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Nintendo's Next Console Revolution Will Have WiFi
nparasu writes "Nintendo released fresh details about its upcoming games console, codenamed Revolution, at a game developers conference.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president, confirmed that the new console will be able to run games originally made for the GameCube.
Despite the hardware announcements, most of Mr Iwata's speech, entitled "The Heart of the Gamer", was a call for more imaginative game design.
Game creators cannot rely on better graphics and more powerful games machines to attract new audiences, Mr Iwata said.
He also revealed that Revolution will come with wi-fi connectivity built-in."
My kids are doing "wi-fi" every afternoon with each other on their Nintendo DS's right now. Will be interesting to see how a 'Revolution' and the DS interact...
From TFA:
Nintendo's latest handheld games device, the DS, also comes with a version of wi-fi built-in, and Mr Iwata said Nintendo will offer a free net connection service to DS owners, enabling them to play games against each other at no charge.
Considering how poorly most people secure their WiFi, does this mean that I'll be able to hack together something and play other people's video games without their knowledge?
Tell me how you get from being able to snoop a WiFi connection to having full control over a system?
Breaking WiFi only mitigates the connection's security down to the level of wired Ethernet. You still have to exploit vulnerabilities beyond that point to gain access to a system.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
The Nintendo DS will also have free online gaming by the end of the year, one assumes by the same mechanism or service as the Revolution; and they have announced that Animal Crossing DS will be created from the ground up for online gaming, which if you've played the original Animal Crossing, you'll know is going to be just crazy.
Also the Revolution will be backward compatible with the Gamecube, and Reggie Fuls-Aime of Nintendo said something in an interview yesterday on penny-arcade.com which strongly implies they will be announcing a U.S. release of the Play-Yan mp3/mpeg4 player for the GBASP and DS at E3.
E3 should be very interesting.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
A quick google yielded this bio.
Nintendo has been saying that the "revolutionary" part of the console will not be revealed until E3. Therefore, the WiFi is not what they're calling revolutionary.
The wireless technology is to allow out-of-the-box connectivity to the DS as well as online gaming. The reason for it rather than wired is so that you don't have to have perhipherals to use the DS in conjunction with the revolution.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Or, do one better and join Gamefly. From $13.95/month for unlimited rentals, and you can keep them as long or as short as you'd like. Not having to actually drive anywhere is nice, too :)
I've been insanely happy with their service. I used to buy a couple games a month, but now I'm down to one every few months just because few games will actually grab me enough for me to want to buy them.
Except that most people don't have an ethernet cable sitting next to their TV, nor would I think they'd be willing to run an unsightly cable through the house or venture under the house or into the attic just to use the online portion of some games. With WiFi out of the box, they go buy a $40 or $50 wireless router and they're done.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
This mainly comes from the insanely varied cast of characters. Yes, there are a few "clones," that's pretty much unavoidable. However, no fighting game I've played has allowed for such incredibly different sorts of characters onscreen at once. Get, say, Kirby, Link, Donkey Kong, and Game & Watch in one match, and it's hard to believe they're all part of the same fighting system.
And as far as the unresponsiveness, that I don't get. Were you perhaps only playing very massive characters? Weight \ mass factors heavily into the physics. Characters like Bowser and DK are going to feel very sluggish whereas, say, Fox or Pikachu move much more quickly. And even then, it's a deliberate design element that some moves are slower to activate than others, and require a degree of anticipation to use. This really just adds to the complexity.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Which is funny because the GameCube is capable of having better graphics than the PS2.
Resident Evil 4 is a good example.
I guess we'll find out when the PS2 port comes out.
People are stupid.
PS2 has an expansion for hard disk and network adapter separately.
Sony no longer sells the PS2. Its replacement, the PStwo, has a built-in network adapter and no hard drive connector whatsoever.
With Sega becoming a 3rd party developer, Nintendo is the only remaining console manufacturer that is actively trying to innovate and push the medium further. A console manufacturer has more leeway to take risks, because a game may benefit them in more ways than simply sales: by developing new markets, by creating new types of games, by setting an example for developers. Fundamentally, Nintendo is a game design firm that builds hardware to support their own games, and each generation of hardware reflects Nintendo's evolving philosophy of game design.
Sadly, Sony entered the field from the perspective of a hardware manufacturer, not a game maker. They have a game division, but it functions essentially as merely another 3rd party developer. Microsoft has followed Sony's example, rather than Nintendo's. Both sell their systems based upon power, with the emphasis on impressive graphics.
So Nintendo appeals not merely to the graphics fan, but to gamers who are interested in new experiences. To me, the DS is an exciting product. This is something quite unlike any previous game platforms, with a novel input mode--a secondary screen that can be used for display, or as a stylus or touch input pad. What is Nintendo going to do with it that has not been done before? The Metroid demo with stylus input is the first FPS that actually seems to work on a console--and a hand-held at that. I've always found joystick control of FPS to be awkward. Mouse works better, but I don't like to sit at a desk to play games. Nintendo is clearly playing with other interesting ideas--using both screens as a single, tall screen (reproducing the aspect ratio of many older arcade systems). Will there be vertical shooters that take advantage of this? Some classic trackball games are coming out for the system. Such games always suck with a stick--how will they play with a pad. And will Nintendo be able to come up with game types for which a pad is really the method of choice? Succeed or fail, I know that Nintendo will offer me something that I haven't seen before.
So I'm excited about the DS in a way that I can't get excited about Playstation 3 or XBox 2. Ho-hum, more polygons, high resolution, fancier lighting, very nice. Similarly, I'm interested in the new Evolution system precisely because I know that Nintendo will take the opportunity to think up new game ideas, and come up with a system uniquely designed to take advantage of them.
I think you're mistaken. Have you heard of Warp Pipe?
Discomfort for large handed players
Again, mistaken. Third-party companies have released some pretty bulky controllers.
No possible DVD support.
Wrong again. Panasonic's Q plays DVDs just fine.
--- I'm going to get a score of -1 for this post because the mods are fuckers.