Curmudgeon Gamer
14 May 2008
NYT Crosswords vs CrossworDS
It's possible to take it for granted these days that, if it's a casual kind of game made for the DS and it's not published by Nintendo, then it's a sucky piece of trashware produced solely to cash in on the system's huge user base. And conversely, that Nintendo has produced a similar game that is much better.
That had been the case with Nintendogs (as opposed to Catz, Dogz, Horsez, and the horrifying "Babyz"), with the severely underrated Clubhouse Games, with the two Brain Age games... heck, the Sudoku applet in Brain Age is so clearly better than every other version of the puzzle on the DS that it brings one to a kind of despair. Why is Nintendo's Sudoku minigame so well-made when others' full Sudoku applications are so crappy? Putting these things together is not brain surgery. It's enough to make one wonder if Nintendo doesn't have a patent on non-stupid number grid entry on portable gaming computers (USPTO # 951827364).*
It would be easy to assume that Nintendo's version would be better than Majesco's. It is not, by a long shot.
From looking at the games, initial impressions would seem to indicate the usual first-party upstaging. Crossword DS has a brilliant interface nearly as good as Brain Age Sudoku, and with better character recognition despite having 16 more glyphs to distinguish. It's not obvious at first that Majesco's game HAS character recognition. Furthermore, that game's color schemes range an odious gamut from ugly to unreadable, while Nintendo notices that a crossword game that's not black boxes on white squares is a slight against the memory of Arthur Wynne.
Majesco's game commits a few other grave offenses, although they're only obvious compared to Nintendo's interface. NYT Crosswords shows only Across or Down clues at a time; Crosswords DS shows them both at once. NYT uses a thin-stemmed, seedy newsprint typeface for clues and what looks like hateful Comic Sans for entered letters; Crosswords DS uses sharp, thick-lined sans-serif characters for both. NYT uses annoying button assignments that make it far too easy to accidentally receive an irrevocable hint, and only offers one type of hint at that; Crosswords DS uses the book orientation popularized by Brain Age, ignores button presses in favor of a visual interface, and will give stuck players the option of seeing a single letter, a whole word, or even providing alternate, easier clues, ala GAMES Magazine's World's Most Ornery Crosswords. And while both programs offer more than a thousand puzzles, Crosswords DS also provides Word Search puzzles and Anagrams.
And yet, of the two, despite Nintendo's typical meticulous attention to usability, their product is far inferior where it counts. Ultimately, in a collection of crosswords, the quality of the puzzles is
paramount. The New York Times is just about the most respected source of puzzles out there, and Majesco's inclusion of several years of their output shows that, while they may not be the best at putting together an interface, they care about the puzzles themselves. And once gotten used to, the interface isn't really so bad.
The handwriting recognition particularly turns out to be pretty good when used, even if the drawing area is restricted to a small input box. The ugliness of the interface can be remedied by entering a code. This essential code is "up up down down B B Y Y," and instead of being hidden away on GameFAQs, it should be printed in large, boldface type on the front of the very box, just beneath the title. Thankfully, once entered it's saved to the game file, allowing players to forget the low-contrast sins of the original color scheme.
While NYT Crosswords features years of top-notch puzzles, ranging in difficulty from a relaxing pastime to uncommonly challenging, Crosswords DS's puzzles... well, to be honest, I don't really know how hard they become. You see, in the same way that Brain Age Sudoku starts out with only a selection of low and medium-difficulty puzzles available and a bunch more that must be unlocked, Crosswords DS also forces players to begin with easier puzzles before letting him tackle harder ones.
This wouldn't be so bad, except that the easy puzzles are grievously simple! We're talking 4x4 grids here, progressing up to 11x11 for the harder ones available at first. You should know that these puzzles are included in the game's puzzle count, so when the back of the box says over 1,000 puzzles, a good percentage of them is this slight fare. Even the New York Times Monday puzzles, the easiest of the lot in Majesco's title, are full-sized grids.
Furthermore, while the NYT clues are filled with the wit and cunning for which the Times crosswords are famous, Nintendo's clues honestly read like something better suited for elementary school students. Fill-in-the-blank clues are over-common, as well as slipshod "partial word" clues along the lines of "the farmer in the d _ _ _". While it's possible, should the player persevere through the featherweight stuff to get to the harder puzzles, that the package redeems itself, it is unlikely to match the New York Times' Will Shortz-edited output.
Yet even one of the subgames in Nintendo's package fall prey to this kind of shoddyness. The very first Anagrams puzzle accepts, and in fact requires, "lase," which is a real if obscure word defined by Answers.com in regards to lasers, yet rejects "ale." The Word Searches seem to be okay, although they are hampered by the fact that they're word searches, the decaffeinated coffee of word puzzles.
Were this a perfect world, or at least one less encumbered by exclusive licensing, we would have a game that combined Nintendo's wonderful interface with Majesco's formidable puzzle assortment. It's possible that the problems with Nintendo's game has to do with them trying to play to both kid and adult audiences, which would explain the near-beer clues and word search inclusion. I usually dispute claims that Nintendo's efforts to keep most of their games friendly to children ruins them for adults. For insecure adults, maybe. But in this case it certainly has.
* Don't look that number up; it's a joke.
That had been the case with Nintendogs (as opposed to Catz, Dogz, Horsez, and the horrifying "Babyz"), with the severely underrated Clubhouse Games, with the two Brain Age games... heck, the Sudoku applet in Brain Age is so clearly better than every other version of the puzzle on the DS that it brings one to a kind of despair. Why is Nintendo's Sudoku minigame so well-made when others' full Sudoku applications are so crappy? Putting these things together is not brain surgery. It's enough to make one wonder if Nintendo doesn't have a patent on non-stupid number grid entry on portable gaming computers (USPTO # 951827364).*
It would be easy to assume that Nintendo's version would be better than Majesco's. It is not, by a long shot.
From looking at the games, initial impressions would seem to indicate the usual first-party upstaging. Crossword DS has a brilliant interface nearly as good as Brain Age Sudoku, and with better character recognition despite having 16 more glyphs to distinguish. It's not obvious at first that Majesco's game HAS character recognition. Furthermore, that game's color schemes range an odious gamut from ugly to unreadable, while Nintendo notices that a crossword game that's not black boxes on white squares is a slight against the memory of Arthur Wynne.
Majesco's game commits a few other grave offenses, although they're only obvious compared to Nintendo's interface. NYT Crosswords shows only Across or Down clues at a time; Crosswords DS shows them both at once. NYT uses a thin-stemmed, seedy newsprint typeface for clues and what looks like hateful Comic Sans for entered letters; Crosswords DS uses sharp, thick-lined sans-serif characters for both. NYT uses annoying button assignments that make it far too easy to accidentally receive an irrevocable hint, and only offers one type of hint at that; Crosswords DS uses the book orientation popularized by Brain Age, ignores button presses in favor of a visual interface, and will give stuck players the option of seeing a single letter, a whole word, or even providing alternate, easier clues, ala GAMES Magazine's World's Most Ornery Crosswords. And while both programs offer more than a thousand puzzles, Crosswords DS also provides Word Search puzzles and Anagrams.
And yet, of the two, despite Nintendo's typical meticulous attention to usability, their product is far inferior where it counts. Ultimately, in a collection of crosswords, the quality of the puzzles is
paramount. The New York Times is just about the most respected source of puzzles out there, and Majesco's inclusion of several years of their output shows that, while they may not be the best at putting together an interface, they care about the puzzles themselves. And once gotten used to, the interface isn't really so bad.
The handwriting recognition particularly turns out to be pretty good when used, even if the drawing area is restricted to a small input box. The ugliness of the interface can be remedied by entering a code. This essential code is "up up down down B B Y Y," and instead of being hidden away on GameFAQs, it should be printed in large, boldface type on the front of the very box, just beneath the title. Thankfully, once entered it's saved to the game file, allowing players to forget the low-contrast sins of the original color scheme.
While NYT Crosswords features years of top-notch puzzles, ranging in difficulty from a relaxing pastime to uncommonly challenging, Crosswords DS's puzzles... well, to be honest, I don't really know how hard they become. You see, in the same way that Brain Age Sudoku starts out with only a selection of low and medium-difficulty puzzles available and a bunch more that must be unlocked, Crosswords DS also forces players to begin with easier puzzles before letting him tackle harder ones.
This wouldn't be so bad, except that the easy puzzles are grievously simple! We're talking 4x4 grids here, progressing up to 11x11 for the harder ones available at first. You should know that these puzzles are included in the game's puzzle count, so when the back of the box says over 1,000 puzzles, a good percentage of them is this slight fare. Even the New York Times Monday puzzles, the easiest of the lot in Majesco's title, are full-sized grids.
