Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo's Iwata - Innovate or Die
Linker writes "CNN/Money has interviewed Satoru Iwata, where the president of Nintendo Ltd. says the gaming industry is in the midst of a crisis of innovation, which could lead to its demise. The idea, of course, is to justify the existence of the upcoming Nintendo DS, but Iwata does point out that the gaming market in Japan has been shrinking in the past few years - and the U.S. and Europe may do so soon."
I've been thinking about the new DS for a long time and haven't thought of many gaming methods to take advantage of the dual screen. Alright, this is off-topic.. Anyway - the donkey kong mario racer game that the last pic showed had your location on the track... big deal... the next innovation for them should be making the gamboy thinner with a larger screen, not fatter with two.
mix_master_mike
vafrous
I dont play any more console games cause they just plain suck. I dont care much for the improved graphics if the gameplay is horrible and rehashing another horrible game yet again. I would rather play a text game on my palm that's fun than play some impressive looking game that sucks.
Frankly, I think it's great that the game industry (at least Nintendo) is trying to innovate itself out of this potential problem.
Yay free market.
I'd like it even more if certain other industries could be made to feel this same pressure.
Seriously. If the 'big gaming company' took more risks (hell, they are big enough to take risks) on innovative games instead of working on sequels to games or the latest shooter, the gaming industry would be more exciting.
Instead, we are fed the same old games.
But can you blame them? Works in hollywood like a charm.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This is why all the new innovations are geared towards handheld devices. For over a decade Nintendo has been pushing handheld devices which really did not live up to the technology of the time. Their leadership in the market enabled them to curb innovation. But I view console gaming to be like the Slam Dunk Contest in the NBA. It's all been done, what else is there?
It's because people are stuck in these linear games with absolutely minimal amounts of ability to change the outcome or environment. Game devlopers have lost their ability to let the imagination of the gamer come through. It's sad that people haven't pushed enough to cause some changes. I don't blame the developers, they're giving what the majority of the consumers want...MINDLESS GAMES.
If we all pushed a little we could get games that are bleeding edge and innovative, but the number of these titles will be limited as long as every joe schome dishes out his 50$USD for some mindless point and click linearly story driven boxed pile of horse *!@#!
Just my thoughts
the IronGhost
The above is why I have more fun with Nintendo games than any other games, as a whole. Sure - I own an Xbox and a PS2 as well, but the bulk of my games are for the Gamecube. Nintendo just makes games that are fun playing, and that you don't need to read the manual to understand.
However, playing PGR2 on XboxLive is _really_ fun, I'll admit to that.
it's in my head
Theoretically the cost per hour of console gaming is quite low. Especially if you buy your games used and resell them someplace like half.com. Considering the cost of other forms of entertainment like watching movies and computer gaming it is relatively cheap.
:-)
Of course in practice this is often not the case
Take a look at a game made by, say, the Gamecube, the Xbox, and a PC. Quick, which one looks the best?
Now, odds are you'll say "The PC". Which, at $1000 - $2000 for the hardware, that's certainly true.
For the Gamecube and the Xbox, the systems are pretty well matched. From what I've seen, the Xbox can do lighting better thanks to the shaders, while the Gamecube seems to have better anti-aliasing (take a look at Super Monkey Ball 2).
Fast forward 18 months when the Xbox 2, PS3, and Gamecube 2 come out, all with chips made by IBM, 2 of which have chips made by ATI. Now which look better?
Once we reach a point of technical ability, all of the consoles will start to look the same in graphical and processing power. So then it's going to come down to one thing:
Who has the better games?
PS2 still has the most, though I imagine most PC developers will continue the trend of "PC/Xbox" hybrids (though with the Xbox 2 it will be curious to see how possible this will still be, though XNA should help with the tranferral).
Nintendo at least is trying some new things. Using a stylus to "draw" Pac-Man on a screen, or to "shoot" in Metroid. Or using Congo drums for a Donkey Kong platform game (and, of course, the upcoming Donkey Konga itself).
