Topic: 2-3 Times as powerful as GC true, sez IGN

[KDR_11k]

I think "mature" means "as shallow as TV".

[Pittbboi]

But that’s the thing: Nintendo fans know that Nintendo has the know how and the capability to make and inspire some top notch mature games if they put the same energy into it that they put into, for example, Mario and Link. They could have a legion of mature games at their feet if they did that.  

[BigJim]

It's a chicken or the egg situation. 3rd parties mostly released games that fit Nintendo's customers. Developers don't want to take the risk of trying to create an audience... they make games FOR it (or not). Nintendo pigeon-holded themselves into a spot where only star power and "safe" games really sold. Hence that's about all we got.

It's squarely on Nintendo's lap to set the pace. Launch with a Halo killer and people will be more willing to buy those types of games later on.

[Ian Sane]

"Why make mature games when they typically don't sell as well as E-rated games? If Pokémon and Mario sell, why not continue with those? The GTA games are among the very few exceptions."

Nintendo doesn't just sell games, they sell consoles.  Making only E-rated games would be a fine strategy for a third party developer.  But a console won't sell if it just has E-rated games.  It needs variety and that means lots of different target demographics, genres, styles, etc.  Nintendo's "every game for everybody" approach doesn't work because everything ends up being the same style so anyone who doesn't like Mario doesn't like ANYTHING Nintendo makes at all.  The Playstation brand hasn't been so successful because it has mature games.  It's successful because it has all types of games.  The PS2 is a true "everyone" console.  Hardcore gamers, casual gamers, men, women, adults, children, sports gamers, rpg nuts, fighting game fans, hardcore shmup players, etc. ALL can find a fair amount of games that interest them.  The Gamecube is the most restrictive console as only a Nintendo fan would be able to get any serious use out of the thing.  Now third parties are the key here but Nintendo will NEVER get decent third party support unless they sell consoles and they don't sell consoles because they have no variety so the ONLY way to fix that problem is to, at least temporarily, provide the variety themselves.

Nintendo had the "mature" audience with Goldeneye on the N64 but they followed it up with Banjo-Kazooie and everyone bailed.  The easiest solution to their problem is to have a big mature title and if it takes off have other mature games to keep the momentum going.  That means not releasing one mature game (Eternal Darkness), having it flop, and then never trying again.  They have to keep trying until they release a title that catches on and they have to keep a steady flow of non-everybody titles in the works so that if something catchs fire they're not stuck having to wait a few years to get a follow-up developed.

[couchmonkey]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
"The real complaint was "your third party support sucks" but Nintendo misinterpreted that and instead rushed their games.  Typical out-of-touch Nintendo solution."

I agree that people wanted better third party support, but there was also a ton of complaining about Nintendo's delays and slow release schedule.  Any time a game got delayed on the N64 there was a huge collective moan from the public.  Ian, you'll probably argue that by saying that better third party support would have prevented that, which is true, but the message to Nintendo was clear: We don't like delays.

As for mature games, we can argue over the definition of mature all day, but we know what people mean when they say Nintendo isn't mature enough: it isn't offering the types of adult-themed games that sell to the current mainstream gaming audience.  Those are FPS', war simulators, Horror games, and Grant Theft Auto.  But how is Nintendo supposed to fix this?  Either it can focus most of its attention on the mature games market, which we all know it won't do, or it can pay off a bunch of third parties to do the same thing.  The thing is, Nintendo has to pay a lot of third parties a lot of money to make this strategy work: Resident Evil and MGS: TS weren't enough.  Can Nintendo really afford to pay off enough developers to produce, say, 5 exclusive mature titles per year?

In the end it doesn't matter because I think with Revolution Nintendo is saying, "Screw that demographic".  Can Nintendo attract a new demographic instead?  We'll see.

[JonLeung]

I keep saying that's why Nintendo should try harder to get Sega to give up their whole library for the Revolution's download service.

