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Revolution Roundtable
1up.com is running a piece talking to six professional game developers, where they discuss the possibilities and possible pitfalls of the Nintendo Revolution. From the article: "I don't think it will be difficult at all to make full length titles for the Revolution. First of all, Nintendo has hinted that they will provide an add-on for the controller that will mimic a "normal" controller, like the GameCube's Wavebird controller. Second, as long as the device is light, movement based input is not that tiresome. I have used a gyroscopic mouse for many years, and can successfully play many games with it. I would presume that games specifically tuned for the Revolution's controller will be easy to use for extended periods of time. As a bonus, gamers who play that long will end up with impressive looking forearms!"
But that is the whole point of the Revolution. We don't want EA to go and make yet another batch of traditional "console-genre games", we want a whole new breed of console genres. The "second stick" or whatever controller add-on one can plug in should always be secondary, or it should be as innovative as the wand. I'd really hate it if games required a regular controller to plug into the wand, and then only use the controller for regular gameplay.
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Nintendo would have to go out of its way to ruin the launch.
I think more accurately, the developers would have to go out of their way to ruin the launch. It seems to me that with the stale game market these days, developers would have to be tied up to keep them from flocking to this console.
Just imagine the current proposal for a game now: "Ok, it's a [insert genre] game where you play a [insert catchy character type] who has to [choose: save, kill, defeat] this [choose: victim, enemy]."
Now think about some of the game ideas you could have with the Revolution--just from the unique controller: Drums player (2 controllers for sticks), pilot games (tilt/turn the plane with the controller).
Then there are the improvements to current games: aiming a rifle, using a sword, etc.
All that needs to happen is for a decent initial lineup of games to come out, which will attract a lot of users, and a lot more companies will follow. If all that can happen, the Revolution may really live up to its name.
It sounds a lot like these developers haven't even seen a dev kit for the revolution. Which to seems odd to me if we are going to see a system in roughly 6months, and the 3rd party dev's don't have the dev kits; then how are they going to have decent launch titles? Maybe they need to interview developers who are going to have launch titles, but maybe big N has these people locked down on what they can say about the new system.
impressive looking forearms... I think we're overlooking one of the revolution controller's biggest disadvantages. Before all we had to worry about was a bad case of Nintendo thumb. Now what? Carpal tunnel syndrome? Tennis elbow? A sprained shoulder? Will I have to get Tommy John surgury to play MVP 2007??
It makes real cupcakes, with a 40 watt bulb, and there's icing packets....but the secret ingredient is love.
Nintendo could mess things up pretty well with even slight flaws in their controller, if performance isn't up to snuff the lag will destroy them, if wireless conflicts are a problem that will kill them.
Most critical is how accurate this controller can be, if it has poor quality tracking people will have to lower the sensitivity (Totally destroying the fun) or simply will hate the thing.
But it's damn good to see that the biggest problems they're likely to have are technical which is how it should be, there will be killer games for this system the fps control scheme alone practically guarantees huge interest.
And the DS is really a feather in their cap, it's not totally dominating (yet) but it's technical acheivements are increadible in how seamlessly it handles things that would be considered a problem in another system,two systems (GBA and DS in one), two screens, two cpus, and two control schemes. Brilliant, I love mine.