Topic: My two cents: Revolution will have more third-party support than PS3. (No, I'm not crazy.)

[NotSoStu]

I was looking at the archives, and they didn't answer the question I was looking for, so if anybody knows: Was some of the software for the 'Cube known to exist before they officially unveiled the console? Did developers have press releases with them saying "hay guyz we r maeking teh gaems 4 teh nex nitendo consul lol!11," or was all the third-party software only unveiled after the StarCube was unveiled?

And as for a "killer game," GCN most certainly had some (namely Metroid Prime). But what Nintendo really needs are killer <I>launch</I> games. Xbox wouldn't have done so well if they didn't have Halo at launch - I think we can all agree with that. PS2 didn't really have any truly "killer" launch titles, but they had such a large head-start that Xbox and GCN's launch titles had to compare with about a year's worth of PS2 titles. And GCN's launch titles were, I have to say, not great choices. The only real killer game was probably SSBM. People I know would look at Luigi's Mansion and say, "Dude, no Mario? That's gay."

What we need is a balanced launch with two or three games that would sell very well, and then make sure that there's no drought of quality games in the coming months. Seems Nintendo's learnt half of its' lesson - The DS went on sale with a killer app, SM64DS. But then there were barely any good games until Warioware, then until Kirby, and we're only starting to see a flood of good games (AWDS and Nintendogs!) now, nearly 10 months after the DS's launch. They can't let that happen to Revolution.

Just my two cents. (I swear, that should be my catch phrase.)

[SgtShiversBen]

The best place I can tell you to go is here

I say this because I went through it one day and found out that we've been lied to ever since then.  Horray...take this charming quote:

"We are planning to expand our software widely on GameCube because it's not a mask Rom based console. One reason we didn't publish a lot of software on Nintendo 64 was because of its choice of media." - Yoshiki Okamoto (3/29/01)

[zakkiel]

Yeah, if Nintendo and not Microsoft had bought out Bungie, history would be very different. For one thing, Microsoft would not be making another console right now.

Nintendo needs a best-selling FPS franchise. It needs to be high-quality, innovative, and have a mature storyline and presentation. Nintendo's very good at the first two, but they can't seem to do that last bit to save their lives. If Nintendo were a restaurant, their meals would all be excellently prepared, delicious, nutritious, and entirely vegetarian, on the assumption that making it vegetarian will allow everyone to enjoy it. Problem is, meat eaters crave meat for its own sake, and most of the market eats meat.

[wandering]

It always makes me sad when a good vegetarian restaurant caves in and starts selling meat.

Nintendo DOES produce good "mature" titles: through second and third parties. To ask for something more (a first party bloodbath of a game, for example).....that's not what Nintendo is interested in making. Further, to suggest that a title needs to be dark or bloody to be popular....look at the success of Nintendogs. Or Ocarina of Time. Or Mario 64.

There's this vegetarian chinese retuarant where I used to live. They offer a wide array of delicious and original dishes. And they're always packed.
 

[BigJim]

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Originally posted by: Stu L Tissimus
I was looking at the archives, and they didn't answer the question I was looking for, so if anybody knows: Was some of the software for the 'Cube known to exist before they officially unveiled the console? Did developers have press releases with them saying "hay guyz we r maeking teh gaems 4 teh nex nitendo consul lol!11," or was all the third-party software only unveiled after the StarCube was unveiled?

Nope, I don't believe any software was known before SpaceWorld 2000 when the first demo videos were shown, as well as the first view of the hardware in 5 colors.

Check out the events archives for the SW2K stuff. Memory lane.

[Bill Aurion]

Well, it was rumoured before SW2000 that Metroid would be making a reappearance ... =D

[zakkiel]

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Nintendo DOES produce good "mature" titles: through second and third parties. To ask for something more (a first party bloodbath of a game, for example).....that's not what Nintendo is interested in making. Further, to suggest that a title needs to be dark or bloody to be popular....look at the success of Nintendogs. Or Ocarina of Time. Or Mario 64.

All good games. And yet, Nintendo lost the N64 battle with these games, and Xbox rose from nowhere to second place on the basis of one first-person shooter. Which isn't a gore fest by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not interested in gorefests. I don't understand the appeal. A movie like "A Beautiful Mind" is not exactly a gorefest, and yet it is by no stretch of the imagination a family movie.

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There's this vegetarian chinese retuarant where I used to live. They offer a wide array of delicious and original dishes. And they're always packed.

Tragically, Nintendo is mostly empty every night, and will remain so until it "caves in" as you say and starts offering a more rounded menu.
 

[wandering]

"A movie like "A Beautiful Mind" is not exactly a gorefest, and yet it is by no stretch of the imagination a family movie."