Furthermore, while the NYT clues are filled with the wit and cunning for which the Times crosswords are famous, Nintendo's clues honestly read like something better suited for elementary school students. Fill-in-the-blank clues are over-common, as well as slipshod "partial word" clues along the lines of "the farmer in the d _ _ _". While it's possible, should the player persevere through the featherweight stuff to get to the harder puzzles, that the package redeems itself, it is unlikely to match the New York Times' Will Shortz-edited output.
Yet even one of the subgames in Nintendo's package fall prey to this kind of shoddyness. The very first Anagrams puzzle accepts, and in fact requires, "lase," which is a real if obscure word defined by Answers.com in regards to lasers, yet rejects "ale." The Word Searches seem to be okay, although they are hampered by the fact that they're word searches, the decaffeinated coffee of word puzzles.
Were this a perfect world, or at least one less encumbered by exclusive licensing, we would have a game that combined Nintendo's wonderful interface with Majesco's formidable puzzle assortment. It's possible that the problems with Nintendo's game has to do with them trying to play to both kid and adult audiences, which would explain the near-beer clues and word search inclusion. I usually dispute claims that Nintendo's efforts to keep most of their games friendly to children ruins them for adults. For insecure adults, maybe. But in this case it certainly has.
* Don't look that number up; it's a joke.
Labels: crosswords, crosswordsds, ds, majesco, newyorktimes, nintendo, nyt, portable
--JohnH at 06:31
Comment
[ 0 ]
25 April 2008
Review: Impossible Mission (NDS)
I just finished a game I never finished almost a quarter century ago: Impossible Mission. My original experience was with a pirated copy (yes, pirated) on the Commodore 64. I just finished it on the Nintendo DS. Frankly, it's a little depressing.
Here's the gist of the game: collect pieces of punchcard keys from rooms guarded by lethal robots and then make it to a special room to stop a nuclear weapon launch. You can run, jump, search for keys, and use the computer terminals to reset lifts and disable the robots temporarily.
First, the very fact that this game is still being sold -- practically unchanged -- is alarming. I understand nostalgia, it's my personal excuse for playing this game, but how can this game be on store shelves in this day and age? My guess is that it's just simple enough to appeal to the casual Nintendo DS player. After all, the game involves only a few platform-mechanics in several barely-randomized rooms and some 30-odd puzzle pieces to find.
Second, the game is easier for everyone now because you can save at practically any moment and then reload later. Messed up a jump and lost 10 minutes off the countdown? No problem. Reload that save and it's like it never happened. You can (and I did) save-crawl the game to completion.
Additionally, the only novelty aside from the save game option, is a set of improved graphics. Purely cosmetic. The game even offers the option of playing with the original 8-bit graphics, which are strikingly neon-looking. I guess I've become accustomed to "realistic" graphics after all this time.
Finally, after all these years, I'm disappointed in the end-sequence. I thought there might be something significant to facing the madman, but here it's just a cut scene. SPOILER: He presses the button to launch the missile and you press another one to stop it. What drama! END SPOILER.
For $10, Impossible Mission for the Nintendo DS isn't bad. I'll settle for the comfort of striking this title off my list of uncompleted games.
Here's the gist of the game: collect pieces of punchcard keys from rooms guarded by lethal robots and then make it to a special room to stop a nuclear weapon launch. You can run, jump, search for keys, and use the computer terminals to reset lifts and disable the robots temporarily.
First, the very fact that this game is still being sold -- practically unchanged -- is alarming. I understand nostalgia, it's my personal excuse for playing this game, but how can this game be on store shelves in this day and age? My guess is that it's just simple enough to appeal to the casual Nintendo DS player. After all, the game involves only a few platform-mechanics in several barely-randomized rooms and some 30-odd puzzle pieces to find.
Second, the game is easier for everyone now because you can save at practically any moment and then reload later. Messed up a jump and lost 10 minutes off the countdown? No problem. Reload that save and it's like it never happened. You can (and I did) save-crawl the game to completion.
Additionally, the only novelty aside from the save game option, is a set of improved graphics. Purely cosmetic. The game even offers the option of playing with the original 8-bit graphics, which are strikingly neon-looking. I guess I've become accustomed to "realistic" graphics after all this time.
Finally, after all these years, I'm disappointed in the end-sequence. I thought there might be something significant to facing the madman, but here it's just a cut scene. SPOILER: He presses the button to launch the missile and you press another one to stop it. What drama! END SPOILER.
For $10, Impossible Mission for the Nintendo DS isn't bad. I'll settle for the comfort of striking this title off my list of uncompleted games.
--jvm at 13:18
Comment
[ 1 ]
10 March 2008
Super Smash Bros. Bawl
I went down to the local ConHugeCo GameStopPlaceStoreThing yesterday and picked up my copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the latest alternative the game industry has presented us for boring, painful life. All the way back, my mind was swirling with the possibilities: how would the workings of fate conspire this time to dash my hopes? Would the disc turn out to be broken neatly in two halves when I open the case? Would there be a wacky mix-up, and the game inside would be Sonic Riders? Would my car get sideswiped on the way back, leaving my organs strewn across the pavement, and as consciousness surrenders to death, would my copy of Smash Bros. Brawl lay sprawled mere inches from my rapidly stiffening arms? Would the game suck? Turns out none of this happened. Instead, the damn thing just doesn't work!
But it's just my Wii the game fails to work in. It works in my cousin's son's perfectly well, and at his place I was at least able to play the game for a couple of hours (under the disapproving glare of one of the visiting obnoxious local kids with which our street is cursed, they roam the road in packs). But whenever I tried to play it in my own Wii, the system would continually pop up one of those hateful "Disc is unreadable" errors, which Wiis present whether the disc's data is entirely opaque to the drive, or if even one byte of data is unreadable, drawing the whimsical ire of the Lockout Fairies.
Nintendo, at least, knows of the problem, and has a mechanism in place to handle repairs, and to their credit they provide free shipping and repair for affected systems. What they say is that, since the game is on a dual layer DVD, some systems whose lenses have gotten a bit dirty will fail to recognize the disc. This seems a little suspicious to me, since never before has a game disk failed to read in my Wii. In fact, it strikes me as more likely the result of a manufacturing flaw, whether one that directly makes dual layer discs unreadable, or maybe one that allows grime to get on the lens in the first place. Anyway, either way, the game still don't work.
And they considered the possibility that I might somehow enjoy the game on my cousin's son's Wii while mine is being fixed, because they want me to send my copy of Smash Bros. Brawl along with the system too.
But it's just my Wii the game fails to work in. It works in my cousin's son's perfectly well, and at his place I was at least able to play the game for a couple of hours (under the disapproving glare of one of the visiting obnoxious local kids with which our street is cursed, they roam the road in packs). But whenever I tried to play it in my own Wii, the system would continually pop up one of those hateful "Disc is unreadable" errors, which Wiis present whether the disc's data is entirely opaque to the drive, or if even one byte of data is unreadable, drawing the whimsical ire of the Lockout Fairies.
Nintendo, at least, knows of the problem, and has a mechanism in place to handle repairs, and to their credit they provide free shipping and repair for affected systems. What they say is that, since the game is on a dual layer DVD, some systems whose lenses have gotten a bit dirty will fail to recognize the disc. This seems a little suspicious to me, since never before has a game disk failed to read in my Wii. In fact, it strikes me as more likely the result of a manufacturing flaw, whether one that directly makes dual layer discs unreadable, or maybe one that allows grime to get on the lens in the first place. Anyway, either way, the game still don't work.
And they considered the possibility that I might somehow enjoy the game on my cousin's son's Wii while mine is being fixed, because they want me to send my copy of Smash Bros. Brawl along with the system too.
Labels: nintendo, repair, smashbrosbrawl, wii
--JohnH at 07:45
Comment
[ 1 ]
11 January 2008
Mario Artwork
My eldest son has been on a Mario 64 kick for a week or so. I'm no fan of the game, but it has been an obsession for him. In particular, his imagination has driven him to draw and color many Mario, Peach, and Bowser pictures at school and at home. Here is my favorite, a portrait of Mario that he brought home today.
--jvm at 20:37
Comment
[ 2 ]
22 November 2007
Zomb-wii
The Wii is gradually building up a list of games that interest me. Regrettably, they're all zombie games:
I'm tepid on Metroid Prime 3, mostly because the first one put me to sleep every time I tried to play it, but will still give it a run when I get a Wii. Even so, give the Wii another year and another three zombie games, and I'll buy one on that basis alone.
- Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
- Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
- House of the Dead 2 & 3
I'm tepid on Metroid Prime 3, mostly because the first one put me to sleep every time I tried to play it, but will still give it a run when I get a Wii. Even so, give the Wii another year and another three zombie games, and I'll buy one on that basis alone.
