The Japanese are also nuts over endless Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest sequels, so it isn't necessarily their gaming population that so craves innovation.
The way I'd interpret the success of Brain Age in Japan is the fondness of technology that their population has, even among non-gamers. This enables non-game electronic entertainment like Brain Age and Nintendogs to flourish there.
Popular mechanics may not have the most credibility, but surely the facts published on a web site that features presentation as professional as this one's pushes the story beyond reproach.
That may be true, but just remember the law of deminishing returns.
Absolutely true, and I think Nintendo was wise to take their current tact with the Wii. The hardware got powerful enough with the X-Box/GameCube, if not the Dreamcast/PS2 to allow developers a broad range of visual expression and style for their games. Although more definition and detail can certainly be an even nicer treat for the eyes and is necessary to produce more "realistic" looking games, more detail is certainly not necessary to create games that can make a great impact visually. Diminishing returns are very clearly starting to kick, especially when you take a look at what it costs to make games that do strive for that extra level of detail.
It doesn't a monsterously powerful system to produce some very cool looking games. Style matters much more than a few extra polygons and slightly more detailed bump maps anyway. Compare World of Warcraft to EverQuest II. EverQuest II probably has the more technically demanding/impressive graphics on paper (as well as aiming for, and probably achieving a slightly more realistic look), but in the eyes of most, World of Warcraft has a much stronger art style and thus is the better looking game. Sometimes the challenge of working with certain limitations can produce brilliant results.
I am glad Microsoft and Sony (and NVIDIA, ATI and IBM, etc.) are still around to push one another to new graphical peaks, but I'm also glad Nintendo is taking a breather and giving developers a chance to do the same.
I think the only reason developers are looking to episodic content as "the wave of the future" is because the games are getting absurdly expensive to create, thanks to the need to employ dozens upon dozens of artists to populate their worlds with content that live up to the standard that games are being held to today. Having to model all of those high poly count characters, monsters, buildings and weapons, and texture them all with high resolution, highly detailed bump maps, parallax maps, normal maps, etc. is very labor intensive.
The "gamer" demographic is not growing significantly in size and the games are getting more expensive to make. The apparent solution, in the eyes of Sony and Microsoft, and all of the developers who aim to produce cutting edge visuals with their games, is give people a relatively short game for $50-60, then squeeze them for a few extra dollars here and there by having them download new episodes, weapons, horse armor, levels, or whatever.
This is the price we're going to have to get used to paying for detailed graphics, because until we see some substantial breakthroughs in the way advanced graphics are produced, then I don't think things are going to change. The publishers have to maintain profitability somehow.
I've been hearing for the past 10 years from gamers that "gameplay is more important than graphics", but it's the graphics that have been driving the industry, for the most part. Nintendo is finally holding gamers to their word by saying "Okay, you wanted gameplay over graphics? Here you go." The fact that the Wii doesn't have all of the shaders, the memory, or the raw CPU/GPU power of its competitors means that developers don't have to invest all those resources in creating the most visually stunning games (unless they do it by employing a bold style that like Okami for the PS2) because there is no prayer of anything on the Wii looking as realistic as the most realistic games on the PS3.
The pressure to one-up the competition with graphics is gone on the Wii, leaving a focus on the quality (and quantity) of gameplay.
Nintendo also sold a RAM upgrade pack for the N64, it was required to play Majora's Mask.
By and large though, you're right... and when users have been asked to upgrade, it's traditionally been much cheaper and less painful in the console world than having to upgrade a graphics card or CPU (especially if this requires a motherboard upgrade).
Not to mention the fact there don't appear to be any games in development for the PS3 that will be able to claim an "E" rating from the ESRB (except maybe that EyeToy card battle game).
The PS3 seems exclusively targeted at adult gamers (and overwhelming targeted at a subset of adult gamers: young males). To hell with kids, parents, women, families and non/casual gamers.
PlayOnline registration actually, swear to god, confused the hell outta me, and I've navigated a lot of clumsy registration systems in my time. When I quit the game for a couple months and wanted to come back, they told me that my PlayOnline ID or some shit had expired and I'd need to buy a new copy of the game if I wanted to continue playing. Thanks, but no thanks.
