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Revolution Worldwide Launch Possible
hammersuit writes "GameDaily Biz reports that a Nintendo Revolution simultaneous global launch is still in the cards. From the article: 'Bloomberg.com suggested that Nintendo would avoid a global launch. However, a Nintendo representative today said that those comments were misinterpreted. 'The comments have been taken out of context,' said the Nintendo spokesperson. 'What he's actually saying is that we're not holding a worldwide launch just because everyone else is doing one too. It's just another re-iteration of the fact that we're not looking at what Sony or Microsoft are doing.'"
Why? They are working on a compelling product that is vastly different from what Sony / MS are creating. Nintendo has stated repeatedly that they are approaching the market in a completely different fashion, so why concern themselves with how the others are marketing their stuff?
Nintendo will bring out a compelling system, that while it may not garner the same sales as the other 2 (or it might, you never know), it will make a profit because they wouldn't sell it at a loss, just to gain market share.
I think what the comment means is that they are not trying to match or one-up whatever MS and Sony do. Of course they are watching what their competitors are doing. Nintendo wants to isolate a bigger market that Sony and MS, in their one-ups-manship war, are starting to neglect. Honestly, who is going to buy 10 year old Johnny a $400+ system with $60 games? They want MS and Sony to battle eachother for the male 16-30 demographic, they will be more than happy to take the rest of the market.
Does the Rev need to be in our hands at the same time its in the hands of those that live in Japan? No. Does it need to be in our hands before Thanksgiving? Absolutly Critical! A Christmas Holiday launch is really the only concern (in terms of timing for the launch).
Ves
No, its more of an issue of supply and demand. Say the factories can only pump out 6 million consoles by launch date. They can sell it in one country and meet demand or they can go for a worldwide launch and totally piss off many people that can't buy one. Kinda like what happend to the 360 when it took months for supply to catch up with demand. Game translation is an issue though, but its small one. More of an issue is the supply part. As well as having to deal with retailers across the globe, as well as having support lines avaiable with speakers of all the languages you intend to ship to.
Since the Revolution is meant to backwards compatible, is it using the same size disc as in the GameCube, or will you require a disk adaptor?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes different product. But they would be stupid to overlook the problems MS faced with their worldwide launch. You can learn many things from the failures of your competitors.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As others have suggested, I think this is to some degree a PR issue, but I think it's also part of Nintendo's corporate strategy to be successful without winning. Parts of the public see a giant PS3 vs Xbox360 vs Revolution "war", but I think being #1 or even #2 in the sales charts is about as important to Nintendo as it is to They Might Be Giants. Microsoft and Sony both make bets so big that they have to win, but Nintendo would prefer to not even be at that table.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
The last categorical statement was a period of 14 weeks across the world which seems great and seems manageable.
But then they did completely deny a revamp of the DS just months before coming out with the DS Lite so if they were doing a simultaneous global launch I'm sure they wouldn't care if they'd actually said they weren't going to do one.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Of the three, the only one making any profit is Nintendo. Why would Nintendo want to watch the other two? Learn how not to make money?
"Nintendo is the only company who's launches have not been met with console flaws or games that won't run"
Don't remember the gamma problems of GBA launch titles?
"Nintendo has always had the console launch first in Japan and then in the States"
The DS was released in North America first.
From Wikipedia: "but that's primarily people being picky."
No, it was a design flaw in either the dev kits or the units sold.
"And that's why the sp had a backlite screen."
Except for the new ones that advertise brighter screens, the SP was frontlit.
"or having dead pixels in the screen?"
The DS has had its share of dead pixel units. The difference is with Nintendo customer service, which will replace a DS if any pixel is dead anywhere on either screen.
And the first line of the original Game Boy also had its share of pixel problems; on some early units vertical lines along the sides of the screen did not light up. But, again, Nintendo's policy was to replace rather than dither.
Oh no! Nintendo's Truck have started to Move!
Translation is usually done in the according headquarters, i.e. NOE or NOA, by specific translation teams, so it isn't putting more work on developers. Some games are even translated while in development, such as "Zelda: Minish Cap", which was released in Europe first. It's pretty routine work, and not really a problem. The main reason for delays are marketing and business strategies. The Minish Cap, for example, was kept from an American release because they feared it woud interfere with the holiday season sales of the DS. Other times it could be because the publishers haven't even decided whether to release it at all, or the developers haven't found a publisher. And sometimes it can be real arrogance from the publishers by not investing enough in translation teams, or even trying to do a speedy release, as I suspect with SquareEnix.
Damn, quite the post.
Okay, I here you about the kiddie stuff, and some excellent features on 360. And the emulation. But here's thing - you're the minority.
Things like cute characters make the game more approachable to everyone, not the small demographic that you are a part of. I appreciate that I can get my girl friend to play a round of mario kart with me. She's not going to enjoy GRAW, and not many other people besides a very small minority of the population do either.
Most people dont have time to invest hours a day into gaming. A lot of these game require an extremely high amount of dedication. Those games can be fun, and you should play them as much as you can if that is what you enjoy and have time for. But the majority of people would prefer to play in short intetervals.
Concerning emualtion, again, mmost people aren't aware of how to download an emulator and hook up a controller to their computer. Also most people dont want to play a console game on their computer. The living room would be more suitable.
I agree with you about the innovation thing. Nintendo hasn't done anything lately that is remotely innovative. They really need to get off their haunches and do something disruptive I think.
So while everyone of your points are completely valid when it comes time to decide how to invest your money, the resoning behind that decision isn't widley supported. Nintendo is making games more approachable and is really giving it back to the people.