Monster Hunter Three is an interesting example. It's a pretty 'hardcore' game, if you label games as such, and traditionally offered on Sony consoles. It was going to be on the PS3 this gen; but the developers looked at the multimillion dollar expense of creating it on that console, and decided to switch to the Wii. It might sell less, and yet be more profitable at the same time.
Monster Hunter Tri is actually the best selling 3rd party title in Japan among any of the home consoles of this generation. It will reach a million sold some day. So it didn't sell less than it would have on other consoles. It will stay the best selling 3rd party title until Final Fantasy XIII is out on PS3 in December.
Apart from that, I disagree with you that it will happen, and that's a good thing. I mean, some 3rd parties advertise they are making a "mature" game for the Wii like it's an amazing thing, and media are quick to come saying they are failures. Something is wrong in this picture, especially when some of them (Resident Evil) are actually big successes. There's several problems, like the gaming media wanting to convey the belief that mature games can't sell on the Wii, as if it was a problem. At least they see it as a problem. But the mature Wii audience sees through the BS, and won't buy a bad game (Madworld) just because it has a M on it. One other problem, is that all these 3rd parties believed they could fool the Wii audience with their stupid scheme. How come you start making "mature" games 2.5 years after the console was out? These 3rd parties actually expected people wanting "mature" games to wait this long for a "mature" game on Wii, while they made several elsewhere? And they expect people to buy these games, whatever their quality, even though there is no promise of more to come to those that absolutely want "mature" games? This makes no sense. Unless there is a load of "mature" games that are very good in quality coming to the console, it just won't work.
It's pretty apparent to me that some part of the gaming industry realized too late the huge market available on Wii and is struggling to take advantage of it because it's too late, while another part is afraid that these games would work on Wii, which would remove lots of resources from the competitors' home consoles for these same games.
I don't really have much to say about your argument other than I think your personal experience is somewhat subjective.
You just missed all the facts in his post then. Like lots of people mixing iPhone with "cellphones" when cellphone is needed to imply "huge market".
As evidence I'd just point out that the iPhone games market is something that is clearly on the minds of people at Sony and Nintendo. Since the iPhone has launched both Sony and Nintendo have introduces low priced, downloable tiers to their platforms (DSiWare and "snackable" games on the PSN) to compete directly with the game market on the iPhone.
iPhone game market clearly is not on the mind of Nintendo. Sony I don't know, but sure enough not Nintendo. At best, Nintendo have tried to protect itself from a potential threat coming from iPhone apps market. The game market for the iPhone sure enough is not profitable for big publisher companies doing games for DS or even PSP. Those that entered the market (mostly western companies) are struggling and realising this is a very different market. Small japanese companies like Hudson are successful. But none of downloadable apps on DSiWare compete with iPhone game market.
And in this very article, Iwata directly compares this possible download system to that of the iPhone.
No he doesn't, that's only speculation from the article author. What he does is specifically saying that the iPhone download system DOESN'T fit their customer, meaning it doesn't fit their market. That's the contrary of what you're saying.
As for the issue of how much functionality the iPhone replicates... I think it varies from title to title, but the iPhone most certainly does replicate some of the functionality of the DS. For example, the iPhone version of Civ Rev is nearly identical to the DS version.
Oh yes the iPhone does replicate some of DS functionality, but none that matters, and especially none that can make it compete with the DS. Notice that every people that share their experience of leaving their DS for their iPhone are forced to say that they don't care about any of the big number of important features that the DS has and the iPhone doesn't replicate: kid friendly, buttons (giving tactile feedback) and D-Pad, battery life, screens, game library, game reselling and used games availability,...
There won't be a monthly plan, because it was be bundled into the price upfront. I also wouldn't be surprised if the median owner rarely used their 3G connection, and were subsidizing the small minority who uses it. There's a problem when Nintendo's handheld is more expensive than their full console. Especially when a large part of the success for the Wii is attributed to it's low price point.
Where is the problem exactly with Nintendo's handheld being more expensive than their home console (it's not)? I rather see a problem when someone: - is calling Nintendo's home console a "full" console, meaning handhelds are not "full" console, - says their handheld as more expensive than their home console when it's not, - have a problem with a handheld being more expensive than a home console, - is saying without any basis that a large part of the success of the Wii is attributed to its low price (it's not, for example the XBox 360 is cheaper since a long time and never managed to sell as well, and the huge queues to play it when the Wii was revealed were not because it was cheap), - says things I've seen lots of astroturfers repeat all over the Internet.
One of the comments that came out from people reviewing the PSP Go was that the screen looked "sharper" because it was smaller with the same resolution as the PSP 3000. Wouldn't this just have the opposite effect for the DSi? As it is the DSi has a rather low resolution and I'd be worried that increasing the screen size will just make games "bigger and uglier". I'm skeptical that this is going to do anything but highlight the shortfalls of the system; it being both the oldest and the slowest architecture on the market.
You can be worried. But this isn't aimed at the tiny group of people that care about this. Instead, this is aimed at older people that don't care one bit about these silly technical things, and just want to entertain themselves. The games are not ugly to most people owning a DS, and actually most people don't care about that.
And don't care either about highlighting shortfalls. The DS is on its way to become the most successful dedicated videogame system in history, already at 110+ millions units sold in 5 years. The DSi LL won't highlight any entertainment shortfalls the DSi might have, on the contrary, it's designed to destroy some entertainment shortfalls the DS have, like not being big enough for elder people, which are becoming a huge market (baby boomers).
Except that the DS is far from being capable of the same things as modern consoles. A laptop could be set up to run a 64-bit OS with 8 gigs of RAM, store a half terabyte of data and render DX11-level graphics smoothly at 1280x800 or higher, which is what many full-sized desktops are used for today. Expensive, yes.
The DS, on the other hand, is running substantially weaker hardware than current consoles, with graphical capabilities roughly on-par with the Nintendo 64. From a technical perspective, that falls pretty far short of the major consoles.
The problem with what you're saying is exposed in the end: from a technical perspective. But the DS and the Wii are NOT sold as technical objects, they are NOT in the technology business. Wii and DS are in the entertainment business, and thus are sold as such, their value is in the entertainment realm, and this is what determines their price, not technology. And in the same way, the "modern consoles" are far from being capable of the same things as the DS, so this argument is void. Even the laptop you describe is extremely expensive, and just can't compete with the DS in entertainment value, and is unable to match the DS in value. Just in battery life and portability, the DS is a huge value compared to your laptop. Fortunately, the DS is priced far less than such a laptop, which end completely the argument on which one is better as mobile entertainment device.
Laptops are expected to be able to do the SAME thing as your desktop though(with the exception of high end current games), in portable form. Take the same tech and shrink it, it will cost more.
But no laptop can do what a desktop does for the same price, and you already thrown in an exception in your statement, that renders it irrelevant. Besides, there are several things that the DS can do that the Wii can't. So what's your point?
This analogy with computers is just plain wrong anyway.
On the other hand, Nintendo's profits fell by over 50% last quarter over the same quarter last year. Additionally, the PS3 outsold the Wii in September in the US, taking the top spot in console sales.
To read Slashdot, you'd think Nintendo is experiencing exponential profits growth, and the Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 10-to-1.
Perhaps not, but read that Reuters stupidity with huge grains of salt. Because it's full of BS. Nintendo's profits may have fell by over 50 %, but they're still far ahead of their competitors despite that. Sony game division nearly lost as much (-$600M+) as Nintendo earned in profit ($700M+) this quarter, and MS game division earned $169M in profit this same quarter. Nintendo still post quarterly profits that the other players in the game industry rarely reach in a full fiscal year. In H1, Nintendo earned $1.2B in profit, which was never earned in a full year, even during the best PS2 years by Sony where their gaming division reached $1.1B in profit.
That's to keep some perspective on these news, because it seems these media have none, which is sad. Nintendo was beating record after record and posting huge numbers, and they're just now falling back to "normal" levels, which happen to still be better than PS2 best levels.