Nor is it by any stretch of the imagination a particularly GOOD movie.....
And note further that Lord of the Rings, a movie that nearly everyone can enjoy, did much better at the box office that year.

I don't have a problem with Nintendo coming out with more second and third party mature games like Eternal Darkness, RE4, and Geist (I like more adult games too!). But I do have a problem with people saying Nintendo should make first-party mature games. Then they wouldn't be Nintendo....they'd be some kind of souless EA-like company who makes games solely based on what it thinks will make the most money.

"Everybody" games do sell and do have broad appeal. The N64 didn't 'fail' because it launched with Mario instead of Goldeneye....it 'failed' becasue it didn't have third party support, and it didn't have that because of a bunch of other stupid decisions Nintendo made. And GameCube 'failed' because it never really aquired a killer app...NOT because the games they produced at launch were 'tiku tiku tiku! ', but becasue the games were neither particularly amazing nor easy to get into.

"Tragically, Nintendo is mostly empty every night, and will remain so until it "caves in" as you say and starts offering a more rounded menu."

Companies who spend all of their time trying to please everybody invariably wind up pleasing nobody. Nintendo needs to convice people that what Nintendo offers is worth getting into, and they can do that without changing what makes Nintendo... Nintendo.

[Don'tHate742]

"Companies who spend all of their time trying to please everybody invariably wind up pleasing nobody. Nintendo needs to convice people that what Nintendo offers is worth getting into, and they can do that without changing what makes Nintendo... Nintendo."

Do you have any examples that prove that point? I have many examples that disprove it....but you first.

As for Nintendo staying Nintendo....sure, we would never want Nintendo to change what they are, instead we'd like them to change what they produce. Instead of making games that appeal to all audiences, they should make many games that appeal to different groups of people. Even though what Nintendo produces is fun, people know what they want, and for most, it isn't Nintendo's type of fun. Making games that seem "cool" to certian groups is alot easier than making a game that seems "cool" to everyone.....I hope that makes sense to you.

[wandering]

"Do you have any examples that prove that point? I have many examples that disprove it....but you first."
How's about Wolfgang Peterson's TROY film? It was like 3 hours long and somewhat artsy, so as to appeal to critics... yet they also loaded it with poular actors and replaced Gabriel Yared's beautiful score that he worked on for a year with a more 'commercial' hack job, so as to appeal to the masses. At the end of the day, the movie was widely panned by both critics and average moviegoers.

"Instead of making games that appeal to all audiences, they should make many games that appeal to different groups of people."
I actually agree with this, partly. Revolution should definitely have a wide variety of games. It's just that I think in order to acheive that, Nintendo should change, not the kind of games that they produce personally, but rather their level of 3rd part support.

Variety is no problem for the DS: the system offers everything from simple pet simulators, to complex RPGs, to bloody action games. This is because the system has great 3rd party support. Which is because the system is poular. Which is becasue of low cost and innovative features. And since Revolution is also supposed to be inexpensive and innovative.....I'm not too worried about game variety.

[stevey]

"on the assumption that making it vegetarian will allow everyone to enjoy it. Problem is, meat eaters crave meat for its own sake, and most of the market eats meat."

People eat meat because it healty and tasted ten time better than grass and not because it teh mature and 99% of people eat meat so vegetarian food will let no one enjoy it because there no flavore. I not a redneck in nature thing eat other thing that how it work get used to it  

[KnowsNothing]

I like how stevey completely missed the point of that analogy.

[zakkiel]

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Companies who spend all of their time trying to please everybody invariably wind up pleasing nobody.

Like Sony, for example. They definitely bombed hardcore.

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And note further that Lord of the Rings, a movie that nearly everyone can enjoy, did much better at the box office that year.

Also note: if Nintendo made a game with the visual maturity of LotR, I would be well satisfied. And didn't you just say that movies that products that aim to please everyone will please no one? How is that different from "a movie everyone can enjoy"?

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It's just that I think in order to acheive that, Nintendo should change, not the kind of games that they produce personally, but rather their level of 3rd part support.

More third-party result will mean that Nintendo has more copies of games that everyone else has. I'm all for this, but I don't see it producing a lot of mature titles. Here's why: Nintendo's image is driven by their first-person titles. If Nintendo has an image of being actively hostile to anything with a T or higher on the box, then people go elsewhere for those games and those mature titles that do come out (RE, ED) horribly undersell and the producers go elsewhere. That's what happened this generation.

Troy bombed because the many elements is used all sucked. The action was bad, the actors were wooden, and the music was bad (people have better taste in music than commonly supposed). I'm definitely not suggesting that Nintendo create a wide variety of bad games. And A Beautiful Mind was a great movie. It's not one of my favorites, but it definitely earned its acclaim.

