Responses To Nintendo's Revolution Controller

Gamasutra has reactions to last week's Question of the Week, discussing the Nintendo Revolution Controller. While there were a lot of mixed feelings, overall the response seemed to be positive. From the article: " I certainly hope [the controller will be beneficial]. More of the same thinking in terms of developing the future of games can only take us so far. As a lifelong gamer and game developer, I urge everybody in our industry to support the innovation and risks taken by Nintendo on sheer principle. We always lament that there is no creativity and innovation in the games industry anymore. Guys, we have to rally around these initiatives. It brings a tear to my eye that somebody out there in this big brutal word of ROI and risk management still dares to go out on a limb like that to push gaming further. And my mouth waters when I think of designing for such hardware. -Marque Sondergaard, Powerhouse"

Comments

Re:Gamecube controllers work on Revolution too.

[Castar]

This is definitely Nintendo's biggest problem (both currently, and with the new controller): third party support.

However, look at the DS. Very few developers are saying "Oh, I can't make my touchscreen/dual screen game for the PSP also! Woe is me!" The DS gets a lot of great games.

Now, partially this is due to the fact that the DS has a large marketshare, and to the fact that handhelds are a lot cheaper to develop for, but still the fact remains: platform-exclusivity is not an automatic killer. In fact, for most of the console world's history, titles have been exclusives (was there anything that was on both SNES and Genesis? Or PS1 and Dreamcast?)

So if Nintendo can make enough hardware sales, and can make the platform cheap enough to develop for (signs point to yes on the second one, at least), then they have a shot even without cross-platform games.

Anyway, 3rd parties might be more willing to step up to the plate than you think - EA has already said they're looking forward to using the new controller features in their sports games, and a number of other large publishers have stated support as well. That's not to say they won't back out if things start going downhill, but of course that will be a lot harder once you've started to develop a game around the controller.

A Silly Question

[blueZhift]

Okay okay, it looks like a remote control, but can you actually control the TV with it? Seriously, I think that is a feature that would complete the set. The more I think about it, the better I like this new controller and really want to see the games. So if a person can just pick this up, turn the TV on with it, adjust the volume and channel, turn on the Revolution, and play, that would be perfect! Wow, imagine that people start using this as their primary remote, then they'd always be a click away from playing a game. You know, that's where Nintendo might be going with this. Gaming becomes as casual as using a TV remote.