The reason is quite simple : consoles games sell a lot more copies. Game publishers have no choice but to make a game for console with maybe a PC port. Especially for AAA titles that need huge teams of artists and programmers to develop the graphics and game engine.
I don't think the reason PC gaming is dying is because console games sell a lot more copies. It's rather because consoles are associated with games, while PC are associated with work. Few people will seek a PC for games when their favorite genre is available on consoles.
Why do console games sell more copies? One big reason is reduced piracy due to vastly better DRM with a console. The OTHER reason is much bigger : consoles are vastly cheaper to purchase than a gaming PC. Just $300, and any game works immediately without hassle. The majority of the gamers in the world don't have the patience or knowledge to screw around with the many, many incompatibilities and bugs associated with PC hardware and software.
This boils down to consoles being far more accessible than PC for gaming. Which is the point of videogame consoles.
This wasn't always the case, PC gaming was huge in the 1990s. However, consoles have 'caught up' to the point that while any given generation of consoles quickly falls behind PCs, the graphics can render to an HDTV which at least approaches the quality of a good PC monitor. Also, current consoles fully support online gaming about as well as PCs ever did.
This is nonsense. Videogame consoles started taking away the market since the NES in the 1990s, when lots of gaming companies died, EA nearly died because they refused to support consoles and were all on PC, which already had far better graphics. Graphics is not what sells games, history should have taught that to many people in the gaming industry. The NES proved it and now the Wii proved it again. People don't care that it renders with high fidelity or high definition.
The only edge PCs still have is the keyboard and mouse as a controller.
No, the PC has no edge. Keyboards and mouse are not as accessible as gamepads and wiimotes. Or rather they have an edge for a niche of people. Keyboard and mouse may be better for some game genres, but people are only interested in good enough, not in "the best". And as soon as every genre on PC can have its controls be replaced by a more accessible device on consoles, they will all die. Fortunately that's not the case yet.
Yes, PC graphics cards are better than current consoles, but that only applies to a small fraction of the available PCs.
Of course, console's new reign of domination is only going to last until cloud gaming takes off, which should be over the next few years.
LOL no. Consoles always dominated since the NES, and graphics are not the most important thing for games. I wonder how people can still say that while Nintendo DS is cleaning up and people constantly talk about iPhone games.
So, you are saying the 8-bit Nintendo is all we ever needed. That's the argument you are making and it is stupid.
No, actually that's YOUR stupid argument. He is saying that 8-bit Nintendo game were still quality games, and you're saying they can't be. That's a very stupid argument to make, when the 8-bit Nintendo games still sell well on Virtual Console on the Wii.
A more capable system allow for better graphics that can give a more immersive environment as well as having improved AI or capabilities.
Yes, but a less powerful system allows for exactly the same things.
Every retard knows that better graphics != a better game. But it seems counter intuitive to people on here that increasing the hardware specs can give a developer more options to create a deeper game.
Experience has shown that the counter intuitive thing is the correct one. What you're saying is true in a vacuum, but in real life, there's a thing called money that prevents you from reaching your utopia.
Any artist can make great art with the tools of their time. But you seem to argue against improving those tools...that the tools we have now are good enough. Could you really have Half-Life or Mass Effect or Bioshock on an 8-bit Nintendo? Maybe, but it would not be as fun because it would be so limited. It would be like telling Mozart that all he could use is a tuba and a triangle.
So much BS. How do you know it would not be as fun because it would be so limited? Artists always manage to manage past the limitations of their tools, that's creativity. Because you're unable of being creative enough to bypass the tools' limitations doesn't mean nobody can. That's this mindset that made Sony, MS, and nearly everyone in the game industry dismiss Nintendo as irrelevant this generation, only to be destroyed. The game industry is not technology industry: having less powerful hardware doesn't prevent you to succeed, at all. Seems like lots of people still have not understood that the game industry is not a technology industry: it's entertainment. The same entertainment industry where it doesn't matter if your movie is in mono, black and white, or other "limited" technology, if the content is better. That's why the Nintendo DS is cleaning it up, despite being "limited". Thus why the OP is plain wrong in thinking that more power will bring more quality.
Eye candy won't distract Nintendo from anything. The OP is just completely wrong:
The 'Nintendo TS,' as it has been dubbed, will apparently be ready for a late winter 2010 release and should put a spark in the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo's developers the power to bring higher quality games to the platform.
Seems like some people still have learned nothing from this generation of consoles (handheld and home). Power won't bring any quality in games, games do not improve in quality because your hardware is more powerful. If anything, power hinders console developers ability to make quality games, as the budget for the game doesn't improve like the hardware's power, and they are tempted to have higher quality graphics, which takes away money and talent needed to make quality games.
We often look at the past with rose-tinted sunglasses.
When we were children, some of us grew up with Nintendo. The NES gave us incredible gameplay. We fell in love with the company.The SNES brought even more to the table. Many of us are also plagued by the Tetris theme, thanks to the Gameboy.
Unfortunately, the reality is much more bitter. Nintendo has done some pretty rotten things since the very first version of their system. Whether it was the 10NES lock-out chip, their censorship policies, their anti-competitive attitude (which landed them fines in the European Union in 2002 thanks to how they ran their business from 1991-1998), Nintendo has a long track-record of "doing evil". We only never realized it because, at the time, most of us were children and only cared about getting that next fun game.
Compared to the way things were then, all of this is unsurprising.
I don't know the details of the european fine part, which I don't doubt was evil, as region locking is mainly due to the european part of Nintendo. But every other move they made have a reason that is everything but evil, and that was made to fight against evil. Looking at the Nintendo past with blinders won't lead you anywhere either.
Nintendo launched the NES after the big videogame crash involving Atari. Nintendo single handedly revived the videogame industry with the NES. In order to not repeat the great crash, which was caused by everyone putting tons of crap in huge quantities on the market (like ET), they limited how many games each company could release each year on the market, so that only the best quality games are put out. Keep in mind that now that they stopped doing that, as they are still demonized by ignorant AC like you for this, the very same problem was seen in holidays 2008, as the good games were lost among all the crappy ones.
The censorship policies and their paranoid attitudes is following their discovering of how western business were doing business, with things possible like Atari suing them without any reason, just to slow them down, and it worked. They don't want to ever be in a position to be attacked like this again, and just seeing the launch of the Wii shows clearly why they're right to be paranoid. The announces of lawsuits or potential lawsuits are numerous: people breaking their TV (despite the countless warnings) or harming their friends, people hurting themselves, people bricking their console, patent trolls on their controller,... If not for their paranoia, Nintendo would be dead by now.
If we believe what MS implied with "console sells 75 % of their LTD (final) number at 199$ or below", then the Wii is setup to sell 200 millions units worldwide. Wow!
I have a Wii, and if I were to buy one now I wouldn't pay more than $149. When you compare it to the Xbox 360 Arcade at the same price, it's a no brainer for most people - get the Xbox.
It's a no brainer for most people like you, which must be a really tiny part of the market, as it had basically no effect.
The draw of the Wii was that it was cheaper than the Big 2. Now, not so much.
You mean more than a year ago? The XB360 was cheaper than the Wii for more than a year, and it didn't do anything, as the Wii still sells far better. That's without counting the constant rebates from MS on holidays in Europe, and the Wii still crushed the XB360 in sales. Which contradicts your argument that the draw of the Wii was that it was cheaper than the Big 2.
You do understand that the console business model is to sell the hardware at a loss and make all the profit on game licensing, don't you?
You know you have someone who discovered console games with Playstation when you read that. No, this has never been the console business model, only the Sony business model. There were console manufacturers before Sony that never did that, and are still not doing that. Only big corporations are able to survive with such a bad business model. Sega tried to do the same to compete and was forced to leave the hardware console market.
I'd like to correct this because it's wrong. The Wii's target audience is everyone. Even the age 12 through 40 males who enjoy the satisfaction of a good online headshot. The only ones that don't want to participate are 3rd parties.
