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

[Nile Boogie]

Nintendo botched GameCube.  Regardless of weather or not my favorite games are on the system. Metroid Prime is arguably the greatest game of all time along with other greats like F-zero, WindWaker, RE4 Eternal Darkness and yet if you're going for the Number One Spot, you have to adapt with the times and for two generations, Nintendo has failed to do so.
•Markerting
•Lack of of DVD support
•Smaller disc size
•Off-line
•3rd Party support( better but not great)

I love Nintendo games and since the others don't deliver what I want, I have to be patient with what I have. With that being said it doesn't take away from the fact these points, although they're not important to Nintendo per se, if you're going for market leadership you have to give the people, all the people not just Nintendo fans what they want.

I'm glad Nintendo decided to flip the script and go what I like to call "mainstream niche." Since Nintendo sucks at playing catch-up, they quit and started a whole new race and that seems perfect to me.

Ahhh what do I know, I'm a eagles fan.

[BigJim]

Nobody asked (deal with it ), but since apparently my opinions sometimes get mixed with others, these are what I consider Nintendo's big boo-boo's this generation.

- Marketing/product perception/image
- Late to market/large headstart for competition
- Console design
- Narrow audience/demographic
- Weak support (partially due to previous)
- No killer apps/system sellers (their own GTA/Halo)
- No DVD support (by Iwata's admission)

Online falls under "would have been nice" but I'm not sure it falls on the biggie list. It would have helped image/perception, but it's actual impact is questionable. Would it have resulted in a few million more hardware sales to tie or beat MS? Probably not. The fact that Sony still has no significant online plan for PS3 is amazing though. Nintendo could leapfrog them next year. Whodathunkit?

The headstart for the competition thing has almost gone forgotten. PS2's lead was deadly for everybody else. Flat out. That's the biggest mistake of all (IMO) that created some of the other problems. I still wonder if Xbox's headstart will actually result in an irreversable lead. I doubt it, though. Sony could be strong enough to catch up. Nintendo is the wildcard. Will they win? Nah, but I do think MS and Nintendo will take bigger pieces of the pie. No more 60/20/20 or whatever it is.

About half of the list is unanswered. There's already some possible perception issues (HD support) but hopefully the corrections will strongly outweight the negatives. Strong marketing and a killer app in SD will still beat PDZero in HD any day of the week.

[mjbd]

Somebody brought this up in another forum, but basically stated that the differance in power basically indicates that the differance in visuals will be very similar to the differance between Dreamcast and PS2.  Sounds about right to me.  Its a noticable differance, but DC games still looked good.  If your a fan of what Nintendo has done with the DS, then your probably excited for Rev.  If you feel that the PSP is better than DS, then your probably very disapointed.  If DS is any indication of what we can expect from Rev, I am throughly excited.  

[zakkiel]

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Last I checked, opinions are selfish by default.

That's.... bizarre. Last time I checked, an opinion can't be selfish. That's a category mistake. People can be selfish. Actions can be selfish. Opinions can't be selfish any more than mathematical proofs can be selfish. I guess you might mean self-serving, in which case, no, there is no requirement that an opinion be self-serving, and the majority of human opinions ("the sky is blue") aren't.

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If you don't read those opinions in context or just didn't read the last page or so, oh well.

A crushing rebuttal! If only I understood what exactly it was supposed to be rebutting. Perhaps because I responded to something from a few pages ago, you assume that I just didn't read the other pages, or something? Where do you think I took the online service example from? And if I hadn't read the last few pages, it still wouldn't be relevant unless someone had either made or responded to my point already, which they hadn't and still haven't.

[nemo_83]

I read a rumor that the secret will be Nintendo's answer to HD.  Does that mean highly optimized mapping techniques (cube or displacement), optimized lighting techniques (cel shading), or the controversial 3D dual imaging.

Cube mapping is used to create 3D reflections, a bubble for example; if the technique were reversed placing the camera inside it would be as if the player where inside a virtual imax theatre and with the use of motion capture headgear the player could look around putting an end to tunnel vision.

By the way, does anyone find this suspicious:  IBM On

[mac<censored>]

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Originally posted by: nemo_83
Cube mapping is used to create 3D reflections, a bubble for example; if the technique were reversed placing the camera inside it would be as if the player where inside a virtual imax theatre and with the use of motion capture headgear the player could look around putting an end to tunnel vision.

