GCN/Revolution E3 Game Announcement Thread

[goosedude]

"Wow, you'd think I'd know better by now but noooo! Hornswoggled again."

Maybe they put Yamauchi's brain into Iwata.....or he's a clone.

Hey if the EMPEROR can do it......

[zewone]

How can anyone bash the Revolution? First of all, we know very little about it. Second, the things that we do know are all good: super small, 512 MB internal flash memory, wireless controllers, Backwards compatible with GC, Wi-Fi enabled, Online library of past Nintendo games, Online titles at launch (Smash Bros, FF:CC).

Because all of that isn't that impressive.
512MB internal flash memory? 360 has a 20GB internal/removable memory.

Sounds like with the Revolution Nintendo is setting themselves up to be 3rd place again because all the stuff they mentioned just reminds me of the GC.

[David85]

I'm sorry, but that GBA Micro may sell well but it seems useless to me.

I can already fit the GBA Sp in my pocket. It's clamshell will protect the screen unlike with the Micro. It offers no new features. I can't tell either but if the Micro screen is smaller that's a definite NONO. Of course it could be bigger, but then it wouldn't be micro.

Finally, I have big hands, and it's hard enough playing on the GBA Sp. I dunno how I'll be able to use the GBA-M for long periods without cramping up.

You are right on eevything and the screen is smaller (2in). I don't until why you posted that here through.

[MorPhiend]

I only have one GBA. I held off on the GBASP because I knew that A.) I liked the landscape design, B.) there would eventually be one last carnation of the GBA and C.) such a device would allow me to not only get the newest design, but also get an SP cheaper (if I decide I want one).


This was a welcome anouncement to me.

[dd_mcdoodle]

http://www.zelda.com/universe/game/legendzelda/

New trailer for Zelda: Twilight Princess.

[FriskyTanuki]

Damn, you guys have talked a lot. I'm just now watching the conference, so I guess I'll just post my thoughts afterwards.

[David85]

The Zelda game now looks a little weird.

And I saw sailing... I know how much everyone loved the sailing in WW. :)

[jw1976]

Because all of that isn't that impressive.
512MB internal flash memory? 360 has a 20GB internal/removable memory.


you mean 360 has a 20GB removable hard drive for storage. they don't make memory that large yet.

i figure the 512MB flash memory might be used to temporarily store the 'downloadable' nintendo games.

[Snake2715]

A couple of things I am thinking about....

I am just watching the E3 conference.

they touced on lower development costs. That can come from a few approaches but what about allowing companies to bring new franchises in any previous format? I mean say they want to drop a new 8 bit or 16 bit game they can. Obviously those development costs are lower than current gena nd with new faster computers its got to be even easier than it was 10 years ago.

Also say they want to bring a lot of their (Nintendo's) new franchises up to date. The downloadable content will allow the users to catch up before teh enw game comes out...

Just a few ideas....

On top of that they expressed in the first 10 minutes that they are only showing a little bit of what the revolution has to offer. It could be smoke they are aiming at my ass with but I still tend to think that its got more to offer.

[jam3582]

Look this thread came out later than the other threads. Its the most recent press conference and yes its almost double the size of the PS3 thread already.


well its because every one was trying to watch the streaming video coverage :-P

[Quillion]

So basically you suggest Nintendo should blackmail other companies.

How is that blackmail? It's a business arrangement. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

[epobirs]

The Zelda game now looks a little weird.

And I saw sailing... I know how much everyone loved the sailing in WW. :)

Cripes! Why don't they throw in sub-lightspeed interstellar travel while they're at it.

This reminds me of the unreleased Penn & Teller game for the Sega CD. It was intended to make fun of many game types. One of the games was a Greyhound Bus simulator, in which you drove a big passenger bus from Los Angeles to Phoenix. This would take about 8 hours. Each way. Those poor playtesters.

[Quillion]

While I think Nintendo has an interesting idea with downloadable old games, I think someone else came up with that idea a long time ago. Now where was it...oh yes, THE INTERNET! Nintendo can't honostly believe that this will be anything more than an added feature if they charge for it, as roms for anything before the current gen can be easily found all over the place (not that I'm endorsing emulation, just stating a fact). Why would someone pay to download an old SNES or N64 game when an emulator/rom combo on a PC can play them just as well. I'll buy the Revolution no matter what, as it is the only system that will have Nintendo first and second party games, but I REALLY hope this feature isn't supposed to be some sort of selling point.

I will happily pay a nominal fee for downloadable games if they are legal.

I'd much rather buy than steal any day of the week.

[epobirs]

A couple of things I am thinking about....

I am just watching the E3 conference.

they touced on lower development costs. That can come from a few approaches but what about allowing companies to bring new franchises in any previous format? I mean say they want to drop a new 8 bit or 16 bit game they can. Obviously those development costs are lower than current gena nd with new faster computers its got to be even easier than it was 10 years ago.

Also say they want to bring a lot of their (Nintendo's) new franchises up to date. The downloadable content will allow the users to catch up before teh enw game comes out...

Just a few ideas....

On top of that they expressed in the first 10 minutes that they are only showing a little bit of what the revolution has to offer. It could be smoke they are aiming at my ass with but I still tend to think that its got more to offer.

The GBA has low development costs, too. It's simple. The less capable the platform the less you can get out of it from further investment.

On the PS3 a developer is going to have immense amounts of disc storage and 512 MBs of RAM. If you want your dungeon crawler to be the best ever you'll make every room and tunnel distinct. Instead of one generic version of each monster create a whole pack of distinct examples of the species. The potential is endless but resoures aren't. If RAM and disc access speeds dictate X amount of detail and no more, that is where that part of the process ends.

On the PS3 and Xbox 360 there is a whole laundry list of new techniques for developers to master to properly exploit these machines. If the Revolution just amounts to a GameCube on steroids then there isn't much new to learn, just more elbow room for the stuff they've been doing already.

[David85]

Cripes! Why don't they throw in sub-lightspeed interstellar travel while they're at it.


Well they aren't going that fast, but they are out of this world. :)

[jkam]

Nintendo has already been mining that veing for a while. We've seen numerous NES and SNES titles revived on GBA and more recently DS has offered a new home to N64 games. The big advantage of this on the GBA is the massive number of owners too young to have experienced those games in their previous incarnation. I'm a big believer in keeping old properties available but I've got dire misgivings when it is the most prominent feature of a new system.

Microsoft already has the means in place to duplicate this via Xbox Live Arcade. Sega licenses out the Genesis emulation cheap and SNK Playmore would likely be pleased to do the same with the Neo-Geo platform. The PC Engine/TurboGrafx is owned by Hudson and also available for emulation licensing.

Sony likely has something in mind as well. This could be a nice additional revenue stream but system seller it ain't.

For you. A lot of people here have already mentioned it is for them.

[Snake2715]

Or the people that have skipped gaming for a few 8+ years and want to play those older games or show their kids the older games.

[PsyClerk]

Cripes! Why don't they throw in sub-lightspeed interstellar travel while they're at it.

This reminds me of the unreleased Penn & Teller game for the Sega CD. It was intended to make fun of many game types. One of the games was a Greyhound Bus simulator, in which you drove a big passenger bus from Los Angeles to Phoenix. This would take about 8 hours. Each way. Those poor playtesters.

You forgot to mention that the bus pulled slightly to one side, so you couldn't just set it up and walk off for 8 hours. Plus there was no real roadside scenery. And when you completed the journey, you got 1 point.

[jngx80]

I just saw the Revolution and it looks really small and sleek. Out of the three next gen systems, I like its design the best.

It's hinted that the revolution's price is going to be low (I wonder how low) which is a plus and I'm tempted to get it. This would be a great selling point for Nintendo if it were to come out first, but it isn't.

I'm worried that their 3rd party games will be small again because nintendo's going to use DVD's? for games. When PS3's and Xbox's game disks hold so much data how would game developers port over the games?

PS3 probably gets a new final fantasy and Nintendo gets another FF: CC? That's not a good sign.

[epobirs]

For you. A lot of people here have already mentioned it is for them.

I think they'll find the novelty of the idea has worn before the product is even available. Things change when real money enters the picture. Recall how many complained at the price of the NES Classics line? Nintendo made an outrageous margin on those in Japan but they didn't do nearly as much business here. If Nintendo expects comparable margins (minus the media cost) on their virtual library service it's going to mean renewed interest in visiting swap meets for a better deal on the original hardware and software.

[evilmax17]

I just saw the Revolution and it looks really small and sleek. Out of the three next gen systems, I like its design the best.

It's hinted that the revolution's price is going to be low (I wonder how low) which is a plus and I'm tempted to get it. This would be a great selling point for Nintendo if it were to come out first, but it isn't.

I'm worried that their 3rd party games will be small again because nintendo's going to use DVD's? for games. When PS3's and Xbox's game disks hold so much data how would game developers port over the games?

PS3 probably gets a new final fantasy and Nintendo gets another FF: CC? That's not a good sign.

Xbox 360 uses standard DVDs, just like Revolution.

[Jaket]

i don't care what you all say...

super smash brothers online at launch for the nintnedo revoloution

pure gaming bliss

[MorPhiend]

The GBA has low development costs, too. It's simple. The less capable the platform the less you can get out of it from further investment.

On the PS3 a developer is going to have immense amounts of disc storage and 512 MBs of RAM. If you want your dungeon crawler to be the best ever you'll make every room and tunnel distinct. Instead of one generic version of each monster create a whole pack of distinct examples of the species. The potential is endless but resoures aren't. If RAM and disc access speeds dictate X amount of detail and no more, that is where that part of the process ends.

On the PS3 and Xbox 360 there is a whole laundry list of new techniques for developers to master to properly exploit these machines. If the Revolution just amounts to a GameCube on steroids then there isn't much new to learn, just more elbow room for the stuff they've been doing already.

I wouldn't be surprised, actually, if that was one of the Revolutionary aspects. Maybe the Revolution is just like developing for the GCN? Companies are barely starting to figure out the tricks this gen and this gen is being abondoned already (something that, iirc, you yourself have complained about) - just look at RE4 and MGS3 for examples. So what would be the problem with a "new" console that, at it's heart, was just a souped up, consolidated, energy efficient, cheaper version of the old core. But then throw in new technology that was developed for just such a purpose (such as GPU) that will make the console comparable to what trhe others are offering. So a simplified way to make games that allows developers to utilize what they already know, is cheap to develop for, is quick to develop for, allows for games and innovation to be used instead of time and money, plus it all looks on par with 360 (maybe better?) - what's so wrong with all of that? I'd be on board for that. Throw in exclusive Nintendo franchises, plus a back catalog of Nintendo's entire history? You have got to be kidding me if you think it's a bad idea.

You don't know that this (or more) isn't the case. And everything that has been said sure suggests something along these lines, so just withhold your judgement until you actually know something.

(Something I do know is that Sony flat out lied with the PS2 unveiling. Why wouldn;t that be the case again? Nintendo underplayed the power of N64 and GCN, why wouldn't it again be the same?)

[Zoglog]

Just play what you want to play and stop criticizing other people for what they play.

Personally I don't like where Nintendo is going and I'm not going to buy thier consoles. Too many rehashes, boring, and few games. I can only take so much mario or zelda or metroid. But for you nintendo fanboys go at it, they need somone to support them. But just know that it might not last forever.

also I remember them touting the system as being revolutionary?!?! what have they announced so far that is so revolutionary?! I know they wernt gonna focus on graphics.... well if anything it's prob the controller since that's the one thing they didn't show. But who knows....

Oh yeah I will bag on the new gameboy, more of nitnendo's shady tactics lol. Talk about major gameboy burnout.

[Quillion]

(Something I do know is that Sony flat out lied with the PS2 unveiling. Why wouldn;t that be the case again? Nintendo underplayed the power of N64 and GCN, why wouldn't it again be the same?)

Yup.

Anyone else remember the tech demo of "the eye" they used for the PS2? It was a photo-realisitic eye that blinked.

No game on the PS2 even approached photo-realism.

The demos of "The Getaway" are impressive, but I will wait until I see actual games running on actual hardware before being blown away.

[Javery]

Just play what you want to play and stop criticizing other people for what they play.

Personally I don't like where Nintendo is going and I'm not going to buy thier consoles. Too many rehashes, boring, and few games. I can only take so much mario or zelda or metroid. But for you nintendo fanboys go at it, they need somone to support them. But just know that it might not last forever.

also I remember them touting the system as being revolutionary?!?! what have they announced so far that is so revolutionary?! I know they wernt gonna focus on graphics.... well if anything it's prob the controller since that's the one thing they didn't show. But who knows....

Oh yeah I will bag on the new gameboy, more of nitnendo's shady tactics lol. Talk about major gameboy burnout.

I just don't see how anyone can say the GCN has too many rehashes and is boring. There are WAY more "rehashes" (whatever that means) on the PS2 and in general there's nothing that screams must-have to everyone that is available only on the Xbox that you can't get for another console (except maybe Halo). Nintendo consistently has the most innovative and all-around fun games, IMO. I'm not saying the PS2 and Xbox are bad by any means - I LOVE my PS2 but I just don't understand all the Nintendo hatred. Is it that tough to get past the purple cube?

[MorPhiend]

I think they'll find the novelty of the idea has worn before the product is even available. Things change when real money enters the picture. Recall how many complained at the price of the NES Classics line? Nintendo made an outrageous margin on those in Japan but they didn't do nearly as much business here. If Nintendo expects comparable margins (minus the media cost) on their virtual library service it's going to mean renewed interest in visiting swap meets for a better deal on the original hardware and software.

You also have to remember that you are not everyone. They are going for All Access Gaming. They want the casual and the non gamer. A good example would be either my older brother or my younger sister. My older brother likes games. But now that he has a family, he has not spent much time, especially because of always buying a new console, the outrageous costs of buying games, etc. But it's not that he won't take the time to play games. I bought him an N64 back when they were still common. He loved it and started buying used games for it. It's the initial investment and the high cost of games that has kept him away from games. With this, he can now have a relatively cheap console that not only allows him access to all the new games and all the GCN library, but he can get all of the games he grew up on and all of the games that he missed out on for a nominal price, all without any clutter (which his wife hates).

There are many people in similar situations. Everyone has not been able to stay devoted to gaming their whole lives. This makes it easier.

Then there are people like my little sister. She is not a gamer at all. She scoffs at the idea of playing videogames. But Nintendo has her. If you mention Donkey Konga, DDR, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, etc., things suddenly become different. She is all about playing those with you (and schooling you). And she isn't a gamer. Now, when I show her Nintendogs she is absolutely gona flip.

These are the people that Nintendo were mainly selling to today (or at showing what is going to sell these people on Nintendo). If you think they don't also have something in store for the core gamer, you live in a fairytale land. But that audience is there. They are listening. They want to hear the news (even the Nintendo bashers). You don't think that Nintendo knows this? Iwata even aluded to it and mentioned multiple times that these elements are going to remain shrouded in mystery for now.

[jkam]

I think they'll find the novelty of the idea has worn before the product is even available. Things change when real money enters the picture. Recall how many complained at the price of the NES Classics line? Nintendo made an outrageous margin on those in Japan but they didn't do nearly as much business here. If Nintendo expects comparable margins (minus the media cost) on their virtual library service it's going to mean renewed interest in visiting swap meets for a better deal on the original hardware and software.

It is all based on your opinion. You believe the novelty will wear thin. It is pretty obvious to me that you are very tech oriented and only concerned about the current tech. I for one could care less about HDTV, Graphics, and the Blue-Ray or HD-DVD formats. For me it is all about the games. While I am very impressed with the PS3 Devil May Cry 4, Tekken 6, and Gran Turismo 5 don't exactly make me jump out of my seat. AND NO I'M NOT SAYING THAT NINTENDO DOESN'T DO THE EXACT SAME THING but I need more than a shiny coat of paint. The truth is I still enjoy a ton of old school games some even more so than the current generation.

The system however will most likely be a lot cheaper than the PS3 and the XBOX 360. So it will = less real money. A lot of people complained about the cost of the NES Classics line but people still bought them (more in Japan) which became almost pure profit for Nintendo. It is also a different point as even though they were remakes they never appeared in portable form. Nintendo hasn't even mentioned anything as far as pricing goes so who knows what will happen? Maybe nintendo could offer points for every Revolution game you buy good towards downloable old-school games or maybe they'll make swap meet hunting obsolete by offering all the old games for free. Now that would be a revolution!

[vherub]

Personally I don't like where Nintendo is going and I'm not going to buy thier consoles. Too many rehashes, boring, and few games. I can only take so much mario or zelda or metroid. But for you nintendo fanboys go at it, they need somone to support them. But just know that it might not last forever.

also I remember them touting the system as being revolutionary?!?! what have they announced so far that is so revolutionary?! I know they wernt gonna focus on graphics.... well if anything it's prob the controller since that's the one thing they didn't show. But who knows....

Oh yeah I will bag on the new gameboy, more of nitnendo's shady tactics lol. Talk about major gameboy burnout.

Just play what you want to play and stop criticizing other people for what they play.

exactly

[Theduck]

Is there a better video quality for the Nintendo conference? its all blurry, I can't make anything out.

[jam3582]

Yup.

Anyone else remember the tech demo of "the eye" they used for the PS2? It was a photo-realisitic eye that blinked.

No game on the PS2 even approached photo-realism.

The demos of "The Getaway" are impressive, but I will wait until I see actual games running on actual hardware before being blown away.

well I for one think it might be different this time because this time sony wasnt developing the system on its own. Its a great partnership with IBM ,Toshiba, and NVIDIA. Like nintendo did with IBM and ATI and look how good the GCN turned out graphic wise. Same goes for xbox with Nvidia and IBM also. So ill give them the benefit of the doubt for now .

[Alpha2]

It is all based on your opinion. You believe the novelty will wear thin. It is pretty obvious to me that you are very tech oriented and only concerned about the current tech. I for one could care less about HDTV, Graphics, and the Blue-Ray or HD-DVD formats. For me it is all about the games. While I am very impressed with the PS3 Devil May Cry 4, Tekken 6, and Gran Turismo 5 don't exactly make me jump out of my seat. AND NO I'M NOT SAYING THAT NINTENDO DOESN'T DO THE EXACT SAME THING but I need more than a shiny coat of paint. The truth is I still enjoy a ton of old school games some even more so than the current generation.

