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Dan Egger, Please Call Us!

by Steven Thomas - June 17, 2000, 3:29 am EDT
Source: Daily Radar

Steve rants and rants in response to another Daily Radar biased-Nintendo bashing. Watch Steve break it down...

We understand you are looking for a job, and we would like to help! We realize now, that you were just grossly misunderstood, and were only serving the Evil Emperor, Frank O'Conner with your biased and unsubstantiated claims against Nintendo during your tenure at Daily Radar. There is no reason why you should continue to suffer after being stabbed in the back by your leader, when you only thought you were marching to the same drum beat as him. There is still good in you! We can feel it! Heck, at least your stuff had personality in it, this, however, is pure evil.

Now, I would somewhat agree with FO's (gotta love those initials, don't you?) stance on the limited edition Pokémon being made available at Spaceworld as the headline story, the fact of the matter is that Spaceworld is Nintendo's public show. It is not E3, and there will be many, many kids there. Many kids partially driven in by the promise of a new Pokémon, to see the new hardware and software that Nintendo has to offer. HELLO! Pokémon sells, the franchise took a top slot in sales on N64 last year, multiple top slots on Game Boy last year ... and believe it or not, ranked pretty high up on sales charts for PC games as well. You don't want Nintendo to be stupid? Well not capitalizing on one of the most successful franchises in the history of ALL mascots would be pretty darn stupid.

We all want to see Dolphin at Spaceworld, Frank. We will see Dolphin at Spaceworld. Maybe Spaceworld might end up getting delayed until November or something but, that would hardly be a tragedy. The fact of the matter is, though, that it is currently slated for August, and Nintendo not only has said that Dolphin would be revealed at Spaceworld, they have to show it at Spaceworld. Word on the block is multiple playable games ... maybe even some by third-parties.

Actually, launching Dolphin in the US sometime between Spring and Summer would be one of the smartest moves Nintendo could make at this point. The only downside to it is that it is that much more of a lead between Dolphin's launch, and when Xbox launches. Well, you have to draw the line somewhere, don't you? There is no reason why Spring has to be one of the slowest seasons for videogames. Early-adopters will buy Dolphin right when it lauches, no matter when it launches. Early-adopters get their machines in the Summer, and that leaves plenty of time to re-stock for Christmas again. Considering that last years AIAS awards quoted NPD sales data for the periods from March through February, I would think that getting in on that earlier in the game, would be a lot more beneficial for bragging rights. One look at how Dreamcast did on those same charts, and you can see that. Sega's numbers aren't there, but that's because of a launch in September. Some people aren't smart enough to see things like that, though. They only see 500,000 vs 1.3 million.

FO's argument on the DVD issue is way off base as well. DVD's are slower than CD's? HELLO! That is true about access times, after all a DVD was meant for high-speed sequential transfer rates, in which it is far superior to a CD. Then again, PSX's access times and sequential transfer rates both sucked, didn't they? DVD was chosen for various reasons, cost to the developers was one reason (lesson finally learned from N64), capacity (to a certain extent), but most importantly, copyright protection. No one is going to take it in the shorts this time around nearly as bad as PSX did with pirated software, although Sony is still going to see some of that on PS2 simply because they were stupid enough to include backwards compatibility, and make CD's an option for PS2 developers.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for Nintendo to sell a DVD movie player, either. Every machine produced has an associated production cost that goes along with it. Every machine that gets made and goes out the door immediately looses money until profits are recovered on game sales. Maybe Sony makes money off of DVD movie sales, but Nintendo does not. "Yea, but it will get more consoles out there." You're missing the point. It is not better to sell 2 million consoles and not make a dime on profits because no one is buying games with it than it is to sell a million consoles and have people but three games to go with it. PS2 maybe the cheapest DVD player in Japan right now, but that is not necessarily going to be the case in the US, especially come Christmas time this year.

Pikachu-N64 is targeted towards the late-adopters. Not the people that will have had a N64 for 4 years by the time Christmas rolls around this year. Even here in snobby Southern California, not every kid under the age of 18 is going to convince his parents to kick down for what is likely to amount to a $300 - $400 Christmas present (once game software or a DVD movie or two are thrown in). Pikachu-N64 targets kids like my 8-year old niece who are about to find out just how cool it is to have a cartoon that you can control. Do you even remember what you thought of video games when you were that age? It's another instant video game player for life.

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