Will most of these works? Probably not. There's a good chance that most people will think that playing a platform game with drums will suck donkey balls (pun intended), or that drawing on a screen won't be fun. But in an a realm where Final Fantasy XII seems to play like Final Fantasy XI only with a blond in a hoochie skirt (for Pete's sake, woman, put on some tights and have some dignity instead of letting it all hang out like you're going to walk down Prostitute Avenue), and every first person shooter looks the same, it's going to the ones that are different that will pull it out.
Personally, I'm betting that the Xbox will continue to be big on the FPS and Sports games, PS2 will rock the RPG and "everything else", while Nintendo will grab those "Games you must have or die" kind of things (Nintendo, new Mario, and of course GBA games).
I'll withhold judgement on Nintendo's innovation until I see sales rise (remember the lesson from SEGA: different doesn't always mean $$$), but if nothing else, you've got to give them credit for at least doing something different than the other guys.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
its great that Nintendo is really trying to do this, because they have been one of the largest victims of this anti-innovation, perfect example being their relentless release of mario-themed games. (i know its practically their mascot, but maybe its time for a new one...)
It's tough for developers to sell a new innovative game because few publishers want to take the risk. It is much easier to take a successful franchise and develop sequel after sequel.
... ie: All of EA's sport franchises.
Rinse, lather, repeat
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
Why do people say this silly thing? It's not like it's a movie. You understand that a game is about gameplay, right? And you understand that the "Donkey Kong" made today has no gameplay in common with the "Donkey Kong" that came before, right? So the question of innovation has nothing to do with whether they re-use the same characters?
Mario doesn't even kill things by stomping on them anymore, for the most part. Seriously.
I grew up playing video games (mostly during the winter months). I had a Coleco, NES, Genesis and later played a lot of PC games at college. (Doom, Quake, etc). Looking back at it now, I just can't believe I wasted as much time as I did.
Wasted? A moment enjoyed is never wasted.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have piles of Systems at home. Sega origional system ,saturn, dreamcast.... every nintendo machine made, and a couple of atari systems. as well as all the Sony creations. except for a couple of games on the PS2 and MarioKart on the Gamecube... the N64 and the supernintendo get most of the use.
Sorry, but southpark for N64, goldeneye and alot of the other classics are simply more fun to play. New games coming out simply suck. I go and shop every month, nothing for the PS2, even the $19.00 cheapie "classics" interest me, the Gamecube has no new games that I dont already have that are of any interest. I try, I rent things that might be interesting and end up dissapointed every time.
Games today just plain suck. I love Ut2004 on the pc, but that kind of game (FPS that is) sucks big time on a system withough a mouse and only 10 buttons, same as a flight sim without a real yoke and throttle controller.
They could work on making games that are actually fun and addictive instead of the same old crap over and over and over.
having 90,000 polygons per object and realistic shading is worthless if the games just plain suck.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The current crisis in the gaming industry does not surprise me. Today, games are primarily a product, not an entertainment. It costs a hell of a lot of money to develop a state-of-the-art game; this leads to a lack of creativity, since it is cheaper to rely on tried and true gameplay concepts than to innovate. With innovation, there is always the risk of people not accepting it. However, this leads to many similar games, people get used to this similarity, and become even less tolerant to new concepts. At the same time, the technology advances, games become more complex, costs raise etc. I guess somewhere in there the industry lost the concept of joy. A game is .... well, a game! :) A game is supposed to be funny. I think things changed when the CEOs and lead designers in the game companies were no longer creative minds who created several games before (like Sid Meier), but managers and professional designers drilled to create "an economic and reliable video game product". And hey - I'm sick of playing games that feel primarily like a product, and not like a game.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Many games, each requiring a significant time to master, means that fewer people will play each one. And as the games get more expensive to make (as they try ever harder to attract an audience share), they require more players to be profitably made.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The problem is that most of the game concepts have been done already..
Now, I'm not trying to get myself a Bill Gates style quote ("640k is..."), but seriously - there isn't much more to do, and what there is to do - is very very hard to think of or implement.
