Okay. I have to admit that while I had heard about the nunchuck accellerometers, I did not know that they announced a small speaker in the Wiimote.
Now that I know about it, I'm even more excited though... why? Well, hopefully Nintendo will be using the speaker the same way that Logitech did in their "iFeel" mouse. The mouse came and went many years ago, but was still cool though completely unsupported. The speaker in it was used to give tactile feedback as you moused over buttons and desktop items. By modulating low frequency sounds, they were able to generate quite a few physical textures. In my opinion, this feedback scheme produces much more natural feedback than the basic rumbling that console controllers use today.
This technology would also play excellently into the wiimote strategy -- using bits of tech that are not new in themselves, but have never before been brought together and well supported in a single device.
Nintendo folks have been saying for some time now that there is still a big secret to be revealed about the Wii. The controller, on the other hand, has been public for some time. Nintendo execs are no fool. They knew that if the public liked the Wiimote one of the other companies would quickly follow. Sony has just hung themselves with their half-assed knockoff attempt.
Now, Sony is really going to feel the fool when Nintendo reveals the true secret of the Wii tomorrow...
"I don't mean to sound negative but I don't see Nintendo changing it's stripes any time soon..."
And why should they, since they are the only video game company (or company division) that seems capable of making a profit? Every single "prediction" that you made also represents a sound business decision.
Just because "cater to every fanboy whim, and do it for free" isn't on the list, you assume the system is inferior and doomed?
Yeah... so I can then spend 40 minutes driving and $5 in gas every week to go cash in the coupon at the nearest blockbuster store. Livig in the middle of nowhere is a really good reason to get either service, but I found that I just liked netflix a little better.
Of course, if only Blockbuster had a subscription movies+games option, I'd be all over dumping netflix&gamefly to have a single entertainment channel.
1) Microsoft is not trying to "create a video game industry." They are trying to buy out the existing one.
2) If having the Japanese control console gaming is what it takes to keep the industry from tanking, I'm all for it! As it currently stands, I'm seriously considering learning the Japanese language just so I can import and play some of the interesting (fun, creative, and or quirky) games that I always hear about being released there, but know will never get brought to the US.
And the other nice thing about learning to speak/read Japanese is that it will add another country to my list of potential places to move to when the government and personal freedom here collapse from all the "patriotic" and "security" s*** legislation that has been spewing out of D.C. these past few years.
I definitely agree with this one... I think I learned more of some topics from Animaniacs songs than I did from classes at school. States and their capitols, Countries of the world, presidents of the United States, etc.
And then there's also Tom Lehrer's Periodic Table of the Elements song...
Fresh squeezed lemon is best, but when I don't have any fresh fruit around, I use the powdered version made by TrueLemon.
It tastes amazingly close to the real thing, and doesn't have the metallic aftertaste that most concentrates have. And the fact that it comes in little packets makes it real easy to keep some in my desk for adding to water or tea at the office. They make a good lime powder as well.
Too bad I don't want to buy one. My local walmart has had a couple premium 360 boxes sitting on the shelf for at least two days. Of course, I don't know which is more sad... that the town I live near is so small and poor that people can't afford 360 boxes, or that the town is so small and boring that there's nothing better to do than shop at walmart every day.
Anywho... I suppose the lesson learned from this is that if you really want to get the hot hardware, try looking in places where it won't sell as fast. If I remember correctly, the walmart strategy is to put a store in every town of 10,000+ people. So, if you live in a city, check the map for nearby towns that are just big enough to have a big-box retailer, but also more isolated and/or poor.
It worked for me when I bought a nintendo DS on launch day. By the time I decided to get one, most everywhere was sold out, but I found a K-mart in a smallish town that was a good 20-30 minutes from anything of interest (including the highway) and sure enough, they still had plenty to sell.
Actually, I don't know. I just didn't want to sound like a fanboy extolling all of Nintendo's virtues, so I assumed that there must be something that they have messed up in the past. The only think I can think of is the NES cartridge connection you already mentioned.
Portables need to be rugged not fragile and easy to scratch or break not to mention super expensive which makes scratching it or breaking it that much worse.
