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Microsoft Lusts Nintendo, To Little Avail
Richard Finney writes "The online version of Forbes Magazine says that Bill Gates has expressed an interest in buying Nintendo from Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Yamauchi." Though this news seems to have been part of a theoretical 'what if' question, the story reports: "'If Hiroshi Yamauchi phones me up, i will pick up at once,' Gates told WirtschaftsWoche magazine on the sidelines of an analyst conference."
...these stories based on idle speculation that company A might buy company B are utterly worthless. There really must be enough News For Nerds that we don't need three of these every day.
but can MS afford it? Nintendo has a higher market value than Apple.. meaning it would be cheaper for MS to buy Apple than Nintendo.
How about the decision to stick with the cartridge format for the N64 when all of the competition had moved to CDs (cost them Square's games, a major blow)? The abortion that was the N64 controller? How about the decision to use a miniature disc for the GC, thus making the GC unable to double as a DVD player while simultaneously decreasing the storage space available for media content such as voices, music, video, and high-resolution textures? Not a huge deal, but when your competition is offering that feature and you're not, it's just one more reason why a person may not buy your console. How about no backlight on the GB/GBA for years, up until the release of the GBA SP? I can understand no backlight on the GB, but when the GBA was designed there was no reason not to add a backlight. What about the aborted SNES CD expansion, which ultimately turned into the Sony Playstation and signed Nintendo's death warrant? And the worst of all ... wait for it ... VirtualBoy.
It's too soon to tell yet how the DS will turn out, but I'm afraid that the touch screen is going to be more pain than it's worth.
No, Nintendo may have monetarily the best console out right now (assuming it costs less to build than a PS2), but I don't think anyone would claim that the XBox is not the best technically. Two words: hard drive.
Nintendo used to be the best at attracting 3rd parties, but their rash of bad hardware mistakes (mostly starting with the N64, which they still have recovered from) caused them to lose many 3rd parties. Oh, and the GC does get 3rd party non-exclusives, but the problem is that while the GC ports may be better than the PS2 (not always the case, given that the PS2 has more storage space available on the disk, and a better controller), they can't hold a candle to the XBox port (see Splinter Cell and Splinter Cell: PT). I expect that a majority of GC owners also have a PS2 or XBox, and so when it comes to 3rd party non-exclusive titles they will either buy it for the platform it's released on first (XBox or PS2, depending on the game), or where it has more/better features (better graphics, online play, better controller, etc).
First off, the cost for manufacturing XBoxes, like all the other consoles, has steadily been decreasing. Second, the Gamecube is a slightly more elegant PowerPC kludge of a console. The fact that the XBox is based on PC hardware doesn't make it any less of a console. And finally, what "problem" was Microsoft "throwing money at" to solve with a hard drive? You can still use memory cards, but putting a fixed storage device in a console is a very good idea.
That would define the games as non-exclusive then, huh? Would you care to provide any examples of this? The marketing just doesn't make sense. "Hey, let's spend a bunch of money to write an exclusive game for a marginal console. If it does well there, then we can spend even more money and port it to PS2." Why not just start on the PS2 immediately? Oh, and I'm referring to the US market, so if you want to mention Japanese games that are GC exclusive, they should be games that have already or will be released in the States.
Again, I'm going to have to ask for examples. For my part, take a look at the Splinter Cell games (better on XBox than GC or PS2), EA Sports' entire lineup (they're designed for PS2, but at least now the XBox ports will have online play -- GC still doesn't get the love there, and no the Warp Pipe project doesn't count), Prince of Persia (best on XBox), Soul Calibur II (again best on XBox with better graphics and game control, though fanboys will prefer the GC version for the Link character -- personally, I like Spawn), Rainbow Six 3 (well, pretty much every Ubi Soft game), and many more. Can you provide me examples of cross-platform games that were better on the GC? And games like Skies of Arcadia don't count, because that was only cross-platform for DreamCast and GC, not GC/PS2/XBox.
If the port is done properly, the PS2 version will always be less impressive because both the GC and XBox support higer resolution textures. That's not to say that ports are always done well, especially when it's a port from PS2 to GC/XBox. However, I wouldn't say that the GC and XBox "are basically the same". Oh, and speaking of HDTV, that's another Nintendo hardware bungle. They dropped the component output on recent GameCube hardware revisions, which is just plain stupid. Of course, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy when their marketting department looked at the usage of component output on GC, since they only sell the component cables direct from the Nintendo store, and not at regular retail joints. And speaking of non-HDTV, I don't know why, but my GC looks much worse via composite or S-Vid than my XBox. My GC apparently has issues with red pixels, making them appear very blocky and nasty, and bleed all over the place. It seems to be an inerlacing issue, though, because I have the same problem with component cables unless I switch to progressive mode. It's most visible on the red Nintendo oval logo at the start of each game, though you can also really notice it on Mario's hat in Mario Sunshine (horrible game, sold it not long after getting it "for free" with the purchase of my GC). In contrast, my XBox looks just fine on a comp