Topic: Iwata Promises Cheap Games

[SS4Gogita]

Just how cheap is cheap, you say? Click the link to find out what Nintendo's president had to say on the subject.

Satoru Iwata, in an interview with CNN Money, revealed that Nintendo's first party games are going to be no more then $50.    

"I cannot imagine any first party title could be priced for more than $50."    

He couldn't guarantee that other companies would follow suit, however.    

In regards to the reason for keeping prices low this generation, he gave this statement:    

"I really don't think that there's going to be a lot of acceptance by current customers of the $60 price tag. They may allow that for a limited number of premium titles, but not all."    

Iwata also mentioned that "practically any storage method can be used" when he was asked about the USB ports on the back of the Revolution.    

This is good news for those who thought that the 512 MB of internal flash RAM wasn't enough.    

We should be hearing more specifics about pricing and the Virtual Console as E3 continues to near.

[KDR_11k]

I hope he'll have a talk with Nintendo of Europe, then. 60 Euros is definitely too much.

[vudu]

Good news.  But aren't Microsoft's first party titles $50?  This doesn't really mean third party games won't be more expensive.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Quote
Originally posted by: PGC NewsBot
Iwata also mentioned that "practically any storage method can be used" when he was asked about the USB ports on the back of the Revolution.    

This is good news for those who thought that the 512 MB of internal flash RAM wasn't enough.

Does that mean we can hook up USB hard drives to our revs for infinite strorage at wholesale prices?

That good news cause you can find 250GB HDDs for $150 right now and name brand ones should be that cheap by the end of the year

A $199 Rev + a $150 250gb HDD would still be cheaper than a $399 Xbox 360 w/ 40gb HDD or a $399/499 PS3 with a 100/160gb HDD  

[SS4Gogita]

Quote
Originally posted by: vudu
Good news.  But aren't Microsoft's first party titles $50?  This doesn't really mean third party games won't be more expensive.

That's true, but it doesn't mean they can't get more expensive down the road.  Third party games might be as expensive still, but the inherently cheap cost of the Revolution makes the price of the games not as hard to swallow.

[BlkPaladin]

Well this must mean that Nintendo's OS will be more rubust than usual. Because if any storage can be used that means that the OS will handle the storage method via the OS so the games do not need to written to support it only the list to a common port and send it to the correct medium based on settings. That would be the "easy" way.

[Rize]

I'll just use a USB thumb drive to unload stuff if  I fill up the 512

[MaryJane]

Hopefully any storage device includes my mp3 player, would make it a lot easier to carry around games from one rev to another perhaps?  

[Ian Sane]

I don't really classify games costing the same price they are right now as "cheap" but it's still good that Nintendo is going to try to keep their prices down.

The USB stuff sounds great.  Now we can just do whatever we want regarding storage.  Though I wonder if this would be a piracy issue.  If I can save all my downloaded games on an external harddrive what's to keep me from connecting said harddrive to my PC and distributing those games all over the internet?  I hope Nintendo has a plan against that.

[BlackNMild2k1]

so technically I could hook my Rev up to my TV and my computer at the same time and just use my computer as a file strage center and only use my SD cards for portable memory cards, that would work for me too cause my TV and computer are right next to each other

edit: Ian, maybe they will have some sort of proprietary software that you need to install on the hard drive that doesn't allow you to share, or the Rev istelf(or the online service) keeps track of what you have and have not downloaded therefore not allowing your Rev to play games that you have not payed for. most likely the latter cause Nintendo would be more in control of that situation.

[Ian Sane]

"or the Rev istelf(or the online service) keeps track of what you have and have not downloaded therefore not allowing your Rev to play games that you have not payed for."

That seems like the best solution.  Something like that would also let you redownload something that accidently got deleted but you already paid for.

Iwata mentions temporary downloads as well.  I personally don't care for the idea of Nintendo deciding that I can't play this demo anymore or anything like that.

[Hostile Creation]

More good news.  I'm definitely glad about the storage system detail.  I don't want any extra crap with the Rev I don't need.  512 MB would probably be enough for me, but if not, I have a USB drive I could use.  Awesome.

