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Some Revolution Downloads Will Be Free
GamesRadar has the details from an interview with Nintendo of America VP George Harrison, in which he passes on the very good news that certain past-gen Nintendo titles will be free for download onto the Revolution. The article seems to imply that primarily the games available for free download will be Nintendo created titles. From the article: "This is a clever move by Nintendo: regardless of the final power of Revolution and the frequency of new titles, Nintendo knows that its loyal fans will cry tears of joy over a free service that lets them download previous Nintendo classics straight out of the box."
I can download another version of zelda.
Fan-fecking-tastic
CJC
Considering that anyone can go to a ROM site and download the entire NES and SNES library anyway, I think this is a great move on Ninetendo's part.
I'm sorry to say but I'm really burned out on most of today's games, regardless of which platform they're on. I don't have 20 hours to dedicate to a title. A lot of times I'm coming in from work, I want to blow off some steam and a round or two of Punch-Out would be right in line with what I'm looking for.
I know there's a big market for the Epic game title, but it's good to see that someone hasn't forgotten that millions of people loved those old school pixelated 2D games.
I'd buy the console for the old games alone.
Xbox Live Arcade
This alone will make their console better. Some of the old-school nintedo games are the best ones anyway. Imagine getting Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon series for free?
This also combats the fact that I run all of these emulators on my current xbox. They are effectively taking back their own games.
/. ++
Hey, the article that reported this misunderstood the point that the interviewee was trying to get across. Past-Gen Nintendo-Created Titles will not be downloadable for free. From the original interview: 1) They contradict that it will be free: "GS: Do you plan on having like a per-download pricing model along the lines of the microtransactions that will be used in the next-gen Xbox marketplace? GH: Well, we can use it in a variety of ways. We've used some of the older games already as little bonuses, either as bonus gifts or hidden in levels of games. Certainly for the first-party titles we'll be making some of those available. We haven't really talked about whether we would sell them. The third parties can make their own decision whether they want to sell them, or maybe they will add it on as sort of a free benefit when you buy a current version of the game. " 2) The part of the interview that was misunderstood: GS: To continue with what's so revolutionary about the Revolution... GH: Well, I think certainly being wireless out of the box is revolutionary. People sort of picked on us for not jumping in prematurely into online or Internet gaming, but we just looked at it, the way it was evolving, and just felt that it was not time to jump in. But certainly with the next console it would be, with a couple of important changes like eliminating the access fee so there's not really a monthly subscription, and making use of first-party games, downloadable for free. He speaks of eliminating access fees then says "making use of first-party games" outside of the context of backwards compatability; he could have meant that downloadables, such as new maps for a Nintendo FPS, would be downloadable for free because access fees would be eliminated. I'd love to be wrong.
Nintendo are often crititised and being "for kids", this move looks like it's aimed at an older set of gamers who don't have the time/inclination to figure out the emulation scene but want to relive those games they grew up on.
Smart move in my book.
Hey, the article that reported this misunderstood the point that the interviewee was trying to get across.
Past-Gen Nintendo-Created Titles will not be downloadable for free.
From the original interview:
1) They contradict that it will be free:
"GS: Do you plan on having like a per-download pricing model along the lines of the microtransactions that will be used in the next-gen Xbox marketplace?
GH: Well, we can use it in a variety of ways. We've used some of the older games already as little bonuses, either as bonus gifts or hidden in levels of games. Certainly for the first-party titles we'll be making some of those available. We haven't really talked about whether we would sell them. The third parties can make their own decision whether they want to sell them, or maybe they will add it on as sort of a free benefit when you buy a current version of the game. "
2) The part of the interview that was misunderstood:
GS: To continue with what's so revolutionary about the Revolution...
GH: Well, I think certainly being wireless out of the box is revolutionary. People sort of picked on us for not jumping in prematurely into online or Internet gaming, but we just looked at it, the way it was evolving, and just felt that it was not time to jump in. But certainly with the next console it would be, with a couple of important changes like eliminating the access fee so there's not really a monthly subscription, and making use of first-party games, downloadable for free.
He speaks of eliminating access fees then says "making use of first-party games" outside of the context of backwards compatability; he could have meant that downloadables, such as new maps for a Nintendo FPS, would be downloadable for free because access fees would be eliminated.
