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Nintendo Going Online, Releasing New Games
GamesIndustry.biz has an article up about the Big N's future plans. Shigeru Miyamoto stated recently that Nintendo plans to be fully supporting online play within a few years, with the DS leading the way. From the article: "Miyamoto, credited as the design genius behind key Nintendo franchises including Zelda and Mario, told the magazine that online gaming will reach the mainstream within three to four years, and that Nintendo will be moving in that direction as a result." Gamespot also has details on upcoming Gamecube games, including another Mario, the next Legend of Zelda, Donkey Konga 3, Mario Baseball, and a new Kirby game.
Online gaming is already mainstream. It may not be FPS, but many people I know who are not techs play Hearts online, or some other card game.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The article repeatedly says that Nintendo plans to come online within a 3-4 year timescale. I don't really see that as the near future. All of the current consoles will likely be onto their next versions by then.
If I had just bought a DS, which hypes online capabilites as a major feature, I would be very annoyed that I had to wait 3 years before I got any games that supported it.
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
Maybe because it is not as fun?
I'm probably in the minority here, but I love offline gaming and hate online gaming. Maybe the games have improved a bit, but the last time I played a game online, I had trouble finding people who suck as bad as I do, and getting killed repeatedly is not very fun. Also, the average gamer's maturity level leaves something to be desired. They appearently seem to enjoy linking one's sexuality with one's skill in a particular game. Not sure how those are coorelated, I chock it up to poor math education.
In contrast, to me playing in someone's living room with a bunch of good friends and some booze is much more enjoyable. You can catch up while blasting eachother and/or sending your sphere-enclosed primate off a cliff. I don't get that much time to play games, so when I do play them, I don't really want to have to deal with the frustrations that I perceive to be common in online gaming.
Monstar L
As a diehard nintendo fan since I was 6, I'm glad to see nintendo finnaly join us in the 21st century and go online. Imagine playing Super Samsh Bros. online! Now all nintendo needs to do is to get a 3rd party supporter!
The key word Mr. Miyamoto used was 'mainsteam'.
Online gaming for consoles isn't anywhere near mainstream as of now, even with services like Xbox Live.
Just because a game has the Zelda or Mario name on it doesn't makeit automatically uninnovative... Zelda:OOT and the original Legend of Zelda are both in the same series but both are completely different kinds of games. Both were innovative games for their time. Same for Super Mario Bros. and Mario 64. Metroid. Donkey Kong. Point is that Nintendo has spent a long time building up name recognition for their premier characters and they can now capitalize on that by bringing out new games that feature them.
It's funny you should mention that. Me and a friend were discussing that very topic over lunch last week when both of us had classes canceled. He raised the legitimate point that, from the outside looking in, Nintendo doesn't seem to be innovating that much. I mean, there's well over 40 different Mario titles to date. However, for the most part, I've found that when Nintendo licenses their characters into a new spin-off game, it's actually quite innovative. I can say with a certain amount of confidence that Mario Kart, Mario Tennis and Mario Golf are all really fun and different from any cart/tennis/golf game I've played. If they were simply cart/tennis/golf sims, then it would be a perfectly valid point to state that no innovation has been done, but that is not the case. All of the spin-off franchises brought something new to the new medium of sport, the hallmark "Nintendo quirkiness", or in the case of the Zelda series, you get a graphical overhaul/new battle system/new multiplayer features/new style of story-telling.
With that said, I'm looking forward to Mario Baseball. It will be interesting to see what spin Nintendo takes on the sport.
I really big to differ on the Sony note. Nintendo lost because Sony is just plain better at courting the consumer and the developer. While I'm a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series, there's not a tremendous amount of innovation between 7 and 10, aside from battle system improvements and new characters and story, it's pretty much more of the same. And I wouldn't have it any other way for FF, that's how I like it, but it's not innovative. Generic cookie-cutter sports titles, Yet Another Animated 2-D Generic Marvel vs. Capcom vs. KOF vs. SNK vs. SF games, Yet Another 'I Wish I Was Final Fantasy II So Bad' Sprite-Based RPG, all found a home on the PSX. Sony won because they knew which buttons to press while Nintendo was asleep on the job, not because they were innovative.
"You and your third dimension."
I think that Nintendo probably goes something like "Let's make baseball game", and come up with the idea for the game - then when they need to stick some characters in, they pick from their stock selection of Mario/Zelda, etc.
On the other hand, another company probably goes something like "Let's make a another Mario game". Then when they need to actually have some gameplay, they stick some stock baseball game in.
I think the use of Mario is more to just place their trademark on the game, more than anything. Of course, the name recognition helps as well.
You're reasoning is still a little cloudy, go check all the titles on the PS2 and compare them to the developers and Titles formerly on the SNES, almost every single developer FORMERLY developed for the Super Nintendo before jumping to PS1 which secured the exclusives for PS2's dominance. The reason was the developers jumped ship to PS1 due to superior storage capacity that enabled you to make superior games with more content, better textures, and graphics then you could on a cart, lets face it, Cartridges were measured in mere megabits, a CD is 650Mbytes, there is no way you would want to develop for a cartridge. That is the whole reason Square left nintendo after 3 sequels to its legendary final fantasy series (and its still going strong and sells playstation 2's today), which was the smartest move on Sony's part ever was to get all the best 3rd party devs doing their system totally screwing over Nintendo.
