Did you notice how he used gross profit instead of net profit to add his numbers up? The sale price of a piece of hardware or a game is a very poor metric for how much money is actually made from the sale.
The upshot is that if Sony loses money on each PSP sold (which I've heard is the case), then each of their 1.5 million hardware units is actually multiplied by a negative number, not by $250. How do you think the numbers would look if the GGP had taken that into account? Or let's do the same math, but add in the sales of Mario 64 DS (which the article said had been omitted from the sales count). What do you think the numbers would look like then?
The false logic you're talking about has been used all over the place. In the case of the PS2, Sony claims market domination because they claim the largest number of units shipped. This should mean that Sony has the largest installed user base, but in reality, many of those sales occured because of faulty or broken PS2 hardware. Despite the large sales numbers, Nintendo has posted significantly more profit than Sony's game division, and I suspect more profit than the entire company itself.
My point is that if the GGP wants to use "money made" as the metric for domination for the PSP, then he must also admit that the Gamecube is trouncing the PS2 in the home console market (although admittedly, the actual PSP profits are likely much, much lower than the number quoted, even in the US). On the other hand, if he wishes to say that the PS2 is beating the Gamecube because of high sales numbers, then he must also admit that since the DS has higher sales numbers, it is beating the PSP in the handheld market. I suspect that he actually was trying to take sides, and he was certainly excersizing bad logic. The point was to try to make Sony look good, but reality is reality. Things appear to be pretty bleak for the PSP.
What you mean to say is that if Sony is lagging behind in number of units shipped, then we should use gross revenue as the metric for market domination, but if Sony is lagging behind in total videogame profits (re: GC vs. PS2), then we should use number of units moved as the metric for market domination.
From what I've read, the Revolution's wand controller can be stuck into a "shell" which is shaped like an ordinary controller, allowing you to control a game using a button layout you're used to. As an added bonus, the controller could transmit data about how the controller shell is oriented in space, allowing an appropriately-programmed game to react to the player tilting the shell around. The Revolution will have no problems playing ported games from the other two systems, since those games can simply instruct the player to put the wand controller into the controller shell. Remember, even if the controller is sending orientation data, the program can simply ignore it and only respond to button presses.
The people who got to play with the controller at the Tokyo Games Festival said that it felt completely natural to use the controller, even with the nunchuck thingie attatched. The thing is you don't have to move your wrist much at all to make big movements, but you can also make tiny movements moving your wrist the same distance, too. Unless you're flailing your arms around, having a cord attatched shouldn't be a big deal.
As far as buttons, you forgot about the two triggers located on the left-handed part of the nunchuk controller. It has an analog stick and two triggers which you can press with your index and middle fingers.
So, controls:
Controller aims, takes care of sniper rifle zooming, fluid posture and leaning. The two triggers on the left-handed nunchuck control are your crouch and reload. Start pauses, select toggles altrenate fire. A jumps, B trigger fires. A "Use" button can be contextually mapped to any of those. Also, "using" something may be done by using the controller's 3D location abilities. In a lot of FPS's, you can "Use" a button to push it, but with the Revolution controller, you can extend your hand out, pushing the button by actually extending your hand in game. There seem to be enough buttons on the controller to create a basic FPS control scheme. It certainly has a lot more potential than any of the other console control schemes I've seen, especially since it has natural support for things like fluid posture and leaning, and rolling, etc.
At the same time, the controller shell can provide all the buttons you need to play an EA sports game or whatever.
Descent is 5D. 3D locator for your ship, and 2D locator for your ship's angle. Having more than one way of changing your ship's angle or position doesn't add any more D's, it just means there are more buttons to push, or the controls are more versatile. (Think of it this way: The space you move in is three dimensional, but choosing your angle is the same as locating a point on a hollow sphere with a fixed radius. Select any point on the sphere and it determines your angle. You would have 6D controls if said sphere was filled, and you could choose any point on the exterior OR interior to aim at.)
Also, I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say that it was impossible to emulate n-dimensional controls using a PC (for relatively small n). Of course it's possible. I can divide the keys on the keyboard into pairs and map each pair to a dimension and wind up with something like a 40D game (I didn't bother counting keys). My point was that the Revolution Controller has all of the mechanisms that one would need to play your average FPS (FPS, not flying-around-ship-shooter, since Mark Rein was talking about FPS's.), and that it actually provides new functions that aren't easily emulated by a PC. On a PC, if you wanted to reach into your screen, you could either get a 3D mouse, map two keyboard buttons to handle the task, or use your mousewheel. 3D mice aren't pervasive (meaning that your average game developer could not assume that their customers possessed the hardware), and mapping the keys splits your aiming mechanisms between two hands (and may also interfere with moving and aiming at the same time). The only plausible solution I can see is to use the mousewheel, but there are still some serious problems with it if you want to do anything more complicated than zoom a sniper rifle.
This isn't so with the Revolution Controller. You can use it to draw a circle in 3D space in any orientation you can move your hand in. The best you could get with your mouse/mousewheel is a sort of ovally-diamond, and that's if you're particularly coordinated and the circle was rectilinearly aligned to an axis. Many FPS's also have fluid posture and buttons mapped to make your character lean in certain ways. Since the Revolution Controller can also determine its orientation in 3D space, these functions can also become much smoother and more intuitive.
Mark Rein was also specifically talking about consoles. Even though it is possible to create a 40D game on a PC, you are going to have a lot of trouble replicating the experience on an XBox. You don't have any sort of 3D locating device on a normal console controller without pressing non-control stick buttons. (The PS2 clicky analog sticks don't count since you can only move in one direction in the third dimension with them. Also, it's difficult to press them in and move the stick at the same time.) The out-of-the-way buttons can substitute as the third-dimension controls, but normally you have your thumbs on the control sticks and your index fingers on both triggers so that you can fire, so pressing those buttons approaches being ergonomically impossible. The PS2 controller may be able to pull it off (using the secondary triggers), but the index fingers would have to choose between movement or shooting.
