Topic: Why is the console so small?

[RiskyChris]

HD is not gameplay altering like online play is.  I'd much rather they skimp on something that has little bearing on my gaming experience.

So far every decision regarding the Rev has been about making the gameplay elements as good as possible while maintaining an affordable price range.

HD is the most overrated thing since sliced bread.

[Michael8983]

Atrimus is right.
The vast majority of people who buy the REV won't even know it doesn't have HD support. Even the ones who DO have HDTV's won't know. So if Nintendo can sell the console a lot cheaper and even make a larger profit by excluding a feature that  probably over 90% of its users won't know to miss, why not do it? Sure it might p*ss off a few tech-junkies but alienating a small percentage of the market in exchange for making a product much more accessible to the majority is reasonable. But the real benefit  is the Rev will be much quicker and easier to develope for. Which is a necessity in order to convince developers to take a chance on it with some unique new games.


"If they're buying a console and do their research..."

They won't.
If consumers did research and made smart buying decisions Sony would have gone out of business long before it entered the gaming market.  

"And if they don't do their research the guy at EB or Best Buy or Toys 'R' Us is going to mention it when they ask him about the different consoles."

Hopefully they'll mention the REV is a hundered or even two hundered dollars cheaper than the others.
Honestly they probably won't. But sales clerks will probably try and convince people to buy a 360 or PS3 over a REV regardless. Even if it had HD support it wouldn't make a difference.

[Ian Sane]

"HD is not gameplay altering like online play is."

I agree and it's not that big of a deal on its own.  It's a problem in that it represents Nintendo continuing to skimp on features and make excuses and tell us what we should think is important.  And that attitude is Nintendo's overall problem.  What else are they going to skimp on?  What other excuses will there be?  Plus Nintendo is in full control of this issue.  Some negatives can't be foreseen.  What is Nintendo going to miss that no one can foresee if they're intentionally making such blatant obvious oversights for their console?  And why have we heard so many negatives about the Rev but the positives are all largely theoretical?  Most of the concrete facts are negative while the good stuff is largely dependent on Nintendo's word with no actual proof.  "Well it's worth it for all these innovative games."  What innovative games?  We've got nothing.  If HD and lesser hardware doesn't matter then why haven't we seen PROOF that it doesn't matter?  I'm kind of assuming that we haven't seen such proof because it doesn't exist.

[RiskyChris]

"If no one is looking at the moon, it doesn't exist"

A play on Schrodinger's Cat (spelling!).

Just because there is no sight of quality, innovative gameplay doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.  We'll wait and see at E3.

[Michael8983]

"It's a problem in that it represents Nintendo continuing to skimp on features and make excuses and tell us what we should think is important"

Either way Nintendo has to skimp on something. Either it can skimp on the HD or skimp on the low price the way MS and Sony have.
I'd say price is very important and most consumers would agree. Sony and MS are the ones telling consumers what to think is important by making them pay extra for a feature most can't even use.

[BigJim]

Again I say, Sony proved that people will pay for what they want. The bell curve ignores the obvious. People were willing to pay more for Sony. They wanted it. They grabbed 3-4x the market Nintendo did. The price advantage did not matter.

Nintendo targetting the non-gamer is a *result* of foregoing competition (and offering weaker hardware), after the fact. One comes after the other. Of course HD and non-gamer aren't entirely compatible. They wouldn't target the non-gamer if they wanted to compete. So since they aren't, HD is dropped as an option. I reject the notion that HD doubles the system price, though.


"Either way Nintendo has to skimp on something. Either it can skimp on the HD or skimp on the low price the way MS and Sony have"

Again with the sacrificing. It's not either/or. The cost does not automatically skyrocket out of control. What people pay for (or, rather, don't pay for) in the 360 and PS3 is absolute bleeding-edge. So new it's difficut to even manufacture. You don't need up-to-the-second bleeding edge to have HD resolution.

"I'd say price is very important and most consumers would agree. Sony and MS are the ones telling consumers what to think is important by making them pay extra for a feature most can't even use."

MOST consumers bought PlayStations and Xboxes. For 50% more than GameCube. It's silly to say Sony and MS are doing the spinning when Nintendo is right there with them spinning a message of what we REALLY need and don't need.