Commonly used for that purpose too, and it doesn't even really require any new technology (that's one of the advantages of cube mapping).  However because of the angles involved (at typical viewing angles, only a small area of the background is visible), the resolution of textures used in a a cube-mapped environment is much more noticeable, so you have to either use huge textures or blur the background pretty drastically.  In reflections the size is usually reduced enough that you don't see the same problems.

Here's a pic I made with a cube-mapped background:

  Alien disco donut

The background is 6 800x800 textures.  Notice that in the background the pixels are fairly obvious despite interpolation, whereas the reflection of the same background looks "clean".

[nemo_83]

This cross shows that the image doesn't have to be of low quality.

[attackslug]

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Originally posted by: nemo_83


Cube mapping is used to create 3D reflections, a bubble for example; if the technique were reversed placing the camera inside it would be as if the player where inside a virtual imax theatre and with the use of motion capture headgear the player could look around putting an end to tunnel vision.

You've just pretty much summed up QuicktimeVR.  There's some sort of Nintendo patent regarding "depth-mapped panoramic cube mapping", which as far as I can tell, makes for a more interactive form of QTVR where realtime 3d objects can interact with the static images used for the environment, ala Resident Evil but without the use of a polygonal mesh.

As far as displacement mapping goes, I always thought that was a way of converting a greyscale texture into real geometry.  Unless my understanding of the tech is off a bit, I'd imagine that displacement mapping would only result in the rendering of more polys thus lowering performance.  

[mac<censored>]

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Originally posted by: nemo_83
This cross shows that the image doesn't have to be of low quality.

It's a nice picture, but it's very low-res (the faces are only 125x125)!  It works reasonably well as an environment map because it is so low-res -- at any kind of realistic viewing angle the pixels become entirely blurred out:

Florentine donut

Notice that the reflection looks great but the background is completely "out of focus".  For some purposes that's fine (and even makes it look sorta artsy), but I'm not sure it's reasonable for the "VR" kind of experience I thought you were suggesting.  For the background to be sharp and non-pixellated, I'd think you'd need something like 2048 x 2048 textures (for each face, or a 6144 x 8192 "cross"!!).

[nemo_83]

I thought the background was fuzzy because the camera was focused on the donut.  

[KDR_11k]

6x1024x1024 should suffice with 640x480 display resolution and an FOV of ~90. But I don't see what's to be optimized there and I certainly don't see the point of using it when your source data is realtime generated anyway and you could just turn the camera as much (since your VR thingie wouldn't get updates any faster than a TV). Do you want to have lots of prerendered graphic adventures (AKA Myst clones) on the system? Yes, sure, that's what non-gamers play the most (second to bejewelled and tetris clones) but their PCs do that well enough.

[wandering]

In response to the talk about why the cube 'failed' this gen: I think it failed because people aren't as interested in Nintendo games these days. And why should they be? At one point in time, the Zelda games were amazingly epic, now they are eclipsed by the likes of Morrowind. When Mario 64 came out, the world it created was amazing, now, compared to the likes of Jak and Daxter, Mario Sunshine feels almost dated. And then there's the larger problem of people migrating away from fantasy -who wants to jump on mushrooms when you can run around a city shooting people? (yeah - I know - all of us would). I think the revmote is Nintendo's attempt to get people interested in the kinds of games they offer, again.

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Do you want to have lots of prerendered graphic adventures (AKA Myst clones) on the system?" Yes, sure, that's what non-gamers play the most (second to bejewelled and tetris clones) but their PCs do that well enough.

Sure do! And PC's won't do those kind of games well enough, after non-gamers see how they can be done on the rev by comparison.  

[JonLeung]

Hey, I'm a gamer, and I recently got into the Myst games and loved them all.  I still have to pick up my copy of Myst V...

I'm been trying to convince my dad to play the Myst games because he plays Spider Solitaire practically 24/7, over and over and over.  He doesn't like fast-action games so you'd think that would be his style.  I figure if you're going to spend all day in front of a computer being unproductive, you might as well do it with a game with actual story and stuff.  Not a pack-in Windows card game.  (As if to spite me he played Minesweeper for a whole day once.)

Maybe people don't care about Myst anymore; the last couple installments were kind of quick with less fanfare as the first couple.  It's no longer the best-selling PC game series (eclipsed by The Sims, obviously).  But if most of those Myst/Sims sales were to people who aren't interested in most games (with the exception of my father), maybe it wouldn't hurt to have a couple games like that on the Revolution.  Okay, there are already too many Sims games on consoles, but a Myst-like game done right on a console would be sweet.  The controller works well, like a mouse, which is probably why past attempts at point-and-click games have rarely worked on consoles in the past.