It's just like cinema. What new genre has the cinema introduced in the last decade or more? There are some ground breaking technical movies who have interesting stories that combine thanks to technology - Pulp Fiction, Memento are two examples I can think of. Fight Club was amazing. LOTR improved on the fantasy genre. But in the end, I can't think of anything totally new.
Games will eventually start being more and more similar to movies or to real-life. Better AI, better graphics, interesting ways of presentation and good stories. But the genres will remain the same, with rarely any innovation - if any at all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Looking back at it now, I just can't believe I wasted as much time as I did.
Agreed. I haven't been big into gaming since Starcraft. The wife and I filled our living room with computers when that came out and spent the large bulk of our time gaming with friends. Looking back, we spent 2-4 hours on almost a nightly basis. Fridays would start by 6:00pm and continue until 1:00am or later; we played until our wrists just couldn't move the mouse any more.
Sure, we had fun, but what a waste of time. I could have been developing some cool piece of software, or building something, really anything but sitting on my butt doing what amounts to nothing.
So here I am surfing Slashdot instead. Hmmm... maybe I shouldn't submit this. Oh well.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Good point. There's few things more suspicious than a focus group... ;)
<grrr>
I think Penny Arcade hit the nail on the head in their article on the recently launched City of Heroes, when they said the game had plenty of depth, but lacked width. That is the increasing problem with electronic games; they may be complex, but they lack any real sense of immersion. Goto area A, fight monster B, retrieve item C, rinse and repeat. It's the same formula we've seen a million times before, only with a shinnier wrapper and new kung fu grip.
Eh? And which games are "too complicated"?
;)
Excluding more advanced and in depth MMORPGs (Everquest, FF11, etc), single player RPGs (Morrowind), or an RTS game (Warcraft, Starcraft, etc.), games, for the most part, aren't complicated at all.
GTA: You have a button for gettin in a car, running, jumping, and switching weapons. Not too complex there. Get in a car, drive to your destination, get a mission.
Fighting games? Not very complex. Most are designed around the Tekken/Virtua Fighter modes where you have weak/medium/strong attacks. That's it. Unlike earlier fighting games, moves, combos, and finishing moves are listed for you within the game.
Survival Horror? Every one I've played is pretty simple to figure out. You pretty much walk, shoot, and solve puzzles. What about FPS games like Halo and Unreal? Not much to them aside from knowing where the move/shoot buttons are.
RPGs like Diablo are pure hack & slash. Yeah, you can incorporate strategy into it, but it takes a whopping 5 minutes to read up on how to socket your items.
Sure, you have your occasional game that takes a while to figure out, but those aren't geared toward those who'd rather flip blocks for 20 minutes then call it a day.
But one thing is for certain: game today are NOT too complicated by any means. I think you must be gettin old
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
It's like this: Developer platforms are the problem. Much innovation was created by reinventing the tools everytime they made a game. Its alot like the loss of innovation that occurred in typing or writing many versions of a page of a book verses typing and deleting on a computer. The process of doing something over and over again allows your brain to rework the problem and come up with better solutions.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Specifically an industry founded on "flashes in the pan"
I think the industry is getting to a phase where they can't rely on the latest and greatest to justify selling their games at enormous prices.
Prices need to be lowered on games as do development cycles, its inevitable. Someone will eventually come along and say "We're sticking with this engine and going to churn out 1 game every 6 months for $20 bucks a pop"
The future of gaming is going to be about selling the story, not the technology.
Matrix 3 "bombed?"
Sorry, but it did far from bomb. The two matrix sequels were filmed together for a budget of $200 million. That's pretty expensive plus a marketing campaign of about $50-75 million for the two. However, Matrix 2 has taken in over $281 million in the USA alone, covering the costs of both movies (that is WITHOUT dvd/vhs/tv rights sales). Worldwide, it has taken in $457 million.
Therefore, by definition, ANYTHING matrix 3 made was in essense a profit. It was impossible to bomb as the movie was already in the black (i.e. proifiting). That being said, Matrix Revolutions has made $285 million worldwide (again, minus dvd, tv, tie-ins, etc).
