"I find it ironic that the only gaming company to go with an entirely digital gaming pad, when Everyone had analog gaming pads, some with numerical digital pads.. is now considered to be the the company to bring back standard analog sticks."
Well... eh.. I dunno about that. I don't know much about pre-Nintendo analog sticks, so bear with me. What use is an analog stick in a 2D game? They became far more interesting when consoles started going 3D. (PCs had them for years for flight simulators.) I'm hard pressed to imagine an Atari-era game that made effective use of an analog stick.
I personally think that Nintendo was 'revolutionary' in adding the analog stick to the N64 and tying it to Mario's movement. (The control paradigm of "tilt stick in direction you want Mario to go" instead of trying to turn him and make him go forward...) But, and this may seem like I'm backtracking here, I think that analog sticks would have materialized eventually anyway. So, why aren't I back-tracking here? Well, maybe I'm just too much of a Nintendo zealot, but I think that the controlling of 3D characters wouldn't have been standardized the way it is now.
"I think sega dropped the analog stick too, but i'm not sure at what point they did."
Sega didn't have analog sticks until the Saturn came out. Even then, they were peripheral and not really standard. They came out when the game Nights came out. The Dreamcast controlles are fairly similar in design to the Saturn analog controller.
"They're only 'back' because they co-exist with the d-pad, which is a much easier input device to handle."
Err... The ease-of-use of digital vs. analog controls is more context sensitive than anything else. For Mario 64, analog is king. For Tetris, stick with the D-pad. I recently bought a Playstation 2, and ugh, the differences between the PS2 controller and the GameCube controller are disturbing. The GC controller has an analog stick, but it has an 8-way notch you can move the stick into. You can actually get the GC stick to go straight up, or diagonal, etc much like a D-pad. The PS2 stick doesn't do this. Worse, if you push the stick down, there's a click. That may seem like a great idea, but it's driving me nuts playing San Andreas. I accidently hit the L3 button a LOT. It blows the car's horn. Every time I make a sharp turn *HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK*. In that case, I'd almost rather use the D-Pad than the analog stick.
Er.. yeah, I have a lot to say about controllers. Heh.
" If they launch systems this close, they need to drop support quicker."
Eh, sort of. Take a closer look at your list here. The Game Boy/Pocket/Color all played the original Game Boy games. The Color had a faster processor and had a few games made specifically for it. The GBA plays all GB games, and the DS plays all GBA games. The NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube are all roughly 5 years apart. The Revolution, in theory, will at least be 4 years apart. The actual support required isn't close enough together to really worry about.
Anyway, I said 'sort of' because you did bring up a point I'm worried about as well. Will the new GBA be DS compatible? I have trouble imagining that. Granted, we really don't know. Still, though, from everything Nintendo's said, the DS seems to be the runt of the litter.
Vibrating controllers came to be standard fare when the Rumble Pak came about.
Not long after the N64 was unveiled, Sony released it's Dual Shock controller (complete with 2!! analog sticks and a built in 'rumble' feature.) to the PS1. Then, the Dreamcast had it's own 'rumble pak'. Then the PS2 came with the Dual Shock Controllers. Then the XBOX came along... etc.
Personally, that little tidbit about the Dual Shock controller is what's making me wonder about Nintendo's secrecy, here. I personally think that they did something snazzy with the controller, but they're trying to prevent an imitation of the feature from making it into the boxes of the PS3 and XBOX02's.
I know it's popular to hate the Virtual Boy. I can understand why it didn't take off. Still, though, it had something quite laudable going for it: It could produce stereo images that actually looked stereo, instead of looking like a 'magic-eye' image. It worked because it used a row of red LEDs, as opposed to two magnified LCD screens. The problem with the LCDs is that even today, their resolution is so low that you can see the individual RGB pixels. A solid red screen, for example, looks like you're looking through a screen door. That's not so bad, but when you've got both eyes trying to line up the grid, but then trying to line up the images that are being represented, ugh it just doesn't work well.
Nintendo really f'd up with the VB, but I've at least got to give them credit for effort.
"The mini-disks are used because they avoid DVD licensing issues and the constant velocity drive gives better performance (shorter loading times.)"
Maybe my imagination's working over-time here, but I also think they chose this medium in order to make a portable GameCube some time down the road. Right or wrong, I really hope Nintendo sticks with this format. Imagine if the PSP was big enough to accomodate the PS2 discs. Ugh.
"So, basically the Nintendo DS IS the controller."
Considering the announcement of Wi-fi with the system, is that such a bad thing? I dunno about you, but I LOATHE the thought of playing on-line using only an analog stick.
"As long as Nintendo stick to their guns and keep making fun games their fanbase won't stray too far."