I'd love to be wrong.
Considering they'd do this... What are the chances that if this is successful as a marketing strategy that they'd also make the N64 games available for a few bucks? (If not free sometime during the system's lifespan.) I think this is one of the best moves Nintendo could make against Sony and Microsoft. Simply because they have A LOT of classic games through the generations. And the first two being made free? ^_^ Say hello to major console sales. (Which means better sales of their exclusive games.) Not to mention their console is probably going to be about half as expensive as the other two. (Very attractive to parents.) If only they'd come out with re-writeable carts for the DS. Then you could link it to the Revolution and take those classic games with you. Which I think would be a HUGE boost for the DS and Revolution in the youth market and maybe also with the older gamers for nostalgia.
This is the feature that will make the Revolution sell to current non-Gamers. For instance, my wife, someone who is decidedly not a gamer, said we are definitely getting a Revolution as soon as I told her about being able to play all the old school Nintendo games.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Here at Gamespot
Don't you love it when an interview conducted by a first-tier site is rewritten by a second-tier website a week later, then posted to Slashdot? I know I do.
This move by Nintendo, on a console that is likely going to cost less, is brilliant marketing...Not only do they fill the die-hard Nintendo fans, but they entice all the families that don't spend £300-400 on a console plus 40 pound a game to but a £200 console that, at least for now, will keep the kids happy with old games while keeping daddy happy because all he has to do is buy one or two sport games. The whole family is happy, and for quite a bit less money.
The Nintendo Revolution sounds more and more like a family console, and less as a punk-mid-teens/late maturing mid twenties men's machine like the Xbox360 and PS3.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I also wonder if by "classics" they mean stuff that was just for the NES. Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but the idea of playing Super Metroid or Ocarina of Time on the Revolution is simply mouth-watering.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
...and Nintendo makes a killing on Flash Memory expansions.
While how many Nintendo titles will be free and how much it will cost for others remains dubious, any number of quality games for free would be a true boon.
Regardless, I highly doubt Nintendo will charge $9.99 for all but the most insanely good NES and SNES games (such as Legend of Zelda), and only pass that for some N64 titles. In fact, I find it far more likely that most titles for all three emulators will be either free or excessively cheap, unlike Xbox Live Arcade.
Xbox Live Arcade requires 1) Xbox Live 2) A Special CD 3) Money to buy each individual arcade game. If you look at the prices, it's typically $9.99 per.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Well according to the article, everything nintendo does will be free...
Now if that architecture is open for 2nd/3rd party devs (and comes standard in the dev kits) there should be no reason for backcatalogs and connection fees (unless you're doing an MMO at which point you have persistent server fees, GMs, and all that).
If Nintendo is truly doing this, then what we have here is a console battle.net system. And if Nintendo is doing this for free (at least for their games) that's got the potential to throw a monkey-wrench into MS's plans for Live. Especially if 3rd party multiplayer is free on Revolution but you gotta have a Live subscription for XBox.
Even if 3rd party devs can charge for online connectivity+back catalog, i'm not worried too much. The sad fact is that the amount of 3rd party support for Nintendo consoles has dropped considerably since the SNES.
Insert Sig Here
If nintendo keep the price of the unit down i can see the revolution very successful, its great how nintendo seem to be using there stregnths instead of trying beat sony and microsoft at their own games. No other single game developer has the heritage and consistant quality that nintendo have, execpt maybe sega, but not so much nower days.
It seems ironic to me that people criticised nintendo for keepin the cartridge format for the N64, and blamed that for why the playstation became dominant, but it could be a factor in regaining nintendos dominance, as it would be much harder and NSF56K to allow gamers to download CD games, at 700mb (+with more disc!)
oxymoron of the day - Xbox gamer
Here's the quote:
XBox fanboy: "Nintendo R teh sUxX0rZ, d00d. XBox graphics R sick, w/ redder blood + tight controls + Live just r00lz. DOA Volleyball + Blood Wake R sw33t. I saw teh 360 on MTV and it pwns!"
