRM-free format. I don't know if there is an appropriate analog in the video game world ("I didn't pay $50 for the full game, but I'd pay $10 for just the first three levels if that was available(?)")
Either way, I don't think it's fair to say, "I liked your game ... but not enough to pay for it. The reason I am pirating your games instead of paying you is because I wish it was better, so it's YOUR fault." That sort of reasoning is akin to blaming women for assaults because they were being "too provocative" or some s**t like that ... that train of thought is just wrong.
"95% of all Slashdot
I see a lot of people linking cartridges to combat piracy. This is not at all what Nintendo has in mind. People are pirating Nintendo hardware/software because they simply don't exist on the Chinese market. So if you introduce them to the market, some of the people who are pirating Nintendo merchandise will start to purchase it, and piracy will decrease. Granted, in some cases it may be cheaper to pirate, but by giving people what they want, they may be willing to pay for it.
Cartridges are just as easy to copy as CDs with the right hardware. A friend of mine paid $300 Canadian for a blank cartridge (can hold, on average, 8 GBA games), a cartridge copier, and a GBA. He can store a bunch of games on a CD or on his hard drive, and dump them to the blank cartridge whenever he wants to play them. The games are smaller, the cartridge is rewritable (although yes, there are CR-RWs available) and hooks right up to his computer.
Introducing their products on the market won't make copying harder; if anything, it'll make it easier. It's giving people another incentive to not pirate these products that Nintendo is after.
Using older game consoles such as N64 and even SNES/SFC enables schools, particularly in rural areas, to immediately gain the benefits of technology without the cost and maintainence expense associated with traditional PC platforms. We look forward to seeing the results of this experiment in China, and will likely expand to other developing countries if it goes well.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
If there isn't a current working emulator for the N64, there will be (just like everything else). ROMs aren't a problem to dump, so it will actaulyl be EASIER to pirate those than to duplicate the special small GameCube titles. Not sure why Ninetnedo wants to go this route...
Actaully, given reports of their diminishing profitability, I'm not sure why they don't flood China with GameBoys instead. Or maybe that's what "old hardware" meant...
Actually, as another poster pointed out, it is probably more to do with the fact that the games sold in China will probably be a lot cheaper - and mixed with a lot of pirated games. IF the newset console is readily available in China, the pirated games to go along with it will crop up very quick. Thus, people in USA/Australia/Europe would rather import games/pirated games from China, because the latest games for the latest console would be readily available.
Pirating catridges isn't that difficult, and has been done for some time.
I.O.U One Sig.
Think about it... suppose they re-release the SNES over there.
Now, think back to the days when *you* were playing SNES. Suppose consoles as powerful as the XBOX, PS2, and GameCube were available elsewhere in the world but they weren't available to you, thanks to your government.
Holy crap! I'd be plotting to overthrown that bastard in a minute!
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Actually I think what he means is that in China you can get burned DVDs and CDs a dime a dozen, so they're afraid to release Gamecube in China. ROMs are much more difficult to copy so they'll release N64 instead.
I don't think it's got to do with preventing ROM piracy since no matter how long a game's been off the market it's still technically illegal to copy it.
Strangely enough, that was kind of the point of the original NES (a.k.a. Famicom - family computer) in the first place. Remember that parallel/expansion port thingy?
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
actually that's not the same sort of reasoning at all. The actual analog would be a hooker taking your money and then refusing to sleep with you because you smell bad.
I'll be looking into reverse exports for those with a nostagia itch. At 1/3, everyone can make a profit, I'm sure :)
> (And why did you leave the +1 bonus on your post? If used on silly little things like that you should turn it off. You only wrote 15 'words', for fuck's sake.)
Now I've seen it all! An AC complaining about a logged in user "potentially wasting" karma. Maybe the user has been capped and doesn't care.
Really, I thought that the GameCube had a pretty good way to fight piracy.. they just use a non-standard propritary CD. How can you pirate something that you cannot re-create? There surely is a way, but it's not about the ability it's about the ease of it. If it's easy to pirate a lot of people will do it. If it's hard to pirate, a lot less people will.
This might be a little off-topic, but I got to thinking (uh oh):
Assuming that Nintendo (or anyone else for that matter) re-released an old console & games, what kind of editing would be necessary to make a game fit the culture?
Take for example, the classic NES games Rush N' Attack (say it out loud) and Contra. Those were clearly marketed toward the anti-communism sentiment prevalent in the US in the 80's. How would the Chinese take to that?
Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society (scary thought). For the most part, that's stuff we believe the Chinese can only dream of. What would they think of it? How about games like Wall Street Kid ?
For that matter, what kind of Chinese-only games are there? Damn, I wish I knew more about the culture... I'm sure they would have games that are pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here.
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
Well, I suppose cartrages are a bit harder to pirate, but that never stopped anyone in east asia before.
On the other hand, while the chinese economy is on fire, I doubt many people would be able to afford $100 consoles anytime soon, but SNESs could probably be made for $10-20 MSRP these days.
My guess is there will be new games, but only in chinese from chinese 3rd parties, while nintendo puts out translations of their popular games.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
On a side note, I think that new Super Mario Bros. games should be made anyway. I want a Gamecube disc full of expanded versions of all the old side-scrolling Mario games. Man, I'd buy a Gamecube just to get at that! (Nothing beats the functionality or fun of the classic Mario games!)
i don't think nintendo wants to sell old consoles in china to 'fight piracy' - plain and simple old consoles are CHEAPER. The average chinese household couldn't afford a GC, so releasing the SNES or N64 is the smart move - the consoles are cheap to make and there are plenty of great games they can re-release (and make more money on).
smd4985
He says:
Due to piracy problems, we are studying several marketing methods, such as selling machines several generations old, rather than the latest models.
Maybe I'm just thinking too simply, but it seems like he means he wants to avoid piracy, not stop what is currently happening. Nintendo's is thinking that due to high piracy in china, if they sell their newest games, they'll be copied and sold illegaly in other more lurcrative markets (US, Japan). If you only sell china old games, nobody is going to bother to pirate them. So sell them SNES and make some extra bucks with no negative effects.
How's this justification for you: I like the products but I don't like giving up money. So I won't, unless I like the product so much that I want to finance future development of similar products from the same people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Do the copyrights on games expire in the same way that copyrights expire on everything else? Or, since the company theoretically will still be around in [X] years, is the copyright thus interminable?
The GBA is a 32bit machine. Much more powerfull then the SNES, and not physicaly based on it at all. It's mostly designed for 2d games. but not based on the SNES's hardware.
Remember, the SNES was slow but had a lot of acceleration. The main CPU was just 3mhz!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The head of Microsoft's China operations actually suggested the same thing to Microsoft - sell older versions for _alot_ cheaper. Alot cheaper is often what to what people in the developing world be willing, and able, to pay for software. She figured it would create mind-space and make people used to buying legit copies. Yeah, she was fired. I have seen alot of NES-compatible game systems sold in down-scale Chinese apartment stores, and Nintendo probably figures that there is a buck to be made by going in and competing with these fly-by-night manufacturers. Makes sense to me.
Actually a better analogy would be to refuse to pay for some food because you claim it's awful, but still stuff your face full of it.
Yeah, but it'll be in Chinese markets - not sold in the US. So it won't significantly impact the legacy market here. I'm sure there will be folks who'll want Chinese imports. Also, remember that we're dealing with economies of scale. A hot-selling high-priced cartrige in China might sell for the equivalent of US$4.
"The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games?"
Who cares if there will be new games? The very concept of putting NES and SNES hardware and software back on the assembly line is teriffic news as far as I'm concerned!
Nintendo retired these consoles because they had reached the point where their sales didn't justify the cost of manufacturing them any more. But now we have the possibility of introducing these systems to a new, relatively untouched market. A market that may very well fund the continued manufacture of these consoles and cartridges. The NES and SNES markets will (with any luck) be self-sufficient again. Especially when you consider the advances in both hardware and manufacturing in the past decade or so (ie. they're cheaper to make than ever).
And if the cost of manufacturing the older consoles is being justified by the Chinese market, what could they possibly have to lose if they, say, start selling them in North America again? I'd finally be able to have my very own copy of EarthBound!
(WaReZ kiddies: No, ZSNES is not the same. It lets me play the games I wish I had, but I still wish I had them. If you can't understand the difference, I truly pity you.)
(Moral self-righteous twits: No, I will not mortgage my first-born on eBay for a used copy of the game. Nintendo makes no money off the sale of used cartridges. I'll buy it when Nintendo re-releases it.)
It's a lot cheaper to produce CD's and DVD's than it is to produce solid state storage (like a videogame cartridge). At the prices you can get pirated stuff for in China--depending on how you bargain, under 0.70USD for a DVD last time I was there--it just isn't economical for someone to produce illegal carts.