Nintendo's got themselves an interesting situation here. They do have their fanbase and they can remain successful maintaining it. Despite not being #1, Nintendo's not exactly hurting here. They may not have several 10s of millions of GameCubes out there, but several of their titles have surpassed the million-units-sold mark. Nintendo makes a LOT more money on games than they do on consoles, especially the first-party ones. (That's before even mentioning Nintendo's hand-held monopoly... wow.)
Nintendo's biggest success here, as you've stated, is in their self-branded games. When those start becoming run-of-the-mill (and yes, there is a serious risk of that happening), then I'd be less inclined to argue with people predicting Nintendo's demise. Man I'm seeing a lot of Apple similarities here.
Heh. Well I have a theory. Rumor has it that Nintendo is choosing between two or three systems right now. Assuming that's true, maybe Nintendo's waiting to see what MS and Sony do before making any commitals.
This may seem a little out-there, but if Nintendo is doing something revolutionary like putting a touch screen into the controllers, it stands to reason that the money put into those will result in not as spiffy of graphical specs. If the difference is that noticable, perhaps they're deciding between a $200 system and a $300 system.
Anyway, maybe that's just my imagine working over-time. If I were a bettin man, though, I'd say that Nintendo's big revolution isn't in the system itself, but in the controller. It's probably too late for Sony or MS to mess with the system specs a lot, but tossing in a controller feature may not be out of the question yet.
"They ARE being unveiled at or before E3, while Nintendo has expiclitly said they won't have anything to show."
Eh I'm so confused by this. Just 2 days ago I read that Nintendo was going to show clips of the games, but not the actual system. *Rolleyes* In any event, I wouldn't equate that with "we have nothing". Nintendo wouldn't make that bold of risk at the turn of a new generation.
As for Sony and Microsoft, they'll show their systems and make ridiculous claims about the capabilities of them. They're going to be suffering from hype-burn, too.
"Nintendo has the most to gain by releasing a console based on Linux. In this respect, they could capture some console market and then facilitate for the same apps to be released on Linux."
There are more people with GameCubes than using Linux today. Why would Linux make the next Nintendo system suddenly capture marketshare when nobody even cared that the PS2 had a Linux kit?
"That's how revolutionary the new console is Lets just hope that doesn't mean something like "Lets dare to be different, and use annoying mini-disks instead of the standard DVDs. They provide lower quality, AND they don't meet up to modern-day standards. Its brilliant!"
This might be insightful if Nintendo wasn't responsible for the standard 4 controller ports, standard analog sticks, standard 'rumble' functions, the huge portable gaming market, yadda yadda yadda.
"Isn't it obvious? Al Qaeda just loves playing Halo 2."
Heh. Seriously, though, it seems that XBOX Live would be a crappy service to disrupt if you're mad at the USA. I'm not sure how I'd register a complaint about that, but XBOX Live seems like a wasted effort. Hmm.. how about the IRS's site close to the 15th? Heh.
", which is that this is entirely Microsoft's fault and has nothing to do with Mozilla"
Mozilla not support ActiveX. Mozilla fault. *Grunt*
""Widely accepted standard" my ass. ActiveX is not a bloody standard!"
ActiveX is a standard. It is widely used. Yes, it is Windows only. However, Mozilla could easily support it.
"I mean, have fun blaming other software for perpetuating it by not supporting it"
Heh. "We're making sure that anybody dependent on MS's features can't leave MS, but we won't acknowledge that by doing so we're feeding Microsoft! Afterall, we ARE the good guys!"
"Didn't you just basically say something that makes absolutely no sense,"
Only if you're not in a listenin mood.
" Maybe some fault lies with Microsoft themselves for perpetuating your vendor lock-in? But no, that's silly."
This might be interesting had I said "This is entirely Mozilla's fault and not Microsoft's" However, I didn't. It's Mozilla's fault they don't support a widely accepted standard, not Microsoft's. I don't see the point, though. I'm talking to a wall, here.
Slashdot Mirror
"Who spends this much time on the webmail?"
When I was out of town and at an internet cafe....
"Though I wonder if they are planning on adding a sattelite feature any time soon?"
Hmm... that'll be difficult in Lower Uncton. Might need infa-red.
"heres my better solution, plug controller 3 into controller 2, plug controller 4 into controller 1."
That's called Daisy chaining, it's been done (3DO), and it wasn't popular.
"No need for 4 ports on the machine, save manufacturing and put all the effort into the 200% profit margin controllers."
Tell Sega and Microsoft that.
"So far, it looks like everything Nintendo has tried releasing with 2 screens has been a flop."
Nintendo's sold nearly 3 million DS units. Not stellar, but not a flop either. We're only a few months into it.
"I find it ironic that the only gaming company to go with an entirely digital gaming pad, when Everyone had analog gaming pads, some with numerical digital pads.. is now considered to be the the company to bring back standard analog sticks."
