Miyamoto on PS3, Industry

The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."

Comments

No suprise

[the computer guy nex]

Nintendo is trying for a much different audience. Not the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches, not the 80hours/week MMORPG addicts, not the fans who buy consoles just for sports games.

Nintendo is going for the casual "family" audience. Nintendo is going for what made the original NES great. I hope they can pull it off. Nintendo right now is competing with themselves, not MS or Sony.

Re:No suprise

[ectal]

I think Nintendo is mostly betting on the existence of a market that doesn't want to spend $400-500 for a console that has a huge catalog of $60 titles that can mostly be sliced into categories like Yet Another Shooter Part IV and Major Sports Game Early January 2007 Edition.

In other words, it's all about the software. A good comparison comes from looking at the Nintendo DS and the PSP. The PSP is an amazing and sexy little piece of hardware with a catalog of same-old, same-old games. The DS is an unsexy, somewhat dated piece of hardware with a great catalog of games that often defy categorization (of course, it's sprinkled with the usual trash titles, as well). The DS is dominating the PSP.

But just because Nintendo's strategy is working so well in the handheld market, with they've owned for years, that doesn't mean any of this will matter when the Revolution comes out. The home console market is not the handheld market. I'd like to see the Revolution do well, and I think it will. But I'm a little bit of a fanboy, just praying it doesn't sink.

If nothing else, we're set up for a much more interesting console battle than the last round.

Re:No suprise

[ClamIAm]

[Nintendo's not going for] the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches,

In my experience, there are at least as many casual college gamers as those who consider themselves "hardcore". The casual ones seem to have given up on modern games, only playing things like old consoles and casual PC games (and, of course, when I pull out Guitar Hero).

You might say that this is the "casual" audience, but then there are people like me who really used to be gamers but have burned out because of how ridiculous games/the industry are today.

The real question is...

[steveo777]

... can Miyamoto's vision of a PS3/XBox 360 peacefully coexhisting with a Revolution in the same living room be real? He states it himself when he said that the customer sees the systems as competition. He's going to have to find a way to convince everyone in the world that they are both worth the time and money.

I love Nintendo, but it seems like Miyamoto's sitting there, looking at the cup of hemlock. Just like Socrates. Both are/were in high spirits and thought their course of action was for the best. Hopefully Nintendo avoids this fate.

On further reflection, it's not quite that good of an analogy, as Socrates was ordered to drink his...

Re:The real question is...

[GundamFan]

I think it is and here is why, that is the state of things in the US right now many households eather have 2 or three consoles attached to one TV or PS2s Xboxes and Gamecubes attached to diffrent TVs. I see no reason for this to change for the new generation because even if the consoles are exspensive there are always going to be diffrent tastes in games among the people in a household.

Surprise! Nintendo can be both.

[ianscot]

I agree that Nintendo is trying to pitch to a family audience the other two have been outcooling themselves away from. It's not necessarily that they wanted to be focused only on their core of support, though. The DS had launch titles and so on being pitched with the supposedly-edgy theme "Touching is okay," and seemed to be attempting to bring their demographic up the age chart a while.

It's not clear that it happened for them. In retrospect it looks like the DS has thrived because it was trying to do something a little different, unlike the competition -- but did it really crack that older demographic?

Personally I am the family market, with two 12-year-olds. I'm also the older market: I'm 38, and I've bought my share of games, though none for myself in the last year-plus.

The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.

So they got me in both senses. Even if I was just buying for myself, what would make me want a PS3 or XBox? The incremental changes in hardware specs are dullsville. Shaq sweats on screen, but the game mechanics still don't let him rebound with any realism at all. At that price, too, for my limited taste in games now, no way. (That's leaving alone the cost of real HD, which I'm not going to be picking up in the next year or two.)

Both MS and Sony have vastly overshot me, as a market. Nintendo hasn't, and they're trying to rediscover the fun in the whole thing. They win my cash.

Wow. What a GREAT news story! (sigh)

[DorkusMasterus]

So Miyamoto-san thinks there will be gamers for both the PS3 AND the Revolution? Their approach to video games are different? Wow! Who'da'thunkit?

Slow news day, eh? :)

Sony and MS have overshot me completely

[ianscot]

38-year-old father of 12-year-old twins here.

I have no interest in either the cost or the catalogs for either the 360 or the prospective PS3. The Revolution interests me both for my kids and for myself, and is far easier on the pocketbook to contemplate.

The other two consoles are positing the existence of a much, much wider hardcore gamers' market than exists, and pricing themselves out of a significant share of that.

Nintendo is also, astonishingly, the only player that's projecting any sense of fricking fun with its products. It's amazing.

Four players per machine on a console

[tepples]

Why [spend $400 on a console] when you can build a decent gaming PC for $600?

Because on the PC, you typically need a cluster in order to handle four simultaneous players (combination of one or more of you, your kids, their play dates). Such a cluster costs $2400 and needs an extra monitor for each player. A console, on the other hand, costs only $200 to $400 and can use the same monitor that you already use for your DVD player. It would be different if you could plug four gamepads into a machine and have PC games actually recognize them, but most commercial PC games tend to restrict themselves to one player per machine. Not all four-player games are split-screen; many, such as * Party or Bomberman, use a shared view instead of a split screen.

you can get joysticks if you want

What good will buying four joysticks do if the game will only let me use one at a time per PC?

and you can play a huge array of games

Which does include independent games, granted, but notably does not include any games similar to Smash Bros. or Katamari.