`which fortune`
Release them here. And get Sega on board - man, I would have killed to have been able to play Warsong on my actual Genesis.
.iso through paid download.
This is a question I've long had for console makers: Why not create an emulator, package a shitload of games on the same disc as it, and sell it? Hell - you could even offer the
Sure, just like music and movies - there are people who simply wouldn't pay for it.
There's also a lot of people who would. I'll admit, I've downloaded games whose cartridges I don't own. The problem is - I couldn't find those cartridges back in the day. They're impossible to find now.
I have a hard time finding decent Sega CD and Saturn hardware. The games? Well, they're few and far between, aside from the massively craptastic ones. If used game places have a *good* game in stock, they'll have jacked the price up to the point where it's higher than it was when the game was new!
That's just Sega CD. If you look for anything earlier than that, good fscking luck. You're reliant on dodging e-bay fraud and looking in the local paper's classified section.
Selling an emulator and roms would be quite easy for game manufacturers. Hell - look at the lack of cost! No packaging, no cartridge/disc, no printed instruction manual.. Distribution? Toss it on a website and let it cook.
Now, of course, there might be legal issues with distributing games created by another company. (See all those wonderful licensing blurbs on all console games.) However, I think the console manufacturers could throw enough weight around to get game manufacturers to join on the bandwagon if they wanted to.
I was in China in September, and I saw everything there. PS2's, XBoxes, GameCubes, GameBoy Advances, and all of the games.
What's this about -entering- the Chinese market again?
As far as I can see, they're already there.
Somehow I don't think that their sales will increase very much as a result of this...
Not quite.
In eastern China, anybody who wants to watch Red TV probably watches their own TV (or 2).
Once you get away from the coast, though, its pretty desperate rural poverty. I'd wager that most of the farming communities in central and western China don't even have a single TV in the entire village.
Tim
Contra was the most popular game along with Mario in 80's china console. I still remeber having numerous fun sessions with my buddies during summer break when I was in high school.
Maybe that will disappoint you a lot, but Chinese gamers are just like gamers around the world. They will simply pick games because it's fun to play with. And no, Government has not much influence over what people play, since 98% gamers get their games from priated market anyway.
Regarding your question, there is not too much home-grown games in China . Piracy has simply killed off most home-grown game studios. There is a few home-grown games set up at ancient China might falls into your "pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here" category. But I think it's more a knowledge of history thing instead of Culture thing, and I've saw American players who know that part of history like those games.
Oh, by the way, GTA III was 2002's #1 seller in China pirated console game market . And GTA III: vice city has been sold out around the country.
the single most nintarded idea I've ever heard
You never seen a virtual boy, have you?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
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This is all part of a brilliant war strategy against Iraq. Remember a few years ago when Saddam Hussein was buying Sony Playstation 2s to reassemble into military computing devices? This is pretty much the same deal, only his top lieutenants will pass out from lack of oxygen when they have to blow on the Nintendos to get them to work. With them incapacitated, the U.S./Japan coalition easily prevails. For Great Justice!
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Manufacturing costs for the SNES or even the N64 are going to be incredibly low by now. Even the cartridges. Of course they'll need to be, they'll still cost a larger proportion of the average chinese salary, than the current round of consoles do of the average salary in the (more) developed world.
You probably believe Palladium is designed to protect your privacy and security, too...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The largest N64 Roms were still less than 64megs, and they were also for an existing piece of Hardware that was needed (Doctor V64). The "emulators" of the time could maybe, just maybe, get off a frame every 10 minutes.
Gamecube titles hover around 600megs-1.2gigs, and are using all of the normal Nintendo compressed texture and caching techniques. They are a non-standard disc. Beyond that, disc based media doesn't use a ROM image, like older cartrages did. They use a separate file system, and need some sort of loading system (Windows CE on the Dreamcast, 2k on the X-BOX) to play games. The Cube is no different.
This post is offtopic. Go ahead. Mod it. But your points are much better spent modding up.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Not true. If things are fairly priced people are happy to buy them. If a CD was $3 then why would you buy an inferior copy? It would be hard for anyone to provide a copy if they had to combat the economy of scale. The problem is that because the games/music/film industries have a cartel they can rip off the customer and that in itself creates the market and the sympathy for the underground copying. Instead of entering into a fair market these businesses try to enforce their hold by using technical and legal means but in places like Asia this simply does not work.
