Nintendo Revulotion

[Graham]

I haven't owned a Nintendo since my Super Famicom back in the late 80s or early 90s. Still got the thing stuffed in the back of a closet somewhere with a whole load of cartridges .

I've got so many PSX/PS2 games that it just doesn't make sense for me to consider another system. Not that I'm even planning to buy a next gen console though.

Never really liked Nintendo that much. I'm not into Italian plumbers, cute dragons riding carts or little green elves

Graham

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

I've got so many PSX/PS2 games that it just doesn't make sense for me to consider another system. Not that I'm even planning to buy a next gen console though.

I have the same general feeling. We are being rushed into the next gen imo.

I hope that when the first generation of games comes out, like with my purchase of the dreamcast after seeing soul calibur, or like with the xbox upon seeing the graphics of dead or alive 3, that the system has killer apps to make the system an impulse purchase. An impulse purchase for me is when a game blows you away that you just got to buy the system to play it. This is the key for a successful launch: give us something that the other systems can't, and make it irresistible to refuse and I'm sold.

But if all they do is release a sequel with slightly improved engine instead of something built from the ground up, which does not demonstrate the system power, I won't be impressed and will just sit back and wait for a price drop. It's all in the quality of the software to me.

[Black Valkyrie]

NGC pads and memory card slots :

[Fort Max]

NGC pads and memory card slots :

That's nice, yet another subtle clever little detail.

Still anxious to see the actual pads though.

[Effect]

I'm still excited about being able to download NES, SNES, and N64 games and being able to store and play them. Even if you aren't interested in the new games that much and you love old school this is still something you should be interested in. It's access to all those games(most likely a low prices I'd assume) and a system to store and play them on. Now I can try out all the games I missed out on either due to lack of interest or money and time at the time. Just think how huge that library will have to be. There are tons of SNES games I'd love to play again and even though I have them being able to play them without having to find all the parts to my SNES and making sure the games work and have no dust will be a plus. Get done playing a new NR game and then play Chrono Trigger or some other SNES game. :)

The only thing I hope is that this system has a ethernet port for this setup. Wireless is great but not everyone has a router(though not a problem for me but when I get my own place it might since it will just be my computer). Being able to directly connect the system to the cable modem would be nice.

Edited May 18, 2005 by Effect

[Ghadrack]

The download library of Nintendo games is enough to sell me on the system. Sure I have friends with Hard-Drive pirate libraries of darn near every video game ever made, but I just don't roll that way. I would pay to be able to legitimately play em.

I want Nintendo to come out on top of the console wars so bad I can taste it but they have just hamstrung themselves at every milestone in the road they really have to get a winning strategy and draw the third party developers back to them. I hope that their simplicity strategy works and that small, new, innovative game developers flock to revolution with new and interesting titles.

I keep buying their systems but like Mike, I don't feel like I a getting much value from them aside from the nintendo in house exclusives.

[Jolly Rogers]

Are the N64/SNES/NES downloads limited to first party titles or can you get access to third party gems and imports that have been long out of print?

[Radd]

I'm still excited about being able to download NES, SNES, and N64 games and being able to store and play them.

Whoa, wait a minute! What's this? Where can I find more info on this downloading of old Nintendo games to the REvolution?

[Sundown]

I don't think Nintendo's using lesser hardware.

I think it's more that they're intentionally understating their performance gains while the competition is intentionally overstating them.

That's a weird market strategy. Do we have any actual tech demos of what the Revolution is able to do? Reports seem to indicate that the new system is "only" about 2 or 3 times as fast as the Cube. Sony and Microsoft are posting numbers that are almost an order of magnitude greater. That's a huge disparity, and seems to me that it's too big a difference to be entirely faked and imagined.

Instead, Nintendo's strategy highlights the fact that developers don't need to change much in their code to get modest speed gains. Which is another spin for "we didn't do anything particularly "Revolutionary".

Yeah, I know contrived benchmarks don't tell close to the whole story-- I've actually written one for work that pits one of our chips against a very well known competitor's and has us "beating" them, when we know bloody well that in almost every other case ours would be vastly slower.

-Al

[Loner]

I'm still excited about being able to download NES, SNES, and N64 games and being able to store and play them.

