Miyamoto on PS3, Industry 55
The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."
RTFA? No need for that. (Score:3, Informative)
No suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo is going for the casual "family" audience. Nintendo is going for what made the original NES great. I hope they can pull it off. Nintendo right now is competing with themselves, not MS or Sony.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Informative)
The price is gonna drop you know? (Score:2)
Re:The price is gonna drop you know? (Score:2)
Still, the price of a PS2 isn't nearly what I expected it to be - though I do see the original XBox for about $100. I think I saw the PS2 at Best Buy last month for like 179 and scoffed loudly enough for the entire store to hear, but now I see it on Amazon for 149. And yes, I know all of their sales associates have copulated with the Devil's rigid, icy member. I hate them too.
I'm sure I could get a well-loved console for next to nothing, but I don't want that.
The Revolution doesn't have to be that cheap
Re:The price is gonna drop you know? (Score:1)
Gamer = High Priced (Score:1)
You know, this is an attitude that ticks me off that is being championed. "Ganers" do not have unlimited wallets or the desire to have those wallets vacuumed. Yes, I am willing to pay more for hardware or software that is substantially different or more advanced. No, I am not willing to pay more for something that is extremely similar but has a "gamer" label slapped on i
Re:No suprise (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, it's all about the software. A good comparison comes from looking at the Nintendo DS and the PSP. The PSP is an amazing and sexy little piece of hardware with a catalog of same-old, same-old games. The DS is an unsexy, s
Sony and MS have overshot me completely (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no interest in either the cost or the catalogs for either the 360 or the prospective PS3. The Revolution interests me both for my kids and for myself, and is far easier on the pocketbook to contemplate.
The other two consoles are positing the existence of a much, much wider hardcore gamers' market than exists, and pricing themselves out of a significant share of that.
Nintendo is also, astonishingly, the only player that's projecting any sense of fricking fun with its products. It's amazing.
Re: (Score:2)
Four players per machine on a console (Score:3, Insightful)
Why [spend $400 on a console] when you can build a decent gaming PC for $600?
Because on the PC, you typically need a cluster in order to handle four simultaneous players (combination of one or more of you, your kids, their play dates). Such a cluster costs $2400 and needs an extra monitor for each player. A console, on the other hand, costs only $200 to $400 and can use the same monitor that you already use for your DVD player. It would be different if you could plug four gamepads into a machine and hav
Re:Sony and MS have overshot me completely (Score:2)
Depends of the game, playing platform games (mario-style, especially 2D) or good ol' Double Dragon or Ghouls and Ghosts plain sucks on a keyboard.
On the other hand, you can't beat keyboard'n mouse for FPS or 3D RPGs.
Re:Sony and MS have overshot me completely (Score:2)
Re:Sony and MS have overshot me completely (Score:2)
The MS and Sony market is the "upgrade" market. They just remade their current consoles with better stuff inside it. Then upped the price and continued down the same path. There really is nothing remotely hardcore about them or the catalog of
Re:No suprise (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't used to be a Nintendo fanboy. I didn't play the GBA too much, and I played more PS than N64. But then I bought a DS. Once I saw how cool and useful the touch screen was, I was more than ready to listen to whatever they were pitching for their innovative new console, especially at the $150-$250 price range. Unless it's the next Virtual Boy, I'm planning on picking one up shor
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
- The controllers (very easy to use and understand, big green main button)
- simpler hardware design (mechanical eject lever vs. the bizarre arrangement on the PS2)
- four contoller ports, standard
- price
- first-party game catalog focused on family fun
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
- The controllers (extra buttons make it flexible for use in a number of roles, like the N64's was, and the GameCube's isn't)
- I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray
- Price: hardly relevant anymore. They're both rock-bottom.
- Third-party game catalog focused on variety and just good games.
But yes, Sony's multitap stupidity does just suck
Re:No suprise (Score:1)
Some of the new GC games coming look really sexy... as well as some of the ones that just came out...
I'm having a blast with Chibi-Robo right now...
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
- I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray"
GCN controller has the same number of buttons as the N64... they just rolled the C-Buttons into a stick... The C-Buttons were designed to be camera control buttons, but got outfitted to a numerous amount of other us
Re:No suprise (Score:1)
- Power switch on the front, when pressed, pulls in the drive tray and resets the console.
- Power switch on the front turns the unit on, but not off, unless you hold it down, which is as far from obvious as you can get. Also pulls in the tray before turning the unit off, which isn't all that obvious either.
Wow. You turn the switch on in the back. You leave it on.
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
Until one day I held the reset button in longer than normal. *blink* unit turns off, sucks drive in (sleep mode)...
Ahhh. Much nicer than reaching around to the back.