--jvm at 23:20
Comment
[ 8 ]
03 November 2007
Awesome: Game Boy Micro
I picked up a Game Boy Micro this week. Amazing piece of hardware. I know it doesn't play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but if I really need those I can try a GB-on-GBA emulator and my flash cartridge. As it is, the GBA library is plenty rich to justify this hardware as-is.
My only serious complaint is that it doesn't share the same power socket as the Nintendo DS, so the USB charging cable that Ruffin bought me (for the NDS) doesn't work. I'll live.
My only serious complaint is that it doesn't share the same power socket as the Nintendo DS, so the USB charging cable that Ruffin bought me (for the NDS) doesn't work. I'll live.
Labels: game boy micro, gba, nintendo
--jvm at 21:40
Comment
[ 6 ]
12 August 2007
The Wii nine months later, good and bad
Things I'm disappointed with concerning my Wii:
Positive things:
- Here we are approaching a year since the Wii's release, and so far Wii Sports remains the only game to use the message board, and only three games use Miis. This is a tremendous opportunity that's being wasted. Hearing about the problems EA had in getting access to the Mii feature for My Sims was troubling. It's not every day that EA even decides to try something new, to reject them for the attempt borders on criminal.
- Staying on the topic, how amazing is it that even now, the Wii game I and my friends play the most remains Wii Sports? We started with bowling (and still play it sometimes), after that we moved on to baseball, golf, then tennis. The only game on the disk whose charm has mostly eluded us is boxing, yet it's possible to see us playing even that.
- While I'm not as annoyed with "waggle" as some bloggers, it remains a fact that tacked-on remote functionality is a big problem. There is no reason that remote-swishing should block laser blasts in Lego Star Wars for the Wii, which isn't exactly a first-person game and was good enough as it was.
- Although their system is more than capable over the internet (and they have, by far, the best web browser among the consoles), Microsoft still easily beats them in online features, and with Nintendo's downloadable games effort still shrouded in scaffolding the 360 has a huge lead over them in new software. Settlers of Catan and Championship Pac-Man are almost enough to make me consider getting a 360 by themselves and are available now, but we're barely even sure what Nintendo's got lined up yet. So far we only have two channels available for download that didn't have placeholders (or full channels) on the screen at launch, and one of them is just a fancy advertisement for Metroid Prime 3.
Positive things:
- I'm more excited over Super Mario Galaxy than I have been over any game for a long time. It's good to see the series return to form. Smash Bros. Brawl is interesting, but we've seen little to indicate that it's going to be very different from Melee. That may be understandable, since in the end Melee was the most popular Gamecube game, but it's not exactly visionary.
- What we've seen in the way of the channels Nintendo has produced have been, generally, well-made. While it was singled out for complaints right after its release, Everybody Votes has been my most-used non-game channel, since there's only so much room on the system for Miis, and for news and weather I generally turn to the internet and the window, respectively. One sometimes learns disturbing things there too: when the world-wide question asked users if they had dreams for the future, "yes" understandably far outweighed "no" in all nations except three: Germany, Austria and Japan, in which places the split approached 50/50. I'm surprised sociologists haven't yet pounced upon this data.
- The Gamecube had a number of excellent games made for it that got dismissed out of hand solely because of the system's third-place position in the market. The second Paper Mario deserved so much better than it got. It is nice to see that, despite their lacking performance at the time, Nintendo is perfectly happy making sequels to those games. Super Paper Mario may not ultimately be the same kind of game, but it's got the same sense of humor and the same brilliant writing. Seeing it break a million units sold is almost enough to make me think justice has returned to the world.
- Finally, the most awesome aspect of the recent firmware update wasn't the clock (by a long shot) but unannounced USB keyboard support. This makes for a big change from the usual Nintendo policy regarding hardware, namely, to make users buy highly-profitable first-party accessories whenever possible. Here's hoping that the Internet Channel gets patched for keyboards soon, and that Nintendo realizes USB drives are a lot more convenient as a backup solution than SD cards.
--JohnH at 22:55
Comment
[ 6 ]
25 May 2007
Media Summit A-Go-Go
The big sites have mentioned they've been under another of those news embargos for the duration of Nintendo's big E3 replacement show. (I've registered my disdain for the news embargo system before.)
So, what was the big news that was so R0XX0RZ MEGAT0N that Nintendo would forcibly gag a legion of game press until the moment of midnight to release it?
THAT THERE WAS NO NEWS.
In the words of Joel Robinson, "Oh god! The joke's on us!"
So, what was the big news that was so R0XX0RZ MEGAT0N that Nintendo would forcibly gag a legion of game press until the moment of midnight to release it?
THAT THERE WAS NO NEWS.
In the words of Joel Robinson, "Oh god! The joke's on us!"
--JohnH at 15:33
Comment
[ 1 ]
14 May 2007
GameDaily: How Microsoft can win (if by win you mean lose)
I think you can rightly accuse me of being an occasional ivory tower pundit, but even I can see that this tripe from GameDaily is, well, tripe. Apparently Microsoft can take five steps to a definitive lead over Sony and Nintendo, and those steps can be summed up as "Lose money on everything."
The steps are:
They are not going to give up on making a profit -- I just don't think the company or shareholders are prepared to see another year or two of massive losses in the Xbox venture. They're not going to discount the one game that every owner -- or prospective owner -- will happily pay $60+ for this holiday season. They're not going to kill the Xbox Live goose which keeps laying those golden eggs. So far Microsoft hasn't shown the best judgment when it comes to buying studios (although Bungie turned out well), and the age of buying exclusive games has passed for now. More likely is that Microsoft should pay for exclusive bonuses for their version of a cross-platform game -- and that should be a lot cheaper than buying the whole game outright.
I understand the usual argument is that Microsoft can afford to lose money hand over fist, but does anyone really think that this reckless strategy is sound? Other than GameDaily, of course.
The steps are:
- Slash the price (i.e. lose money)
- Bundle Halo 3 for Holiday '07 (i.e. lose money)
- Make Xbox Live free (i.e. lose money)
- Acquire more studios, pay for exclusives (i.e. gamble)
- Enter the kiddie game market (i.e. go up against Nintendo on its own turf)
They are not going to give up on making a profit -- I just don't think the company or shareholders are prepared to see another year or two of massive losses in the Xbox venture. They're not going to discount the one game that every owner -- or prospective owner -- will happily pay $60+ for this holiday season. They're not going to kill the Xbox Live goose which keeps laying those golden eggs. So far Microsoft hasn't shown the best judgment when it comes to buying studios (although Bungie turned out well), and the age of buying exclusive games has passed for now. More likely is that Microsoft should pay for exclusive bonuses for their version of a cross-platform game -- and that should be a lot cheaper than buying the whole game outright.
I understand the usual argument is that Microsoft can afford to lose money hand over fist, but does anyone really think that this reckless strategy is sound? Other than GameDaily, of course.
Labels: business, microsoft, nintendo, sony, xbox360, xboxlive
--jvm at 21:27
Comment
[ 9 ]
03 May 2007
Virtual Console Adventures: The MK64 Bug
One of the things my local circle of gaming friends and I love is Mario Kart 64.
For my money SNES Mario Kart is a little better, but it's limited to two players. For multiplayer Mario Kart action, nothing matches the N64 version. Its battle mode provides a level of strategy unseen in what has become, in later installments of the series, a throwaway mode. Its race mode is also fairly awesome, despite some worrying design choices. It is a game that has kept us occupied for over a decade.
Last night, we were playing a few Mario Kart rounds on the Wii's Virtual Console, and we encountered a surprising flaw in the emulation. In one race on Moo Moo Farm, the game played at an obviously much higher speed than normal. I'm not talking about it just seeming faster through the Wii's increased framerate, it actually was a much faster race. The starting lights, instead of the measured "one... two... three", went by in less than a second, and during the race our velocities were likewise increased.
It was entertaining to play, once, but it wasn't accurate. We were lucky we were on Moo Moo Farm, a fairly laid-back course, and not, for example, Bowser's track. If we had been in a Grand Prix, a "real" game instead of a quick race, the playthrough would likely have been ruined.
Interestingly, the music and sound effects were not accelerated. One of us used a Star powerup during the game, and the invincibility music only had enough time to loop twice before the effect ran out. The next race, speeds returned to normal, and remained there until we stopped for the night.
We're not sure what circumstances triggered the speed-up. The story is that some people who have purchased Mario Kart 64 were later offered a mysterious update for it in the Wii Shop Channel. Nintendo is notoriously tight-lipped about what goes into these updates, and I hear that sometimes, like with Star Fox 64, they actually seem more like downgrades, rolling back some of Virtual Console's already-meager framerate improvements. If SF64 runs off the same emulator it is not unreasonable to assume that it will also suffer from speed spikes once in a while.
