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Nintendo Confirms New Console In 2005
GweeDo writes "It is official. Nintendo will be releasing their next console right along side Sony's PS3 in 2005. The news was released here by cube.ign.com. They also went on to say that Retro Studies is working on a Prequel to Metroid Prime. The best quote to all you people that said Nintendo was leaving the console market is this: 'Iwata emphasized Nintendo's plans to stick in the console industry by saying, "When we withdraw from the home game console, that's when we withdraw from the video game business."'"
I can't picture a gaming market without Nintendo. Mario, Zelda, Metroid... all classics. I got the cube when Metroid came out, and I'm glad I did .. it is superior to the PS/2 in many ways.
I just wish the plethura of games that PS/2 and XBox compete with also appear on the cube (and further systems).
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Free your mind.
While some may label them bastards for their hard-nosed stance on emulation (but with them releasing so many great remakes for the GBA, can you blame them?) and arrogance, the fact is that, compared to the Everything-Box multimedia behemoths of Sony and MS, this is the equivalent of a mom-and-pop general store that's been around for generations vowing to stick it out against the Wal-Mart and the Target raking it in on either side.
Nintendo of Japan president Satoru Iwata says...
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consumers today apparently don't want to sit in front of the television to play games for hours and hours.
Really? Why has Sony sold about 8 billion* PS2's?
However, it is good to see Nintendo vowing not to bow out... (And to see them planning a release around the same time as the other boxes.) Looks like they learned their lesson (show up late, get no pie.)
*estimated
Man, I can't believe someone would consider Nintendo a mom and pop operation. That's just so ridiculous. Listen, just because a company isn't Microsoft, that doesn't make them "good." Do a little bit of research before you spout off.
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I wonder if Nintendo will continue to chase after the young gamer market. The biggest slam I hear from people about the 'cube is that it's all kids stuff. Having an 8 year old, I don't mind seeing all the titles out that are kid friendly... but with the new embrace of the older male market with games like GTA and the like, I'm wondering if Nintendo will forsake its past and try and get a chunk of the 18-30 market.
Technically, the Gamecube might not be quite as advanced as the XBOX (but it is more advanced than the PS2). However, I den't even notice it's "inferiority" to my XBOX since it gets played about 10 times as much as the XBOX. In fact, with the exception of Halo, about the only time I play the XBOX is when I first get a new game or when my wife is using the GameCube first. GameCube games just seem a lot more fun than any other system's. Animal Crossing, Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros Melee, Mario Party 4, Super Monkey Ball 2, Resident Evil 0, and soon to be a new Zelda. So far, nothing on XBOX except Halo has come even close to these games for me (though I haven't yet picked up Splinter Cell).
In some ways, backwards compatibility hurt the PS2. I remember reading in its first year that Sony was having trouble convincing developers to make PS2 games instead of PSX games. And the developers had good reasons:
- proven development tools for the PSX
- PSX had a huuuuuge market share compared to the PS2, even after several months
- writing a game for the PSX meant the PS2 market was open to the game, but not vice versa
Now, obviously the first reason applies to any new console, but given the general crappiness of the PS2's development tools (by every account I ever read they were shoddy as hell -- hopefully Sony paid attention and will do better on that score with the PS3) developers were leary of committing time to learning the new tools and learning the ins and outs of the new hardware given that with no new effort they could make a PSX game that'd work on 25 million units.What you ended up with was a whole whack-load of developers who teetered on the fence for the first year of the PS2 trying to figure out when the best time was to jump on the bandwagon. Without the the backwards compatibility, certainly some of those developers would have jumped to the PS2 earlier. Okay, so Sony wasn't exactly hurting for games, but you have to wonder what some of those games from the end of the PSX era might have looked like a on a console that was truly capable of 3D rendering! :)
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I like the software but not the hardware... but only because I already have a PS2. I'm getting very tired of these "For this particular console only" games. Each console has its merits and I chose PS2 because I had a PS1 that I loved, and I still had a lot of PS1 games. Now that I have a PS2, I don't want to buy an XBox or a GameCube. I already have a great console, why should I have to buy 2 more so that I can play all of the games that are out?
Further, where am I going to put two more consoles and how am I going to hook it all together? I have two consoles plugged in now (N64 is the other) and I don't have much free space in my gaming table (a coffee table with shelves in the front where I put my consoles and all the games, game mags, game books, etc.
Why can't we have one console to rule them all?
Seriously though, I think I would be more likely to pay more for a console that could play games from 2 of the big 3 than buying two consoles. If there was a PS2 that was licensed and able to also play GameCube games, or XBox games, at least it would help with my space issue. As it is, I have to consider the extra cost of another console, new controllers and other accessories, and then find a place to stick it.
Anyway, back to my original reason for posting... I like Nintendo games. They have some great games available for their console but I would prefer if they were to follow Sega and stop making hardware. As it is, they aren't getting much money from me (I buy N64 games still - there were some good games for that system) but if they were to release their games for PS2, I would buy a lot of them. I don't know what kind of profits they make on their hardware, or how that would be affected if they were to license their games for PS2, but I think overall they would sell more games because there are more PS2's in the world than GameCubes... and if they did a tri-license and included XBox, they would do even better... but one has to wonder how many consoles they would sell if their games ran on PS2 and XBox. I bet the hardware numbers would go in the shitter real quick.
Maybe you can clear this up for me: What are the advantages (real world, not just statistical) of the GameCube? If all else was equal, would there be a good reason to get a GameCube over a PS2 or XBox?
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
He's a goldmine because they let him do whatever the hell he wants and let him take 6 years to make one game. I doubt Miyamoto would be a great asset to any company other than Sega or Nintendo, because I doubt any company other than those two would give him the freedom he needs to be great.
