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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."
Yeah, but there wasn't much homebrew on the PS2, which Sony opened up for home dev witht the linux kit. There may not be a groundswell of support.
Nintendo has a pretty nasty reputation with homebrew games (at least in the US. In Japan, they made a programming kit for the Famicom).
And I've seen some pretty bad bugs in games that were officially signed off on. How many games for the N64 showed clipping errors?
Nintendo is in trouble. Their longtime cash cow, the venerable Game Boy, is going to lose market share to the PSP. If they add the hard drive to the PSP, and bring the price down $100 (or even $50), Sony's going to eat their lunch. Nintendo can't afford the development costs that M$ and Sony can (not that there was much in the way of Development costs for the Xbox). And they really can't afford the same marketing costs. This approach is intended to be a sort of grassroots marketing campaign. And is laughable considering Nintendo is the group that set up this whole proprietary, licensed marketing scheme, and now wants to change course because its been biting them in the heiney.
If they really wanted to reach out to the fans, they should make an add on (or better yet, build in) an adapter for old NES and SNES cartidges. They've been touting the emulators, and a third party sold one for the N64. I HATE having to repurchase games (or any media) that I've already bought, and I'm sure you all do too.