Revolution May Launch Last

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has publicly stated that the Revolution may be the last next-gen console to market. From the article: "Until today, Nintendo has said only that the Revolution will be released in 2006 in North America, without specifying any date. Iwata's comments indicate that the console could appear after the launch of Sony's PlayStation 3, which is currently slated for a spring 2006 launch in the US. Microsoft's Xbox 360 will arrive on store shelves during the 2005 holiday season worldwide."

Comments

Re:This could be good ...or bad.

[ZephyrXero]

As long as they release it before Christmas 2006 in all the markets they still have a fighting chance. A full year can certainly earn an advantage, but if they come out just a few months later than the other guys it's not as big a deal. Also, remember Nintendo is still Japan centric, and there they only have one competition, Sony.

Re:This could be good ...or bad.

[AnObfuscator]

Also, don't forget that the console market is not a zero-sum game. Many gamers will want multiple consoles -- so just because most people are buying XBox or Playstation doesn't mean they *won't* buy Revolution.

in fact, the delayed introduction might even be an advantage. After everyone buys their Playstation/Xbox, they save their money for a few months, play out the first big PS3/360 games... and then have the spare cash to buy a new Revolution.

At any rate, the Revolution looks like a very strong console, on the game front -- especially if it's true that it can play all of nintendo's old games. I can play the latest games, AND SuperMario, AND Starfox 64, AND Perfect Dark... all on the same box? Count me in. :)

Good

[77Punker]

It's too early for a new system. My Gamecube still gets 60 fps in most games all the time. They should wait until the current hardware is really challenged before they start selling something more powerful.

Re:Good

[patternjuggler]

My Gamecube still gets 60 fps in most games all the time.

How do know what fps you're getting?

Re:Good

[HawkingMattress]

You realize this is consoles we are talking about, and that developpers restrain themselves to put too much strain on them because unlike with pcs, they can't take the excuse that you just need a better system ?
Nobody's going to release a game that will crawl on a gamecube, even if we're still waiting for the revolution in 2 years. Either they won't release the game on the gc because it can't compete, or they'll trim everything down until the required fluidity is there.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bit of a misunderstanding of how the console market works. You don't necessarily get games running at a lower fps towards the end of a cycle.

PCs are a continually evolving platform. New graphics cards, processors etc come out every few months, more or less. If a developer makes two PC games a year apart, the second game can theoretically be designed to a higher technical specification than the earlier one, as technology has moved on in the mean-time. Consoles, however, are essentially a static platform. Once they're released, they don't actually change significantly over the next 4 or 5 years of their life-cycle. Sure, you get a lot of peripherals appearing, such as steering wheels and hard-disks, that weren't available at launch, but you can't develop on the basis of customers owning these, in the vast majority of cases.

The challenge for console developers is in learning how to develop most effectively for the hardware that exists. When the PS2 was launched, its architecture was a bit of a mystery to a lot of developers, with the result that they could only use its most basic capabilities. This is why so many early PS2 titles look so downright horrid. It's also why so many of the early PS2 games were so choppy. As developers become better at utilising a system's potential, you start to see games which both look better and present a more consistent framerate.

May be beneficial

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that the fact that Nintendo's console will probably launching last is a plus. They will be able to learn from the mistakes of it's competitors, and hopefully have more time for development and research.

Yeah, right

[IoN_PuLse]

Something tells me the millions of people who haven't splurged on HDTV systems yet, CAN'T.

Re:Not a surprise

[HunterZ]

Those are some good points. It's also worth adding that the gameboy probably stuck around so long in the U.S. due more to the Pokemon games than to the numerous hardware variants released over time (GB Color, GB Pocket, etc.).

Re:You guys are ridiculous

[SetupWeasel]

Sony and Microsoft see the growing game market in the US and Europe. Nintendo sees the shrinking game market in Japan. Nintendo execs have said over and over that many people are becoming uninterested in video games.

I don't think it is about lack of will or talent that Nintendo is taking the path they are. I think Nintendo really believes that the future of the industry is outside the 18-24 male demographic. They see shrinking sales in Japan and predict it won't be long until the US and European markets jump the shark.

Re:Huh.

[Seumas]

At the price the next generation of consoles are being rumored to sell at (as much as $400!), I think I'll stick with my one spare gaming PC. I was going to jump into the console market finally, but I'll wait a year or two until the prices drop at least 50%. If they think I'm going to spend $400 for a box and a single controller and $70+ per game on top of that, they're out of their freaking vending-machine-panty-sniffing minds.

Nintendo going last is good.

[MeanderingMind]

Honestly, coming out last is the best thing Nintendo can possibly do. Here's my reasoning.

Nintendo's Revolution is already going to be cheaper than the other consoles, and is still very likely to make money per console. If the Revolution came out first, a lot of people (erroneously of course, but we've already seen how the persistant erroneous statements that the GameCube was 'just for kids' and 'has no adult games' hurt it) will assume that because it is both cheaper and coming out first is must therefore be worse that the Xbox 360 and PS3. However, by coming out last and cheaper, Nintendo simply makes many gamers who failed to look before they lept feel stupid for spending $100-$150 more for consoles that aren't significantly better.

Additionally, Nintendo has a history of being copied. Regardless of whether the controller is a red herring or the sole source of revolution, coming out last gives Nintendo the edge in that they can keep their Revolution secret for longer. If they were coming out before or at the same time as their competitors, they'd need to release information on the Revolution around the same time as Sony and Microsoft and give them plenty of time to make similar improvements or copies of the technology.