Becuase Sony doesn't seem to care much about their online gaming product. Their support is terrible. My Sony Network adapter worked sporadically, and I had to deal with inept customer service people via email to try and figure out whether or not it was a faulty adapter or a router setting that was keeping things from working properly.
Xbox Live on the other hand works much more efficiently, and becuase M$ is charging for it, they actually want to help with support. Sony has nothing to gain if I play SOCOM or Twisted Metal Online. Their business model is all wrong.
So why do I own a Gamecube and an Xbox? Simple. The common game list is much smaller than Xbox and PS2. Gamecube has "fun" games like Animal Crossing and Zelda that are somewhat cartoony, and not all blood and guts. They also have Metroid Prime which is incredible, and their broadband adapter got me setup with Phantasy Star online in seconds with ZERO CONFIGURATION.
It asked if I wanted to connect via the broadband adapter, I said yes, and then I was connected. No DHCP, IP numbers, or anything.
Xbox and PS2 seem to be almost mirror images of one another in terms of game selections. Large amounts of common games, and smaller amounts of exclusives. PS2 has the Grand Theft Auto series, which I grew tired of, and Xbox has some of its own exclusives, like Morrowind. Regardless, I think one of the most important features of the xbox will be its increasing use of its harddrive and the Live service to update content. New Levels, new types of characters. Keeps games fresh.
Well this post has gone on far enough. Conclusion: Xbox over PS2 for reasons stated, Gamecube in addition, to suppliment the blood and guts games with a serving of happy little cartoons.
Release dates do play a big part in who buys what system, but Nintendo doesn't sound like it's accounting for why or how their consumers make decisions to pick a console! Honestly if they had released the GameCube closer to the unveiling of the Playstation 2, how many more sales would they have generated? How many additional impulsive buys would that have accounted for? How many people would still buy the Playstation 2 for GTA?
The biggest question on the minds of my friends back in '95 was, "Do I buy a Sega Saturn now, wait for Sony's first console system, or preorder an N64?"
My buddies started to fall in to three distinct camps. First there were the impatient gamers that wanted to satisfy a fix right now! Naturally they snatched up the Saturn and voiced no regrets. The next bunch were the tech savvy spec hunting gamers that assumed the market would follow whichever system had the best hardware (please don't remind me of the 3DO). Even after the Playstation was released, and it was becoming obvious that Nintendo was going to take a lot longer to ship, there were still countless people that I knew that stuck with the philosophy that if Nintendo was taking it's time to do things right it was probably worth it to wait for their system(even if it meant waiting another year)! Last, but not least, there's the slow-to-let-go, trend-following fan-boys-and-girls that were too leary to fork over hundreds of dollars to a company that was just getting it's feet wet in the game biz. As would be expected the last bunch became product loyalists, either standing devoutely behind Nintendo and their SNES's or advocating the virtues of buying the already-here Sega Saturn system. To be fair, there were those that just wanted to wait to see which developers would sign up with which systems. And others who just wanted to make sure that the system they bought had GOOD games worth playing, developers be damned! That's probably another camp or two entirely, but who's counting?
So you have players operating on indulgence/instant-gratification, product superiority, product loyalty, the number of developers backing the console (which probably has it's roots in the adage, "a 1000 monkeys all banging away at a 1000 keyboards for a 1000 years, and eventually you have to get something good"), and what seems most important, IMHO, GOOD titles worth playing.
It just rather irked me that Iwata sounded so desperately clueless in this interview! Yes, getting it out the door sooner would be great, as long as you don't compromise any of the other things needed to sustain your system! Duh! If they're trying to finger why their sales are low they should look towards their software and hardware. For having spent as long as they did to release, they only surpass the PS2 by a foot on the yard stick.
What do you get when you cross a mountain-climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scaler with a vector.
you've got to be kidding, nintendo has nver produced ANYTHING that was backward compatible. both Sony and MS beat the heck out of them there.
First off: That's not actually true. The Game Boy Color was backward compatible with the Game Boy, and the Game Boy Advance was backward compatible with the previous two Game Boy platforms.
Secondly, while no *home* console system nintendo has ever released has been backward compatible (unless you count add-ons like the 64DD and the [japan only] Famicom Disk system), Nintendo has also always in the past always been cartridge-based. This is no longer the case; the gamecube is optical disk based. It is not really particularly easy to maintain compatibility from machine to machine when each machine has a different cartridge format that is going to be a different size and shape. Optical disks, however, are a different beast; this thing alone shows that it is perfectly possible to create one laser that can read both the DVD format and the Gamecube format. If nintendo continues with the optical disks thing, and there is every reason to believe they will, nintendo very well could just allow disks of either sort to fit in their next-gen console.
Now, here's my prediction: Nintendo once released a $50 super nintendo addon that let you play game boy games on it, and now has out a $50 gamecube addon that lets you play GBA games on it. A few years into the Super Nintendo's lifespan, they released a "redesigned" NES, that could play all the NES games but was very small and very cheap, just for everyone who'd never had an NES. From this i'd say Nintendo knows how to milk every last cent out of an expired franchise. My guess would be that if it turns out to be technologically inconvenient to make their next console backward-compatible, Nintendo will just release along with the console a $50 "compatibility card", or something, that will allow people who never had a gamecube to enjoy both systems relatively cheaply, while still making the new system as cheap as possible for those of us with gamecubes.
But what do i know.
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And anyway, how can you say MS beat out nintendo in the back-compatibility department? MS has only released one console, ever, remember? Wait to make statements like that until the Xbox2 (and maybe, to, be fair, the GC2) is actually *out*.
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