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Revolution to Allow For Home Development?
Via the Guardian GamesBlog, a BoingBoing post with an interesting posit. Will the Revolution allow owners to run their own code on the machine? From the article: "...the world of consoles that only ran signed code was a nice racket while it lasted, but at the end of the day, needing to get permission to run software on your own device sucks and devices that let anyone write software for them get more valuable as more people write more code for them." A nice idea, but not too likely in my opinion.
The rest of the paragraph they got this "information" from is this:
Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea. "Our next console proves small in size but big on ideas," says Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales & marketing. "We're throwing open the doors of gaming to wider audiences, from casual players to hard-core gamers who live for the thrill of defeating an endless army of wireless opponents."
Now, if you ask me, all this blathering from Nintendo's own is their way of saying "we made an accessible SDK that small teams can work with just as easily as large teams". That doesn't mean they won't charge to release the SDK, and that doesn't mean they won't make you sign certain rights over in order to develop for their console. It's a flimsy line, and it shows that Nintendo may finally be trying to woo third party support. That much is good. But I think the blog is reading wayyyy too much into this simple statement.
As I understand, console manufacturers lose some cash on console hardware sales, and try to recoup their losses with game sales and licensing. So wouldn't a free licensing strategy undercut Nintendo's main revenue stream?
Not really. Reportedly Nintendo makes a profit on it's consoles, unlike Sony and Microsoft. Also, Nintendo is the #2 game publishing company in the world, behind only EA; I don't think hardware is their main revenue stream.
With the Internet and the online community thing being central to Nintendo's strategy this time around, perhaps they'll allow limited independent minigame development. Indie developers would submit the final source code to Nintendo for approval and QA, and, if approved, the encrypted executable would appear in the minigame download section of Revolution's download portal for purchase. Nintendo and the developer split the cash both ways, and everyone's happy.
And if the developer shows enough promise, Nintendo possibly gets them into a contract, invests in their talent, and gets the next big underground hit to debut exclusively on Revolution.
It's worth noting that the Revolution prototype box at E3 has two USB ports on the back next to the video and power ports, which marks the first time an industry-standard port has appeared on a Nintendo console. Of course, this doesn't mean they'll still be there at launch. Until people have the thing in their hands, anything's possible.
But, wow. Not only would Nintendo be redefining "backward compatibility", they'd also be redefining the industry accepted norm of the "third party". Or, it could be just yet another box that only plays discs. Guess we'll find out in about a year.