Talking 'Bout A Revolution

Now that the weekend has passed, folks from all over have had their chance to speak up about the revolution behind the Revolution. Hugh Williams writes "The blokes at Next Generation decided to ask a bunch of game designers, media and analysts what they thought about Nintendo's new Revolution Controller. Some were a little skeptical. Others were downright in love." Additionally, Heartless Gamer writes "Heartless Gamer blog has initial comments up regarding the Revolution controller, but more importantly comments on the various reactions around the internet regarding the controller." Finally, LATRINE! writes "Whether you like it or not, the Nintendo Revolution is on the way. Brittlefish has an article discussing some of the challenges Nintendo will face in gaining acceptance in the market."

Comments

Whether it works out or not....

[TheBrakShow]

I applaud Nintendo for actually innovating. There is so much new technology out there and most of it is going untapped. I think the concern is similar to that of people's issue with the DS. Is it gimmicky for the sake of being gimmicky or is it really something special?

Re:Whether it works out or not....

[sdhankin]

I couldn't agree more - inovation is important and Nintendo is second to none in this area. But all the inovation in the world will come to naught if the games built around it aren't fun.
The DS as a prime example. It's undoubtably inovative, but I haven't seen a compelling game for it yet (defined as one that would make me go out and get a DS to play it.)

Inovation is not an end in itself. Games that are fun to play are essential if the inovation is to be adopted.

Will it really work?

[thundar2000]

I've tried experimental controllers like this before that work spatialy, and they never feel quite right. They just don't have a solid enough feel - sometimes it is because of latency issues, other times you just don't get a good sense of the bounds of movement like a analog pad gives you.

But having said that, if any company can get it right and move the whole industry in a different direction, it is Nintendo.

Controller Intimidation Factor

[siegesama]

Yes, it looks like a DVD remote. Which is a good thing for most non-gamers because it is familiar.

This argument is driving me crazy. Are there really people out there who look at a video game controller and say "oh my god, that's so scary, I cannot possibly fathom it! run away!!" Maybe. Are these people capable of playing a video game, even with the simplest of controllers? Doubtful.

Humans are fantastic at mapping thought to motion. Typing, playing musical instruments, walking, dancing, swimming, driving a car: give us feedback for a minute motion, and we learn bloody fast.

I'm fine with using spatial mapping as a controlling scheme, it sounds awesome. But stop pushing it like they're trying to lure all of the retarded monkeys they can possibly find into gaming with the magic non-scary stick.

Re:Controller Intimidation Factor

[cowscows]

I think it makes perfect sense. My mom wasn't terrified of the gamecube controller, but she couldn't manage to play any games that required you to use more than the thumbstick and the A button. So she could play Mario Kart at least halfway competently pretty quickly, but she'd get frustrated with almost immediately. And forget something like Metroid Prime.

Even I get frustrated sometimes, and I've been playing plenty of video games for almost twenty years. It took me a couple hours to get comfortable with the controls on Halo 2, and i still hit the wrong buttons often enough. It's entirely complex, and if you haven't built up the muscle memory over time, it's got to be overwhelming.

I am capable of using a controller with a whole bunch of buttons, but I'd rather not. There's nothing immersive about it, it's not particularly fun. I think Nintendo's really got a great idea here, and if the implementation is solid, it'll be a ton of fun. And that'll make people less afraid of it. Even retarded monkeys like to have fun.

Re:Controller Intimidation Factor

[Headcase88]

On top of this, the remote control shape just makes sense; it's easy to point with. Try pointing a current-gen controller around, you won't get very far. Why are remote controls shaped the way they are? Because that's the best way to design a one-handed controller. (Of course the Revolution controller is smaller than most remotes for what should be obvious reasons).

Re:Controller Intimidation Factor

[Otter]

Are there really people out there who look at a video game controller and say "oh my god, that's so scary, I cannot possibly fathom it! run away!!"

You bet. Lots of them.

Are these people capable of playing a video game, even with the simplest of controllers?

Of course they are. One might certainly ask how much money is to be gained from those people (mostly 30 and over) regardless of the simplicity of the controller. But there are plenty of non-moronic people who find a Playstation or XBox controller intimidating

Humans are fantastic at mapping thought to motion. Typing, playing musical instruments, walking, dancing, swimming, driving a car: give us feedback for a minute motion, and we learn bloody fast.

Yeah, it's not like anyone has ever looked at a piano and said "Gee, that's too hard to learn." Look at all the "musicians" who have embraced "mash-up" crap as an alternative to learning a real instrument. Are they all "retarded monkeys"? OK, they are, but nonetheless there are non-morons who are scared off by overly complex gaming.