I'll probably check online for an update to see if it addresses the problem, but will it? It occurs so infrequently that we'll really never know if the flaw has been fixed or not unless it happens again. Nintendo has taken pains to keep the mechanics of Virtual Console hidden from the player, ostensibly for usability's sake, but there is a limit to what can be explained away in the name of simplicity, and it seems in this case that Nintendo is more trying to hide the details of Virtual Console's flaws by not talking about them.
But that is really a crappy way to treat one's customers. We deserve to know what the benefits and drawbacks to updating are before pressing the fatal button. C'mon Nintendo, give us some credit here.
For my money SNES Mario Kart is a little better, but it's limited to two players. For multiplayer Mario Kart action, nothing matches the N64 version. Its battle mode provides a level of strategy unseen in what has become, in later installments of the series, a throwaway mode. Its race mode is also fairly awesome, despite some worrying design choices. It is a game that has kept us occupied for over a decade.
Last night, we were playing a few Mario Kart rounds on the Wii's Virtual Console, and we encountered a surprising flaw in the emulation. In one race on Moo Moo Farm, the game played at an obviously much higher speed than normal. I'm not talking about it just seeming faster through the Wii's increased framerate, it actually was a much faster race. The starting lights, instead of the measured "one... two... three", went by in less than a second, and during the race our velocities were likewise increased.
It was entertaining to play, once, but it wasn't accurate. We were lucky we were on Moo Moo Farm, a fairly laid-back course, and not, for example, Bowser's track. If we had been in a Grand Prix, a "real" game instead of a quick race, the playthrough would likely have been ruined.
Interestingly, the music and sound effects were not accelerated. One of us used a Star powerup during the game, and the invincibility music only had enough time to loop twice before the effect ran out. The next race, speeds returned to normal, and remained there until we stopped for the night.
We're not sure what circumstances triggered the speed-up. The story is that some people who have purchased Mario Kart 64 were later offered a mysterious update for it in the Wii Shop Channel. Nintendo is notoriously tight-lipped about what goes into these updates, and I hear that sometimes, like with Star Fox 64, they actually seem more like downgrades, rolling back some of Virtual Console's already-meager framerate improvements. If SF64 runs off the same emulator it is not unreasonable to assume that it will also suffer from speed spikes once in a while.
I'll probably check online for an update to see if it addresses the problem, but will it? It occurs so infrequently that we'll really never know if the flaw has been fixed or not unless it happens again. Nintendo has taken pains to keep the mechanics of Virtual Console hidden from the player, ostensibly for usability's sake, but there is a limit to what can be explained away in the name of simplicity, and it seems in this case that Nintendo is more trying to hide the details of Virtual Console's flaws by not talking about them.
But that is really a crappy way to treat one's customers. We deserve to know what the benefits and drawbacks to updating are before pressing the fatal button. C'mon Nintendo, give us some credit here.
Labels: bugs, classic, emulation, mariokart, mariokart64, nintendo, pr, virtualconsole, wii
--JohnH at 10:57
Comment
[ 8 ]
08 April 2007
Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP: Game pricing update
With the basic PSP dropping to $169.99, I felt it was time to see what had changed since I did some rudimentary number crunching on Nintendo DS and Sony PSP game prices five months ago. Not only has the system price dropped, but publishers have abandoned $50 PSP games. Average PSP game prices have shifted down $2.16, although it still has more high priced games than the Nintendo DS. During the same period, average DS game prices have come down about $1.68.
Here's the key result:
Some of the drop in the average PSP game price can be attributed to the disappearance of $49.99 games. In November 2006, the PSP had one such game. Removing just that one game from the November data would have dropped the average price of a PSP game by $0.16.
The only PSP game that currently lists for $49.99 is the PSP version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an unreleased game slated for a December 2007 launch. (As it is unreleased, it isn't figured in the numbers shown in this article.)
Other points of interest:
The disappearance of the $50 game makes things a bit harder for publishers on the PSP. Being able to charge $50 for a PSP game was one advantage that system had over the DS. It would be interesting to know if publishers have made a pricing decision based on market conditions or whether Sony has set a $40 ceiling on PSP game prices. I suspect that Nintendo generally won't let publishers charge $40 on the Nintendo DS, although an exception has clearly been made for Final Fantasy III DS.
Now that the $50 option is missing, the big name PSP titles launch at $40. Moreover, I suspect that some publishers are less likely to stay at $40 as long when there are no games in the higher $50 bracket. Notably, even Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories can command only a $30 price tag six months after it was released; by comparison, Liberty City Stories stayed at $50 for almost the entire first year after its release.
I look forward to examining sales data over the coming months to see if the hardware and software price adjustments affect PSP sales.
Feel free to download the data for yourself: OpenOffice ODS, plaintext CSV.
Here's the key result:
| Average Game Price | Mid-Nov 2006 | Mid-Apr 2007 |
| DS | $28.97 | $27.29 |
| PSP | $31.97 | $29.83 |
Some of the drop in the average PSP game price can be attributed to the disappearance of $49.99 games. In November 2006, the PSP had one such game. Removing just that one game from the November data would have dropped the average price of a PSP game by $0.16.
The only PSP game that currently lists for $49.99 is the PSP version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an unreleased game slated for a December 2007 launch. (As it is unreleased, it isn't figured in the numbers shown in this article.)
Other points of interest:
- EB Games lists 102 new games for the Nintendo DS and 94 new games for the PSP. This doesn't count out-of-stock and unreleased games, so the numbers could shift 2-3 games either way in a day's time.
- The median game price for each system is $29.99.
- About 33% of all PSP games retail for under $25. Around 41% of Nintendo DS games are below the $25 level.
- About 1/3 of all PSP games retail for $39.99. Only one Nintendo DS game sells for that price (Final Fantasy III DS), while about 23% of Nintendo DS games retail for over $30.
- 18 out of 22 Nintendo DS games priced at $34.99 are Nintendo-published games.
The disappearance of the $50 game makes things a bit harder for publishers on the PSP. Being able to charge $50 for a PSP game was one advantage that system had over the DS. It would be interesting to know if publishers have made a pricing decision based on market conditions or whether Sony has set a $40 ceiling on PSP game prices. I suspect that Nintendo generally won't let publishers charge $40 on the Nintendo DS, although an exception has clearly been made for Final Fantasy III DS.Now that the $50 option is missing, the big name PSP titles launch at $40. Moreover, I suspect that some publishers are less likely to stay at $40 as long when there are no games in the higher $50 bracket. Notably, even Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories can command only a $30 price tag six months after it was released; by comparison, Liberty City Stories stayed at $50 for almost the entire first year after its release.
I look forward to examining sales data over the coming months to see if the hardware and software price adjustments affect PSP sales.
Feel free to download the data for yourself: OpenOffice ODS, plaintext CSV.
--jvm at 01:36
Comment
[ 7 ]
21 February 2007
Gamespot Virtually Reviews Virtual Console game
Gamespot's review of last week's foremost Virtual Console release, Kirby's Adventure, is deficient in a surprising way. In particular, I'm not sure they played the game. The result is that they say something clearly false, something that a reviewer should know after playing the game.
After taking pains to tell us that the game's major fault is its short length, that it can "be beaten in a single evening" (possible, if you do nothing else for several hours) it tells us that the game has a bit of replay value since, by finding all the hidden switches, the player can get a better ending.
This is not true. More recent Kirby games have instituted this as the incentive for finding all the secrets, but the ones directed by Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai (the Smash Bros. guy), which includes Kirby's Adventure, use new game modes as their super-lockables. In Kirby's Adventure, this is the challenging "Extra Game," which is the answer to Gamespot's other problem with Kirby's Adventure, that it is too easy.
But let's stick with the true problem, why Gamespot's review is wrong:
It also casts doubt on the validity of their score of 7.3, for what is one of the best games on the NES.
After taking pains to tell us that the game's major fault is its short length, that it can "be beaten in a single evening" (possible, if you do nothing else for several hours) it tells us that the game has a bit of replay value since, by finding all the hidden switches, the player can get a better ending.
This is not true. More recent Kirby games have instituted this as the incentive for finding all the secrets, but the ones directed by Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai (the Smash Bros. guy), which includes Kirby's Adventure, use new game modes as their super-lockables. In Kirby's Adventure, this is the challenging "Extra Game," which is the answer to Gamespot's other problem with Kirby's Adventure, that it is too easy.
But let's stick with the true problem, why Gamespot's review is wrong:
There is no better ending. They did not play the game through.Maybe someone relied on a faint memory of the game from the NES era, but considering that they say the game is short, there is really no excuse for them not having played through it again. The reviewer should have known there was no better ending to be had.
It also casts doubt on the validity of their score of 7.3, for what is one of the best games on the NES.
