RJ Mical On The DS, PSP, Current Game Hardware

Thanks to 1UP for its interview with Amiga luminary and 3DO and Lynx co-creator RJ Mical, discussing many facets of portable gaming, including his views on the Sony PSP ("Well, the thing I dislike most about it is that I didn't get to do it"), possible disadvantages for the Nintendo DS ("The running joke in the [Fathammer] office [when touchscreens and styluses were being tested] was that we were actually funded by the screen makers; they could increase their sales, because indeed, people were always breaking their screens"), and lessons learned earlier in Mical's career ("Probably the most important thing I learned from the Lynx: never trust focus groups... They all told us to make it big, so we made it big.")

Comments

Toughness

[tprime]

Up until this point, only the PSP has been questioned with respect to how well it will fare with a 12 year old tossing it around. People have said that the screen might not be able to last.

It might not be the first time that it has been mentioned, but it is the first time that I thought about problems with the DS holding up. Giving a 5th grader a pointy stick (stylus) and telling him to "gently touch" the screen is probably that will result in a lot of DSs with holes in the bottom screen. It probably won't happen, but Nintendo could create a solid secondary market of selling replacement LCD screens.

Re:Toughness

[Zeromous]

I think you underestimate 12 year olds.

Its obvious that a 5 year old has no business toting either a PSP or DS, but an average 12 year old is perfectly able to care for one of these systems. They are fairly rugged in design, and are probably no more susceptible to damage than a cellphone or Palm.

Not to mention there will be usual barrage of carryng cases and plastic protective devices.

Are you suggesting that 16 year olds with a drivers license would have better luck caring for his PSP or DS?

Re:Toughness

[Anonymous Coward]

True, even I wouln't trust myself (why I haven't got a 399pound iPaq) to get a speck of grit on the stylus an then scrrrreeeeewwwww one hairline scratch across the once flawless screen :|

The Sonic game (from the videos) require you to ramp the stylus back and forth as fast as you can across the screen to build up speed, SEE ABOVE x 100.

Re:Toughness

[cowscows]

I wouldn't give a five year old something that expensive to play with anyways.

I think most of the concern about the PSP's screen is that it's generally unprotected by the design of the device. The clamshell on the GBA SP and DS makes both of them far more suitable for tossing into your bag, pulling them out for 10 minutes while on the subway, and then tossing it back in when you get to your stop.

Outside of Japan maybe, noone's going to wear their PSP around their neck like sony's be showing off. So you'll have to buy a bigass case for it (which will also have to protect disc media I guess), and that just adds a whole other step that makes it less convenient.

I've got a case for my GBA SP, I use it to organize my stuff when I'm going on long trips. But for day to day usage, the thing just sits around, floating from between my nightstand, my desk, and my living room. The casing shows some evidence of all that movement. The screen, fortunately, does not.

Re:Toughness

[cluke]

I wouldn't give a five year old something that expensive to play with anyways.

Geez, I pity any of your future children.
"No, son, you can't play with this, this is Daddy's gameboy. Go and sit in the corner."

Re:Toughness

[cowscows]

I wouldn't tell them to go sit in the corner, but the rest sounds about right.

"No, son, you can't play with this, this is Daddy's table saw. No, you can't play with that either, that's the oven."

Setting limits for children, whether its for their own safety, or other reasons, is not a bad thing. If the only entertainment available for my children in the future ends up being gameboys, then I pity them too.

Industry insider.

[Xenex]

"...Amiga luminary and 3DO and Lynx co-creator RJ Mical"

Amiga.

3DO.

Lynx.

Long chain of success there!

Re:Industry insider.

[sammaffei]

The Lynx failed due to lackluster advertising and pitiful developer support from Atari (i.e. Tramiel Co.). The Lynx was a great handheld and wasn't truely outdone until the TurboExpress showed up in the market.

I personally used one for about 10 years (until it finally gave out).

Re:Industry insider.

[MemoryDragon]

Well, I cannot speak for the USA but over here in Europa the Amiga was highly successful. It basically was a worthy successor to the C64. It slowly became obsolete once the PC graphics started to surpass the possibilities the amiga had.

Re:Industry insider.

[Taulin]

The Amiga was pretty successful here (US) too. The problem was the 'war' that was going on between PC lovers and Amiga lovers. PC lovers would always say 'I need it to do word processing, so I got a PC'. Meanwhile, Amiga owners just said 'whatever'. This lack of app support is one key factor that the Amiga did not do better in the US, but it is still a success. The Amiga 3k and 4k would have been a real contender if Commondor didn't screw up.