Nintendo lost half their market in one fell swoop because of the mistake that ended up being the N64, all the developers that were formerly developing for the snes TOTALLY abandoned the N64 for the Playstation, Konami with Metal gear (which btw, the original was originally released on Nintendo's NES way back in the day), Street Fighter Series, Tekken, all the best fighting games, and all the Japanese RPG's went to the PSX while the N64 totally got shafted. I couldn't stand how Final fantasy became a PSX exclusive and that sealed the deal and I had to get a Playstation, their worst mistake ever was not realizing that they needed hot 3rd party exclusives to secure #1 and sell consoles. The reason N64 did ok was because of fanboyism and hopes and dreams left over from the SNES era, I remember wishing against fate that N64 would get some good games because my brother recieved one for christmas while I owned a PS1. You have to realize hardware manufacturers like Sony don't sell playstation 2's, the developers sell playstation 2's by developing MUST HAVE games that force you to buy the hardware. This is the way the console industry works. Games drive the hardware sales.
At least 60-80% of nintendos best 3rd party devleopers games and their sequels were all moved over and released on playstation and became exclusives to that platform. This is what killed Nintendo, they didn't realize the power of third party developers until it was too late and they lost the system wars.
While nearly all the developers who formerly made games for SNES didn't release ANYTHING at all worth playing for the N64 if they even released *anything*. Squaresoft TOTALLY shafted the N64 completely as well as every other major RPG maker and most other developers of different genres as well. ALL the developers wanted to develop for the PS1 with that massive storage that enabled near perfect reproductions of many fighting arcade games and FMV and other graphical niceties at the time. FF VII would not have even been possible on those small dinky cartridges. Ocarina of time had washed out textures and practically had to use super compression to get as much content on the ROM as possible.
It is very VERY clear that nintendo lost due to superior hardware primarily because of the storage medium they chose becuase the developers wanted to make great games, what are you going to choose, a 32, 64 or 256Megbit cartridge or a 650Megabyte CDROM??? If you're a developer you can easily, do the math on what kind of game you can create! NES sold 60 something million units with SNES pulling in something like 50-54 Million units, a drop in 20 milllion or so units of market share is MASSIVE compared to their past domination with NES and SNES.
It's very clear why the N64 failed because they didn't realize that they couldn't carry the system by themselves and that a huge library of games coupled with all the hottest 3rd party developers (Konami, Capcom, Square, etc) killed them completely. All the best series on Nintendo in the NES and SNES days are all now practically exclusives on the playstation and playstation 2.
The reason was the developers jumped ship to PS1 due to superior storage capacity that enabled you to make superior games with more content, better textures, and graphics then you could on a cart, lets face it, Cartridges were measured in mere megabits, a CD is 650Mbytes, there is no way you would want to develop for a cartridge.
CDs are cheaper to manufacture than carts, thus Sony offered better royalty rates. It wasn't that developers suddenly could do amazing shit with their games on the PSOne (check out those early games, most of them look and play like shit, SNES games coming out at the same time looked better, and often played better-- and even later PSOne games aren't that amazing in the graphics department), it was that publishers could charge the same amount for games, and see more money from the sales. Simple economics says we can make the same game for both systems, but we make more money on each CD versions sold over the carts, so we'll support disk based media.
And all the extra space of CDs got wasted with rendered video, which people were assuming was gameplay video... until they got past the opening to the actual game itself.
That is the whole reason Square left nintendo after 3 sequels to its legendary final fantasy series (and its still going strong and sells playstation 2's today), which was the smartest move on Sony's part ever was to get all the best 3rd party devs doing their system totally screwing over Nintendo.
Let's not forget all the rendered video Square could put on those CDs, nor the boatload of money Sony offered Square to make FF VII exclusive. Yet, SONY made more money off of FF VII than Square did, because Sony was the publisher of the game in North America.
Also, one thing people like you fail to remember is that while the PSOne was selling fairly well, it wasn't until FF VII was announced as exclusive to the PSOne that sales went through the roof. Before FF VII was announced exclusive, there wasn't much reason for people to own a PSOne, especially when most of the games were pretty craptacular looking thanks to the PSOne's very limited RAM.
Nintendo lost half their market in one fell swoop because of the mistake that ended up being the N64, all the developers that were formerly developing for the snes TOTALLY abandoned the N64 for the Playstation, Konami with Metal gear (which btw, the original was originally released on Nintendo's NES way back in the day), Street Fighter Series, Tekken, all the best fighting games, and all the Japanese RPG's went to the PSX while the N64 totally got shafted.
Again, not until FF VII was announced as exlusive and the sales shot through the roof did these developers and publishers jump ship to Sony. Or did we forget that Metal Gear Solid came out around a full year plus AFTER FF VII was announced and released? Street Fighter + load times = crap (in fact, the PSOne had a horrid time doing 2D games at all, because it had so little RAM to load all the sprite animations-- and Sony was very against 2D gaming, with the exception of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night), Tekken = meh (and Soul Calibur was much better on the Dreamcast than the PSOne), and the RPGs went so they could do tons of rendered video-- joy.
You have to realize hardware manufacturers like Sony don't sell playstation 2's, the developers sell playstation 2's by developing MUST HAVE games that force you to buy the hardware.
Right, because Sony NEVER overhyped their specs and told people to forget about the Dreamcast because the PS2 was going to be super dooper better than it and be able to render Toy Story in real time, right? The Sony Hype Machine(TM) is well known. The promise of great games down the road for the PS2 didn't sell them at launch, and certainly the launch games didn't (since almost all were pure crap), the Sony Hype Machine(TM) sold them by touting the DVD playback and the 75 million polygons/second theoretical max of the Emotion Engin