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
The USB stuff sounds great.  Now we can just do whatever we want regarding storage.  Though I wonder if this would be a piracy issue.  If I can save all my downloaded games on an external harddrive what's to keep me from connecting said harddrive to my PC and distributing those games all over the internet?  I hope Nintendo has a plan against that.

If Nintendo wants to emulate Apple (and they do), then these games will likely be hardware-coded to work only with your Revolution or maybe the Revs of you and 2-3 friends.

Apple allows you to share the music you download from iTunes with 6 or 7 other people, I believe, so long as you give them your password to unlock the song.

[Ian Sane]

"If Nintendo wants to emulate Apple (and they do), then these games will likely be hardware-coded to work only with your Revolution or maybe the Revs of you and 2-3 friends."

Having that little extra flexibility would be nice.  What if my Rev breaks?  It wouldn't be fair to have to rebuy all those games because they're associated with a certain Rev machine.  Plus there's the issue of used consoles as well.

[capamerica]

I wonder if Nintendo will release the nPod =P

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane Having that little extra flexibility would be nice.  What if my Rev breaks?  It wouldn't be fair to have to rebuy all those games because they're associated with a certain Rev machine.  Plus there's the issue of used consoles as well.

I'm guessing that, much like the iTunes store, you'll have an account which is linked to your Rev and CC#. In the event that you change Revs, you'd have to move the account over which would likely be easy to do.

Quote
Originally posted by: capamerica
I wonder if Nintendo will release the nPod =P

They already have. It has two screens and hibernates when you close it, allowing you to copy various games to it and take them with you, just like the iPod does with music.

[jasonditz]

Plug and Play USB, sounds good to me. I still wish they'd stick a firewire port on there so I can use my Powermac's external hard drive on it as well.

[Smash_Brother]

If it's USB II, it should be pretty quick as it is.

Plus, I think firewire would have been more expensive, sadly.

[BigJim]

It's not like the SD card slot is going away, or is it? We always had some kind of expansion option... Though an HDD would be cheaper and store tons more. A 40 gig external HDD will run about the same as a 1gig SD card ($50ish).

Definitely expect the downloads to be DRM'ed to be tied to the Rev, your account, or some combination to make sure it's not emulated off a computer or shared among a million people. Illegal ROMs have been available for years so there's nothing particularly more desireable about Rev-originated ones.

But iTunes works because the cheapness (and convenience) of the content is enough to persuade against much of the piracy.  

[vudu]

Quote
Illegal ROMs have been available for years so there's nothing particularly more desireable about Rev-originated ones.

Unless they start releasing official translated versions of games that never made it out of Japan.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Smash_Brother
If it's USB II, it should be pretty quick as it is.

Plus, I think firewire would have been more expensive, sadly.

Firewire ports only cost like a quarter per system, so they're not prohibitively expensive. The minor speed difference between the two probably isn't worth the hassle (if they're not bothering to put ethernet ports on the thing), but it would've been nice since I already own the firewire drive.

[ThePerm]

lol lets all use the xbox hd

[ssj4_android]

Sweet, allowing a USB hard drive is a good idea. Why couldn't MS do that? Anyway, I have a spare 30 GB external drive lying around. Upgraded my laptop hard drive, and got an external USB exclosure for that for around $10. Anyway, I wouldn't think it would be too hard to lock it to the hard drive for most people. Just use some information you get over USB (does anyone know if there actually is any?), upload that to Nintendo's servers, have them sign/encrypt the data (which would include your serial number), and then check it on playing. Then they just have to make sure they don't leak their private key. Perhaps they could have two, one to encrypt the static data, and one to encrypt your HDD information.
Anyway, I kind of hope they offer a cheap subscription service, like Yahoo Music Unlimited or whatever, only for games.

[jasonditz]

AFAIK there's no unique identifier to any given HDD... it's not a huge issue though: Whatever method you use, it's going to be breakable, but since the ROMs are already out there I don't think I'd worry about it.

[AnyoneEB]

$50 for a 40GB external drive? Try newegg. A nice 80GB drive is around $40 and a USB2 enclosure is about $10. Myself, I have a 512MB USB flash drive with a lot of free space. I assume that I could copy the files off of the USB stick onto a hard drive if I needed to.