Whoa, wait a minute! What's this? Where can I find more info on this downloading of old Nintendo games to the REvolution?

http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articl...78746&page=home

The secret weapon: The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

The article also mentions that it will have an SD card slot to expand the flash memory and it will have two USB ports.

[Max Jenius]

Nintendo has always made systems I like for some reason. I'm not really into these Fred Durst wannabe "new" gamers. I dunno, I haven't seen much of an improvement in graphics since either system came out. I don't think a console really needs to be 35 times as powerful as the Xbox or PS2 or whatever at this point. Sure the, potential is there, but people rarely take advantage of it. Its probably going to be a few years before we see anything truly exciting. I think the Revolution is going to use some sort of gyroscopic technology though (think of the FPS/Sim/whatever games you could play with that!)

But yeah... think about the latest Gamecube games... do you really need 35x more power? I think many of them looked freakin awesome even by today's standards. While its nice to be able to have some of the flashier stuff from today's hottest PC video cards, I'm wondering if its even applicable yet... maybe HD TV will change things when its cheaper. Another thing is that Sony and MS ALWAYS GROSSLY overestimate their consoles. Remember when the PS2 was supposed to render Toy Story graphics in realtime? HA! I think Nintendo is just being traditionally conservative and that it is at least close to the 360 in terms of power, but we'll see. I've not really run into a need for more at this point.

[JB0]

I don't think Nintendo's using lesser hardware.

I think it's more that they're intentionally understating their performance gains while the competition is intentionally overstating them.

That's a weird market strategy. Do we have any actual tech demos of what the Revolution is able to do? Reports seem to indicate that the new system is "only" about 2 or 3 times as fast as the Cube.

Nintendo's own numbers. And what's wierd about attempting to give real-world performance #s instead of grotesquely bloated ones?

Average user can get 4x the Wavebird's max range, too.

Sony and Microsoft are posting numbers that are almost an order of magnitude greater.  That's a huge disparity, and seems to me that it's too big a difference to be entirely faked and imagined.

The 3.2 GHz PowerPC in the XBox is pr'ly about 2-3x better than the 733MHz P3.

We'll say 3.

Dual procs is usually roughly 1.6x single proc performance. 3 procs gets you roughly 2x. Resource conflicts typically prevent the gains from being as great as expected. A problem compunded by the fact that all 3 of the XBox cores are on one chip, and thus one CPU bus.

That's 4-6x, hardly the 15x being promised.

Sony's 35x is just comedic. They have ONE 3.2 GHz processor with 7 extra floating-point units. Admittedly, FPUs are good for 3D gaming, but not THAT good.

Aside from which, SCE's never released an accurate spec in their entire history.

Yeah, I know contrived benchmarks don't tell close to the whole story-- I've actually written one for work that pits one of our chips against a very well known competitor's and has us "beating" them, when we know bloody well that in almost every other case ours would be vastly slower.

These aren't even benchmarks, as far as I know. Just marketing estimates of increased "power."

And power isn't even really defined. We can assume, with the context, that it's the CPU(s). But beyond that, what is it? More MIPS? Less cache misses? Watts comsumed? ... actually, I'd believe it if it was watts consumed.

It's just the modern version of "bittage". It's a meaningless term without a definition.

Edited May 19, 2005 by JB0

[Radd]

That's a weird market strategy.

This is also what Nintendo did for the Cube. Do you remember the claims Sony made about the PS2 before it launched? Do you remember when they showed the realtime rendered ball scene from FFVIII and claimed it was running on the PS2, when it was really running on several SGI machines? Sony hype should never be taken at face value. I'd go so far as to say their hype for the PS2 was outright lies.

[JB0]

That's a weird market strategy.

This is also what Nintendo did for the Cube. Do you remember the claims Sony made about the PS2 before it launched? Do you remember when they showed the realtime rendered ball scene from FFVIII and claimed it was running on the PS2, when it was really running on several SGI machines? Sony hype should never be taken at face value. I'd go so far as to say their hype for the PS2 was outright lies.

And Sega got hammered with those claims, because htey were releasing what they believed were real-world specs for the Dreamcast. In point of fact, developers got more than spec'ed out of the DC rather regularly.

But it's damn near impossible to get the "spec'ed" performance from a PS2.

