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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Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president, confirmed that the new console will be able to run games originally made for the GameCube.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."
is release more than 2 online games.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
sequels sell better than original ideas... and flash is more important than substance when it comes to marketing the games.
It is nice to see at least some companies who remember that games should be fun first, however.
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? Or, more realistically, does this mean that I'll be able to join multi-player WiFi games without being explicitly asked to join? Will gamers start driving around looking for open Nintendo WiFis to satisfy their gaming needs?
Or will Nintendo provide idiot-proof WiFi security (which could then be transplanted to other WiFi solutions...) ?
Who says they have to be mediocre-looking? All signs point to the Revolution using the same graphics chip as the X-Box 2. I always thought that Nintendo games had a knack for playing well, and looking good.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
I haven't realized that the current Nintendo's President had such strong developer roots. He was behind Super Smash Bross Melee, and Kirby. Does any one have a good link on this man's history and how he became Nintendo's #1?
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
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.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president, confirmed that the new console will be able to run games originally made for the GameCube.
Finally, nintendo making something that has backwards compatability. unlike the 'super game boy' or 'game boy color playing game boy games'. It would be fantastic if they could make a way to play NES, SNES, or n64 games on the new system. I'd spend my money on that.
"In the universe of interactive entertainment, there is a planet we call video games. We know this planet the best, but it is not the only one," he explained.
"There are other planets that entertain, and it is those planets we are keen to explore." so, does that mean they're more interested in adapting other forms of entertainment onto their new system? music, movies, porn, internet? a full computer that will work with their specific game cartidges and discs, with the insane GPU processing power of video game systems?
i want one.
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
"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."
I have played almost virtually every single version of the Nintendo since the original unit was introduced in the mid-80's. Many, many fun-filled nights were had on that system (Baseball All-Stars, Super Mario, Zelda, Techmo Football), yet it seems lately that the leadership at Nintendo is just trying to re-hash old titles. Metroid was a great initial title and completely original. That was what made it great.
That rant aside, I just wanted to put in my opinion on the above statement. Developers cannot rely on the latest graphics and more powerful machines? Correct me if I am wrong, but Half-Life 2, EverQuest 2, Doom 3, Far Cry and a few upcoming games (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. etc) rely almost completely on the latest technology. While it might not make for the best games it is a tried and true method to attract new gamers.
Now, Wi-Fi? Serously, why on Earth would a Nintendo home console need Wi-Fi? Sure it sounds really, really cool to add but it also opens up the floodgates to a host of other problems. One of those recent problems was talked about here with Bluetooth and cell phones.
Putting great technology into a console is one thing, but taking advantage of what already exists is another. How can this gentleman sit there and call for a more imaginitive game design and in the same speech announce one of the latest technological advances in home consoles into the next-generation Nintendo system?
Just one man's opinion...
Finally, Nintendo releases a backwards compatable console. This way, even people who were too snooty to get a Gamecube will have a chance to play its greatest hits on the Revolution.
...Now that they've changed their minds, maybe I won't have to dig through old systems (and sacrifice a chicken to the god of dust mites in hopes that they'll still work) whenever I get the urge to play a classic game.
This sets a new precedent for Nintendo. I remember working as a "Nintendo Demonstrator" in high school when the SNES came out, and asking the local rep. why it wouldn't play NES games. "Why would we charge somebody for features they already own?" came the marketing-speak reply.
I can see the stategy now: Nintendo DS... it's not just a portable gaming system, it's a KICKASS wifi controller for your Nintendo console...
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Of course, people often forget that the best games are great looking AND fun to play.
until you play a game you don't know how well designed it is.
That's one reason I like Nintendo. It's a sure bet that their first party titles are normally a whole lot of fun.
A lot of people don't like Nintendo because they assume the games are only for kids. But saying Nintendo games are only for kids is kind of like saying Shrek was a kid's movie. Anyone who doesn't play Nintendo's first part games on the sole pretense that they're for children is missing out on some of the finest and most innovative games.
But then, in my experience the modern day gamer isn't really much of a gamer anyway, and all they want is the newest sports title, movie to game heap of crap, or the lastest "Eventu-Win" RPG. Then you have the whole lot of people obsessed with first person death match (often in realistic combat themes).
Gamers as a whole aren't the imaginative, creative, above intellence group of people they were way back. They're normal everyday media consumer whores.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
(a) the games: There are tons of great games on the gamecube. But you probably are unhappy with the lineup because you can't kill everything in sight without reason like in GTA.