This way, any gamer over about the age of 20 who has memories of games a few generations back, whether they were with the Nintendo camp (NES/Super NES) or Sega camp (Master System/Genesis) would get a Revolution for nostalgia alone.  Monopoly on the classics!

That is, if older gamers are into nostalgia when the alternative is something like Halo 3.  >_<

But I think the download service really would sell better among the over-20s than the below-20s.

[Spak-Spang]

Hmmm  let my try to make my point another way.

During the NES, and SNES era.  Nobody would have argued that Mario was a I LOVE HALO 2 game.  Mario was a platformer that agreed with all ages.  Mature games loved the game, younger players enjoyed the game, and teens enjoyed the game.

The same has been true with EVERY ONE of Nintendo's major franchises has this mass appeal.

Now, you we changed the rules on Nintendo.  We have told them that we believe Mario is 'I LOVE HALO 2'.  We believe Pokemon is 'I LOVE HALO 2', and now we believe Zelda is 'I LOVE HALO 2'.  Why because they get an 'E' rating for everyone?

Mario 64 and specially Mario Sunshine had some really difficult sections of the game that could only be beaten by skilled, sophisticated players.  Sure the plot was silly, and colors were bright, but the game itself was a true Mario experience.

Pokemon is a very serious RPG wrapped around a cute package, and a lighthearted story.  However, because of a cartoon show that exists no 'mature' gamer will touch the series.

Nintendo's style has always been to make great games that appeal to everyone...and people have now twisted that to mean Nintendo doesn't care about mature gamers.

Well I ask what about these series is not for mature gamers:

Mario
Mario Kart
Fire Emblem
Super Smash Brothers
Advance Wars
Metroid
Zelda
Mario RPGs (Paper, and GBA/DS games)


Has there been a game or two in these series that has appealed to younger markets alittle more?  Sure.  But look back and tell me that Nintendo has really changed their style much from back in the day?  No, we have changed and become jadded.  Because now it is acceptable to have Cop Killing heros, raping and stealing cars in our games.  (YEAH, that is really Mature.)

Nintendo's approach is to gaming is more mature and sophisticated than most of the M rated games out there...but we just won't accept it, because the industry has become overrun by teens that are too insecure to play anything accept what looks cool to them.

[Dirk Temporo]

Something occurs to me. When they say "2-3 times more powerful," they mean numbers IN the console. RAM, storage space, CPU speed, etc. When they first made that statement, everyone was assuming that they meant 2-3 times more polygons, or textures, or whatever the hell it is, and that would mean it was a very small upgrade. However, with the actual hardware numbers being 2-3 times more powerful, you actually get a damn powerful machine.

[JonLeung]

I agree with Spak-Spang; it seems like bratty 15-year-olds gravitate towards the Xbox section in the video rental stores.  (No offense to anyone here who might be 15 or owns an Xbox.)

I remember kids on the bus making fun of another who played Pokémon, and then he caved and one day was like, "yeah, I finally gave up on Pokémon" a couple days before the next games in the series came out.  You could tell there were some insecurity issues there.

Unfortunately image is hard to change when you're against alternatives that throw a lot of marketing dollars down.  It's difficult for me, being 25, to express my enthusiasm for the next Nintendo game.  Oftentimes it comes down to someone saying "Nintendo sucks" and trying to change the conversation to something they can relate to, like a PS2 or Xbox game.  If I try to factually express that gameplay=/=number of colours, they still can't follow because they stick with their obviously skewed-by-the-media perception.  And though many of them have a GameCube now it's rarely a topic of discussion when there's yet another game, even if generic, on another console that just came out and doesn't involve throwing Poké Balls.

[Ian Sane]

"I agree that people wanted better third party support, but there was also a ton of complaining about Nintendo's delays and slow release schedule."

People were complaining about delays but that was only because the third party support was weak.  Nintendo's output level on the N64 was probably pretty comparable to the SNES.  It's just that on the N64 you could notice the delays because there was pretty much nothing else being released.  People did mean "we hate delays" but that's not really what they needed.  Nintendo should have read between the lines there and come of the conclusion that though they think they hate delays they really hate gaps in the release schedule which were the result of poor third party support.  Nintendo was treating a sympton instead of a problem.  If a patient says they have headaches do you give them an Aspirin or do you try to find out why they're having headaches?