Labels: gamespot, media, nintendo, virtual console
--JohnH at 15:45
Comment
[ 1 ]
09 February 2007
The best selling game systems of all time
In a business whose headlines are dominated by the hardware and software sales of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, it helps to have a little perspective. In this case, the needed context is probably in your pocket right now.
Let's review some numbers. In the last two generations, Sony has sold over 230 million PlayStation-branded game machines. Nintendo has sold nearly 400 million from its home consoles -- NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube -- to its long-dominant handheld systems -- Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. While it has only had a console on shelves since 2001, Microsoft has already racked up combined sales of over 30 million of its two Xbox systems.
Yet these are not the game systems most people own. Their game systems don't say Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony. They say Nokia or Motorola or Samsung. (Ok, some of them actually do say Sony: Sony Erricsson. But they're still relatively small.) Even the cheapest phones can play some form of Tetris nowadays and many are far, far more capable.
According to Strategy Analytics, over one billion mobile phones shipped during all of 2006. In all of 2006, the leading vendor, Nokia, shipped almost 350 million phones. Those numbers are just staggering when compared to the sales of dedicated game systems. For example, if we consider all the systems shipped by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo since 1983 and compare to just the mobile phone shipments in 2006 we get the following:
In fact, if we combine the numbers for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo and stack that up against the mobile phone shipments, it's still not much of a contest.
According to NPD, the dedicated videogame market made an estimated $6.5 billion on software last year alone. With over a billion phones shipped in 2006, is it any surprise that analysts regularly predict that the mobile game market will eventually hit $10 billion a year in the near future?
Let's review some numbers. In the last two generations, Sony has sold over 230 million PlayStation-branded game machines. Nintendo has sold nearly 400 million from its home consoles -- NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube -- to its long-dominant handheld systems -- Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. While it has only had a console on shelves since 2001, Microsoft has already racked up combined sales of over 30 million of its two Xbox systems.
Yet these are not the game systems most people own. Their game systems don't say Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony. They say Nokia or Motorola or Samsung. (Ok, some of them actually do say Sony: Sony Erricsson. But they're still relatively small.) Even the cheapest phones can play some form of Tetris nowadays and many are far, far more capable.
According to Strategy Analytics, over one billion mobile phones shipped during all of 2006. In all of 2006, the leading vendor, Nokia, shipped almost 350 million phones. Those numbers are just staggering when compared to the sales of dedicated game systems. For example, if we consider all the systems shipped by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo since 1983 and compare to just the mobile phone shipments in 2006 we get the following:
In fact, if we combine the numbers for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo and stack that up against the mobile phone shipments, it's still not much of a contest.According to NPD, the dedicated videogame market made an estimated $6.5 billion on software last year alone. With over a billion phones shipped in 2006, is it any surprise that analysts regularly predict that the mobile game market will eventually hit $10 billion a year in the near future?
--jvm at 14:46
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[ 9 ]
13 January 2007
Wii expands the GameCube market? Feh.
Mike pointed me to an article I missed in Thursday's updates to Next-Gen.biz: O3 Still Loving GameCube. It brings up an angle on backward compatibility that I don't recall being raised back when we last discussed its importance: it expands the base of the older platform, and therefore opens possibilities for smaller publishers to make some money.
O3 is bringing a Japanese shooter on the GameCube called Radio Allergy and depending on the Wii to expand the potential audience. That's a neat theory, but I don't think I really believe Wii players will be browsing the GameCube section of their stores enough to pick up cheap games. Sure, I know that I will do precisely that, but one thing the commenters on this blog have made painfully clear is that my habits are often widely divergent from the typical consumer habits. I suspect this is one of those cases.
We have a precedent, of course: the PlayStation 2 transition period. There we had nearly perfect backward compatibility and a successful system leading into yet another successful system. However, the kind of games that smaller publishers brought out were often quite poor. In O3's defense, I have no idea whether their game will be brilliant or ridiculously bad.
I hate to pick on Mud Duck Productions, since they at least have a nifty name, but their post-PS2 output for the PSOne is typical of what I expect will happen to publishers who look to the GameCube and Wii as one platform: cheap, one-off games like Qix Neo and Puzznic that sell for $10 and languish on shelves for years. (I think their pre-PS2 game Gubble falls into the same category, but I digress.) I just don't see Wii players jumping at the chance to own similar quality GameCube games.
There might actually be a profit in such ventures, especially if the production values are low enough and the number of gullible buyers is high enough*, but this isn't some sort of GameCube renaissance waiting to happen. The next time you see a really great game on a GameCube, it will probably be a homebrew title created by a fan somewhere around 2012.
* Yes, I own Qix Neo. I'm making my own library of games, for crying out loud, and that means getting everything, good and bad. I try not to pay too much for the dreck, naturally.
O3 is bringing a Japanese shooter on the GameCube called Radio Allergy and depending on the Wii to expand the potential audience. That's a neat theory, but I don't think I really believe Wii players will be browsing the GameCube section of their stores enough to pick up cheap games. Sure, I know that I will do precisely that, but one thing the commenters on this blog have made painfully clear is that my habits are often widely divergent from the typical consumer habits. I suspect this is one of those cases.
We have a precedent, of course: the PlayStation 2 transition period. There we had nearly perfect backward compatibility and a successful system leading into yet another successful system. However, the kind of games that smaller publishers brought out were often quite poor. In O3's defense, I have no idea whether their game will be brilliant or ridiculously bad.
I hate to pick on Mud Duck Productions, since they at least have a nifty name, but their post-PS2 output for the PSOne is typical of what I expect will happen to publishers who look to the GameCube and Wii as one platform: cheap, one-off games like Qix Neo and Puzznic that sell for $10 and languish on shelves for years. (I think their pre-PS2 game Gubble falls into the same category, but I digress.) I just don't see Wii players jumping at the chance to own similar quality GameCube games.
There might actually be a profit in such ventures, especially if the production values are low enough and the number of gullible buyers is high enough*, but this isn't some sort of GameCube renaissance waiting to happen. The next time you see a really great game on a GameCube, it will probably be a homebrew title created by a fan somewhere around 2012.
* Yes, I own Qix Neo. I'm making my own library of games, for crying out loud, and that means getting everything, good and bad. I try not to pay too much for the dreck, naturally.
--jvm at 00:57
Comment
[ 5 ]
20 December 2006
Videogame gaffes and blunders of the year, director's cut
Next-gen.biz kindly asked me to reprise my curmudgeon role for an end-of-year post, and I obliged. The result has now been posted here.
To all who offered editorial comments on various topics this year -- Ruffin, John H., Michael, Dustin, and Kyle -- thanks for the help! Hopefully I remembered everyone.
Some bits ended up on the cutting room floor and I thought they'd be worth sharing. I should emphasize, perhaps, that everything past this point is mine, not Next-Gen.biz's, so if you want to yell at someone (or sue someone, if that's your thing), I'm your guy. In fact, if you just want to yell at someone, the comments are always open.
To all who offered editorial comments on various topics this year -- Ruffin, John H., Michael, Dustin, and Kyle -- thanks for the help! Hopefully I remembered everyone.
Some bits ended up on the cutting room floor and I thought they'd be worth sharing. I should emphasize, perhaps, that everything past this point is mine, not Next-Gen.biz's, so if you want to yell at someone (or sue someone, if that's your thing), I'm your guy. In fact, if you just want to yell at someone, the comments are always open.
- The name - Originally I called the list "The 2006 Nelsons" after Nelson Muntz and his immortal "ha-ha" laugh. That got nixed (as I half-expected, but I held out hope until the end). My second choice was to award #1 the prestigious 2006 Foo Cup (say it out loud) and the others could be the 9 runners up. Apparently that didn't make it either. Gaffes and blunders it is!
- Linkification - The original version had well over fifty links (all internal to next-gen.biz, incidentally) which were changed to just standard text. I'd rather hoped they'd make it, because they provide the documentation for everything I wrote, and for the sake of business didn't go off-site. Ah well.
- The text went through several revisions. This bit about Nintendo never made it into any final drafts, but is pretty high on my list of flubs this year.
Wii was region-free before it wasn't - What's worse than a region-locked console? Announcing a console is region-free and then correcting yourself to make it to region-locked. That's what Perrin Kaplan and Nintendo did to us with the Wii this year. I'm still angry about that one.