People here talk about the cheap copies in Asia but the legal versions there are much cheaper in order to combat copies. I buy legal DVDs for $10 in Asia, I could buy copies for less but the quality is crap. If DVDs were $10 at home no-one would even consider the cost of a DVD-R. The situation is the same with music although I can never find my taste in music for sale there. It is all Asian or pop (Britney Spears type stuff).
Nintendo have now got the Cube which uses non-standard disks to combat copying. Although I think this is a good way for them to do it I think someone will find a way to circumvent this soon. Anyone got a lathe?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
China has more people under 13 than North America(including Mexico) has in total. China's productivity is growing faster than anyone elses. Chinas education system is strong in sciences. There is a big difference in living standards between the coutry and the city, but that is shinking fast.
If Nintendo chooses to sell old hardware to China, it might work for a while, but china will be demanding the most cutting edge products very soon, and with more money than any other market.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Didn't the Iraqi government buy up all the PlayStation 2s in some US cities a few Xmases ago, to use for missile guidance systems? (Or possibly to spoil US kids' Christmas, because Saddam's a meany.) Or is that more Kuwaiti-incubator-baby material?
I heard some years ago (in the late 1990s) that someone was still manufacturing Commodore 64s for sale in China (or possibly Latin America), where few people could afford modern computers. Anyone know anything about this?
If they're making C64s for mass use these days, how closely are they keeping to the original designs, and how many cheap-enough improvements have they added? Are they building them all on one chip, or using the original small-denomination RAM chips? Do they have any funky modern enhancements, like ZIP drives which pretend to be 1541s or integrated USB ports/IP stacks or whatever?
going to start making Super Nintendos again? Actually, here in Japan you can walk into most gameshops and purchase a brand new NES or SNES. These game machines are redesigned NES and SNES machines (or should I say Famicom and Super Famicom ?), meaning they are much smaller than the originals, and are still being manufactured by Nintendo. I think the only major Nintendo console not being produced in one form or another is the N64.
Agreed.
But the quantity of pirating may be related to the average quality of available merchandise.
Let's say this friend I used to know (ahem) got his Playstation I modded and purchased a bunch of copied games for very little. One tends to be a little less choosy when the price is low, no? Go for long-shots, a few of which turn out to be great finds, most of which turn out to be complete duds. Well, when you've got 20, 30, 50 games sitting there in a pile (the mistake of parents at Christmas, even giving more than 1, and of youths with too much money), you don't spend a whole lot of time on the duds. I'm talking mere minutes, per.
But it sure makes you think about the number of titles that seemed promising and turned out to be abolute crap, and how you're glad you didn't blow your only $50/$75/$100 (Ok, my friend is Canadian) on one game to find out it was one of the 95% of the crappy ones out there. In fact, through this method, one might decide that the only way to find quality games is to sift through a bunch of crud, which is only possible if you're rich or you're pirating.
Having purchased some PC games at full (well, discounted price) I can tell you that my friend is now thinking about burning PC stuff, too. Directly as a result of the proportion of crap that's on the shelves.
Now, did I go and buy the genuine article of any of the gems I found through pirating? Actually, I did, twice, but I think that's unusual (I was separated from my software for a while). Normally, I would agree. Peeps just don't pay for what they can get for free, quality or no. And that is a major problem. Damn. I meant, my friend.
Do they really think they'll be able to confine the users to the older hardwre? LOL, hell, a majority of the next gen hardware and software is already pirated through Kowloon! They aren't gonna sit there and watch the world play PS3's and GameTriangles while Japan tries to filter them 8 bit machines...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
You know, it might be a mini-dvd however I do not think it is _just_ a mini-dvd...seeing as how I have not been able to read a gamecube disc on any computer with a DVD drive as of yet. I have also never heard of any reports of pirated gamecube games while considerable amounts of playstation 2 and xbox games are available.
I know Nintendo carts were pirated successfully a few years back, so I think that Nintendo's intention to fight piracy by releasing older hardware in China is probably centered on two assumptions : 1.) The technology has already been paid for by the rest of the world when it was first released so any money made rereleasing it now is gravy, and 2.) most of the big entertainment consumers (the US, Europe, Japan, and Canada) have graduated to later generations of game consoles, so there is no demand for the export of SNES priated material. China was/is notorious for suplpying the world with pirated CDs , CDROMs, and DVDs, so I'd imagine that Nintendo thinks that while this may not eliminate piracy, at least it will localize it.