The system however will most likely be a lot cheaper than the PS3 and the XBOX 360. So it will = less real money. A lot of people complained about the cost of the NES Classics line but people still bought them (more in Japan) which became almost pure profit for Nintendo. It is also a different point as even though they were remakes they never appeared in portable form. Nintendo hasn't even mentioned anything as far as pricing goes so who knows what will happen? Maybe nintendo could offer points for every Revolution game you buy good towards downloable old-school games or maybe they'll make swap meet hunting obsolete by offering all the old games for free. Now that would be a revolution!

Any gamer worth his salt still has his old systems, hell I have TWO NES systems just because the frist one has bad connectors and I havent had time to replace them, but the point is anyone who wanted to play these games already has a way to do it, be it old systems, used games, emmulators or actually plunking down the 40 bucks for the overpriced GBA classics versions which frankly were only bought by people who didn;t actually know there were other options. For Nintendo to really take advantage of downloadable content of the old games it'd have to be a package deal. 4 generations of Nintendo games for a nominal monthly fee or only a very rich minority will even bother.

A friend of mine was playing games with some kids he baby sits, he tried to get them to play the old arcade version Ninja turles, a 4 player game, so they could all play together, 5 minutes into it they wanted to play something else. So I'd say counting on oldies can very easily blow up in their face if they arnt careful.

[manofpeace20]

Nothing is wrong with Nintendo at all. When I was only moderately interested in games about 3 years ago, Nintendo was perfect because it was cheap and most of its first party games are high quality. Sure Nintendo might be in 3rd place in the "console wars", but they seem to be making money on what they sell unlike Microsoft which loses money on each XBOX sold. Of course, I am a huge XBOX supporter now, but Nintendo is great and will continue to have lasting appeal. After all, how much longer do you think graphics can keep being improved on in games?

[spoo]

I was thinking of an iGames $.99 each. They won't release them all at once only a few titles a month so it will only cost you a few dollars a month to gain a large collection of great games.

[Apossum]

already have a nintendo revolution, it's called a modded xbox, and it didn't cost me anything to get the entire back catalog of nintendo(and sega) games. :lol:

But i'll end up getting a revolution anyway.

[FriskyTanuki]

Looks like the info I posted was largely correct, so that's good. The Revolution looks nice but all of the "We'll have more info on that later" kind of disappointed me, but what info we did get was good. LoZ looks good so far, can't wait to get my hands on that. Not really interested in the GBM as my Retro GBA SP is more to my liking than the mini GBA.

[Alpha2]

Nothing is wrong with Nintendo at all. When I was only moderately interested in games about 3 years ago, Nintendo was perfect because it was cheap and most of its first party games are high quality. Sure Nintendo might be in 3rd place in the "console wars", but they seem to be making money on what they sell unlike Microsoft which loses money on each XBOX sold. Of course, I am a huge XBOX supporter now, but Nintendo is great and will continue to have lasting appeal. After all, how much longer do you think graphics can keep being improved on in games?

As long as there's a gap between what you can see in real life and what the machine can produce there will always be improvment. As long as a creator can say "man I wish I could have created that the way I saw it in my head" there will always be room for improment. Don't assume graphics can never get better because there's always something you can't do this generation that you wont be able to do for another 4 years.

On the other hand, yeah there's no such thing as bad graphics on any of the current or upcomming systems unless the developers just refuse to try (dev tools would even make it easier for them not to try) But all the great graphics inthe world can't make a sucky game playable and people's tastes will eventually change making a game they once thought awesome to be "meh". They need to wow people not only with graphics to keep them interested but more fun for people to want to com back even after the graphic suprise is gone and that's getting harder and harder to do.

[pumbaa]

Lots of people who lost their way when gaming went to 3D will LOVE the backlibrary feature. I know TONS of my nongamer college friends who still dig up old SNES and NES consoles and games and play them. It's retro... it's cool... it's nostalgic. In fact more than a couple of the guys on my floor this year (I'm an RA in college) dug up old NINTENDO consoles to play Street Fighter, Mario 64, Zelda OoT, etc. This feature alone will make some people consider the console. It's like an expanded version of those illegal NES emulators they sold in malls. If the price is right... and its marketed well... Nintendo may have an entire new market.

Obviously cost is a huge issue for Nintendo... today's announcement makes me think that this console will be much cheaper at launch than the normal console... I get the feeling that this thing is going to change how we think about consoles... not with revolutionary new concepts (although those may remain to be seen) but with its entry price and target market. Essentially what we are going to have is what we've ALWAYS had. A system with plenty of first party Nintendo games, a bunch of 2nd party games/collaborations, and a few 3rd party games. The difference is going to be in PRICE. As a Nintendo fan I'm getting what I've always gotten... just most likely at a cheaper price. And if developement costs are indeed cheaper on this system... it might ATTRACT smaller, more creative developers who are just getting their feet wet in devloping. Its starting to make a lot of sense.

[Apossum]

It's retro... it's cool... it's nostalgic. This feature alone will make some people consider the console.

It also gets old very quickly to me, but maybe it'll have a different effect on casual gamers. This will be a selling point for the system and I'm confident it will tide Nintendo over until the next gen.

[epobirs]

I wouldn't be surprised, actually, if that was one of the Revolutionary aspects. Maybe the Revolution is just like developing for the GCN? Companies are barely starting to figure out the tricks this gen and this gen is being abondoned already (something that, iirc, you yourself have complained about) - just look at RE4 and MGS3 for examples. So what would be the problem with a "new" console that, at it's heart, was just a souped up, consolidated, energy efficient, cheaper version of the old core. But then throw in new technology that was developed for just such a purpose (such as GPU) that will make the console comparable to what trhe others are offering. So a simplified way to make games that allows developers to utilize what they already know, is cheap to develop for, is quick to develop for, allows for games and innovation to be used instead of time and money, plus it all looks on par with 360 (maybe better?) - what's so wrong with all of that? I'd be on board for that. Throw in exclusive Nintendo franchises, plus a back catalog of Nintendo's entire history? You have got to be kidding me if you think it's a bad idea.

You don't know that this (or more) isn't the case. And everything that has been said sure suggests something along these lines, so just withhold your judgement until you actually know something.

(Something I do know is that Sony flat out lied with the PS2 unveiling. Why wouldn;t that be the case again? Nintendo underplayed the power of N64 and GCN, why wouldn't it again be the same?)

Where Sony lied wasn't in the numbers but in the hyperbole regardign what those number would enable.

A big difference this time around is that the Emotion Engine was kept larely under wraps until the machine was shipping. When Microprocessor Report did the definitve analysis of it they said it was liek pulling teeth try to get objective data out of Sony. With Cell, things are different. IBM is much more open about it and the product is intended to see use in many devices other than the PS3. You can't sell it to the open market without disclosing a lot about the product. Sources I trust have told me the numbers are pretty much what Sony is claiming. The question is channeling the power effectively.

The 360 offers a lot of known quantities as well. If Microsoft claims number that experience PPC developers find questionable the word is going to spread pretty fast. The web loves that sort of gossip.

On the GPU side the there is lots of new secret sauce but we can tell a lot from those vendors' recent products. Even if those video processors are only equivalent to the best of what is in gaming PCs today, that is a huge jump for consoles. There is definitely some new ground being broken here. The unified shader structure in the Xbox 360's VPU, for instance, has long been the stuff of dreams but now it's real. Instead of being stuck with the distribution of pixel shader pipes to vertex shader pipes chosen by the vendor, developers can now configure those on the fly. (The SDK will likely offer a tool to determine which ration best suits a scene.)

If the Revolution is just the GameCube made faster there won't be much learning curve but there won't be much gains over time either. Third year titles won't look much better than launch titles. There will hopefully be some new elements such as dedicated shaders but the physical requirements of the design mean those will be limited, perhaps equivalent to the low end of DX9 class chips. A big improvement over the GameCube but the competition won't even break a sweat while leaving it in the dust.

Thems the choices. If nintendo can hit a $200 price point again and come up with some clever ways to differentiate themselves from the more expensive monsters, there may be a good business. If their sole tactic is to lower cost of entry again, they're in deep doo-doo.

[pumbaa]

Where Sony lied wasn't in the numbers but in the hyperbole regardign what those number would enable.

A big difference this time around is that the Emotion Engine was kept larely under wraps until the machine was shipping. When Microprocessor Report did the definitve analysis of it they said it was liek pulling teeth try to get objective data out of Sony. With Cell, things are different. IBM is much more open about it and the product is intended to see use in many devices other than the PS3. You can't sell it to the open market without disclosing a lot about the product. Sources I trust have told me the numbers are pretty much what Sony is claiming. The question is channeling the power effectively.

The 360 offers a lot of known quantities as well. If Microsoft claims number that experience PPC developers find questionable the word is going to spread pretty fast. The web loves that sort of gossip.

On the GPU side the there is lots of new secret sauce but we can tell a lot from those vendors' recent products. Even if those video processors are only equivalent to the best of what is in gaming PCs today, that is a huge jump for consoles. There is definitely some new ground being broken here. The unified shader structure in the Xbox 360's VPU, for instance, has long been the stuff of dreams but now it's real. Instead of being stuck with the distribution of pixel shader pipes to vertex shader pipes chosen by the vendor, developers can now configure those on the fly. (The SDK will likely offer a tool to determine which ration best suits a scene.)

If the Revolution is just the GameCube made faster there won't be much learning curve but there won't be much gains over time either. Third year titles won't look much better than launch titles. There will hopefully be some new elements such as dedicated shaders but the physical requirements of the design mean those will be limited, perhaps equivalent to the low end of DX9 class chips. A big improvement over the GameCube but the competition won't even break a sweat while leaving it in the dust.

Thems the choices. If nintendo can hit a $200 price point again and come up with some clever ways to differentiate themselves from the more expensive monsters, there may be a good business. If their sole tactic is to lower cost of entry again, they're in deep doo-doo.

IF (and this is a big if...) this is about all there is to the new Revolution... price and cost are going to be VITAL. Price of the hardware/software is giong to allow Nintendo to undersell the competition and make the Revolution the definitive "2nd console". Cost of game production is something that they seemed to push as well... again... maybe smaller, newer, and younger developers will flock to this console is the costs are low enough that they want their unknown products to get some retail space and attention (a game like Alien Hominid comes to mind).

[evilmax17]

Obviously the Revolution isn't ready OR finalized. They showed a prototype system, and didn't have many details to talk about. It's pretty clear that Nintendo only said as much as they did to save face against the other 2 console unveilings.

We only got a taste, and the main course hasn't been brought out yet. As I said before, I'm guessing we'll get the real scoop at Spaceworld.

[epobirs]

Lots of people who lost their way when gaming went to 3D will LOVE the backlibrary feature. I know TONS of my nongamer college friends who still dig up old SNES and NES consoles and games and play them. It's retro... it's cool... it's nostalgic. In fact more than a couple of the guys on my floor this year (I'm an RA in college) dug up old NINTENDO consoles to play Street Fighter, Mario 64, Zelda OoT, etc. This feature alone will make some people consider the console. It's like an expanded version of those illegal NES emulators they sold in malls. If the price is right... and its marketed well... Nintendo may have an entire new market.

Obviously cost is a huge issue for Nintendo... today's announcement makes me think that this console will be much cheaper at launch than the normal console... I get the feeling that this thing is going to change how we think about consoles... not with revolutionary new concepts (although those may remain to be seen) but with its entry price and target market. Essentially what we are going to have is what we've ALWAYS had. A system with plenty of first party Nintendo games, a bunch of 2nd party games/collaborations, and a few 3rd party games. The difference is going to be in PRICE. As a Nintendo fan I'm getting what I've always gotten... just most likely at a cheaper price. And if developement costs are indeed cheaper on this system... it might ATTRACT smaller, more creative developers who are just getting their feet wet in devloping. Its starting to make a lot of sense.

So these retro enthusiast are already covered. How does Nintendo convert them to paying cutomers for stuff they already own? It isn't like the GBA revivals where portability was a feature.

Which raises another question. Hard core gamers can name a zillion titles near and dear to their hearts, but how many of the golden oldies that have a good sized potential audience haven't already been resurrected on the PS1, GBA, DS, etc. ? For instance, why buy the NES Classics version of Metroid when Metroid Zero is a far superior version with the original as an unlockable? Assuming they don't make the service overpriced, what will the cheap availability of N64 games do the revival of same of the DS?

If you're a big fan of vintage Nintendo titles, chances are you already bought them on the GBA. Are there going to be enough items left to make the cost of the service acceptable.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's a good idea. I just don't think it's a sufficient reason to buy the Revolution. I'd suggest Sony do the same thing with PS1 games when the new generation of broadband service becomes available, like Verizon's FIOS. At 15 MB speeds you could download a game that filled two-thirds of a CD-ROM quite quickly. But if that happens in the PS3's lifetime it would be a cool thing but not reason in of itself to buy a PS3. It would be like choosing a new car model because it comes with a CD player and cassette deck while the others only have CD players. When you can get a portable cassette player for $20 that feature is hardly a way to pick a car.

[David85]

There is no SpaceWorld, hasn't for years.

Nintendo and MS really should have HD DVD on their systems, but they are being dumb again.

[epobirs]

There is no SpaceWorld, hasn't for years.

Nintendo and MS really should have HD DVD on their systems, but they are being dumb again.

MS doesn't need it. If HD-DVD becomes a big thing you can install one in your PC and stream movies over the network. For games the capacity doesn't matter. Just putting a nother disc in the box is too cheap to worry about it. It's fars less disruptive to change discs in a game that takes many hours or even days to complete than in the middle of a movie, which was one of the problems with laserdisc.

MS plans to play the Media Center Extender card for enhancing the 360's value proposition. Nintendo isn't in the movie or media player business. They'll get plenty of mileage from DVD. Both will benefit from it being a very inexpensive and proven mechanism. There is no telling what issues Sony may encounter with Blu-ray and their schedule. If a compromise format comes into existence as the standard for HD content playback it will be far too late for PS3. The Blu-ray drives in the PS3 could become like the Dreamcast's GD-ROM.

[pumbaa]

So these retro enthusiast are already covered. How does Nintendo convert them to paying cutomers for stuff they already own? It isn't like the GBA revivals where portability was a feature.

Which raises another question. Hard core gamers can name a zillion titles near and dear to their hearts, but how many of the golden oldies that have a good sized potential audience haven't already been resurrected on the PS1, GBA, DS, etc. ? For instance, why buy the NES Classics version of Metroid when Metroid Zero is a far superior version with the original as an unlockable? Assuming they don't make the service overpriced, what will the cheap availability of N64 games do the revival of same of the DS?

If you're a big fan of vintage Nintendo titles, chances are you already bought them on the GBA. Are there going to be enough items left to make the cost of the service acceptable.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's a good idea. I just don't think it's a sufficient reason to buy the Revolution. I'd suggest Sony do the same thing with PS1 games when the new generation of broadband service becomes available, like Verizon's FIOS. At 15 MB speeds you could download a game that filled two-thirds of a CD-ROM quite quickly. But if that happens in the PS3's lifetime it would be a cool thing but not reason in of itself to buy a PS3. It would be like choosing a new car model because it comes with a CD player and cassette deck while the others only have CD players. When you can get a portable cassette player for $20 that feature is hardly a way to pick a car.

You misunderstand the situation as I see it. Sure, a couple of the guys (4 outta the 40) had retro gaming systems. Almost al the rest of the guys would see these retro system and become nostalgic "Awesome... Chrono Trigger, I remember this game...". They were conversation starters... not all people who were INTERESTED in them OWNED them. A surprsing amount of girls (perhaps even MORE girls) are interested in these systems (which they do not own...). Nintendo as a BRANd is riding high on retro cool (clothing, patches, and the like). I think if the price is right (somewhere alnog the lines of $4.99 for NES, $14.99 for SNES, and $19.99 for N64) and it is marketed as such... Nintendo may have a feasible idea on their hands. It should be noted that these peopel DON'T own a GBA... they like playing these games as they would play Halo 2, or GTA... on the big screen.

This would also make an amazing budget choice for families... I understand that it may not automatically appeal to us... but those illegal old school emulators sold like hotcakes... and for the consumer this may just be a souped up version of that.

As I see it... there isnt a lot of direct to DS N64 ports... in fact I was expecting MORE of them than have shown their face. I don;t think that this feature would kill to much of the NDS's momentum.

[RelentlessRolento]

well, no matter what, after seeing and owning the DS, I have newfound faith in Nintendo for sake of originality, and that's from someone who hasn't owned a home console system from Nintendo since the Super Nintendo. I am totally on board for the revolution, just as long as they keep their originality up to par. one thing I think most people have looked over is this


Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.


at the moment I am working on developing a game, complete with engine and all, and this will atract a huger crowd of developers thus pulling in more games.

[Javery]

I think if the price is right (somewhere alnog the lines of $4.99 for NES, $14.99 for SNES, and $19.99 for N64) and it is marketed as such... Nintendo may have a feasible idea on their hands.

Yikes. I have a hard time paying $20 for a current gen game. There's NO WAY IN HELL I'd pay more than $3 for ANY N64, SNES or NES game that I've already played and even less of a chance of paying that much if it's a game I never played... and that's on the high end. I still have the other systems and if I wanted to play that bad I'd just do so on there...

[Alpha2]

retro gaming isn't going to hook the common masses. Hard core retro gamers already have a hundred GB of roms or their old systems, they arnt going to buy another system and pay a fee to play what that already can for free.

The common generic consumer is not going to save them unless they seriously push newer, fun and well made games.

[epobirs]

You misunderstand the situation as I see it. Sure, a couple of the guys (4 outta the 40) had retro gaming systems. Almost al the rest of the guys would see these retro system and become nostalgic "Awesome... Chrono Trigger, I remember this game...". They were conversation starters... not all people who were INTERESTED in them OWNED them. A surprsing amount of girls (perhaps even MORE girls) are interested in these systems (which they do not own...). Nintendo as a BRANd is riding high on retro cool (clothing, patches, and the like). I think if the price is right (somewhere alnog the lines of $4.99 for NES, $14.99 for SNES, and $19.99 for N64) and it is marketed as such... Nintendo may have a feasible idea on their hands. It should be noted that these peopel DON'T own a GBA... they like playing these games as they would play Halo 2, or GTA... on the big screen.

This would also make an amazing budget choice for families... I understand that it may not automatically appeal to us... but those illegal old school emulators sold like hotcakes... and for the consumer this may just be a souped up version of that.