[IceCold]

And why have we heard so many negatives about the Rev but the positives are all largely theoretical?

Negative features? Hmm, no HD support. What else?

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

It's interesting how devices like cell phones and music/media players exhibit new features and added computing power while STAYING SMALL.

On the other end, "popular" home consoles, HD movie players, surround sound receivers, etc. continue to boast more powerful components with the downside of being bulkier, heavier, and hotter.

I tend to like sound, efficient engineering rather than chunky, cutting-edge power.

[nemo_83]

The way things go down is this, at system launch, for the first year; noone who buys Revolution is going to really be detered from buying the system because it is too expensive.  The early adopters are willing to pay out the three to four hundred or more for the new hardware even if it doesn't have a killer app.  In other words there is no reason for the system to be cheap at launch, especially when launch is the time when there are the least number of games available for the system.  In the console world the cheapest console loses, it is the opposite of the handheld market; home console gamers want to buy a system that convinces them they only need that one system.

If the console launches at $150 how much will it be in three years, its price will be marked down so much it won't exist in the eyes of consumers.  Once a home console drops below a certain mark it has an affect on people's minds, they smell death and droughts, and thus as gamers avoid the console the imagined death becomes real and stores nolonger carry the software for the console.

By the way I just read a rumor a company called 3Dh may be involved with the revolution.

[Khushrenada]

I'm glad this topic was brought up. I was thinking about bringing up something like this. I don't know if anyone read this but IGN posted something a while back in which they looked at the E3 comments made by Iwata and played his formal puzzle game as he called it. The point being to see what information is left to be discovered. What stood out to me were these quotes.

"Every home game machine in history has married a controller to a console, and a console to a television. "

"How these four elements: Controller, Console, TV, and Internet interact with each other forms a central difference in Revolution design."

There was also this comment that may or may not be unrelated: "But, our advances in our technology will also relate to areas that have no direct bearing on gameplay."

Let's not forget the comment by Square Enix that was mentioned in the beginning about "not just a console, not just a portable"

Now whether the small size of the Revolution has something to do with this or not, I'm not sure. But right now, we know how the controller and console interact, and we have a bit of information as to how the internet and console interact but nothing seem to have been discussed with how the T.V. and console interact. Unless it's a reference to the sensor bars you have to put beside the T.V. for the Revmote to work but I think there might be more.

In fact, the only thing I can recall with reference to this was a question in a recent IGN mailbag about whether the Revmote would work on any T.V. The answer was that Reggie had been traveling around to different developers and showing them a Revolution unit. Reggie said that he had hooked the unit up too all kinds of T.V.'s and there never was a problem. It always worked. No time-consuming fiddling.

Of course, I could be way off that this has anything to do with the yet unveiled secret but I've been wondering about it for awhile.

[animecyberrat]

sorry Nemo but not true. Back in the 16 bit days, the SNES was cheaper than Gensis and was cheaper than the Neo Geo, which was several times more powerfull.


Now getting back to the rev and HD.



To teh average consumer they are nto goign to knwo t doesnt suport HD because it WILL support Progressive scan which still looks goog on an HD TV set.


someone said Nintendo could sell it for 1 dollar profit adn still make money, sorry you must not haev taken economics or bussiness classes at all, besides covering your manufactoring cost, and your shipping cost and your marketing cost in order to profit you must cover your operating cost as well, that means you haev to make enough money to pay for LABOR, and BUILDINGS, ELECTRICITY, INSURANCE, TAXES, and many other smaller things that makea difference.



Most Bussinesses earnings only generate what equals 5% profit for them It takes a LOT of money to make a profit epsecialy when yoru talking gaming systems



Lets do some math.



In order for 1 Revolution to get made Nintendo has to pay for the factory buiulidng and equipmewnt, they haev to pay for pwoer to run the equipoment, they have to pay people to operate the equipment, and payf or training, they have to have insurance to cover accidents or theft/damage etc.

They have to pay property taxes, AND they have to pay taxes on the equipment they use.  


Then they have to pay for pakaging, and shipping. Pakagin costs include the copst of the materials, and the equipment to make the package, shippng cost include paying form someone to label it corectly, put it on whatever transport tthey use and then cover the cost of the transport.