- The following was one of the entries, but got edited out. Along with this, I also considered putting in the big brouhaha over the Neverwinter Nights 2 review on 1UP and this bit by Simon Carless on how Xbox 360 sales were reported (poorly). Anyway, here's what got cut:
Blogger Ethics Panel to Convene Soon - In September the popular videogame blog, Joystiq, posted about "a scoop for some important news with one of the next-generation consoles." Leaving details to the overactive imaginations of an army of commenters and forum fanboys, post author Robert Summa assured everyone that "this announcement is something worth waiting for." Was it a secret, unannounced feature of the Nintendo Wii? Was Microsoft going to announce that Halo 3 would be on shelves this holiday season? Maybe Sony would relent, drop the price, and put the PlayStation 3 within reach of upper middle class Americans with spotless credit ratings. Not to be left out, rival blog Kotaku's Brian Crecente posted about the upcoming announcement, saying "expect to hear some kinda interesting news about a very interesting upcoming console", but similarly gave away no details.
What was that burning scoop? Here it is: "IBM announced that their Broadway chip custom-designed for Nintendo's Wii console has been shipping to Nintendo's since July."
Oh, the humanity!
Predictably, the firestorm sparked by this little stunt was ferocious. Robert Summa was summarily fired (yes, bloggers sometimes get paid) and Joystiq editor Chris Grant posted an apology. Summa shortly appeared on another site, Destructoid, and penned what amounted to a "f--k you" farewell to Joystiq, tastefully incorporating Martin Luther King Jr's famous "Free at last" speech and a picture of Mel Gibson in a battle skirt.
And they wonder why we think the videogame press is less than professional sometimes... - Hurricane Jack - When I wrote about Jack Thompson, I used the term Hurricane Jack to refer to him, since he hit the Gulf states of Louisiana and Florida. That term got nixed in the editing.
- Core Design and the Tomb Raider trailer - I wanted to include the mess surrounding the Tomb Raider PSP trailer that showed up this summer. I wrote a two long posts about: original post and the update. Unfortunately, one of the ground rules for the article was that I had to stick to facts, and unfortunately neither Core nor SCi/Eidos have provided a definitive version of just what did happen. We will probably never know exactly what it was, but you can at least read my take on it.
- Other ideas that didn't make the cut - Capcom's ongoing struggle to use larger fonts (in Dead Rising and Lost Planet), Nintendo DS absolutely destroying the PSP month after month, the coming rush of ridiculous MMOGs (Romero, Cartoon Network, James Cameron, and Dave Perry).
--jvm at 06:00
Comment
[ 8 ]
14 December 2006
The real hidden cost of the Wii
Chatting with my brother this evening, he was griping that the Wii's remote strap is not the problem, as has been reported elsewhere, but rather the battery life. He's been using normal Duracell alkaline batteries and getting 15 hours of play out of them. For reference, Nintendo says you can get as much as 35 hours.
So let's do some calculation. Let's assume you play 10 to 25 hours a week, every week, for a year. You buy 20-packs of AA batteries from Wal-mart for $9.76 plus some tax, which we'll just call $10 for the sake of round numbers. You run your single Wii remote down until it's dead each time before replacing the batteries. The following table tells you how much you can expect to spend per year for batteries based on your usage (per week) and the lifespan of your batteries.
So if you're only getting 15 hours of use before you change the batteries, as apparently is happening with my brother, then you could spend $35 per year just on batteries by playing as little as 10 hours per week. If you play 20 hours a week, you're up near $70. And if you have two Wii remotes, the cost will go even higher.
Apparently the manual discourages the use of rechargeables, although the page linked above says use Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) if you insist on doing so. I don't know how long those will last, but my experience has been that regular batteries will last longer than rechargeables will between charges.
These are not huge costs, but they are costs you won't see with a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360 controller. Naturally, Nintendo will no doubt offer a new rechargeable Wii remote very soon, giving you the chance to upgrade. I bet it won't be cheap either.
Update: Brother sent me this scan from his manual, just to point out the bit that says you should use alkaline batteries...to avoid BATTERY LEAKAGE. Of course, who reads the manual (besides my brother)?
So let's do some calculation. Let's assume you play 10 to 25 hours a week, every week, for a year. You buy 20-packs of AA batteries from Wal-mart for $9.76 plus some tax, which we'll just call $10 for the sake of round numbers. You run your single Wii remote down until it's dead each time before replacing the batteries. The following table tells you how much you can expect to spend per year for batteries based on your usage (per week) and the lifespan of your batteries.
So if you're only getting 15 hours of use before you change the batteries, as apparently is happening with my brother, then you could spend $35 per year just on batteries by playing as little as 10 hours per week. If you play 20 hours a week, you're up near $70. And if you have two Wii remotes, the cost will go even higher.Apparently the manual discourages the use of rechargeables, although the page linked above says use Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) if you insist on doing so. I don't know how long those will last, but my experience has been that regular batteries will last longer than rechargeables will between charges.
These are not huge costs, but they are costs you won't see with a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360 controller. Naturally, Nintendo will no doubt offer a new rechargeable Wii remote very soon, giving you the chance to upgrade. I bet it won't be cheap either.
Update: Brother sent me this scan from his manual, just to point out the bit that says you should use alkaline batteries...to avoid BATTERY LEAKAGE. Of course, who reads the manual (besides my brother)?
--jvm at 21:03
Comment
[ 5 ]
13 December 2006
Nintendo DS: sold out
A post on NeoGAF reminded me that I'd expected the Nintendo DS to sell out this holiday season. I just did a quick check and Amazon, EB Games/GameStop, Wal-Mart, and Target all list every version of the Nintendo DS as out of stock or, in the case of Target, available in stores only. (I might be in a local Target soon to have a look at their stock.)
Nintendo sold almost a million Nintendo DS systems in the U.S. during the month of November alone. If they can keep the stores stocked, they'll be able to hit that or more in December. It now appears that's could be a fairly significant "if".
Nintendo sold almost a million Nintendo DS systems in the U.S. during the month of November alone. If they can keep the stores stocked, they'll be able to hit that or more in December. It now appears that's could be a fairly significant "if".
--jvm at 20:49
Comment
[ 3 ]
10 December 2006
Happy to be sad
I just finished Resident Evil: Deadly Silence for the Nintendo DS and had an experience I haven't had in a while: a wave of sadness at finishing a good game. I recall vividly the same feeling when I finished Tomb Raider for the first time, and again when I finished Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. It means I really enjoyed the game.
It also requires that a game not have dragged on so long that the very thought of more is exhausting rather than exhilarating. Games like this pull me back in for a second play, to recapture some of the thrill of the first run but also to do more skillfully those parts I originally mucked up. For Resident Evil: Deadly Silence there is also the fact that I got Jill's bad ending -- which means I didn't get the real final boss battle (i.e. didn't get to hear "You're an amazon, Jill!"). I'd sure like to make a better showing than that.
If I have time, I'll try to put together a brief review this week with my list of complaints.
Ten word version: Complete classic game handsomely remade with fitting albeit unimaginative improvements.
It also requires that a game not have dragged on so long that the very thought of more is exhausting rather than exhilarating. Games like this pull me back in for a second play, to recapture some of the thrill of the first run but also to do more skillfully those parts I originally mucked up. For Resident Evil: Deadly Silence there is also the fact that I got Jill's bad ending -- which means I didn't get the real final boss battle (i.e. didn't get to hear "You're an amazon, Jill!"). I'd sure like to make a better showing than that.
If I have time, I'll try to put together a brief review this week with my list of complaints.
Ten word version: Complete classic game handsomely remade with fitting albeit unimaginative improvements.
Labels: nintendo
--jvm at 20:55
Comment
[ 2 ]
03 December 2006
How Nintendo is solving its piracy problem
Given the rampant online piracy of Nintendo's games, should be no surprise that they have constructed significant roadblocks to prevent emulation of their last three systems: the GameCube, the Nintendo DS, and the Wii. While the GameCube used a proprietary medium, the Nintendo DS and Wii have much more effective deterrents: their unique interfaces.
The transition from the Atari 2600 joystick to the PlayStation analog pad (two sticks, D-pad, left and right shoulder triggers) not only focused the industry on a fairly standard interface but ensured that the previous generation's controls were mostly a subset of the next generation's. That progression also permitted emulation of earlier systems on newer systems with a minimum of fuss. If you want to emulate a SNES on an Xbox, the button mapping is natural. The Game Boy Advance could emulate NES games and the Nintendo DS can emulate the SNES, no mucking with buttons required. For years those same PlayStation-style pads have been available for home computers as well.
That process makes emulation both possible and attractive.
While emulation of games with nonstandard interfaces has been done before -- we have commercial emulations of the arcade games Paperboy and Star Wars: The Arcade Game and Marble Madness and 720 degrees -- the compromise made to fit a different controller is always unsatisfying.
And so, with the introduction of the Nintendo DS touchscreen and the Wii's spatial controller we see that Nintendo has made emulation piracy far less attractive, albeit still possible. Will we see people trading Wii games over the internet in 10 years as they do now with SNES ROMs? Perhaps, but it will probably mean that you will have to have a Wii controller -- or a knock off controller. Anything less will be unsatisfying. And in 10 years you can probably bet that Nintendo will offer a relatively cheap and easy alternative on their next system -- which will work with the Wii controller out-of-the-box and offer Wii games for download for a few dollars. With appropriately priced hardware and downloads, Nintendo will keep people in the Nintendo store and off the ROM sites.