There's a reason game devs don't often try to impliment these control schemes.
You say you want the control system that allows you to spin around in circles forever without lifting your hand. Are you sure that's better than the one that can only do one and a half spins, but will never drift or overturn, and which responds instantly and accurately to your hand movements?
People who have actually used the controller have said that it feels completely natural and that they could detect no lag or discrepancies in how it responded to their hand movements. Of course there will be problems if the controller doesn't react quickly or accurately enough, but according to testimony I've read, it w
In my personal opinion, this dude is talking out his ass.
The Revolution controller is a massive improvement over the current controller designs when it comes to first person shooters.
First person shooters are 3D games. That means that somehow, the player has to have access to a at least a 4D pointing device. They need to be able to move in two dimensions (at the minimum) to move along the ground, and they need a second 2D locator in order to pick an angle at which to fire. In total, you need two separate 2D pointing devices to play an FPS, for a total of 4D. (really you need a 5D locator to play FPS's because your character moves in three dimensions (i.e. they aren't stuck to the ground.) Your average console or PC cannot emulate a 5D locator. However, this issue is avoided in most FPS's because there is normally some sort of gravity in the level to limit the amount of motion your character can have in the third dimension. In most FPS's, walking occurs in two dimensions, and you can achieve limited motion in the third dimension by using your jump button.)
There are a few ways you can get 4D location. On a PC, you use your left fingers to press WASD for movement (with thumb on spacebar for jump) and your right hand on the mouse to control aim. On consoles, this problem has been solved by having two 2D control sticks used for moving and aiming respectively. The Revolution nunchuck controller is better because it emulates a 5D pointing device.
In addition to having the left-handed control stick to replace WASD, the right-handed pointer will be able to locate a point anywhere on your television screen. What's even cooler is that the pointer will also be able to point at points inside your TV since it can determine its own distance from the TV's screen. This doesn't easily solve the problem of true 3D character movement, but it opens up interesting potential for tasks that would actually require you to reach into your TV screen to do things.
In short, the Revolution controller provides all of the necessary parts needed to control an FPS. It is more intuitive since you really are pointing where you are aiming, and its unique features actually add more degrees of control than you could get on a PC or a current console. For example, in order to emulate the Revolution controller on your PC, you would have to lift your mouse up and have it be able to detect its distance to the mousepad, and it would still have to detect sliding, even when not in contact with the mousepad. There are 3D mice out there for PC's, but they are certainly not as mass-consumption as the Revolution controller will be.
Here is the second reason the Revolution Controller is superior for FPS's. Go find a laser pointer or a flashlight and sit down facing a relatively blank wall in your dwelling. Turn the laser or flashlight on set it comfortably in your lap. Now, point at a spot near the left end of the wall, pretending that you're playing an FPS and that the light is your targetting reticule. With your eyes, pick out a spot on the right side of the wall. Quickly move the light to the spot you picked, and then move it back to where it started. Now, point at the spot on the left side of the wall, but extend your arm. Do the same thing with your arm extended - move to the right side and back to the left.
The first thing you did is the Revolution controller. The second thing you did is a mouse on your PC. When using the Revolution Controller, you can make very large motions with very small movements of the wrist. On a PC with a mouse, you have to move your entire arm when dragging the mouse all the way across the mousepad. Using a PC mouse is comfortable since your wrist is probably resting on a wristrest or on your desk, but the fact that such little motion can have such a big effect on the Revolution Controller means that playing FPS's with it will be much faster and more accurate than on
I think often people forget that Nintendo did not make all of the cool NES games people keep talking about. They made a good chunk, but not all. As such, they may not be able to get access to the rights for all of the games you would like to play. Are the companies that made those games even still around today? I suppose it would be worth looking into, but it's certainly not trivial to get the rights to those things.
Interesting to note that even though the PSP is capable of recreating the gaming experience you could get on a PS2, the only game people ever wind up talking about is Lumines, a 2-D blockbreaking game.
I am not the grandparent, but you should see the AC post (written by me) right below yours for a good definition.
Shortly put, an RPG is a game where *playing the role* is a gameplay choice that you make. The same sort of choice as shooting a gun or swinging a sword.
A game is not "role-playing" if the player is never given a choice as to *how* to deal with the problems before them. Ever played Deus Ex? You could play the game as an FPS, shooting everything in your way, but it was also possible to finish the game without ever firing a single bullet. THAT is a role-playing game. Final Fantasy X is not a role-playing game, even though it has more "gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games" than Deus Ex does.
In Final Fantasy X, your choices affect the game world as they do in every game, but there is never any question as to what is a good idea. You almost always will open a treasure chest. Playing an environmentalist who does not want to disturb the native treasure chests is likely to get you killed.
Enemies are for killing. You can't ever play a pacifist and try to talk them down. Forget trying to tame them. You also never have a choice as to what to do with the loot you gather from the enemies you do kill. You use it or sell it. You can't play a charitable character and donate it to people. You want to play a leader character and use your swag to arm your own army? Sorry, you can't.
People never comment on how cool your sword is. Hell, villagers don't even bat an eye when a group of heavily armed people walk into town, one person with a sword twice the length of their body. The video games normally referred to as RPG's usually have nothing to do with role-playing. They are usually simply action games with a story and fantasy setting.
I think the term "role-following" is more appropriate.