Durability

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I gather, talking to people who were actually at E3, the DS's screen is a type of touchscreen noone has seen before... its like noone knows how it works, but it's really durable. Check out the forums at http://www.n-sider.com/ for stories of people really trying to damage them and coming up unsuccessful. I don't belive Nintendo has anything to worry about in terms of durability of the system. They've never released anything that was prone to break down, whereas Sony is on what? It's 3rd or 4th version of the PS2? They couldn't make a durable product even AFTER going through a whole previous generation of console manufacturing? I really hope the PSP does come with some kind of protective case. And I don't doubt the DS will survive something closer to a nuclear blast.

Re:Durability

[Zangief]

I remember a Miyamoto Interview on Gamespy, in which he comented that the sonic game was excesive, and that it damaged the touch screen from the intense rubbing. He said that they would create guidelines for the use of the touchscreen.

However, lately Nintendo has delivered some very resistent products. SP for example. Gamecube has a rate of failure notably lower than PS2/Xboxes (but it has its problems). So I think that the DS won't have any problem of this kind

Re:Durability

[Allison Geode]

Sony is on what? It's 3rd or 4th version of the PS2?

sony's on their 10th version of ps2, actually. i just bought one, myself, and the biggest difference between mine and my friend's first-gen, is that his makes a grinding noise while reading discs (from age) and mine has no iLink port, but it does have an infrared port between the reset and eject buttons for use of remote control without needing a 'plug-in.'

Re:Durability

[Anonymous Coward]

Lately? Nintendo's hardware is notoriously resilient. I remember that Nintendo Power used to print letters from people that had seen their Nintendo stuff withstand monstrous violence unscathed. My favorite was the Gameboy (the old brick-like version) that flew out of a car window that was driving over a bridge at 55 mph. They found the Gameboy by listening for the Tetris music. It was barely even scratched.

After reading that, I always found it amusing that that version of Tetris was made by a company called Bulletproof software.

Re:Durability

[smcn]

There was a letter in the Player's Pulse section of Nintendo Power a long time ago with a story about someone who left their Gameboy (the original mind you) out in the snow for an entire winter and it still worked when the snow melted and he found it.

Who knows if it's true, but personally I've dropped my Wavebird (well, on the carpet) at least 20 times with no damage. However my PS/PS2 controllers all have saggy analog sticks even with less regular use than my Gamecube controllers...

Re:Durability

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

They are, indeed, built to last, something that bothers me about some of the more precious pieces of my collection that I kept after the last round of cleanups.

To illustrate, in our living room my flatmate and I have an XBox, an N64, a Gamecube and a NES hooked up. The NES is still rock solid functional after all these years - it doesn't glitch, overheat, and the controllers are still responsive and sturdy, despite years of abuse.

On the other hand, neatly packed in my cupboard is my Dreamcast - which would not be a tenth as old as the NES, but twice already in its lifetime I've had to open it up and readjust the contacts between the mainboard and the transformer because the pins have drifted away from their contact patches ( DC veterans will know what I'm talking about here. )

I might only take it off the shelf to play Soulcalibur or whatever once or twice a year, but I really want it to work when I do - because that's why I let it have some precious shelf space in my bedroom. I wish everyone else was building their gear as sturdily as Nintendo does/did.

=/ stylus , == finger?

[gmezero]

From what I've read the idea is that games are being designed so that you can use your finger for the touch screen.

Focus Groups...

[FatElvis2000]

Never trust Focus Groups... a very common fall-back. Rule #1 of new product research, don't expect to walk in a room of 8 random people and expect them to tell you what to do. They can only respond to what you show them, and only in the context of what you showed them prior. Did they show consumers a small device? How many groups did they conduct, and who with? The vast majority of focus groups are a waste of money, and a crutch for insecure designers, product development, advertisers, and marketers so they have something to blame later for their failure. Use the qualitative to build depth, gain insight, and tasty verbatims to include in internal communications. But not to decide how big a portable gaming device should be. If I were the researcher in the room I'd immediately start to wonder about gamers asking for a "big" portable gaming machine.... at odds with 50 years of tech miniaturization trends. LOL. So the failure of the Lynx is blamed on Market Research. Give me a break.

Re:Focus Groups...

[gmezero]

They probably hired the same focus group that told NEC to make make the PCEngine/CD system larger in the US, hence the monstrosly sized TG-16 with CD base. Remember, "bigger is better" cause it's all about the size of your p3n1s :b

Re:Focus Groups...

[GlenRaphael]

[focus groups] can only respond to what you show them, and only in the context of what you showed them prior. Did they show consumers a small device?