Nintendo is targeting gaming, and must be the only gaming company left. The "traditional gamer" people are talking about are not traditional gamers at all, they are people who discovered games with the PS1. These people are unable to recognize gaming when they see it. Traditional gamers discovered games with arcades, Atari 2600 or NES. The Playstation gamers don't know anything about games outside the Playstation games and believe that cinematic and 3D games are the sole things that can be called games.
Actually, the Wii is a revival of gaming, and is the sole company saving gaming by itself, against the current nonsense in the game industry. The NSMB Wii that is coming doesn't not repel old Mario gamers, it's done to appeal to them too, to include everyone.
The Wii games library is not any more a weakness than the PS2 library was, as the PS2 library was also terrible. Trying to make a point with nonsense like saying that Smash Brothers isn't a Wii game won't work (except perhaps on Slashdot where most of people were ridiculing the Wii name when it was announced), and saying there's no Zelda for Wii is stupid too. Mario Kart has become a decent party game. It's incredible how the Wii destroyed the brain of its haters this gen. The same poster that suddenly put Mario Kart in the party game genre (which is nonsense) is saying the Wii has no racing game. It's called Mario Kart and sold more than most games out there in a very little time : the game is 1,5 years old and is going on selling 18 millions units if not more. But it's only a decent party games to some people. Knowing that, you know the opinion of such people can't be reliable or representative of anything but a niche of elitists or people with an agenda.
People like that don't know anything either, they say the Wii has no racers (and yet they cited Mario Kart) or decent RPG (and yet there are several like Fire Emblem, Tales of,...). There's a huge credibility problem, accentuated by citing top ranking games on Gamespot (for the Wii I suppose), and saying half of them we were tired playing 10 years ago. So Gamespot is not reliable to rate games, so why cite Gamespot?
It's funny that it goes on with fitness games. I don't know EA Active, but saying Wii Fit is fucking terrible is nonsense, and I'm confident it is a very good game, with 15+ millions people at least agreeing with me.
The Wii has the highest number of third party million sellers this generation.
No, there aren't enough good quality 3rd party games on the Wii for that. But the Wii has the highest number of 3rd party games sold already worldwide, despite the XB360 having 1 year headstart on the market.
The game developers probably have realized that even though the Wii has a better market penetration, the people that have it at home just use it for WiiFit and similar stuff, not gaming. Nintendo is the only one gaining from the Wii sales.
Actually, the game developers are going out of business, see their studio closed or are losing tons of money, while Nintendo, the only one making only good games for its console, rakes in the cash. So to me that just means the game developers look mor like very stupid entities that deserve what happens to them. Since the launch of the Wii, the choices are still the same: support the console correctly to go up, or go down.
Will we (wii?) ever see the price come down? It has been on the market for almost 3 years now and the price has yet to change.
Then pray for Nintendo's 3 hit combo games to not improve the sales of their console at all. Then perhaps, if they're not still destroying the competition till march 2010, you will have a chance to see a price cut. Scratch that, they would have to be selling the least of the three consoles for Nintendo to do sth about the price. BTW, the 3 hit combo games are Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit + and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Nintendo expects each of them to sell 10 millions units for the record, and WSR (the only one already released) is well on its way to do just that.
Except for the fact that you have to use these tools to even be able to launch any homebrew application. The fact is that you can't run any homebrew on the Wii without first taking the risks you're talking about.
You do NOT need to take those risks just to run homebrew, and running homebrew is pretty much completely safe these days (there are always some theoretical risks risks, of course, but the practical incidence of issues is just about zero).
I agree, but I'm talking to you about the exploits used to install HBC or BannerBomb in the first place. This is the same step needed for installing both homebrew and piracy tools. If Nintendo wants to stop piracy tools, that's this very first things they have to stop, and it then could stop the installation of things like HBC too. That's what they've done till now, but homebrew people found ways to go around that up till now if I'm not mistaken. Killing the point of entry (the exploits) is the only viable solution IMO. The ROI of going after specific homebrew (err, piracy) tools is not worth it in their opinion I think, given their actions till now.
Playing imports with homebrew is perfectly safe, since it only involves a replacement game loader that doesn't check for the region (it's something optional, not enforced by the IOS security software). This is totally safe (and useless to warez games).[...]
Very interesting. Actually, what I feared was my HBC being removed, and then impossibility to reinstall it. Semms like it's got in check. I admit I was interested by the HDD loading feature in case my Wii DVD drive dies, but given that I get less functions from the tools, I'm not even using it anymore.
The latest homebrew enablers that bypass the latest Nintendo patches are even more dangerous. So I don't buy what you say.
That's ridiculous. With the Twilight Hack, you had to copy a save game to your Wii. With Bannerbomb, it runs straight from SD. If you throw any homebrew app together with Bannerbomb on an SD card, it will run without having to install or modify a single thing in your NAND. You can't get any safer than that.
OK. I actually installed the HBC since the Zelda save time, I didn't have the incentive to install with the new way since I have no use for it for now.
And to install the homebrew channel, ironically you also need to use the VC utility that can be used for piracy.
Are you one of those clueless folks who is using HBC.wad? That's an illegal distribution of HBC (the license does not allow modification or redistribution), not supported by us, and highly stupid. Please stop infringing on our copyright and use the installer instead. It runs on unmodified Wiis straight from Bannerbomb, it's infinitely safer than the crap WAD Manager that you're using, it doesn't require any IOS patching, it makes no permanent changes to your Wii other than just installing HBC, and it actually installs a newer version of HBC.
Please, I used the old method, I never used any HBC.wad, and I was actually talking about the exploits, sorry for not being specific enough. I used the method at the time on the Wiki of HBC folks, so I don't think I made anything wrong. I'm saying the same exploits are used in the first place and Nintendo has to patch these exploits to prevent piracy. Won't this also then prevent installing HBC? Which I don't care as long as it stays there, to play my import games. You seem strongly against the HDD loading tools, which I can understand, as I was just concerned when I saw it work. Given that I don't even use it, I think I will just let it go anyway, don't worry about that:). I have nothing to fear about bricking my Wii with the new tools if I understand you correctly, and I can even update my HBC w
It may have been hard before some of the current tools, but literally it was following a guide of 10 steps, dragging and dropping files to an SD card, and then pointing with my Wiimote.
The big problem is that it's so easy now. Anyway, my point is that the same countermeasure used against piracy work against homebrew, because homebrew use the same flaws to get installed, than piracy tools. Nintendo has no way and no incentive to differentiate who is who.
However, I am still tempted to get the backup stuff working on an old USB HDD and putting all of our games on it. It's not like we have a ton of games (maybe 20), but I'm mostly concerned about wear and tear on the discs. My kids are pretty well trained in handling DVDs, CDs, game discs, but company often is not. I'd only backup and run from USB HDD the stuff I own, but the problem with that I hear is that the way those loaders work is "illegal" even if you are using it for backup. Somehow the HBC claims not to be "illegal," but it still voids your warranty.
I've installed the tool for the same reason, and would actually use it if it registrered my game time and other things like games played from the DVD drive. That's not for me to decide if HBC is legal or not though, and I don't care.
Playing DVDs and watching Youtube is cool on the Wii. I don't get why Nintendo doesn't license that and blow AppleTV and that sort out of the water since they've got a huge marketshare? I don't have a major need for this as we've already got a killer MythTV setup, but I love that the Wii is ultra portable. Not that we'd take it anywhere, as if we're going on vacation, we can take a break from all of that.
Nintendo is the sole console company left, thus why they don't concentrate on giving you features that don't push you back to games, or protect them from being disrupted by other games company (like those that make flash games). That's why they won't develop a strong offering in the TV space. They're competing with every other entertainment business: TV, theaters, movies, music, photos,... Thus why they will try to make you use your Wii as soon as you want to have one of these entertainment, but won't put the full feature on their console. If their console has an exposure every time you want some entertainment, you will go back to play games more often, something like that.
