Messages

1

TalkBack / RE:Resident Evil 4 Not GC Exclusive

« on: November 02, 2004, 08:48:40 AM »

I doubt Nintendo will have much to say about it.

They barely said anything about the departures of Rare or Silicon Knights and have never talked about developers like LucasArts dropping GCN support entirely.

Besides anything like that would just serve to piss off Capcom furthur. They could easily just turn around and say "well, we're not supporting Revolution at all, we're going to have our hands full with PS3 and XBox 2".  

2

TalkBack / RE:Resident Evil 4 Not GC Exclusive

« on: November 01, 2004, 11:41:09 PM »

I think you guys are getting a bit too overdramatic about this.

It's not like Nintendo is exactly holding up their end of this bargain. Back in 2001, when Capcom signed the deal with Nintendo, Iwata was saying there'd be
50 million GameCubes sold.

Nintendo will be lucky to end up with 25 million sold total by the end of the generation. They themselves haven't done a very good job in selling the platform to consumers, Capcom can only do so much. I don't think Capcom signed on to "sacrifice" their top franchise solely for Nintendo's sake.

Nintendo just has no sway with 15-30 year old consumers aside from the hardcore Nintendo set. Maybe Capcom shouldn't have been naive enough to sign the deal in the first place knowing that, but they probably thought Nintendo would do a helluva lot more in terms of content and marketing in helping them get such an audience.

Obviously things haven't really worked out. I don't expect Nintendo to convince many third parties to offer up such big exclusives in the future either. Capcom isn't the only one, Namco ported Tales of Symphonia to the PS2, Sega has ported Monkey Ball, and originally Virtua Fighter Quest was supposed to be GCN-only.  

Capcom's had a rough few financial quarters, they have their own bills to pay. Nintendo probably understands that, and what difference does it make anyway? Chances are there weren't going to be a ton of PS2 owners buying a GC solely for this game. One game is still only one game, there's not enough titles like RE4 on the GCN to get people to move over en masse (and this is not Capcom's fault). GameCube still gets the title first and will probably have the better looking version of the game.  

And of course Capcom is interested in making money. So is Nintendo. Making games like Resident Evil 4 isn't cheap and it takes years of development to make a game like that, if I was a developer on such a title, it would absolutely kill me to put so much effort into a game and then watch it get ignored by most of the market. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a game to sell well.  

BTW: According to IGN it was NINTENDO that forced Capcom to raise the price of RE2/RE3. Capcom wanted to sell them at $19.99, but Nintendo wouldn't give them a break on the licensing fees.  

3

Nintendo Gaming / RE:PSP vs DS

« on: October 27, 2004, 09:19:47 PM »

The PSP will be supported for a while simply because it's going to take Sony a while to break even and make a profit on the unit (we're talking years, not months).

Nintendo has said openly that Game Boy Next continues in development. So I don't know.  

4

Nintendo Gaming / RE:PSP vs DS

« on: October 27, 2004, 08:43:56 PM »

I'll be honest. I am a pretty hardcore Nintendo fan, but I will admit when someone else has a better product. I think for a lot of people PSP is the better product.

For $50 more you're getting a huge generation leap in visuals, but not only that the widescreen display and the 24-bit color depth is practically unheard of on a portable device. Ask anyone who's demoed the unit at E3 or TGS, the display on the PSP is gorgeous.

Battery life is lower, but that's to be expected. Sony has wisely though added the option of swappable battery paks. You can effectively bring your PSP battery life up to 8-12 hours for longer road trips if you go with a second battery.

The touchscreen on the DS is very cool. I think it's a good idea. My personal gripes with the DS is the image quality is really horrid. I don't mind the N64 graphics, I still fire up my N64 now and again and have no problems except for the choppy framerate of the FPS titles. I don't however like the "jaggy" look of the DS in 3D though. It reminds me of the original Playstation or Saturn, and I just hate that "look".

DS is a nice looking unit, but the PSP is actually apparently a bit smaller and even lighter. And I think it just looks really badass.

Game wise, right now both systems seem to have a lot of ports or "expanded" quickie sequels.

If you like Nintendo's franchises obviously I would say go with DS, if you like more of Playstation-centric franchises like Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry, etc. PSP is your ticket.

I'm getting both, but I like the PSP a little more at this point. For me it's got a bit more "wow" factor to it, whereas with DS, I'm not so sure it's not just a stop gap until they can get a proper Game Boy Next out.  

5

Nintendo Gaming / RE:New North American (NPD) Sales Thread

« on: October 21, 2004, 07:18:59 AM »

I don't see MS abandoning XBox Live any time soon. Broadband installation is simply growing. A broader Sony Network is likely coming for PS3/PSP, so I doubt MS takes their foot off that pedal.

MSN for Microsoft was unprofitable for 8 straight years until it finally turned a profit last year, but MS never pulled the plug. The fact is they make such ridiculous profits off their software division, that losses like that honestly are just PR embarrassments more than anything else.

I think online gaming is a niche right now, but it's a growing niche. By next generation it will become more mainstream and probably even able to generate profit. I suspect Nintendo is also working on an online solution for the Revolution.  

6

Nintendo Gaming / RE:New North American (NPD) Sales Thread

« on: October 20, 2004, 10:36:40 AM »

The only reason the XBox isn't a stronger no.2 is because XBox has no sway in Japan currently. In Europe and North America though, it's a platform which is very much on the rise and the definite no.2 machine.

600k for Fable in one month are blockbuster numbers, Halo 2 is going to be huge. Star Wars Battlefront sold more on the XBox than the PS2 according to the NPD. The thing about the XBox is software sales are very high. They're waaaay up from last year.

The problem with GameCube is software sales are low overall. Not just for Pikmin 2, but the platform as a whole. GCN owners just do not buy as many games per user as the PS2/XBox do, which makes the GCN seem more like a niche platform. The other problem is, the bulk of GCN software sales are Nintendo games, so you can't really hold it against third parties for not supporting the system as much. Not only do GCN owners not buy as many games, but when they do, it tends to be Nintendo-published stuff.

I think Nintendo is more focused on the DS being successful (and it should be) this holiday. It's important at this point that Nintendo not show any weaknesses in the portable sector. The GBA SP is tearing up the charts. The GameCube, honestly I think is a system that's just treading water at this point. Nintendo gave it a good shot, they just got caught with not enough of the types of games people want nowadays and made far too many mistakes to seriously contend.  

I think you will see Nintendo in the future becoming a different kind of company, perhaps expanding more into an anime/entertainment company. You can kind of see them leaning this way already with the investment in Bandai, the seperation of Pokemon into its own company (handles merchandising, Pokemon retail outlets, etc.), and Yamauchi pushing the company into feature film animation.

The thing is the next generation console race is probably going to be even tougher than this one was. Sony and Microsoft are probably going to pull out all the stops to beat each other, it's just not going to get any easier. There's definitely a chance even if Revolution is well designed and corrects many of the mistakes made with the GCN (as the GCN corrected many of the N64 errors), that Nintendo may still continue to lose ground in the console market.