Don't really think that "stop the production of the gamecube" "dropping the price" "restart the production" are three unrelated decision... maybe I'm just xfiling (but well the thruth is out ther, no?), but to me it sounds like a multi step marketing strategy:
1) Big N claims that GC struggle in misery, developper ain't to do any further game, etc.
2) This generation of consoles is over (or so says Nintendo), everybody start to speak about GC2, Xbox2, PS3, Big N stops the production of the GC.
3) Price are dropped so much that everybody who possibly would rather play Zelda or Mario buy the GC (hey man it's just 99 bucks)
4) Nintendo starts the stats festival: "we're up of 3% while the others are down of 15%", GC+GBA dominate the console market with a combined share of more than 50%, etc
5) Eventually Nintendo restarts the production of the GC, so the next Xmas season will start with a diffuse feeling that Nintendo is doing very well and GC is about to win the console's war.
Of course the targets of these remakes are the old school player, don't think the palyer of the newest generations will lose they sleep for Space Harrier or Golden Axe... well the point is that any player who ever had a nostalgic crisis already got and installed Mame or just another emulator
out of the zillions available on the net...
of course there's the rom's IP issue... but well, I can't really figure out how many people would erase the rom of Golden Axe and buy the "slap in the face" PS2 remake.
The study involved more than 100 men aged between 25 and 35.
...
When asked how they felt when playing the games, individuals said their main emotions were happiness, nostalgia and cheerfulness.
I also suppose that this works just for people who actually played the classics before they became classics.
The tech specs claim PSP to have a 4.5" (that should be more or less 11.5 cm) 16:9 display, that would mean more or less a 10x5.7cm (3.9"x2.2") screen, according to the images
the screen width should be roughly the half of the overrall console length, while being the media radius 6cm (2.36") an overrall height between 6 and 6.5cm (2.36" - 2.56") is to be expected.
So aside form the mistakes I did with the numbers the PSP size should be more or less 20x.6.5cm (7.9"x2.5")... is either that I have a way too much limited idea of portability or that I werar trousers with far to short pockets, but I fear that it'll be not incredibly confortable to carry this console around.
If at Square they did an outstanding job writing the history of FFVII, why the hell they did "The spirit within" with such an awful screenplay?
I think that the point is that histories for games are written from people who feel free to try daring solution, because the key of the succes of a game is to find a core of people who really, really, really love to play it (otherwise they wouldn't spend tens of hours and bucks on it); screenplays have on the contrary the main goal to be pleasant to the masses, so when translating a videogame in to a movie there's this tendency to smooth all the sharpen edges that eventually characterise the game... consequently the atmosphere of the story will be dramatically altered... as far as I remember they tried to do a Supermario movie... a decade after I still trying to wash it from my brain;)
IMHO Middle Earth has the great advantage that Tolkien's fans have plenty of well known places they would probably visit, the Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Moria, Smaug Mountain, Minas Tirit, just to name somes, so it's thinkable that people will hang around in the MMORPG just as tourists, just to say I was there... the world has been described in thousands of pages covering differents epochs, so the world itself isn't just a background for the adventures of Bilbo or Frodo...
Starwars's universe has been described in movies, so the additional elements were introduced to give a stage to the characters, so if you're not fighting against (or maybe for) the empire isn't so interesting to be there, and what's the big deal meeting Darth Vader or Jabba the Hutt if you know that they eventually die and lose?
The point is that every MMO game can be very addictive if you have the time to live estranged from the real world for a couple of months and play 24/7, but for the masses of "casual players", who are the key to turn MMO games into a very big businness, it's quite difficult to get involved... so i think that even if being the One on matrix is more appealing than be the average joe in Sims, if you don't have the whole night to stay online you would eventually log in Sims half an hour just to see how your petunias are growing and to chat a little with your neighbours.
I played today Super Monkey Ball and Tomb Raider... SMB isn't all evil, even if the field of view is too tight and controlling the ball is sometimes quite difficult, TR has quite massive control problems, so I can say it has bdeen ported with a good degree of fidelity...
I live in Switzerland where it retails for 99 francs (~70$) by signing up a new contract, so if I were to get a new cell phone I suppose I would possibly give N-Gage a chance, it still a cell phone after all, while keeping the GBA for the serious gaming stuffs.
On a businness model point of view MMORPG are just a wonder: develop once cash forever, as long as people continue to play.
Is a matter of fact that the occasional players can't stand a chance against the pro who spend tenth of hours a month online, so I suppose that a dramatic explosion of the number of players isn't likely to be expected, as long as people are used to also do other things in their lives.
The key of making money with MMORPG is that the customers/players pay for the service, but once the server is installed and runs in what does the service consists? I mean there's no need to be a fortune 500 to set up a machine and play with friends online more or less the way people gather to play paper & pen RPG.
