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Reflections On The Revolution
Kotaku has been reporting from the Digital Interactive Entertainment Conference this past week, and they have a short piece on Industry giants talking about gaming on the Revolution. From the article: "Miyamoto keeps dropping his receiver, which is connected to an earpiece through which English is translated into Japanese. The perky student that greeted me at the door tells me that they didn't have money for a Japanese-to-English translator, meaning that I have to pay extra attention to what Miyamoto's saying right now. He's talking about the Revolution controller."
Now that would be an obvious nod to Nintendo. It would also validate them and help the Revolution get games.
However, doing that will have one serious problem for MS and Sony (unless their version tops Nintendo's). We all know how well "required" accessories sell for consoles. look at anything from the PS2 broadband adapter, to the GC broadband adapter, to the Sega CD, to the PS2 HD, to the Sega 32X, to most any light-gun (Guncon, Menecer, Super Scope, etc), to the N64 memory upgrade. They just don't get the penetration to make them terribly useful. Most companies won't make designs that require them because "nobody owns one". So unless Halo 3 and FF XII require it, it will probably stay as an afterthought on the the PS3 and XBox 360.
This means more than likely games wouldn't support it, would "tack on" support (like some of the early DS games, where it just hurt the experience), it would need the controller but you could play with the regular (thus must people would think it was terrible because the control with the normal controller would be terrible), or you will HAVE to have the controller and you won't be able to use the old one (thus the price of entry is $30 higher and sales will suffer).
Nintendo has the right solution. I think we will see Sony and MS copy them, but it won't be until the PSP 2, PS 4, or XBox 720.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Any word on what the revolution will cost? I'm hoping it's in to $200 range, that'd be sweet & affordable.
Also, what's the big deal about the controller? The only revolutionary thing about it that I've heard is that it's got a gyroscopic motion detector. Is there anything else, or should I be more excited about gyroscopes?
Among consoles, Nintendo has led the controller revolution in the past. Weren't they responsible for introducing the rumble feature and the analog stick? They'll be copied in time, but once again, points for innovation will go to Nintendo. Of the big three, Nintendo's the only company with any heart whatsoever, whereas I'm concerned.
Before Nintendo what did we have? Little joysticks (2600), paddles (2600), and sets of buttons like a telephone pad (Intellivision). Of course, that idea didn't completely die (see the Jaguar pad).
Nintendo seems to bring it all to us. It gets refined by other companies (Sony added the 2nd analog stick, and introduced built in rumble as opposed to an add-on), but Nintendo is the master so far.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Because they probably expect to dominate the other in the current market, and will let Nintendo go off and do it's own thing?
I've told several people that I'm interested to see if the Revolution controller will become the new standard if the system does well in this console war, which is an idea everyone scoffs at.
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Nintendo introduced the analog stick.
The Atari 5200 and the Apple II both had analogue joysticks as standard.
They introduced the d-pad (before that you only had joysticks and possibly seperate buttons, they put it together in the classic + shape).
The Intellivision controllers were d-pads. They were just round instead of a plus.
They added shoulder buttons.
I think this could arguably be from earlier controller designs too. The Colecovision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200 all had buttons that would be "shoulder buttons" if the controller had been held sideways.
IMO Nintendo borrows concepts from other places that weren't ready for prime-time when they were originally introduced. I think their new idea is still in that category, but fortunately I'll get to see for myself if that's the case or not.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Blame it on the utter lack of anything new except a processing boost on any of the other systems.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"Both the PS and the Saturn got analog controllers after launch (ostensibly because they saw how good the N64's analog stick helped things). Now both controllers got a lot of use, much more than most add-on peripherals. The fact that those controllers started being bundled with the consoles did help quite a bit."
True, but try to find a PlayStation game that required the analog stick. Just about every published PSX game I can think of was playable with the old digital pads, simply because there was still no guarantee everybody had a DualShock.
Sega had the right idea for helping with analog stick penetration: include it with a game like NiGHTs.
Personally I don't think Nintendo's been any more innovative than anyone else in the colors they use for their AC adapters, either, as long as we're limiting the discussion to score "points."
Yeah, it is kind of hard to say that the software's no different when no games have been announced for the new machine. But apparently you didn't notice that the Revolution controller is something new and completely unlike the "We smooshed existing controllers a little" offerings from Sony and MS? Apparently you didn't notice that, between the DS and the few public features of the Revolution, Nintendo surely is encouraging unique programming styles? There's a whole bevy of interesting games using the DS's stylus control, including surgery titles where you make sutures by zig zagging with it. The Revolution controller's tech demos were more interesting than anything MS has ever done.
You're right that the third party problem is what Nintendo has to get past. But the games you cite as examples of moribund franchises with nothing but re-tweaked graphics are not particularly good examples of that. If you want a mediocre franchise resting on its laurels, Zelda isn't the place to look. (Hello, EA sports? Maybe you could stop adding polygons to Shaq's bald pate and make rebounding physically possible one of these years.)
If these latest Nintendo systems get wiped out in the marketplace, we can count on the industry basically being mired in utter mediocrity for a good while. Sony and MS are battling for marketshare and have no love of the games. Nintendo is the indie film circuit next to the Hlooywood studio competition.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.