The Revolution Is In The Games
Dark Paladin writes "There's an interesting article over at Advanced Media Network regarding discussing how the upcoming Nintendo Revolution's ability to let players play old games and more independent developers gain access to mainstream gamers could take advantage of the Long tail approach of Internet business." From the article: "Imagine how many would-be developers that are now working on independent games, games that sell maybe only a few thousand copies online, unable to break into the console market. But if Nintendo is right, and offers maybe an inexpensive (or free, which would be better) development system for would be game makers, the field could shift. Now, they don't need to rely on that one Legend of Zelda game to sell 5,000,000 copies to be a success - they could have 1,000 developers all making microbudget games that only sell 5,000 copies each (a pittance in the game development world) and still be considered successful."
id software started as shareware garage developers
It was already done with Linux on the PS2, but it sucked because Linux itself burned up most of the PS2's ressources, and you needed to have Linux installed to run them on other machines. Let's hope Nintendo can pull something better.