Of course, with the blow-them-up mentality of the so-called "hardcore" gamers, you'll need to balance this out with a decent FPS, another genre that works best with a mouse.

Maybe Nintendo is after PC gamers (since for whatever reason many people consider that a different market)...

[ThePerm]

i say the more games the better on revolution, i want to see a big launch

[couchmonkey]

About the quality of Nintendo games this generation: Yes, a lot of them weren't as good as in the past, but I don't think it affected sales (that much).  I don't think people who don't own a GameCube made that choice because Nintendo's big games aren't as good as they were in the past - most of them have never even played the games, so how could they know or care?

About Nintendo's ability to compete in the existing market:  I think Nintendo could compete in the existing market, but I don't think it's enough just to not make any mistakes.  In order to actually match or beat the competition, I think Nintendo would need supreme third party support  and that would mean cutting liscensing fees, and probably even paying off some developers to make sure that key franchises like GTA, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear are ported to the Revolution.  At that point, everything could degenerate into a big bidding war between the hardware developers and while I think Nintendo could compete in that type of war, in the end the only way to win is to invest way more money.

So rather than staying in a market where the only way to keep marketshare is to cut profits, Nintendo is trying to seek out a new market.  For the record, I'd still like to see Nintendo be a little more competitive for third party support, but by differentiating itself from the competition and seeking new markets the company puts itself in a position to "win" the war without wasting as much money as Sony and Microsoft have to.  Not to mention it gives Nintendo a more exciting (to me) feature than high-definition graphics.

[Ian Sane]

"Witness the ridiculous claim that an online service would have made some difference to the Cube's performance, for example."

I think it was more the lack of the feature being the problem then having the feature being any huge advantage.  Nintendo LIED to their fanbase about online plans that they never really had.  They let us think they would be going online for over a year after the console launched.  Lying to your fanbase isn't very good PR.

Second both competitors had a feature that Nintendo failed to match.  The gen before everyone thought CDs were the future.  Nintendo didn't.  That descision proved to be very wrong.  Now they're got to show that was an isolated incident.  Now everyone thinks online is the future.  But not Nintendo.  Nope old fuddy duddy Nintendo is behind the times yet again.  That's a very negative perception and I think things like that hurt Nintendo more than anything.  With the N64 Nintendo got the image of being too consertative and behind the times and the Cube being offline just confirmed that for everyone just like now no HD support is confirming that again.  They always look like the old fuddy duddy playing catch up, always one generation behind.

[nemo_83]

I'm going to jump right into the middle of this disappointment with the Cube thing.

I believe Nintendo should have done online, and they shouldn't have tried to pass the cost along to the consumer in the form of GBA connection games (sells charts speak the opinion of gamers).

The previous generation Nintendo offered the analog stick and Sony offered the CD; it was a close race.  Now Nintendo is offering the remote and Sony is offering blue ray and the format is not as big an issue as MS has already put its foot down on using a small format (itty bitty compared to Blue Ray); Sony will be going against two companies with cheaper formats and cheaper lasers which means cheaper consoles, that means larger install bases, and it will result in more games for everyone whose name isn't Sony.  

Blue Ray might as well = cartridge.  

Hell, with a new expensive cart system at least ram wouldn't be an issue anymore.  An expensive disk system; its an oxymoron.

I predict next generation we will move to flash memory of some type; something solid and rewrittable.



On software, the Cube, as I've said before, felt like a game of Old Coke New Coke.  The Cube software wasn't bad, it just lacked the fun and thrill of immersion brought on by the N64.  The Cube to me tasted like New Coke; now they're going to act innocent and come out with Coca Cola Classic, and everyone is going to drink it up like its going out of style.  I feel like the controller and software of the Cube were intensionally held back to lower people's expectations of the company and make consumers feel Nintendo is the underdog, that they're a victim of image control, and that they're really ignorant enough to launch a purple lunchbox as a serious piece of electronics equipment in the U.S.  

Then I snap out of that theory and realize they may have fixed the surface image of the Revolution but they still are truly ignorant to fact that their image is shaped in other ways too.  Americans for example care to an extent about how the Revolution will consume less energy, be more quiet, and is a fourth the size of my British Literature text book; but Americans only care so much.  The Japanese market may see those qualities as crowning jewels; Americans though are going to say, "I really don't care about any of that as they left out 400 MB of RAM and two thirds of the CPU to make it that small and quiet."  Americans would rather deal with the noise and have the bandwidth than to be nit picky about how Nintendo could trim two inches from the thickness.  With the Revolution Nintendo is saying to its fans that the system is just as equivalent to 360 or PS3 as the DS; as in, Nintendo doesn't presently have a console.