Sure, Nintendo may make a few products that aren't as durable, but their portable systems are phenominal survivors. I personally have had a gameboy color that got lost underwater for three days (freak car accident, but that's another story) and after opening it up to dry out the parts and clean the mud off the screen, it still worked. Also, if you visit the Nintendo World Store in NYC, they have a display there of an original gameboy that literally got toasted in an explosion during the gulf war, and yet is still running.
Nintendo has a history of making durable handheld products, and I don't see any reason that the DS redesign should be any different.
Apparently you haven't read any of the numerous other slashdot articles that are following the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD debate. Considering that the first generation stand-alone players for BOTH formats will be over $1000, a $600 (or even$700) PS3 will be a real bargain for anybody who is looking to buy into one of the new formats. At that point, the fact that it also plays games is simply a bonus. This is the successful strategy Sony used with the PS2 (when DVD was new), and it is the strategy that it looks like they will be using again.
Sure the "pure gamers" and the "home theater enthusiasts" may turn it down for the reasons you give... but the "cost-conscious average consumer" and "I-have-a-job-and-money-but-not-a-ton-of-time-to-w aste gamers" will be grubbing up the PS3's, and these groups of buyers greatly outnumber the enthusiast groups.
I used to be a subscriber to the magazine, back when it was National Geographic World. Back in that day, it actually had interesting articles and no advertisements. I grew out of the magazine, but my younger sisters continued getting it until shortly after it went through the "National Geographic Kids" makeover.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened or who was responsible, but somewhere along the line, something went drastically wrong. If you pick up a copy of the magazine now, it's nothing but pure trash. At least a third of the pages are overt advertisements. Sandwiched between all the advertisements are the "articles" of which at least half are nothing but thinly veiled ads for more toys, tv shows, and movies. Gone are the informative articles about the world around us. Now, all they they have are features that talk about and try to sell the latest commercial crap.
The sad thing is, there are many parents who are suckered into subscribing or keep renewing their kids' subscriptions to the "magazine" simply because it bears the National Geographic name up top. They never bother to look at the actual content, and so the advertisers are allowed to slip under the radar and brainwash kids, all in the name of "education."
So, yeah, I'm not surprised at all that NGK has an article about the new Nintendo console, or that it's a worthless article to boot.
Article has a point in myth #8...
on
Videogame Mythbusting
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
From the article: "Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic."
When I read this, I couldn't help but smile at how right the article author is... why? because of a story my mom told me:
Way back in the day -- before videogames ever existed -- and my mom was a little girl, her mother volunteered to let her (my mom) be a subject in a study on child behavior. So, my mom is placed in a room with all sorts of toys. One thing that catches her eye though, is a clown bop-bag... you know, the inflatable punching bags that are weighted to stand back up after you knock them over. My mom had played with dolls and kitchen sets and many of the other toys at home, but she had never seen one of these punching bags, and she was fascinated. She poked it, and it wobbled. She hit it, and it tipped, but stood back up. So, being a curious child, she hit harder and harder, trying to see if she could make it stay down. The researchers were horrified at the "violent behavior" that this girl was showing... Surely, she must have deep psychological issues, intense hatred of clowns, or must have been brought up wrong. But no, as my mom distinctly remembers, it was simply curiosity in testing the limits of a new toy. She has since grown up and had no psychological problems or aggressive tendancies at all, despite the fears of the "researchers."
Anyway, I think that many parallels could be drawn between this story and the points made by the article author. Particularly that trying to make conclusions on what a child will become or policies to govern her based on a few minutes of observation is at best flawed, and at worst, more detrimental to society than the unsupervised child would ever be.
What I was trying to say in the original post by "doesn't need new motion input" is that it remembers things like relative motion.... how much to move the in game control for every bit that you move the controller. Much like how you can set your computer mouse pointer to move at a certain speed relative to your actual hand motions. Those type of settings should be remembered at least by the system, but shouldn't require recalibration every time the system boots.
People will take these controller around with them instead of just leaving them at home, the controller itself will be a status symbol.
I definitely wouldn't be surprised if this is both the feature and response to it that Nintendo is aiming for. What better way to market to the non-gmaing crowd than to make part of the console "cool" to carry around with you. Non gamers would see you carrying your controller around, become interested, and would not be scared away by its simple interface. Just like that Nintendo has made another sale.