Of course home brew server could difficulty manage hundreds of thousands of players (as long as distributed system are not developped), but as MMORPG player tend to buy them homes and settle down I am likely to think that in to the long run there's the tendency to play almost "locally" and to become part of a quite small community.
At present day portable games are more or less equivalent to console game of early 90 (i.e. GBA SP is more or less a portable SNES) on a smaller screen, now the question is if it's possible to do the transition to 3d games with this kind displays.
Otherwise it will be interesting to see the direction in wich the genres of "portable games" (or better games for portable devices) will evolve (Just one thing is sure, we will see more and even more Pokemons).
I hope it will sports some decent video outputs... a VGA out for instance.
til now I tried a quite vast amount of adapter and conventer to connect the PS2 with a beamer but I couldn't match the image quality of a DC+VGA adapter.
The philosophy of the Duke Nukem developpers seems to have caught new disciples...
I'm pretty sure that Half-Life Chapter 1 is a compelling legacy, and that all what Valve want is to not daikatanize it, so I am just fine waiting for something good.
As Yoda said (possibly while "playing" Angel of darkness) "If you choose the quick and easy path, you will become an agent of evil".
Just hope I'm not waiting for good (Duke where are thou?)
If the public of Gamecube is mainly made of children and teenager (everybody says so), and the football fans are mainly on the 25-40 yo (just guessing) range then it would be quite logic that Madden for the GC can't sell really well.
But well, being born in a continent where football is game of foot and balls use to be round maybe I am missing something ; )
Ok the GTA games are among the most succesfull games in history so I suppose that a two for one in a new package could be in someway considered a news... well good for them who have not yet bought some GTAs
You forgot to mention Jaguar and Virtual Boy ; )
As a wise man said:
"ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" (Johnny Rotten)
Being N-Gage a phone you will still able use it for its main purpose when the gaming thing will vanish like soap bubble... phantom... mmmh phantom... who honestly believe that phantom will hit the shelves for real?
Hype about a console is at its high at the launch time, when the installed base is equal to 0, installed base is at its high when the last console is sold (I suppose that not so many consoles are "killed in action") when hype is gone and underground since a while.
Hype helps selling more consoles, more sold consoles help selling more games... there are maybe a couple of millions of japanese with a GC at home who don't have exactly what I would define as an infinite choice of titles, so say that one out of eight or ten want to play without buying a PS2 and the math is quickly done.
If Lucas & co still wanting to see campfire outside theaters weeks before the release of Episode III why should they frustrate fans who like SW so much that they spend theirs free time developping stuffs that will surely help keeping the hype about Starwars alive?
Pushing the fans give away theirs fanatism is the best (possibly the only) way to turn a cult movie back to the "just movie" status.
Mario and Zelda still selling in seven digits figures, that's right, and this is the fruit of the great legacy both series have, and the great legacy is the fruit of the massive success the old Big N consoles had.
At present less people are playing Nintendo's game, in percent and even in absolute value, and less player today means a weaker legacy tomorrow... how many Mario Sunshine or Zelda more would Nintendo have sold if it had released them for the PS2... easily three or four times more.
The GBA is a big hit but GC is the second worst seller in Nintendo history (if you the count the Virutal GB), and the mainstream are set by "house/hard/fix/dunnotherightword" consoles... mmmh well ther're some exception... pokemon for instance : )
The deal between MS and ATI is annonced... and after a while rumor spreading begins...
PS2 overwhelms Xbox with a ratio that is somewhere in the 1 to 5 and at least in the near future it looks like hard that things will turn into a bed of roses for MS, so it's maybe in Redmond's interests to shift the attention to the next generation of game machines.
Nvdia is no longer the official chipmaker for the MS consoles... maybe producing for the first Xbox was not the King Mida's deal it seemed at first glance, but this isn't exactly the kind of news that makes shareholders explode of joy, and rumors about a possible deal with Sony for the PS3 will surely help theirs morale.
Sony on its side, after two sledgehammer consoles is working on number three, its position is of course enviable but its rivals are quite tough: a neverending cash company that usually crushs every competitor and a toymaker that has more fanatic disciples than an ayatollah and that year after year, despite a shrinking market share, earns tons of pokemoney... so if "mo' rumors mo' hype" still working (it should) mr. Kutaragi and friends will surely appreciate any kind of rumors about PS3.
Sounds a little a sort of "my rumors are bigger than yours" indeed.
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Don't really think that "stop the production of the gamecube" "dropping the price" "restart the production" are three unrelated decision... maybe I'm just xfiling (but well the thruth is out ther, no?), but to me it sounds like a multi step marketing strategy:
1) Big N claims that GC struggle in misery, developper ain't to do any further game, etc.