Well... eh.. I dunno about that. I don't know much about pre-Nintendo analog sticks, so bear with me. What use is an analog stick in a 2D game? They became far more interesting when consoles started going 3D. (PCs had them for years for flight simulators.) I'm hard pressed to imagine an Atari-era game that made effective use of an analog stick.
I personally think that Nintendo was 'revolutionary' in adding the analog stick to the N64 and tying it to Mario's movement. (The control paradigm of "tilt stick in direction you want Mario to go" instead of trying to turn him and make him go forward...) But, and this may seem like I'm backtracking here, I think that analog sticks would have materialized eventually anyway. So, why aren't I back-tracking here? Well, maybe I'm just too much of a Nintendo zealot, but I think that the controlling of 3D characters wouldn't have been standardized the way it is now.
"I think sega dropped the analog stick too, but i'm not sure at what point they did."
Sega didn't have analog sticks until the Saturn came out. Even then, they were peripheral and not really standard. They came out when the game Nights came out. The Dreamcast controlles are fairly similar in design to the Saturn analog controller.
"They're only 'back' because they co-exist with the d-pad, which is a much easier input device to handle."
Err... The ease-of-use of digital vs. analog controls is more context sensitive than anything else. For Mario 64, analog is king. For Tetris, stick with the D-pad. I recently bought a Playstation 2, and ugh, the differences between the PS2 controller and the GameCube controller are disturbing. The GC controller has an analog stick, but it has an 8-way notch you can move the stick into. You can actually get the GC stick to go straight up, or diagonal, etc much like a D-pad. The PS2 stick doesn't do this. Worse, if you push the stick down, there's a click. That may seem like a great idea, but it's driving me nuts playing San Andreas. I accidently hit the L3 button a LOT. It blows the car's horn. Every time I make a sharp turn *HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK*. In that case, I'd almost rather use the D-Pad than the analog stick.
Er.. yeah, I have a lot to say about controllers. Heh.
" If they launch systems this close, they need to drop support quicker."
Eh, sort of. Take a closer look at your list here. The Game Boy/Pocket/Color all played the original Game Boy games. The Color had a faster processor and had a few games made specifically for it. The GBA plays all GB games, and the DS plays all GBA games. The NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube are all roughly 5 years apart. The Revolution, in theory, will at least be 4 years apart. The actual support required isn't close enough together to really worry about.
Anyway, I said 'sort of' because you did bring up a point I'm worried about as well. Will the new GBA be DS compatible? I have trouble imagining that. Granted, we really don't know. Still, though, from everything Nintendo's said, the DS seems to be the runt of the litter.
Vibrating controllers came to be standard fare when the Rumble Pak came about.
Not long after the N64 was unveiled, Sony released it's Dual Shock controller (complete with 2!! analog sticks and a built in 'rumble' feature.) to the PS1. Then, the Dreamcast had it's own 'rumble pak'. Then the PS2 came with the Dual Shock Controllers. Then the XBOX came along... etc.
Personally, that little tidbit about the Dual Shock controller is what's making me wonder about Nintendo's secrecy, here. I personally think that they did something snazzy with the controller, but they're trying to prevent an imitation of the feature from making it into the boxes of the PS3 and XBOX02's.
"Big fan of the virtual boy?"
I know it's popular to hate the Virtual Boy. I can understand why it didn't take off. Still, though, it had something quite laudable going for it: It could produce stereo images that actually looked stereo, instead of looking like a 'magic-eye' image. It worked because it used a row of red LEDs, as opposed to two magnified LCD screens. The problem with the LCDs is that even today, their resolution is so low that you can see the individual RGB pixels. A solid red screen, for example, looks like you're looking through a screen door. That's not so bad, but when you've got both eyes trying to line up the grid, but then trying to line up the images that are being represented, ugh it just doesn't work well.
Nintendo really f'd up with the VB, but I've at least got to give them credit for effort.
"Wow. It's a good thing they kept the GameCube secret, otherwise sony and microsoft might have outcompeted and outsold them."
Hehe. Seriously, though, do you really expect that the XBOX 360 or PS3 won't have Wi-Fi now?
"The mini-disks are used because they avoid DVD licensing issues and the constant velocity drive gives better performance (shorter loading times.)"
Maybe my imagination's working over-time here, but I also think they chose this medium in order to make a portable GameCube some time down the road. Right or wrong, I really hope Nintendo sticks with this format. Imagine if the PSP was big enough to accomodate the PS2 discs. Ugh.
"So, basically the Nintendo DS IS the controller."
Considering the announcement of Wi-fi with the system, is that such a bad thing? I dunno about you, but I LOATHE the thought of playing on-line using only an analog stick.
