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Revolution Least Expensive Next-Gen Console
exdeath writes "Today, one of Nintendo's most public faces said the Revolution
will stand out from its competition for a reason besides its innovative controller: price.
Speaking to CNN/Money correspondent Chris Morris Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing,
predicted that the Revolution would be cheaper than both the Xbox 360
and the PlayStation 3. How low will Nintendo go? It's hard to tell.
Microsoft is selling two Xbox 360 SKUs--the no-frills $299 core Xbox
and the $399 standard model with hard drive and wireless remote. In his interview with Morris, Fils-Aime also reiterated that the
Revolution will not support high-definition televisions. 'What we'll
offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up
for the lack of HD,' he said. Both Microsoft and Sony are making much
of the 360 and PS3's HD capabilities. Fils-Aime also implied that the DS will see redesigns, just as the Game Boy Advance has."
Nintendo, of the three, targets children better than any other of the big three console developers. The average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy (nevermind that the odds that the child will use the majority space of the harddrive on the xbox360 is slim to none). They did it with the DS (unintentionally?) and it's helped them as well. It's now a semi-proven model of competition for them that works.
Considering the $50+ price tag of new games, is the console price really that important?
1. You are a minority.
2. Nintendo doesn't cater to the hardcore.
I don't care that much about HD, but I would like to see routine support for widescreen and progressive scan
"When you look at the specs of the PS3 or Xbox 360, it appears to me that your money is getting you a better system."
What's funny is that I remember two of my friends using the same argument to buy a Saturn over the Playstation at launch time. Better hardware != better system. (Personally, I think the Saturn was a better system but I'm obviously in the minority.)
Also, while HD sounds nice, the majority of Americans aren't onboard yet. Nintendo is merely betting that HD won't become a big factor over the course of this console's lifespan (which will probably be 4-6 based on typcial console lifespans). I don't think that's a terrible bet given HD's slow adoption rate thus far.
But, as the article says, is that enough for Nintendo? Gamecube was/is priced considerably lower than the PS2 and Xbox, but doesn't have nearly the mindshare (not even mentioning the marketshare). I'm not planning on getting either PS3 or Xbox 360 until they reach price points comparable to what the Revolution will launch at; for me, $200 is the sweet spot. Any more and I won't buy it.
Personally, I'm most excited about the possibilities of the Revolution (the controller, download old games, internet play, Super Smash Bros. Revolution Online, etc.) but I fear that it might be too little too late.
The Kerr Divine: My wife's battle with a mysterious illness.
640x480 should be enough for anyone.
Good think you don't matter to Nintendo, then. It would have been a disaster is their business model depended entirely on you.
Most people don't even have HDTVs nor surround sound nor a computer that can handle high end games at that resolution. You're a huge minority, especially considering Nintendos "casual gamer" target demographic.
Help a student gain some exp. http://www.halovariants.com/touchup/index.php
Having started playing FPS's at 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 on my 6800, I don't think it would be possible for me to go back to NTSC resolution for modern games.
Well I'm still using an old 15' CRT television to play my games and I'm more that satisfied with it. I've tried HD TV, and I don't see that benefits in the increase in resolution offset the enormous costs of
a) Purchascing such a device
and
b) The loss of CPU and GPU cycles to increasing resolution that could be put to better uses eleswhere, like gameplay or AI.
You may have enjoyed the 1600x1200 resolution, but I seriously doubt you enjoyed it at the same framerate or lighting quality or perhaps even texture and model quality as someone who was using good old 1024x768 resolution. There's a payoff here, and in terms of what makes a game look better, increasing resolution beyond 1024x768 ranks pretty low on the list of options.
Of course the number one way of making a game look better is better art design. This fact slips past most developers.
May the Maths Be with you!
It all depends on what you want. Do you want the same old games we've been getting for years now, updated with flashy graphics? Or do you want a new gameplay experience with an innovative remote allowing for a unique experience?