What I value about Nintendo is its dedication to quality, innovation, and solid engineering, not its dedication to an E rating. Yes, a Nintendo that produced the occasional Halo or KotOR or Fable would be different. And I would celebrate that. It would mean they had embraced a broader form of entertainment.  

[IceCold]

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A movie like "A Beautiful Mind" is not exactly a gorefest, and yet it is by no stretch of the imagination a family movie."

Nor is it by any stretch of the imagination a particularly GOOD movie.....

Eh? That's why he picked that movie as an example, because it is good.

But I'm with you concerning Nintendo. I would prefer making deals with 3rd parties (or getting Retro to do one) to get quality mature titles and then ramming them down everyone's throats by advertising them rather than Nintendo itself making them. Even if the ones by Nintendo would be better, I still wouldn't want it to happen.

[wandering]

 

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Also note: if Nintendo made a game with the visual maturity of LotR, I would be well satisfied.

Twilight. Princess.

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And didn't you just say that movies that products that aim to please everyone will please no one? How is that different from "a movie everyone can enjoy"?

Erm.... Okay, here's the difference. When making art, the artist's intention is often to introduce his audience to things that he enjoys. If an artist enjoys watching paint dry for hours at a time, he probably wouldn't make a film of paint drying for several hours....but he might make a film that explores paint-drying in some kind of witty and fun way that his audience can appreciate. This is pandering, in a sense, but not in a bad way.

The flip side of this is someone (or more likely, several someones, who form a committee of some sort) who tries to predict what is popular/well-liked and then tries to mass-produce that thing and make as much money off of it as possible. The result of this sort of thinking is things like summer buddy action comedies, MTV, and EA games. This is bad.

It's the difference between labouring over a great movie that a wide array of people can enjoy, and painting a movie by the numbers in an attempt to acquire the most amount of money possible based on the latest statistical reports of what is popular. It's the difference between Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. It's the difference between Sony and Nintendo.

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Here's why: Nintendo's image is driven by their first-person titles.

Nintendo's image is driven by Nintendo. Nintendo can take many steps to create a more 'mature' image of its console than it has in the past, without sacrificing what kind of games they want to make personally. They can do this by making a more adult looking console (done), and building better relationships with 3rd parties (apparently being done), and working with second parties to create exclusive mature titles (hopefully being done).

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What I value about Nintendo is its dedication to quality, innovation, and solid engineering, not its dedication to an E rating. Yes, a Nintendo that produced the occasional Halo or KotOR or Fable would be different. And I would celebrate that. It would mean they had embraced a broader form of entertainment.

I wouldn't mind this IF THAT'S WHAT THEY WANTED TO DO. And maybe it is. Another Code isn’t 'I LOVE HALO 2'. OOT had blood. Miyamoto worked on Eternal Darkness. If Nintendo wanted to create a Touchstone-like first party mature games division, I wouldn't necessarily object. But what I do object to is people constantly calling for Nintendo to cave into every market pressure, every trend. 'Who cares if Wind Waker is artistic? It's teh I LOVE HALO 2!' 'Nintendo should put voice acting in Twilight Princess!' 'Nintendo needs to go online RIGHT NOW!!' 'Nintendo games should have more blood and less bright colors!'

Maybe, while we're at, Nintendo should have produced a generic Space Invaders clone instead of a cartoony jumping game involving an Italian carpenter and a gorilla back in '81.

.......sigh. I feel like we're arguing over a lot of nothing, in any case. I want variety; I want more mature games (and by mature I don't mean GTA or any of the other junk passing off as mature these days). I just don't want Nintendo to sell out, that's all.

P.S. A Beautiful Mind was generic paint-by-the-numbers, warmed-over, academy pandering, that didn't offer a particularly accurate view of either John Nash or Schizophrenia. Just my two cents.

[Don'tHate742]

Mature is a two-faced way of describing something. When some people here mature it means blood, guts, violence, nudity and so forth. This type of mature I'd never like Nintendo to consider making.

However, the other type of mature, the better one, is in fact an interesting genre. This type mature can be very psychological, and deal with very traumatizing and emotional issues. It doesn't have to be dark to be mature, and a good example of this is the Lion King (which was very mature for the audience it was aiming towards). A game that deals with death, self-sacrifice, and moments of bittersweetness is something I'd like Nintendo to consider. With it's ability to produce quality and it's dedication to innovation, they could make a masterpiece. Somthing akin to a light-hearted yet more disturbing Eternal Darkness could really hit the spot.