The same could easily be true for the Nintendo DS. If the DS were the beginning of another cycle of incremental improvements roughly paralleling the progression from Game Boy to Game Boy Color to Game Boy Advance then we may not see another radical evolution of the Nintendo handheld line for another 15 years. Despite Nintendo's claims to the contrary, the DS appears to be its future for the handheld, not the Game Boy.
There will always be the hardcore folks who refuse to pay. They're a sad fact of life. Someone will hack drivers to make the Wii controller work on an emulator running under Windows or even on a GNU/Linux-enabled console. And certainly you can emulate a Nintendo DS with a mouse. I bet it isn't nearly as entertaining to play Elite Beat Agents by clicking a mouse, but that won't stop some people from doing it anyway.
However as appears to be happening with music, most people will choose to buy their games instead of pirate them if there are enough blocks to casual emulation piracy and a reasonably priced legitimate alternative. That's Nintendo's goal, and I think they've made the right moves to attain it.
The transition from the Atari 2600 joystick to the PlayStation analog pad (two sticks, D-pad, left and right shoulder triggers) not only focused the industry on a fairly standard interface but ensured that the previous generation's controls were mostly a subset of the next generation's. That progression also permitted emulation of earlier systems on newer systems with a minimum of fuss. If you want to emulate a SNES on an Xbox, the button mapping is natural. The Game Boy Advance could emulate NES games and the Nintendo DS can emulate the SNES, no mucking with buttons required. For years those same PlayStation-style pads have been available for home computers as well.
That process makes emulation both possible and attractive.
While emulation of games with nonstandard interfaces has been done before -- we have commercial emulations of the arcade games Paperboy and Star Wars: The Arcade Game and Marble Madness and 720 degrees -- the compromise made to fit a different controller is always unsatisfying.
And so, with the introduction of the Nintendo DS touchscreen and the Wii's spatial controller we see that Nintendo has made emulation piracy far less attractive, albeit still possible. Will we see people trading Wii games over the internet in 10 years as they do now with SNES ROMs? Perhaps, but it will probably mean that you will have to have a Wii controller -- or a knock off controller. Anything less will be unsatisfying. And in 10 years you can probably bet that Nintendo will offer a relatively cheap and easy alternative on their next system -- which will work with the Wii controller out-of-the-box and offer Wii games for download for a few dollars. With appropriately priced hardware and downloads, Nintendo will keep people in the Nintendo store and off the ROM sites.
The same could easily be true for the Nintendo DS. If the DS were the beginning of another cycle of incremental improvements roughly paralleling the progression from Game Boy to Game Boy Color to Game Boy Advance then we may not see another radical evolution of the Nintendo handheld line for another 15 years. Despite Nintendo's claims to the contrary, the DS appears to be its future for the handheld, not the Game Boy.
There will always be the hardcore folks who refuse to pay. They're a sad fact of life. Someone will hack drivers to make the Wii controller work on an emulator running under Windows or even on a GNU/Linux-enabled console. And certainly you can emulate a Nintendo DS with a mouse. I bet it isn't nearly as entertaining to play Elite Beat Agents by clicking a mouse, but that won't stop some people from doing it anyway.
However as appears to be happening with music, most people will choose to buy their games instead of pirate them if there are enough blocks to casual emulation piracy and a reasonably priced legitimate alternative. That's Nintendo's goal, and I think they've made the right moves to attain it.
--jvm at 23:37
Comment
[ 8 ]
02 December 2006
Virtual Console Stupidity
Go Nintendo reports on the games that will be made available at launch over Wii Virtual Console in different markets:
France, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain - Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Wario's Woods, Bomberman 93, Super Star Soldier
Norway, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden - Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Wario's Woods, Bomberman 93, Super Star Soldier, The Legend of Zelda, Dungeon Explorer, Victory Run
That's right, France and Britain will be getting five games on launch, while Luxemborg and Ireland will be getting eight -- including two, Dungeon Explorer and Victory Run, that are not yet available in the US, Nintendo's largest non-Japanese market. But that's nothing compared to the final sentence in the post:
Australia and New Zealand will not see TurboGrafx games, seeing that that platform never made it to those countries.
Nintendo has basically proven here that, to their mind, Virtual Console exists for nostalgia purposes only. Why would they not want to release TurboGrafx games in markets that never saw the system? Because, despite the fact that it costs almost nothing other than rights fees (which cannot be very high) and bandwidth to offer them, they will not, simply because they didn't get it the first time around. Each Virtual Console sale, especially at those prices, is almost pure profit for the licensor and Nintendo, to not chase it is ludicrous. Yeah, they gotta ESRB 'em, sure, so get it done and get them released!
Even worse, indeed incredibly bad, is that this also implies that the many Japanese-only games released over Virtual Console will remain Japanese-only.
To say that Nintendo is dropping the ball here seems like an understatement. If Nintendo were the only download gaming place in town then this kind of arrogance, which is fairly typical for the company it must be said (and this is coming from a long-time Nintendo supporter, the only console I got last generation was a Gamecube), might restrict their sales a bit it would not directly harm them.
But they are certainly not the only download console gaming guys around. X-box Live Arcade has been at it for months now, and has some very nice, original, games for it, and will only be getting more. And they have some of the greatest classic arcade games ever seen; whoever has been picking the out for Microsoft seems to know his stuff. Nintendo has some games that are equal, maybe even a little better, in quality (do not overestimate that "better" thing: objectively measured, Zelda may be awesome, but so is Robotron, just in a different way), but their greatest ally is volume, and so far that's fallen woefully short.
They may claim that the Wii is not trying to compete with the other new-gen consoles, and there is some truth to that, but they are competing directly in the downloadable games space, and so far Nintendo's only real advantages there are simplicity of use and the games themselves. We've heard murmurings about original Virtual Console games but for all we know those could go the way of the 64DD, discarded on a whim at any time in the future. We hear about all these games they COULD release, but COULD != WILL, and their statement that they're going to release a "greatest hits" selection is, frankly, idiotic when two of their US VC launch games are Pinball and Soccer. PINBALL AND F--KING SOCCER! If they're determined to launch early NES classics as well as later ones then where the hell is Ice Hockey?!
Meanwhile in Japan they already have Super Mario Bros! Even though the system launched a couple of weeks later in Japan than the US, at launch they have more games available, and knowing Nintendo, will probably continue to have more throughout the Wii's lifespan.
Nintendo! You cannot afford to do things like this any more! You've left your lunch right there on the table, and Microsoft is heading over with a hungry look in its eye!
And their appetite is boundless.
France, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain - Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Wario's Woods, Bomberman 93, Super Star Soldier
Norway, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden - Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Wario's Woods, Bomberman 93, Super Star Soldier, The Legend of Zelda, Dungeon Explorer, Victory Run
That's right, France and Britain will be getting five games on launch, while Luxemborg and Ireland will be getting eight -- including two, Dungeon Explorer and Victory Run, that are not yet available in the US, Nintendo's largest non-Japanese market. But that's nothing compared to the final sentence in the post:
Australia and New Zealand will not see TurboGrafx games, seeing that that platform never made it to those countries.
Nintendo has basically proven here that, to their mind, Virtual Console exists for nostalgia purposes only. Why would they not want to release TurboGrafx games in markets that never saw the system? Because, despite the fact that it costs almost nothing other than rights fees (which cannot be very high) and bandwidth to offer them, they will not, simply because they didn't get it the first time around. Each Virtual Console sale, especially at those prices, is almost pure profit for the licensor and Nintendo, to not chase it is ludicrous. Yeah, they gotta ESRB 'em, sure, so get it done and get them released!
Even worse, indeed incredibly bad, is that this also implies that the many Japanese-only games released over Virtual Console will remain Japanese-only.
To say that Nintendo is dropping the ball here seems like an understatement. If Nintendo were the only download gaming place in town then this kind of arrogance, which is fairly typical for the company it must be said (and this is coming from a long-time Nintendo supporter, the only console I got last generation was a Gamecube), might restrict their sales a bit it would not directly harm them.
But they are certainly not the only download console gaming guys around. X-box Live Arcade has been at it for months now, and has some very nice, original, games for it, and will only be getting more. And they have some of the greatest classic arcade games ever seen; whoever has been picking the out for Microsoft seems to know his stuff. Nintendo has some games that are equal, maybe even a little better, in quality (do not overestimate that "better" thing: objectively measured, Zelda may be awesome, but so is Robotron, just in a different way), but their greatest ally is volume, and so far that's fallen woefully short.