(b) the controller: It's literally designed so that the controls require you to move your thumb no farther than 1/4 inch to reach the next button. I don't understand why people have such a hard time with this controller. "Which button do I push?" "Gee, I don't know there Einstein. This is just a guess, but could it be THE GIANT FUCKING GREEN BUTTON DIRECTLY IN THE MIDDLE?" "Well what button goes back?" "Try the RED ONE, the natural opposite of the GREEN ONE."
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
If you read the complete keynote transcription you'll know what I mean with "strong developer roots": He programed a baseball game on his hp calc in college, worked in a 5 employee dev house named HAL (that later became a Nintendo's 2dn party in the NES era). He even showed a picture of himself at that age when he survived on pizza and rice balls coding until sunrise. Later on, when he was working in a higer position for Nintendo he asigned himself full time back to HAL in order to finish a game. If that's not "true geek" material I don't know what would.
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
I hope Nintendo had learned it's lesson with the GameCube and the GameBoy Advance by making it easier for third-party developers to actually develop games for their consoles.
I was the lead QA tester at Atari for the first GC and GBA titles. The GC was a pain since they withhold valuable testing information about the debug hardware for a year that only their internal developers had access to. The GBA multiplayer link was an absolute pain in the butt that took up most of the developer's time to get right and QA had to spend twice as much time on multiplayer than single player. My last GBA title was supposed to have wireless support but that was pulled due to bugs in the Nintendo API that turned testing into a nightmare.
Nintendo could have a lot more great titles for the GC/GBA by making the development process a lot more easier. Most game publishers been dropping Nintendo titles because it cost more to get approval from Nintendo.
This was one thing definitely missing from the GC (to play N64 games), as compared to the PS2. This will make it a lot easier to sell people a new console. (And it will be one thing that Microsoft (probably) hasn't got!)
I really don't understand how can this factor be neglected so often. For me, backwards compatibility with the original PSX was the key reason to buy PS2 instead of XBox. I have already had a huge library of PSX games, some of which happen to be among my favorite (Syphon Filter, for example), and - more important - also among my kids favorites (Crash Bandicoot series). Choice of PS2 was a no-brainer for me. If XBox 2 won't have backwards compatibility with XBox (and right now it seems unlikely for it to have, since they chosen entirely different hardware), MS will prove that they are not just evil, they are plain nuts.
Here is my take on Nintendo - they are so bent on "redefining gaming" that they refuse to try and copy a known good design. Everything you hear from Nintendo has the undertone not of "innovate" but instead of "reinvent". Nintendo has become so involved with it's own genius that it refuses to acknowledge the other person in this relationship - the consumer.
For instance, the DS. The DS is simply a game boy with two screens, one you can touch. But they tought it as something that is gonna change gaming. How? How exactly is this so much different from past designs that people are gaming differently now?
Nintendo is known for its pushing innovations in gaming, such as 4-port gameplay, rumble packs, and true 3D console gaming. But they've become so obsessed with their own genius that they refuse to copy good designs and give the customer what they want. Instead they'd rather "define" what you want and give it to you.. in their vision. So instead of a platform that is superior because it has the best games, instead we get platforms that are technically superior but no games to play on it.
Nintendo.. Sega called, it said you better step it up or just get out. Stop dick teasing all of us into thinking you're gonna give us some real good games and then pulling the "change the way you think" shell game.
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
I don't own a PS2 or XBox, but whenever I play them in the store the controllers always piss me off. They in-game characters will say something like "Press Triangle to shoot!" So I have to look down because Triangle feels the exact same to my thumb as Circle, Square, and X.
On the GameCube I don't even care about the button labels. My thumb just cares about the big one in the middle, the little red one below it, the gray one above it and the gray one to the side (which are 99% of the time shown in the shape of the button on the controller.)
Whoever designed that controller is a genius. I hope future Nintendo consoles use it.
and what is up with that freaky controller?
The controller reflects a strong game design philosophy, namely that games should have a single action button that you use most of the time. So there is a big, comfortable button, and the others are arranged around it. And since the other buttons have very different shapes/angles, it is virtually impossible to hit the wrong button by mistake. I'd consider it the best currently available controller.
Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Both Metroid Prime titles
Resident Evil series
Eternal Darkness
F-Zero GX
Both Prince of Persia titles
Pac Man Vs. (Best party game ever) Or are you going to argue that Pac Man is a kiddy game?
Mortal Kombat series
The Splinter Cell series
Beyond Good and Evil
Soul Calibur 2
I'd have to go dig around in my collection, but there are tons of things that should fit your definition.
However, what you probably mean by the "over 13 crowd" is "the 13-21 crowd that is too insecure to play fun, challenging games that may be viewed as kiddy games by their peers." In that case, you're pretty much screwed, since all of your mature friends are going to laugh at you for having a Gamecube in the first place, and the games won't even matter. Go play your XBox like a good media consumer.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
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.