You should try Yoshi Touch and Go. I can't put that game down. A lot of people bash it for being too short (there are only two sections of the game (falling and running), and each of those sections is semi-randomly generated), but I found it helps to think about it like the DS's Tetris. It looks like a side-scrolling Yoshi adventure, but really it's more like an abstract puzzle game. It's simple to learn, hard to play, and addictive as hell.
I hear the Kirby game is excellent. Haven't had the chance to try it yet.
I wasn't searching for the truth of the matter. In my case, given the choice between a DS game and a PSP game, I will always get the DS game simply because I do not own a PSP.
I only meant to point out that the grandparent's numbers were useless since he/ she used a very narrow definition of "market share". i.e. one that didn't account for overall changes in the market size. That is to say that he or she made some pretty big assumptions about what people would do (they assumed that someone who bought one system would not buy the other, for instance). In reality, you can't really know what each individual spender will or won't do.
Economists run into this kind of problem all the time. The best we can do is examine worst or best case scenarios and try to perform emperical studies. It's a rare case that we can actually *know* something about a given market through theory. I was merely trying to point out that the grandparent's numbers were bunk because he has no way of knowing where inbetween the "best case" and "worst case" we actually are in the real market. Anyone who claims they know what's "going on" probably has something to sell you.
Not that I really want to get into the astroturfing that Slashdot endures all the time...
But to address your point: We don't know the reason that your hypothetical person only buys two games a month on average. The reason is important. If two games is all they can afford, and there are more games out there than they can buy, then you would probably be correct that Nintendo would sell a lower proportion of that person's monthly consumption.
If, however, that person only buys two games a month on average because only two games a month appeal to them even though they have the cash to buy more than that, then i would suspect that that person would buy two games from Nintendo AND two games for the Sony handheld. You just can't say for sure what's really going on. Often times, you have to rely on antecdotal evidence. I have a fair amount of money to spend on entertainment each month, but I haven't been buying many games lately since I've been occupied with other things, and there hasn't been much that has appealed to me.
I suspect that someone who is actually willing to lay down the money to get a PSP has a pretty large game budget to begin with. The price of a few games a month to a parent is nothing compared to a mortgage, insurance, college tuition, plus all the additional costs incurred while trying to keep a house in repair. Families making income to cover those expenses have historically been able to keep savings as well (on average 5% of income, I believe). I know there are families that are "against-the-wall" money-wise, but many families have the disposable income to tolerate any number of games a month their child wants. If there is a significant number of such families, I suspect the portable market will grow rather than go stale.
Nice work, AC. Your wisdom is ever appreciated. Check out this hypothetical situation:
Alan and Bob are gamers. Say Nintendo is the only company producing handheld gaming machines. So both Alan and Bob buy the Nintendo handheld, the DS.
Now say that a new competitor enters the market with a new handheld, the PSP. Now, there are a few things that could happen. If one or both of them decide to forgo buying a DS in order to buy a PSP, then you can clearly say that Nintendo has lost market share. If Alan and Bob are only given the choice of one handheld and at least one of them decides to buy a PSP, then Nintendo's market share has dropped to 50% or even 0% in this market. In this case, it's clear what's going on.
But now we can see cases in which it's not so clear. Say that (just like before) both Alan and Bob buy DS's, but one or both of them also buys a PSP. Whether or not Nintendo has lost market share depends on your definition of "market share". Obviously, the added PSP's in this market means that Nintendo's handheld no longer accounts for 100% of the number of handhelds in the market. However, in our hypothetical situation, Nintendo has recieved the *same amount of money* and has the *same user base* as they did before Sony entered the market.
This seems like a more appropriate definition of market share, as it accounts for the instances in which having a second competitior in a market actually helps *grow* the market, perhaps to the point where everyone is better off. The thinking goes like this. If I have a lot of money and decide to buy a DS, I will still have a lot of money left over. I won't buy another DS, because there's only one of me. However, if another handheld comes along that I like, I can spend some more of that money to get it, thereby pouring more money overall into the handheld market while still giving money to both competitors.
It is also possible that competition may help bolster sales for both competitors. An example: Say Cindy really isn't into games. One day Alan and Bob show her their gaming systems, and she likes them so much that she decides to buy a PSP. After playing her PSP for a while, she really gets into games, and starts searching for more sources of entertainment. One of those sources could potentially be a DS, since it could fulfill her desire.
As I understand it, this is part of Nintendo's strategy that they're realizing with the DS. They hope to get new people into gaming - people who were uninterested, or who just didn't know about it. When that happens, it's better for everyone.
Patents have not been effective at protecting Nintendo's stuff in the past. Believe it or not, they actually have a patent on the D-pad that has been used in their controllers since the NES days. But wait, you may say. Sony's controller has a D-pad, too! How can that be?
The answer is that Sony got around Nintendo's patent by having each of their direction buttons be separate entities on the controller (ever notice how the direction buttons on the Playstation controller are not connected?) As I understand it, having them be separate buttons lets them get around Nintendo's patent.
Personally, I think it's pretty asanine that someone could hold a patent on the D-pad, but around the time of the NES, it was a fairly new idea. It just goes to show that Sony is sleazy enough to be able to ignore patented ideas. I fully understand why Nintendo isn't revealing anything about their magic controller, because it's about 100 to 1 odds that Sony and Microsoft would rip it off one way or another, patents be damned.
Intellectual property is only worth respecting if it's yours, it seems.
Did you really just say stranglehold on innovation?
Do you mean to say that Nintendo was preventing other companies and game devs from being innovative? I hate to say it, but if Nintendo is the only innovative company out there, it's not their fault that no one else is.
I agree that Katamari Damacy is an innovative game. Ico, too. Whenever anyone asks about innovation on a non-Nintendo platform, those two games always come up. What about others? Are there others? This may be one of those cases where the exceptions prove the rule.