Playstation fanboy: "I'm glad that you enjoy your cutesy games about fat, mushroom-eating plumbers. In the meantime I'll be enjoying the largest game library of any console, and the vast majority of those new games will finally make full use of my obscenely expensive HDTV. $400-$500 for the console? Hell, I wipe my ass with that kind of money. I really couldn't care less about the Revolution."
Casual gamer: "Is this one of those stupid blogs? I just wanted to check my email..."
At some point it makes more sense to give stuff away to get goodwill from customers who are buying your newest toys anyway.
Or sometimes --like with GTA & GTA2, you can even get the oldies without owning the lastest.
Sample this!
It would appear that all those roms people are trading on the Internet as "abandonware" aren't so obsolete after all.
Although not comfirmed, it's certainly possible to get N64 games for free also. Mario 64 as well as the Zelda games from that generation would make the Revolution worth owning just for those alone. When you throw in the SNES and NES games and it's a no brainer. It's great that Nintendo is moving forward with the most novel, and brilliant use of an online service we've seen yet, considering they wouldn't touch online with the last generation.
Has it occured to anyone else that this might be a move by Nintendo to bolster their third party support? I mean, if Nintendo can demonstrate that enough people are willing to pay a small ammount for an 'clasic' game ($1 Nes, $2 Snes, $5 N64) than many third parties (Sega, Namco, Konami, Square) may end up releasing both new and clasic games and using the revinue generated from the clasic games to offset development costs. If it is successful (and new 'clasic' games can be made) then companies could even end up having a small development team make a 2D game that is released at the same time as their New big budget game; for example square could Make Final Fantasy XX (at an enormous cost) and at the same time make Final Fantasy XX - 2D (at a comparitively smaller cost) and use the 2D version to tell another portion of the story.
To a certain extent, what I am saying is that if this works than Nintendo may have found a setup that is similar to how TV acts compared to Movies.
Nintendo has been quietly furious about ROM trading all along; now they are taking constructive action by offering them via Revolution (as opposed to just destructive legal action). I think they are finally noticing the sites that call their 'ware "unused classics" (hint: search for that phrase + ROMs) and giving them what they want (all for the price of an original DRM tool, the console).
"Don't call it a comeback; I've been here for years..." --James Todd Smith
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, and Right.
Then B, A, and Start.
Now I can get bored again by the exact same games I got bored of years ago.
Free? I'll wait and see I can't imagine Nintendo would turn down this goldmine opportunity. As long as it's cheaper then what the Nintendo classics for the GBA are (I think in Canada it's around $30 ea) this seems like a no brainer to me, even if most games do cost a bit. I'll get one (or maybe both) of the PS3 and X360 sometime, but the Revolution? That's a definite yes.
It's nice to see a company come up with a novel idea once in a while. Nintendo seems to be making a smart move, one that's taking them out of comptetion with MS and Sony and putting them into another category.
SMB 1 - 3
Zelda
Anything good
NOPE!
The games that free will be like duck hunt, ET (yeah I know it was for Atari but it sucked), maybe zelda 2. But any good games Nentendo will suck another $5 - $20 out of your wallet for it.
I think he was consistant on two points:
1) First party games, which would be games produced/owned by Nintendo, COULD be free, and likely there will be alot of free ones out there.
2) Thrid party games, which would be games NOT Produced/owned by Nintendo, COULD be free IF the company who made it/owns the rights allows it to be such. However, they could also cost money if they felt they wanted to make money on it.
Not very hard here. There's already several games out there for the GameCube that have older NES games imbedded in them. Like Animal Crossing for instance. My girlfriend is always collecting them for when I decide to play (Never!).
He also was consistant in that he was always referring to the idea of removing access fees. He never once said that they would actually. Just that they were considering it.
Access to their content network, wether free or subscription based wouldn't necessarily allow you to have access to all content available. I'm sure there'd probably be a free base subscription, and then a multi-tiered price scheme like everything else.
The games? Think of it more like iTunes or something from what I gather.
Charge money for all the games, but give $50 worth of downloads out of the box?
Then people can choose their favourite games and "buy" those instead of getting dredetermined free games, and feel like they're saving $50 off the Revolution.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
from an interview with Nintendo of America VP George Harrison
Where's the rest of the staff? John, Paul, and Gringo?