As I see it... there isnt a lot of direct to DS N64 ports... in fact I was expecting MORE of them than have shown their face. I don;t think that this feature would kill to much of the NDS's momentum.

$20 for an N64 game over the wire? NFW. The last time I paid that much for an N64 game it was still Nintendo's lead console. You can get the real thing, machine and all for not much more than that. Heck, I can get a shrinkwrapped copy of Perfect Dark at my local TRU for 98 cents plus tax.

$10 a month for an all-I-can-eat subscription is the most I would even consider. I might even sell of some of my several hundred SNES and N64 games under that circumstance to get some room back. At that price Nintendo should still make an excellent margin on each user. (I'd have a cap on how much a user could transfer in a given time period so insane people drive up the bandwidth bill. Most users would never know about it.) They need to price it low so that it doesn't make users need to justify not canceling every time they get their credit card invoice. Of course, if they really wanted to make people happy they'd be gracious enough to not bill in months of no activity or at least reduce the fee. This is like the bubble gum near the cash register at a grocery store. If the price is painless and the service accommodating the customer just goes along with their whim and that gum adds up to serious money over time.

[2poor]

http://www.the-magicbox.com/0505/revolution.jpg
looks kinda plain.

[Genocidal]

looks kinda plain.

Fine by me. It'll stack well, unlike the 360 or PS3 because of its shape, and can easily find its way into most entertainment centers with game boxes stacked on top for those people with space issues.

[MorPhiend]

well, no matter what, after seeing and owning the DS, I have newfound faith in Nintendo for sake of originality, and that's from someone who hasn't owned a home console system from Nintendo since the Super Nintendo. I am totally on board for the revolution, just as long as they keep their originality up to par. one thing I think most people have looked over is this


Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.


at the moment I am working on developing a game, complete with engine and all, and this will atract a huger crowd of developers thus pulling in more games.

That's been one of my points all along.


And as for the retro games, I doubt that Nintendo (given that they have tried for so long to find a way around extra online costs for the consumer) would go for a subscription service. I'd say that it's more likely that you can buy sets of multiple games for a price, or at the very least it will be like iTunes, $.99 a pop.

I know that I'd go for that. Everything from NES to N64 would be more than worth that (way moreso than a measley song)! And if they had an online function to all of these games, you would be crazy not to buy this thing (and that's not even getting to the GCN functionality and it being foremost a next-gen machine!

[Grave_Addiction]

I think if the price is right (somewhere alnog the lines of $4.99 for NES, $14.99 for SNES, and $19.99 for N64) and it is marketed as such... Nintendo may have a feasible idea on their hands.

Hah hah, dude that is insane! INSANE!

Most people won't pay more than $5 for most N64 carts nowadays. What makes you think they'll pay $20 for an N64 ROM?

[GreenMonkey]

NES - $.99
SNES - $1.99-$2.99
N64 - $4.99

Workable IMO

$20 for an N64 game? Bah. No chance. When you can buy a $20 Gamecube game?

[jam3582]

That's been one of my points all along.


And as for the retro games, I doubt that Nintendo (given that they have tried for so long to find a way around extra online costs for the consumer) would go for a subscription service. I'd say that it's more likely that you can buy sets of multiple games for a price, or at the very least it will be like iTunes, $.99 a pop.

I know that I'd go for that. Everything from NES to N64 would be more than worth that (way moreso than a measley song)! And if they had an online function to all of these games, you would be crazy not to buy this thing (and that's not even getting to the GCN functionality and it being foremost a next-gen machine!

why wouldnt they charge I mean they need to make money somehow correct just to supplement the ability to download these retro games from live servers that need to be mantained and serviced 24/7 . selling all those pokemons and zeldas wont compensate for maintaning those servers up . Its very understandable if they wanna charge for that .

[pumbaa]

$20 for an N64 game over the wire? NFW. The last time I paid that much for an N64 game it was still Nintendo's lead console. You can get the real thing, machine and all for not much more than that. Heck, I can get a shrinkwrapped copy of Perfect Dark at my local TRU for 98 cents plus tax.

$10 a month for an all-I-can-eat subscription is the most I would even consider. I might even sell of some of my several hundred SNES and N64 games under that circumstance to get some room back. At that price Nintendo should still make an excellent margin on each user. (I'd have a cap on how much a user could transfer in a given time period so insane people drive up the bandwidth bill. Most users would never know about it.) They need to price it low so that it doesn't make users need to justify not canceling every time they get their credit card invoice. Of course, if they really wanted to make people happy they'd be gracious enough to not bill in months of no activity or at least reduce the fee. This is like the bubble gum near the cash register at a grocery store. If the price is painless and the service accommodating the customer just goes along with their whim and that gum adds up to serious money over time.

It'll be interesting so see exactly how it pans out. 99 cents a game? Thats sounds pretty cool... An Xbox Live-like subscription service... thats sound okay by me as well. This is a pretty intersting approach to both online profitablity and "microtransactions"... and if anyone has the IP and the library to do it... it's Nintendo. The next coming weeks and months are going to be very interesting indeed.

[Grave_Addiction]

I say a subscription service would be best. It would be cheaper for us in the long run, too.

There could be different tiers of the service and each one would cost a bit more but would let you download more games a month.

All Nintendo has ever said is that their online play would be free of subscriptions. They've never said they wouldn't do subscriptions for downloadable content.

[Ozzkev55]

I say a subscription service would be best. It would be cheaper for us in the long run, too.

There could be different tiers of the service and each one would cost a bit more but would let you download more games a month.

All Nintendo has ever said is that their online play would be free of subscriptions. They've never said they wouldn't do subscriptions for downloadable content.
im not paying per game, if we had to i garuntee there would be price variants:

Vigilante 8 - 2.00
Goldeneye - 20.00

[ArthurDigbySellers]

I think they'll find the novelty of the idea has worn before the product is even available. Things change when real money enters the picture. Recall how many complained at the price of the NES Classics line? Nintendo made an outrageous margin on those in Japan but they didn't do nearly as much business here. If Nintendo expects comparable margins (minus the media cost) on their virtual library service it's going to mean renewed interest in visiting swap meets for a better deal on the original hardware and software.

Well you are talking about the difference between storing that medium on a ROM cart and it sitting on a server ready for download. The storage medium has already been paid for by the consumer. Hopefully Nintendo will charge a nominal fee for game downloads, but we won't know until 2006 so the speculation will just have to continue.

[MorPhiend]

why wouldnt they charge I mean they need to make money somehow correct just to supplement the ability to download these retro games from live servers that need to be mantained and serviced 24/7 . selling all those pokemons and zeldas wont compensate for maintaning those servers up . Its very understandable if they wanna charge for that .

You didn't read my post. I said that it would likely be a per title service, not a subscription. Subscription and ongoing payments is exactly what Nintendo has tried so hard to avoid.

I know I wouldn't go for a subscription. That is lame. Lets see. I can download about 500 top tier NES, SNES and N64 games over a period of five years from Nintendo for $495 ($.99 each) and own them forever (and just transfer the files to Revolution2), or I can pay maybe $10 a month (with limited bandwidth/downloads), have access to the same 500 titles that I wanted the other way, but once I stop paying, there goes my games. And in the end, after five years, I have paid $600 and nothing to show for it.

Either way, Nintendo makes pure profit. These games have already had development costs done away with years ago. One just has no advantage to the consumer and costs more. Not a business friendly model at all.

[Moxio]

Whoa, the Revolution looks great! Sure beats its competition by a long shot.

[MorPhiend]

I say a subscription service would be best. It would be cheaper for us in the long run, too.

There could be different tiers of the service and each one would cost a bit more but would let you download more games a month.

All Nintendo has ever said is that their online play would be free of subscriptions. They've never said they wouldn't do subscriptions for downloadable content.

They haven't talked about this at all is more like it. It is the principle of what they have been after. They haven't wanted to cause any extra costs to the consumer. Especially ongoing ones. They have toyed with it before in Japan and have not found good results. And as I just demonstrated, subscription is neither cheaper, nor beneficial.

[Gameboy415]

Wow, this thread got huge!

Way back on the first few pages we were talking about Sonic Gems Collection....

I found pics!

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/sonicgemscollection/screenindex.html

From what I can tell, Sonic: The Fighters, Sonic CD, and Sonic R are in there for sure but who knows what else might show up!

[MorPhiend]

Wow, this thread got huge!

Way back on the first few pages we were talking about Sonic Gems Collection....

I found pics!

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/sonicgemscollection/screenindex.html

From what I can tell, Sonic: The Fighters, Sonic CD, and Sonic R are in there for sure but who knows what else might show up!


Sweet! Thanks for the news. And thanks for derailing that topic.:D

[Grave_Addiction]

You didn't read my post. I said that it would likely be a per title service, not a subscription. Subscription and ongoing payments is exactly what Nintendo has tried so hard to avoid.

I know I wouldn't go for a subscription. That is lame. Lets see. I can download about 500 top tier NES, SNES and N64 games over a period of five years from Nintendo for $495 ($.99 each) and own them forever (and just transfer the files to Revolution2), or I can pay maybe $10 a month (with limited bandwidth/downloads), have access to the same 500 titles that I wanted the other way, but once I stop paying, there goes my games. And in the end, after five years, I have paid $600 and nothing to show for it.

Either way, Nintendo makes pure profit. These games have already had development costs done away with years ago. One just has no advantage to the consumer and costs more. Not a business friendly model at all.

Who's to say Nintendo won't let you keep the games in a subscription-based plan? Hell, you pay for the games, why can't you keep them?

Think of it this way, you spend $500 on $1 games and get 500 of them. Or you could spend $120 in a year and get those same games.

A subscription-based plan would be very good for both consumers and Nintendo.

This is an extremely friendly business model and one that's a helluva lot better than pay per game.

[manofpeace20]

As long as you can save the retro games to the hard drive after purchasing, I'd say this has the potential to be the best of the three systems.

[Zoglog]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?

[Grave_Addiction]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?

What would you suggest?

[pumbaa]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?

Sad? The game looks really really cool. Its something completely different... something fresh... something that might not even be considered a game. It's a risk... sure.. but its exciting. I can see myself buying it and showing it to non-gaming friends... some will play with it for a minute and put it down... others (the more musically inclined) will probably get lost in it. I guess we will see.

[evilmax17]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?
Sounds like fanboy bait to me ;)

[Tromack]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?

My friend is a very casual gamer and after I showed him video of Electroplankton in action he went out and bought a DS and import copy of it. I'd say it is a very good idea.

[Alpha2]

Casual people like movies, television and sports. Something that can identify with, they want characters, a puzzle game isnt a character, it can HAVE character however, but only if it's a really GREAT puzzle game.

[Jrunt20x]

Casual people like movies, television and sports. Something that can identify with, they want characters, a puzzle game isnt a character, it can HAVE character however, but only if it's a really GREAT puzzle game.

An example I guess would be Lumines or Tetris back in the day. Though I personally don't love Lumines like everyone else, but that's besides the point.

[punqsux]

Wow, this thread got huge!

Way back on the first few pages we were talking about Sonic Gems Collection....

I found pics!

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/sonicgemscollection/screenindex.html

From what I can tell, Sonic: The Fighters, Sonic CD, and Sonic R are in there for sure but who knows what else might show up!

haha i SO called sonic R being on there. 3dblast and knuckles chaotix, and possibly even shuffle seem like natural choices.

[jkam]

What does everyone REALLY want out of a Nintendo console? The more and more I read the more I really don't understand. I right now have a Gamcube and a PS2. I have both because both offer great franchises and what can't be satisfied on one console I can get on the other.

I think even though not groundbreaking Nintendo is doing something right by adding online play and backwards compatibility. The also added DVD playback which doesn't really make a difference but it shows they are listening to the gamer a bit more now.

Does everyone really want them to just duke it out with Sony? I see Microsoft shooting for holy grail of gaming top dog and it looks like it will take them quite awhile to "beat out" the competetion if they ever do for that matter. I still see the XBOX as 1. a console modder's wet dream and 2. a system that lacks Great franchises besides HALO. I don't care for FPS's so the XBOX never really appealed to me. People buy an XBOX and then trick it out so it can play MAME games, old Nintendo games, so on and so forth. I realize there are a lot of other good games and good 3rd party support but I still feel that I can get almost all the games I need on the other 2 systems.

While Sony builds up their intense high def system I will still be playing the games on a regular non-HD TV. While it is obvious that techies love this stuff it doesn't mean too much for me as off right now. I realize prices will come down and it will be the standard later on but it wouldn't sway me one way or the other when buying a console.

I love beautiful graphics and I'm sure I will be drooling over the PS3 when it comes out. The truth however is I will still love Nintendo for their games and their unique-ness. If Zelda had more shading would the game be that much better? So now my question to everyone is WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???

[Jrunt20x]

haha i SO called sonic R being on there. 3dblast and knuckles chaotix, and possibly even shuffle seem like natural choices.

I pray that X-treme shows up even if it's just a one level demo. That would be a huge treat, that's the one game I always think about and say "What if". I'm positive that would've been the best sonic game ever made.

[jam3582]

What does everyone REALLY want out of a Nintendo console? The more and more I read the more I really don't understand. I right now have a Gamcube and a PS2. I have both because both offer great franchises and what can't be satisfied on one console I can get on the other.

I think even though not groundbreaking Nintendo is doing something right by adding online play and backwards compatibility. The also added DVD playback which doesn't really make a difference but it shows they are listening to the gamer a bit more now.

Does everyone really want them to just duke it out with Sony? I see Microsoft shooting for holy grail of gaming top dog and it looks like it will take them quite awhile to "beat out" the competetion if they ever do for that matter. I still see the XBOX as 1. a console modder's wet dream and 2. a system that lacks Great franchises besides HALO. I don't care for FPS's so the XBOX never really appealed to me. People buy an XBOX and then trick it out so it can play MAME games, old Nintendo games, so on and so forth. I realize there are a lot of other good games and good 3rd party support but I still feel that I can get almost all the games I need on the other 2 systems.

While Sony builds up their intense high def system I will still be playing the games on a regular non-HD TV. While it is obvious that techies love this stuff it doesn't mean too much for me as off right now. I realize prices will come down and it will be the standard later on but it wouldn't sway me one way or the other when buying a console.

I love beautiful graphics and I'm sure I will be drooling over the PS3 when it comes out. The truth however is I will still love Nintendo for their games and their unique-ness. If Zelda had more shading would the game be that much better? So now my question to everyone is WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???

maybe um a revolution, nah im messing with yah . heres the thing kno one wants nintendo out ( I kno I dont ) but its that they arent helping themselves much out right now with not releasing atleast a tad bit more info about the revolution . I mean what do you expect after looking at the ps3 and xbox 360 conference . I kno I was expecting a revolution but all I got was ho hum sorta like the e3 that featured the GBA GCN connectivity .

I understand DieHard Nintendo fans will support the BIG N one way or the other . But some other fans who want nintendo to be #1 are dissapointed when nintendo decides to stay shut about their future offerings. It just gets really fustrating.

[Alpha2]

I love beautiful graphics and I'm sure I will be drooling over the PS3 when it comes out. The truth however is I will still love Nintendo for their games and their unique-ness. So now my question to everyone is WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???

The problem I think is no one really knows.

Personally there was a point when I decided I was done with nintendo because they were too busy taking me for granted. I didn't want to miss s new metroid game but I also didn't feel like sticking with a company that refused to grow up (and the obvious lack of a Metroid game on N64 meant I wasn't totally wrong). That was the moment I moved to the Playstation. I vowed never to buy another system from nintendo (outside of the GB since it was the onlything that didn't seem to be talking down to me.) I chose not to buy any consoles untill they learned their lesson to stop censoring games and pretending the person droppign 50 bucks on their games didn't matter as many others did since they quickly dropped to last place.

When the Cube came along I said they had to impress me, make decent games, make games I want to play that dont treat me like a baby and I'll concider it. Eventually they made a few decent fun games or atleast were able to convince several 3rd parties to comeback and make those games for them. I figured they had finally decided to alter their stance and make the types of games I was enjoying on PS2. That's when I decided if I could fine 10 games I wanted to play on the system and none where mario games then I's by it once the system dropped to 150 or less... Which is what I did.

The thing is even to this day it's only a secondary system to me, a great one but by no means my absolut favorite. It's a niche system, like the TurboGrafx16 or the NeoGeo, a few great games but not a huge library you want to have every title of. The PS2 fit this more for me and still does and apparently the PS3 will do so next gen too.

UltimatelyI think the only way Nintendo can "win" is to change their appearance and move to a new state. Start fresh, Stop playing the "all ages" game kid's arnt the where the money is, but they cant do that because they feel there'll be no new gamers later on....who will eventually out grow them and go to their competators. They're basically caught in a catch-22 and they can either change and challange Sony for hardcore gamers which they'll likely have a rought time with and spend too much money on or they can keep the "all ages" persona, not make a lot of money but still make enough to stay afloat like they are right now. Online for Nintendo is only a result of the "all ages" they cater to becoming more and more net savy since the SNES days...

[epobirs]

Does anyone find that Nintendo's attempt to make Electroplankton thier bridge to casual gamrs kind of sad?

Almost any item that reaches a previously untapped audience is going to get its share of WTF? from those already consuming the mainstream products. Keep in mind plenty of people out find the enticement of your favorite game unfathomable, no matter what that game may be.

[alongx]

I have to say, I was disappointed by the Nintendo conference. Last year, I felt they gave the best show. This year, I think they were arguably the worst. I know they seem to think their ideas are so great that everyone else will try to steal it if its revealed, but it's going to be very hard to battle the hype that's going to build for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 if you have nothing to give to the gamers. I pray Nintendo is smart enough to release all of the details (Controller, price, specs, Miyamoto's new game, etc) a month or two before the 360 launches. This way, maybe they can entice consumers to wait for their console. I know I'll get it, but I'll get them all...the casual gamer is the one I think would get a 360 now and not want or have the cash for the Revolution a few months later.

[epobirs]

What does everyone REALLY want out of a Nintendo console? The more and more I read the more I really don't understand. I right now have a Gamcube and a PS2. I have both because both offer great franchises and what can't be satisfied on one console I can get on the other.

I think even though not groundbreaking Nintendo is doing something right by adding online play and backwards compatibility. The also added DVD playback which doesn't really make a difference but it shows they are listening to the gamer a bit more now.