Even now, a lot of the hardware for the Xbox 360 isn't even set yet. Of course, if the Revolution is solely within the controller that hardly matters because surely whenever the controller is revealed the secretly assembled crack teams of Sony and Microsoft will be ready to make quick prototypes of their own similar controllers. However, I find it likely that the controllers are a red herring. Perhaps half the revolution lies within the controller, but I predict that either the revolutionary controller will require something that requires special hardware within the console to work, or is useless without the other console half of the revolution.

In any case, releasing last, Nintendo's secret can be kept so until the hardware for the other two consoles is immutable.

Also, being last means that technology will have improved, and thus opening up more opportunities to make a console as powerful as Sony's or Microsoft's without the crazy costs.

The last point is that, remaining last Nintendo can take a good look at the mistakes Sony and Microsoft make, and not repeat them. With the article concerning the design of the competitor's CPUs claiming they are hardly as good as was claimed, Nintendo could easily make a similar CPU that is not plagued with the same problems.

That's my take on it all.

Re:This could be good ...or bad.

[Yosho]

Surely you're aware that a modded xbox does all of the above for free? (Assuming you have an xbox, of course...)

But can it do so legally? Believe it or not, when given a choice between something legal and something illegal, many people will choose to go with the legal route, especially when it's easier than the illegal one -- and plugging in a Revolution and connecting it to the 'net will undoubtedly be easier than modding an Xbox, finding an emulator and ROMs for it, and getting them on a compatible medium.

Re:Anti-marketing

[Grey Ninja]

Put up or shut up for cryin out loud!

Isn't that exactly what Nintendo is doing? Shutting up? They get interviewed a LOT because people want to know what the secrets of the Revolution are. But they never ever say anything. Stories like this get posted, as we are still waiting for Nintendo, and the major news outlets have to post SOMETHING to keep their jobs.

And if you think about it, it was the same thing as last generation. Microsoft and Sony went on and on about how powerful their consoles were (150 million polys per second!), and Nintendo just gave honest answers. Who came out to be the most powerful? Nintendo. Who gets the credit? Microsoft.

Yes, Nintendo is likely making a marketting blunder. But honestly, I am always grateful for a company that's up front and honest. How many other companies do you see with the business ethic of Nintendo?

It's all good.

[MeanderingMind]

Firstly, sorry if you're being driven nuts. But remember there is A) Always a fanboy whose heart will not be swayed until the corpse of Mario/MasterChief/Sonic/Sony's Exec is rotting in front of them B) Actually, there's quite a lot of them. Additionally, you're C) Never going to convince them otherwise and D) Are probably wasting your time if that is the demographic you're targeting with your post.

The people who I attempt to speak to are those who aren't on any side, and for those people insight as to why Microsoft rushing to go first is good for the Xbox 360, and Nintendo waiting to go last is good for the Revolution is valuable.

To respond more specifically to some of your points, Microsoft's, Sony's and Nintendo's different strategies are closely related in how one defines "winning" the console war.

Microsoft wants to grab a lot of market share as evidence of "winning" the console war (specifically to take out Sony). For that purpose, being the first on the market brings with it the bang of being the first.

Sony thinks along similar lines, but their console has usually come out after or about the same time as another console in that generation, and has managed to grab the largest market share. So, Sony is likely to do what has worked in the past.

It's pretty obvious that either Nintendo no longer bothers with trying to grab market share, or has at least gotten good at making a large profit regardless. For them, a smaller company without the ability to risk as much (as they don't have other divisions to make up losses) competing with the marketing machines of Sony and Microsoft by releasing the Revolution near to when their rivals consoles come out is simply wasted money. Certainly, they could potentially grab more market share that way, but it's only a potential market share, and if the potential market share doesn't make up for the expenditure of resources sufficiently to justify the risk, Nintendo won't do it.

It would be foolhardy to think that bringing in the rear is either devoid of benefit or devoid of detriment. This is true of any release date. No matter when you release the consoles, each is taking risks. Microsoft is risking suffering a similar response as what happened with the Dreamcast, Sony is risking Microsoft succeeding with its early launch, and Nintendo is risking losing out to whichever of the other two comes out on top.

Honestly, we could theorize about who could come out on top all day. That, however, would be utterly pointless. It's excessively easy to make statements like, "because of the hype Microsoft and Sony laid out for their consoles, gamers will be dissapointed by the actually graphics for the first wave of games and wait for the revolution" or "everyone will be dissapointed by the Revolution because it will be viewed simply as a gimmick". These statements are entirely unhelpful because even professional analysts can't predict how people will react and what they will do. I didn't claim that because the Revolution will be coming out last, Nintendo will crush the other two. All I said was that it was good for Nintendo to do so. We can't predict how the next console war will play out yet, we can only observe the strategies of the competitors and find where the holes and, and what actions are golden.

In fact, gamers should really hope that no one ever "wins" the console war. Were that to happen, there's simply be one gaming platform standing alone without competition to force innovation and creativity. We simply wouldn't have a choice.

In the end, I would make argument that each company is following very closely the path each must take to do as well as they can. Sony and Microsoft are huge companies that can tie in their consoles to all sorts of devices and software they make. Nintendo makes games and game hardware, and has nothing to tie into. So, it makes perfect sense for Sony and Microsoft to make the "media center" consoles they've designed, and for Nintendo to be more focused. If you look past the hype, and look