I really couldn't say, either. At the same time, I don't claim to be able to develop innovating games. I honestly don't think there is a way that Gran Tourismo could change the way you use a car, since it is trying to be as realistic as possible. They've pretty heavily limited themselves by deciding that they have to adhere to consensual reality and physics. Since there is nothing that can be added due to the game's very definition, a lot of people can't justify upgrading to the latest version if it simply provides a graphics upgrade / more cars, and it is even more difficult to hail it as something that is innovative.
All that being said, if you take a look at the Burnout games and the Gran Tourismo games, they are very clearly not the same game. In Burnout, your aim is to tend towards mischeif and destruction, trying to rack up as many "near-misses" as you can while driving on crowded highways. Near-misses give you NOS, which lets you go faster. I've only played Gran Tourismo a couple times, and none of the tracks had any other cars on them. But if they did, I presume that you would play the game trying your best to avoid any contact with the other cars, since contact would either lose you the race or drop your time by too much.
So there's a very simple example of how simply changing an accumulation mechanism alters the way in which you think about the game while playing. While Zelda games don't have many accumulation mechanisms to alter, each game adds new variations on the Zelda world that change the way you use your tools and weapons. Even adding something as trivial as allowing the boomerang to hit 5 targets at once means that Wind Waker could contain new puzzles that made the player have to position Link in just the right spot in the room to get five simultaneous hits.
I was just trying to make the point that just like it's incorrect to claim that Burnout and Gran Tourismo are the same game just because they have cars in them, it is incorrect to claim that the Zeldas are the same since they all have Link and Zelda in them.
Okay. Just go look at the titles (just the titles for the last 4 or 5 Zelda games (I mean for both the Gamecube and the GBA)). Did you notice those subtitles? The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
This may surprise you, but those subtitles actually mean something. They all refer to added gameplay in their respective games. In one game, you travel through time, and your magic abilities are geared towards affecting the flow of time. In another game, you control the wind, and there are actually quests and challenges that revolve solely around using the wind to get you from place to place.
Saying that a game is a remake of another game simply because they contain the same faces is bupkiss. When people complain about how Gran Tourismo 4 is stagnant, they aren't complaining about it because it's a game with cars in it. They're pointing out that the past 4 incarnations of Gran Tourismo have not changed the way in which you use the cars in the game. One is stagnation, the other is not.
You know, I saw a list of PS2 launch titles and every single one ended in a number. At least Nintendo has the courtesy to come up with subtitles for all of their games.
While we're on the subject of subtitles, have you ever noticed how all of the Nintendo franchise games have them? This may come as a surprise to some people, but those subtitles actually mean something. In nearly every case, they encapsulate information regarding new and interesting gameplay. In Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you used a magical instrument to travel through time, and your actions in the past world had repercussions in the future world. In Zelda: Majora's Mask, you were made to don different masks, which would give you a host of new abilities not available to Link on his own. In the Wind Waker, you got around the world by controlling the wind. The wind had a drastic effect on where you could go (and also affected the trajectories of your arrows).
When is the last time a franchise like Tekken or Gran Tourismo has done anything that drastically changed the way you had to think about the game to survive?
Remember, adding more of the same thing to a game is not innovative. It doesn't take a creative person to say "People like the cars, tracks and music in racing games, so we'll just add more of those things in the next iteration of our racing game." That's not to say that adding more of the same sort of content to games is a bad thing, but unless the game does something to define itself and separate itself from the other games in its genre or even its series, there is little call to hail it as being innovative. On the other hand, a game that actually takes the steps to advance its core gameplay, even if they are not terribly innovative steps, isn't as easy to write off as a waste of money and time.
Which is completely impossible to enforce, and everyone knows it.
On the other hand, having the ability to build a "whitelist" of players with which you may game would be a boon for those of us who don't like playing with assholes over the internet.
My point was that games for the DS have all seemed like they were intended for a 6-year old that never saw a Palm PDA, or someone with ADD.
It doesn't matter what they seem like. A game can seem like it was designed for a kid and still have "rather precise control, polished visuals, and engaging (and often very difficult!) gameplay". The fact that a game has MIDI music, cartoon characters, and cutesy dialog has absolutely nothing to do with its controls, visuals or gameplay. You have a pretty clear double-standard when it comes to DS and PSP games.
There are a good number of us adults who prefer the twitchy, engaging gameplay of WarioWare and Yoshi Touch and Go to the hairpin turns in a lot of racing games. One is not more mature than the other, they are just different styles of gameplay. I might add that liking one does not automatically imply that you dislike the other, nor is there an age threshold at which somebody's preferences magically change to reflect a more "adult" state of being.
A mature game is one that a mature person can appreciate. This includes games like Metal Gear Solid and games like Yoshi Touch and Go. Both those games are mature for different reasons, so it is unfair to use the standard by which one is judged to judge the other.
As a twenty-four year old gamer who's been playing games since the NES era, the Yoshi game is one of the most refreshing gaming experiences I have had in over five years. For me, it is like the new Tetris. Do I care that it has Yoshi's face on it? There's no reason I should, and even if I did, it wouldn't change the fact that the game is so much fun. As a personal standard, I would think that I was acting pretty juvenile if I wrote something off as no fun because I felt like it was intended for someone 15 years younger than me. To be honest, I was surprised at how much fun drawing bubbles around things could actually be.
As an aside, it is also interesting to note that the single most-talked-about game for the PSP is Lumines, a puzzle game.
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Did you notice how he used gross profit instead of net profit to add his numbers up? The sale price of a piece of hardware or a game is a very poor metric for how much money is actually made from the sale.