Yes, as a matter of fact they did. From the article:

Probably the most important thing I learned from the Lynx: never trust focus groups. In all the focus group testing, and we did a lot of it with consumers, we had a bunch of different models that we showed them. [We asked] "which one do you like? Which one would you like to have it be?" We showed them big ones; we showed them little ones. We showed them gigantic ones; we showed them little tiny ones. They loved the big ones. They all told us, "Make it big. Make it big. This one feels like it's substantial and I'm really getting my money's worth." They all told us to make it big, so we made it big. And when it came out on the market, they all said, "Why is this damn thing so big?" It'd drive me nuts, because the original Lynx was mostly air space inside. We put it in, because that's what they told us they wanted.

Lynx Failure

[superpulpsicle]

When "california games" is the best game in your handheld library, you got some serious problems. Either it was impossible to program lynx games or just the lack of contents period.

Gameboy with black and white development could pump out $20-30 games at light speed compared to lynx games. Which was $50, and you'd see 1 new game a month.

Re:Lynx Failure

[MemoryDragon]

it was more like nintendo broke the lynxs neck... the devs showed the lynx to bign - they refused to distribute it and then basically brought out the gameboy which broke the neck of lynx because it came out the same time and didnt have shortage problems. the other thing is the titles, nintendo could rely on more third party devs than epyx/atari

Re:Lynx Failure

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

You know, I had a Lynx - one of the large, first generation ones, and I found it a good system, with enough good games to keep me busy ( was I the only person who liked Electrocop? ). Everyone holds up CalGames as the beginning and end of Lynx gaming, but what I don't think they realise is because this version of CalGames was really, really, really good.

I've played CG on pretty much every platform going, and the Lynx version beats the hell out of all the others. But just because CG was so good doesn't mean their ports of Gauntlet, Rampage and stuff like Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure ( even if I could never finish it ) weren't also fun and engrossing. Maybe I was just young and easily amused.

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

"1UP: Do you think it's a problem if a system tries to do [everything] -- involving movies, music, and stuff like that alongside games? Mical: Yes. Well, yes and no." Wait a second, what about the PSP? (he then talks about how expandability yay, built-in nay) "We created an environment where you could add any thing you wanted...the key to it is -- like they're doiing with the PSP as I understand it -- [is that] they are thinking up front about this kind of expandability" The Red Jade? Now, I know it was cancelled because of lack of funding, but the thing, even with all the special features, looked boring. They we're convinced that people didn't want a "portable snes" in their pockets, but a portable ps1. Hmmm... I won't start on the the whole "quality of game vs polygon count" issue, and which is more valuable. Er I will. Who wants to play a game like "A link to the past",(or insert favorite SNES game here) which was a kick ass game, vs. some PS1 type game, you know the generic racer game, that has X many polygons per scene! Hurray! Oh, check out the features on this one: Career mode, where you can work your way up in the ranks by driving around unrealistic circular tracks. Multiplayer mode: Where you can drive around in circles with a friend! (I know there were shitty SNES games, but the focus on "better graphics" from developers often (not always, doom 3 is good I hear) lose sight of what they're trying to do: make fun games and not tech demos) I'm not bashing /good/ racing games, I'm bashing all the crappy ones. Obviously some racing games are fun. Now, anyway, I don't think any of these "Market Insiders" have realized (except for the Nintendo ones) that when your talking about two 3 or 4 inche screens, and one huge widescreen, that polygon count means ALOT less. Plus, as it's been said before, who need's doom 3 graphics (exageration) on a portable that your going to play for a half hour to hour at a time? Obviously this is a relative thing, but how can you call a system "portable" if the battery dies out in 2 (er was it 4?) hours? I wouldn't play a portable for 2/4 hours straight, but I don't want to have it constantly plugged into the wall. Bah, I don't even know what the article was about anymore. Anyway, I'm neither a PSP/DS fan, and instead of buying one, or both, I'll buy neither. Portable gaming isn't my thing. I just think the DS has a better design. Flame away.

PDA?

[rsilvergun]

Anyone else think Nintendo is eyeing the low end pda market? Why the heck else build that silly stylus in (I can't imagine playing with it being comfortable)?

GOOD NEWS NINTENDO FANS

[StingRayGun]

The person who created lynx and 3DO doesn't think the DS will work! He likes the PSP instead!

This is great news! The Nintendo DS will be a huge hit!

Re:GOOD NEWS NINTENDO FANS

[muel]

The person who created lynx and 3DO doesn't think the DS will work! He likes the PSP instead!

This is great news! The Nintendo DS will be a huge hit!

In other news, Sony has recently conducted a private study, and in the results, they reported that nine out of ten rapists prefer the DS to the PSP.

Re:GOOD NEWS NINTENDO FANS

[Weirdofreak]

Those rapists being themselves.

Re:GOOD NEWS NINTENDO FANS

[hambonewilkins]

Yes it will be a huge hit just like the virtual boy was after critics trashed it as well. I remember I couldn't go five feet without seeing some kid hooked up to those 3D glasses - Nintendo, enough with the market saturation with the Virtual Boy!