People always ask for sequels too but that's not always what you should give them.  Often what they're REALLY asking for is a game that will give them the same satisfaction they felt when they first played that game.  How many times have you seen people on message boards talk about some old game they loved and how fresh and exciting it was and how they want a sequel?  How many times did those same people complain when a highly anticipated sequel arrived and failed to deliver?  I love Gunstar Heroes but I don't want the sequel.  That's because what made Gunstar so great to me was it's uniqueness.  The sequel repeats some of the same bosses and thus lacks that uniqueness.  Fans asked for those bosses to return and they were foolish to do so.  What they REALLY were asking for were bosses as creative and original as those in the original game but they didn't actually realize that.

It sounds a little confusing now that I re-read what I've typed but sometimes what a person asks for isn't really what they want and a company like Nintendo has to be able to spot that.

[JonLeung]

But now you're putting faith that Nintendo knows what gamers want better than the gamers themselves.

I think they said that at one point, actually, I can't remember if they said it in a way that didn't sound arrogant.

Hopefully for the sake of all those naysayers of the controller that Nintendo's departure from tradition here is what gamers want whether they realise it or not yet.

[trip1eX]

WEll 'mature' is definitely misused when it comes to games.  What it really translates to is hip.  Nintendo just ain't hip anymore for instance.  IT's like 80's pop ain't hip anymore.  Rap is.  Same with Nintendo I guess.   I not even sure the word 'hip' is hip anymore.  

I think the 'Cube started off with decent 3rd party support in America.  But it slipped as the Xbox started to outsell it.  Tho folks seem to forget EA and Ubisoft make alot of games (most of their major ones) for the 'Cube still.  

I also think Nintendo has to start facing the facts that the American market is different than the Japanese market.  They need to face this especially as a software developer.  

Anyway I think it's just the nature of the beast as far entertainment goes that what worked 20 years ago doesn't necessarily work today.  The same movies and music certainly aren't as popular today as 20 years ago and I think the same with games.  And what I'm really talking about is image.  Because I mean the stories really haven't changed.  But they need updating to appeal to today's youth.  

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

It's not that I 'forgot,' it's that I DON'T CARE.  

[Spak-Spang]

That statement about Hip is true.

Playstation became Hip when it took the market from Nintendo during the PS/N64 era.  And then Sony started releasing games (as well as 3rd parties) that have never been seen on Nintendo before...bloody, mature oriented games.  Soon Sony became known as the system for these games, though if you look back, Nintendo 64 had several games like this as well.

That myth just continued to carry throughout all of Nintendo.  Soon Nintendo became a younger system, because these new hip games weren't on it.  

However, to ask Nintendo to change and adjust to become hip is to ask them to sell their souls to the devil.  A great example is Lunatics.  They tried to make Looney Toons hip, but destroyed everything that was loveable and interesting about the characters.  If you ask Nintendo to make their games and characters hip, and geared towards more mature characters, you are asking creators and artists to betray their art, and their personal style.

You actually kill Nintendo.

[ruby_onix]

GamesIndustry.biz

Quote
An article published by US website IGN this morning revealed some details of the console, and several developers today have spoken to GamesIndustry.biz to help fill in the gaps.

Quote
The picture we're building up of the final console is as follows; the Cube will be powered by the IBM CPU codenamed Broadway, which is very similar to the Gekko CPU used in the GameCube, but runs at around twice the clock speed and offers potentially two to three times the overall performance, and the ATI graphics chip codenamed Hollywood.

While Broadway is well-understood by developers, the ATI part remains "a bit of a black box", according to one senior developer we spoke to. "We have theoretical throughput figures and stats from Nintendo, but nobody's seen the hardware yet - we're just treating it like it's a faster version of the GameCube GPU, at the moment."