NOW lets say they pay thier laborers minimum wage, they most likely DONT but for sake of numbers lets assume 5.15 per hour.

Ol lets say they can make 500 revs in an hour and it takes 50peopel to make that number of revs. Then lets say the assembly line and ect cost them an initial start up of 50,000 dollars. (rough estimate but from what i have studied pretty close cost for manufactroing equipment of this nature)

Ok now then you say it costs them 75 dollars in parts for every rev they make. Now they have to sell each console at enough profit to cover all their costs, yo do the equation and tell me what you come up with.




Lets say that the total cost for Nintendo to sell a revolution is 125 dollars, tahst after paying all expenses, now the retail store has to make a profit, they have to pay for the truck it was shipped to them they have to pay the shippng/recieving team who unloads the truck and puts it on teh shelfe, they have to pay for retail space (the building) and insurance, electricity, etc. Now lets say for a store to make 1 dollar profit from the sael they HAVE to price the rev at 199.99 now lets say that the price of adding HD (parts) is 30dolalrs, now you haev to redesign the assembly line to accomodate that extra peice of hardware, now your talking uppng the cost a lto more than 30dollars.

[IceCold]

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There was also this comment that may or may not be unrelated: "But, our advances in our technology will also relate to areas that have no direct bearing on gameplay."

That is the quote I'm most puzzled about.. I know there's something else about the Revolution, but what? Is it someting embedded in the Revolution hardware? If so, will they even reveal it until Sony finalises their hardware?

[nemo_83]

I still think the following quote may reveal the last secret,

"Level 5's Akihiro Hino, producer of Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest VIII, believes that the Revolution will give birth to new types of games. He is personally interested in making an RPG where you hold a shield in one hand, a sword in the other and mount a head set on our head"

[KDR_11k]

The big issue with HD is not to get the hardware to handle it but to have the software do it as well. Bigger framebuffer means less RAM for the rest of the game, varying resolution means you have to adjust the GUI and possibly other game features to work with multiple resolutions. More pixels can mean that your per-pixel shaders that worked so well at 60FPS at SD suddently kill the framerate. Your LOD switches suddently become obvious, your prerendered background segments look out of place.

And personally I haven't seen a single HDTV in a reasonable price range yet. Projectors, yes. PC monitors, yes. But no TVs.

Never mind that many people have no idea what HD really is. They buy a HDTV, run it at SD and with horrible stretching and think it's better just because it's a better screen than their old one. A survey showed that less than 50% of all HDTV owners even use it fo HD content.

nemo: Please, realize that noone WANTS a headset. It's dorky, it's nauseating, it's pointless.

"If no one is looking at the moon, it doesn't exist"

A play on Schrodinger's Cat (spelling!).

I think that's more what a philosopher says than what Schrödinger says.

[Ceric]

Ian this is for you and you only.  That same technicallity you call it was the same as Sony.  They just happen to have Square to push them.  That being said this is completely different then the cables.  The cables had never been sold retail.  Never.  You always had to get them from Nintendo which was stupid from the start.  All the online components where.  I mean I don't agree with Nintendo for dropping the digital output on the Cube.  But I can agree with why they stop selling retail the Modem and Network adapter.  No one except Nintendo really tapped into the full potential of the cube and even Nintendo didn't do it completely. Also if you thank back to early on Nintendo didn't start to do the "training" until after they realized that no one was going to use the online feature.  By that time Live had come and Nintendo had to explain why they weren't releasing Nintendo Live!

Lets face it.  Live was a relative success but all the simply online offerrings of Sony, with the exception of FFXI, were relative "Oh, that's nice."

I mean if Nintendo hadn't been so stuck on people being together to play games and pushing the GBA connectivity I'm sure we would have seen the online thing.   Also if this generation Nintendo would have become on online power house, which mind you wireless did not until recenctly become reasonable, people would be clamoring for the GBA to go online.  Which it simply can not.  It could be done but it's much to complicated.  The larger prevalance of Wireless is making things click more with the Nintendo philosophies since the N64.