If the control is used well, and not used as a gimmick, then I can see the Revolution being a hell of a lot better then PS3 and Xbox 360. But it has to be used to good effect. Of course, those that will lap up whatever "XXX 200X" gamecompanies spew out, will of course like their flashy graphics, because for them that's one of the few ways a game can improve in.
I'm just hoping the Revolution gets a good healthy library from a large range of developers, and isn't inundated with gimmicky games and Mario Bros XX.
I know of quite a few people who bought a GC to go alongside a PS2 or an Xbox, because of its comparatively low price. Perhaps Nintendo noticed this and is aiming the Revolution to be everyone's "other" next-gen console, given their emphasis on different kinds of games than the indistinguishable powerhouses from MS/Sony.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Ars Technica had a good piece related to this. Very briefly, they point out that most titles are written to be cross-platform, thus erasing a lot of the relative hardware benefits of each platform.
r ossplatform.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/c
I think Nintendo is on to a winner; we'll see if the execution is as good as their ideas.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Journalists were playing Revolution games at the TGS; they even had a Metroid Prime demo on show. Dev kits shipped a short while back and are based on the GameCube APIs. Perhaps you should, you know, actually check these things.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
With the DS Nintendo have officially stopped playing Sony/Microsoft's game. They can clearly see that games are being put in a box now with nothing but graphics improving, so they picked up there ball and started a new game. Sony and Microsoft can stay with the graphics grind where as Nintendo will start making some intresting games and change the scene.
Maybe it'll be a hit (like the DS), maybe it'll fail. It's a new direction and a some fresh blood in the old games markets heart. It's not going to hurt Nintendo any if they screw this up because the DS will keep them a float. The cube has a dedicated fanbase (I love mine) which wants to play fun games and graphics don't matter all that much to them. These are the same people who will buy the revolution and love it.
Nintendos job in this "generation" is to try something new, keep their fans happy and forget about Sony and Microsoft. The PSP VS DS "battle" so far has been pretty much 99% in Nintendos favour. Theres a few PSP fans but mostly people have no intrest or are disapointed by their handheld. If it had been GBA Mark 2 VS PSP then the PSP would of won hands down. Yet Nintendo changed the entire game and have so far (Nintendogs being a major part of it) totally owned Sony.
As long as Sony and Microsoft keep throwing thud around about "Hard drive this" and "Media centre" that they'll never beat Nintendo. They may sell more consoles or make more money, but people will only go "ooohhh shiny" so often.
I like muppets.
One thing's for sure: The Revolution will not support high definition video, a marked divergence from the path Microsoft (Research) and Sony (Research) are taking. And it's not something the company is re-thinking, despite the fervent hopes of some hardcore gaming fans.
Casual and non-gamers, the company feels, are less interested in flashy graphics than enjoyable games. And the large files that go hand in hand with high definition video result in "almost interminably long" load times for games, said Fils-Aime, something that would also be detrimental to a mainstream audience.
"What we'll offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up for the lack of HD," he said.
They are talking about HiDef. The current norm seems to be that HD=HiDef, HDD=Hard Disc Drive. The Revolution won't have either, but that won't keep me from buying one. If it's $200 at launch, I'll grab one, otherwise I will wait for the first price drop or used sales to get below $200.
That's pretty beside the point, however. I suspect that while the "majority of people" will not have HD in 5 years, the majority of people buying a new video console WILL. I still don't think it is a mistake, though. I have an HDTV (a modest 30" widescreen CRT). At full 1080i it looks spectacular. At 480p widescreen (ie DVD) it looks REALLY GOOD. If Nintendo supports widescreen/anamorphic 480p (the GC does, so it's not that far fetched) and either component or full digital outputs it will look very nice. For $100 cheaper system and $10 cheaper games, plus having spare GPU cycles to render lighting, mapping, whatever effect is the new hotness, it'll DAMN good.