Anyway, my point is that one can't say the Homebrew channel and homebrew in general == piracy any more than BitTorrent, a web browser, ftp or Google does for that matter.
I'm not saying that, I'm saying that there's no incentive for Nintendo to see it any other way. To take your analogy, crowbars have many uses yes, but when most of the crowbar users use them to break in your property, and you don't have any way to separate those that broke in from the others, what do you do?
The fact is that the only thing separating the homebrew tools from piracy tools is what the user deem moral or not. The exact same tools used for homebrew are used for piracy.
Ha ha no. A homebrew tool is one that takes an executable file and runs it. A piracy tool is an executable file that fucks up half of your system, has a 50% chance of bricking it, then plays pirated disc games or installs pirated VC games.
Except for the fact that you have to use these tools to even be able to launch any homebrew application. The fact is that you can't run any homebrew on the Wii without first taking the risks you're talking about. It has been streamlined, but you're basically modifying the Wii's firmware, which is were the risk of bricking your console comes from. The latest homebrew enablers that bypass the latest Nintendo patches are even more dangerous. So I don't buy what you say. I agree that to play games from HDD requires installing a different firmware, but that's basically the same thing you're doing when installing the homebrew channel. And to install the homebrew channel, ironically you also need to use the VC utility that can be used for piracy. My point is that the same methods are used for enabling homebrew and enabling piracy, and Nintendo has no time to waste to differentiate who is doing what with these tools.
Tools to play copied games aren't "homebrew tools", they're piracy tools. You're confusing "backups" with homebrew. "Backup" tools were developed for and by pirates, and the "backup" argument is a thin screen that they hide behind. I'd say less than 1% of their users truly use the tools for only backing up games. VC piracy utilities have a 0% legitimate use rate, since VC games can already be backed up to an SD card using Nintendo's system menu.
I agree with you, except on the part that these tools to play games from disc where only done to play pirated games.
As for modchips, consider this: they are hugely popular and there is a huge industry behind them (they are more popular than softmods), and yet all of them are trivially detectable by software. All Nintendo could do is push out a software update and instantly break every single modchip out there, causing mayhem among the piracy community. One little update. And yet they haven't done so.
The problem is that Nintendo is customers first, and would never take the risk of destroying legitimate consoles. Also, the history of Nintendo in the USA is riddled from the start with lawsuits, and they're very cautious about them, thus why they even warn users of these modchips that an update can brick their hardware. Nintendo integrated very well the american way of doing business, since bitter Atari slowed them down considerably when they saw Nintendo succeed where Atari failed. Again, I can't blame Nintendo for this.
I understand every one of these moves that Nintendo make, and I think they're all legitimate. This despite the fact that I could no longer play my foreign games (like No More Heroes with blood instead of coins) if homebrew would no longer work.
NONE of the console manufacturers have even a measurable amount of respect for Fair Use. NONE. As far as they are concerned, they own the hardware 100% and should be able to 100% control every single one of your actions with their product as if they are in the room holding your hand. That game you bought gets a little too scratched? That cart get dropped in the pool? Well FUCK YOU. Buy another.
I see what you try to do, but your argument is stupid and wrong anyway. If what you said was true, they would never allow you to download games you buy online as many times as you want. Erased that online game because you need place on your Wii? You can download it back as many times as you want. The sole reason that they don't allow that on physical properties is because they fear you would get several legitimate copies when you actually paid for one. Did you even try getting a new copy? Usually, a cart dropped in the pool will still work once dried up. And usually you can phone them and arrange for you to get back a new copy if you send the malfunctioning copy back to them. Perhaps not in every country, I don't know.
It's just wishful thinking they are going to try to find a middle ground. They are just as extreme and inflexible as hard core pirates who will never compensate anyone for any intellectual property whatsoever.
It might as well be religious fundamentalism. Your reasonable position has no place here.
You just come off to me as someone trying to put them on the same level as hardcore pirates, thus deeming them unworthy of not being pirated. That's just a straw man to me.
No, really. The've shown that they believe that Wii homebrew == Wii piracy (having attacked generic homebrew almost exclusively, not just piracy tools, and considering that they harassed us when we attempted to notify them of a security issue), and yet it's been over 5 months since the latest security-related update. Somehow I don't get the felling that Nintendo is interested in combating Wii piracy very much (it's not like they've done a whole lot to stop modchips either).
So somewhat, you not getting the feeling that Nintendo is interested in combating piracy equates to "They've given up on Wii piracy"? Seriously? Looks like complete BS to me. The fact is that the only thing separating the homebrew tools from piracy tools is what the user deem moral or not. The exact same tools used for homebrew are used for piracy.
I use the homebrew tools, and really, if it wasn't for the fact that my play time on a game is not registered in the Wii when I use them, I would always use the homebrew tools to play my games, that I have all ripped, just in case. And you can see how tiny of an argument I have already to not use these tools (but they're still installed). Once someone starts continuously using the homebrew tools, all hell breaks loose, as they will be more and more tempted to download some games "just to see". The sole thing preventing me from downloading some games and then play them on the Wii is in my head. If I didn't have enough money or if I played lots of games all the time, I guarantee I would have downloaded lots of games already.
So to me it's no wonder that for Nintendo, Wii homebrew == Wii piracy because that's exactly what it is. You can't scan people's heads to make a difference between pirates and legitimate homebrew users. And I'm sure there are far more pirates than homebrew users. If Nintendo didn't put region lock in their console, I wouldn't even have considered homebrew. This is one of their mistake. That's the sole thing that pushed me to install homebrew.
Then again, modchipping your console is on another level entirely, and so I understand that they don't get out of their way to stop these people, because the return on investment is far too ridiculous.
Even installing homebrew is not for the faint of heart, and most people don't even understand how all of that work and don't care. I'm even sure that most people installing homebrew on their console don't understand at all what they're doing, which is evidenced by all the video tutorials I've seen people made just to install homebrew.
All of this is far more difficult than buying a flash card for the Nintendo DS.
In this thread we get to read over and over how Slashdotters would run a gaming company, if they ran a gaming company.
Putting a headline like this on a web site like this is a guaranteed flamebait page impression generator. With a readership composed of mostly help desk employees who program in their spare time and aspire to be engineers the natural jealosy of more socially adept types, like marketing people, can be easily manipulated. Point out that the most comercially successful game company in the world budgets 3x more for marketing, where geeks don't work, than development, where they do, and you are sure to get comment after comment saying this is the wrong thing to do. Comments from people who couldn't manage the business end of a Snoopy snow cone pushcart.
I don't know what's more pathetic: this stupid BS or the fact that so much ignorance was modded up. Geeks don't mind being corrected when they are wrong, so I hope that's why you got modded up, because they actually believed what you said. The fact is that EA is losing hundreds of millions of dollars (to be on the safe side, but I think it's billions) every fiscal years since several years now. Actually, the most commercially successful game company is Nintendo, and to add insult to injury, its CEO, Satoru Iwata, is a former developer. And I bet he makes more than the marketing people in his company, which makes billions of dollars of profit every fiscal year since several years.
So yeah, sure, everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what Slashdotters think of EA's business decisions. EA makes a mint. EA is sure to keep turning out games. EA isn't closing shop or laying off or in danger of never getting a game to stores. EA knows that staying in business takes more than making great games and hoping people show up to buy them.
Cue more out of depth stupidity.
LOL! EA actually closed off several studios, laid off lots of its workforce every year since 2007, and is going through a huge restructuration. EA was nearly destroyed when the NES came out decades ago, and apparently people never learn, as they did the same mistake AGAIN this generation with the Wii (and DS), that they refused to support correctly. When you cut off 50 % of the market from your revenue, to go to games of grandeur for which there isn't a big enough market to support them, this is what happens. But don't let facts go in the way of your argument. Or was it a joke? AC these days...
