Ecofreak
01-19-2006, 10:00 PM
A very interesting article lifted off of EvilAvatar.com, which talks about Nintendo's strategy for success even though it doesn't official state it wants to regain the crown from Sony.
Note: This article is written by a non-Nintendo fan.
Disclaimer: I am not a Nintendo fan. Of all Nintendo systems, I only owned the NES, GBA, and briefly, the SNES. The N64 was a subject of my humor and the GameCube earned immediate contempt for its storage format and the vastly inadequate memory cards it came with (it took 3 or 4 to save a season of Madden with rosters on release). Regular readers of the site will have no doubt read many of my scathing comments about the Revolution controller design.
Gameplay has stagnated beyond the obvious sequelitis. What was the last major revolution in RTS development? Homeworld gave us 3D almost six years ago now. WarCraft III and Warlords: Battlecry gave us heroes about three years ago. Age of Empires III was so similar to Age of Empires II that many reviewers found themselves making sure they weren’t playing a graphics mod for the older game by accident. Where have first-person shooters gone? Great, we have realism. Now what? We had years of Quake games, then we had years of Half-Lifes, and then years of Counter-Strikes and Medals of Honor. Come on, developers and publishers, we need something fresh! And don’t even get me started on the pathetic state of the RPG market, things are as bad if not worse than during those years before BioWare and Black Isle came onto the scene.
Now here comes Nintendo into this situation. Whether through some sort of master genius trend anticipator, a corporate account with Miss Cleo’s psychic hotline, or sheer dumb luck, Nintendo has just the strategy to take advantage of the situation. The Revolution will be cheap. Rumors range from $200 to $250. It will be a game system, not an all-in-one multimedia home theater experience extraordinaire (with built-in blender and Blu-Ray drive) like the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Some of the points have been stated already but he does make some other convincing arguments.
Discuss!
Note: This article is written by a non-Nintendo fan.
Disclaimer: I am not a Nintendo fan. Of all Nintendo systems, I only owned the NES, GBA, and briefly, the SNES. The N64 was a subject of my humor and the GameCube earned immediate contempt for its storage format and the vastly inadequate memory cards it came with (it took 3 or 4 to save a season of Madden with rosters on release). Regular readers of the site will have no doubt read many of my scathing comments about the Revolution controller design.
Gameplay has stagnated beyond the obvious sequelitis. What was the last major revolution in RTS development? Homeworld gave us 3D almost six years ago now. WarCraft III and Warlords: Battlecry gave us heroes about three years ago. Age of Empires III was so similar to Age of Empires II that many reviewers found themselves making sure they weren’t playing a graphics mod for the older game by accident. Where have first-person shooters gone? Great, we have realism. Now what? We had years of Quake games, then we had years of Half-Lifes, and then years of Counter-Strikes and Medals of Honor. Come on, developers and publishers, we need something fresh! And don’t even get me started on the pathetic state of the RPG market, things are as bad if not worse than during those years before BioWare and Black Isle came onto the scene.
Now here comes Nintendo into this situation. Whether through some sort of master genius trend anticipator, a corporate account with Miss Cleo’s psychic hotline, or sheer dumb luck, Nintendo has just the strategy to take advantage of the situation. The Revolution will be cheap. Rumors range from $200 to $250. It will be a game system, not an all-in-one multimedia home theater experience extraordinaire (with built-in blender and Blu-Ray drive) like the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Some of the points have been stated already but he does make some other convincing arguments.
Discuss!