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Nintendo Dismisses Online For GC Successor
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GamePro article discussing Nintendo's public attitude to online gaming, even as it extends to the GameCube successor. According to Nintendo's senior VP George Harrison, "[Online gaming] is a consideration. We're looking into it for the next iteration of the GameCube. We just don't believe consumers are ready for it. Right now, no one's paying for subscriptions. The real test comes when you have to start coughing up $15 per month." However, analyst Michael Goodman doesn't concur: "The game console isn't just a game console anymore. It's evolving into a home entertainment system. Nintendo has refused to acknowledge that and it's hurt them."
Personally I don't play my consoles online since I have my PC for that, but this sounds an awful lot like the time Nintendo brushed aside this new-fangled CD technology in place of good-ol cartridges for the N64...
Boy did that work out well. Didn't they learn anything?
to just concentrate on the pure gaming consoles; I personally think they'd need some better games to do that though. Thank god for Zelda.
Gaming companies are going to create games for the systems with the higest sales numbers; it's the best way to make sure that if you make a good game, it'll sell well.
The console public really is not ready for online gaming. Online gaming in general is a really neat sounding idea, but its just not what its cracked up to be. No one wants to pay 40-50 for the game then also have to pay a monthly fee to play online on top of their internet costs.
The analyst is wrong. Game consoles are NOT home entertainment devices, they are game consoles. Everyone who has tried to make them more than that have failed in the extras. PS2 dvd player isn't very good. XBox DVD player you had to pay extra to get the remove and abilities. No one is going to want to surf the web on their game console.
well, there's only one online game FOR The gamecube right now. I payed the $10 monthly fee for PSO for about 4 months, but got tired of it. the problem is, nintendo seems to expect third parties (like sega) to fill that void where there is no online multiplayer, and right now, the only really viable market for online console gaming is Live. nobody wants to have to set up their own network: "let microsoft do it for us!" except for sega, who has always boldly gone where no game company has gone before... often to their detriment, since they go there before the rest of the industry is ready to follow.
How many times can they miss the boat and still survive?
The Super Nintendo was a good product. The GBA was seriously flawed, as evidenced by the success of the GBA-SP, which is also a good product. (BTW, missing headphone port seriously overrated; I got the adapter and still almost never use it when traveling, which given the ease of folding the SP up and slapping it in my pocket is quite frequently. But this could too easily turn into an SP-love-fest...) The N64 was also seriously flawed because Nintendo missed the optical disk trend, and was seriously hobbled by using cartridges as a result.
The Gamecube is, as far as I know, a good product (don't own one, but haven't heard systematic complaints about it), so maybe they're due for a Major Boat Missing again. Will they be able to survive?
Granted, this isn't quite as bad as the N64 going with carts, despite the fact it had been obvious for multiple years that they could not hold enough data, especially for 3D, where a single good texture would be the size of a 1980 megahit videogame. Online gaming in the console arena is too new to be called a run-away success. On the other hand, the trend in the PC world is crystal clear; while not everything has to be playable online, anything that can be, should be, and it will contribute to its success in ways that a non-online experience couldn't have. (Would Diablo have been as much of a success without online support?) If nothing else, online play relieves the game house of the still-nearly-impossible task of writing an AI!
I'd feel pretty safe in predicting that if they don't include online capabilities in the base-unit, or as a really cheaply-priced upgrade, that it will be seen as a mistake on par with sticking a 3D system like the N64 with just cartridges for data storage. People like playing with people and that is not going to change.
In fact, phrase it that way and one almost wonders at the hubris of thinking you can discard the single best AI intelligence there is on your console and still compete against the console systems who will tap that AI to the fullest!
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I haven't heard much about either XBOX Live or the PS2 online stuff since they launched. I would be interested to see the numbers of XBox in the wild, and the number of those that are using XBOX Live. It seems to me that that the service has a pretty narrow audience. You have to have the XBOX, have to have broadband, have to be willing to get hardware to get it online (cable, hub, WiFi, etc), possibly run cable, and then buy the Live kit. How many people are actually doing this? Same goes for the PS2 network except I would think the audience is a bit wider there since some games will deal with dial-up.
I myself couldn't care less about online gaming, and I think Nintendo is right at this point. For many people it's to much bother, all to get your ass handed to you by somebody who lives to play xyz Online.