Speaking of carrying your gaming gear around with you... it makes me wonder what the demo kiosks will be like. Will they encourage people to take their controllers to walmart to get new demos and downloads? Will the kiosks be running crippled software so that you can't pull out your own controller, jump in the game, and beat down some unsuspecting kid (and/or his mom)?
At any rate, I'm glad to know that there are more "secrets" to the revolution that haven't been revealed, because if we do have to wait almost another year for its release, the anticipation of the unknown will make that wait a little more bearable.
Controller can carry games, like those 5-in-1 game kits that plug directly into the TV
Actually, I think you're really on to something here. Not so much that it is a X-in-one game kit, but that the controller also comes with memory built in standard. Your controller is your memory card. It keeps track of all your controller preferences such as any motion calibrations, etc so that it will always be easy to play on any Revolution console with any game and doesn't need a new motion input each time.
Or, downloaded games can be saved to your controller. Carry the controller to a friends house, and they are available to play as soon as your friend's console finds your controller. Or treat memory the way that they did with the N64. One game that comes to mind was Tetris (forget which version) where they encouraged each player to have a memory pack in their controller so that they could "take home" the lines that they won when playing on someone else's console.
Really, including a memory function so that your controller becomes your controller wouldn't be too surprising.
Assuming the controller works great, we don't know whether the games will truly take full advantage, enough that people will say "Damn, I MUST own that." It's a big question mark.
I suggest you go back a re-read some of the gaming media articles written after Nintendo unveiled the controller. Most people writing the first round of articles did get to actually use the controller (granted, only for tech demos) and the general consesus was "Damn, I must own that." And that was just based on tech demos!
As we've seen from every past console, the first games out may not be much better than tech demos, but the games that follow will quickly take advantage of the systems capabilities. Most of the concerns about arm fatigue and accuracy have come from people responding to the initial wave of reports - from people who have NOT had a chance to use it in person. Also, consider that when the Revolution is fully unveiled in May, it will be another six+ months after the initial controller was shown to the public. Nintendo will have had time to tweak an already impressive component to be even better based on the reactions of the public (both those who have tried the controller, and those who have not).
So, while I do hate to wait until may to get all of the details, and then wait again until the console is finally released, I have absolutely no doubts that it will be an impressive machine when it launches, and will only get better with time.
It must suck to live in a rural area and have to get your fix this way.
Actually, by living in a rural area in a poor part of the state, I've found it EASIER to find the must-have systems (well, I've only been here for the Nintendo DS and sony PSP) available on launch day. I'm not sure if the K-mart two towns over still has 360's 'cause I don't need one and don't have a reason to be near there today, but I'm sure that it took them at least several hours to sell out if they did.
I, for one, welcome the "Tom, Dick, and Harry" programmers for whatever console they can afford to program for. Sure, not EVERY one will be at the standards of the big companies, but if you go back just a few years to when shareware was the way to find new computer games, you could find a lot of good stuff written by unknown and underfunded authors.
And the simple solution is to lock out all M rated games, and make them ask you for permission to boot one of your "approved" M rated games when they wish to play it. That way you are aware of how often they play (some of) their games, or whether they're playing it with friends whose parents would object to M for violence.
Well, considering that movie studio profits have started to decline as the effects/creativity ratio has skyrocketed, it's only a matter of time that the games industry will also suffer if they follow the same path.
It's already been mention in lots of other articles that Nintendo's revolution will be a lot cheaper to develop for since the focus is on gameplay and not on all the expensive shiny bits.
Sure, there will be a lot of games for the revolution that won't turn a profit, but with significantly lower development costs, there will also be a greater number of successes. With the revolution, hopefully designers will be rewarded with profits for good gameplay in whatever niche they are aiming for, rather than making a good game that fails because they had to spend way too much money to have it look pretty for the average consumer.
I was honestly only expecting maybe a few dozen of the most popular titles, so I'm pleasantly surprised at the quantity of supported games. Now if only they can work on the quality of the supported games...
Slashdot Mirror
Okay. I have to admit that while I had heard about the nunchuck accellerometers, I did not know that they announced a small speaker in the Wiimote.