Does everyone really want them to just duke it out with Sony? I see Microsoft shooting for holy grail of gaming top dog and it looks like it will take them quite awhile to "beat out" the competetion if they ever do for that matter. I still see the XBOX as 1. a console modder's wet dream and 2. a system that lacks Great franchises besides HALO. I don't care for FPS's so the XBOX never really appealed to me. People buy an XBOX and then trick it out so it can play MAME games, old Nintendo games, so on and so forth. I realize there are a lot of other good games and good 3rd party support but I still feel that I can get almost all the games I need on the other 2 systems.

While Sony builds up their intense high def system I will still be playing the games on a regular non-HD TV. While it is obvious that techies love this stuff it doesn't mean too much for me as off right now. I realize prices will come down and it will be the standard later on but it wouldn't sway me one way or the other when buying a console.

I love beautiful graphics and I'm sure I will be drooling over the PS3 when it comes out. The truth however is I will still love Nintendo for their games and their unique-ness. If Zelda had more shading would the game be that much better? So now my question to everyone is WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???

What I want is an end to attempts to fight battles that are hopeless and instead find a separate path where the product can be taken on its own merit rather than how it compares to those from companies better equipped to wage tech wars.

That they appear to have targeted a low power, low price platofrm with distinguishing features yet to be revealed offers a glimmer of hope. I think it's actually good for Nintendo to keep their distance from the cutting edge in hardware as it only leads to demands for them to support functions that aren't part of their company focus. Note how they've found themselves in the same position as Microsoft when it came to DVD playback. Both companies just wanted to use the disc standard as a cost effective way to distribute multi-gigabyte games but the demand to also play movies cannot be avoided, even though the market is thoroughly saturated with cheap DVD players. So Nintendo too is going the route of offering an optional remote/license for the function.

"There. You happy? Can we go back to selling games now?"

Holding back from making HDTV support a big feature lets them stay free of the whole formats wars issue and all the other attendent hassles. They can sell a game machine, not a media player to promote businesses they aren't in. This might be a disappointment for some nostalgic for Nintendo era of dominance but those days aren't coming back. Better to avoid the big battle and concentrate on producing stuff that sells because it's good without challenging the viewer to stay continent at both ends.

[epobirs]

I have to say, I was disappointed by the Nintendo conference. Last year, I felt they gave the best show. This year, I think they were arguably the worst. I know they seem to think their ideas are so great that everyone else will try to steal it if its revealed, but it's going to be very hard to battle the hype that's going to build for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 if you have nothing to give to the gamers. I pray Nintendo is smart enough to release all of the details (Controller, price, specs, Miyamoto's new game, etc) a month or two before the 360 launches. This way, maybe they can entice consumers to wait for their console. I know I'll get it, but I'll get them all...the casual gamer is the one I think would get a 360 now and not want or have the cash for the Revolution a few months later.

It depends. One reason they may be holding out for a launch in the Q3/Q4 potrtion of next year is that they're betting on IBM being able to produce the chipset on a 65 nm process. With the relatively modest performance goal (3x or 4x GameCube) this could make for a remarkably inexpensive machine. There is all sorts of interesting ways that could be leveraged. For instance, trojaning it into homes by selling as part of a bundled party game system with software and multiple controllers. Pitch it as a single application system that by no small coincidence can play all these other games...

[jkam]

What I want is an end to attempts to fight battles that are hopeless and instead find a separate path where the product can be taken on its own merit rather than how it compares to those from companies better equipped to wage tech wars.

That they appear to have targeted a low power, low price platofrm with distinguishing features yet to be revealed offers a glimmer of hope. I think it's actually good for Nintendo to keep their distance from the cutting edge in hardware as it only leads to demands for them to support functions that aren't part of their company focus. Note how they've found themselves in the same position as Microsoft when it came to DVD playback. Both companies just wanted to use the disc standard as a cost effective way to distribute multi-gigabyte games but the demand to also play movies cannot be avoided, even though the market is thoroughly saturated with cheap DVD players. So Nintendo too is going the route of offering an optional remote/license for the function.

"There. You happy? Can we go back to selling games now?"

Holding back from making HDTV support a big feature lets them stay free of the whole formats wars issue and all the other attendent hassles. They can sell a game machine, not a media player to promote businesses they aren't in. This might be a disappointment for some nostalgic for Nintendo era of dominance but those days aren't coming back. Better to avoid the big battle and concentrate on producing stuff that sells because it's good without challenging the viewer to stay continent at both ends.

I agree...

From what Nintendo has said is they do want to go down their own path so to speak but then again it doesn't help when Reggie compares sales of the DS and the PSP. If they really want to head in a different direction they shouldn't bother with those charts and graphs. It was kind of silly to say we are a viable platform in a gaming industry we don't want a part of. I can understand when the day ends they still need to sell their product but why compare?

I would think though that the media and gamers add fuel to the fire when they hear that the next Nintendo won't be an all out technical achievement. Playstation and Xbox fans talk the system down while Nintendo lovers defend it.

Hopefully their revolutionary idea will actually set them apart so they can be based on their own merits rather than their technical shortcomings.

[CouRageouS]

If I wasn't already sold on the Revolution, this would help a lot..
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/large_img/revo_7l.jpg
They flipped the ports so the Wavebird receivers would fit. Great job Nintendo, now if the PS3 has something similar to let me look past the boomerang, I would be set.

More pics:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/

[basketkase543]

i don't care what you all say...

super smash brothers online at launch for the nintnedo revoloution

pure gaming bliss

I'm pretty sure that it was never mentioned as a launch title, though I could be wrong. I thought he just said it was coming to the Revolution, without mentioning when.

[CaseyRyback]

I'm pretty sure that it was never mentioned as a launch title, though I could be wrong. I thought he just said it was coming to the Revolution, without mentioning when.

it was specifically mentioned as a launch title with online.

[-Never4ever-]

Am I the only one not disapointed with the conference? Online play and huge BC has already sold me on the system, long before any actual games are shown (N's stradegy at work).

BTW, who's to say the older games aren't streamed, ala Sega Channel? Could keep things reletivly cheap or even free. Imagine a network where they have a rotated block of X amount of games. IE 20 NES games a month, streamed over Gamespy servers, with games getting swapped in and out once a month.

Revolution indeed.

[Alpha2]

if you really can use Compact Flash cards I have a 256mb card I'm not doing anything with, I wouldnt mind filling it with a few games to plug into a Revo... but it's not like I plan on paying for them....since I already have them... legally, on cartridges!

[alongx]

If I wasn't already sold on the Revolution, this would help a lot..
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/large_img/revo_7l.jpg
They flipped the ports so the Wavebird receivers would fit. Great job Nintendo, now if the PS3 has something similar to let me look past the boomerang, I would be set.

More pics:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/

Well, this makes the Revolution the first console that appears to be backwards compatible with controllers. But can it support wired GC controllers and wireless Revolution controllers simultaneously, allowing for 4+ gamers on a single console?

[Alpha2]

Well, this makes the Revolution the first console that appears to be backwards compatible with controllers
...If you ignore the Playstation2.
But can it support wired GC controllers and wireless Revolution controllers simultaneously, allowing for 4+ gamers on a single console?
We dont even know what a revolution controller looks like so we dont even know if we can use Cube controllers with the new games yet, let alone trying to add more than 4 players.

[alongx]

...If you ignore the Playstation2.

I meant for this generation.

[CouRageouS]

I have a suspicion the PS3 will have controller ports on it too. When you put the PS3 side by side a PS2 (horizontally), it makes me wonder if you can slide over the left side to reveal controller ports/memory card slots. It would make sense and make me very pleased.

[Alpha2]

Ah ok then, since techncally we still don't know if the PS3 even has a real port as it damn well should.

[Alpha2]

oooooh color!
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/large_img/revo_8l.jpg

[CaseyRyback]

I think I would get the red or the lime one if they do release them in a lot of colors. I am completely tired of seeing black and silver

[FriskyTanuki]

So that shadow like color change isn't a shadow? That doesn't look so good to me. If it was all black, white, or whatever, then it'd look better to me.

[MorPhiend]

oooooh color!
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2005/revo/large_img/revo_8l.jpg

Yeah, I was wondering if those will all be launch colors, or if that is part of what he (Iwata) meant when he said that he wanted the press and their readers to give them feedback on the design. In other words, maybe those are concept colors?

[CouRageouS]

I like the black the best even though Black and blue have the PS2 feeling. Silver is nice too, since its like the Panasonic Q colors. I actually like them all except for the green, the blue light doesn't go with it. I personally would want a dark blue one. Its gonna be hard to pick if they have all those colors come launch time.Though I'll probably be going to go for having my Rev and PS3 be the same color.

After seeing those pics on NoJ's site, I'm dying to see the Rev controller now. I'm hoping they have a standard one and then their Revolutionary one for all their unique games. I wouldn't see anything wrong with a Wavebird 2 as their standard controller, just make it rechargable, give it a nice color and shrink down the receiver portion. Adding another button to parallel the Z button would be perfect too, that way the control schemes won't effected with multi-console games. And if they want the Rev to have some edge over the PS3/X360 versions, how bout a screen on the controller to give us a little something extra? One of the best little things of the DC was having little animations on your controller. Come on Nintendo, you can do it.

Aslo, just wanted to point out since the Rev has GC controller ports, I have high hopes of more Bongo support. Lets some Jungle Beat sequels rolling out.

[Chris in Cali]

I'm digging the red, and the white.

[MorPhiend]

So that shadow like color change isn't a shadow? That doesn't look so good to me. If it was all black, white, or whatever, then it'd look better to me.:?

[Parathod]

I'm not dissapointed or impressed with the Revolution at this point. It's definitely the best looking console, but it's too mysterious right now to get me that impressed. This whole "download Nintendo's history" thing could turn out to be nothing more than a glorified ique(and only 1 in 3 people here, even know what that is). It could also turn out awesome if the price is right and they put some mods in. That could potentially put your Revolution/DS combo as the only Nintendo consoles you need to own to play the whole backlog. More levels for Mario 1? Environment mods in Earthbound? Online sounds good, and we already knew about the BC, but what about the games and the graphics. I think they were way too vague on the graphics issue. It would have been nice if they had at least one game to show off so we could get some sort of visible idea of what the graphics will/might look like.

If Nintendo doesn't deliver, I can't say i'm too interested in this next generation. Xbox360 seems to be following the stigma of "trying to be a PC" that was always used to criticize the original Xbox. PS3's lineup, so far, looks like what we'd expect if we tacked another year or so onto the PS2, but with much better graphics. Meanwhile, Nintendo is drifting further into la-la land, almost completely ignoring the competition and giving them a huge lead. I also must say that I was dissapointed with the showings for PSP and DS. Almost no new announcements for either handheld, which is especially disheartening for the DS, because it's success is very dependent on fresh ideas.

Oh well, i'm still highly anticipating Zelda TP.

[onikage]

I'd prefer to see blue and purple over puke-green and red. If those did happen to be the final colors I'd go w/ the white one.

[io]

OK, so I read through *every* post on the 25 or so pages since we were talking HD support and I see very little about it now (except for one or two people saying they don't mind not having it). I'm guessing that Nintendo didn't really address it either way (which is probably not a good sign for those of us who think it is critical). I hope *at least* that they support progressive scan and widescreen as in the GC (PS support is fairly common, WS support has been minimal but nice when available). I'm fine with the Revolution being a marginal improvement over the GC, but dropping support for 480p and WS would be a shaq-fuing *downgrade*, unless they manage to go all photo-realistic at normal TV resolution to mask the scan lines. (And yes, I know they dropped it in the more recent Gamecubes, but they still support it in newer games like Starfox Assault).

I would be thrilled if I could get Mario Sunshine or Metroid Prime-like graphics at 1080i. There wouldn't need to be a ton of improvement to do so - just (roughly) a 4X improvement in resolution - poly count and all the rest could stay the same. However, this approach would be impractical because it wouldn't really change the experience for non-HDTV viewers. Since they will be increasing the normal graphics capabilites (poly count, shading, effects, etc) it might be too much for the marginally imrpoved graphics engine ALSO to scale that up to higher resolution. But PLEASE, Nintendo, support component video and PS/WS!

[goosedude]

Could this be the beginning of Nintendo reflecting in their consoles what they have been doing with the Gameboy?? i.e. the beginning of generational shrinkage of the hardware with minimal technology increase ala the Gameboy Advance --> SP --> Micro??
I'm envisioning Gamecube --> Revolution --> Portable Revolution to combat PSP with Nintendo milking their franchises for profit with little to no 3rd party support....again.

I really see Nintendo's market share becoming even smaller this generation with the XBOX making real inroads in design and developer support in Japan.

[David85]

What ever happened to Mario 128?

[gambitmachete]

What does everyone REALLY want out of a Nintendo console? The more and more I read the more I really don't understand. I right now have a Gamcube and a PS2. I have both because both offer great franchises and what can't be satisfied on one console I can get on the other.

I think even though not groundbreaking Nintendo is doing something right by adding online play and backwards compatibility. The also added DVD playback which doesn't really make a difference but it shows they are listening to the gamer a bit more now.

Does everyone really want them to just duke it out with Sony? I see Microsoft shooting for holy grail of gaming top dog and it looks like it will take them quite awhile to "beat out" the competetion if they ever do for that matter. I still see the XBOX as 1. a console modder's wet dream and 2. a system that lacks Great franchises besides HALO. I don't care for FPS's so the XBOX never really appealed to me. People buy an XBOX and then trick it out so it can play MAME games, old Nintendo games, so on and so forth. I realize there are a lot of other good games and good 3rd party support but I still feel that I can get almost all the games I need on the other 2 systems.

While Sony builds up their intense high def system I will still be playing the games on a regular non-HD TV. While it is obvious that techies love this stuff it doesn't mean too much for me as off right now. I realize prices will come down and it will be the standard later on but it wouldn't sway me one way or the other when buying a console.

I love beautiful graphics and I'm sure I will be drooling over the PS3 when it comes out. The truth however is I will still love Nintendo for their games and their unique-ness. If Zelda had more shading would the game be that much better? So now my question to everyone is WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???

I'd just like better 3rd party support so that I don't have to buy a PlayStation to keep myself occupied while waiting for something good to come out on my Nintendo console. Aside from that, I'm happy with everything that was revealed about Revolution. I really don't care how much more powerful PS3 and 360 supposedly are.

[gambitmachete]

I'm digging the red, and the white.

Me too. It'd go well with the tons of STL Cardinals stuff I have all over the place.

[ArthurDigbySellers]

OK, so I read through *every* post on the 25 or so pages since we were talking HD support and I see very little about it now (except for one or two people saying they don't mind not having it). I'm guessing that Nintendo didn't really address it either way (which is probably not a good sign for those of us who think it is critical). I hope *at least* that they support progressive scan and widescreen as in the GC (PS support is fairly common, WS support has been minimal but nice when available). I'm fine with the Revolution being a marginal improvement over the GC, but dropping support for 480p and WS would be a shaq-fuing *downgrade*, unless they manage to go all photo-realistic at normal TV resolution to mask the scan lines. (And yes, I know they dropped it in the more recent Gamecubes, but they still support it in newer games like Starfox Assault).

I would be thrilled if I could get Mario Sunshine or Metroid Prime-like graphics at 1080i. There wouldn't need to be a ton of improvement to do so - just (roughly) a 4X improvement in resolution - poly count and all the rest could stay the same. However, this approach would be impractical because it wouldn't really change the experience for non-HDTV viewers. Since they will be increasing the normal graphics capabilites (poly count, shading, effects, etc) it might be too much for the marginally imrpoved graphics engine ALSO to scale that up to higher resolution. But PLEASE, Nintendo, support component video and PS/WS!

With the limited information on the Revo, I'm already sold. I really like my GC and the Revo seems to be taking the same tack with the addition of free online play (finally!). But that being said, Nintendo needs to have support for HD sets. IGN reported recently (before E3) that Nintendo stated the Revo would support HD. Then Nintendo says nothing about it at E3. I need to scour the site again and see if I can find it.

EDIT: Here it is http://cube.ign.com/articles/613/613340p1.html

[basketkase543]

What ever happened to Mario 128?

Shhh.

*whisper* I think they want us to forget about it, considering they haven't shown anything in two years *whisper*

[the3rdkey]

Shhh.

*whisper* I think they want us to forget about it consiering they haven't shown anything in two years *whisper*

I smell Revolution launch game. Nintendo needs to launch with a Mario!

[WildWop]

I smell Revolution launch game. Nintendo needs to launch with a Mario!

That was one thing they actually realized over the last couple of years. I recall interviews with Reggie and Perrin Kaplan that said something on the order of "we learned our lesson: don't launch without mario"

Smash Bros coupled with a Mario would be an excellent way to get a foothold.

[maxflight]

That was one thing they actually realized over the last couple of years. I recall interviews with Reggie and Perrin Kaplan that said something on the order of "we learned our lesson: don't launch without mario"

Smash Bros coupled with a Mario would be an excellent way to get a foothold.

bring back pack in games and put mario 128 with the revolution. they'll need that to make up ground for being the last system out.

[basketkase543]

bring back pack in games and put mario 128 with the revolution. they'll need that to make up ground for being the last system out.

They may not be the last system out. PS3 is scheduled for Spring 2006 which is around the same time that Revo is expected.

[David85]

No Rev is coming out a few months later in the Summer.

[WildWop]

By the way, anyone else feel mildly impressed with what they've done to the Advance Wars on GCN (Battalion Wars now)? I went from completely apathetic to mildly interested by way of the video they showed yesterday at the press conference.

[epobirs]

I don't understand how you could store these download games.....

Average nes game is around 300kb..... So thats fine
Average Snes game 300kb-3 megs... Getting bigger
Average N64 game.. 10 megs-50 megs... Thats pretty large.... I wonder how they would work that.......

I'm all about paying to download games, but only if I can keep them.... Maybe the system burns discs.... I'm hoping they sell collection discs... Nintendo could fit all of there n64 games on 1 dvd... All of their snes and nes games on 1 dvd....
I wonder if we can get gameboy games....

What think is so cool about revolution is I think we will learn you can make your own games on it.... Probably not 3-d, but I think their going to have a 2-d video game maker...

This system is going to do something drastically different from the others... I'm curious what it is....

I see this retailing for 149.99 or maybe even 99.99.... With the downloadable games they can make money back on the system.....

I honestly think this is so small because their going to have a option goggle headset you can buy...

We already have a platform that lets you make your own games. It's called a PC. You don't even need to be much of a programmer to do stuff in Flash or Shockwave. Even less for a package like Gamemaker.