[Max Jenius]

Yeah, just saying "power" will make all the dumbasses that don't know any better continue to hail the 360/ps3 as the second coming. I respect Nintendo for many reasons, and real, in-game numbers are what I would like to see (read: benchmarks). Maybe I'm just a Nintendo fanboy, but I'm sure they'll get my money this time around too, unless they botch it horribly... but I'm liking what I'm seeing... and this mysterious controller....

As for the DS, I think that there's a lot of untapped potential there, and developers will just have to stop being lazy and come up with creative ways to make use of the 2nd screen. I played a DS for quite some time and was impressed that FINALLY a portable system can play FPS games smoothly and intuitively. The PSP has that little analogue nub, but ... meh, the PSP isn't very ergonomic at all. It hurts my hands. But the video looks fabulous.... *drools* I was thinking of getting a PSP just to have as a power toy, but I think the DS will trump it because I think it has more to offer me.

[JB0]

Yeah, just saying "power" will make all the dumbasses that don't know any better continue to hail the 360/ps3 as the second coming. I respect Nintendo for many reasons, and real, in-game numbers are what I would like to see (read: benchmarks).

Yah. IMO it's better to be a little under than massively over.

Sadly, massively over builds better hype, even when the people making the claims get caught red-handed.

[Radd]

Sony was rewarded handsomly for lying to their customers. I mean, geez, can you imagine if the Cube or the XBox had gotten the lion's share of the install base and developer support? Both are much better pieces of hardware than the PS2. On top of the PS2's lacking hardware, the first year or two of the system's life had almost no decent games, meanwhile the Dreamcast was regularly pumping out excellent games until it's early death at the hands of Sony's hype machine. The PS2's success was a big loss for gamers if you ask me.

[Effect]

To true it seems.

[sabretooth]

i think nintendo is actually going to have a winner this time

just for the availability of the snes and 64 titles,!!!!

global goldeneye madness

[Sundown]

These aren't even benchmarks, as far as I know. Just marketing estimates of increased "power."

And power isn't even really defined. We can assume, with the context, that it's the CPU(s).  But beyond that, what is it? More MIPS? Less cache misses? Watts comsumed? ... actually, I'd believe it if it was watts consumed.

It's just the modern version of "bittage". It's a meaningless term without a definition.

Well, there were "industry standard" measurements thrown around. Like FLOPS and such. They're not entirely without meaning, but not entirely representative of what an actual game will run and look like.

I did catch both the Ghost Recon 3 preview on the XBOX 360 and the Gundam demo on the PS2. Both look amazing. I'm suspicious of the latter, however, as it doesn't look to be actual gameplay but a cutscene. And it just looks too good.

But yeah, it's all kind of useless and full of specious conjecture until we actually see comparative titles run on each of the systems next to each other. But I've still always felt Nintendo to be slightly lacking, whether it be in its controller, choice of media, power, or selection of games. And I'm just not big on Nintendo's own line of games, as great as they are. It wouldn't surprise me if the trend continued in some form, although that's just baseless speculation on my part. *shrug*

I may still end up picking one up someday, just because I've been so envious of MGS Twin Snakes and the Rogue Leader games being Nintendo exclusives.

-Al

Edited May 19, 2005 by Sundown

[bandit29]

So Nintendo's only selling point of the Revolution right now is that you can download 10-20 year old games..great...while it is a cool idea it really sounds like they came to E3 unprepared.

[mikeszekely]

So Nintendo's only selling point of the Revolution right now is that you can download 10-20 year old games..great...while it is a cool idea it really sounds like they came to E3 unprepared.

It's not that they came unprepared... Nintendo has a bad habit of doing this. They don't bring the stuff that people want to see to E3, and instead will hold their own mini-show later, after they're comfortable that the competition is locked into their designs, to show off actual games, tech demos, hardware specs, and the controller.

[Effect]

I dont' think it has anything to do about being unprepared. After all it's not like they forgot about the event. More like they set out to do something and did what they want. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they actually held their own show sometime later where everything is focused on them 100% without fighting for attention from Sony and Microsoft and all the other game companies. Didn't Sony do something like themselves before?

At least Microsoft had games that could be played on the Xbox 360. The Ureal demo on the PS3, honestly I don't seem it looking that different from anything on the Xbox 360. Everything else was tech demos. And didn't we all learn a lesson before when it comes to Sony and even Xbox and tech demos.

Also when is the Tokyo Game Show? Isn't that as big as E3? Or close to it. Maybe they'll say more there.