If that's a bomb, then that's a bomb i'd love to be responsible for...
The problem is that most of the game concepts have been done already..
Yeah, all except those that haven't been thought up yet...
Thus you see probably the biggest potential in the ONLINE gaming market.
Granted, they still have to figure out a paradigm solution to the "how can Joe Sixpack (who plays a few hours a week) have fun in the same world as l33t g4m3rZ (who play 30+ hours per week)", but the interest value, the innovation, and sheer unpredictability of human opponents will outweigh that of even top-notch AI's for many years to come.
A developer has a choice:
1) Spend $5 million building a complex, detailed storyline single player game with multiple solutions and plot branchings, detailed character interaction and clever 'learning' AI. Most people (who actually play 3d Magnum Deer Hunter XXVI) won't even buy it, some will play it for an hour or two before hunting for the walkthrough online, and only a very teeny % will actually play through and enjoy 90% of the investment.
2) Spend $3 million making an online game where you can continually input content over time, you can get players to pay $15/month to play it as long as you're willing to pay the continuing bandwidth, server, and staff costs to support it, and let THEM pretty much create the interactions and plotlines internally.
#2 looks like a pretty good option.
-Styopa
I was just thinking about this the other day.
how, since SEGA (who have been the leg-up for innovation in the gaming industry) stopped making consoles, we havent seen any attempts towards any next-generation systems, only little plastic boxes that hook up to the TV.
Now the DS is coming out, which may start a future of systems that can easily replace the systems that hook to TV's (though I dont see it happening)
but it throws the handheld market out of the repetitive 2d-only market.
Now there's the PSP, but I honestly wouldnt want to buy that, it's neither innovation, or really something that can be called handheld or portable.
all it is is a PSone with games that are incompatible with all of sony's other products.
the only selling point is the mp3 player, which will attract the sony fanboys right away. but you can just buy a psone with a monitor, and you got a fairly portable system, with pre-existing games.
The DS will have its own games, yes, but they'll have their own unique features that take advantage of the DS' power, people may make fun of the DS, but it's a system with a hell lot more innovation and potential than anyone has done to date, and is something nintendo hasnt done before to date.
but with all that, we need more innovation, and the only real innovator left is nintendo, really.. Sony just copies the innovation and adds a tacky feature here or there to make it sell like hotcakes. and Microsoft.. well we dont need to go there. Sega and nintendo used to be the main innovators back in the 90's and now that Sega no longer makes systems, it's really up to nintendo now to do it, or else we're facing a dark age for console gaming. Because if Sony and Microsoft get their way with the industry, console gaming will mostly die for the most part. and any innovations will be minor details, nothing new, since they wouldnt have competition except each other, and they leech, so nothing would really come up.
I say, go nintendo.
Bertold Brecht proclaimed around 1930 that everything that can be said has been said (he justified plagiarism with that, but that's another topic). Yet, new books still appeared after 1930 and not all of them were rehashes of older books. Proclaiming that all possible ideas have been done just means that your imagination is too limited. Yes, you're saying "most", but what exactly is "most"? 51%? 99%? Even more? If we define "most" as too many you're too unimaginative, if we understand it as 51% or something your point is void (since that'd leave quite a few ideas).
Just look at the past. Do you think twenty years ago people would have thought of most of the games produced nowadays?
Games don't make total changes, yes. Most games can be filed into a genre, yes. But that doesn't mean change doesn't happen. Games evolve gradually. Try comparing, say, Doom and Unreal Tournament 2004. That's a big difference. Yet, if you look through the FPS history there weren't any big revolutions in between. It's like continental drift. You might not notice it, but it's there and it totally changed the layout of the Earth.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
What is all this complain about today's games sucks? People posting here are obsessed with lame ass platform games. No one plays that anymore.
Try dropping Gran Turismo 4 and go back to NES rad racer. People always bring up some puzzle game like tetris to compare the ENTIRE gaming industry.