Quote
In terms of RAM, the system is well-known to boast 512MB of Flash RAM which can be used to store save games and downloaded content, but this will not be accessible to developers, we were told. What they'll have available is 96MB of main memory, built on the same 1T-SRAM architecture as the Cube, and "a few megs here and there for other stuff" - such as 3MB of on-board memory on the graphics chip, which will be used for a frame buffer. "That's plenty, since the Revolution isn't supporting HDTV," one developer added.

Quote
"You can basically treat it like a current generation machine," one told us. "The time it'll take to ramp up to developing on this is basically nil - we can just work on a PC or maybe an Xbox, and then improve the quality of our assets when we move to the Revolution. Or even work on a Cube, in fact. The libraries are very similar."

"We could do a game for this in a few months," commented another developer. "Developing games is going to be easy, the challenge is going to be using the controller properly."

 

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"the Cube will be powered by the IBM CPU codenamed Broadway"

Keanu:  "WHOA."

Thank you, gaming journalists.

[Ian Sane]

"However, to ask Nintendo to change and adjust to become hip is to ask them to sell their souls to the devil. A great example is Lunatics. They tried to make Looney Toons hip, but destroyed everything that was loveable and interesting about the characters."

That only applies if you ask Nintendo to make Mario cool which no one is asking (though I wouldn't mind them removing things they added later that made him less cool like his voice).  But there is nothing stopping Nintendo from making some new franchises to appeal to a new generation of gamers.  They don't even have to be dark and gory.  They just have to be different because younger gamers today don't identify with Mario and they shouldn't have to.  Note that Nintendo had a huge boom with kids when Pokemon came out.  That was brand new and the kids of the time period took it as their own.  In 1988 kids had Mario and in 1998 they had Pokemon.  Kids need something in 2008.  The way Nintendo is going they would try to give them Mario and Pokemon again and neither would work.

[KnowsNothing]

Ian, I suggest you wait until 2008 to start that subject of bitching, you're getting a little ahead of yourself here.

[Karl Castaneda #2]

In my opinion, the most mature game of this generation was Killer 7 by SUDA-san. Seeing as how he's crazy about the controller and has already started on a new game for it, I'm not too worried.  

[JonLeung]

It takes more than one insane game to get people's attention.  I don't know if Killer7 would've even got the attention that it did get if it wasn't also available for the PS2.

And RE4 probably would've sold better on the GCN if they didn't announce that it was coming to the PS2 shortly BEFORE the GCN version came out.

[Karl Castaneda #2]

I think you're underestimating how long I'll hold out waiting for a follow-up to Killer 7. I'm not saying it'll boost the Rev's marketshare; I'm just saying that it's a huge plus for me. And when it comes to me playing games, I'm the one who matters.  

[Nile Boogie]

It just occured to me that if Zelda: TP had came out on time I wouldn't care about any of this mess. One thing that makes no sense is us getting all bent out of shape over clock speeds. " There is no way the cpu is only 900mhz", sh*t my doorbell has a faster chip than that.  

Revolutions final specs will be simalar to the MacMini.  

[BigJim]

Quote
Originally posted by: Spak-Spang
Hmmm  let my try to make my point another way.

During the NES, and SNES era.  Nobody would have argued that Mario was a I LOVE HALO 2 game.  Mario was a platformer that agreed with all ages.  Mature games loved the game, younger players enjoyed the game, and teens enjoyed the game.

The same has been true with EVERY ONE of Nintendo's major franchises has this mass appeal.

Now, you we changed the rules on Nintendo.  We have told them that we believe Mario is 'I LOVE HALO 2'.  We believe Pokemon is 'I LOVE HALO 2', and now we believe Zelda is 'I LOVE HALO 2'.  Why because they get an 'E' rating for everyone?

Mario 64 and specially Mario Sunshine had some really difficult sections of the game that could only be beaten by skilled, sophisticated players.  Sure the plot was silly, and colors were bright, but the game itself was a true Mario experience.