Now that I know about it, I'm even more excited though... why? Well, hopefully Nintendo will be using the speaker the same way that Logitech did in their "iFeel" mouse. The mouse came and went many years ago, but was still cool though completely unsupported. The speaker in it was used to give tactile feedback as you moused over buttons and desktop items. By modulating low frequency sounds, they were able to generate quite a few physical textures. In my opinion, this feedback scheme produces much more natural feedback than the basic rumbling that console controllers use today.
This technology would also play excellently into the wiimote strategy -- using bits of tech that are not new in themselves, but have never before been brought together and well supported in a single device.
Ha! The Joke's on Sony for taking the bait..
Nintendo folks have been saying for some time now that there is still a big secret to be revealed about the Wii. The controller, on the other hand, has been public for some time. Nintendo execs are no fool. They knew that if the public liked the Wiimote one of the other companies would quickly follow. Sony has just hung themselves with their half-assed knockoff attempt.
Now, Sony is really going to feel the fool when Nintendo reveals the true secret of the Wii tomorrow...
You may be desperate, but must you really announce to the whole world that you want to buy some "anUss" ?
Please, for the sake of the games, we really don't need yet another round of lame toilet jokes.
"I don't mean to sound negative but I don't see Nintendo changing it's stripes any time soon..."
And why should they, since they are the only video game company (or company division) that seems capable of making a profit? Every single "prediction" that you made also represents a sound business decision.
Just because "cater to every fanboy whim, and do it for free" isn't on the list, you assume the system is inferior and doomed?
Yeah... so I can then spend 40 minutes driving and $5 in gas every week to go cash in the coupon at the nearest blockbuster store. Livig in the middle of nowhere is a really good reason to get either service, but I found that I just liked netflix a little better.
Of course, if only Blockbuster had a subscription movies+games option, I'd be all over dumping netflix&gamefly to have a single entertainment channel.
Cute. So now everyone will have to stop calling the controller a "RevMote" (kinda awkward sounding anyway) and call it the "WiiMote"
With a name like this, Nintendo is going to have a harder time shaking off the "kiddie" image.
Still, I don't mind the official name too much.
1) Microsoft is not trying to "create a video game industry." They are trying to buy out the existing one.
2) If having the Japanese control console gaming is what it takes to keep the industry from tanking, I'm all for it! As it currently stands, I'm seriously considering learning the Japanese language just so I can import and play some of the interesting (fun, creative, and or quirky) games that I always hear about being released there, but know will never get brought to the US.
And the other nice thing about learning to speak/read Japanese is that it will add another country to my list of potential places to move to when the government and personal freedom here collapse from all the "patriotic" and "security" s*** legislation that has been spewing out of D.C. these past few years.
I definitely agree with this one... I think I learned more of some topics from Animaniacs songs than I did from classes at school. States and their capitols, Countries of the world, presidents of the United States, etc.
And then there's also Tom Lehrer's Periodic Table of the Elements song...
Fresh squeezed lemon is best, but when I don't have any fresh fruit around, I use the powdered version made by TrueLemon.
It tastes amazingly close to the real thing, and doesn't have the metallic aftertaste that most concentrates have. And the fact that it comes in little packets makes it real easy to keep some in my desk for adding to water or tea at the office. They make a good lime powder as well.
Too bad I don't want to buy one. My local walmart has had a couple premium 360 boxes sitting on the shelf for at least two days. Of course, I don't know which is more sad... that the town I live near is so small and poor that people can't afford 360 boxes, or that the town is so small and boring that there's nothing better to do than shop at walmart every day.
Anywho... I suppose the lesson learned from this is that if you really want to get the hot hardware, try looking in places where it won't sell as fast. If I remember correctly, the walmart strategy is to put a store in every town of 10,000+ people. So, if you live in a city, check the map for nearby towns that are just big enough to have a big-box retailer, but also more isolated and/or poor.
It worked for me when I bought a nintendo DS on launch day. By the time I decided to get one, most everywhere was sold out, but I found a K-mart in a smallish town that was a good 20-30 minutes from anything of interest (including the highway) and sure enough, they still had plenty to sell.
Like what?
Actually, I don't know. I just didn't want to sound like a fanboy extolling all of Nintendo's virtues, so I assumed that there must be something that they have messed up in the past. The only think I can think of is the NES cartridge connection you already mentioned.
