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."

Comments

The Controller

[Eightyford]

What's to stop Microsoft or Sony from creating their own copy of this controller design?

Re:The Controller

[MBCook]

Nothing. Good ideas get copied.

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.

Re:The Controller

[MBCook]

True. Nintendo introduced the analog stick. They introduced the rumble pack. They introduced the d-pad (before that you only had joysticks and possibly seperate buttons, they put it together in the classic + shape). They added shoulder buttons.

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.

Other Mentions

[MBCook]

I can't wait for the Revolution. The PS3 and the 360 are nice, but they are more of the same. The Revolution is the one that really interests me.

However, I just saw a article on Kotaku that says a top guy from Valve is very excited about the Revolution (as is Kojima).

Plus, apparently Miyamoto hinted at that same event that there is still some big feature of the Revolution that is under-wraps. Considering what they've already showed us, I can't wait to see what else they've got up their sleeves.