Slashdot Mirror
Monster Hunter Three is an interesting example. It's a pretty 'hardcore' game, if you label games as such, and traditionally offered on Sony consoles. It was going to be on the PS3 this gen; but the developers looked at the multimillion dollar expense of creating it on that console, and decided to switch to the Wii. It might sell less, and yet be more profitable at the same time.
Monster Hunter Tri is actually the best selling 3rd party title in Japan among any of the home consoles of this generation. It will reach a million sold some day. So it didn't sell less than it would have on other consoles. It will stay the best selling 3rd party title until Final Fantasy XIII is out on PS3 in December.
Apart from that, I disagree with you that it will happen, and that's a good thing.
I mean, some 3rd parties advertise they are making a "mature" game for the Wii like it's an amazing thing, and media are quick to come saying they are failures.
Something is wrong in this picture, especially when some of them (Resident Evil) are actually big successes.
There's several problems, like the gaming media wanting to convey the belief that mature games can't sell on the Wii, as if it was a problem. At least they see it as a problem.
But the mature Wii audience sees through the BS, and won't buy a bad game (Madworld) just because it has a M on it.
One other problem, is that all these 3rd parties believed they could fool the Wii audience with their stupid scheme. How come you start making "mature" games 2.5 years after the console was out? These 3rd parties actually expected people wanting "mature" games to wait this long for a "mature" game on Wii, while they made several elsewhere? And they expect people to buy these games, whatever their quality, even though there is no promise of more to come to those that absolutely want "mature" games?
This makes no sense. Unless there is a load of "mature" games that are very good in quality coming to the console, it just won't work.
It's pretty apparent to me that some part of the gaming industry realized too late the huge market available on Wii and is struggling to take advantage of it because it's too late, while another part is afraid that these games would work on Wii, which would remove lots of resources from the competitors' home consoles for these same games.
I don't really have much to say about your argument other than I think your personal experience is somewhat subjective.
You just missed all the facts in his post then.
Like lots of people mixing iPhone with "cellphones" when cellphone is needed to imply "huge market".
As evidence I'd just point out that the iPhone games market is something that is clearly on the minds of people at Sony and Nintendo. Since the iPhone has launched both Sony and Nintendo have introduces low priced, downloable tiers to their platforms (DSiWare and "snackable" games on the PSN) to compete directly with the game market on the iPhone.
iPhone game market clearly is not on the mind of Nintendo. Sony I don't know, but sure enough not Nintendo. At best, Nintendo have tried to protect itself from a potential threat coming from iPhone apps market. The game market for the iPhone sure enough is not profitable for big publisher companies doing games for DS or even PSP. Those that entered the market (mostly western companies) are struggling and realising this is a very different market.
Small japanese companies like Hudson are successful. But none of downloadable apps on DSiWare compete with iPhone game market.
And in this very article, Iwata directly compares this possible download system to that of the iPhone.
No he doesn't, that's only speculation from the article author. What he does is specifically saying that the iPhone download system DOESN'T fit their customer, meaning it doesn't fit their market.
That's the contrary of what you're saying.
As for the issue of how much functionality the iPhone replicates... I think it varies from title to title, but the iPhone most certainly does replicate some of the functionality of the DS. For example, the iPhone version of Civ Rev is nearly identical to the DS version.
Oh yes the iPhone does replicate some of DS functionality, but none that matters, and especially none that can make it compete with the DS. Notice that every people that share their experience of leaving their DS for their iPhone are forced to say that they don't care about any of the big number of important features that the DS has and the iPhone doesn't replicate: kid friendly, buttons (giving tactile feedback) and D-Pad, battery life, screens, game library, game reselling and used games availability, ...
There won't be a monthly plan, because it was be bundled into the price upfront. I also wouldn't be surprised if the median owner rarely used their 3G connection, and were subsidizing the small minority who uses it. There's a problem when Nintendo's handheld is more expensive than their full console. Especially when a large part of the success for the Wii is attributed to it's low price point.
Where is the problem exactly with Nintendo's handheld being more expensive than their home console (it's not)?
I rather see a problem when someone:
- is calling Nintendo's home console a "full" console, meaning handhelds are not "full" console,
- says their handheld as more expensive than their home console when it's not,
- have a problem with a handheld being more expensive than a home console,
- is saying without any basis that a large part of the success of the Wii is attributed to its low price (it's not, for example the XBox 360 is cheaper since a long time and never managed to sell as well, and the huge queues to play it when the Wii was revealed were not because it was cheap),
- says things I've seen lots of astroturfers repeat all over the Internet.
One of the comments that came out from people reviewing the PSP Go was that the screen looked "sharper" because it was smaller with the same resolution as the PSP 3000. Wouldn't this just have the opposite effect for the DSi? As it is the DSi has a rather low resolution and I'd be worried that increasing the screen size will just make games "bigger and uglier". I'm skeptical that this is going to do anything but highlight the shortfalls of the system; it being both the oldest and the slowest architecture on the market.
You can be worried. But this isn't aimed at the tiny group of people that care about this.
Instead, this is aimed at older people that don't care one bit about these silly technical things, and just want to entertain themselves.
The games are not ugly to most people owning a DS, and actually most people don't care about that.
And don't care either about highlighting shortfalls. The DS is on its way to become the most successful dedicated videogame system in history, already at 110+ millions units sold in 5 years. The DSi LL won't highlight any entertainment shortfalls the DSi might have, on the contrary, it's designed to destroy some entertainment shortfalls the DS have, like not being big enough for elder people, which are becoming a huge market (baby boomers).
Except that the DS is far from being capable of the same things as modern consoles. A laptop could be set up to run a 64-bit OS with 8 gigs of RAM, store a half terabyte of data and render DX11-level graphics smoothly at 1280x800 or higher, which is what many full-sized desktops are used for today. Expensive, yes.
The DS, on the other hand, is running substantially weaker hardware than current consoles, with graphical capabilities roughly on-par with the Nintendo 64. From a technical perspective, that falls pretty far short of the major consoles.
The problem with what you're saying is exposed in the end: from a technical perspective.
But the DS and the Wii are NOT sold as technical objects, they are NOT in the technology business. Wii and DS are in the entertainment business, and thus are sold as such, their value is in the entertainment realm, and this is what determines their price, not technology.
And in the same way, the "modern consoles" are far from being capable of the same things as the DS, so this argument is void.
Even the laptop you describe is extremely expensive, and just can't compete with the DS in entertainment value, and is unable to match the DS in value. Just in battery life and portability, the DS is a huge value compared to your laptop. Fortunately, the DS is priced far less than such a laptop, which end completely the argument on which one is better as mobile entertainment device.
Laptops are expected to be able to do the SAME thing as your desktop though(with the exception of high end current games), in portable form. Take the same tech and shrink it, it will cost more.
But no laptop can do what a desktop does for the same price, and you already thrown in an exception in your statement, that renders it irrelevant.
Besides, there are several things that the DS can do that the Wii can't.
So what's your point?
This analogy with computers is just plain wrong anyway.
On the other hand, Nintendo's profits fell by over 50% last quarter over the same quarter last year. Additionally, the PS3 outsold the Wii in September in the US, taking the top spot in console sales.
To read Slashdot, you'd think Nintendo is experiencing exponential profits growth, and the Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 10-to-1.
Perhaps not, but read that Reuters stupidity with huge grains of salt.
Because it's full of BS.
Nintendo's profits may have fell by over 50 %, but they're still far ahead of their competitors despite that.
Sony game division nearly lost as much (-$600M+) as Nintendo earned in profit ($700M+) this quarter, and MS game division earned $169M in profit this same quarter.
Nintendo still post quarterly profits that the other players in the game industry rarely reach in a full fiscal year.
In H1, Nintendo earned $1.2B in profit, which was never earned in a full year, even during the best PS2 years by Sony where their gaming division reached $1.1B in profit.