A billion's always been a 1000,000,000 in the British Commonwealth too.
Afterall a thousand's not a hundred hundred, it's just ten hundred, so why do people think a billion's a million million just because a million's a thousand thousand.
There's actually a patern to this
10 x 10 = hundred
10 x 100= thousand
1000 x 1000 = million
1000 x 1,000,000 = billion
Yep. And how many people noticed The Legend of Deng Xiaoping? Deng Xiaoping? Err...you mean the key Chinese revolutionary figure and former leader?
Cheers,
Ian
I am expatriate living in Shanghai, China. I am posting this from a cyber cafe here. It's obvious to see why this is such a dumb idea for Nitendo and will destory Nintendo in China forever.
For most Chinese, cyber cafe serves as their introduction to computer, Internet, and compuer games. The machine I am on right now is a PIII 800 with Nvidia GeForce. The usage cost is about US$1 for 4 hours. It's 2AM on Sunday morning and the place is packed with young people in their early 20s. Most are playing games, some are watching movies and surfing the net.
The availabe games on this machines:
Now the picture should be clear. Chinese are introduced to computer games with flashy 3D graphics and online gaming. None of people in this room except me have any idea what games look like before 3D acceleration and Nitendo is nobody to them. With their first game experience with such hardware setup and game titles, Chiese customers would hardly be impressed even with next generation GameCube, let along the NES.
Moreover, China and Japan have a really bad history. In general, Chinese hate Japanese. If Nitendo actually bring NES to the Chinese market, all it takes is an editorial in People's Daily provoking the memory of Sino-Japan war history and paint the sales of NES an insult for the Chinese people as second class customers. It will make Nitendo notorious in China and ultimately destory any chance for Nitendo in Chinese market.
I really hope Nitendo be smart about Chinese market. I workship Shigeru Miyamoto. I have already pre-ordered Zelda for GameCube from the states and can't wait to play it. I hope my Chinese friends will eventually have the chance to appricate the art of the master game creator.
For one thing, gamecube disks read from the outside in, which makes them hard to read in regular players, and makes the data quicker to load on Constant-angular-velocity (CAV) drives.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
1.2 billion without TVs in china compared to the few hundred thousand who replace older TVs or upgrade to HDTV or whatever in the United States. The market FOR televisions is much larger in china. A TV in china is only $12
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Most Chinese people have little money; many work for under $5 a day. That means that if Nintendo revives a cartrige based console in China, its games won't be as counterfieted as a CD based system, but they'll be more expensive, ruling out many people. Maybe Nintendo could bring back one of their old consoles, but with a CD drive so they could sell their old games for a few dollars apiece. It wouldn't cost much more than a portable CD player, require very little R&D, and the games would cost little enough to reduce counterfieting somewhat.
Look at what I wrote...
How can one say there is a larger market for consoles FOR televisions in China than in the United States.
I like you, you got a nice website. But read my post. I am talking about televisions, I don't give a rats ass about the market for televisions. The reality is Nintendo doesn't make televisions, they make video game systems. One comes with a a screen, one needs a television. The market for televisions in China may be huge, but that doesn't matter to Nintendo. The reality is 80% of chinese do NOT have televisions. That means the market for video game devices which require televisions amongst those people is small.
We are talking about how Nintendo can get money from each and every chinaman in china. That isn't going to happen with a Super Nintendo. Hypothetically speaking however, Nintendo could put a GBA in the hands of every Chinaman in China.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
> The idea of the +1 bonus was for mature, experienced Slashdot posters that have a history of quality posts to get their better comments modded up quickly so that people browsing with high thresholds see them quicker.
No shit, sherlock.
> Unfortunately, people like you and the parent post come along, think that karma/post scores/+1 bonuses are all part of a penis size contest, and ignore the fact the bonus is supposed to promote good content.
Unfortunately, you make the mistake of assuming I actually care about about karma! I've been capped for years. I'm just too lazy to turn off the +1 bonus.
If you don't like people "wasting" their +1, maybe you should *do* something about it -- like change your Preferences | Comments, so it doesn't show up.
> However, so many idiots (such as the parent poster, and yourself) have the +1 Bonus and always use it that it's become irrelevant.
What? Now you have to resort to name-calling? So much for the "mature, experienced Slashdot poster" you mentioned above. LOL.
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls...
Cheers