I am sure I can't sit thru tetris for an hour, but I'll sit thru wolfenstein for 8 hrs straight.
I'd like to somewhat disagree with you here, I think it's not that games are too non-linear but rather that they are still linear but allow you not to go in the right direction. This is why you end up wandering around aimlessly for ages just wanting to find a way past your current problem, in a truly non-linear game you could wander off and find something else to do, a completely different solution to your problem or just some mindless fun..
But I agree that action games should be linear although I think being able to choose which line to follow (so to say..) is a nice thing since sometimes you just don't want to go head to head with that guy with double flak-jackets and a grenade launcher, it might suit you better to gun down a dozen or so ordinary enemies.. (This is what I kind of miss in Max Payne 2, the ability to find alternate paths that still have the same result in the end.)
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
According to your post, shouldn't PlayStation 2 be failing big time in markets outside of Japan? AFAIK, there are no differences between the Japanese PS2 and the American one - other than what is necessary (PAL versus NTSC and the like).
Also, I believe the Xbox is the same in the US and world markets.
The articles your referred to regarding differences in Japanese, European, and American markets talked about the gaming titles themselves (i.e. what genre of games each market like), and didn't really refer to the gaming hardware themselves.
In fact, if Nintendo manufactured different hardware for each of its regional markets, they probably can't take advantage of lowering manufacturing costs in terms of scale, so it would probably lead to a higher retail price and damage its market share.
P.S. the NES and the FamiCom had very little differences outside of appearance. It was purely a marketing decision to make them "different".
-B
Quoting from the article:
While there were some very promising titles on display at this year's show, there were very few games that were truly unique. Most, instead, rehashed familiar genres, tossing in a few new elements or simply polishing gameplay.
If you take out the "simply polishing gameplay" phrase, this statement would apply to movies as well. Most movies are pretty much just rehashes of existing concepts, with different actors and special effects. Yet, the movie industry thrives and makes billions of dollars.
So my sense is that the game industry isn't going anywhere, it's just maturing as a creative medium. That means that, over time, you're going to see less innovation, just like you do in most creative media. Doesn't mean people are going to stop buying.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
while Nintendo posted their first quarterly loss in decades.
I think the word you were looking for wasn't "decades", it was "ever". And while they are of course trying to hold up their recent loses in a positive light, the overall game/console sales in the Japanese market has declined. Even Sony has felt the burn in that respect.
Nintendo is having problems not because of the localization thing, but because they don't want powerful 3rd party developers and they do their damndest to keep those they do embrace on a very short leash.
Take GTA3, sold more copies than grains of sand on the beach right? But if you add up all the crap 3rd party stuff released on the PS2 you will see that GTA3 is not even 10% of all the software sold on the PS2. What does this mean? It means that there are people that will buy anything, even what you or I may think is crap, not because they are stupid but because given a large enough group of people, there is a good chance that someone will like your game.
More selection equals more games that any given person is going to want, and this equals more systems sold. Nintendo (and MS to a point) are in a spot where the 3rd party shovelware makers are not all that interested in porting to their system because they don't have a strong enough user-base to buy their games. MS kisses ass and throws money at the problem, and eventually this will work. Nintendo on the otherhand holds it's nose up and is content with their 1st party line ups.
The problem with changing outcome or environment is that it increases the amount of possible paths through the gameworld. If, for example, there's 3 possible paths through each area, it triples the amount of content needed in the game. If there's eight choices you can make during an adventure game, and each choice has two possible paths you can take, it means that there's 256 possible routes through the gameworld. If some or all of these choices lead back to the main plot (so they are side quests), then there's an uncountable number of different paths through the game - and the plot has to be exiting and coherent no matter what path you take. And if there's a destroyable wall in an FPS game, the enemies must reach sensibly to the wall blowing up and the level can't become too easy just because you blew the wall up.
The more choice the player has, the harder it is to keep the plot or action coherent and exiting, and the more likely the game will get to a state the designer didn't anticipate and crashes or exhibits weird behaviour as a result.
So, it isn't a question of imagination, it's a question of ability.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.