[MaryJane]

Here is what all the doubters need to realize almost everything nintendo is doing is to attract new gamers or non-gamers if you want, while still trying to satisfy the nintendo faithful (us). that's pretty tough to do. personally i think with the extremely small amount of info that we have now, they did a pretty good job. The 64 and GC didn't sell well they had to come up with ways to ensure a bigger fanbase, because as i'm sure everyone knows, even if nintendo makes a profit on each rev it sells, the real money comes from game sales, even if revs make a profit from launch it would be largely insignificant, especially when compared to the importance of game sales. a cheaper price attracts a lot of people.

i've never met any of these people who think that because something is cheaper it must not be good. everyone i know looks at something inexpensive and sees a bargain. Hypthetical situation: "Hey check out the new Nintendo system" "Oh is that the one with that weird controller" "Yeah, Hey WOW check it out man it's only $200" "Awesome I can afford that no problem, it'll be worth it just to try that controller" Then after buying the system, who wouldn't fall in love with the new controller (everyone who's played it thus far has)

I believe in Nintendo, yes they've made some bad decisions in the past, but i think their current situation looks good, offer something completely new, never before done, for a very good price. maybe some people will never be satisfied, i garuntee if the rev was as big as a 360 and had HD the same people who are hating in this thread would be complaining about how there's not going to be any 3rd party support for the rev because they think the controller is scaring them away. complainers always complain. do i think the rev is perfect? nope. am i going to buy one? of course. is anything going to deter me from getting one? nothing i can see. is anyone here not going to get one because it's too small or doesn't off HD? idk but those are both pretty stupid reasons not to buy it. game quality and innovation, two things you can always count on nintendo to deliver and they are most important things in the video game industry. (at least to me)  

[Ian Sane]

"Negative features? Hmm, no HD support. What else?"

Well all this talk about weak hardware.  We know the hardware isn't up to snuff and that HD is dropped.  I would consider a weird controller no one asked for as a negative as well until we see it in action.  For positives we know that the system looks nice, has a download system of some sort, and is online for free.  But we don't know the pricing for the download system.  Nintendo is heavily hinting at forcing us to have wireless internet access for a stay at home console and will not clarify the issue.  They talk about the graphics being good enough but never show them.  They say the controller will have a shell but haven't shown it.  They say the new controller is innovative and will introduce cool new ideas but they've shown nothing.  Most of the postive stuff sounds good in theory but is missing the really important details that determines if it's a good idea or not.  And Nintendo is incredibly secretive about those important details.  It's suspicious.  It looks like they're hiding things from us.  It is very easy to come to the conclusion that the Rev isn't that great but it takes blind faith in Nintendo to believe the opposite.  We really have no reason to assume the Rev is anything even remotely good because our only source of that info is Nintendo themselves and they're obviously biased.

[MaryJane]

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It's suspicious. It looks like they're hiding things from us. It is very easy to come to the conclusion that the Rev isn't that great but it takes blind faith in Nintendo to believe the opposite. We really have no reason to assume the Rev is anything even remotely good because our only source of that info is Nintendo themselves and they're obviously biased.

Nintendo isn't the only person saying how great it is. IGN reported on the love developers have for it with just the dev kits (i thought this was old news) and they're not hididng from us, they're hiding from the competition who has a long history of stealing nintendo's ideas. MS wants to make a portable to combat the ipod, and psp, what's the betting it features a touch screen?  

[Ian Sane]

"they're hiding from the competition who has a long history of stealing nintendo's ideas."

Then why did Nintendo show off the controller already?  Wouldn't that make more sense to hide than anything else?  I guess the idea would be that the use of the remote is the real idea and that's what they feel is more important but it's still weird.  They say this whole remote design gives them this big advantage because everyone is familiar with a TV remote.  They say they don't want the competition to steal their ideas and that we have to see the remote in motion to really see how great it is.  Then they reveal the secret but don't show us how it works?  So now Sony and MS know what Nintendo's big secret controller is and we're all staring at it going "wha?" because they haven't shown us it in use which apparently was a requirement for us to like it.  That just doesn't make any sense.  The secret's out and we didn't have a good first impression of the controller.  I thought those two things were exactly what they were trying to avoid.