The upshot is that if Sony loses money on each PSP sold (which I've heard is the case), then each of their 1.5 million hardware units is actually multiplied by a negative number, not by $250. How do you think the numbers would look if the GGP had taken that into account? Or let's do the same math, but add in the sales of Mario 64 DS (which the article said had been omitted from the sales count). What do you think the numbers would look like then?
The false logic you're talking about has been used all over the place. In the case of the PS2, Sony claims market domination because they claim the largest number of units shipped. This should mean that Sony has the largest installed user base, but in reality, many of those sales occured because of faulty or broken PS2 hardware. Despite the large sales numbers, Nintendo has posted significantly more profit than Sony's game division, and I suspect more profit than the entire company itself.
My point is that if the GGP wants to use "money made" as the metric for domination for the PSP, then he must also admit that the Gamecube is trouncing the PS2 in the home console market (although admittedly, the actual PSP profits are likely much, much lower than the number quoted, even in the US). On the other hand, if he wishes to say that the PS2 is beating the Gamecube because of high sales numbers, then he must also admit that since the DS has higher sales numbers, it is beating the PSP in the handheld market. I suspect that he actually was trying to take sides, and he was certainly excersizing bad logic. The point was to try to make Sony look good, but reality is reality. Things appear to be pretty bleak for the PSP.
What you mean to say is that if Sony is lagging behind in number of units shipped, then we should use gross revenue as the metric for market domination, but if Sony is lagging behind in total videogame profits (re: GC vs. PS2), then we should use number of units moved as the metric for market domination.
Do I have that right?
Enter key... Please.... Use it....
Hear, hear!
From what I've read, the Revolution's wand controller can be stuck into a "shell" which is shaped like an ordinary controller, allowing you to control a game using a button layout you're used to. As an added bonus, the controller could transmit data about how the controller shell is oriented in space, allowing an appropriately-programmed game to react to the player tilting the shell around. The Revolution will have no problems playing ported games from the other two systems, since those games can simply instruct the player to put the wand controller into the controller shell. Remember, even if the controller is sending orientation data, the program can simply ignore it and only respond to button presses.
The people who got to play with the controller at the Tokyo Games Festival said that it felt completely natural to use the controller, even with the nunchuck thingie attatched. The thing is you don't have to move your wrist much at all to make big movements, but you can also make tiny movements moving your wrist the same distance, too. Unless you're flailing your arms around, having a cord attatched shouldn't be a big deal.
As far as buttons, you forgot about the two triggers located on the left-handed part of the nunchuk controller. It has an analog stick and two triggers which you can press with your index and middle fingers.
So, controls:
Controller aims, takes care of sniper rifle zooming, fluid posture and leaning. The two triggers on the left-handed nunchuck control are your crouch and reload. Start pauses, select toggles altrenate fire. A jumps, B trigger fires. A "Use" button can be contextually mapped to any of those. Also, "using" something may be done by using the controller's 3D location abilities. In a lot of FPS's, you can "Use" a button to push it, but with the Revolution controller, you can extend your hand out, pushing the button by actually extending your hand in game. There seem to be enough buttons on the controller to create a basic FPS control scheme. It certainly has a lot more potential than any of the other console control schemes I've seen, especially since it has natural support for things like fluid posture and leaning, and rolling, etc.
At the same time, the controller shell can provide all the buttons you need to play an EA sports game or whatever.
Descent is 5D. 3D locator for your ship, and 2D locator for your ship's angle. Having more than one way of changing your ship's angle or position doesn't add any more D's, it just means there are more buttons to push, or the controls are more versatile. (Think of it this way: The space you move in is three dimensional, but choosing your angle is the same as locating a point on a hollow sphere with a fixed radius. Select any point on the sphere and it determines your angle. You would have 6D controls if said sphere was filled, and you could choose any point on the exterior OR interior to aim at.)
Also, I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say that it was impossible to emulate n-dimensional controls using a PC (for relatively small n). Of course it's possible. I can divide the keys on the keyboard into pairs and map each pair to a dimension and wind up with something like a 40D game (I didn't bother counting keys). My point was that the Revolution Controller has all of the mechanisms that one would need to play your average FPS (FPS, not flying-around-ship-shooter, since Mark Rein was talking about FPS's.), and that it actually provides new functions that aren't easily emulated by a PC. On a PC, if you wanted to reach into your screen, you could either get a 3D mouse, map two keyboard buttons to handle the task, or use your mousewheel. 3D mice aren't pervasive (meaning that your average game developer could not assume that their customers possessed the hardware), and mapping the keys splits your aiming mechanisms between two hands (and may also interfere with moving and aiming at the same time). The only plausible solution I can see is to use the mousewheel, but there are still some serious problems with it if you want to do anything more complicated than zoom a sniper rifle.
This isn't so with the Revolution Controller. You can use it to draw a circle in 3D space in any orientation you can move your hand in. The best you could get with your mouse/mousewheel is a sort of ovally-diamond, and that's if you're particularly coordinated and the circle was rectilinearly aligned to an axis. Many FPS's also have fluid posture and buttons mapped to make your character lean in certain ways. Since the Revolution Controller can also determine its orientation in 3D space, these functions can also become much smoother and more intuitive.
Mark Rein was also specifically talking about consoles. Even though it is possible to create a 40D game on a PC, you are going to have a lot of trouble replicating the experience on an XBox. You don't have any sort of 3D locating device on a normal console controller without pressing non-control stick buttons. (The PS2 clicky analog sticks don't count since you can only move in one direction in the third dimension with them. Also, it's difficult to press them in and move the stick at the same time.) The out-of-the-way buttons can substitute as the third-dimension controls, but normally you have your thumbs on the control sticks and your index fingers on both triggers so that you can fire, so pressing those buttons approaches being ergonomically impossible. The PS2 controller may be able to pull it off (using the secondary triggers), but the index fingers would have to choose between movement or shooting.