Re:Controller Intimidation Factor

[LKM]

Are there really people out there who look at a video game controller and say "oh my god, that's so scary, I cannot possibly fathom it! run away!!"

Uhm. No. But lots of people don't want to play games because they have never used a controller and are afraid of embarassing themselves. Seriously, modern controllers are not easy to learn. If you started out on, say, the SNES, moved to the Playstation and eventually to the PS2, you never had to learn a lot of new stuff. But somebody picking up a Gamecube controller who has never had a controller in his hands right now needs to learn a heck of a lot of stuff right away.

First of all, there are three "direction controllers" on on a modern pad (the cross and two analog sticks). Then you have your normal assortment of buttons and between two and four shoulder buttons, some of them analog.

Whenever people are around my place, we usually play games like Mario Kart: Double Dash. Fortunately, you can have two players on one kart, so experienced players can help out new players. But even so, if you want to, say, switch position after the first lap, it's confusing. "Press the Z button" - "What button?" - "It's the small button above R" - "R???" - "Where your index finger is, R is for right, L is for left." - "There's no button where my index finger is!" and during all of this, they have to keep controlling the game.

Lots of people just go "Oh, you play, I'll just watch, I'm too bad at games.".

Having a controller like this will make it a whole lot easier to get into gaming.

Re:Controller Intimidation Factor

[MendicantMonkey]

Well, I'm not quite twice your age. Smack in the middle of the so-called Generation X. We had Atari 2600s in grade school, probably making us the first to "grow up" with gaming.

At least early on, my parents played with me, when typical games were like Pac-Man and Frogger. After all, the first video games were marketed to people my parents' age -- mid 50's now.

But they quit playing when games became complicated. I suppose a large part of that is the mid-80s video game crash. What seemed like a fad to them had passed. For a few years, truly new games only came out for the home computers. Realm of the hard core gamer -- Dungeons & Dragons and war/board game geeks. At least that's the perspective I had coming into middle school as a D&D/computer geek.

Then the NES hit the scene and "arcade-style" simplicity was back. But the older crowd never really came back from what I could tell.

I hope you don't think that the 50-60 crowd are "dying off." Those folks are just now considering retirement -- when they'll have lots of potential leisure time to spend on video games if they find something that appeals to them.

Modern gamepad ontrollers ARE weird to folks who haven't really played video games since the one-button joystick and paddle controller were king. Breakout's gonna be a no-brainer on the Revolution.

Also don't forget a large number of Japanese folks are getting on in years. Hell, Shigeru Miyamoto himself is 53. Not that 53 is old, which is the point I'm trying to make, eventually.

It scratches an itch, a big itch

[rAiNsT0rm]

The Revolution is being looked at and covered as if it is a direct competitor to the 360 and PS3, it isn't. In the battle for dominance Sony and MS have ceased innovation and lost focus on the huge market for videogames. To crush the other they need to focus on a narrow market, and it has narrowed considerably with the 360 and PS3. This is a bad move, no matter who you are a fan of.

Notice the stories just today on the massive numbers of casual gamers and the demand for casual games? This is no fluke. This is the true gaming market. I know for us hardcore gamers it is difficult to see that the world does not revolve around us, but it does not. This market is booming, yet has no real major companies targeting them. In comes Nintendo. If you need 27 buttons and 3 analog sticks to feel "right" playing a game, then the Revolution is not for you... and it also isn't targeted toward you. *Gasp* a gaming company doesn't care about you? but your a "gamer" you wait in lines for a new release, you have every issue of CGW/EGM/whatever hardcore gaming mag, etc. Yep, you are not the target. Hard pill to swallow, and the cause of most of the ire.

I use the story quite often, but it is the perfect illustration of this. Last year one game/system outsold ALL videogame sales for the entire Christmas season... The small "retro" controllers that contain 6-12 games built in that hook up to a TV. They outsold ALL sales for the entire game industry! That is no small number, and those games don't feature eye-bleed graphics or complex strategy or gameplay.

People are clamoring for simple, fun, fresh, enjoyable experiences. Nintendo is looking to provide exactly that, while at the same time wooing back a lot of smalled developers and expanding their content to reach even the hardcore gamer. Since they are in no direct competition it affords them the freedom to make their own path and even innovate, fail, and try again all while still being successful overall. This is a position Sony and MS would kill for, so instead of looking at things though the normal gamer tunnelvision... step back and look at the big picture.