Now what is developing into my greatest fear; how their online will work on the console.  Will there be a central forum, will there be a ranking system allowing one to view things like drop out rates, wins, loses, accuracy, efficiency, will there be third parties charging on the side to play their games, will obsenities be flailed at me in ten year old voices (its quite disturbing on LIVE) telling me things I shant write here making me feel as though I have some how crossed connections with Xbox LIVE, will Nintendo be censoring, etc?  There is so much about their online plan I know nothing about, like, will it be ready for launch?  Will there be a game worth buying the system at launch, will that game work online?  Nintendo has said nothing but, "hey dude, don't worry about it, it's free, I'm free, you're free; now pass that *** ***** and let's free our minds."  Nintendo needs to release information.  Its not like they have any console on the market or software coming out for it so they can't hurt any products; if anything they can make themselves look serious in the console market and more people will buy more handhelds until the console launches.

Not telling the industry what you have planned causes things like the megameltdown.  People start wondering if you're buying X company, or that you have some miracle that allows your weaker hardware to outperform the competition, or that you are going to use the motion capture control with a visor; when in reality you've got nothing.  That's right, I'm calling your bluff Nintendo.  I'm calling you chicken, draw your pistols, shoot me dead.  I've seen the big gun, now show me the bullets ************.  I want to be disproved; I want to see the fire in your eyes again.  I'm waiting and its already three hours past noon.

[IceCold]

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Originally posted by: couchmonkey
About the quality of Nintendo games this generation: Yes, a lot of them weren't as good as in the past, but I don't think it affected sales (that much).  I don't think people who don't own a GameCube made that choice because Nintendo's big games aren't as good as they were in the past - most of them have never even played the games, so how could they know or care?

Well, there are always the people who don't own a Gamecube but do own an Xbox or a PS2

Anyway, I also disagree about the quality of Nintendo games this generation - to me they were of exceptional quality, and I don't think this is a major reason at all that the Gamecube did poorly.

And I strongly agree with nemo that Blu-Ray is a huge Sony mistake. With their ulterior motives, they're doing the same thing as with the PSP - they're taking the focus away from gaming. So is Microsoft, but this, in a way, is worse. The cost of having Blu-Ray will be felt, and the price of the PS3 will reflect that. And to top it off, it has no use for games. No one will use that much storage; Microsoft and Nintendo have gone with lower capacity discs, and the game industry will use them as the guideline, not Blu-Ray discs.

[Kairon]

Strange Nemo... I already see fire in Nintendo's eyes. They're going ultra-aggressive on mass market pricing, they're leveraging what may turn out to be their entire back catalog of games, they're zigging when Sony and Microsoft are zagging, they've always been weak on marketting but they've at least made decent attempts recently AND they're throwing down the game design Gauntlet with the rev controller.

You don't seem to realize that Nintendo has already undertaken on the biggest risk of all. The Revolution Controller is putting Nintendo's Game Design Legacy on the line, betting it all, and saying now or never. Nintendo's games for the Rev are forced to start from near scratch, their dev teams can't reuse many past concepts, and EVERYONE is still looking to Nintendo to lead, lead, lead.

For years, Nintendo has laid claim to making the best videogames, period. Now, with the revolution controller, their telling us that they're going to prove once and for all whether Nintendo is just a bloated old brand, or whether they can really, truly, make another Mario 64.

Nintendo's reputation as a game maker is on the line here Nemo. If they lose that claim to fame among the general industry, then they've got nothing left.

If that doesn't strike you as fire, then I don't know what does.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[nemo_83]

The final testament will be the games, they will show if Nintendo has lost the magic or if the interface is so integral to the experience that it can nolonger be seperated from fun factor.  If its all about control, nothing is stoping MS from dumping tons of money in an "ultimate" video game system next generation using motion control and 3d visor.  

If Nintendo is aiming so low with the initial hardware cost, why should they not take the risk now of a visor which would be optional rather than waiting five years for their hard work to allow the competition to be the first ones to the market with a wireless motion control 3D visor system.

[KDR_11k]

Blu Ray won't cost 20$ per disc or something, the price isn't as much of an issue as the MPAA loves to make of it (because to those greedy bastards 50 cents would be too expensive). Certainly the price won't be so large that games wouldn't be profitable on the PS3. The licensing fee is a much larger part of the per-unit cost than the disc cost.