Only selling point? Huge library of games, free online structure, new next generation games(more of this innovation Nintendo is in to). True we haven't seen what the games will be like or anything else but the same can be said for PS3. We've only seen tech demos and the game demo that have shown don't look that different from what is currently out I feel. Then again maybe I'm just not "wowed" by graphics anymore and I don't care about little details.

[mikeszekely]

Also when is the Tokyo Game Show? Isn't that as big as E3? Or close to it. Maybe they'll say more there.

There's two, the Spring show and the Fall show. They're two of the bigger shows in the industry, but not even close to E3. It's possible that they'll have more to say at the fall show, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo likes to have their own little shows instead. IIRC, Nintendo didn't even used to attend the Tokyo Game Shows.

[bandit29]

So Nintendo's only selling point of the Revolution right now is that you can download 10-20 year old games..great...while it is a cool idea it really sounds like they came to E3 unprepared.

It's not that they came unprepared... Nintendo has a bad habit of doing this. They don't bring the stuff that people want to see to E3, and instead will hold their own mini-show later, after they're comfortable that the competition is locked into their designs, to show off actual games, tech demos, hardware specs, and the controller.

Then Nintendo must be comfortable in being the little guy or the console that is a gamers second choice. How can they not show anything for the Revolution at the worlds biggest show. Really disappointing. I want Nintendo to do well this time around. They've done nothing but let me down since after the SNES.

Edited May 19, 2005 by dejr8bud

[lord_breetai]

I shall get it and play GI Joe for the NES on it ^^

[Effect]

Maybe Nintendo is being realistc. They don't have the backing of huge companies the way the gaming divisions of Sony and Microsoft have. People seem to forget that Sony and Microsoft have gaming divisions and are apart of much larger companies. Mean while Nintendo is completely 100% and not as big as those two other companies. I'm sure if we took Nintendo alone, and compared it with the Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions alone(in that they broke away to becme their own companies without Sony and Microsoft backing, closer to how Nintendo is setup and works and have to work on their own) that Nintendo would stomp them and they wouldn't be as big as they are now. That isn't the case here though and I'm sure Nintendo clearly knows that so they have to do things a certain way. Sony and Microsoft can afford to lose tons of money since they tons of other things they do in other areas.

Edited May 19, 2005 by Effect

[bandit29]

Maybe Nintendo is being realistc. They don't have the backing of huge companies the way the gaming divisions of Sony and Microsoft have. People seem to forget that Sony and Microsoft have gaming divisions and are apart of much larger companies. Mean while Nintendo is completely 100% and not as big as those two other companies. I'm sure if we took Nintendo alone, and compared it with the Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions alone(in that they broke away to becme their own companies without Sony and Microsoft backing, closer to how Nintendo is setup and works and have to work on their own) that Nintendo would stomp them and they wouldn't be as big as they are now. That isn't the case here though and I'm sure Nintendo clearly knows that so they have to do things a certain way. Sony and Microsoft can afford to lose tons of money since they tons of other things they do in other areas.

That's why I think Nintendo knows they are a gamers second console. From what I've read Nintendo makes more of a profit than Sony or Microsoft's game divisions. But Nintendo still can't compete with the big 2 since, like you said, they don't have the financial backing of huge parent companies. I wonder if Nintendo would ever swallow their pride and become a third party developer, like Sega.

[JB0]

Sony was rewarded handsomly for lying to their customers. I mean, geez, can you imagine if the Cube or the XBox had gotten the lion's share of the install base and developer support? Both are much better pieces of hardware than the PS2. On top of the PS2's lacking hardware, the first year or two of the system's life had almost no decent games, meanwhile the Dreamcast was regularly pumping out excellent games until it's early death at the hands of Sony's hype machine. The PS2's success was a big loss for gamers if you ask me.

Sad part is... the hype machine not only buried the Dreamcast, it desecrated the corpse.

I've talked to several people recently that SWEAR the Dreamcast had "no good games."

After some prodding they'll amend it to "Well, okay, but Soul Caliber was the ONLY good game for the system."

It's disgusting.