2) This generation of consoles is over (or so says Nintendo), everybody start to speak about GC2, Xbox2, PS3, Big N stops the production of the GC.
3) Price are dropped so much that everybody who possibly would rather play Zelda or Mario buy the GC (hey man it's just 99 bucks)
4) Nintendo starts the stats festival: "we're up of 3% while the others are down of 15%", GC+GBA dominate the console market with a combined share of more than 50%, etc
5) Eventually Nintendo restarts the production of the GC, so the next Xmas season will start with a diffuse feeling that Nintendo is doing very well and GC is about to win the console's war.
Of course the targets of these remakes are the old school player, don't think the palyer of the newest generations will lose they sleep for Space Harrier or Golden Axe... well the point is that any player who ever had a nostalgic crisis already got and installed Mame or just another emulator out of the zillions available on the net...
of course there's the rom's IP issue... but well, I can't really figure out how many people would erase the rom of Golden Axe and buy the "slap in the face" PS2 remake.
The tech specs claim PSP to have a 4.5" (that should be more or less 11.5 cm) 16:9 display, that would mean more or less a 10x5.7cm (3.9"x2.2") screen, according to the images the screen width should be roughly the half of the overrall console length, while being the media radius 6cm (2.36") an overrall height between 6 and 6.5cm (2.36" - 2.56") is to be expected.
So aside form the mistakes I did with the numbers the PSP size should be more or less 20x.6.5cm (7.9"x2.5")... is either that I have a way too much limited idea of portability or that I werar trousers with far to short pockets, but I fear that it'll be not incredibly confortable to carry this console around.
If at Square they did an outstanding job writing the history of FFVII, why the hell they did "The spirit within" with such an awful screenplay?
;)
I think that the point is that histories for games are written from people who feel free to try daring solution, because the key of the succes of a game is to find a core of people who really, really, really love to play it (otherwise they wouldn't spend tens of hours and bucks on it); screenplays have on the contrary the main goal to be pleasant to the masses, so when translating a videogame in to a movie there's this tendency to smooth all the sharpen edges that eventually characterise the game... consequently the atmosphere of the story will be dramatically altered... as far as I remember they tried to do a Supermario movie... a decade after I still trying to wash it from my brain
IMHO Middle Earth has the great advantage that Tolkien's fans have plenty of well known places they would probably visit, the Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Moria, Smaug Mountain, Minas Tirit, just to name somes, so it's thinkable that people will hang around in the MMORPG just as tourists, just to say I was there... the world has been described in thousands of pages covering differents epochs, so the world itself isn't just a background for the adventures of Bilbo or Frodo...
Starwars's universe has been described in movies, so the additional elements were introduced to give a stage to the characters, so if you're not fighting against (or maybe for) the empire isn't so interesting to be there, and what's the big deal meeting Darth Vader or Jabba the Hutt if you know that they eventually die and lose?
The point is that every MMO game can be very addictive if you have the time to live estranged from the real world for a couple of months and play 24/7, but for the masses of "casual players", who are the key to turn MMO games into a very big businness, it's quite difficult to get involved... so i think that even if being the One on matrix is more appealing than be the average joe in Sims, if you don't have the whole night to stay online you would eventually log in Sims half an hour just to see how your petunias are growing and to chat a little with your neighbours.
I played today Super Monkey Ball and Tomb Raider... SMB isn't all evil, even if the field of view is too tight and controlling the ball is sometimes quite difficult, TR has quite massive control problems, so I can say it has bdeen ported with a good degree of fidelity...
I live in Switzerland where it retails for 99 francs (~70$) by signing up a new contract, so if I were to get a new cell phone I suppose I would possibly give N-Gage a chance, it still a cell phone after all, while keeping the GBA for the serious gaming stuffs.
On a businness model point of view MMORPG are just a wonder: develop once cash forever, as long as people continue to play.
Is a matter of fact that the occasional players can't stand a chance against the pro who spend tenth of hours a month online, so I suppose that a dramatic explosion of the number of players isn't likely to be expected, as long as people are used to also do other things in their lives.
The key of making money with MMORPG is that the customers/players pay for the service, but once the server is installed and runs in what does the service consists? I mean there's no need to be a fortune 500 to set up a machine and play with friends online more or less the way people gather to play paper & pen RPG.
Of course home brew server could difficulty manage hundreds of thousands of players (as long as distributed system are not developped), but as MMORPG player tend to buy them homes and settle down I am likely to think that in to the long run there's the tendency to play almost "locally" and to become part of a quite small community.
I think that with the virtual boy we should relativize the concept of "portability"...
Does this really fits in your pockets?
At present day portable games are more or less equivalent to console game of early 90 (i.e. GBA SP is more or less a portable SNES) on a smaller screen, now the question is if it's possible to do the transition to 3d games with this kind displays.