The largest N64 title is Resident Evil II at 64 MB. I don't know about you but downloading 64 MB on my DSL line is trivial. Well under ten minutes typically. As that level of broadband offer wider availablility and lower cost there are new offerings just starting to roll out. Verizon and SBC are both pushing fiber a lot deeper into neighborhoods. If you're one of those lucky residents the Verizon FIOS service can deliver 15 Mbps speed for all of $40 a month. That RE2 game would come across in a bit under a minute. If Nintendo were to colocate their servers within a big provider's network this would avoid crossing the open internet and speed thing up considerably. This can already be seen with a lot of big sites like Apple's movie trailers.

One of the few specifications offered for the Revolution was 512MB of onboard flash memory. That will hold a lot of old games, especially if they're offered in all you can eat fashion and there is no penalty beyond inconvenience for erasing one to make room. There will also be memory cards. If they allow us to use a standard like SD you could add a gigabyte of storage for around $60.

I've downloaded plenty of ISO files representing the content of entire CDs in the space of just a few hours. So a service offering PS1 games to PS3 buyers would be on the slow side but still a viable little business. Under a service like FIOS even an entire CD would be accessable in under 20 minutes. So expect to see a lot of this sort of thing in the future.

[WildWop]

Not to mention that they could deliver games in a compressed format to speed performance while downloading. Since we're talking about a proprietary system anyway, it seems plausible that they could shrink an N64 game down to 1/2 or 1/3 size and have it automatically decompressed once the download completes.

[epobirs]

I have a suspicion the PS3 will have controller ports on it too. When you put the PS3 side by side a PS2 (horizontally), it makes me wonder if you can slide over the left side to reveal controller ports/memory card slots. It would make sense and make me very pleased.

All of the views shown didn't appear to leave any legacy ports in evidence. There was a row of USB ports along the bottom front, on the base. Under the pop-up door next to the drive slot there were the SD, CRF and Memeory Stick slots. In back was more USB, Ethernet, and AV ports. I strongly suspect support for legacy controllers and memory cards will come via an optional USB device. This saves some space and cost.

Down the road, when they're re-engineering to reduce costs more I predict the second HDMI port will be removed. It makes for great demos but it seems very unlikely there will be a enough dual HDTV owners to make it worth having in the long term. It will go the way of the PS1 Serial Link port and the PS2's i-Link/1394 port.

[basketkase543]

No Rev is coming out a few months later in the Summer.

Where'd you find this out?

[zewone]

WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM A NINTENDO CONSOLE???
I don't want them to make any consoles besides portables. They should pull a Sega and become a 3rd party videogame maker. God knows it would save me money from having to buy a fucking revolution just to play the new Zelda (the only Nintendo games I truly enjoy). Seeing them make new home consoles just pisses me off.

[Alpha2]

All of the views shown didn't appear to leave any legacy ports in evidence. There was a row of USB ports along the bottom front, on the base. Under the pop-up door next to the drive slot there were the SD, CRF and Memeory Stick slots. In back was more USB, Ethernet, and AV ports. I strongly suspect support for legacy controllers and memory cards will come via an optional USB device. This saves some space and cost.

Down the road, when they're re-engineering to reduce costs more I predict the second HDMI port will be removed. It makes for great demos but it seems very unlikely there will be a enough dual HDTV owners to make it worth having in the long term. It will go the way of the PS1 Serial Link port and the PS2's i-Link/1394 port.

They stated in the Sony conferance that it would have built in ports for Memstic and memory cards, non of the pictures show them so I have to suspect they're hodden beneath the front cover to the left of the drive.

As for the Revo, I agree I want to see GAMES not spend money on a system for games I already have. Mario 128 was originally just a tech demo and had no actual game associated with it. Supposedly Miyamoto was working on something "better" than the demo so I guess we'll have to wait for it but they need to show SOMEthing game wise before this week is over.

[Javery]

I don't want them to make any consoles besides portables. They should pull a Sega and become a 3rd party videogame maker. God knows it would save me money from having to buy a fucking revolution just to play the new Zelda (the only Nintendo games I truly enjoy). Seeing them make new home consoles just pisses me off.

I totally disagree. I hope Nintendo can carve out it's own sustainable market share and not really worry too much about what Sony and Microsoft are doing. To me, the Xbox and PS2 are really the same thing. There's nothing that I see on Microsoft's console that I can't play elsewhere that I have to have. Halo is great but it's really all they've got as far as a system seller goes... Nintendo has a ton of quirky games that are just fun to play. If you only like Zelda then I really don't know what to say - there's a lot you are missing out on, IMO. I recently picked up Pikmin 2 and it's a perfect example of a great game that you just don't see on other the consoles. I'll always own the newest Nintendo console because I know what I'm getting with it. It's Sony and Microsoft that are going to have to compete for my money each generation... and based on this generation, the PS3 is looking like the right purchase for me...

[zewone]

Yeah, Pikmin is fun, I'll give you that, but I still find it hard to tell myself to buy this new console. I mean, I bought a Gamecube fairly early in its life span and have in total bought 6 games for it. :oops: Kid games just don't appeal too much to me, nor do gimmick games such as Donkey Konga and what not.

[evilmax17]

:oops: Kid games just don't appeal too much to me, nor do gimmick games such as Donkey Konga and what not.

Tsk tsk tsk.

Well, you'll have your fair share of War FPSs, Zombie FPSs, Sports games, and Baditude at this years E3 to keep you happy. I wouldn't worry about it.

BTW, has anybody noticed the rediculous amount of Zombie games for the next gen systems? It's ridiculous!

[Sleepkyng]

i want to see more innovation on the revolution, even if that means lots of failures.

i'm tired of games where you go from point A to point B, or you have guns and kill people to win at stuff... these games are ultimately stupid. Yeah, I love them, i got the handcannon in RE4, but really at the end of the day, it's the same old shit.

and if it has to be the same old shit, put a new spin on it (pikmin as an rts for example).

prince of persia, ninja gaiden, devil may cry? blah blah same old shit.

Was metroid prime same old shit? not really, it was pretty innovative.

i realize that i like turn based rpgs or tactical rpgs, and i hope someone makes an innovative one (I'm excited for Fire Emblem). Wario Ware Inc was a fucking fun game, where is all this shit on the xbox and ps2?

When I'm 12 again, i'll buy a ps2 or xbox. Shit...

[epobirs]

IF (and this is a big if...) this is about all there is to the new Revolution... price and cost are going to be VITAL. Price of the hardware/software is giong to allow Nintendo to undersell the competition and make the Revolution the definitive "2nd console". Cost of game production is something that they seemed to push as well... again... maybe smaller, newer, and younger developers will flock to this console is the costs are low enough that they want their unknown products to get some retail space and attention (a game like Alien Hominid comes to mind).

Recall how Alien Hominid started though. They went to a platform with immense installed base, minimal cost for tools, and no requirement to pass anyone's authorization or pay royalties. This was Flash. It could have been Shockwave or just a plain old PC game in C but the important part was that documentation was freely available and the tools cheap with the only barrier to distribution the cost of hosting the web site.

Console development is no place for amateurs. The console makers won't even sell you a dev kit until you jump through a few hoops to demonstrate you're worthiness. It isn't just the money. They don't want the ongoing support investment for people who may not be productive. Having some demonstrable completed projects is the most important thing a prospective developer can do and the easiest way to do that by far is the shareware and freeware realm on the PC. Even then, this may not get you accepted as a developer. More likely you'll need to hire on at an established company a see a project there through to completion.

There is nothing stopping the developers you describe from doing projects on the cheap for the more powerful platforms. They just won't be using much of the system, similar to how most launch titles for PS2 were just enhanced PS1 games. They didn't know how to properly use the PS2 yet but could still treat it as a high powered PS1 to make those games look better. Between backward compatibility and budget titles no platform is going to have an advantage in drawing developers that matters more than sheer number of machines sold.

[epobirs]

They stated in the Sony conferance that it would have built in ports for Memstic and memory cards, non of the pictures show them so I have to suspect they're hodden beneath the front cover to the left of the drive.

As for the Revo, I agree I want to see GAMES not spend money on a system for games I already have. Mario 128 was originally just a tech demo and had no actual game associated with it. Supposedly Miyamoto was working on something "better" than the demo so I guess we'll have to wait for it but they need to show SOMEthing game wise before this week is over.

As I mentioned, there is a Sony media kit photo showing the door open and all that is visible is flash card slots. It looks very much like what you might see on a recently produced PC. None of the site I've checked have the photo now but it was out there.

Cutting some cost on what is going to be a very pricey machine is important. Putting some of the burden for legacy support on users wouldn't be surprising. This is only the first Sony machine to support more than two controllers out of the box without an extra purchase. I think a USB adapter is pretty likely. A Bluetooth to allow wirelesss use of existing dance pads and such is very likely and guaranteed from third parties if Sony doesn't bother. I wouldn't be surprised if someone was working on it right now.

[evilmax17]

I wonder if Nintendo (or a third party) will release wireless N64, SNES, and NES controllers for playing oldschool games on Rev. It'd be nice to have the actual controllers, and without wires and ports, I would think it would be easy(er).

[Javery]

I wonder if Nintendo (or a third party) will release wireless N64, SNES, and NES controllers for playing oldschool games on Rev. It'd be nice to have the actual controllers, and without wires and ports, I would think it would be easy(er).

This is probably where the "Revolution" comes in with a moddable controller or something...

[PsyClerk]

I wonder if Nintendo (or a third party) will release wireless N64, SNES, and NES controllers for playing oldschool games on Rev. It'd be nice to have the actual controllers, and without wires and ports, I would think it would be easy(er).

I think it would be interesting to see the GBA Micro used as an old school NES controller, since they have the same shape and about the same dimensions. GCN already has GBA connectivity.

I would still think the GBAM was crap but it would at least make it somewhat useful.

[MorPhiend]

ok ok ok wait a minute let me get this straight your saying that the kill zone 2 demo looked like a pc game ? plz let me know which one sure isnt doom 3 or Half Life 2 and those are the top games right now , and the only other game that comes to mind is unreal 2007 and gear of war and thats slated for next gen systems also. now if the killzone 2 video was actual in-game footage ( still skeptical ) there is no pc game that looks like that ,it looks like a rendered cut scene . Now I dunno about you but the best looking game i have seen on xbox was splinter cell 3 and that cannot compete with Half life 2 or Doom 3 sorry. Not trying to start in argument but I think that comment was a little naive .

BAck to topic , wish they did show something on the revolution controller . Let me ask this question is every one impressed by the fact that you could download old nintendo games , do u think this would be a main selling point for the system that would actually sell more revo ? Im 50/50 on that one. Ofcourse ill still get it why not right I mean hello who cares if its not as powerful as the other 2 . your buying it cause you know your gonna get alot of first party software that will not dissapoint you. shit thats why I bought the Gamecube , first party software is sex-cellent. :lol:

Sorry, it was prerendered...

http://egm.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140675




PS3 Videos Possibly Pre-rendered
Controversy erupts over Sony press conference.
by Garnett Lee (http://egm.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5324853), 05/18/2005 19 of 24 users recommended this story.
The past 24 hours have been an emotional roller coaster ride for game fans anxiously waiting the PS3. At its press conference (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140590) Sony thrilled the crowd with videos that definitely said "next generation". To an audience eagerly hoping to be blown away it was like a nuclear bomb went off and they ate it up. It was a powerful shot across the bow of the other contenders in the escalating console wars, but was it real?

Before sunrise today a spark of doubt was smoldering. It caught fire by the end of the day. In the midst of the storm brewing this morning a poster identifying himself as Epic's Mark Rein posted to the Voodooextreme forums talking about the videos seen at the conference. While he did preface his comments saying that everything he saw looked perfectly achievable, he clearly said that he had seen the three or four times during rehearsals and only Sony first-party, Epic and EA demos were running in real-time on the PS3.

Of course that meant that the darling of the presentation, Killzone 2, was CG. It also meant that the hardware might not be light-years beyond the competition. After all, that left the Unreal tech demo as the best looking game running real time; more or less the same as the very Gears of War Microsoft used to show off the Xbox 360. That kicked off a cascade of people reviewing what they'd seen with a more critical eye. The consensus coming out is that the scenes are in fact pre-rendered material. Some of the signs that point to that are the extreme particle effects and tightly choreographed shots. On the other hand, our own John Davidson has it direct from Sony contacts that "just about all of it" was "real". As our friend Fox used to be prone to saying, "the truth is out there." What we're wondering is how much it really matters at this point. Hardware is still a long way off and developers will be making the usual enormous strides in quality over the final few months -- Sony, Microsoft and when the time comes Nintendo. For now the one thing certain is they served their purpose. Sony has put the contenders on notice; it isn't coming to this generation resting on its laurels.

[evilmax17]

:!:

I knew it!

[Javery]

Sorry, it was prerendered...

http://egm.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140675




PS3 Videos Possibly Pre-rendered
Controversy erupts over Sony press conference.
by Garnett Lee (http://egm.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5324853), 05/18/2005 19 of 24 users recommended this story.
The past 24 hours have been an emotional roller coaster ride for game fans anxiously waiting the PS3. At its press conference (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140590) Sony thrilled the crowd with videos that definitely said "next generation". To an audience eagerly hoping to be blown away it was like a nuclear bomb went off and they ate it up. It was a powerful shot across the bow of the other contenders in the escalating console wars, but was it real?

Before sunrise today a spark of doubt was smoldering. It caught fire by the end of the day. In the midst of the storm brewing this morning a poster identifying himself as Epic's Mark Rein posted to the Voodooextreme forums talking about the videos seen at the conference. While he did preface his comments saying that everything he saw looked perfectly achievable, he clearly said that he had seen the three or four times during rehearsals and only Sony first-party, Epic and EA demos were running in real-time on the PS3.

Of course that meant that the darling of the presentation, Killzone 2, was CG. It also meant that the hardware might not be light-years beyond the competition. After all, that left the Unreal tech demo as the best looking game running real time; more or less the same as the very Gears of War Microsoft used to show off the Xbox 360. That kicked off a cascade of people reviewing what they'd seen with a more critical eye. The consensus coming out is that the scenes are in fact pre-rendered material. Some of the signs that point to that are the extreme particle effects and tightly choreographed shots. On the other hand, our own John Davidson has it direct from Sony contacts that "just about all of it" was "real". As our friend Fox used to be prone to saying, "the truth is out there." What we're wondering is how much it really matters at this point. Hardware is still a long way off and developers will be making the usual enormous strides in quality over the final few months -- Sony, Microsoft and when the time comes Nintendo. For now the one thing certain is they served their purpose. Sony has put the contenders on notice; it isn't coming to this generation resting on its laurels.

Not a big surprise. The PS2 was going to easily produce Toy Story-esque graphics. As usual, I will reserve judgement until I actually play it.

[Ozzkev55]

Not a big surprise. The PS2 was going to easily produce Toy Story-esque graphics. As usual, I will reserve judgement until I actually play it.
Time will tell, but I believe that the PS3 pwns XBOX360

[ArthurDigbySellers]

Time will tell, but I believe that the PS3 pwns XBOX360

I agree! The PS3 will knock out Xbox360 with its patented boomerang!

[Alpha2]

You toss around that artical rather easily but it's still not Hard proof eitherway of how much is real or prerendered.

[magilacudy]

I hope the All-Access Gaming isn't Nintendo's main selling point. Let's make up a theoretical view of the market:

Who would want to pay to play NES, SNES N64 etc. games? The people who grew up with them, which would probably be the 18-24 demographic. The younger demographic would be more concerned with newer (more violent :P ) releases in addition to the whatever the next-gen Pokemon will be. The older folk would sway toward the more mainstream/ big budget/ extremely hyped releases that would maximize their playing time.

The 18-24 demographic are primarily college age individuals in dorms or similar as pumbaa mentioned. However, (judging by my college with Xbox Live) would console access to All-Access be allowed? If not, then a subscription based service would fail. If the content could be saved with a one-time fee, then this would be a non-issue. Point is, if Nintendo is putting their eggs into one retro-basket, then this could be a disaster. If the demographic Nintendo is aiming for has no access to their content, then things could go south real soon.
Of course, CAGs would defy any trends in favor for cheapass deals. It will be interesting to see what ace, if any, Nintendo has left up its sleeve.

Oh yeah. :lol: at Zelda TP.

[Alpha2]

The only thing I can think of is if the games are streamed downloads. 300k to play Super Mario 3 is nothing. 64mb to play RE is a hell of a lot more painfull but only if you're on dialup but frankly I see people tossing in the bargin bin copy they got for their PS for 5 bucks first... which when it comes down to it is the main issue I have with this service.

Assuming it's a free service to D/L NES and SNES games thats no big deal, Yahoo.games are roughly the same size 200k to 4mb and people play that stuff all the time... granted they get spamed to the teeth with banner adds but lets assume Nintendo would rather not hack up your screen to show them and plays you a quick commercial for the next Superman movie or something while your game loads like Gamespot likes to do. This is nice for the few hits you get on those old games.... later on though for things like N64 games and the 'Cube there's a better chance people will skip the cube games since they;re big big games and you can already play them if you just go out and buy them (which I'm sure nintendo would prefer) and N64 games are usually better on PS or if they arnt on PS it's easy to run out to TRU and buy them for 5 bucks usually. A nice little offering but it's still very little. A side of fries rather than the Big Mac itself.

Over all it just feels very risky, I can see them using the Ad+Download method but is it really profitable? will enough people care about these old games for it to matter or will they just move on to the new stuff? I dont know many casual gamers that would sit around for very long just to play duck hunt when they could be playing TimeCrisis which actually has a couple of duckhunt style games in it.

[pumbaa]

I hope the All-Access Gaming isn't Nintendo's main selling point. Let's make up a theoretical view of the market:

Who would want to pay to play NES, SNES N64 etc. games? The people who grew up with them, which would probably be the 18-24 demographic. The younger demographic would be more concerned with newer (more violent :P ) releases in addition to the whatever the next-gen Pokemon will be. The older folk would sway toward the more mainstream/ big budget/ extremely hyped releases that would maximize their playing time.

The 18-24 demographic are primarily college age individuals in dorms or similar as pumbaa mentioned. However, (judging by my college with Xbox Live) would console access to All-Access be allowed? If not, then a subscription based service would fail. If the content could be saved with a one-time fee, then this would be a non-issue. Point is, if Nintendo is putting their eggs into one retro-basket, then this could be a disaster. If the demographic Nintendo is aiming for has no access to their content, then things could go south real soon.
Of course, CAGs would defy any trends in favor for cheapass deals. It will be interesting to see what ace, if any, Nintendo has left up its sleeve.