Yeah, that's another thing that disgusted me about, S-E. MMOs aren't exactly known for their stellar customer service, but no other game to me seemed to scream at you like a spurned lover, "FINE, LEAVE, BUT DON'T EXPECT FOR ME TO WELCOME YOU BACK LATER!" This is the vibe I got from the fact that they have a policy of deleting characters on inactive accounts after as few as 3 months. Completely killing your PlayOnline registration is something I'd never heard of is even more ridiculous.
It's hard to compare the DVD and the PS2's DVD playback capabilities with Blu-Ray and PS3, in my opinion.
At the time of the PS2's release, the DVD was obviously going to be the next big thing in home video, it was just a matter of when. It had too many things going for it over VHS: better visual and audio quality, digital, no degradation in quality with playback over time, much more compact media, menus and options for things like subtitles, alternative audio/vocal tracks as well as special features like deleted scenes, interviews, easter eggs, etc.
Now look at what Blu-Ray offers over the DVD. Higher resolution and copy protection. That's about it. Without an HDTV, the higher resolution doesn't even mean anything. So only people who already have high end home entertainment setups will have any real compulsion to buy a Blu-Ray player right now, and how many of those people are going to want a reasonable compact, quality standalone Blu-Ray player and not a huge "all in one" device like the PS3?
Finally, the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is far from over, so in buying a PS3, you're buying into a format with a less than certain future. I expect Blu-Ray to fare pretty well (eventually) but we have to remember that Sony doesn't exactly have a track record in establish new media standards (Betamax, UMD, both huge flops).
Joe Consumer is not going to buy a PS3 just to get Blu-Ray, at least not until HDTVs and the PS3 itself come down dramatically in price. For now it is going to have to be the games which sell the PS3, and the games for the PS3 aren't looking all that much more compelling that what the 360 and Wii will be offering.
Though the grouping thing annoyed me, it's one of the things I might have come to accept from the game, except FF11 had/has an absolutely horrible UI. Unresponsive and with only minimal customization options. The nail in the coffin for me was ultimately the inability to alt-tab. By the time I quit the game I was disgusted, not necessarily by the gameplay or the game content, but just so utterly frustrated by the straight jacket UI that I grew to simply loathe the game.
I also found the community to be, if anything, a drawback. I encountered far many rude, racist and simply bad players in FF11 than I ever encountered in EverQuest or World of Warcraft (which also certainly have their share of bad eggs, but not nearly to the same degree of FF11). And one thing damaging the community aspect of the game was the inability to have robust communication with something like half of the game's population because of language differences. They didn't even give NA players the option to try to learn and speak with the Japanese in their own language by providing an IME for Japanese characters.
The game had a lot of features that make the game unaccessible to the casual gamer (mandatory grouping, an incessant need to farm to keep gear current and arrows/tools/whatever stocked), the need to quest for many area maps, etc. but a lot of this is appealing to the hardcore so it can't really be called a flaw, but just an aspect of the game that not everyone will appreciate.
The skillschain and magic burst system was cool and I'm still waiting for an MMO that isn't Final Fantasy XI to do something similar. The cutscenes and storylines were also fun to follow. I liked the game's art style in most respects, and am a little sad I never did acquire all that Red Mage pimp gear. Taru are just insanely adorable.
I never really got the name though. "Final Fantasy XI"? Why not just call it Final Fantasy Online? Now with FF12 coming out, FF11 sounds as dated as it is actually becoming. Will Final Fantasy XI still be running when Final Fantasy XV-2 is out? Heh.
I wish Square-Enix would revamp FF11 just a bit to be more accessible to casual gamers, with a robust, customizable interface for PC users, the ability to alt-tab without crippling the game enabled and rework the exp system so you're not so heavily penalized for having one player a few levels higher than the rest of the group (1 level 41 in a group of level 44's isn't bad, but 1 level 44 in a group of level 41's has an incredibly negative impact on your exp.) That, with a few graphical upgrades/reskins and it would be a great modern MMO. Oh, get rid of PlayOnline too, and don't make the install/registration process such a mess for new users.
I don't this stuff happening though, Square-Enix is very stubborn.