It would benefit Nintendo significantly to show more than what they're showing.  People say the hardware isn't up to snuff.  Well they could prove us wrong with a couple screenshots.  People say the controller is too limiting to work with traditional games.  Well they could prove us wrong by demonstrating some titles.  But they don't so it's very natural to assume it's because they can't.  When someone accuses you of something negative and you have proof otherwise you show it.  The only reason you wouldn't is because you can't or you're a total f*cking idiot.  When accusations of insufficient hardware were flying around Nintendo could have been all "Oh yeah?  Check this sh!t out!" and blown us away with some screens.  But they didn't and the negative buzz about the Rev being underpowered has spread.  Why would they not use that opportunity to put that negative rumour to rest?  They're either stupid or they've got nothing.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

No, they all just have an NDA ending around May 9.
Quit making up ultimatums.

From my perspective, 360 and PS3 (and their games) are designed to perform and look at a certain level at HD.  Once you force them to run at SD, I don't expect these games to perform any better with the extra resources that have now been freed (that is, if they're still forced to run at HD specs, plus a resolution downsize.)   I haven't heard any accounts of a game that has some framerate hiccups in HD running smoother when in SD.

Nintendo, I see it, just cut out HD specs and went to maximize SD performance.  Weaker hardware?  Oh yes, especially when enforcing the HD standard.  But considering the majority of the playing field is SD, will the performance be comparably weaker?  I think not.

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
It would benefit Nintendo significantly to show more than what they're showing.  People say the hardware isn't up to snuff.  Well they could prove us wrong with a couple screenshots.  People say the controller is too limiting to work with traditional games.  Well they could prove us wrong by demonstrating some titles.  But they don't so it's very natural to assume it's because they can't.  When someone accuses you of something negative and you have proof otherwise you show it.  The only reason you wouldn't is because you can't or you're a total f*cking idiot.  When accusations of insufficient hardware were flying around Nintendo could have been all "Oh yeah?  Check this sh!t out!" and blown us away with some screens.  But they didn't and the negative buzz about the Rev being underpowered has spread.  Why would they not use that opportunity to put that negative rumour to rest?  They're either stupid or they've got nothing.

...or they always have ignored rumors and gossip and they always will.

[Ian Sane]

"No, they all just have an NDA ending around May 9."

How does an NDA affect Nintendo?  It's their console.

[animecyberrat]

maybe it ahs something to do with WHY tehres NDA in the rist place. They dont want to show off anything that will give the copetition an edge, and tehrefore they dont want thier SUPPORTS to do the same so EVERYBODY has to keep the secret so yeah teh NDA affect Nintendo to.  

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Hey, they're simply not unveiling until then, ok?  So all this junk about the quality of the system's output should be "TBA" or "N/A" -- as in, we won't have concrete screens/video media until then.

But the NDA affects everyone else.  All this tension was built up cuz they didn't have a Spaceworld last year to show off non-playable movies, couple that with the fact that near-full-speed dev kits are barely coming out in the next couple months, it's obvious they didn't have hardware mature enough in the past 5 something months to show us something accurate and reflective of the finalized performance level.

Madden on 360 doesn't compare with the Madden E3 "demo footage" preceding it.  Ghost Recon 3 doesn't compare with the E3 "demo footage" preceding it.  Killzone only existed thanks to the magick of Maya 3D and Adobe Premiere.  MGS4 ran live on a machine, but probably wasn't a "PS3" (according to the Sony artist that got fired).  Spare me the lies.

[MaryJane]

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Then why did Nintendo show off the controller already?

so you'd have less to bit<h about

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It would benefit Nintendo significantly to show more than what they're showing. People say the hardware isn't up to snuff. Well they could prove us wrong with a couple screenshots. People say the controller is too limiting to work with traditional games. Well they could prove us wrong by demonstrating some titles. But they don't so it's very natural to assume it's because they can't. When someone accuses you of something negative and you have proof otherwise you show it. The only reason you wouldn't is because you can't or you're a total f*cking idiot. When accusations of insufficient hardware were flying around Nintendo could have been all "Oh yeah? Check this sh!t out!" and blown us away with some screens. But they didn't and the negative buzz about the Rev being underpowered has spread. Why would they not use that opportunity to put that negative rumour to rest? They're either stupid or they've got nothing.

they should the controller.

also what would be more fun? punching a guy like 10 times and making him pass out, or hitting him over the head with a steel beam and seeing brain matter fly? I choose the latter, and obviously so does nintendo. e3 = steel beam. brain matter = all doubts.