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Hiroshi Yamauchi On Nintendo's Future
Thanks to 1UP for its article covering a new interview with former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, as he discusses the recently announced DS portable and the state of Nintendo as a whole. In particular, the article notes: "The DS represents a critical moment for Nintendo's success over the next two years, Yamauchi said -- 'if it succeeds, we rise to the heavens, if it fails, we sink into hell.' His hope, and Nintendo's mission, is to spread new gameplay through this device and re-energize the games market in both Japan and the rest of the world." Apparently, it was the 76-year-old Yamauchi "...who first proposed the concept of games employing a dual-screen device about 18 months ago", and elsewhere, Game Science has coverage of largely enthusiastic comments from Japanese developers on the DS, ranging from the positive ("It's exciting hardware for both makers and users) to the guarded ("A machine with two screens is going to be quite a high hurdle for developers to get over.")
Does it have two sets of controls or not?
If it does, it has the smack-your-head obvious advantage of being a portable multiplayer device; with only one unit and one game, you can play with your friends.
If not....well, I'm sure that people will come up with ways to use multi-screen in a single-player fashion.
As a longtime N fan, I have to say, this guy's an idiot. I haven't read the article yet, I'm just saying. This is the man who dismissed internet gaming as a fad, and who is possibly a significant part of the reason that GameCube lags so much in that respect. He also, supposedly, doesn't like kids. Luckily the people around him were always up to their eyeballs in genius. I'm glad he's gone.
- The first time I saw it, I thought "?", then when reading the specs, that turned into "!"
This guy's brilliance is only surpassed by his arrogance.
One of his better quotes in the mid 90s was something along the lines of
'I could shut this industry down by next week'
Having said that, it was under his direction that led to the massive success of both the NES and the SNES. He became arrogant and somewhat senile during his later days at Nintendo.
No shit. I wonder if he has a picture of the guy who headed the Virtual Boy's development sitting on his desk to remind him every day.
-my other sig is your mom
The gameboy is one of the things that Nintendo has done right, so I think it will be pretty hard to grab a large share in the portable market, but Sony does have a lot of money. It's almost as if portable division is a completely different company than Nintendo.
I've been a Nintendo supporter for a long time(not quite fanboy status yet) and some of the things they do and say just boggles my mind. They fail to realize that people actually do like to play games online. They also fail to realize that people are going to buy the latest and greatest system, so the Big N can't just close their eyes to the fact that better and better hardware will sell.
Did you miss the part where it said he was the *former* president?
In the deep hole for years? cite?
I don't buy that at all (though I tend not to believe Yamauchi). I saw an insightful post on slashdot a while back which suggested that this was designed to cut into PSP market share only. That, and it's not designed to replace the GBA, and it won't because it's more expensive and has a smaller library. Nintendo can still do fine off the GBA/GC whether or not the DS takes off.
A couple of people have said that Yamauchi and/or Nintendo's desicions boggle the mind - the fact is they should (and perhaps shouldn't; the man's had a history of being crazy like a fox - anyone remember him talking smack about the Sony president?). Yamauchi isn't known as Mother Brain for nothing - he is a bizarre combination of loud mouth crank and brilliant businessman. He took a hanafuda company into the player in the a high tech industry.
Though he's (thankfully) retired, I'm sure he's pulling strings behind the scens
A GREAT look into Yamauchi and Nintendo's corporate culture is David Scheff's Game Over, which has a lot of in-depth history on Nintendo as a company.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I think this sumarizes both sides of the argument fairly well. It doesn't look to be a profitable market area; not yet at least. Nintendo's gotten more out of the Link Cable via Pokemon.
The DS is in it's own class.
The GBA's successor (With at least a 320x240 screen) is going to compete the with PSP, not the DS.
I'm quite intrigued about the possibilities for the DS. I can quite see that a couple of killer apps will come out on it, and if so I will definitely buy one.
I can see a game like Splinter Cell, where you could put a camera in a hallway and watch it on one screen, whilst performing a task on the other screen.
Or threaded roleplay games, where two sides of the story are playing out, one on each screen. You alternately play a part in each story, and watch the repurcussions of your actions on the other thread of the story.
As usual, Nintendo are actually trying to do something interesting rather just produce the 'best' console.
Yeah, but initial price figures have it 40,000 yen+(which, given the current exchange rates, that is close to $400, I wouldn't put my money(pun intended) on psp just yet.
Or, y'know, maybe the DS isn't intended for massive (100m+) mainstream sales like the GBA. Nintendo have stated it's not a successor to the GB line.
Ah, but they you're an idiot ("Nobody wants games about plumbers who have turtle problems anymore.") so your punditry can safely be ignored.
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hah...
Nintendo has always tried in recent years to be the lowest cost new platform out. The PSP is expected to be in the $300-$400 range, and the DS in the $200-$300 range. I'd bet it'll debut at about $100 less than the PSP.
What it looks like Nintendo is trying to do, and I'm not sure if these are the right moves to go about it or not, is bring about the 3rd golden age of gaming, just as they brought about the 2nd after Atari all but died.
They're of the opinion that there's a market there for simpy fun games unburdened by, to quote the article, "flashy graphics, heavily-orchestrated sound, and complex stories."
"Simply creating more advanced technlogy and adding more features to hardware doesn't translate to fun games, Yamauchi said."
I agree with his basic premise, I'm not sure if the DS is the way to go about doing it or not however. So, I'm patiently awaiting E3 to see how it all turns out.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Nintendo Dianetics-Scientology?
I'd just like to say that I'm massively excited about the DS, and completely support Nintendo trying to actually revolutionise gaming.
2. Programming for the multiprocessors would actually be pretty interesting. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't.