That's to keep some perspective on these news, because it seems these media have none, which is sad. Nintendo was beating record after record and posting huge numbers, and they're just now falling back to "normal" levels, which happen to still be better than PS2 best levels.
And, of course, PC gaming is dying...
The reason is quite simple : consoles games sell a lot more copies. Game publishers have no choice but to make a game for console with maybe a PC port. Especially for AAA titles that need huge teams of artists and programmers to develop the graphics and game engine.
I don't think the reason PC gaming is dying is because console games sell a lot more copies.
It's rather because consoles are associated with games, while PC are associated with work.
Few people will seek a PC for games when their favorite genre is available on consoles.
Why do console games sell more copies? One big reason is reduced piracy due to vastly better DRM with a console. The OTHER reason is much bigger : consoles are vastly cheaper to purchase than a gaming PC. Just $300, and any game works immediately without hassle. The majority of the gamers in the world don't have the patience or knowledge to screw around with the many, many incompatibilities and bugs associated with PC hardware and software.
This boils down to consoles being far more accessible than PC for gaming. Which is the point of videogame consoles.
This wasn't always the case, PC gaming was huge in the 1990s. However, consoles have 'caught up' to the point that while any given generation of consoles quickly falls behind PCs, the graphics can render to an HDTV which at least approaches the quality of a good PC monitor. Also, current consoles fully support online gaming about as well as PCs ever did.
This is nonsense. Videogame consoles started taking away the market since the NES in the 1990s, when lots of gaming companies died, EA nearly died because they refused to support consoles and were all on PC, which already had far better graphics.
Graphics is not what sells games, history should have taught that to many people in the gaming industry. The NES proved it and now the Wii proved it again. People don't care that it renders with high fidelity or high definition.
The only edge PCs still have is the keyboard and mouse as a controller.
No, the PC has no edge. Keyboards and mouse are not as accessible as gamepads and wiimotes.
Or rather they have an edge for a niche of people. Keyboard and mouse may be better for some game genres, but people are only interested in good enough, not in "the best". And as soon as every genre on PC can have its controls be replaced by a more accessible device on consoles, they will all die. Fortunately that's not the case yet.
Yes, PC graphics cards are better than current consoles, but that only applies to a small fraction of the available PCs.
Of course, console's new reign of domination is only going to last until cloud gaming takes off, which should be over the next few years.
LOL no. Consoles always dominated since the NES, and graphics are not the most important thing for games. I wonder how people can still say that while Nintendo DS is cleaning up and people constantly talk about iPhone games.
So, you are saying the 8-bit Nintendo is all we ever needed. That's the argument you are making and it is stupid.
No, actually that's YOUR stupid argument.
He is saying that 8-bit Nintendo game were still quality games, and you're saying they can't be.
That's a very stupid argument to make, when the 8-bit Nintendo games still sell well on Virtual Console on the Wii.
A more capable system allow for better graphics that can give a more immersive environment as well as having improved AI or capabilities.
Yes, but a less powerful system allows for exactly the same things.
Every retard knows that better graphics != a better game. But it seems counter intuitive to people on here that increasing the hardware specs can give a developer more options to create a deeper game.
Experience has shown that the counter intuitive thing is the correct one.
What you're saying is true in a vacuum, but in real life, there's a thing called money that prevents you from reaching your utopia.
Any artist can make great art with the tools of their time. But you seem to argue against improving those tools...that the tools we have now are good enough. Could you really have Half-Life or Mass Effect or Bioshock on an 8-bit Nintendo? Maybe, but it would not be as fun because it would be so limited. It would be like telling Mozart that all he could use is a tuba and a triangle.
So much BS. How do you know it would not be as fun because it would be so limited?
Artists always manage to manage past the limitations of their tools, that's creativity. Because you're unable of being creative enough to bypass the tools' limitations doesn't mean nobody can.
That's this mindset that made Sony, MS, and nearly everyone in the game industry dismiss Nintendo as irrelevant this generation, only to be destroyed. The game industry is not technology industry: having less powerful hardware doesn't prevent you to succeed, at all.
Seems like lots of people still have not understood that the game industry is not a technology industry: it's entertainment.
The same entertainment industry where it doesn't matter if your movie is in mono, black and white, or other "limited" technology, if the content is better. That's why the Nintendo DS is cleaning it up, despite being "limited".
Thus why the OP is plain wrong in thinking that more power will bring more quality.
Eye candy won't distract Nintendo from anything.
The OP is just completely wrong:
The 'Nintendo TS,' as it has been dubbed, will apparently be ready for a late winter 2010 release and should put a spark in the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo's developers the power to bring higher quality games to the platform.
Seems like some people still have learned nothing from this generation of consoles (handheld and home).
Power won't bring any quality in games, games do not improve in quality because your hardware is more powerful.
If anything, power hinders console developers ability to make quality games, as the budget for the game doesn't improve like the hardware's power, and they are tempted to have higher quality graphics, which takes away money and talent needed to make quality games.
We often look at the past with rose-tinted sunglasses.
When we were children, some of us grew up with Nintendo. The NES gave us incredible gameplay. We fell in love with the company.The SNES brought even more to the table. Many of us are also plagued by the Tetris theme, thanks to the Gameboy.
Unfortunately, the reality is much more bitter. Nintendo has done some pretty rotten things since the very first version of their system. Whether it was the 10NES lock-out chip, their censorship policies, their anti-competitive attitude (which landed them fines in the European Union in 2002 thanks to how they ran their business from 1991-1998), Nintendo has a long track-record of "doing evil". We only never realized it because, at the time, most of us were children and only cared about getting that next fun game.
Compared to the way things were then, all of this is unsurprising.
I don't know the details of the european fine part, which I don't doubt was evil, as region locking is mainly due to the european part of Nintendo.
But every other move they made have a reason that is everything but evil, and that was made to fight against evil.
Looking at the Nintendo past with blinders won't lead you anywhere either.
Nintendo launched the NES after the big videogame crash involving Atari.
Nintendo single handedly revived the videogame industry with the NES. In order to not repeat the great crash, which was caused by everyone putting tons of crap in huge quantities on the market (like ET), they limited how many games each company could release each year on the market, so that only the best quality games are put out. Keep in mind that now that they stopped doing that, as they are still demonized by ignorant AC like you for this, the very same problem was seen in holidays 2008, as the good games were lost among all the crappy ones.
The censorship policies and their paranoid attitudes is following their discovering of how western business were doing business, with things possible like Atari suing them without any reason, just to slow them down, and it worked. They don't want to ever be in a position to be attacked like this again, and just seeing the launch of the Wii shows clearly why they're right to be paranoid. The announces of lawsuits or potential lawsuits are numerous: people breaking their TV (despite the countless warnings) or harming their friends, people hurting themselves, people bricking their console, patent trolls on their controller, ...
If not for their paranoia, Nintendo would be dead by now.
If we believe what MS implied with "console sells 75 % of their LTD (final) number at 199$ or below", then the Wii is setup to sell 200 millions units worldwide.
Wow!
I have a Wii, and if I were to buy one now I wouldn't pay more than $149. When you compare it to the Xbox 360 Arcade at the same price, it's a no brainer for most people - get the Xbox.
It's a no brainer for most people like you, which must be a really tiny part of the market, as it had basically no effect.
The draw of the Wii was that it was cheaper than the Big 2. Now, not so much.
You mean more than a year ago?
The XB360 was cheaper than the Wii for more than a year, and it didn't do anything, as the Wii still sells far better. That's without counting the constant rebates from MS on holidays in Europe, and the Wii still crushed the XB360 in sales. Which contradicts your argument that the draw of the Wii was that it was cheaper than the Big 2.
You do understand that the console business model is to sell the hardware at a loss and make all the profit on game licensing, don't you?
You know you have someone who discovered console games with Playstation when you read that.
No, this has never been the console business model, only the Sony business model. There were console manufacturers before Sony that never did that, and are still not doing that.