Oh yeah. :lol: at Zelda TP.

I can connect to Live fine... just gotta register the MAC address with the IT dept. You should make some noise about it on your campus... I'm sure theres more than one gamer pissed off about no Xbox Live.

ALSO... if we are basing success on CAG's participation in respective threads... the Revolution is winning by far. At the very least Nintendo has added some gas to the hype fire... impressive for not showing any footage at all.

[Alpha2]

I wouldnt call the number of posts an indicator of how well the Revo is doing. Even if the PS3 stuff was rendered they atleast tried to show us something new, Nintendo's shown use nothing but the backwards compatable black box full of games we've already played 15 to 20 years ago.

[Snake2715]

When did it mention playing downloadable Cube games?

When that part of the video showed it only showed the NES, Snes, and N64.

No downloadable cube games were shown.

If you are talking about it playing all teh games to current gen then yes the system plays the cube disks but I honestly do not recall downloadable cube games being mentioned.

[epobirs]

Not to mention that they could deliver games in a compressed format to speed performance while downloading. Since we're talking about a proprietary system anyway, it seems plausible that they could shrink an N64 game down to 1/2 or 1/3 size and have it automatically decompressed once the download completes.

These by and large are already as compressed as they're going to get. The severe memory restrictions of ROM chips have always meants that every available technique was applied to making the data storage more efficient. This is how we got RPGs with the same monster shown five times with different colors to designate its level of power. RE2 on the N64 used an early version of MPEG-4 to squeeze in FMV sequences that occupied many times more CD space as M-JPEG on the PS1.

If you've ever wondered at some of the awkward translations of RPG text, not all of it was due to poor language skills. A lot of it was due to technical limitations. All of the text in the Japanese version would have a number assigned to each unique pictograph and stored in a sort of dictionary. Having a full Japanese vocabulary runs into thousands of different characters. Keeping that to the lowest possible power of 2 helps save memory usage. Say the text of the game uses about 900 different words. This along with any punctuation and other special characters fits within 1024, so you only need 10 bits for every word in the game's dictionary. A line of text consists of a series of 10-bit numbers.

Now comes the English translation. We save a little memory immediately because we need far fewer characters, as few as 64 in some old games that didn't even offer lower case. Thats only 6 bits per character. OTOH, the words are made up of multiple characters, meaning that recovered memory is taken away again. We know we're going to see a lot of the same wrods used over and over so the dictionary approach lets us economize English, too. Rather than spell out each word in the game code we assing each word a number and use a string of number and a lookup system for making that into text onscreen.

If our English language version needs to be the same size cart as the Japanese original, we may find that we have to simplify the text to keep it from being to wordy in translation. This is one of the reason so many RPGs were never translated. IT could be a real pain in the ass job.

If we wanted to offer older CD-ROM games for download, there is a lot that could be done. This requires access to the original source and raw data files but it isn't especially hard. As I mentioned above, the codecs used on early CD games were horribly inefficient by today's standards and produced badly compromised image quality. If the original work was done with good standards and well documented it wouldn't be a major hack to substitute the native hardware accellerated codec of the host platform and use the full quality precompressed versions of the FMV to produce new files. Likewise, most audio was done in umcompressed Red Book. There are some PS1 games where the Red Book audio comprises half to two-thirds of the disc space used. A modern audio codec at full quality can reduce that by at least a factor of five.

So imagine a big game like FFVII. Takes up three CDs but about 80% of that is FMV and streaming music files. (The game code and gameplay data are replicated across all three discs so players can boot from the next discs after finishing the one before and not need to reference that disc again.) Convert the FMVs at full quality to MPEG-4 and likewise compress the audio tracks. The result is a game with better FMV that takes up less than a single CD equivalent of space. Downloadable in just three or four hours. Most PS1 games are much smaller to begin with and could shrink even further. Quite a lot of them are smalle enough to not be worth the trouble of altering.

[ArthurDigbySellers]

I wouldnt call the number of posts an indicator of how well the Revo is doing. Even if the PS3 stuff was rendered they atleast tried to show us something new, Nintendo's shown use nothing but the backwards compatable black box full of games we've already played 15 to 20 years ago.

So you would rather have Sony and Microsoft show renders (which mean absolutely nothing) than the approach that Nintendo took which is showing what they currently have (i.e. nothing) and sharing some of the important features of their new system which comes out more than year from now?

Personally, I like Nintendo's approach but it seems to be lost on a lot of the people in this thread. Because Nintendo released so little information about the Revo, eveyone is claiming that its only focus is retro games. That is a feature, not the focus. Microsoft focused heavily on Xbox Live and the Xbox Live Marketplace, so do you think that is the their focus?

[epobirs]

So you would rather have Sony and Microsoft show renders (which mean absolutely nothing) than the approach that Nintendo took which is showing what they currently have (i.e. nothing) and sharing some of the important features of their new system which comes out more than year from now?

Personally, I like Nintendo's approach but it seems to be lost on a lot of the people in this thread. Because Nintendo released so little information about the Revo, eveyone is claiming that its only focus is retro games. That is a feature, not the focus. Microsoft focused heavily on Xbox Live and the Xbox Live Marketplace, so do you think that is the their focus?

Microsoft showed 360 games of which many are playable on the show floor. The Nintendo presentation told us nothing whatsoever that couldn't have been written by any one of us on short notice. 'There will be new iterations of Nintendo franchises and they'll support wireless.' We have the web for such soundbites. The big pre-show event at E3 is for SHOWING stuff. All we got was some vague assurances and "Oh look! Puppies!. Cute!"

[pumbaa]

I wouldnt call the number of posts an indicator of how well the Revo is doing. Even if the PS3 stuff was rendered they atleast tried to show us something new, Nintendo's shown use nothing but the backwards compatable black box full of games we've already played 15 to 20 years ago.

Buzz my friend... buzz. WTF is Nintendo doing is better than I don't care what Nintendo is doing.

[zewone]

I'm so confused by what the hell you are talking about.

[ArthurDigbySellers]

Microsoft showed 360 games of which many are playable on the show floor. The Nintendo presentation told us nothing whatsoever that couldn't have been written by any one of us on short notice. 'There will be new iterations of Nintendo franchises and they'll support wireless.' We have the web for such soundbites. The big pre-show event at E3 is for SHOWING stuff. All we got was some vague assurances and "Oh look! Puppies!. Cute!"

That's funny since those cute puppies are blowing DS's off the shelves in Japan. It's no small wonder that Nintendo would like the same thing to happen in America.

The fact is Nintendo didn't show enough for you. But what they did show was more meaningful to me than pre-rendered CGI sequences that will never be fulfilled with the in-game engine that the others paraded around.

And the 360 games that were shown are being panned b/c of framerate problems, jaggies, and a sense of "this gen, not next-gen." Microsoft quickly counters with the 1/3 performance argument. So "showing stuff" can have consequences as well.

[RAMSTORIA]

http://img.engadget.com/common/images/5844052316327252.JPG

[Javery]

http://img.engadget.com/common/images/5844052316327252.JPG

Is he at the airport?

[Ozzkev55]

Is he at the airport?
what airport do you go to with chairs like that, damn those look comfy

[Javery]

what airport do you go to with chairs like that, damn those look comfy

I don't know... you don't see chairs like that so close together...

[RAMSTORIA]

thats a pretty nice airport

[epobirs]

That's funny since those cute puppies are blowing DS's off the shelves in Japan. It's no small wonder that Nintendo would like the same thing to happen in America.

The fact is Nintendo didn't show enough for you. But what they did show was more meaningful to me than pre-rendered CGI sequences that will never be fulfilled with the in-game engine that the others paraded around.

And the 360 games that were shown are being panned b/c of framerate problems, jaggies, and a sense of "this gen, not next-gen." Microsoft quickly counters with the 1/3 performance argument. So "showing stuff" can have consequences as well.


Enough for me? So far as Revolution goes they showed NOTHING. Nada, zip, zilch. It was completely meaningless.

Alpha demos with performance issues are standard fare at E3. That doesn't faze me in the least. Playable demos at least indicate a real product in the works with a believable delivery schedule. Anyone looking at Ghost Recon 3 and thinking it doesn't require a major hardware upgrade needs to have their head examined for any stray particles of neural tissue preventing their skull from being a pristine vacuum.

It would have been far more honest to just admit that they're breaking their claim to not be last out the gate this time and say next year will be the E3 for their new console, meanwhile here is why we still own all but the most expensive part of the handheld sector.

[Ozzkev55]

thats a pretty nice airport
Damn...the japanese and their cool technology...

Are you sure thats photoshopped...any points in particular that point to that

[Tromack]

I wouldnt call the number of posts an indicator of how well the Revo is doing. Even if the PS3 stuff was rendered they atleast tried to show us something new, Nintendo's shown use nothing but the backwards compatable black box full of games we've already played 15 to 20 years ago.

My god. You have been spouting the same bullshit over and over. We get it. You think that Killzone 2 is really pretty, and it is. However, it isn't real and the PS3 is probably going to be a disappointment for you since it probably won't live up to the hype.

Nintendo is just doing what Sony has been doing for years, i.e. showing a pretty, sleek, black box and promising the world. Will it deliver? Probably not, but you can't fault Nintendo for copying a successful strategy.

[Alpha2]

First off Tromack, ...Edited. Just because you flew off the handle dosent men I have to also... You obviously saw two similar posts in a row from me that you dissagreed with and figured I was on som cruesade so I'll cut you some slack.

I didn't mention killzone I was refering to many of the videos in general that there are a lot of possible real time footage, if not played then and there at E3 then played somewhere else and recorded for E3. And if you want to talk about KZ then fine, I even acknowledged in the KZ2 thread in the Sony section that it could very well be enhanced, if you;d like to crucify me for being hopeful go right ahead but that;s the same thing people are doing here in this thread. The post made claiming everything they showed was rendered was NOT completly conclusive It cast doubt on a lot of sony's stuff but I'm just being hopeful someof it wasn't rendered.

All I ever said was I was more impressed that they atleast showed something exciting rather than nothing new. Nintendo showing a new system is great but I'm just stating what I find unsatifying about the situation.

[WildWop]

First off Tromack, What do you care what I think, especially since I wasn't talking to you at the time So STFU or put me on ignore so you dont have to read what I say, Second I didn't even mention Killzone in that post so you're obviously just trying to pick a fight about some you don't agree with which I've only spoken about in maybe 2 posts in separate threads when it was brought up.

All I ever said was I was mor impressed that they atleast showed something interesting rather than nothing new, if you have a problem with that, Tough.

Edited... what we need is to be rid of all this Sixth Crusade-ing and get on with some real action.

[Alpha2]

I edited my post, if you'd like to edit your's Wildwop. I realized I made a mistake in tha last post responding to tromack. I'm not a fanboy I have a Gamecube and I'm very happy with it.

I'm trying to be optimistic, I'm just not very excited by what I've seen from nintendo yet.

[WildWop]

These by and large are already as compressed as they're going to get. The severe memory restrictions of ROM chips have always meants that every available technique was applied to making the data storage more efficient. This is how we got RPGs with the same monster shown five times with different colors to designate its level of power. RE2 on the N64 used an early version of MPEG-4 to squeeze in FMV sequences that occupied many times more CD space as M-JPEG on the PS1.

If you've ever wondered at some of the awkward translations of RPG text, not all of it was due to poor language skills. A lot of it was due to technical limitations. All of the text in the Japanese version would have a number assigned to each unique pictograph and stored in a sort of dictionary. Having a full Japanese vocabulary runs into thousands of different characters. Keeping that to the lowest possible power of 2 helps save memory usage. Say the text of the game uses about 900 different words. This along with any punctuation and other special characters fits within 1024, so you only need 10 bits for every word in the game's dictionary. A line of text consists of a series of 10-bit numbers.

Now comes the English translation. We save a little memory immediately because we need far fewer characters, as few as 64 in some old games that didn't even offer lower case. Thats only 6 bits per character. OTOH, the words are made up of multiple characters, meaning that recovered memory is taken away again. We know we're going to see a lot of the same wrods used over and over so the dictionary approach lets us economize English, too. Rather than spell out each word in the game code we assing each word a number and use a string of number and a lookup system for making that into text onscreen.

If our English language version needs to be the same size cart as the Japanese original, we may find that we have to simplify the text to keep it from being to wordy in translation. This is one of the reason so many RPGs were never translated. IT could be a real pain in the ass job.

If we wanted to offer older CD-ROM games for download, there is a lot that could be done. This requires access to the original source and raw data files but it isn't especially hard. As I mentioned above, the codecs used on early CD games were horribly inefficient by today's standards and produced badly compromised image quality. If the original work was done with good standards and well documented it wouldn't be a major hack to substitute the native hardware accellerated codec of the host platform and use the full quality precompressed versions of the FMV to produce new files. Likewise, most audio was done in umcompressed Red Book. There are some PS1 games where the Red Book audio comprises half to two-thirds of the disc space used. A modern audio codec at full quality can reduce that by at least a factor of five.

So imagine a big game like FFVII. Takes up three CDs but about 80% of that is FMV and streaming music files. (The game code and gameplay data are replicated across all three discs so players can boot from the next discs after finishing the one before and not need to reference that disc again.) Convert the FMVs at full quality to MPEG-4 and likewise compress the audio tracks. The result is a game with better FMV that takes up less than a single CD equivalent of space. Downloadable in just three or four hours. Most PS1 games are much smaller to begin with and could shrink even further. Quite a lot of them are smalle enough to not be worth the trouble of altering.


I've definitely learned my new thing for the day. Surprising it didn't come while at work...

danke epobirs, danke

[PsyClerk]

ALSO... if we are basing success on CAG's participation in respective threads... the Revolution is winning by far.

Naw, brutha. It's just a lot more fun watching the same people who bashed MS and Sony for a poor presentation turn around, get jack shit from Nintendo, then gush "OMFG I'M PRE-ORDERING SO I CAN GET IT ON LAUNCH DAY!!1!"

[WildWop]

Naw, brutha. It's just a lot more fun watching the same people who bashed MS and Sony for a poor presentation turn around, get jack shit from Nintendo, then gush "OMFG I'M PRE-ORDERING SO I CAN GET IT ON LAUNCH DAY!!1!"


All this E3 has done for me so far is:

1) Nintendo hired an actual designer for their console!
2) Microsoft is smoking something if they think i want a faceplate that makes my 360 look like it's got faux-wood-paneling. Oh wait...
3) Sony's console looks like someone tried to make a burrito out of a sheet of dense plastic

[PsyClerk]

All this E3 has done for me so far is:

1) Nintendo hired an actual designer for their console!
2) Microsoft is smoking something if they think i want a faceplate that makes my 360 look like it's got faux-wood-paneling. Oh wait...
3) Sony's console looks like someone tried to make a burrito out of a sheet of dense plastic

I, too, have rained on many a parade. Since the different consoles have such staggered release dates, I expect we won't hear about the really good stuff until it's time for the next launch. When 360 launches, expect to find out some more info on PS3 and/or Revolution.

[epobirs]

The only thing I can think of is if the games are streamed downloads. 300k to play Super Mario 3 is nothing. 64mb to play RE is a hell of a lot more painfull but only if you're on dialup but frankly I see people tossing in the bargin bin copy they got for their PS for 5 bucks first... which when it comes down to it is the main issue I have with this service.

Assuming it's a free service to D/L NES and SNES games thats no big deal, Yahoo.games are roughly the same size 200k to 4mb and people play that stuff all the time... granted they get spamed to the teeth with banner adds but lets assume Nintendo would rather not hack up your screen to show them and plays you a quick commercial for the next Superman movie or something while your game loads like Gamespot likes to do. This is nice for the few hits you get on those old games.... later on though for things like N64 games and the 'Cube there's a better chance people will skip the cube games since they;re big big games and you can already play them if you just go out and buy them (which I'm sure nintendo would prefer) and N64 games are usually better on PS or if they arnt on PS it's easy to run out to TRU and buy them for 5 bucks usually. A nice little offering but it's still very little. A side of fries rather than the Big Mac itself.

Over all it just feels very risky, I can see them using the Ad+Download method but is it really profitable? will enough people care about these old games for it to matter or will they just move on to the new stuff? I dont know many casual gamers that would sit around for very long just to play duck hunt when they could be playing TimeCrisis which actually has a couple of duckhunt style games in it.

I don't see GameCube titles as part of the download service. Unless retailers stop stocking the software in a big way there will be plenty of it, especially the Player's Choice line covering most of the reasons to own a Gamecube-compatible machine, still available for purchase. The primary point of the virtual library is to generate revenue from the old IP in the most effective way when the retail channel is no longer viable to Nintendo's liking. Eliminating the need to produce carts and cutting out the retailers lets Nintendo make some serious profits at very low prices. This is really the only way to move most of the really old stuff. The NES Classics line didn't do as well as hoped in the US, resulting in only about half the titles released in Japan coming out here. But there is a market there if the price is right and the distribution methods allows a profit at that price.

Usually better on the PS? You obviously haven't played the N64 version of RE2. It was by far the best version in that generation. It was really a remarkable piece of work that went unappreciated.

Other than giving up FMV in some games I can think of many example where the superior hardware features of the N64 were shown in multiplatform games. It's something of a moot point though since the majority of games likely to be offered are first and second party titles. A lot of the third party stuff depends on unknown variables but Nintendo knows where they stand with their own IP and those titles contracted from outside developers like Rare. The participation of third parties could vary depending on what sort of percentage they're offered and whether they have other plans for their IP that obligates them elsewhere.

As for availability of those N64 games, nearly all retailers except those selling used games has long since cleared their stock of those carts. My local TRU has a few Perfect Darks left and maybe a Quarterback Club but thats it. Sure, there is a ton of used games at the local Gamestop but the sale of those offers no benefit for Nintendo. If there isn't any money in the download service it's worthless, even as PR since gamers spending time playing old games aren't buying new ones.

No matter how cheap the used games there is something to be said for having them delivered within a few minutes, especially if done on a whim rather than making a shopping trip. It's like ordering a pizza. The purchase is more likely when it's just a phone call away rather than having to leave the house.

For the future, I think Nintendo hopes to see a situation similar to the PS1/PS2 relationship. New GC games continue to appear at bargain prices while Revolution games fill the higher price points. Whether this will work with the already meager level of third party support is another question.