There's a reason game devs don't often try to impliment these control schemes.
You say you want the control system that allows you to spin around in circles forever without lifting your hand. Are you sure that's better than the one that can only do one and a half spins, but will never drift or overturn, and which responds instantly and accurately to your hand movements?
People who have actually used the controller have said that it feels completely natural and that they could detect no lag or discrepancies in how it responded to their hand movements. Of course there will be problems if the controller doesn't react quickly or accurately enough, but according to testimony I've read, it w
In my personal opinion, this dude is talking out his ass.
The Revolution controller is a massive improvement over the current controller designs when it comes to first person shooters.
First person shooters are 3D games. That means that somehow, the player has to have access to a at least a 4D pointing device. They need to be able to move in two dimensions (at the minimum) to move along the ground, and they need a second 2D locator in order to pick an angle at which to fire. In total, you need two separate 2D pointing devices to play an FPS, for a total of 4D. (really you need a 5D locator to play FPS's because your character moves in three dimensions (i.e. they aren't stuck to the ground.) Your average console or PC cannot emulate a 5D locator. However, this issue is avoided in most FPS's because there is normally some sort of gravity in the level to limit the amount of motion your character can have in the third dimension. In most FPS's, walking occurs in two dimensions, and you can achieve limited motion in the third dimension by using your jump button.)
There are a few ways you can get 4D location. On a PC, you use your left fingers to press WASD for movement (with thumb on spacebar for jump) and your right hand on the mouse to control aim. On consoles, this problem has been solved by having two 2D control sticks used for moving and aiming respectively. The Revolution nunchuck controller is better because it emulates a 5D pointing device.
In addition to having the left-handed control stick to replace WASD, the right-handed pointer will be able to locate a point anywhere on your television screen. What's even cooler is that the pointer will also be able to point at points inside your TV since it can determine its own distance from the TV's screen. This doesn't easily solve the problem of true 3D character movement, but it opens up interesting potential for tasks that would actually require you to reach into your TV screen to do things.
In short, the Revolution controller provides all of the necessary parts needed to control an FPS. It is more intuitive since you really are pointing where you are aiming, and its unique features actually add more degrees of control than you could get on a PC or a current console. For example, in order to emulate the Revolution controller on your PC, you would have to lift your mouse up and have it be able to detect its distance to the mousepad, and it would still have to detect sliding, even when not in contact with the mousepad. There are 3D mice out there for PC's, but they are certainly not as mass-consumption as the Revolution controller will be.
Here is the second reason the Revolution Controller is superior for FPS's. Go find a laser pointer or a flashlight and sit down facing a relatively blank wall in your dwelling. Turn the laser or flashlight on set it comfortably in your lap. Now, point at a spot near the left end of the wall, pretending that you're playing an FPS and that the light is your targetting reticule. With your eyes, pick out a spot on the right side of the wall. Quickly move the light to the spot you picked, and then move it back to where it started. Now, point at the spot on the left side of the wall, but extend your arm. Do the same thing with your arm extended - move to the right side and back to the left.
The first thing you did is the Revolution controller. The second thing you did is a mouse on your PC. When using the Revolution Controller, you can make very large motions with very small movements of the wrist. On a PC with a mouse, you have to move your entire arm when dragging the mouse all the way across the mousepad. Using a PC mouse is comfortable since your wrist is probably resting on a wristrest or on your desk, but the fact that such little motion can have such a big effect on the Revolution Controller means that playing FPS's with it will be much faster and more accurate than on
I think often people forget that Nintendo did not make all of the cool NES games people keep talking about. They made a good chunk, but not all. As such, they may not be able to get access to the rights for all of the games you would like to play. Are the companies that made those games even still around today? I suppose it would be worth looking into, but it's certainly not trivial to get the rights to those things.
It's probably a feature of the DS dev kits.
Interesting to note that even though the PSP is capable of recreating the gaming experience you could get on a PS2, the only game people ever wind up talking about is Lumines, a 2-D blockbreaking game.
Bravo! You guys (and gals) did a great job with that game. It is fantastic, and I've been recommending it to everyone I know.
I am not the grandparent, but you should see the AC post (written by me) right below yours for a good definition.
Shortly put, an RPG is a game where *playing the role* is a gameplay choice that you make. The same sort of choice as shooting a gun or swinging a sword.
A game is not "role-playing" if the player is never given a choice as to *how* to deal with the problems before them. Ever played Deus Ex? You could play the game as an FPS, shooting everything in your way, but it was also possible to finish the game without ever firing a single bullet. THAT is a role-playing game. Final Fantasy X is not a role-playing game, even though it has more "gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games" than Deus Ex does.
In Final Fantasy X, your choices affect the game world as they do in every game, but there is never any question as to what is a good idea. You almost always will open a treasure chest. Playing an environmentalist who does not want to disturb the native treasure chests is likely to get you killed.
Enemies are for killing. You can't ever play a pacifist and try to talk them down. Forget trying to tame them. You also never have a choice as to what to do with the loot you gather from the enemies you do kill. You use it or sell it. You can't play a charitable character and donate it to people. You want to play a leader character and use your swag to arm your own army? Sorry, you can't.
People never comment on how cool your sword is. Hell, villagers don't even bat an eye when a group of heavily armed people walk into town, one person with a sword twice the length of their body. The video games normally referred to as RPG's usually have nothing to do with role-playing. They are usually simply action games with a story and fantasy setting.
I think the term "role-following" is more appropriate.