Re:Lost Garden

[cowscows]

Is using EVERY hardware feature in every game what makes games expensive to make? I wouldn't think so. I'd hope that the hardware is there to make things easier for the developer. I think that the particular point of the Lost Garden writer was that the stylized look probably requires less artist effort, and that's where the savings come from. I don't work in the industry, but it's my understanding that that's where the bulk of the money for a big game goes. Content, not programming. It would certainly seem to me that creating all the textures for mario baseball was easier than creating all the textures for GTA: San Andreas. Most of the stuff in the mario universe is just plain colors.

I don't think he was talking about your average clone game, I think he was talking about the big names. Certainly EA isn't spending millions upon millions of dollars every year adding another layer of polish to their latest Madden installment, but that's not really what he was talking about. How long did it take for Valve to finish Half-life 2? How many dollars did they spend on that? It's a great game, no doubt, but it's really just an evolution of the original HL. It has much fancier graphics, meaning it needed much fancier models, and much fancier textures, and better sounds, etc. etc. I can imagine Nintendo reusing a lot of the artwork within their franchises, and instead using their time to work more on the ideas and the gameplay. Which, i think, is one of the reasons that their fanboys are at least forgiving, and often supportive of Nintendo's constant use of franchises.

Although as a sort of relevant note, Nintendo no doubt understands how cheap it is to do a quick update (see the pile of crap that is Donkey Konga 2). So they do do that too sometimes.

Last comment

[MindStalker]

Wow the last guy was a moron. He stated
"However, the concern with something new like this is that it will appeal mainly to an enthusiast crowd and alienate the mass market who can be very reluctant to change their comfortable game playing habits."

Maybe I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen the mass market dislikes the complicated controller of the newest generation. This guy seems to have it all backwards.

Re:cradle/shell

[Irish_Samurai]

OK, this makes way more sense. I haven't been keeping up on the Revolution very much as I usually wait for the fandom and speculation to settle down before I begin to do research.

My first thoughts on that remote were:
"That's pretty damn cool. I wonder what a lightsaber game would be like with it."

My second thoughts were:
"How the hell am I going to play an action game with that? I don't think anyone is going to develop for the system with those restrictions."

This cradle just alleviated my fears. I have shyed away from Nintendo since I got burned on the 64, but if this lives up to it's potential - it will get me back.

Re:Two Words

[JedaFlain]

If a toy company can sell a He-Man sword or a Ninja Turtle sai without getting sued, I highly doubt Nintendo is going to get sued over a kid getting clocked in the head by a controller.

A console for the masses

[RyoShin]

It's easy to tell that the most criticism against the Revolution is (and will continue to be) the controller- no longer the lack of Hard Drive, not supporting HDTV, but "Is that a fucking remote?"

A lot of people fail to see the big draw that a remote will have for the common plebian (read: non-gamer.) On the one hand, you have this massive controller, with 8 buttons, two joysticks, and more. Even I, a casual gamer, thought the Gamecube games would be hard to control with so many buttons and knobs (I was thankfully proven wrong.)

Using this remote, Nintendo will give people a reason to glance twice. A remote control is a familiar object- walk up to any person on the street, and there's a good chance they'll have used a remote. Since it will be a common object, with a different layout, they'll be whimsical. Initially, they'll pick it up and try to use the D-pad to play something. But as soon as they get angry and shake the controller, they'll understand just how interesting this new device is. (Obviously, there will be motion instructions by the demo, but, having worked in an electronics store, I can tell you that not everyone reads the instructions.)

It will be more less intimidating for new users to pick up, while giving us regular gamers a whole new (and quite innovative) way to plays games. Nintendo has it right this time.

The biggest gripe that I've heard from all sides is how it will play other games, or porting games to it (due to having to retool the interface to work with the NRV.) It's already been pointed out in a previous post, but this needs to be mentioned again: the controller will have a shell that will work like a "regular controller". (Note that the mockup on the bottom of that page is NOT THE OFFICIAL MOCKUP, but it gets the idea across.)

Not only will this remove the need for the Gamecube controllers for backwards compatibility (though there are GCN ports on the system,) but it will allow developers to port the games without having to do a lot of modifications, if they are that lazy.

Or not.

[idonthack]

Quoting 1-Up's article:

[The controller] was incredibly responsive to even slight wrist movements-I barely had to move my hand at all.

If they whack someone, it's their own damn fault :)
---
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Media Comments on the Controller

[saphint]

It may be nice that the industry seems to be responding highly of the new controller. But its a long way off from putting money on the table and seeing what comes out. It is probably also one of the many reasons why Nintendo kept the consoles graphical power down so that it would be (possibly far) less expensive to create a game for the Revolution then for the PS3 or the Xbox 360. Hopefully developers are willing (or atleast a chance) to have ago.