Third parties trust Sony enough to deliver a system with a large userbase and therefore are willing to make games that use the BRD. Sony is pretty good at netting exclusivity deals as well so if they snatched e.g. Rockstar they'd make a GTA that wouldn't be feasible on the X360 (GTASA already uses as much disc space as the DVD medium offers (can only use one layer because refocussing takes too long AFAIK)). If in doubt they'll just make the game for the PS3 and downsample the textures for the X360 and Rev. After all, optimization for disc constraints comes last so the PS3 fork would have to cull the least content.

I'd say MS made the bigger mistake, games on the PS2 manage to fill DVDs without using a lot of FMVs, textures on the X360 will take up 16 times the space (1024x1024 vs. 256x256) already, music will take 3 times (5+1 channels vs. 2), animations will need more space because of more bones, even geometry is getting more space consuming. The Rev can get away with it to a certain degree (lower resolution greaphics, two channel audio, etc) but for the X360 it'll turn into a huge constraint. Multi-disc games would mean you can't have streaming so that's not a clean solution.

[odifiend]

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Originally posted by: nemo_83
The final testament will be the games, they will show if Nintendo has lost the magic or if the interface is so integral to the experience that it can nolonger be seperated from fun factor.  If its all about control, nothing is stoping MS from dumping tons of money in an "ultimate" video game system next generation using motion control and 3d visor.

Patents.  People even on these forums have found the 3D sensing patents.  As for a 3D visor, nobody wants that .

RE:  Bluray:  I'd imagine with Xbox360 games already pricing at 60 USD, the price of BluRay would be passed on to the consumer.  65+ USD would be a bad move, especially since the Revolution being able to come in around the same price.

[KDR_11k]

There are plenty of implementations for 3d sensors but I doubt MS and Sony will release controllers for that before the Rev is released and has tried out whether that's desirable. Of course that'll mean it's not standard on those consoles.

65+ USD would be a bad move

I wouldn't expect prices like that. MS themselves are pushing for 50$ prices and I doubt Sony would appreciate such pricing, either. Besides, games are as expensive as customers are willing to buy them and I doubt they could tell to people "look, Blu Ray is so expensive, our games are more expensive as a result".

[nemo_83]

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Originally posted by: odifiend

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Originally posted by: nemo_83
The final testament will be the games, they will show if Nintendo has lost the magic or if the interface is so integral to the experience that it can nolonger be seperated from fun factor.  If its all about control, nothing is stoping MS from dumping tons of money in an "ultimate" video game system next generation using motion control and 3d visor.

Patents.  People even on these forums have found the 3D sensing patents.  As for a 3D visor, nobody wants that .

RE:  Bluray:  I'd imagine with Xbox360 games already pricing at 60 USD, the price of BluRay would be passed on to the consumer.  65+ USD would be a bad move, especially since the Revolution being able to come in around the same price.

There are a storm of rumors and I'm trying not to get my hopes up.  I've heard the system will have a screen on top, I've heard it will use a projector, I've heard it will look like 360 on a regular TV, and I've read the following patent.

"[0009] We use cube mapping for a somewhat different purpose--to pre-render a three-dimensional scene or universe such as for example a landscape, the interior of a great cathedral, a castle, or any other desired realistic or fantastic scene. We then add depth to the pre-rendered scene by creating and supplying a depth buffer for each cube-mapped image. The depth buffer defines depths of different objects depicted in the cube map. Using the depth buffer in combination with the cube map allows moving objects to interact with the cube-mapped image in complex, three-dimensional ways. For example, depending upon the effect desired, moving objects can obstruct or be obstructed by some but not other elements depicted in the cube map and/or collide with such elements. The resulting depth information supplied to a panoramically-composited cube map provides a complex interactive visual scene with a degree of 3D realism and interactivity not previously available in conventional strictly 2D texture mapped games."

Sounds like RE Rebirth, but instead of scrolling the character through a flat pre rendered picture, you move the character through a pre rendered image that is panoramic allowing the camera to move in full 3D. The room would not just be a flat image with an invisible wire frame inside, it would contain six images, and the CPU would make the transitions from one image to the next seemless giving the illusion of true prerendered 3D backgrounds.

They could cube map entire sky lines or simply lanscape or mountains in the backgrounds that are out of reach but instead of a flat image they create a distant image that can be viewed from multiple perspectives as if it were a hologram.  

This is like augmented reality reveresed.

[KDR_11k]

The camera still doesn't move, it can merely rotate infinitely. And I don't see the point of such elaborate prerendered images when the console could render almost anything you'd want in realtime.