And yes, it makes sense to suck the drive tray in. It's turning off for gods sake - you don't just leave your computer CD-ROM tray sticking out as you tell it to power down, do you?
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
When I say "bizarre", I'm referring to the combination of the drive tray and the power button, which you must admit is just strange:
- Power switch on the back turns the unit off, but not on. Doesn't retract the drive tray, unless you flip it to "on" while the tray is out.
- Power switch on the front, when pressed, pulls in the drive tr
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
1. If the unit is in "standby", pressing the button brings out of standby and boots.
2. If the unit is "in use" and the button is tapped, it acts as a full-reset button for the system. This causes the system to reboot, and hence drags the tray in so that it can boot whatever is in the tray.
3. If the unit is "in use" and the button is pressed >2 secs(?), it places the unit in standby, after ensuring the drive tray is "put away". This way it doesn'
Re:No suprise (Score:2)
It should, but the reverse isn't necessarily true: a machine capable of playing the "family" games may not be capable of playing the high-performance FPS/driving/simulation games.
So it makes sense that a company like Nintendo, who has always had a focus on gameplay over glitter, would distance themselves from the textured-polygon arms race -- but I don't understand why Sony and Microsoft, and their developer
Surprise! Nintendo can be both. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not clear that it happened for them. In retrospect it looks like the DS has thrived because it was trying to do something a little different, unlike the competition -- but did it really crack that older demographic?
Personally I am the family market, with two 12-year-olds. I'm also the older market: I'm 38, and I've bought my share of games, though none for myself in the last year-plus.
The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.
So they got me in both senses. Even if I was just buying for myself, what would make me want a PS3 or XBox? The incremental changes in hardware specs are dullsville. Shaq sweats on screen, but the game mechanics still don't let him rebound with any realism at all. At that price, too, for my limited taste in games now, no way. (That's leaving alone the cost of real HD, which I'm not going to be picking up in the next year or two.)
Both MS and Sony have vastly overshot me, as a market. Nintendo hasn't, and they're trying to rediscover the fun in the whole thing. They win my cash.
Re:Surprise! Nintendo can be both. (Score:1)
While the console itself is important, and I think your image of it is dead on, it's not just the console you need to buy: there are games too. There will undoubtedly be a healthy amount o
Re:No suprise (Score:1)
Sports/driving/FPS from Sony or MS and inovative, quirky and fun games from Nintendo.
Re:No suprise (Score:2, Insightful)
In my experience, there are at least as many casual college gamers as those who consider themselves "hardcore". The casual ones seem to have given up on modern games, only playing things like old consoles and casual PC games (and, of course, when I pull out Guitar Hero).
You might say that this is the "casual" audience, but then there are people like me who really used to be gamers but have burned out b
The real question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I love Nintendo, but it seems like Miyamoto's sitting there, looking at the cup of hemlock. Just like Socrates. Both are/were in high spirits and thought their course of action was for the best. Hopefully Nintendo avoids this fate.
On further reflection, it's not quite that good of an analogy, as Socrates was ordered to drink his...
Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
Competition is good for everyone, as long as the competition exists in the media and not in business practices. The console flame wars are ensuring that more people will buy all three. (Just like boy band rivalries ensure higher record sales on both sides.)
That said, Nintendo's marketing has tried to convert to a sort of "intra-genre" format. They're framing the current media storm so that they are on
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
Re:The real question is... (Score:1)
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
This is why I call their strategy "intra-genre." If Nintendo gets the word out that their console is significantly different, Nintendo effectively separates itself from the other two consoles. Effectively this puts their product in
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
They make most of the best games I've ever played (Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros, Mario Kart...). I'd hate to have to sift through everyone elses trash to find a descent game for all time (I've had to do so as often as I
Re:The real question is... (Score:2)
When he said that Nintendo is not competing with the PS3/Xbox 360, what he's saying is that the Revolution is intended* for a different living room than the PS3/Xbox 360, not that he sees it coexi
People will buy it. (Score:2)
Actually, I don't think so. I would guess that most casual gamers will find the Revolution to be an attractive proposition: Interesting console, acceptable price and fun games for the whole family. Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, don't need to be convinced to buy more than one console. If the Revolution turns out to have a few great games (Metroid Prime Revolution?), they will buy it.
Miyamoto-san in headlights (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Miyamoto-san in headlights (Score:2)
Re:Miyamoto-san in headlights (Score:1)
Wow. What a GREAT news story! (sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Slow news day, eh?
Re:Someone care to post the article... (Score:1, Informative)
The Pope talks about Brokeback's Oscar Snub (Score:1)
More of the same? (Score:2)
Microsoft wants to push Windows and their own online services into the living room, and they're not exactly responsible in the way they approach business. Sony on the other hand wants to push Blu-ray, not to mention having a re