It beats some of the other names they're tossing at us... Origami, anyone?
Origami is likely a codename (like Revolution was for the Wii), not a final product name.
And I'm not so sure Origami is a worse name than Wii for a game console anyway.
I'm getting used to it, but you know, it makes it difficult for me to enthusiastically talk to my friends about the system. I anticipate the eye-rolling and dismissive snorts every time I think to say something like "Hey, have you heard about Nintendo's Wii?" or "Nintendo is unveiling the Wii on Tuesday!"
I know it the name is supposed to appeal to the non-hardcore gaming population, but all of my coworkers (who own video game consoles, but I would not call any of them really hardcore gamers) think the name is stupid and embarassing. So does my girlfriend. My mom and sister think it's silly. Just who is this name supposed to appeal to, because nobody I know personally likes it.
Will I get used to the name? Probably. Do I like having to double-check and rephrase everything I'm about to say about the console so it doesn't sound like a 2nd grader's penis joke? Not really.
I can't wait for tomorrow so there will be something to actually talk and think about regarding the new console besides its horrible name.
Actually it is a fair parallel to Hot Coffee. The content shipped on the disc, but the content isn't a sex scene. The content is a nude-colored texture for female characters. However, this horribly offensive nude "patch" doesn't even have nipples. The odd thing is that you can't access it on the 360, but the 360 version is being rerated and ripped off the shelves. So no nipple, and not even in the 360, but the 360 is being rated for having nudity. Thank God for the ESRB to protect me!
I've heard conflicting reports concerning this. I could be wrong but I don't think a flesh colored body texture would cause any real contraversy. I'm pretty sure that originally the nude female texture did in fact include nipples, but they were removed in the first patch (still in beta at the moment).
It does seem like a stupid oversight on Bethesda's part. Why would they include "nippled" textures at all if they were aiming for a T rating? And now that they seem to have been irrevocably rated M, why not just leave the textures in?
Your mother or girlfriend doesn't want something called an Xbox 360, but that's okay because they won't find any games they like on an Xbox 360 anyway (beside xarcade, that is). They might be less intimidated by the "Wii" and will definitely find Nintendo games and non-games that sound more interesting than "Madden 2007" and "GTA 2008".
Does anybody actually have a girlfriend or a mom who's heard the game and reacted positively? I know mine haven't.
I agree that traditional console names don't have good mainstream appeal, but that doesn't mean that any non-traditional name is an improvement. Wii is pretty awful.
Does the harvest mod indicate which townsfolk you've deflowered, as well?
No, but I just noticed a disturbing vocabulary mistake in my last post, using the word fauna instead of flora. Thus I suppose I was implying that you could keep track of which bears and mudcrabs you violate.
Natural Wildlife - Instead of all animals (aside from deer) being universally aggressive, this mod adds variable creature behaviors.
Harvest Mod - Makes it so when you harvest fauna, most of it disappears from the environment or is replaced by a "deflowered" version of the model. Makes it much easier to tell which flowers and mushrooms you've already picked.
Stamina/Fatigue Text Switch Mod - Gets rid of the annoying use of the word "fatigue" in the game and replaces instances of that word with "stamina".
Turn Out the Lights - Makes it so you can snuff out various candles, lamps, etc. found in environments.
I've read people make similar claims before, but I am having a difficult time grasping this idea. I read this article thinking it might provide some sort of satisfactory explanation of how any architecture could do an adequate job of resolving the serious differences (and contradictions) between different types of virtual worlds and the avatars, environments and challenges that populate them.
I don't understand how you can mix together such differing genres as Star Wars, World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto and The Sims all together in such a way that does not completely wreck any sense of immersion the player might hope to achieve, for one thing.
Game mechanics and balance produce another problem. Unless all of the unified games utitlize an extremely similar set of game mechanics, interplay and competition between avatars from different "realms" would seem impossible, or at very least, potentially massively unbalanced.
Sorry, I'm just having a horrible time wrapping my head around this one. I'd like to think this is a cool idea, but I'm not really grasping what the advantage to doing this even is. Having an open standard for e-mail works because if there were not a standard, as communications tool it would be a lot less useful. Do games need to be part of a standard to be fun? Do standards make them more fun? Doesn't this present a danger of further homogenizing the already somewhat redundant MMO space?