I think HDTV gameplaying may happen at a slower rate than HDTV adoption. In our house the game system (a gamecube) is relegated to the den on a second TV. When we get a big HDTV its going in the family room and I'm not going to let the kids usurp this TV all day to play games. While this comment clearly puts me in the "video games are for kids" camp, I still think this is the predominant demographic. There's a market for adult game playing and it's growing and I'm sure there is money to be made there, but I still think alot of game systems get relegated to secondary TVs in other rooms. In other words this market is maturing and fragmenting into different niches.
I've heard that the revolution is going to have VGA out. I'm not sure if this is true, or what resolutions it will support, but it will be nice. I'm not interested in buying a hi-def tv just to get hi-def games. I already own a monitor capable of some very high resolutions. And if i'm sitting 3 feet from it, it doesn't have to be 60 inch, 19 is enough at that distance.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
- There are no specs release for the Revolution at all (outside of some extremely unsubstantiated rumors), and the PS3 ones are still a little vague (as is its price point)
- Outside of Sony and Nintendo, almost nobody has gotten to play a real PS3 or Revolution game yet, so it is a little hasty to make qualitative judgements (i.e. "better system") until you actually have a chance to play with them a little.
- It's definitely too early to say which gives you the most bang for your buck, since we don't know what "bang" the Revolution will give you, nor how much "buck" the PS3 will cost.
I don't want anyone to think I'm evangelizing for anyone... but calling systems "better" or "worse" based on rumors are how flame wars get started. Even if you're not saying it in a mean way, there's someone out there who will take it personally.-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
"Nintendo admits that revolution's graphics will not be as good as ps3 or xbox"
Eh? I recall no such thing. I recall Iwata saying that Revolution's graphics will be indistinguishable from Xbox 360 or PS3. I recall spec sheets clearly stating support for 480p. I recall Iwata saying that Revolution could be hooked up to a computer monitor. At no time do I recall him saying that Revolution's graphics won't be as good. He just said that Revolution's focus is not on graphics, but on gameplay.
Metroid Prime at 480p looks pretty darn good, GT4 for the PS2 at 1080i is ok, Halo at 480p is probably the worst out of these three examples. When you are 18" from the monitor, high resolution is important. When you're sitting 8' away from your 48" TV, higher resolutions aren't as ground breaking.
I think Nintendo will do just fine, as long as they support 16:9 mode. BTW, game developers, if you offer split mode game play, make use of the 16:9 screen and let me split the screen side by side instead of just top/bottom.
What, me worry?
This is what it really breaks down to for me:
There is the Xbox 360, which brags about it's HDD support but does not make the HDD a standard option. How many 3rd party devs are going to support a peripheral that maybe a third or less of the market has? Obviously some will, but most won't bother. Plus, it's Microsoft, and they just piss me off.
Then there's the Playstation 3. Made by Sony, a company who installs rootkits on people's PC's, settles for poorly manufactured digicam CCD's, and has generally been riding their name for the past 3 years or so (Hey, we're Sony! People will buy our crap regardless of how craptastic it is!). Sony pisses me off.
Last but not least, we have the Nintendo Revolution, which is not only the least expensive of the three, but is likely to bring about a wave of excellent new gameplay styles with their innovative new controller format (btw, for those who still complain and want their old-style controllers, Nintendo is making one). Most importantly, Nintendo hasn't done anything to piss me off lately.
Disclaimer: If a really good new Ratchet and Clank game comes out for it...I might end up with a PS3 anyway. Damn that addictive Lombax!
The Russian Mafia will mod you down just to see if the Moderate button works.
Low resolution is not the problem with video games these days.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
Nintendo is obviously foolish. Their biggest selling points to me was that you would be able to play their entire back catalog. Now I don't know. I can't imagine playing Mario 3 without my HD hardware.