Otherwise it will be interesting to see the direction in wich the genres of "portable games" (or better games for portable devices) will evolve (Just one thing is sure, we will see more and even more Pokemons).
I have to disagree, projector and plasma tv do have vga and/or dvi input, and I use to consider them as living room stuffs
I hope it will sports some decent video outputs... a VGA out for instance.
til now I tried a quite vast amount of adapter and conventer to connect the PS2 with a beamer but I couldn't match the image quality of a DC+VGA adapter.
still missing and due to the relative low resolution of the TV Sets that hurts quite much.
That just the perfect gadget to be bundled with the next pokemon release...
and of course it's also a milestone on the road to a GBA SP2 with integrated wireless capabilites, some GP 32 way.
Well I think we can thank N-Gage for that, even if at Nintendo they will swear that they were in no way inspired by Nokia.
The philosophy of the Duke Nukem developpers seems to have caught new disciples...
I'm pretty sure that Half-Life Chapter 1 is a compelling legacy, and that all what Valve want is to not daikatanize it, so I am just fine waiting for something good.
As Yoda said (possibly while "playing" Angel of darkness) "If you choose the quick and easy path, you will become an agent of evil".
Just hope I'm not waiting for good (Duke where are thou?)
It's interesting that the name of Nintendo can be found on almost every paragraph... why spend your time talking about #3 when you already are #2?
Well, indeed it could be that being #3 while making money still funnier than reach the 2nd place loosing millions on the way to.
try out this or this... of course old fashioned but funny... and free as long as you have Civilization II...
just 'till the king returns : )
If the public of Gamecube is mainly made of children and teenager (everybody says so), and the football fans are mainly on the 25-40 yo (just guessing) range then it would be quite logic that Madden for the GC can't sell really well.
But well, being born in a continent where football is game of foot and balls use to be round maybe I am missing something ; )
Ok the GTA games are among the most succesfull games in history so I suppose that a two for one in a new package could be in someway considered a news... well good for them who have not yet bought some GTAs
You forgot to mention Jaguar and Virtual Boy ; )
As a wise man said:
"ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" (Johnny Rotten)
Being N-Gage a phone you will still able use it for its main purpose when the gaming thing will vanish like soap bubble... phantom... mmmh phantom... who honestly believe that phantom will hit the shelves for real?
Hype about a console is at its high at the launch time, when the installed base is equal to 0, installed base is at its high when the last console is sold (I suppose that not so many consoles are "killed in action") when hype is gone and underground since a while.
Hype helps selling more consoles, more sold consoles help selling more games... there are maybe a couple of millions of japanese with a GC at home who don't have exactly what I would define as an infinite choice of titles, so say that one out of eight or ten want to play without buying a PS2 and the math is quickly done.
If Lucas & co still wanting to see campfire outside theaters weeks before the release of Episode III why should they frustrate fans who like SW so much that they spend theirs free time developping stuffs that will surely help keeping the hype about Starwars alive?
Pushing the fans give away theirs fanatism is the best (possibly the only) way to turn a cult movie back to the "just movie" status.
Mario and Zelda still selling in seven digits figures, that's right, and this is the fruit of the great legacy both series have, and the great legacy is the fruit of the massive success the old Big N consoles had.
At present less people are playing Nintendo's game, in percent and even in absolute value, and less player today means a weaker legacy tomorrow... how many Mario Sunshine or Zelda more would Nintendo have sold if it had released them for the PS2... easily three or four times more.
The GBA is a big hit but GC is the second worst seller in Nintendo history (if you the count the Virutal GB), and the mainstream are set by "house/hard/fix/dunnotherightword" consoles... mmmh well ther're some exception... pokemon for instance : )
The deal between MS and ATI is annonced... and after a while rumor spreading begins...
PS2 overwhelms Xbox with a ratio that is somewhere in the 1 to 5 and at least in the near future it looks like hard that things will turn into a bed of roses for MS, so it's maybe in Redmond's interests to shift the attention to the next generation of game machines.
Nvdia is no longer the official chipmaker for the MS consoles... maybe producing for the first Xbox was not the King Mida's deal it seemed at first glance, but this isn't exactly the kind of news that makes shareholders explode of joy, and rumors about a possible deal with Sony for the PS3 will surely help theirs morale.
Sony on its side, after two sledgehammer consoles is working on number three, its position is of course enviable but its rivals are quite tough: a neverending cash company that usually crushs every competitor and a toymaker that has more fanatic disciples than an ayatollah and that year after year, despite a shrinking market share, earns tons of pokemoney... so if "mo' rumors mo' hype" still working (it should) mr. Kutaragi and friends will surely appreciate any kind of rumors about PS3.
Sounds a little a sort of "my rumors are bigger than yours" indeed.
Thanks God for headsets : )