[zewone]

http://img.engadget.com/common/images/5844052316327252.JPG
What the fuck is on his head?

[pumbaa]

Something photoshopped

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/features/interviews/shigeru-miyamoto/miyamoto-candy.jpg

[zewone]

Very clever, glad to hear thats not real.

[Samurai X]

When you expect so much out of something , the final results will never be good enough, i was expecting way more for 6 years in the making , i am so disappointed by all 3 systems, specially with all of them using the same remote control designs, theres nothing better than change, i think we didn't need new consoles yet , there will be a hard time distingishing the revolution from satellite receivers all around the world, i hope there is more inside that meets the eye, as of right now there is not much that we know about them and there might still be a change of heart for which im praying for, On the other hand There is nothing closer than the revolution and the NES design (picture below), maybe this new generation is named revolution , to remind us all of the revolution made by the NES and that the revolution of Nintendo is back as of this new generation , that nintendo will take over the industry once again !

http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/615/615030/img_2795079.html

OR http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/615/615030/img_2795079.html

[MorPhiend]

http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=ad14b5d9-0774-4571-bea5-d383322705b4


Due in 2006, the new console will be backward compatible with Nintendo GameCube. The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Players also can buy and add new levels and characters to games made specifically for the new console. The new console has 512 megabytes of on-board flash memory. A bay for an SD memory card will let players expand the internal flash memory.


I have seen some ask about this, but this is the first confirmation of updated/expanded classics. I can't wait.

[PsyClerk]

Due in 2006, the new console will be backward compatible with Nintendo GameCube. The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Players also can buy and add new levels and characters to games made specifically for the new console. The new console has 512 megabytes of on-board flash memory. A bay for an SD memory card will let players expand the internal flash memory.


I have seen some ask about this, but this is the first confirmation of updated/expanded classics. I can't wait.

I read "new levels etc" as relating to new Revolution games, not old games. It's a bit hard to tell because they don't sort the details at all.

[Alpha2]

I don't see GameCube titles as part of the download service. Unless retailers stop stocking the software in a big way there will be plenty of it, especially the Player's Choice line covering most of the reasons to own a Gamecube-compatible machine, still available for purchase.

Yeah I made a mistake on that part. I mean to edit it out earlier but the net hiccuped on me and it didnt get changed.

Usually better on the PS? You obviously haven't played the N64 version of RE2. It was by far the best version in that generation. It was really a remarkable piece of work that went unappreciated.

No never did, I hardly ever heard anything about it because no one I know ever bought it they just got the PS version and never bothered So I assumed it wasn't much better and seeing the lower resolution cutscenes it seemed to track that other things got cut down too.

As for availability of those N64 games, nearly all retailers except those selling used games has long since cleared their stock of those carts. My local TRU has a few Perfect Darks left and maybe a Quarterback Club but thats it. Sure, there is a ton of used games at the local Gamestop but the sale of those offers no benefit for Nintendo. If there isn't any money in the download service it's worthless, even as PR since gamers spending time playing old games aren't buying new ones.

Well NO sale of the carts would benefit Nintendo today frankly at this point anything still in a store wouldnt generate income for them, but the thing is I still see N64 games in my TRU, I dont recall which ones but the occasional deal pops up here too (usually a link to EB or amazon I guess). I wonder how many of the titles produced outside of their own 1st party they can get the rights to. As small as the library is when you take out sports games (would they really bother to include them?) it's probably still their best source of income.

New levels sounds like a nice addition especially if it's to old games, they've done it before so it's not unimaginable they would do it some more to keep all they IP even more fresh.

[epobirs]

No never did, I hardly ever heard anything about it because no one I know ever bought it they just got the PS version and never bothered So I assumed it wasn't much better and seeing the lower resolution cutscenes it seemed to track that other things got cut down too.



I didn't give it much thought when it first appear, since it was so long after the first version. Who would have expected this title would done yet again on Dreamcast and GameCube? But when I came across for $10 I couldn't restrain my curiousity in regard to how much of the game they'd been able to stuff into a cartridge. All of it and more it turned. Codecs had come a long ways in those few years and RE2 made an excellent demonstration of that. Rather that cover all the details by hand I'll just link this review:
http://ign64.ign.com/articles/160/160798p1.html

http://www.gamespot.com/n64/adventure/residentevil2/review.html

The video was a bit grainier than the PS1 but most other areas were improved, especially if the RAM Expansion Pak was present.

In any case, that is the extreme high end of N64 downloads. IIRC, no other carts that large appeared, unless they were Japan-only titles for which I never saw data. (The biggest SNES game that I recall was a Japan only RPG at 48 Mb.) The biggest size commonly used was a mere 256 Mb or 32 MB, and for titles that should see ongoing interest from paying customers, namely the N64 Zelda entries. 32 MB is a pretty trivial download on any decent broadband service, I'd say. It would be interesting to see exactly how big the GameCube version of those games given aways as bonus item but never offered for sale by themselves are in comparison. If they didn't go the Red Book audio route they could still be very small as GameCube game go and more attractive as purchased downloads.

[Parathod]

Enough for me? So far as Revolution goes they showed NOTHING. Nada, zip, zilch. It was completely meaningless.

Alpha demos with performance issues are standard fare at E3. That doesn't faze me in the least. Playable demos at least indicate a real product in the works with a believable delivery schedule. Anyone looking at Ghost Recon 3 and thinking it doesn't require a major hardware upgrade needs to have their head examined for any stray particles of neural tissue preventing their skull from being a pristine vacuum.

It would have been far more honest to just admit that they're breaking their claim to not be last out the gate this time and say next year will be the E3 for their new console, meanwhile here is why we still own all but the most expensive part of the handheld sector.

While I can't say I was "blown away" by Nintendo's announcement, what they have shown so far is probably going to have me thinking twice before I pick up an Xbox360 or PS3. What we have seen is a very nice looking console with features that gamers want. It plays DVDs, it's backwards compatible, online is a focus, it condenses our Nintendo needs into one console, it will have modable games, and it's the nicest looking console ever. Now lets picture if Nintendo revealed absolutely nothing and waited till next year. They'd have the worst conference ever, gamers would have nothing to speculate on, and they'd be pretty much out of the race.

I'm sure Nintendo had games or demos they could have shown, but I think they're waiting for just the right time. As others have pointed out, the Xbox360 games have all sorts of little graphical problems scattered through them and look like they need a lot of work and it seems like Sony is being shady, wowing us over with animations and a list of sequels rather than the games themselves. Nintendo has made some poor decisions in it's past, but I think they are finally gaining an understanding of what the gamer wants. This unveiling gave the Revolution just enough time to hold gamers over until it's true unveiling, which will probably be at the Tokyo Game Show. Had they shown their still too-early work just now, they would have been overshadowed by the PS3, just as the PS3 has managed to overshadow the 360. Also, keep in mind that Nintendo now knows exactly what the competition is up to, which gives them the unique position to improve it's specs and refine it's focus.

Being vague has created some intrigue for what is possible on the Revolution and has bought it some much needed time.

[MorPhiend]

Please see this thread (if you have neglected looking through the forums for new threads):


http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52253&page=1&pp=20

[R1V3R5]

That NES style revolution is awesome! Nice find.

[evilmax17]

Iwata Interview:

http://ngc.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=8255

[ArthurDigbySellers]

Iwata Interview:

http://ngc.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=8255

Thanks for that. It's funny, but Nintendo and Microsoft are both kind of saying the same thing when it comes to appealing to non-gamers. Microsoft is trying to push the Live Arcade for the casual gamer and Nintendo seems to be focusing a lot of its products on bringing casual gamers into the mix as well.

One thing that does scare me about Nintendo's statements about online gaming is this whole concept of "scary online dudes." They seem to be pushing a strategy of gaming with only your "friends" and not just anyone out there. I'm hoping the "friends" approach is only one subset of the service. I don't want to be forced to play with only a subset of the available gamers out there.

[Snake2715]

Thanks for that. It's funny, but Nintendo and Microsoft are both kind of saying the same thing when it comes to appealing to non-gamers. Microsoft is trying to push the Live Arcade for the casual gamer and Nintendo seems to be focusing a lot of its products on bringing casual gamers into the mix as well.

One thing that does scare me about Nintendo's statements about online gaming is this whole concept of "scary online dudes." They seem to be pushing a strategy of gaming with only your "friends" and not just anyone out there. I'm hoping the "friends" approach is only one subset of the service. I don't want to be forced to play with only a subset of the available gamers out there.

I think they mentioned something about this at yesterdays conference. Most likely its for parents to crontrol who plays with who?

[Purkeynator]

(The biggest SNES game that I recall was a Japan only RPG at 48 Mb.) QUOTE]
The largest was Star Ocean 1 on Super Famicom. It clocked in at a huge 56 mb. Even DS many games today are 64 mb.

[WildWop]

I think they mentioned something about this at yesterdays conference. Most likely its for parents to crontrol who plays with who?


Quick! Someone pass along that idea to Microsoft!

Parents! Block them from playing outside of their age group!

... Halo 2 without all tEh kIddiZ!!11

[Ozzkev55]

... Halo 2 without all tEh kIddiZ!!11
and im a happy man :)

[epobirs]

(The biggest SNES game that I recall was a Japan only RPG at 48 Mb.) QUOTE]
The largest was Star Ocean 1 on Super Famicom. It clocked in at a huge 56 mb. Even DS many games today are 64 mb.

Potentially SNES games could have gotten much larger but only if the platform remained viable in the face of new machines using less expensive media.

You have to be careful how you use the upper and lower case to designate measurements.
MB = megabytes

Mb = megabits

Most DS games are at least 64 megabits. The original Mario 64 was that size and the DS version adds quite a lot of new material to the game. The largest size Nintendo currently offers publishers (but not the limit of the DS itself, just what is economically practical at the moment) is 1 Gigabit aka 128 Megabytes.

[SOSTrooper]

So no surprise announcements?

[opportunity777]

So no surprise announcements?

Who is the hot asian chick in your avatar? Now I want to go home and bang my gf :lol:

[Ozzkev55]

Who is the hot asian chick in your avatar? Now I want to go home and bang my gf :lol:
Then kill chris griffen :twisted:

[epobirs]

Quick! Someone pass along that idea to Microsoft!

Parents! Block them from playing outside of their age group!

... Halo 2 without all tEh kIddiZ!!11

A lot of the older players need an emotional maturity rating, too.

[WildWop]

A lot of the older players need an emotional maturity rating, too.

Very true, but it's easier to tolerate immaturity when it isn't accompanied by shrill prepubescent voices.

[Mistik]

I didn't see anyone post this link before but it basically talks abou all the different parts of the Revolution console itself. Have fun.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617195p1.html

PS- Ninja Gaiden 2 might be on Revolution. Score.

[Monsta Mack]

PS- Ninja Gaiden 2 might be on Revolution. Score.

?

[Mistik]

?

http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617882p1.html

[MorPhiend]

I didn't see anyone post this link before but it basically talks abou all the different parts of the Revolution console itself. Have fun.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617195p1.html

PS- Ninja Gaiden 2 might be on Revolution. Score.

That's an old story and what the heck has it got to do with NG?

[MorPhiend]

New interview today. Excerpt:


"If the first entrant always wins the market, the Dreamcast must have won the race against the PS2, for example. There are many precedents like that in the past. The first to market is not necessarily the winner in the race," he said. "But we cannot afford to be too late. That's a very important point. Right now we are keeping many secrets, but by the end of this year, I believe we really need to express to the worldwide audience what the mysterious proposals we have are all about. Otherwise we will be in an extremely different position."
-Satoru Iwata


http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617814p1.html

So it's official. We should know pretty much everything by the time Xbox 360 launches and Sony will launch before Nintendo, but Nintendo won't be too late to the party (mid-2006).

[Alpha2]

Yeah they'll obviously need to release some info before the first Nextgen system launches if they hope to coax more people into waiting and saving their money for a later system, that's basically how the PS2 beat out the DC.

I'll need to be a nice big tasty carrot to lead people away though.

[io]

From:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617195p1.html


The machine features no digital audio out. Instead, it boasts a single proprietary output for video and audio.


No digital audio - strike one... Until I got my PS2 and hooked it to my surround sound system I didn't realize what I was missing with the GC (my receiver doesn't do the DPL II stuff). Make it just like a DVD player Nintendo - and no, I don't have any interest in using it to play DVD's, but it would be nice to have audio like it was from a DVD. Oh and strike 2 on the whole "proprietary" cable stuff - now we have to order something they may decide one day to drop support for?


The output looks exactly like the component out on GameCube. We asked Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto if Revolution would play high-definition games and he told us that he wasn't sure if he was allowed to say yet. Still, we expect a bare minimum of 480p support and likely 720p or 1080i, too, given that previous comments from Nintendo execs suggested that the platform would be able to hook up to a computer monitor.


Hmmm... So no answer, really, to the questions early in this thread. I wonder, though, why they wouldn't say that it would support HD if they were planning to (they wouldn't have to give details, just say "yes")? Seems like this is the answer to give now if you AREN'T planning to support it. The speculation that follows is encouraging but certainly not definitive.

[gsr]

no digital audio, no HD..i'm out..Nintendo can f themselves on that lonely island they're on.

[WildWop]

From:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617195p1.html



No digital audio - strike one... Until I got my PS2 and hooked it to my surround sound system I didn't realize what I was missing with the GC (my receiver doesn't do the DPL II stuff). Make it just like a DVD player Nintendo - and no, I don't have any interest in using it to play DVD's, but it would be nice to have audio like it was from a DVD. Oh and strike 2 on the whole "proprietary" cable stuff - now we have to order something they may decide one day to drop support for?

The utility of a proprietary plug that handles HD and optical cable (see also: xbox) is determined by the software, not the hardware. The more games that are made supporting HD and digital audio, the more likely those cables would be sold in a normal distribution channel.

And don't blame Nintendo for DPLII because your system doesn't support it. A lot of PS2 games were running DPLII -- more so than any 5.1 signal coming from that system.

No wonder people mock Nintendo fans. It's like they sit around coordinating when and where they release their collective "WAAAAAAAAAH", and always decide to start whining way too early. Once they release the official specs, then you start whining. Until then, you're getting yourself worked up over absolutely nothing. Go outside, enjoy the spring weather.

[ArthurDigbySellers]

no digital audio, no HD..i'm out..Nintendo can f themselves on that lonely island they're on.

You were never in based on every post you have made about the Revo. Stop trolling.

[MorPhiend]

From:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/617/617195p1.html



No digital audio - strike one... Until I got my PS2 and hooked it to my surround sound system I didn't realize what I was missing with the GC (my receiver doesn't do the DPL II stuff). Make it just like a DVD player Nintendo - and no, I don't have any interest in using it to play DVD's, but it would be nice to have audio like it was from a DVD. Oh and strike 2 on the whole "proprietary" cable stuff - now we have to order something they may decide one day to drop support for?



Hmmm... So no answer, really, to the questions early in this thread. I wonder, though, why they wouldn't say that it would support HD if they were planning to (they wouldn't have to give details, just say "yes")? Seems like this is the answer to give now if you AREN'T planning to support it. The speculation that follows is encouraging but certainly not definitive.

You don't make sense. You're making definitive claims on something that hasn't been finalized and hasn't had any information released on it. Iwata and the rest even said that that wasn't the final box. It will be different. IGN also said there wasn't the monitor out on the back, but that is one of the few things we do know it will have - support for computer monitors. And you comlain about proprietary outs? Do you realize that that is what they have used since the SNES? That little grey rectangular plug with RCAs on the end is proprietary. You haven't had to buy one up until now. And even if you do have to buy one for HD, you are mixing things up. You obviously don't know what you are talking about. They said there is the one port. You have your cable for that. Are you suggesting they will take that one plug away?!? What the **** do you suggest that you plug the console in with then???

Like lebowsky said, you never were onboard. Grow up. Stop trolling.

[ArthurDigbySellers]

Oh and strike 2 on the whole "proprietary" cable stuff - now we have to order something they may decide one day to drop support for?

Name one current system that does not have a proprietary cable for their video out. You can't because there are none. The PS2, GC, and Xbox all use proprietary cables right now.

The PS3 will have HDMI out, but how many of us have HDMI sets? I sure don't. So I will have to use the other video out option on the PS3, which is proprietary. I'll bet the Xbox 360's video out is not industry standard either.

This has been the case for as long as I can remember. I think only a very early version of the PlayStation had actual industry standard composite ouputs.

[io]

You don't make sense. You're making definitive claims on something that hasn't been finalized and hasn't had any information released on it. Iwata and the rest even said that that wasn't the final box. It will be different. IGN also said there wasn't the monitor out on the back, but that is one of the few things we do know it will have - support for computer monitors. And you comlain about proprietary outs? Do you realize that that is what they have used since the SNES? That little grey rectangular plug with RCAs on the end is proprietary. You haven't had to buy one up until now. And even if you do have to buy one for HD, you are mixing things up. You obviously don't know what you are talking about. They said there is the one port. You have your cable for that. Are you suggesting they will take that one plug away?!? What the **** do you suggest that you plug the console in with then???

Like lebowsky said, you never were onboard. Grow up. Stop trolling.

Wow, my first flaming! Look, guys, setlle down. I love Nintendo and have been a big GC fanboy. I felt BAD buying a PS2 and putting it up there next to the GC. I think the GC has better graphics, and overall, better games, than the PS2, which is why I'd be upset if they don't support HD and Sony passes them. I simply wanted to bring the topic back up again since we had talked about it before the unveiling and Nintendo definitely did not enlighten us on that aspect. I think the rest of the system info that we have is wonderful - I'm just being a worried fanboy about that last bit that *could* make it a GREAT system.

About the cable thing - OK, I could have been more clear. Yes, they are all proprietary (though I don't know jack about the Xbox), but you can't buy the Gamecube component cables anywhere but off the Nintendo site - as I said WAY back in this thread I think that was a GOOD move by Nintendo for the GC, as HD enthusiasts would gladly shell out the extra money directly to Nintendo to get the best possible picture (no one flamed me for that). However, I think it is a mistake in the next gen - this was a follow-up to my previous thoughts when we saw the proprietary cable (of course, 3rd party support might be around this time so we don't have to go through Nintendo - not that it is THAT big of a deal, just annoying). I bought my 3rd party PS2 cables at a regular store, and the digital audio IS a standard cable. That's what I meant anyway... Sorry, mixed that all up a bit.