I'd love to understand why people think this is so inevitable, and why it's a good thing. I think I want to be able to escape to discrete worlds, different worlds for different moods, experiences and challenges, and I don't see the big deal in not necessarily having to create a new avatar for each world (which I've always considered to be part of the fun in playing a new game).
You're talking about a niche within a niche here. I've been using emulators for a while, though I haven't being paying much attention to the scene lately, and it's so easy to find what you're looking for without ever touching a web site that hasn't been vocal about being hit with a cease and desist, so I've never heard of Nintendo itself specifically going after the makers of emulators or ROM distribution sites.
I do recall the IDSA (now the ESA) sending out a bunch of legal threats, but everyone's a member of the IDSA/ESA... only the most diehard retrogamers who don't care at all about new games/systems would boycott an ESA member because of their actions, because it would mean never playing a new, non-indie game.
I'm not saying Nintendo specifically didn't spearhead some sort of gestapo raid on the emulation scene, I don't know... I'm just saying that if I didn't know about Nintendo's supposed behavior and I'm something of a techie/enthusiast, then I highly doubt that a significant portion Nintendo's target audience has heard of their actions, let alone been swayed by those actions enough to refuse to buy a Revolution.
So you're really talking about a statistically insignificant group of people that Nintendo has supposedly alienated. Nintendo is trying to capture the broader audience with the Nintendo Revolution... people who want to get the classic video game experience without downloading software, visiting emulation community sites or downloading torrents and buying special controller adapters for their PC.
Just on my own personal acquaintance I know several people who have played old NES/SNES/Genesis games who would love to do so again, and would do so if they had a simplified interface/device to do so, but when I try to explain them about emulation, they give me blank stares because the process is just a bit too arcane and involved.
Well they should release both, if they're offering ports from the entire libraries of both consoles
But they won't, unless I'm badly mistaken.
It will be up to the publishers of these old games to decide whether or not they want the game to be played on the Revolution's Virtual Console. Nintendo can't just start selling old SNES Konami or EA games just because they feel like it, they'll need each other's permission.
If a publisher does decide to sell one of its older titles for the Revolution's Virtual Console, it will likely be up to them which version of the game is sold (if not both), though Nintendo might put some pressure on them to sell only the SNES version, I don't imagine they will press too hard for that condition.
Microsoft should just go the whole nine and make it a cell phone killer as well. Also, include some scanners in the hardware so it can function as a preemptive tricorder killer.
Also, they should be sure to implement a fold-out cutting blade, screwdriver, corkscrew, can opener, toothpick and nail file so it can kill swiss army knives as well.
This is the product the global marketplace has been waiting for.
Some product placement might be acceptable in a game that I'm paying a subscription for, assuming of course the game takes place in a modern or contemporary setting where you might actually expect the products being advertised to exist. It wouldn't necessarily obtrustive be too obtrustive to be playing a GTA-style game and to see billboards on the side of the road as you drive down the city highway. In fact, it might even make the game more believable. It could prove limiting as well, however. If a car game only features GM automobiles as a part of their product placement contract, it might not work out to be as immersive an enviornment as compared to if they populated the game entirely with made-up autos (or those patterned after a variety of different makes of car).
If I'm paying the market price for a MMO subscription (presently, $15/month or so) not a single advertisement had better be integrated as a part of the UI/HUD, unless I can easily and permanently disable it. Integration of ads in the UI might be acceptable as long as you're paying less than what an adless MMO of comparable quality costs, and if you're given the option to pay a bit more to get rid of the ads.
And though I say that might be acceptable, it doesn't mean I want to see it happen. I worry about the old slippery slope. Today you can easily fork over $80/month to your cable company and the majority of stations will still be displaying pure advertising 15% of the time or so. Gaming companies may figure that if people will accept this in television, they will accept it in games. This is obviously not the direction that I'd like to see another medium headed in.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I'd interpret the success of Brain Age in Japan is the fondness of technology that their population has, even among non-gamers. This enables non-game electronic entertainment like Brain Age and Nintendogs to flourish there.
Don't be such a skeptic.