3. Better hardware and/or better screen does not always equal success. (Game Gear? Neo Geo Pocket Color?)
4. Even with the twin hardware, chances are it'll be priced around $200. Saying that it'll be priced at $300 is really ignorant of Nintendo's history. Nintendo has been in the gaming business for over 10 years, they're not stupid enough to have a HANDHELD be priced at anything over $200 no matter what hardware is inside.
Playstation (like all systems) in the beginning was weak. Poor graphics, lack of great 1st or 3rd party developers (name one besides from Square that made a good 1st generation PS1 game), and insanely annoying and long load times. Sony managed to sell it thanks to great marketing, the large sizes of CDs, and the innovative (at the time) use of FMVs.
The day Nintendo retires its franchises (Metroid, Mario, F-Zero, Donkey Kong, etc) is the day the gaming industry and gamers all over will greve over the loss. Considering the amount of experimentation and innovation Nintendo incorporates into their games; compared to Sony's 3rd party developers (nearly every sports, racing, FPS, and RPG game), Nintendo is a frikin think tank.
"2. Programming for the multiprocessors would actually be pretty interesting. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't." Small nitpick here. Actually it has been, quite a few times. The Sega Saturn had 2 SH2 processors, and the Sega 32X added extra processors to the standard Genesis, so in a sense, it was multiprocessor. The Playstation 2 has an R10000, an R3000, as well as 3 Vector Units (VUs), 2 of which run their own code running in RAM. I'm sure there are others, but I'm pulling a brain fart right now, so none of the other console specs are coming to mind right now, but thats just off the top of my head.
Pessimistic overreaction.
How could there be such a moronic response to such a great post? Ever hear of something called "Game n' Watch"? Look it up.
Now, a detachable-screened, two-player-in-one-unit system that could also serve as a dual-screened one-player system would be revolutionary. Great idea, grandparent poster. Two screens is not. Fuck you, parent poster.
I'd rather see Nintendo retire its franchises rather than run them into the dirt.
I tend to believe SMB3 and Super Mario World were the last decent Mario games. I recently played through Mario 64 and found the technology didn't help; in fact it degraded the quality (adding Mario's voice is no fun when it's the same four sound bites 9.5 million times). The Cube games of the franchise are just weird-- they depart far, far too much from the original formula.
I'd even suggest the same for Metroid Prime. A 3D game tends to inherently have worse control than a sidescroller (you usually have to spend far more time playing the camera than the actors), so don't take a game based on an excellent sidescroll series and try to add a third dimension
As for two screens, a single double-wide or double-tall screen would be better. When two windows are needed, draw a line across the screen.
If you have an actual seperate part, you can't fully combine the screens, say, if you just wanted a single wider screen. This limits its appeal for mainstream titles (appearing on 14 other consoles)
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Have you even played Metroid Prime? Theres no camera at all, you play from a 1st person view. The only time you use a 2st/3rd person view is when you're in morph ball form and thats not saying much.
I don't think you even have an idea of what you're talking about if you think the Metroid series was built on its sidescrolling aspect and then state that a game with no camera is bad because 3d cameras suck.
P.S. The Metroid series wasn't built on its sidescrolling aspect. It was built on the ability to explore a seemingly endless planet at your own will. If you knew the areas in the first game well enough by memory you could get through the entire game without dying once, with one missle tank, no energy tanks, without getting the wave beam, and under 1 hour... without a mini-map available.
I'm not sure if the DS is the way to go about doing it or not however."
Whether or not it's "the way to go about doing it" I think depends on how many developers end up working on this thing, and also how creative they are with what they choose to do with it. So really I believe the biggest question is "Are people willing to accept new concepts". I think mere doutfulness in the system is the biggest potential threat to DS, and moreover, any innovative system.
Personally I salut Nintendo for taking risks and doing things other companies wouldn't dare. There sure are enough stale games around so i'm hoping the DS does well.
Actually, he said that Nintendo would be crushed if the DS failed, not that Nintendo would fall to hell. (The heaven part is correct, though, so it sounds much better in English to use a heaven/hell comparison, which is why that's how the quote is given in some translations).
I highly doubt that Nintendo is banking all of it's billions of dollars on the DS. What I'm pretty sure Yamauchi meant when he said that was that if the DS is a success, Nintendo will have finally openned up a new realm for gaming, a new dimension to be exploited for years to come. If it fails, Nintendo will be heartbroken, because it will show that innovation no longer sells: that franchise sequels with technological pizazz are the meat of the gaming industry, that all gamers will ever want are the same old, same old. If the DS fails, then innovation fails. The industry is already practically at a technological peak. If the DS can't shake things up, then the industry will become stale, flooded with Final Fantasy XXXXXs and Madden 2080s that will be the only games that sell.
I believe in Yamauchi, I believe in Nintendo. And by god, if the DS fails, then I, like Yamauchi, like Miyamoto, like Nintendo, will be heartbroken. The industry needs to be taken in a new direction: the DS needs to shake it up.
I hired it.
In a first person perspective, there's a camera. It's just located at the head.
In a 3D game, you tend to spend much more time moving around trying to see your surroundings and looking for the enemy or item
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
That's because by the time you played it the technology was old. It was the first game of its kind, and as such should be compared to Super Mario Bros. (note the lack of a number here) instead of SMB3 or SMW. Would you think the original SMB was fun if you picked it up and played it for the first time after playing SMB3? I doubt it.
The Cube games of the franchise are just weird-- they depart far, far too much from the original formula.
There has only been one Mario game for the Cube so far. Don't be confused by the other games that include Mario as a character. Nintendo leverages (please forgive the marketing speak) Mario's popularity to sell games that aren't really Mario games.
I doubt the DS will retail for more than $200. I'm guessing it'll come out in the $150 - $200 range myself.