Only big corporations are able to survive with such a bad business model. Sega tried to do the same to compete and was forced to leave the hardware console market.
I'd like to correct this because it's wrong.
The Wii's target audience is everyone. Even the age 12 through 40 males who enjoy the satisfaction of a good online headshot.
The only ones that don't want to participate are 3rd parties.
Nintendo is targeting gaming, and must be the only gaming company left.
The "traditional gamer" people are talking about are not traditional gamers at all, they are people who discovered games with the PS1. These people are unable to recognize gaming when they see it. Traditional gamers discovered games with arcades, Atari 2600 or NES. The Playstation gamers don't know anything about games outside the Playstation games and believe that cinematic and 3D games are the sole things that can be called games.
Actually, the Wii is a revival of gaming, and is the sole company saving gaming by itself, against the current nonsense in the game industry.
The NSMB Wii that is coming doesn't not repel old Mario gamers, it's done to appeal to them too, to include everyone.
bla bla I'm the center of the universe, my taste is what is true in gaming, I know all my wrong Nintendo clichés by heart, bla bla
The Wii games library is not any more a weakness than the PS2 library was, as the PS2 library was also terrible.
Trying to make a point with nonsense like saying that Smash Brothers isn't a Wii game won't work (except perhaps on Slashdot where most of people were ridiculing the Wii name when it was announced), and saying there's no Zelda for Wii is stupid too.
Mario Kart has become a decent party game. It's incredible how the Wii destroyed the brain of its haters this gen.
The same poster that suddenly put Mario Kart in the party game genre (which is nonsense) is saying the Wii has no racing game.
It's called Mario Kart and sold more than most games out there in a very little time : the game is 1,5 years old and is going on selling 18 millions units if not more. But it's only a decent party games to some people. Knowing that, you know the opinion of such people can't be reliable or representative of anything but a niche of elitists or people with an agenda.
People like that don't know anything either, they say the Wii has no racers (and yet they cited Mario Kart) or decent RPG (and yet there are several like Fire Emblem, Tales of, ...).
There's a huge credibility problem, accentuated by citing top ranking games on Gamespot (for the Wii I suppose), and saying half of them we were tired playing 10 years ago. So Gamespot is not reliable to rate games, so why cite Gamespot?
It's funny that it goes on with fitness games. I don't know EA Active, but saying Wii Fit is fucking terrible is nonsense, and I'm confident it is a very good game, with 15+ millions people at least agreeing with me.
The Wii has the highest number of third party million sellers this generation.
No, there aren't enough good quality 3rd party games on the Wii for that.
But the Wii has the highest number of 3rd party games sold already worldwide, despite the XB360 having 1 year headstart on the market.
The game developers probably have realized that even though the Wii has a better market penetration, the people that have it at home just use it for WiiFit and similar stuff, not gaming. Nintendo is the only one gaining from the Wii sales.
Actually, the game developers are going out of business, see their studio closed or are losing tons of money, while Nintendo, the only one making only good games for its console, rakes in the cash.
So to me that just means the game developers look mor like very stupid entities that deserve what happens to them.
Since the launch of the Wii, the choices are still the same: support the console correctly to go up, or go down.
Will we (wii?) ever see the price come down? It has been on the market for almost 3 years now and the price has yet to change.
Then pray for Nintendo's 3 hit combo games to not improve the sales of their console at all. Then perhaps, if they're not still destroying the competition till march 2010, you will have a chance to see a price cut. Scratch that, they would have to be selling the least of the three consoles for Nintendo to do sth about the price.
BTW, the 3 hit combo games are Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit + and New Super Mario Bros Wii.
Nintendo expects each of them to sell 10 millions units for the record, and WSR (the only one already released) is well on its way to do just that.
You do NOT need to take those risks just to run homebrew, and running homebrew is pretty much completely safe these days (there are always some theoretical risks risks, of course, but the practical incidence of issues is just about zero).
I agree, but I'm talking to you about the exploits used to install HBC or BannerBomb in the first place.
This is the same step needed for installing both homebrew and piracy tools.
If Nintendo wants to stop piracy tools, that's this very first things they have to stop, and it then could stop the installation of things like HBC too. That's what they've done till now, but homebrew people found ways to go around that up till now if I'm not mistaken. Killing the point of entry (the exploits) is the only viable solution IMO.
The ROI of going after specific homebrew (err, piracy) tools is not worth it in their opinion I think, given their actions till now.
Playing imports with homebrew is perfectly safe, since it only involves a replacement game loader that doesn't check for the region (it's something optional, not enforced by the IOS security software). This is totally safe (and useless to warez games).[...]
Very interesting. Actually, what I feared was my HBC being removed, and then impossibility to reinstall it. Semms like it's got in check.
I admit I was interested by the HDD loading feature in case my Wii DVD drive dies, but given that I get less functions from the tools, I'm not even using it anymore.
That's ridiculous. With the Twilight Hack, you had to copy a save game to your Wii. With Bannerbomb, it runs straight from SD. If you throw any homebrew app together with Bannerbomb on an SD card, it will run without having to install or modify a single thing in your NAND. You can't get any safer than that.
OK. I actually installed the HBC since the Zelda save time, I didn't have the incentive to install with the new way since I have no use for it for now.
Are you one of those clueless folks who is using HBC.wad? That's an illegal distribution of HBC (the license does not allow modification or redistribution), not supported by us, and highly stupid. Please stop infringing on our copyright and use the installer instead. It runs on unmodified Wiis straight from Bannerbomb, it's infinitely safer than the crap WAD Manager that you're using, it doesn't require any IOS patching, it makes no permanent changes to your Wii other than just installing HBC, and it actually installs a newer version of HBC.
Please, I used the old method, I never used any HBC.wad, and I was actually talking about the exploits, sorry for not being specific enough. I used the method at the time on the Wiki of HBC folks, so I don't think I made anything wrong. :) .
I'm saying the same exploits are used in the first place and Nintendo has to patch these exploits to prevent piracy. Won't this also then prevent installing HBC? Which I don't care as long as it stays there, to play my import games.
You seem strongly against the HDD loading tools, which I can understand, as I was just concerned when I saw it work. Given that I don't even use it, I think I will just let it go anyway, don't worry about that
I have nothing to fear about bricking my Wii with the new tools if I understand you correctly, and I can even update my HBC w
It may have been hard before some of the current tools, but literally it was following a guide of 10 steps, dragging and dropping files to an SD card, and then pointing with my Wiimote.
The big problem is that it's so easy now.
Anyway, my point is that the same countermeasure used against piracy work against homebrew, because homebrew use the same flaws to get installed, than piracy tools. Nintendo has no way and no incentive to differentiate who is who.
However, I am still tempted to get the backup stuff working on an old USB HDD and putting all of our games on it. It's not like we have a ton of games (maybe 20), but I'm mostly concerned about wear and tear on the discs. My kids are pretty well trained in handling DVDs, CDs, game discs, but company often is not. I'd only backup and run from USB HDD the stuff I own, but the problem with that I hear is that the way those loaders work is "illegal" even if you are using it for backup. Somehow the HBC claims not to be "illegal," but it still voids your warranty.
I've installed the tool for the same reason, and would actually use it if it registrered my game time and other things like games played from the DVD drive.
That's not for me to decide if HBC is legal or not though, and I don't care.
Playing DVDs and watching Youtube is cool on the Wii. I don't get why Nintendo doesn't license that and blow AppleTV and that sort out of the water since they've got a huge marketshare? I don't have a major need for this as we've already got a killer MythTV setup, but I love that the Wii is ultra portable. Not that we'd take it anywhere, as if we're going on vacation, we can take a break from all of that.
Nintendo is the sole console company left, thus why they don't concentrate on giving you features that don't push you back to games, or protect them from being disrupted by other games company (like those that make flash games). That's why they won't develop a strong offering in the TV space. They're competing with every other entertainment business: TV, theaters, movies, music, photos, ... Thus why they will try to make you use your Wii as soon as you want to have one of these entertainment, but won't put the full feature on their console.