Pokemon is a very serious RPG wrapped around a cute package, and a lighthearted story.  However, because of a cartoon show that exists no 'mature' gamer will touch the series.

Nintendo's style has always been to make great games that appeal to everyone...and people have now twisted that to mean Nintendo doesn't care about mature gamers.

Well I ask what about these series is not for mature gamers:

Mario
Mario Kart
Fire Emblem
Super Smash Brothers
Advance Wars
Metroid
Zelda
Mario RPGs (Paper, and GBA/DS games)


Has there been a game or two in these series that has appealed to younger markets alittle more?  Sure.  But look back and tell me that Nintendo has really changed their style much from back in the day?  No, we have changed and become jadded.  Because now it is acceptable to have Cop Killing heros, raping and stealing cars in our games.  (YEAH, that is really Mature.)

Nintendo's approach is to gaming is more mature and sophisticated than most of the M rated games out there...but we just won't accept it, because the industry has become overrun by teens that are too insecure to play anything accept what looks cool to them.

Back in the NES and SNES days, video gamers were predominantly pre-teen and teenage boys. The debate over "kid games" didn't exist to any great extent because game content was fine for that audience. But the audience grew up. NES gamers are likely playing PlayStation and Xbox now (if anything).

If you're trying to say the market changed and Nintendo didn't change with it, then I agree 100%. But that's Nintendo's fault. Irrelevance is the DNA for failure. This shift in the market is not a fad. Video gaming is a subset of pop culture now which spans all age groups. You either move with the times or fade into obscurity.

We know what Nintendo's style is. The problem isn't what they're doing. It's what they're not doing. Not everybody wants "everybody" games. Clearly their increasing marketplace irrelevance has indicated this. They rely on "everybody" games because they have to. A healthy, diversified platform wouldn't have that problem.

Another Mario or Zelda is not the answer to the gaping hole that is "no answer to Halo, Doom, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, GTA, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, etc." And if those games are only meant for insecure teens, then I will proudly say I'm a 27 year old trapped in a teenage time warp. Because those are the types of games Nintendo lacks, and some of which I would LOVE to play on this new controller.

The marketplace hasn't been overrun with teenagers since the 90's. There are just as many real, "secure" adults out there playing games as there are pimply-faced kids, if not more so. And about 80% of them aren't playing GameCube, that's for sure.

Perception is reality in business. Nintendo has a perception problem, whether real or imaginary. As couchmonkey said, the definition of "mature" can be debated, but we all know what we mean despite whatever personal spin we want to put on it. Perhaps "mature" really isn't the right word. But we should at least be able to understand it in theory.

What is Nintendo going to do to reverse the very real trend, if anything? That remains to be seen. They're capable of setting the pace with a Halo killer if they so choose to make one with the new controller.  They've been *all talk* when it comes to the mature/hip/whatever demographic, with no bite. So let's see something, if they're really serious about being for "everybody".  

[Spak-Spang]

No Ian.  If Nintendo makes its designers whom desire to create games with the feel of Mario and such design a new mature franchise then they are selling out.

You can't tell a developer or an artist to create something they initially don't desire to make.

Nintendo did the right thing by trying to branch out and bring in developers to make games for them.  

Capcom, Silicon Knights...Nintendo needs to do more of this, but only when the developers and Nintendo can get on the same page.

[JonLeung]

I may have been one of those who said those kinds of games are for insecure teens, but I've played some of them too.  The really insecure people are the ones who will choose a game with guns over any game with colourful graphics no matter what.  But that's their problem.  That's society's problem.  And Nintendo's problem for not following along.

Sometimes I wish Nintendo would throw up a big ad saying "YOU DUMMIES.  9 OUT OF 10 DECENT XBOX GAMES ARE AVAILABLE FOR THE PC TOO."  It would certainly stir up controversy.  I know not everyone has a decent computer like I do, but certainly Microsoft has said things with less factual basis, like the ad implying that Nintendo is for sissies.