You should try Yoshi Touch and Go. I can't put that game down. A lot of people bash it for being too short (there are only two sections of the game (falling and running), and each of those sections is semi-randomly generated), but I found it helps to think about it like the DS's Tetris. It looks like a side-scrolling Yoshi adventure, but really it's more like an abstract puzzle game. It's simple to learn, hard to play, and addictive as hell.
I hear the Kirby game is excellent. Haven't had the chance to try it yet.
I wasn't searching for the truth of the matter. In my case, given the choice between a DS game and a PSP game, I will always get the DS game simply because I do not own a PSP.
I only meant to point out that the grandparent's numbers were useless since he/ she used a very narrow definition of "market share". i.e. one that didn't account for overall changes in the market size. That is to say that he or she made some pretty big assumptions about what people would do (they assumed that someone who bought one system would not buy the other, for instance). In reality, you can't really know what each individual spender will or won't do.
Economists run into this kind of problem all the time. The best we can do is examine worst or best case scenarios and try to perform emperical studies. It's a rare case that we can actually *know* something about a given market through theory. I was merely trying to point out that the grandparent's numbers were bunk because he has no way of knowing where inbetween the "best case" and "worst case" we actually are in the real market. Anyone who claims they know what's "going on" probably has something to sell you.
Not that I really want to get into the astroturfing that Slashdot endures all the time...
But to address your point: We don't know the reason that your hypothetical person only buys two games a month on average. The reason is important. If two games is all they can afford, and there are more games out there than they can buy, then you would probably be correct that Nintendo would sell a lower proportion of that person's monthly consumption.
If, however, that person only buys two games a month on average because only two games a month appeal to them even though they have the cash to buy more than that, then i would suspect that that person would buy two games from Nintendo AND two games for the Sony handheld. You just can't say for sure what's really going on. Often times, you have to rely on antecdotal evidence. I have a fair amount of money to spend on entertainment each month, but I haven't been buying many games lately since I've been occupied with other things, and there hasn't been much that has appealed to me.
I suspect that someone who is actually willing to lay down the money to get a PSP has a pretty large game budget to begin with. The price of a few games a month to a parent is nothing compared to a mortgage, insurance, college tuition, plus all the additional costs incurred while trying to keep a house in repair. Families making income to cover those expenses have historically been able to keep savings as well (on average 5% of income, I believe). I know there are families that are "against-the-wall" money-wise, but many families have the disposable income to tolerate any number of games a month their child wants. If there is a significant number of such families, I suspect the portable market will grow rather than go stale.
Nice work, AC. Your wisdom is ever appreciated. Check out this hypothetical situation:
Alan and Bob are gamers. Say Nintendo is the only company producing handheld gaming machines. So both Alan and Bob buy the Nintendo handheld, the DS.
Now say that a new competitor enters the market with a new handheld, the PSP. Now, there are a few things that could happen. If one or both of them decide to forgo buying a DS in order to buy a PSP, then you can clearly say that Nintendo has lost market share. If Alan and Bob are only given the choice of one handheld and at least one of them decides to buy a PSP, then Nintendo's market share has dropped to 50% or even 0% in this market. In this case, it's clear what's going on.
But now we can see cases in which it's not so clear. Say that (just like before) both Alan and Bob buy DS's, but one or both of them also buys a PSP. Whether or not Nintendo has lost market share depends on your definition of "market share". Obviously, the added PSP's in this market means that Nintendo's handheld no longer accounts for 100% of the number of handhelds in the market. However, in our hypothetical situation, Nintendo has recieved the *same amount of money* and has the *same user base* as they did before Sony entered the market.
This seems like a more appropriate definition of market share, as it accounts for the instances in which having a second competitior in a market actually helps *grow* the market, perhaps to the point where everyone is better off. The thinking goes like this. If I have a lot of money and decide to buy a DS, I will still have a lot of money left over. I won't buy another DS, because there's only one of me. However, if another handheld comes along that I like, I can spend some more of that money to get it, thereby pouring more money overall into the handheld market while still giving money to both competitors.
It is also possible that competition may help bolster sales for both competitors. An example: Say Cindy really isn't into games. One day Alan and Bob show her their gaming systems, and she likes them so much that she decides to buy a PSP. After playing her PSP for a while, she really gets into games, and starts searching for more sources of entertainment. One of those sources could potentially be a DS, since it could fulfill her desire.
As I understand it, this is part of Nintendo's strategy that they're realizing with the DS. They hope to get new people into gaming - people who were uninterested, or who just didn't know about it. When that happens, it's better for everyone.
Patents have not been effective at protecting Nintendo's stuff in the past. Believe it or not, they actually have a patent on the D-pad that has been used in their controllers since the NES days. But wait, you may say. Sony's controller has a D-pad, too! How can that be?
The answer is that Sony got around Nintendo's patent by having each of their direction buttons be separate entities on the controller (ever notice how the direction buttons on the Playstation controller are not connected?) As I understand it, having them be separate buttons lets them get around Nintendo's patent.
Personally, I think it's pretty asanine that someone could hold a patent on the D-pad, but around the time of the NES, it was a fairly new idea. It just goes to show that Sony is sleazy enough to be able to ignore patented ideas. I fully understand why Nintendo isn't revealing anything about their magic controller, because it's about 100 to 1 odds that Sony and Microsoft would rip it off one way or another, patents be damned.
Intellectual property is only worth respecting if it's yours, it seems.
Um...
Did you really just say stranglehold on innovation?
Do you mean to say that Nintendo was preventing other companies and game devs from being innovative? I hate to say it, but if Nintendo is the only innovative company out there, it's not their fault that no one else is.
I agree that Katamari Damacy is an innovative game. Ico, too. Whenever anyone asks about innovation on a non-Nintendo platform, those two games always come up. What about others? Are there others? This may be one of those cases where the exceptions prove the rule.