Don't be ridiculous. As history has shown us, it'll be "Super Mario XX"
Also:
Mario Kart XX
Metroid XX
F-Zero XX
and who could forget,
Mario [sportname]
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
As lots of people tend to forget (even people WITH HDTVs):
* the difference between broadcast NTSC or composite NTSC and studio/dvd-quality NTSC (via s-video) is dramatic and noticeable.
* the difference between studio/dvd quality NTSC via s-video ("480i60") and 480p60 is night and day. Someone who just had PRK/LASEK the previous day could still tell the difference between the two on a 27" TV twenty feet away in a smoke-filled room.
* On a natively 720p60 set, 720p60 looks noticeably better than 480p60. On a natively 1080i60 set, 720p60 is almost indistinguishable from 480p60 because the TV downsamples to 540 scanlines, then kell-filters them to prevent flicker. The net result is almost the same amount of vertical detail as 480p60, with only slightly more horizontal detail. Meanwhile, the GPU and CPU are working almost twice as hard.
* On a natively 720p60 set, 1080i60 is nearly indistinguishable from 480p60, because the TV just throws away half of the scanlines, resamples the 540 that remain up to 720, then resamples the alleged 1920 horizontal pixels to 1280. On a natively 1080i60 set, 1080i60 COULD exhibit greater detail than 480p60... except for the tiny problems of interline twitter (requiring kell filtering), inadequate GPU/CPU power to really pull off their best work at 1920x1080, and the fact that programmers fundamentally don't understand the realities of computer-generated interlaced video and inevitably produce games that look great on the progressive-scan monitors connected to their dev boxen, but have glaring artifacts and deficiencies when viewed on a real interlaced display.
In short, 1080i60 doesn't have a whole lot to offer more than 480p60 for action-related games due to all the filtering necessary to prevent interline twitter, and inadequate raw GPU/CPU horsepower to really handle 1920x1080 properly. 720p60 has definite potential to offer better-looking games because 1280x720 is still a reasonable resolution as far as the GPU/CPU is concerned... but at the moment, natively 720p60 TVs only represent about 1/3 of the total in America (unfortunately), and 720p60 looks like $#!+ on most natively 1080i60 TVs.
At the implementation level, upgrading chips capable of 480p60 to 1080i60 is a comparatively small tweak, because most of the increased bandwidth goes into permitting faster pixel-to-pixel color changes. The actual scanrate (~33.75KHz) isn't a whole lot higher than 480p60's (~31.5kHz). Unfortunately, you can't fool Mother Nature... making the leap to 720p60 requires ~45KHz, because the real or metaphorical electron beam has a LOT more ground to cover in the same amount of time. Put another way, you can do some nasty hacks and claim that a given circuit is technically capable of "1080i", even if its REAL capabilities aren't much better than 480p because the horizontal detail will be all smeared and blurred due to inadequate bandwidth... but making the leap to 720p requires real upgrades that cost real money. And ultimately, the 2/3 majority of American HDTV owners whose sets are inherently 1080i won't see much of an improvement anyway, and will probably bitch about games that only support 480p and 720p.
The REAL surge in "HDTV" console gaming will come in another 2-4 years, once natively-720p TVs have displaced enough older 1080i TVs (at least among gamers who know the difference and care), and Nintendo's NEXT console WILL support 720p (but probably won't bother with 1080i, leading to more waves of grousing and complaining about its lack of "true" support for HDTV).
So, if you assume that people buy a new TV every 10 years (possibly a little conservative), that means that in 2004, 2.2% of existing US TV owners upgraded to HDTV, and in 2005, an additional 2.7% of existing US TV owners upgraded to HDTV, and in 2006, an additional projected 3.7% of existing US TV owners upgrade to HDTV.
So, by the time the Revolution is out, market penetration will be ~8.5% in the US. In Japan, market penetration will be a fair bit higher, because they're buying HDTV's at a faster rate. And note that not everyone who has a TV will buy a console, gamers tend to be more tech oriented, so the number of console users who own an HDTV will be a higher percentage.
