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Nintendo's GCNext Direction Outlined By Iwata
Thanks to GameSpy for its in-depth interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata regarding "what's gone wrong, what's gone right, and why Nintendo will end up on top." Iwata admits that "the competition is tougher than ever before; and in the short run, we have seen declining profitability", but makes it clear that the next-gen GameCube (which he calls "GCNext or GCN") isn't about raw processing power - rather, Nintendo are "discussing... what should be done to entertain people in a new way; and in order to achieve this, what functionality must be added to our current technology."
-Backwards compatibility.
-Kick-ass Mario game.
That should about do it. I'm a huge Nintendo fan, but even I know that this is all they need to add if they want to still KATN. A next-gen F-Zero game and 3D goggles would help too.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
They seem to be getting more and more out of touch with the general gaming populace. The first console I purchased this generation was a Gamecube. It had some great games, like the Resident Evil remake, RE Zero, Eternal Darkness, etc. And the Wavebird is an absolutely fantastic controller. However.. I ditched the GC in favor of the XBox after the very poor online game support and selection the GC provided. Wish they would get with the times, because Nintendo publishes some excellent games. I'd like to see them ditch the console hardware business and start publishing for other platforms.
It's all about the games. Always has been. The reason people buy Nintendo is because of the marios, the metroids, and the zeldas, those kickass exclusive games you just can't get anywhere else. The reason people buy xboxes and playstations is so they can play those highly-advertised gtas and final fantasies after watching a dvd. Think about it. Nintendo's busy delivering the quality while sony and ms are giving us the quantity.
And screw backwards compatibility. I don't care at all about it. It works with the GBA because it already owns something like 80% of the handheld market, but who actually still plays psx games on their ps2? Whoever played sega games on their genesis? Or sega cd or 32x for that matter? I don't want my cool new console to be crippled just because it has to dumb itself down for 5 year old games.
Nintendo has made a lot of bad decisions by failing to address a HUGE hole in their business: networked games. Ok, so there are four ports now, so it's more party-friendly, good for groups of kids who play together. So you've added features including interfacing with the GBA. Great tie-in. But what about adults, the original NES owners, who have their own lives in different areas apart from their good friends but still play regularly with each other? If you ask me, the GameCube has the best chance of creating solid networked games because you've got the potential for four people per Cube without a multitap - ie. the whole idea is multiplayer.
Also, I question the portability issue of the cube. It's not like they got rid of all the attachments necessary to make a gamecube truly portable. You still have to hook up the audio. You still have to plug it into a DC outlet. You still have to bring the controllers along. Sure it's lighter than a PS2, but that still doesn't mean it's a whole lot easier to lug around.
Get something going along networked gaming. M$ and Sony are killing along those lines.
Also, get some adult-themed games going. Maybe even allow independant parties to make games for your system without imposing minimums like a 10,000 minidisc purchase.
I think Mr. Iwata is looking in the right direction. He makes the claim that the next generation will be difficult to distinguish from this current generation. I'm not sure that's 100% true. I recently saw a demo of 'modern realtime hardware' that involved a lot of shadow casting etc that would definitely make next-generation games more interesting. I think it'll be the generation following the next one that'll be difficult to be distinguishing.
Anyway, I have drifted a bit. Modern game consoles have reached a point where it's more about what the artist can do with the system than what the system can do for them. At that point, Mr. Iwata is right, competition becomes very difficult. His suggestion that there needs to be other distinguishing factors is spot on. It is, for this reason, that I think Nintendo has ample opportunity to retake the market. They, as a game developer as well as a hardware developer, know what it takes to entertain, and they certainly have the right talent to cook up those juicy new ideas. I don't have as much faith in Sony or Microsoft. Sony's too arogant (ask the developers about what making a PS2 game is like)and Microsoft is too inexperienced. Niether have any real experience making AAA games.
Maybe saying Nintendo will win back the market is a bit of an overstatement. All this talk of Nintendo losing market share conveniently leaves out figures of how much the market has grown in the last 5 years. Maybe Nintendo won't be #1 again. Maybe it'll be #2 and the market is big enough for them to be quite comfortable profit-wise. Personally, I think that's a bigger win. It means there's another company who's producing an alternative that another segment of the market likes. Who knows?
Well at this point I'm just babbling. Sorry. I just think that Nintendo has at least the right mind-set to continue to succeed. I also think that if Sony and Microsoft are smart, they'll listen to what Iwata has to say very carefully.
"Derp de derp."
Advancing graphics is one thing, but advancing control peripherals is just as important. Let's look at the history of games for a good example:
If you stretch as far back as the 70's, arcade games had very primitive visuals, but some of the better games offered sophisticated input control.
Examples:
PONG uses a rotary "spinner" control. So even though the game consists of controlling a rectangle to hit a square "ball", the input is still pretty advance, with the position of your "rectangle" moving up and down proportional to the rate at which you turn the spinner controller. Imagine if the game designers used a joystick instead. (For you younger folk, imagine the game "Arkanoid" with a joystick for input instead.)
Centipede, Missile Command:
Used a trackball for player control. So although quick reflexes are important to master a game like Centipede, there's also the skill of mastering use of a trackball controller to move the player object.