[Artimus]

I don't think Nintendo needs to become Mature, they jsut need to clear out the painfully childish aspects. Take Super Mario Basebal for example. Couldn't they do the follow three things for the sequel:

1. Choose are art style that is bright and colourful, but ARTISTIC, instead of just bright cartoony stuff, choose something with some art behind it, people raved the graphics of games like Yoshi's Island (and Wind Waker upon playing!) because they weren't childish, they were artistic
2. Don't dumb it down! I used to play 'adult' baseball games when I was ten years old, and I had zero control problems, or heck, include an easy and a complicated control mode, just because it's Mario doesn't mean it can't have an indepth control scheme
3. Improve the voices! Make Peach sound like a woman not an eleven year old, give the characters real lines instead of pointless catch phrases, and make their voices a bit more realistic and less painfully fake

Imagine what a different game these three changes would make. None of these would compromise Mario as a family figure, none of these would make in inaccessable to younger players or dull for older players, and it'd greatly improve the game for everyone!

One thing I'd like to see them do for all games is just notch up the graphics a bit. Games like Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and even back to Smash Bros. all show Nintendo is capable of being on par with anyone. I don't mean realism, I mean quality. Why are the textures so horrific in Mario Sunshine and the polygons so rough?

Essentially Nintendo needs to stop dumbing down games, as kids can figure out reasonable controls just fine, and put a lot more into their damn presentation. Nintendo has about the worst presentation of any quality game maker out there.

[Bill Aurion]

Why are the textures so horrific in Mario Sunshine and the polygons so rough?

Um, the polygons are NOT rough...and the texture issue is an issue with all GC games, because the system doesn't have much RAM...

Essentially Nintendo needs to stop dumbing down games, as kids can figure out reasonable controls just fine, and put a lot more into their damn presentation.

Ok, first of all you say Ninty DUMBS DOWN their games, in the sense that you want them to complicate controls to make them more fun...Irony?  I think so...

[Ian Sane]

Nintendo's problem with maturity is that they have actually made their games appear more childish as time has gone by.  Mario became way more k!ddy when he started talking with that silly accent for example.  Nintendo's NES and SNES games have an art style that looks more sureal and weird.  In the 3D era Mario has looked more like a kids game.

I think the ideal solution is use the style from SSBM for all Nintendo games.  That game actually made Mario look COOL.  He had stiches in his jeans and there was like shading and stuff.  In EAD's games everything is super bright and happy.  Some more shadows and some darker tones in certain areas would go a long way.  Compare Super Mario Sunshine to Donkey Kong Country.  Both are family friendly and cartoony except DKC has more detail while SMS looks like Blue's Clues.  Just having less primary colours would make Mario look more like the "everyone" game it's supposed to be than the "kids" game that it is misinterpreted as.

[Deguello]

No Mario game has ever been more childish than Yoshi's Island. You fail again Ian.

Aww wook. I smiwey fwower in the gumdwop hills in wowwipop lane...  Awwww.

[Ian Sane]

"No Mario game has ever been more childish than Yoshi's Island."

What about Yoshi's Story?

I always felt Yoshi's Island was more arty.  The design was to make it look like a colouring book.  I didn't find it childish at the time.  I feel Super Mario Sunshine is much worse.  Yoshi's Island when it came out had like the greatest graphics anyone had every seen and all sorts of state-of-the-art effects.  Super Mario Sunshine looked dated the day it was released.  That makes a big difference.  With Yoshi's Island it looked like Nintendo was trying to make the best looking game possible.  With Super Mario Sunshine it looked like Nintendo skimped on the details to make it more kid-friendly.

Plus compare Yoshi's voice in the SNES version to the GBA version.  Which one sounds more childish?  Hell this applies to any SNES-to-GBA port.  The GBA ports are way more childish with cutesy voices and dumbed down difficulties.

[Deguello]

Ian, this is a losing fight for you.  Super Mario Sunshine was one of the best looking games in 2002.  Its water effects were state of the art.  Yoshi's Island doesn't get a free pass on being childish just because YOU FEEL it is art.  Face it.  Yoshi's Island is the "kid-freindly" Mario you've been thinking of all this time, complete with sissy baby crying.

[Stimutacs Addict]

no.. yoshi's island is pure art. the backgrounds are brilliantly scribbled to create the atmosphere of a child's drawing book. super mario sunshine had amazing water effects and goofy-ass pintas. the color scheme was bright and, dare i say, TROPICAL. its not 'omg i love teh haloxorz'/childrish. he's on vacation for chrissake, what do you expect?!

[Bill Aurion]

There's a difference between "kitty art" and just plain "kitty"?  That's a laugh and a half...

[Ian Sane]

Well I notice a difference.  To me Yoshi from Yoshi's Island and Yoshi today are like totally different characters.  Maybe it's a sprites vs. polygons thing.

All I know is that when Yoshi made a "yeah-uh" sound he was cool and ever since he started saying "Yoshi" in a dorky voice he's been childish.