Absolutely true, and I think Nintendo was wise to take their current tact with the Wii. The hardware got powerful enough with the X-Box/GameCube, if not the Dreamcast/PS2 to allow developers a broad range of visual expression and style for their games. Although more definition and detail can certainly be an even nicer treat for the eyes and is necessary to produce more "realistic" looking games, more detail is certainly not necessary to create games that can make a great impact visually. Diminishing returns are very clearly starting to kick, especially when you take a look at what it costs to make games that do strive for that extra level of detail.
It doesn't a monsterously powerful system to produce some very cool looking games. Style matters much more than a few extra polygons and slightly more detailed bump maps anyway. Compare World of Warcraft to EverQuest II. EverQuest II probably has the more technically demanding/impressive graphics on paper (as well as aiming for, and probably achieving a slightly more realistic look), but in the eyes of most, World of Warcraft has a much stronger art style and thus is the better looking game. Sometimes the challenge of working with certain limitations can produce brilliant results.
I am glad Microsoft and Sony (and NVIDIA, ATI and IBM, etc.) are still around to push one another to new graphical peaks, but I'm also glad Nintendo is taking a breather and giving developers a chance to do the same.
The "gamer" demographic is not growing significantly in size and the games are getting more expensive to make. The apparent solution, in the eyes of Sony and Microsoft, and all of the developers who aim to produce cutting edge visuals with their games, is give people a relatively short game for $50-60, then squeeze them for a few extra dollars here and there by having them download new episodes, weapons, horse armor, levels, or whatever.
This is the price we're going to have to get used to paying for detailed graphics, because until we see some substantial breakthroughs in the way advanced graphics are produced, then I don't think things are going to change. The publishers have to maintain profitability somehow.
I've been hearing for the past 10 years from gamers that "gameplay is more important than graphics", but it's the graphics that have been driving the industry, for the most part. Nintendo is finally holding gamers to their word by saying "Okay, you wanted gameplay over graphics? Here you go." The fact that the Wii doesn't have all of the shaders, the memory, or the raw CPU/GPU power of its competitors means that developers don't have to invest all those resources in creating the most visually stunning games (unless they do it by employing a bold style that like Okami for the PS2) because there is no prayer of anything on the Wii looking as realistic as the most realistic games on the PS3.
The pressure to one-up the competition with graphics is gone on the Wii, leaving a focus on the quality (and quantity) of gameplay.
By and large though, you're right ... and when users have been asked to upgrade, it's traditionally been much cheaper and less painful in the console world than having to upgrade a graphics card or CPU (especially if this requires a motherboard upgrade).
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but Gyration, Inc. (which Nintendo has a majority stake in) has had an "air mouse" out for a while now.
I would sincerely doubt that Nintendo was thinking about some obscure antique made by Atari when the designed the Wii controller.
There is no doubt in my mind that Sony was thinking about the Wii controller when they hacked motion sensors into the PS3's controller, though.
Definitely a rip-off there.
The PS3 seems exclusively targeted at adult gamers (and overwhelming targeted at a subset of adult gamers: young males). To hell with kids, parents, women, families and non/casual gamers.
Yeah, that's another thing that disgusted me about, S-E. MMOs aren't exactly known for their stellar customer service, but no other game to me seemed to scream at you like a spurned lover, "FINE, LEAVE, BUT DON'T EXPECT FOR ME TO WELCOME YOU BACK LATER!" This is the vibe I got from the fact that they have a policy of deleting characters on inactive accounts after as few as 3 months. Completely killing your PlayOnline registration is something I'd never heard of is even more ridiculous.
At the time of the PS2's release, the DVD was obviously going to be the next big thing in home video, it was just a matter of when. It had too many things going for it over VHS: better visual and audio quality, digital, no degradation in quality with playback over time, much more compact media, menus and options for things like subtitles, alternative audio/vocal tracks as well as special features like deleted scenes, interviews, easter eggs, etc.
Now look at what Blu-Ray offers over the DVD. Higher resolution and copy protection. That's about it. Without an HDTV, the higher resolution doesn't even mean anything. So only people who already have high end home entertainment setups will have any real compulsion to buy a Blu-Ray player right now, and how many of those people are going to want a reasonable compact, quality standalone Blu-Ray player and not a huge "all in one" device like the PS3?