And about the audio - maybe I am blaming them for having a fairly non-standard type of surround sound that my system doesn't support - that is why I specifically mentioned DVD-like sound being a plus (digital, 5.1, etc). I got my receiver a LONG time ago for DVD's. I'm not too into the audio equipment, but I do know that the PS2 plugged right into the second optical input that I had and it works wonderfully - and that made an impression. My DVD's and my PS2 *still* work great on it and I don't see all DVD's and the like switching to DPL II. I wasn't about to buy another receiver just for games as I would have for the GC. I'm sure all newer receivers support DPL II (don't know, don't care as mine works fine enough). HOWEVER, I will be a man and take credit for a little whine on that point. The audio is not as important (to me) as the picture anyway, so no big deal.

But geez, just chill guys. I'm sure it will all work out - it just seems odd that if HD support is planned and already in the design they woulld just say so - what's the big deal? They don't have to say what resolution or anything (as I understand them being hush-hush about specs). I'm simply saying that it makes me nervous that MAYBE, just MAYBE, it won't be supported. THAT IS ALL. Nothing DEFINITIVE - it is all speculation.

AGAIN, I love Nintendo games - my kids love Nintendo games. Also, until the GC, I have not had a console since the Colecovision (and briefly, a NES) so bringing SNES or N64 into it in means nothing to me (they all had this, or they all had that).

Finally, MorPhiend, lebowsky was talking about someone else in his quote - I'm hardly "trolling". Like I said, I love Nintendo. I hardly think anything I said required telling me to "grow up". Very wierd. A little anger management (and really, why get angry over this at all?) might have saved the incoherence at the end there - I don't know what you are talking about with all the cable business. I haven't had to buy one up till now? What? I sure bought SOMETHING extra through Nintendo's web site. Are you saying I can use the component cable I already have for my GC in the Revo? Maybe, but like you said, nothing is definite - they might very well change it. And I might still want my GC hooked up to another HDTV at some point.

[MorPhiend]

Wow, my first flaming! Look, guys, setlle down. I love Nintendo and have been a big GC fanboy. I felt BAD buying a PS2 and putting it up there next to the GC. I think the GC has better graphics, and overall, better games, than the PS2, which is why I'd be upset if they don't support HD and Sony passes them.

About the cable thing - OK, I could have been more clear. Yes, they are all proprietary (though I don't know jack about the Xbox), but you can't buy the Gamecube component cables anywhere but off the Nintendo site - as I said WAY back in this thread I think that was a GOOD move by Nintendo for the GC, as HD enthusiasts would gladly shell out the extra money directly to Nintendo to get the best possible picture (no one flamed me for that). However, I think it is a mistake in the next gen - this was a follow-up to my previous thoughts when we saw the proprietary cable (of course, 3rd party support might be around this time so we don't have to go through Nintendo - not that it is THAT big of a deal, just annoying). I bought my 3rd party PS2 cables at a regular store, and the digital audio IS a standard cable. That's what I meant anyway... Sorry, mixed that all up a bit.

And about the audio - maybe I am blaming them for having a fairly non-standard type of surround sound that my system doesn't support - that is why I specifically mentioned DVD-like sound being a plus (digital, 5.1, etc). I got my receiver a LONG time ago for DVD's. I'm not too into the audio equipment, but I do know that the PS2 plugged right into the second optical input that I had and it works wonderfully - and that made an impression. My DVD's and my PS2 *still* work great on it and I don't see all DVD's and the like switching to DPL II. I wasn't about to buy another receiver just for games as I would have for the GC. I'm sure all newer receivers support DPL II (don't know, don't care as mine works fine enough). HOWEVER, I will be a man and take credit for a little whine on that point. The audio is not as important (to me) as the picture anyway, so no big deal.

But geez, just chill guys. I'm sure it will all work out - it just seems odd that if HD support is planned and already in the design they woulld just say so - what's the big deal? They don't have to say what resolution or anything (as I understand them being hush-hush about specs). I'm simply saying that it makes me nervous that MAYBE, just MAYBE, it won't be supported. THAT IS ALL. Nothing DEFINITIVE - it is all speculation.

AGAIN, I love Nintendo games - my kids love Nintendo games. Also, until the GC, I have not had a console since the Colecovision (and briefly, a NES) so bringing SNES or N64 into it in means nothing to me (they all had this, or they all had that).

Finally, MorPhiend, lebowsky was talking about someone else in his quote - I'm hardly "trolling". Like I said, I love Nintendo. I hardly think anything I said required telling me to "grow up". Very wierd. A little anger management (and really, why get angry over this at alll?) might have saved the incoherence at the end there - I don't know what you are talking about with all the cable business. I haven't had to buy one up till now? What? I sure bought SOMETHING extra through Nintendo's web site. Are you saying I can use the component cable I already have for my GC in the Revo? Maybe, but like you said, nothing is definite - they might very well change it. And I might still want my GC hooked up to another HDTV at some point.

Heh. What do you know? I must have seen WildWop's quote and skipped down to lebowsky's answer. For that I do apologize for. I've had some long days at work this week and as a result, have not been quite as on my toes as usual. Sorry.

But as for the rest, I still read it the same as I did before, but hey, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt there and agree that there was simple miscommunication. But I really don't see Nintendo not going for high quality (HD support). I mean they have confirmed monitor support out of the box, Wi-Fi online out of the box - why would they skimp on an aspect that is clearly where the market is going to be and on something that they themselves have already incorporated in the past?

But we don't know. And I don't think that that is reason to worry. They have no urgency to tell about the different pieces of the machine. We will likely hear about the CPU, VPU, (PPU?), RAM, memory bandwidth, cache, output, input, (cooling system?), etc. all at the same time. It is good for them to let us know that we will playing games online for free from day one. It is good to let us know that we will have a whole back catalog of nostalgic masterpieces available for download. But what good is it going to do to tell us what is inside? The system will be more powerful than GCN. Until we see it in action, that is all that makes sense. As we have seen with Sony every generation, numbers mean nothing (their console has a year yet before release and we already pretty much know that what they have shown is again overinflated hype). So, yeah - we don't know. But I would chalk that up to Nintendo being confident that everyone would take certain features for granted - they don't feel a need to announce it. Certain things are just expected and I see no reason to worry about it.

[io]

Heh. What do you know? I must have seen WildWop's quote and skipped down to lebowsky's answer. For that I do apologize for. I've had some long days at work this week and as a result, have not been quite as on my toes as usual. Sorry.

Well, I understood it was a mistake - it was just your additional commentary in response to it that upset me. No problem now, though :D


But as for the rest, I still read it the same as I did before, but hey, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt there and agree that there was simple miscommunication. But I really don't see Nintendo not going for high quality (HD support). I mean they have confirmed monitor support out of the box, Wi-Fi online out of the box - why would they skimp on an aspect that is clearly where the market is going to be and on something that they themselves have already incorporated in the past?

But we don't know. And I don't think that that is reason to worry. They have no urgency to tell about the different pieces of the machine. We will likely hear about the CPU, VPU, (PPU?), RAM, memory bandwidth, cache, output, input, (cooling system?), etc. all at the same time. It is good for them to let us know that we will playing games online for free from day one. It is good to let us know that we will have a whole back catalog of nostalgic masterpieces available for download. But what good is it going to do to tell us what is inside? The system will be more powerful than GCN. Until we see it in action, that is all that makes sense. As we have seen with Sony every generation, numbers mean nothing (their console has a year yet before release and we already pretty much know that what they have shown is again overinflated hype). So, yeah - we don't know. But I would chalk that up to Nintendo being confident that everyone would take certain features for granted - they don't feel a need to announce it. Certain things are just expected and I see no reason to worry about it.

Fair enough - I agree (to most of it)... If they have HD support, then obviously I'm happy. I don't think we can *assume* it will at this point though - for just the reasons you give. Why tout the Wi-Fi, the monitor support, and all the rest but evade the HD issue? I'm certainly thinking they WILL support it, just not 100% sure. It seems you think it is important as well, so there we agree. If they DON'T support it then you will be disappointed, too, I assume? So in 2 months, or 6 months, or maybe a year from now we can rejoice or be upset together - until then we can let it go.

In response to WildWop (I kind of conflated yours and his responses in mine), since he was the one with the "Waaah" response to what I said (hardly warranted I think), I WILL retract what I said in my previous response about DPLII. Sorry, that don't cut it if Nintendo wants this system to be an entertainment hub, all-in-one system (e.g., wifi, computer monitor support, DVD playback, etc). They should have digital audio (I'm no audiophile, but I know that DPLII, while digital in parts, is mixed together into the standard stereo cables and then recreated by the receiver and thus loses some quality vs all-digital and doesn't have quite the same appeal as 5.1). I remember reading early reviews/comparisons of the GC to PS2/Xbox and this deficiency was routinely put down. It didn't matter too much in 2001/2002, but I think it is more important going forward. Not critical, mind you, but I AM disappointed they don't have an optical audio output. I have a right to not be completely head-over-heels in love with every aspect of every product from Nintendo, after all :D. It certainly isn't a deal-breaker (thus "strike one"). If they dropped component/progressive scan support as well it might be - I'd certainly wait until it dropped in price before picking it up (but will still get it eventually for the wonderful Nintendo franchises that we all enjoy so much!).

'nuff said - back to games (and Star Wars - can't get some of those scenes out of my head)...

[MorPhiend]

Right. I will be disappointed (even though I do not yet own one, it will be the next TV purchase I make - why buy anything else? :dunce: ). But if they do not support HD, about all I can do is shake my tiny fist at them, fork over the dough and then take what they give me. But I doubt that Nintendo would be so cruel. They are a happy company, afterall!

http://img167.echo.cx/img167/8453/miyamotocandysmaller7rl.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

[io]

Right. I will be disappointed (even though I do not yet own one, it will be the next TV purchase I make - why buy anything else? :dunce: ). But if they do not support HD, about all I can do is shake my tiny fist at them, fork over the dough and then take what they give me. But I doubt that Nintendo would be so cruel. They are a happy company, afterall!



Happy Happy Joy Joy!

(They really are, aren't they? :D)

[Alpha2]

Scarily happy.

[Scorch]

The fighting in Zelda looks worse than ever.. hit *game pause*.. hit *pause* hit *pause* hit *pause*.. watch the Zelda booth tour over at GameTrailers.com.. it's a good half second freeze.. unbelievable

And for god's sake, link the picture, don't embed it.. you're stretching out the forum tables

[Parathod]

The fighting in Zelda looks worse than ever.. hit *game pause*.. hit *pause* hit *pause* hit *pause*.. watch the Zelda booth tour over at GameTrailers.com.. it's a good half second freeze.. unbelievable


They do it for dramatic affect, but it does seem out of place in a "realistic Zelda" game. I was actually more excited about this game going into E3 than coming out. I've only heard positive remarks from people who've played it, but i don't know if i'll like the transformations so much and 70 hours of gameplay is too long for a Zelda game. Also, are there any bright portions to this game? Every movie I seen seems to emphasize just how dark it will be.

[j.elles]

Another 4-6 months of development until gold master. So shut up. And complain later.

[Parathod]

I'm hoping it sets a new bar for the series.

[RAMSTORIA]

its not like the game will be 70 hours to beat, its 70 hours of gameplay, thats if you want all items, heart containers, and whatever other goodies they throw in the game, im sure the storyline will be much shorter than that

[Parathod]

I think OoT has the best pacing and difficulty level ever established in a game. Not too easy, not too hard, and always compelling. Any reports on the difficulty?

[j.elles]

70 hours where did that come from? Link me, because that's news to me. Not forums, i've seen that something at least semi-official. And

""Will there be cut scenes and voice talent this time? "

"Aonuma: I don't want Link to talk very much. Maybe I'll record my own voice and that will be Link's voice! [laughs] I'll have to learn how to speak English, of course.""

So in other words there might be voice acting, just no voice for Link. Which goes with what I was saying before about Bioware type games and them following that trend. (main charecter doesn't have voice acting but everyone else does) So this game might just kick a lot of ass. And as for the people who are iffy on the wolf thing, remember majora's mask. I prefer a wolf to a deku sprite.

[j.elles]

Found it

http://cube.ign.com/articles/606/606585p1.html

I wonder why this isn't in there current info page on nintendo.com. Because that's dam long. 2-3 times bigger then Ocarina of time. This game might just be one of the best RPG's to come out in the last couple years. Even though I love Jade Empire and Star Ocean: till the end of time, Zelda is my favorite game period.

[Alpha2]

the 70 hours is probably just an esitmate I'm sure the game can be completed in less time than that.

[thehuskerfan]

I want it to at least be a worthwhile 70 hrs.

[epobirs]

Sailing, sailing,,,

[CoffeeEdge]

Regarding the voice acting rumor...

I hope that, if they do indeed include voice acting in the game, that it is NOT in English of Japanese. I think what they should do is go the same route as Klonoa and Panzer Dragoon: have the characters speak, but entirely in a made-up language (Hylian, in this case). I think hearing these characters speak English or Japanese would take away a little of the game's immersion, for me. Recording "Hylian" dialog would be a smashing move, I think...

[MorPhiend]

Sailing, sailing,,,

:rofl:

Quality time with my GCN...:roll:



I agree coffee. (I wish they had kept the skeksis language in The Dark Crystal...:bomb: )

[Parathod]

I want it to at least be a worthwhile 70 hrs.

Exactly. For me, it's hard to picture an adventure game keeping its momentum up for 70 hours. If they could do it, it may just turn out to be the greatest game ever made, but if 35 of those hours is TP's equivalent to sailing, what's the point of having it other than saying "over 70 hours of gameplay!" on the back of the box. I think we all have exceedingly high expectations for this game and what them to be met in different ways.

[YeahRight13]

isnt the revolution backwards combatible with every game console that nintendo has ever made? i remembering hearing that on an episode of E3 of G4

[FriskyTanuki]

isnt the revolution backwards combatible with every game console that nintendo has ever made? i remembering hearing that on an episode of E3 of G4
No, it's only backwards compatible with the GC, but Nintendo will allow gamers to DL their NES, SNES, and N64 games.

[989boi]

It would be great if we was able to download gameboy and old sega games

[Parathod]

It's a possibility. I'm sure Nintendo won't be angry at other companies if they join their effort. The NES Classic line for GBA has games from Namco, Konami, and Hudson.

[RelentlessRolento]

i hope they allow for some DL of their older portables such as Virtual Boy (except i hop you can emulate in colors other than red... gahh)

[epobirs]

isnt the revolution backwards combatible with every game console that nintendo has ever made? i remembering hearing that on an episode of E3 of G4

No, it's directly compatible with GameCube, and the chipset will likely be a direct outgrowth of that with the same vendors doing the duties. The older stuff is being supported through emulation.

On that same basis there is a whole range of older platform librariess the competing machines might play host to. Sega and SNKwould likely be very interested in such an arrangement.

[epobirs]

i hope they allow for some DL of their older portables such as Virtual Boy (except i hop you can emulate in colors other than red... gahh)

What would be the point without the true 3D effect?

[MorPhiend]

No, it's directly compatible with GameCube, and the chipset will likely be a direct outgrowth of that with the same vendors doing the duties. The older stuff is being supported through emulation.

On that same basis there is a whole range of older platform librariess the competing machines might play host to. Sega and SNKwould likely be very interested in such an arrangement.

Oooo... I like that. I refrained for about fifteen years from buying a Neo Geo (seriously, who can afford that?). That would be nice...

[spoo]

SE not to Happy about Nintendo's Revolution iGames.

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2005/1535.html

While Wada has repeatedly emphasized the growing role of online gaming in the past, he acknowledged the new online features offered by the three next generation console were in fact troubling him. As an example he cited Nintendo's plan to offer a game download service upon launching its new platform Revolution next year. According to Wada, the question of how much profit would be distributed to third party publishers was still entirely opaque. In regard to the other hardware platforms, he explained it was still an open question who would have to shoulder the costs for the proposed online portals. He also could not see how the money would be shared or who would share it once a game had been sold.


Don't expect FFI-VI on the Revolution at this point.

[Reality's Fringe]

SE not to Happy about Nintendo's Revolution iGames.

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2005/1535.html

While Wada has repeatedly emphasized the growing role of online gaming in the past, he acknowledged the new online features offered by the three next generation console were in fact troubling him. As an example he cited Nintendo's plan to offer a game download service upon launching its new platform Revolution next year. According to Wada, the question of how much profit would be distributed to third party publishers was still entirely opaque. In regard to the other hardware platforms, he explained it was still an open question who would have to shoulder the costs for the proposed online portals. He also could not see how the money would be shared or who would share it once a game had been sold.


Don't expect FFI-VI on the Revolution at this point.




SE has yet to make a game worthy of what their name would imply. As a matter of fact, I don't think Square has made a decent game since FFX (which wasn't that great to begin with). It's been nothing but mediocrity since these two singularly great companies merged. I'd like to see Square-Enix support them, but it's really not that great of a loss.

*edit* Also note that the article says he was troubled by Nintendo's online plans, not that he was against/not participating in them.

[evilmax17]

SE not to Happy about Nintendo's Revolution iGames.

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2005/1535.html

While Wada has repeatedly emphasized the growing role of online gaming in the past, he acknowledged the new online features offered by the three next generation console were in fact troubling him. As an example he cited Nintendo's plan to offer a game download service upon launching its new platform Revolution next year. According to Wada, the question of how much profit would be distributed to third party publishers was still entirely opaque. In regard to the other hardware platforms, he explained it was still an open question who would have to shoulder the costs for the proposed online portals. He also could not see how the money would be shared or who would share it once a game had been sold.


Don't expect FFI-VI on the Revolution at this point.
It just seems like he's worried about proffit distribution, but the fact is that Nintendo hasn't released much of any info reguarding the Virtual Console aspect of Revolution, other than that "it's happening". Once further details get hammered out, we might see third party support.

I wouldn't rule it out until we get concrete info.

[j.elles]

Perfect world. Neo-Geo, 3do, and sega's systems, as well as hand helds. That would be great. And be a huge selling point. And the companies involved probably wouldn't be hard to convince. If Sega refuses that will mean that they haven't completly given up on the idea of a new console. But I think they have so I give it a 70/30 in favor of them coming on board.

[postaboy]

I have yet to play secret of mana, chrono trigger (I have it on psx, but loading sux), mario rpg, and final fantasy 1-3. If the Revoltuion let you download these game online, I'm definetly getting a revolution next year.