Portables need to be rugged not fragile and easy to scratch or break not to mention super expensive which makes scratching it or breaking it that much worse.
Sure, Nintendo may make a few products that aren't as durable, but their portable systems are phenominal survivors. I personally have had a gameboy color that got lost underwater for three days (freak car accident, but that's another story) and after opening it up to dry out the parts and clean the mud off the screen, it still worked. Also, if you visit the Nintendo World Store in NYC, they have a display there of an original gameboy that literally got toasted in an explosion during the gulf war, and yet is still running.
Nintendo has a history of making durable handheld products, and I don't see any reason that the DS redesign should be any different.
Apparently you haven't read any of the numerous other slashdot articles that are following the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD debate. Considering that the first generation stand-alone players for BOTH formats will be over $1000, a $600 (or even$700) PS3 will be a real bargain for anybody who is looking to buy into one of the new formats. At that point, the fact that it also plays games is simply a bonus. This is the successful strategy Sony used with the PS2 (when DVD was new), and it is the strategy that it looks like they will be using again.
w aste gamers" will be grubbing up the PS3's, and these groups of buyers greatly outnumber the enthusiast groups.
Sure the "pure gamers" and the "home theater enthusiasts" may turn it down for the reasons you give... but the "cost-conscious average consumer" and "I-have-a-job-and-money-but-not-a-ton-of-time-to-
I used to be a subscriber to the magazine, back when it was National Geographic World. Back in that day, it actually had interesting articles and no advertisements. I grew out of the magazine, but my younger sisters continued getting it until shortly after it went through the "National Geographic Kids" makeover.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened or who was responsible, but somewhere along the line, something went drastically wrong. If you pick up a copy of the magazine now, it's nothing but pure trash. At least a third of the pages are overt advertisements. Sandwiched between all the advertisements are the "articles" of which at least half are nothing but thinly veiled ads for more toys, tv shows, and movies. Gone are the informative articles about the world around us. Now, all they they have are features that talk about and try to sell the latest commercial crap.
The sad thing is, there are many parents who are suckered into subscribing or keep renewing their kids' subscriptions to the "magazine" simply because it bears the National Geographic name up top. They never bother to look at the actual content, and so the advertisers are allowed to slip under the radar and brainwash kids, all in the name of "education."
So, yeah, I'm not surprised at all that NGK has an article about the new Nintendo console, or that it's a worthless article to boot.
From the article: "Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic."
When I read this, I couldn't help but smile at how right the article author is... why? because of a story my mom told me:
Way back in the day -- before videogames ever existed -- and my mom was a little girl, her mother volunteered to let her (my mom) be a subject in a study on child behavior. So, my mom is placed in a room with all sorts of toys. One thing that catches her eye though, is a clown bop-bag... you know, the inflatable punching bags that are weighted to stand back up after you knock them over. My mom had played with dolls and kitchen sets and many of the other toys at home, but she had never seen one of these punching bags, and she was fascinated. She poked it, and it wobbled. She hit it, and it tipped, but stood back up. So, being a curious child, she hit harder and harder, trying to see if she could make it stay down. The researchers were horrified at the "violent behavior" that this girl was showing... Surely, she must have deep psychological issues, intense hatred of clowns, or must have been brought up wrong. But no, as my mom distinctly remembers, it was simply curiosity in testing the limits of a new toy. She has since grown up and had no psychological problems or aggressive tendancies at all, despite the fears of the "researchers."
Anyway, I think that many parallels could be drawn between this story and the points made by the article author. Particularly that trying to make conclusions on what a child will become or policies to govern her based on a few minutes of observation is at best flawed, and at worst, more detrimental to society than the unsupervised child would ever be.
What I was trying to say in the original post by "doesn't need new motion input" is that it remembers things like relative motion.... how much to move the in game control for every bit that you move the controller. Much like how you can set your computer mouse pointer to move at a certain speed relative to your actual hand motions. Those type of settings should be remembered at least by the system, but shouldn't require recalibration every time the system boots.
People will take these controller around with them instead of just leaving them at home, the controller itself will be a status symbol.