Finally, the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is far from over, so in buying a PS3, you're buying into a format with a less than certain future. I expect Blu-Ray to fare pretty well (eventually) but we have to remember that Sony doesn't exactly have a track record in establish new media standards (Betamax, UMD, both huge flops).
Joe Consumer is not going to buy a PS3 just to get Blu-Ray, at least not until HDTVs and the PS3 itself come down dramatically in price. For now it is going to have to be the games which sell the PS3, and the games for the PS3 aren't looking all that much more compelling that what the 360 and Wii will be offering.
I also found the community to be, if anything, a drawback. I encountered far many rude, racist and simply bad players in FF11 than I ever encountered in EverQuest or World of Warcraft (which also certainly have their share of bad eggs, but not nearly to the same degree of FF11). And one thing damaging the community aspect of the game was the inability to have robust communication with something like half of the game's population because of language differences. They didn't even give NA players the option to try to learn and speak with the Japanese in their own language by providing an IME for Japanese characters.
The game had a lot of features that make the game unaccessible to the casual gamer (mandatory grouping, an incessant need to farm to keep gear current and arrows/tools/whatever stocked), the need to quest for many area maps, etc. but a lot of this is appealing to the hardcore so it can't really be called a flaw, but just an aspect of the game that not everyone will appreciate.
The skillschain and magic burst system was cool and I'm still waiting for an MMO that isn't Final Fantasy XI to do something similar. The cutscenes and storylines were also fun to follow. I liked the game's art style in most respects, and am a little sad I never did acquire all that Red Mage pimp gear. Taru are just insanely adorable.
I never really got the name though. "Final Fantasy XI"? Why not just call it Final Fantasy Online? Now with FF12 coming out, FF11 sounds as dated as it is actually becoming. Will Final Fantasy XI still be running when Final Fantasy XV-2 is out? Heh.
I wish Square-Enix would revamp FF11 just a bit to be more accessible to casual gamers, with a robust, customizable interface for PC users, the ability to alt-tab without crippling the game enabled and rework the exp system so you're not so heavily penalized for having one player a few levels higher than the rest of the group (1 level 41 in a group of level 44's isn't bad, but 1 level 44 in a group of level 41's has an incredibly negative impact on your exp.) That, with a few graphical upgrades/reskins and it would be a great modern MMO. Oh, get rid of PlayOnline too, and don't make the install/registration process such a mess for new users.
I don't this stuff happening though, Square-Enix is very stubborn.
Here is the other of the two newly discovered galaxies.
It beats some of the other names they're tossing at us... Origami, anyone? Origami is likely a codename (like Revolution was for the Wii), not a final product name. And I'm not so sure Origami is a worse name than Wii for a game console anyway.
I know it the name is supposed to appeal to the non-hardcore gaming population, but all of my coworkers (who own video game consoles, but I would not call any of them really hardcore gamers) think the name is stupid and embarassing. So does my girlfriend. My mom and sister think it's silly. Just who is this name supposed to appeal to, because nobody I know personally likes it.
Will I get used to the name? Probably. Do I like having to double-check and rephrase everything I'm about to say about the console so it doesn't sound like a 2nd grader's penis joke? Not really.
I can't wait for tomorrow so there will be something to actually talk and think about regarding the new console besides its horrible name.
I've heard conflicting reports concerning this. I could be wrong but I don't think a flesh colored body texture would cause any real contraversy. I'm pretty sure that originally the nude female texture did in fact include nipples, but they were removed in the first patch (still in beta at the moment).
It does seem like a stupid oversight on Bethesda's part. Why would they include "nippled" textures at all if they were aiming for a T rating? And now that they seem to have been irrevocably rated M, why not just leave the textures in?
Does anybody actually have a girlfriend or a mom who's heard the game and reacted positively? I know mine haven't.
I agree that traditional console names don't have good mainstream appeal, but that doesn't mean that any non-traditional name is an improvement. Wii is pretty awful.
No, but I just noticed a disturbing vocabulary mistake in my last post, using the word fauna instead of flora. Thus I suppose I was implying that you could keep track of which bears and mudcrabs you violate.