I really couldn't say, either. At the same time, I don't claim to be able to develop innovating games. I honestly don't think there is a way that Gran Tourismo could change the way you use a car, since it is trying to be as realistic as possible. They've pretty heavily limited themselves by deciding that they have to adhere to consensual reality and physics. Since there is nothing that can be added due to the game's very definition, a lot of people can't justify upgrading to the latest version if it simply provides a graphics upgrade / more cars, and it is even more difficult to hail it as something that is innovative.
All that being said, if you take a look at the Burnout games and the Gran Tourismo games, they are very clearly not the same game. In Burnout, your aim is to tend towards mischeif and destruction, trying to rack up as many "near-misses" as you can while driving on crowded highways. Near-misses give you NOS, which lets you go faster. I've only played Gran Tourismo a couple times, and none of the tracks had any other cars on them. But if they did, I presume that you would play the game trying your best to avoid any contact with the other cars, since contact would either lose you the race or drop your time by too much.
So there's a very simple example of how simply changing an accumulation mechanism alters the way in which you think about the game while playing. While Zelda games don't have many accumulation mechanisms to alter, each game adds new variations on the Zelda world that change the way you use your tools and weapons. Even adding something as trivial as allowing the boomerang to hit 5 targets at once means that Wind Waker could contain new puzzles that made the player have to position Link in just the right spot in the room to get five simultaneous hits.
I was just trying to make the point that just like it's incorrect to claim that Burnout and Gran Tourismo are the same game just because they have cars in them, it is incorrect to claim that the Zeldas are the same since they all have Link and Zelda in them.
Okay. Just go look at the titles (just the titles for the last 4 or 5 Zelda games (I mean for both the Gamecube and the GBA)). Did you notice those subtitles? The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
This may surprise you, but those subtitles actually mean something. They all refer to added gameplay in their respective games. In one game, you travel through time, and your magic abilities are geared towards affecting the flow of time. In another game, you control the wind, and there are actually quests and challenges that revolve solely around using the wind to get you from place to place.
Saying that a game is a remake of another game simply because they contain the same faces is bupkiss. When people complain about how Gran Tourismo 4 is stagnant, they aren't complaining about it because it's a game with cars in it. They're pointing out that the past 4 incarnations of Gran Tourismo have not changed the way in which you use the cars in the game. One is stagnation, the other is not.
Right.
You know, I saw a list of PS2 launch titles and every single one ended in a number. At least Nintendo has the courtesy to come up with subtitles for all of their games.
While we're on the subject of subtitles, have you ever noticed how all of the Nintendo franchise games have them? This may come as a surprise to some people, but those subtitles actually mean something. In nearly every case, they encapsulate information regarding new and interesting gameplay. In Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you used a magical instrument to travel through time, and your actions in the past world had repercussions in the future world. In Zelda: Majora's Mask, you were made to don different masks, which would give you a host of new abilities not available to Link on his own. In the Wind Waker, you got around the world by controlling the wind. The wind had a drastic effect on where you could go (and also affected the trajectories of your arrows).
When is the last time a franchise like Tekken or Gran Tourismo has done anything that drastically changed the way you had to think about the game to survive?
Remember, adding more of the same thing to a game is not innovative. It doesn't take a creative person to say "People like the cars, tracks and music in racing games, so we'll just add more of those things in the next iteration of our racing game." That's not to say that adding more of the same sort of content to games is a bad thing, but unless the game does something to define itself and separate itself from the other games in its genre or even its series, there is little call to hail it as being innovative. On the other hand, a game that actually takes the steps to advance its core gameplay, even if they are not terribly innovative steps, isn't as easy to write off as a waste of money and time.
Somehow I doubt that a business in their right mind would put that much strain on consumers.
Hahaha. You're funny.
Actually, yes it was flamebait.
Which is completely impossible to enforce, and everyone knows it.
On the other hand, having the ability to build a "whitelist" of players with which you may game would be a boon for those of us who don't like playing with assholes over the internet.
My point was that games for the DS have all seemed like they were intended for a 6-year old that never saw a Palm PDA, or someone with ADD.
It doesn't matter what they seem like. A game can seem like it was designed for a kid and still have "rather precise control, polished visuals, and engaging (and often very difficult!) gameplay". The fact that a game has MIDI music, cartoon characters, and cutesy dialog has absolutely nothing to do with its controls, visuals or gameplay. You have a pretty clear double-standard when it comes to DS and PSP games.
There are a good number of us adults who prefer the twitchy, engaging gameplay of WarioWare and Yoshi Touch and Go to the hairpin turns in a lot of racing games. One is not more mature than the other, they are just different styles of gameplay. I might add that liking one does not automatically imply that you dislike the other, nor is there an age threshold at which somebody's preferences magically change to reflect a more "adult" state of being.
A mature game is one that a mature person can appreciate. This includes games like Metal Gear Solid and games like Yoshi Touch and Go. Both those games are mature for different reasons, so it is unfair to use the standard by which one is judged to judge the other.
As a twenty-four year old gamer who's been playing games since the NES era, the Yoshi game is one of the most refreshing gaming experiences I have had in over five years. For me, it is like the new Tetris. Do I care that it has Yoshi's face on it? There's no reason I should, and even if I did, it wouldn't change the fact that the game is so much fun. As a personal standard, I would think that I was acting pretty juvenile if I wrote something off as no fun because I felt like it was intended for someone 15 years younger than me. To be honest, I was surprised at how much fun drawing bubbles around things could actually be.
As an aside, it is also interesting to note that the single most-talked-about game for the PSP is Lumines, a puzzle game.