I think the best route for Nintendo to go with this online distribution method is make games free with a catch
examples:
- Purchase (and Uniquely register) Mario 128 and get Super Mario All Stars for Free!
- Revolution comes with 5 Free downloads right out of the box. Giant Marketing sticker on the box would say "Get 5 Free Classic Nintendo Games with the Revolution"
- Get a free game download after X revolution game purchases
list goes on but thats how you'd market these free downloads. People would eat this up so fast since they are getting more per purchase then just 1 game.
Xbox fanboy: "Watch as I kill this thing! OMG! I'm killing it again! Now I'm throwing a football and Tony Hawk! Ha ha! Generic City Street Racer 3 is so fast, you can tell because of the blurring! It's just like That Racing Game: Slightly Improved, and Driving At Night With Neon, only better! Now I'm throwing a football at some sort of cat with a gun! I love being able to count the polygons on the screen! Gaylo R0xxx0rs1111!!!!11five"
I've still got a N64 and all the stuff that goes with it. What I'm looking for is a system that will play the N64 games at 60 fps instead of emulating a real N64 and play them at 15-20 FPS as many N64 games orginally played.
An addon for the system that would let you insert an N64 cartridge to play the game would also be great.
Over the past decade, Nintendo has lost their grasp on the two major gaming markets: the casual gamer (who would rather play games like most of those in the EA library, and online too) and the hardcore gamer (Sony and Microsoft both have much greater third-party support than Nintendo, therefore the Gamecube tends to get bought last if at all, and not many games get bought for it either). Therefore, Nintendo has to consolidate itself around the audience it has left. No, not kids; most of them fit in one of the previous two categories. I'm talking about the nostalgic gamers.
Nintendo is already pretty popular with them to begin with, seeing as how they rely on a few old franchises and don't make many unnecessary innovations. (About the only major change I can think of in any of the Nintendo franchises is the inevitable move to 3D.) And, of course, a big chunk of the GBA's popularity comes from the fact that it has so many ports of old games on it (as well as games like Warioware that are reminiscent of those games). But offering all of their old games for free is an obvious beacon in the dark to all of those people who have more fun playing the short, uncomplicated games of the past. This is the obvious decision for Nintendo to make.
It's unfortunate for Nintendo that the likelihood of many free third-party games is low, though. Not all of the nostalgic gamers are huge fans of the Nintendo franchises, after all. But I don't think that would hurt them too much. And I don't think Nintendo itself will charge for the service either, like some people who have mentioned the original interview have said. That would just be shooting themselves in the foot. (Though Nintendo does have a track record for doing that, so maybe I'm wrong.)
It will be interesting to see how the nostalgic gamers react to the Revolution. It's entirely possible that this offer could revitalize their ailing console marketshare, and thus be the first really smart move they've made in years. Only time can tell.
Rob
One thing I haven't seen anything about is what kind of storage the Revolution will have. I don't want to download a bunch of ROMs if there's nowhere to KEEP them. And I better not have to transfer them onto a memory card and then transfer them to my computer and then transfer them back when I want to play them again...
Did anyone else think that the GameBoy Micro look like a 2005 model of the original NES controller? I'll probably buy a Micro to play NES games on the Revolution.
GameCube games will not be downloadable, however the console will play them directly -- simply slip the tiny disc into the slot-loader and away you go. It's likely PlayStation / GameBoy style backwards compatability, not straight emulation.
The announcements about downloading and playing older games mentioned only NES, SNES, and N64 games as candidates for download.
Not only has GameCube game-downloading not been announced, I'd say it's an infeasible thing to expect at this time. N64 cartridges, at their largest, are only 64MB; almost all are 32MB or less. This is a far cry from the 1.5 GB discs used by the GameCube -- particularly when it comes to downloading over WiFi or storing internally (Nintendo has not announced details regarding a harddrive, but it's safe to assume that if there is one it will be fairly small to keep prices low).
Although details have not been announced, I'd expect that at any given moment the Revolution might not store more than a handful of ROMs -- instead, it could archive your savegames for them and simply download the ROMs as needed; for the network speeds and ROMs they'll be dealing with it should only take a few moments (less than 30secs) to download -- as opposed to possibly hours for a GameCube disc.