I'm almost getting used to the good news about the DS. I remember Gabe from Penny Arcade early on thought this would be like another Virtual Boy. I'm sure no one thinks that now.

I am surprised at 5 million copies of Nintendogs to 6 million DSes. Wow!

Actually, that's a little deceiving. There are six million DS systems in Japan and five million copies of Nintendogs sold worldwide.

Yeah, the whole world has seen 12+ million sales of the DS, I believe.

As for the training books, I hope we those as well. I'd pay $25 to brush up on my linguistics any day.

Kanji Training import get!

Oops, you're right, not everyone has Nintendogs...but it's still an impressive number.

I remember someone pointing out that million-sellers are rare these days...but these DS games are easily breaking the millionth-sale marks!

"For the last 20 years, the game interface that Nintendo created, using two hands, is still the standard. They mentioned again that they must change this thinking to add to the gaming populace. They want to start everyone from the same starting line."

Man, lines like this still freak me out even though they're sort of expected now. If it's been the standard for 20 years then doesn't that mean it's a pretty damn good standard?

"I remember Gabe from Penny Arcade early on thought this would be like another Virtual Boy. I'm sure no one thinks that now."

Isn't that impossible now?

Say that to PSP fanatics...

Quote

---

Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Man, lines like this still freak me out even though they're sort of expected now. If it's been the standard for 20 years then doesn't that mean it's a pretty damn good standard?

---

"If you controlled the course of history, we'd still be using grunts as communication because it was 'a good standard'..."

We can still grunt and make all sorts of non-verbal communciation. Communication has been built on. No one decided that gestures or facial expressions were no longer a valid part of communication because we can talk and write now. Verbal communication wasn't abandoned when written communication was invented. Nintendo's talking about starting over. That's like someone coming up with a new way to communicate and then telling us we all have to "start over" and can't talk anymore because we have a new way to do it. "Sorry. Now that we can communicate telepathically there is no need for us to talk anymore. Everyone get their voice box removed."

Motion control isn't a bad thing. New functionality isn't a bad thing. Throwing out an old standard completely and starting over when the old standard works is questionable. That's what has always made me uneasy about comments like that. If Nintendo just said "we're going to introduce new ideas for gaming" I'd be fine.

They're not "starting over": they're adding new concepts. All the talk about "starting over" is nothing more than a new age marketing strategy in which Nintendo has to sound as though they believe they're going firmly in the right direction.

If the Revmote didn't have buttons on it or a nunchuck with an analogue stick, THEN I'd be genuinely concerned because that WOULD equate removing voice boxes.

Ian, you gotta admit, SOMEBODY has to take the chance and offer a completely new control interface. You know Microsoft and Sony aren't going to do it. They'd be perfectly happy to pump out clones of the XBox and PS2 controllers until the end of time. It's to the point now where Nintendo has to do some off-the-wall stuff to even get noticed, so why not?

"Ian, you gotta admit, SOMEBODY has to take the chance and offer a completely new control interface. You know Microsoft and Sony aren't going to do it. They'd be perfectly happy to pump out clones of the XBox and PS2 controllers until the end of time. It's to the point now where Nintendo has to do some off-the-wall stuff to even get noticed, so why not?"

That assumes that it's impossible to innovate with the existing setup. I figure at some point we would have a controller so well designed that there would be virtually no reason to add anything else. There would be small changes but as we go forward the big changes between consoles is going to shrink. Sony's and Microsoft's problem is that they're content to release the same games over and over. Their controller is a reflection of this attitude but the controller itself is not the problem. The games are all that matters and it is possible to make innovative games on the existing setup. I think Nintendo has this idea that in order to innovate their has to be this huge change every five years. That's not true. Ikaruga is one of the most innovative games I've played this gen and it only uses three buttons and polygons are only used for its presentation. Realistically the game would have worked on the Sega Genesis. The current controller could probably be kept around forever and people would still be able to think of new ideas for it. That doesn't mean it should be around forever but it could.