[mikeszekely]

Maybe Nintendo is being realistc. They don't have the backing of huge companies the way the gaming divisions of Sony and Microsoft have. People seem to forget that Sony and Microsoft have gaming divisions and are apart of much larger companies. Mean while Nintendo is completely 100% and not as big as those two other companies. I'm sure if we took Nintendo alone, and compared it with the Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions alone(in that they broke away to becme their own companies without Sony and Microsoft backing, closer to how Nintendo is setup and works and have to work on their own) that Nintendo would stomp them and they wouldn't be as big as they are now. That isn't the case here though and I'm sure Nintendo clearly knows that so they have to do things a certain way.  Sony and Microsoft can afford to lose tons of money since they tons of other things they do in other areas.

That's why I think Nintendo knows they are a gamers second console. From what I've read Nintendo makes more of a profit than Sony or Microsoft's game divisions. But Nintendo still can't compete with the big 2 since, like you said, they don't have the financial backing of huge parent companies. I wonder if Nintendo would ever swallow their pride and become a third party developer, like Sega.

That's kind of what I've been hoping for. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of Nintendo games that I really like... I'm just tired of having to buy an extra console just for them.

[mikeszekely]

Sony was rewarded handsomly for lying to their customers. I mean, geez, can you imagine if the Cube or the XBox had gotten the lion's share of the install base and developer support? Both are much better pieces of hardware than the PS2. On top of the PS2's lacking hardware, the first year or two of the system's life had almost no decent games, meanwhile the Dreamcast was regularly pumping out excellent games until it's early death at the hands of Sony's hype machine. The PS2's success was a big loss for gamers if you ask me.

Sad part is... the hype machine not only buried the Dreamcast, it desecrated the corpse.

I've talked to several people recently that SWEAR the Dreamcast had "no good games."

After some prodding they'll amend it to "Well, okay, but Soul Caliber was the ONLY good game for the system."

It's disgusting.

A shame, really. If Sega wasn't losing so much money at the time, the Dreamcast could have easily been one the best consoles of all time. To this day, and I don't care which console they use, I want sequels to Samba de Amigo and Seaman.

[bandit29]

Well after reading this interview with Miyamoto, sounds like Nintendo wasn't ready for E3. And are also content on being small.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617000p1.html

[Max Jenius]

Nintendo isn't even in trouble yet. They don't just make money off software, but their hardware is very cost-effective. MS and Sony all have to at least initially lose money on the consoles(and they're still freakin expensive). Nintendo continues to profit and they've had 5 billion dollars in the bank for years. Not 5 billion in assets, but FIVE. BILLION. DOLLARS. CASH. Don't underestimate a company with that large a war chest. Especially if they've got the focus Nintendo has. I like Nintendo, as I get older I really appreciate how they have helped spur evolution in the industry and how we interact with our games.

Plus.... we don't really know that much about the Revolution. Perhaps saying 3 times more powerful than GC is a ploy to make MS and Sony relax. Hell, but MS and Sony know not to underestimate Nintendo unlike their fanboys.

[JB0]

Well after reading this interview with Miyamoto, sounds like Nintendo wasn't ready for E3. And are also content on being small.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617000p1.html

"IGNcube: Coming back to power. We apologize, but if we don't get some answers our readers are going to go insane. What are the tech specs for Revolution? Or, to put it another way, is Revolution as powerful as Xbox 360?

Shigeru Miyamoto: You know, in regard to the power of the Nintendo Revolution versus, say, the Xbox 360, we're looking at making a small, quiet, affordable console. If you look at trying to incorporate all that, of course we might not have the horsepower that some other companies have, but if you look at the numbers that they're throwing out, are those numbers going to be used in-game? I mean, those are just numbers that somebody just crunched up on a calculator. We could throw out a bunch of numbers, too, but what we're going to do is wait until our chips are done and we're going to find out how everything in the game is running, what its peak performance is, and those are the numbers that we're going to release because those are the numbers that really count.

I do think it's very irresponsible for people to say, "This is what we're running on. This is the power of our machine," when they're not even running on final boards. I think the professional's job is to not believe those numbers. "

A nice dose of realism there.

While there is an implication in the first sentence of the reply that the Revolution will be less powerful than the other 2 decks, he quickyly shifts into "But the competition's full of crap anyways. They can't know how well the system will perform until they finish the system and start running code on it."

[Fort Max]

And Nintendo continues to have my respect and adoration but whether they'll get my money still remains to be seen.

It's sounding good though, I don't think I'd be able to resist playing so many classics on one box.