I definitely wouldn't be surprised if this is both the feature and response to it that Nintendo is aiming for. What better way to market to the non-gmaing crowd than to make part of the console "cool" to carry around with you. Non gamers would see you carrying your controller around, become interested, and would not be scared away by its simple interface. Just like that Nintendo has made another sale.
Speaking of carrying your gaming gear around with you... it makes me wonder what the demo kiosks will be like. Will they encourage people to take their controllers to walmart to get new demos and downloads? Will the kiosks be running crippled software so that you can't pull out your own controller, jump in the game, and beat down some unsuspecting kid (and/or his mom)?
At any rate, I'm glad to know that there are more "secrets" to the revolution that haven't been revealed, because if we do have to wait almost another year for its release, the anticipation of the unknown will make that wait a little more bearable.
Controller can carry games, like those 5-in-1 game kits that plug directly into the TV
Actually, I think you're really on to something here. Not so much that it is a X-in-one game kit, but that the controller also comes with memory built in standard. Your controller is your memory card. It keeps track of all your controller preferences such as any motion calibrations, etc so that it will always be easy to play on any Revolution console with any game and doesn't need a new motion input each time.
Or, downloaded games can be saved to your controller. Carry the controller to a friends house, and they are available to play as soon as your friend's console finds your controller. Or treat memory the way that they did with the N64. One game that comes to mind was Tetris (forget which version) where they encouraged each player to have a memory pack in their controller so that they could "take home" the lines that they won when playing on someone else's console.
Really, including a memory function so that your controller becomes your controller wouldn't be too surprising.
Assuming the controller works great, we don't know whether the games will truly take full advantage, enough that people will say "Damn, I MUST own that." It's a big question mark.
I suggest you go back a re-read some of the gaming media articles written after Nintendo unveiled the controller. Most people writing the first round of articles did get to actually use the controller (granted, only for tech demos) and the general consesus was "Damn, I must own that." And that was just based on tech demos!
As we've seen from every past console, the first games out may not be much better than tech demos, but the games that follow will quickly take advantage of the systems capabilities. Most of the concerns about arm fatigue and accuracy have come from people responding to the initial wave of reports - from people who have NOT had a chance to use it in person. Also, consider that when the Revolution is fully unveiled in May, it will be another six+ months after the initial controller was shown to the public. Nintendo will have had time to tweak an already impressive component to be even better based on the reactions of the public (both those who have tried the controller, and those who have not).
So, while I do hate to wait until may to get all of the details, and then wait again until the console is finally released, I have absolutely no doubts that it will be an impressive machine when it launches, and will only get better with time.
It must suck to live in a rural area and have to get your fix this way.
Actually, by living in a rural area in a poor part of the state, I've found it EASIER to find the must-have systems (well, I've only been here for the Nintendo DS and sony PSP) available on launch day. I'm not sure if the K-mart two towns over still has 360's 'cause I don't need one and don't have a reason to be near there today, but I'm sure that it took them at least several hours to sell out if they did.
I, for one, welcome the "Tom, Dick, and Harry" programmers for whatever console they can afford to program for. Sure, not EVERY one will be at the standards of the big companies, but if you go back just a few years to when shareware was the way to find new computer games, you could find a lot of good stuff written by unknown and underfunded authors.
And the simple solution is to lock out all M rated games, and make them ask you for permission to boot one of your "approved" M rated games when they wish to play it. That way you are aware of how often they play (some of) their games, or whether they're playing it with friends whose parents would object to M for violence.
Well, considering that movie studio profits have started to decline as the effects/creativity ratio has skyrocketed, it's only a matter of time that the games industry will also suffer if they follow the same path.
It's already been mention in lots of other articles that Nintendo's revolution will be a lot cheaper to develop for since the focus is on gameplay and not on all the expensive shiny bits.
Sure, there will be a lot of games for the revolution that won't turn a profit, but with significantly lower development costs, there will also be a greater number of successes. With the revolution, hopefully designers will be rewarded with profits for good gameplay in whatever niche they are aiming for, rather than making a good game that fails because they had to spend way too much money to have it look pretty for the average consumer.
I was honestly only expecting maybe a few dozen of the most popular titles, so I'm pleasantly surprised at the quantity of supported games. Now if only they can work on the quality of the supported games...