Tron: Both a joystick for player control, and a spinner for aiming your shots.
Track n Field: press two buttons as fast as possible to get your player to go fast. Imagine how boring this game would be with just a joystick you pushed left to run left.
Light gun games: Goes without saying... Light guns are one of those peripherals that HAVE made their way onto home consoles for pretty much every generation.
Racing games with steering wheels and pedals: Again, thankfully we have these available for most generations of game consoles (but not all of us bother to fork over the cash to buy such devices).
In the mid to late 80's, games tended to all use joysticks and buttons. It was no coincidence they offer little in the way of innovative control input. One exception was Street Fighter II. They introduced the concept of performing "moves", such as semi-circle motions with the joystick. I need not mention what that game "started"...
And speaking of Street Fighter... the original Street Fighter had two big huge rubber buttons instead of the 6 buttons of different strength. You'd have to literally punch the big button as hard as you could and the strength of your real-world punch translated into the strength of your on-screen character's strength. No, this didn't work that well, since you got tired or could hurt your hand (it didn't take long before these arcade games got retrofitted with ordinary buttons) but you all get the point right? There's a reason why arcade game designers even came up with new input ideas like this.
Back to consoles... When the Nintendo 64 appeared and had an analog joystick, and we saw what 3D could really offer, thanks to Mario 64, it opened up a new realm of gameplay. But I feel we could still explore new play mechanics through innovative input devices. Imagine playing a game like Super Monkey Ball with a trackball. (Or that new game from Namco where you roll around picking up everything you touch...) We need new kinds of controllers, and innovative use of the traditional analog controllers. The more games remain "push left and the thing moves left".
~RB
In many ways, Iwata has made some good points (while loosing the plot on others of course)... First off, his comment about people finding it hard to notice the graphical improvements with the new formats, while not quite as insignificant as he makes them sound, are probably quite right. I don't know about you, but most non-gamers don't have a clue what the technical differences are between the current 3 formats. Sure some may know the XBox is more powerful than the PS2, but clearly few see it as a big thing. And one could argue that in terms of raw power, the XBox outshines the Gamecube, but lets be fair, you'd be kinda hard pressed to see it when looking at both formats top games. And I think this is the point Iwata was making here. The Gamecube wasn't as powerful as the XBox on paper (save the PPC vs Intel x86 debate guys), but it proved to be little hinderance in the real world, and saved Nintendo lots of money in the long run. Frankly if Nintendo used slightly less powerful parts for a fraction of the cost like they did with the GameCube, I'm all for it. What I'm not too sure Iwata has the right track on is this 'new technologies' thing he refers to. Why are they so hell-bent on changing the way games are played anyway? Sure, innovation is a good thing, but is the dual-screen feature of the DS really an innovation, or a gimmick? Will it be a key part of handheld gaming in the future? I doubt it. And for some reason, this also reminds me of the strange design of the N64 controller which, while very cool after a while, soon saw Nintendo returning to a more conventional design with the GameCube. I think Nintendo try too hard in this catagory and must realise that some things people just like better when they are familiar with them.
Someone has to say this, and it might as well be me. In the comments on every story like this, there's always at least one person, usually several, who claim that the GameCube's major failing is the lack of support for networking. I must disagree entirely.
Unless something's changed a whole lot in the past couple months, the online aspect of the other two current consoles is very visible, but the number of people who actually are participating is incredibly small in comparison to how much we hear about them. Xbox Live and some of the online stuff for the PS2 is well done, and a lot of people who have used them are impressed by them. However, the people who have even used a console-based online gaming service are a tiny fraction of the number of console gamers who never have.
In the PC gaming world, especially with things like MMORPGs, RTS games, FPS games, etc., multiplayer network support is almost vitally important. I don't think everyone realizes that the console world isn't like that...yet. I think it will probably become more important in the future, and any console in the next generation without good support for it will probably suffer somewhat, but at this point in time, the vast majority of console gamers are completely unaffected by whether a game or console has network support or not.
Getting back to why the GameCube was less successful than it could've been, I suspect a least a couple things had something to do with it. Launching an entire year after the PS2 definitely did not help. While the PS2 had few, if any, compelling games in its first year, the same could be said of the GameCube, and by the time the GC started getting more games worth playing, the PS2 had already been out for a couple years, had much more support, and was in many more homes.
On a related note, the GC was pretty lacking in third-party support until more recently, too. Even now, I look at which games I've been playing lately on my GC and which games I'm looking forward to, and the vast majority are straight from Nintendo. Now, if I had to pick one and only one company whose games I could play, it would be Nintendo, so I'm not too bothered by that, but it would be nice to have more stuff out there to choose from.
Regardless, as long as Nintendo gets to the party on time with the next console, instead of being unfashionably late, I think they're on the right track. I buy consoles to play games, not to watch movies on or to use a PVR or a CD player or anything else like that. I play games because I want to have fun. As far as I'm concerned, they make some of the best games that are the most fun, and anything they do to make it easier to make good games and to create more ways for games to be fun is ok with me.
There are 77-million gamers around the world.
Total online console gamers are around 3 million.
Understand their decision now? Multiplayer is a huge benefit for games, and will ultimately be a large part of the future of games, but not right now.