"As long as Nintendo stick to their guns and keep making fun games their fanbase won't stray too far."
Nintendo's got themselves an interesting situation here. They do have their fanbase and they can remain successful maintaining it. Despite not being #1, Nintendo's not exactly hurting here. They may not have several 10s of millions of GameCubes out there, but several of their titles have surpassed the million-units-sold mark. Nintendo makes a LOT more money on games than they do on consoles, especially the first-party ones. (That's before even mentioning Nintendo's hand-held monopoly... wow.)
Nintendo's biggest success here, as you've stated, is in their self-branded games. When those start becoming run-of-the-mill (and yes, there is a serious risk of that happening), then I'd be less inclined to argue with people predicting Nintendo's demise. Man I'm seeing a lot of Apple similarities here.
Heh. Well I have a theory. Rumor has it that Nintendo is choosing between two or three systems right now. Assuming that's true, maybe Nintendo's waiting to see what MS and Sony do before making any commitals.
This may seem a little out-there, but if Nintendo is doing something revolutionary like putting a touch screen into the controllers, it stands to reason that the money put into those will result in not as spiffy of graphical specs. If the difference is that noticable, perhaps they're deciding between a $200 system and a $300 system.
Anyway, maybe that's just my imagine working over-time. If I were a bettin man, though, I'd say that Nintendo's big revolution isn't in the system itself, but in the controller. It's probably too late for Sony or MS to mess with the system specs a lot, but tossing in a controller feature may not be out of the question yet.
"They ARE being unveiled at or before E3, while Nintendo has expiclitly said they won't have anything to show."
Eh I'm so confused by this. Just 2 days ago I read that Nintendo was going to show clips of the games, but not the actual system. *Rolleyes* In any event, I wouldn't equate that with "we have nothing". Nintendo wouldn't make that bold of risk at the turn of a new generation.
As for Sony and Microsoft, they'll show their systems and make ridiculous claims about the capabilities of them. They're going to be suffering from hype-burn, too.
"no seriously, i think this just means that theyre not ready to show it."
Or it'd be simple to integrate. The Dual Shock controller came out pretty quickly after the N64 was unveiled.
"Nintendo has the most to gain by releasing a console based on Linux. In this respect, they could capture some console market and then facilitate for the same apps to be released on Linux."
There are more people with GameCubes than using Linux today. Why would Linux make the next Nintendo system suddenly capture marketshare when nobody even cared that the PS2 had a Linux kit?
"That's how revolutionary the new console is Lets just hope that doesn't mean something like "Lets dare to be different, and use annoying mini-disks instead of the standard DVDs. They provide lower quality, AND they don't meet up to modern-day standards. Its brilliant!"
This might be insightful if Nintendo wasn't responsible for the standard 4 controller ports, standard analog sticks, standard 'rumble' functions, the huge portable gaming market, yadda yadda yadda.
"I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, spare me the hype."
So I take it that you won't be paying attention to the XBOX 360 or Playstation 3, either?
"Isn't it obvious? Al Qaeda just loves playing Halo 2."
Heh. Seriously, though, it seems that XBOX Live would be a crappy service to disrupt if you're mad at the USA. I'm not sure how I'd register a complaint about that, but XBOX Live seems like a wasted effort. Hmm.. how about the IRS's site close to the 15th? Heh.
Unfortunately for us, this raises questions about why you had that bookmarked in the first place.
", which is that this is entirely Microsoft's fault and has nothing to do with Mozilla"
Mozilla not support ActiveX. Mozilla fault. *Grunt*
""Widely accepted standard" my ass. ActiveX is not a bloody standard!"
ActiveX is a standard. It is widely used. Yes, it is Windows only. However, Mozilla could easily support it.
"I mean, have fun blaming other software for perpetuating it by not supporting it"
Heh. "We're making sure that anybody dependent on MS's features can't leave MS, but we won't acknowledge that by doing so we're feeding Microsoft! Afterall, we ARE the good guys!"
Yeah yeah, whatever.
"Or does the submitter sound a bit too much like a Sidekick affiliate?"
So?
"Didn't you just basically say something that makes absolutely no sense,"
Only if you're not in a listenin mood.
" Maybe some fault lies with Microsoft themselves for perpetuating your vendor lock-in? But no, that's silly."
This might be interesting had I said "This is entirely Mozilla's fault and not Microsoft's" However, I didn't. It's Mozilla's fault they don't support a widely accepted standard, not Microsoft's. I don't see the point, though. I'm talking to a wall, here.
" I think to attribute problems such as this article talks about as specific to Linux is biased."
Or to Microsoft, who is usually the butt of this complaint.
"I think it's laughable that Computer Associates talking about other people's bloated software."
Hey, if they're experts on it....