The problem is...The games designed by Nintendo are primarily for kids. We can expect to see more of the cute loveable nintendo icons in many of their titles reincarnated a few thousand times more. These aren't the titles I want out of a console, and this will probably be the only reason I'll get an xbox 360 and skip the revolution all together. To me, price won't be the determining factor. The titles availabale will be.
Oh, don't worry one bit. Nintendo definitely has games for you folks. I heard one of the launch titles for Revolution is going to be "Extreme Animal Crossing". It's the same basic game, but all the character are rendered photorealisticly. After you catch a fish, you get to gut it, and it leaves a giant pool of blood on the ground. In addition to collecting fish and bugs, you now get a rife to go with you net and fishing pole so you can hunt deer and hang them on your cabin wall.
If you manage to get the entire exotic collection in your upstairs bedroom and can get it all setup with the proper Feng Shui orientation, I hear that Huggy stops by for a visit and gives you an exotic dance before going down on you. But if you can't get Huggy to stop by because Tom Nook can't get that exotic bed in stock, just bitch slap and pistol whip him and he'll get your point really fast.
And if Biskit starts mailing you death threats because you moved in on his inter-special relationship with Huggy, just set his house on fire. If that doesn't make him back off, all you need to do is slap a laser scope onto your hunting rifle and wait on top of the museum for him the next time he comes to drop off a new fossil. You can dispose of his body by throwing him in the town well. If Officer Copper's investigation eventually leads to you, just throw him a few insider tips on the turnip market and he'll gladly look the other way.
But I don't want to give away too much. Just suffice it to say, you are going to love it.
What the fuck does a game's rating have to do with who it's aimed at? Just because a game doesn't feature exploding corpses, lakes of blood, automatic weapons, random senseless violence, demonic possession, bouncing boobies, or gratuitous sex, it doesn't mean that it's "for kids". In fact, games with stuff that earns them an M rating are exactly the kind of games that are intended for kids, specifically teenagers between 13 and 18 - the hormonally imbalanced "I want to be grown up" lot, who think that playing a game where you go around beating up prostitutes makes them more of a man.
Games that are aimed exclusively at young childeren (in the way you seem to think Nintendo's games are) are extremely rare, and far more likely to be released for everything that's electronic and plays games (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, PC, GBA, DS, PSP, possibly others). Stuff like the endless stream of Spongebob Squarepants or Disney games, or whatever. These games are absolutely awful, because they're developed with the idea that kids are too stupid to know any different, and they largely sell because parents who don't know any better buy them. Anyone over the age of 6 finds them unplayable, and even then they aren't very good games.
That's not even close to what Nintendo's games are like. Nintendo's games are designed for everyone. They aren't intended to exclude everyone over a certain age as kids' games are, and they aren't intended to exclude everyone under a certain age either. In order to be playable by everyone, they need to qualify for the appropriate ratings, so that means they can't include content that would kick their rating too high.
If you thing those ratings are the same as the age ratings on a toy, or a jigsaw puzzle, or whatever (the ones that say things like "Ages 6 - 11" or "12 and up"), you're seriously deluded.
Which nobody has answered yet, even though it's in the open.
Prepping a game for HD, means way more detailed models/backgrounds/whatever. Easy. Nintendo is rejecting this for several reasons, 2 reasons are public, and one reason is my personal speculation.
Confirmed ones first.
#1. Not needing the ultra detailed models will keep development costs down, keeping prices lower and profits higher. Seems reasonable for a business.
#2. The HD models will require additional loading time. Nintendo is trying to keep loading time at a minimum. Again, very reasonable. Now, how much of an advantage this will be, we'll need to see next-gen loading times of course. But it's a wait and see thing.
And my speculation, considering the Ars Technica article on potential Revolution specs.
#3. Using system memory in resources for HD, the Revolution just isn't designed for. The system is designed to maximize non-graphical computations, making for better AI and physics. Personally, when it comes to gaming I'm more than willing to take a graphics hit for better AI and physics.