If their console has an exposure every time you want some entertainment, you will go back to play games more often, something like that.
Anyway, my point is that one can't say the Homebrew channel and homebrew in general == piracy any more than BitTorrent, a web browser, ftp or Google does for that matter.
I'm not saying that, I'm saying that there's no incentive for Nintendo to see it any other way.
To take your analogy, crowbars have many uses yes, but when most of the crowbar users use them to break in your property, and you don't have any way to separate those that broke in from the others, what do you do?
Ha ha no. A homebrew tool is one that takes an executable file and runs it. A piracy tool is an executable file that fucks up half of your system, has a 50% chance of bricking it, then plays pirated disc games or installs pirated VC games.
Except for the fact that you have to use these tools to even be able to launch any homebrew application.
The fact is that you can't run any homebrew on the Wii without first taking the risks you're talking about.
It has been streamlined, but you're basically modifying the Wii's firmware, which is were the risk of bricking your console comes from.
The latest homebrew enablers that bypass the latest Nintendo patches are even more dangerous. So I don't buy what you say.
I agree that to play games from HDD requires installing a different firmware, but that's basically the same thing you're doing when installing the homebrew channel.
And to install the homebrew channel, ironically you also need to use the VC utility that can be used for piracy.
My point is that the same methods are used for enabling homebrew and enabling piracy, and Nintendo has no time to waste to differentiate who is doing what with these tools.
Tools to play copied games aren't "homebrew tools", they're piracy tools. You're confusing "backups" with homebrew. "Backup" tools were developed for and by pirates, and the "backup" argument is a thin screen that they hide behind. I'd say less than 1% of their users truly use the tools for only backing up games. VC piracy utilities have a 0% legitimate use rate, since VC games can already be backed up to an SD card using Nintendo's system menu.
I agree with you, except on the part that these tools to play games from disc where only done to play pirated games.
As for modchips, consider this: they are hugely popular and there is a huge industry behind them (they are more popular than softmods), and yet all of them are trivially detectable by software. All Nintendo could do is push out a software update and instantly break every single modchip out there, causing mayhem among the piracy community. One little update. And yet they haven't done so.
The problem is that Nintendo is customers first, and would never take the risk of destroying legitimate consoles. Also, the history of Nintendo in the USA is riddled from the start with lawsuits, and they're very cautious about them, thus why they even warn users of these modchips that an update can brick their hardware.
Nintendo integrated very well the american way of doing business, since bitter Atari slowed them down considerably when they saw Nintendo succeed where Atari failed.
Again, I can't blame Nintendo for this.
I understand every one of these moves that Nintendo make, and I think they're all legitimate.
This despite the fact that I could no longer play my foreign games (like No More Heroes with blood instead of coins) if homebrew would no longer work.
NONE of the console manufacturers have even a measurable amount of respect for Fair Use. NONE. As far as they are concerned, they own the hardware 100% and should be able to 100% control every single one of your actions with their product as if they are in the room holding your hand. That game you bought gets a little too scratched? That cart get dropped in the pool? Well FUCK YOU. Buy another.
I see what you try to do, but your argument is stupid and wrong anyway.
If what you said was true, they would never allow you to download games you buy online as many times as you want. Erased that online game because you need place on your Wii? You can download it back as many times as you want.
The sole reason that they don't allow that on physical properties is because they fear you would get several legitimate copies when you actually paid for one.
Did you even try getting a new copy? Usually, a cart dropped in the pool will still work once dried up. And usually you can phone them and arrange for you to get back a new copy if you send the malfunctioning copy back to them.
Perhaps not in every country, I don't know.
It's just wishful thinking they are going to try to find a middle ground. They are just as extreme and inflexible as hard core pirates who will never compensate anyone for any intellectual property whatsoever.
It might as well be religious fundamentalism. Your reasonable position has no place here.
You just come off to me as someone trying to put them on the same level as hardcore pirates, thus deeming them unworthy of not being pirated. That's just a straw man to me.
No, really. The've shown that they believe that Wii homebrew == Wii piracy (having attacked generic homebrew almost exclusively, not just piracy tools, and considering that they harassed us when we attempted to notify them of a security issue), and yet it's been over 5 months since the latest security-related update. Somehow I don't get the felling that Nintendo is interested in combating Wii piracy very much (it's not like they've done a whole lot to stop modchips either).
So somewhat, you not getting the feeling that Nintendo is interested in combating piracy equates to "They've given up on Wii piracy"? Seriously?
Looks like complete BS to me.
The fact is that the only thing separating the homebrew tools from piracy tools is what the user deem moral or not. The exact same tools used for homebrew are used for piracy.
I use the homebrew tools, and really, if it wasn't for the fact that my play time on a game is not registered in the Wii when I use them, I would always use the homebrew tools to play my games, that I have all ripped, just in case. And you can see how tiny of an argument I have already to not use these tools (but they're still installed).
Once someone starts continuously using the homebrew tools, all hell breaks loose, as they will be more and more tempted to download some games "just to see".
The sole thing preventing me from downloading some games and then play them on the Wii is in my head. If I didn't have enough money or if I played lots of games all the time, I guarantee I would have downloaded lots of games already.
So to me it's no wonder that for Nintendo, Wii homebrew == Wii piracy because that's exactly what it is. You can't scan people's heads to make a difference between pirates and legitimate homebrew users. And I'm sure there are far more pirates than homebrew users.
If Nintendo didn't put region lock in their console, I wouldn't even have considered homebrew. This is one of their mistake. That's the sole thing that pushed me to install homebrew.
Then again, modchipping your console is on another level entirely, and so I understand that they don't get out of their way to stop these people, because the return on investment is far too ridiculous.
Even installing homebrew is not for the faint of heart, and most people don't even understand how all of that work and don't care. I'm even sure that most people installing homebrew on their console don't understand at all what they're doing, which is evidenced by all the video tutorials I've seen people made just to install homebrew.
All of this is far more difficult than buying a flash card for the Nintendo DS.
In this thread we get to read over and over how Slashdotters would run a gaming company, if they ran a gaming company.
Putting a headline like this on a web site like this is a guaranteed flamebait page impression generator. With a readership composed of mostly help desk employees who program in their spare time and aspire to be engineers the natural jealosy of more socially adept types, like marketing people, can be easily manipulated. Point out that the most comercially successful game company in the world budgets 3x more for marketing, where geeks don't work, than development, where they do, and you are sure to get comment after comment saying this is the wrong thing to do. Comments from people who couldn't manage the business end of a Snoopy snow cone pushcart.
I don't know what's more pathetic: this stupid BS or the fact that so much ignorance was modded up. Geeks don't mind being corrected when they are wrong, so I hope that's why you got modded up, because they actually believed what you said.
The fact is that EA is losing hundreds of millions of dollars (to be on the safe side, but I think it's billions) every fiscal years since several years now.
Actually, the most commercially successful game company is Nintendo, and to add insult to injury, its CEO, Satoru Iwata, is a former developer. And I bet he makes more than the marketing people in his company, which makes billions of dollars of profit every fiscal year since several years.
So yeah, sure, everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what Slashdotters think of EA's business decisions. EA makes a mint. EA is sure to keep turning out games. EA isn't closing shop or laying off or in danger of never getting a game to stores. EA knows that staying in business takes more than making great games and hoping people show up to buy them.
Cue more out of depth stupidity.
LOL!
EA actually closed off several studios, laid off lots of its workforce every year since 2007, and is going through a huge restructuration.
EA was nearly destroyed when the NES came out decades ago, and apparently people never learn, as they did the same mistake AGAIN this generation with the Wii (and DS), that they refused to support correctly. When you cut off 50 % of the market from your revenue, to go to games of grandeur for which there isn't a big enough market to support them, this is what happens.
But don't let facts go in the way of your argument. Or was it a joke?
AC these days...