And offtopic but I think it'd be awesome if Rockstar used the PS2 network to stream new radio station content in GTA5(or whatever it'll be called). Radio stations were the best feature of that game, and that would be a nifty use of the PS2's online capability.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
The much better article on gamesindustry.biz doesn't leave out some important details that like this article. Mainly:
"Microsoft and Sony have now rolled out online services in all three major global territories for their consoles, but the numbers of subscribers remain relatively low - with estimates for the combined numbers of console online gamers ranging from one to two million players, only a tiny fraction of the 60-million odd installed base of the two consoles." (emphasis mine)
Yes, Sony and (especially) Microsoft may be establishing themselves as an 'online' brand. But they are not getting a very big finnancial benefit out of it, and will it be a big boost in the long run? If brand was all that mattered, shouldn't Atari be ruling the market right now?
Plus is just dosent make any cents for publisher to set up a high overhead, high maintance product like on-line gaming when they can outsouce development to some low margin game shop and then just sell mass disk.
On-Line = Pain
Disks = Profit $$$
On-line gameplay looks very expensive to me (money for network adapter, money for game set-up, monthly money for ISP service, monthly money for each on-line game). I always remembered Nintendo at its best with either single-player games or two or four-way games that kids would play with friends. I even played single-player games with friends, where we would take turns or play in a driver/navigator mode.
It seems that on-line games are still in their infancy and are probably fueled most by PC gamers who already incurred the cost of the computer and ISP service. To PC gamers the game fees are really only an incremental cost that is more easily tolerated.
For consoles to really catch on on-line, the prices really need to get driven down, because the main reason for sucessful consoles is large numbers of people too cheap to buy a $2500 gaming PC. For example, consider an average family who recently justified the cost of a cell phone and cable TV in the past several years now confronted with whether to shell out more money per month on on-line games. It took over a decade for cell phones to be in everyone's pocket and often displacing land-line service (rich and poor, it seems); perhaps it will be similar for on-line games.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
It doesn't matter that most people _don't_ use it, it matters that with the GameCube they _can't_ use it.
Even if people aren't particularly planning on getting online, there are good odds that they'll be influenced by the general atmosphere of "XBox is cool because it has online play and GameCube sucks cause it doesn't." Stop expecting people to be rational.
Microsoft's XBox Live is a selling point, even if people don't ever get around to using it. There have been a lot of games for the PC that advertised their multiplayer capability that influenced my opinion at least a little that i never actually got around to playing online or just played one or two games that way. But i bought the game, which is what's important to the company.
And if they don't think people will pay $15 a month for online service then just let them connect directly to each other through their ISP and host the games themselves. I'm far more interested in playing games online with my old college friends and people i know on the east coast than i am with random strangers i've never met on some online service.
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If you read the article, he says it's a consideration that they're looking into. I'm not sure how that can be seen as dismissing. He's right about one thing though...no one is paying for subscriptions, or at least not enough for Nintendo to care. They have their revenue streams and the money is pouring in. MS and Sony are not exactly making a killing on those online subscriptions. Nonetheless in the future it will be interesting to see where Nintendo takes their console, since ... ;)
Sony is basically making a WWW enabled/Cable TV box/TIVO/DVD/MP3 player that also happens to play Playstation games.
Microsoft is on their way to making a (DRM restricted)Windows PC/TIVO/DVD/MP3 player that also happens to play Xbox games.
Nokia has that digital camera/video/text messaging/cellphone (I think) that also just happens to play games.
Nintendo has one console that ONLY plays games and one handheld that ONLY plays games(third party hardware excluded).
If the MS/Sony/Nokia way was better, we'd all be using sporks in our home for silverware. Me, I like my fork and my spoon separate.
Heaven forbid you have to write something down! Maybe it would be easier for you to shell out $50 to buy a broadband adapter, then a cable modem connection, then spend time setting it all up, just so you can trade a couple items in Animal Crossing (which kicks ass BTW).
What Nintendo has done is save people from all that bullshit, and make a simple pw system for trading items. It takes 2 mins and works great, so whats the problem?
- Owns an N64?
- Likes the N64 and its games?
- Likes the GameCube?
"Should have gone with CDs" this and "Missed the boat" that, I really don't care what the analysts (both real and self-imagined) have to say on the topic: I'm still tickled pink by my N64 library, even if you feel the games were "hopelessly cripled" by the "cramped memory" in the cartridge format.So Nintendo still isn't pushing the online aspect. So what? If I really wanted to play online games on a console, I would have gotten an Xbox or even a PS2. Guess what: I haven't. Even PC online games don't do much for me (I like being able to shout insults to my opponent in the next room). I myself don't really see how an internet connection could improve my Zelda or Metroid experiences. The only GameCube game I can think of that I'd like an online connection with is Animal Crossing, and even then I'd be perfectly happy with something akin to a Dex Drive.
So you feel that Nintendo is making another "big mistake." So you feel the original GBA was a "big mistake" (and neglect to mention that you bought one anyway). So what? I enjoy playing video games on a purple lunch box and I'm old enough now that other peoples' opinions mean squat to my enjoyment of them.