Harvest Mod - Makes it so when you harvest fauna, most of it disappears from the environment or is replaced by a "deflowered" version of the model. Makes it much easier to tell which flowers and mushrooms you've already picked.
Stamina/Fatigue Text Switch Mod - Gets rid of the annoying use of the word "fatigue" in the game and replaces instances of that word with "stamina".
Turn Out the Lights - Makes it so you can snuff out various candles, lamps, etc. found in environments.
Maybe it's not canon because the entire game is a dream sequence. :)
I don't understand how you can mix together such differing genres as Star Wars, World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto and The Sims all together in such a way that does not completely wreck any sense of immersion the player might hope to achieve, for one thing.
Game mechanics and balance produce another problem. Unless all of the unified games utitlize an extremely similar set of game mechanics, interplay and competition between avatars from different "realms" would seem impossible, or at very least, potentially massively unbalanced.
Sorry, I'm just having a horrible time wrapping my head around this one. I'd like to think this is a cool idea, but I'm not really grasping what the advantage to doing this even is. Having an open standard for e-mail works because if there were not a standard, as communications tool it would be a lot less useful. Do games need to be part of a standard to be fun? Do standards make them more fun? Doesn't this present a danger of further homogenizing the already somewhat redundant MMO space?
I'd love to understand why people think this is so inevitable, and why it's a good thing. I think I want to be able to escape to discrete worlds, different worlds for different moods, experiences and challenges, and I don't see the big deal in not necessarily having to create a new avatar for each world (which I've always considered to be part of the fun in playing a new game).
I do recall the IDSA (now the ESA) sending out a bunch of legal threats, but everyone's a member of the IDSA/ESA ... only the most diehard retrogamers who don't care at all about new games/systems would boycott an ESA member because of their actions, because it would mean never playing a new, non-indie game.
I'm not saying Nintendo specifically didn't spearhead some sort of gestapo raid on the emulation scene, I don't know ... I'm just saying that if I didn't know about Nintendo's supposed behavior and I'm something of a techie/enthusiast, then I highly doubt that a significant portion Nintendo's target audience has heard of their actions, let alone been swayed by those actions enough to refuse to buy a Revolution.
So you're really talking about a statistically insignificant group of people that Nintendo has supposedly alienated. Nintendo is trying to capture the broader audience with the Nintendo Revolution ... people who want to get the classic video game experience without downloading software, visiting emulation community sites or downloading torrents and buying special controller adapters for their PC.
Just on my own personal acquaintance I know several people who have played old NES/SNES/Genesis games who would love to do so again, and would do so if they had a simplified interface/device to do so, but when I try to explain them about emulation, they give me blank stares because the process is just a bit too arcane and involved.
But they won't, unless I'm badly mistaken.
It will be up to the publishers of these old games to decide whether or not they want the game to be played on the Revolution's Virtual Console. Nintendo can't just start selling old SNES Konami or EA games just because they feel like it, they'll need each other's permission.
If a publisher does decide to sell one of its older titles for the Revolution's Virtual Console, it will likely be up to them which version of the game is sold (if not both), though Nintendo might put some pressure on them to sell only the SNES version, I don't imagine they will press too hard for that condition.
It's supposed to launch before Thanksgiving this year.
Also, they should be sure to implement a fold-out cutting blade, screwdriver, corkscrew, can opener, toothpick and nail file so it can kill swiss army knives as well.
This is the product the global marketplace has been waiting for.
If I'm paying the market price for a MMO subscription (presently, $15/month or so) not a single advertisement had better be integrated as a part of the UI/HUD, unless I can easily and permanently disable it. Integration of ads in the UI might be acceptable as long as you're paying less than what an adless MMO of comparable quality costs, and if you're given the option to pay a bit more to get rid of the ads.
And though I say that might be acceptable, it doesn't mean I want to see it happen. I worry about the old slippery slope. Today you can easily fork over $80/month to your cable company and the majority of stations will still be displaying pure advertising 15% of the time or so. Gaming companies may figure that if people will accept this in television, they will accept it in games. This is obviously not the direction that I'd like to see another medium headed in.