I feel Nintendo is forcing change and forcing innovation, like they're hung up on the idea that there has to be a big jump or they can't make creative games. I think that's unnecessary and they risk trapping themselves in a corner particularly if their "new standard" isn't flexible enough or their revamped controller just isn't that interesting. They can make innovative games without reinventing the wheel. Right now they're risking scaring everyone away with an abrupt deliberate change when they don't have to.

Quote

---

Originally posted by: Ian Sane
"Ian, you gotta admit, SOMEBODY has to take the chance and offer a completely new control interface. You know Microsoft and Sony aren't going to do it. They'd be perfectly happy to pump out clones of the XBox and PS2 controllers until the end of time. It's to the point now where Nintendo has to do some off-the-wall stuff to even get noticed, so why not?"

That assumes that it's impossible to innovate with the existing setup. I figure at some point we would have a controller so well designed that there would be virtually no reason to add anything else. There would be small changes but as we go forward the big changes between consoles is going to shrink. Sony's and Microsoft's problem is that they're content to release the same games over and over. Their controller is a reflection of this attitude but the controller itself is not the problem. The games are all that matters and it is possible to make innovative games on the existing setup. I think Nintendo has this idea that in order to innovate their has to be this huge change every five years. That's not true. Ikaruga is one of the most innovative games I've played this gen and it only uses three buttons and polygons are only used for its presentation. Realistically the game would have worked on the Sega Genesis. The current controller could probably be kept around forever and people would still be able to think of new ideas for it. That doesn't mean it should be around forever but it could.

I feel Nintendo is forcing change and forcing innovation, like they're hung up on the idea that there has to be a big jump or they can't make creative games. I think that's unnecessary and they risk trapping themselves in a corner particularly if their "new standard" isn't flexible enough or their revamped controller just isn't that interesting. They can make innovative games without reinventing the wheel. Right now they're risking scaring everyone away with an abrupt deliberate change when they don't have to.

---

Ian, I sort of agree with you in the sense that I definitely think the current setup isn't as limiting as people make it out to be. My GameCube controller is like an extension of my arms; I don't really think about pressing buttons anymore; it just sort of happens. So when I hear people say, "Well, there's no other way," I roll my eyes a little.

That being said, I'm pretty psyched about the Revolution's controller. It's a big jump that I think'll pay off in the long run. I mean, we at least know Nintendo will make some great games for it. I think (and hope) they'll create some sort of benchmark game - something like Super Mario 64 - that'll inspire the rest of the industry to follow suit with the new style. If they don't, though, there's still the shell controller to allow game designers to utilize the current model. As you've so often said, it's an "and" type of thing, not an "either or" type of thing.

There are a lot of different factors that'll make the Revolution a hit or a miss; Nintendo's taking a huge risk. But as a Nintendo fan, I'm looking forward to taking the ride.

Ian, it's more about shaking up conventions, not about the impossibility of innovating with the current controller. New paradigmas require new approaches and old formulas might no longer work. That way innovation is not much more risky than tried-and-true, in fact it might even be beneficial. It's about kicking the publishers' butts and ripping away their safe concepts. As long as the hardware is the same a suit will think you can just do exactly what a successful title did to be successful yourself, that way they don't even think about innovation. When you change the graphics hardware they want the greaphics changed, when you change the physics hardware they'll want the physics changes. When you change the controller they want the gameplay changed.

Exactly.

If Nintendo went about the same road as the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, I think they would of done far worse than they did this generation. I mean, how would they compete?

This may have forced Nintendo to innovate. They saw this coming. They saw that the two other consoles would pour power into their respective machines, and knew that they couldn't afford to do the same thing. They can financially, but it would have been a lost cause. The competition would have been feirce.

However, even though they may have been forced, doesn't mean that they hadn't been planning anything. You can see that with the REV. They know what they wanted out of the console, then built the devices to make it so.

Now, Nintendo can potentially attract big hits from the one genre that the Xbox needs. I'm talking about FPS's. If Nintendo created something so intuitive and innovative for the genre, I see nothing stopping FPS fans from picking up a Nintendo. Unlike xbox fanatics, they have no loyalty. They picked the xbox because the xbox has halo or call of duty or whatever.