They may claim that the Wii is not trying to compete with the other new-gen consoles, and there is some truth to that, but they are competing directly in the downloadable games space, and so far Nintendo's only real advantages there are simplicity of use and the games themselves. We've heard murmurings about original Virtual Console games but for all we know those could go the way of the 64DD, discarded on a whim at any time in the future. We hear about all these games they COULD release, but COULD != WILL, and their statement that they're going to release a "greatest hits" selection is, frankly, idiotic when two of their US VC launch games are Pinball and Soccer. PINBALL AND F--KING SOCCER! If they're determined to launch early NES classics as well as later ones then where the hell is Ice Hockey?!
Meanwhile in Japan they already have Super Mario Bros! Even though the system launched a couple of weeks later in Japan than the US, at launch they have more games available, and knowing Nintendo, will probably continue to have more throughout the Wii's lifespan.
Nintendo! You cannot afford to do things like this any more! You've left your lunch right there on the table, and Microsoft is heading over with a hungry look in its eye!
And their appetite is boundless.
--JohnH at 18:53
Comment
[ 16 ]
30 November 2006
Exclusives truly dead
Could the pundits really be wrong? Of course. Third party exclusives are so dead that EA is having a whole studio work on exclusives for the Wii.
More from here:
More from here:
"We do have two Wii games that we're working on right now," Cook said. "We also continue to do a lot of the work that we've done in the past, but going forward, our future will be exclusively Wii development."And what platform are they abandoning? The Windows PC.
[...]
"Things always change, but the plan is that we'll just be developing for the Wii."
--jvm at 20:22
Comment
[ 3 ]
29 November 2006
Third party exclusives: We're not dead yet!
The conventional wisdom about this generation of consoles contains two ideas that seem at odds:
In fact, Nintendo has already been doing this. Just look at the Wii launch: Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Activision) and Red Steel (UbiSoft) and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (Sega) are all third party exclusives. While Madden NFL 07 (EA) isn't an exclusive, it is reworked heavily enough to use the Wii controller that it might as well be considered one. To maintain relevance, that kind of stream of exclusives will have to continue.
It is possible that Nintendo obtaining exclusives will push Microsoft and Sony to obtain similar agreements from publishers. These will likely be of the Grand Theft Auto and Splinter Cell variety: time limited exclusivity. Remember that such time-dependent exclusives mitigate the original development cost because the port is cheap to make, and publishers may not want to spend time crafting a game that extensively utilizes the Wii's controller. So Sony and Microsoft will benefit from such exclusives, but Nintendo will end up with games designed for a PlayStation or Xbox controller (i.e. more buttons) and some trivial Wii controller gimmicks -- if it gets a port at all.
I'm not saying that third party exclusives must continue or the Wii will fail, but it is difficult for me to see how their fates aren't inextricably tied. The end result is, as Campbell said in that same podcast, that the publishers "have a lot more power" and "do what they want to do". I'm arguably a Sony fan, but even I can appreciate that their fall from power is likely to improve the marketplace for developers and consumers. It isn't clear, however, that that independence is obviously good for the Wii.
- The Wii will unquestionably succeed, possibly taking second place to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, primarily on the strength of its unique controller.
- Because all three platforms will have significant marketshare third parties will be less likely to make games exclusive to one system.
In fact, Nintendo has already been doing this. Just look at the Wii launch: Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Activision) and Red Steel (UbiSoft) and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (Sega) are all third party exclusives. While Madden NFL 07 (EA) isn't an exclusive, it is reworked heavily enough to use the Wii controller that it might as well be considered one. To maintain relevance, that kind of stream of exclusives will have to continue.
It is possible that Nintendo obtaining exclusives will push Microsoft and Sony to obtain similar agreements from publishers. These will likely be of the Grand Theft Auto and Splinter Cell variety: time limited exclusivity. Remember that such time-dependent exclusives mitigate the original development cost because the port is cheap to make, and publishers may not want to spend time crafting a game that extensively utilizes the Wii's controller. So Sony and Microsoft will benefit from such exclusives, but Nintendo will end up with games designed for a PlayStation or Xbox controller (i.e. more buttons) and some trivial Wii controller gimmicks -- if it gets a port at all.
I'm not saying that third party exclusives must continue or the Wii will fail, but it is difficult for me to see how their fates aren't inextricably tied. The end result is, as Campbell said in that same podcast, that the publishers "have a lot more power" and "do what they want to do". I'm arguably a Sony fan, but even I can appreciate that their fall from power is likely to improve the marketplace for developers and consumers. It isn't clear, however, that that independence is obviously good for the Wii.
--jvm at 21:28
Comment
[ 8 ]
23 November 2006
Bomberman '93 is Excellent
When I drove a hundred miles to be home with Dad for Thanksgiving, I dragged my Wii along for the ride.
Unfortunately, due to an oversight, I neglected to drag its power supply along for that ride.
A scan through local retail outlets made it clear that replacement AC adaptors were not yet available in stores, and Gamecube adaptors don't fit. In the end, I ended up driving BACK to Statesboro, just to get the power supply. But it was all worth it, and for one reason above all else:
BOMBERMAN '93.
Back in the days before its battle game became progressively polluted with 3D, overly-gimmicky level layouts and dino buddies (JVM's coinage here, meaning Pokemon-like helper characters who follow you around wanting to be pals), the Bomberman series produced what could be the finest multiplayer games ever made. I and my friends got hooked playing Super Bomberman with a multitap on my SNES back in the day, and while that game is not yet available on Virtual Console, the similar Bomberman '93 was released last night, becoming the first must-own VC release. Many people missed this game on its original release since it was made for the Turbografx-16, the Gamecube of its time. It is only six bucks to boot.
Not only is the play the cleanest it has ever been, but it even supports five player games! The instructions explicitly state that, although the Wii only accepts up to four wireless controllers and four Gamecube controllers, by using a combination of the two types players can map controllers to each of a Turbo Tap's five virtual controller ports.
Bomberman-maker Hudson has announced that they plan to provide extensive support to Virtual Console, with dozens of games planned for eventual release. The company has some neglected gems in its history (the excellent Bonk's Adventure was also released last night), and they could well be Nintendo's best ally in the fight to unseat X-box Live Arcade from its comfortable spon on the console download gaming throne.
EDIT: Fixed the game's name, thanks to mgroves for pointing it out. Damn numbers.
Unfortunately, due to an oversight, I neglected to drag its power supply along for that ride.
A scan through local retail outlets made it clear that replacement AC adaptors were not yet available in stores, and Gamecube adaptors don't fit. In the end, I ended up driving BACK to Statesboro, just to get the power supply. But it was all worth it, and for one reason above all else:
BOMBERMAN '93.
Back in the days before its battle game became progressively polluted with 3D, overly-gimmicky level layouts and dino buddies (JVM's coinage here, meaning Pokemon-like helper characters who follow you around wanting to be pals), the Bomberman series produced what could be the finest multiplayer games ever made. I and my friends got hooked playing Super Bomberman with a multitap on my SNES back in the day, and while that game is not yet available on Virtual Console, the similar Bomberman '93 was released last night, becoming the first must-own VC release. Many people missed this game on its original release since it was made for the Turbografx-16, the Gamecube of its time. It is only six bucks to boot.
Not only is the play the cleanest it has ever been, but it even supports five player games! The instructions explicitly state that, although the Wii only accepts up to four wireless controllers and four Gamecube controllers, by using a combination of the two types players can map controllers to each of a Turbo Tap's five virtual controller ports.
Bomberman-maker Hudson has announced that they plan to provide extensive support to Virtual Console, with dozens of games planned for eventual release. The company has some neglected gems in its history (the excellent Bonk's Adventure was also released last night), and they could well be Nintendo's best ally in the fight to unseat X-box Live Arcade from its comfortable spon on the console download gaming throne.
EDIT: Fixed the game's name, thanks to mgroves for pointing it out. Damn numbers.
--JohnH at 04:07
Comment
[ 10 ]
20 November 2006
The Good, the Bad, and the (ugh) Wii
The epic tale of my wait in line for a Wii will be told some other day -- a story of happy chance, of suffering, of corruption, of sacrifice. A story, also, of about an hour total of playing Elite Beat Agents on my DS.
I haven't been able to play it an awful lot since getting it back to the apartment, as I have this pesky term paper to write, but as the Wii-blessed member of Curmudgeon Gamer's crack (as in "cocaine") staff of writers, I felt duty bound toput off working on my paper describe my experience.
Good:
Bad:
I haven't been able to play it an awful lot since getting it back to the apartment, as I have this pesky term paper to write, but as the Wii-blessed member of Curmudgeon Gamer's crack (as in "cocaine") staff of writers, I felt duty bound to
Good:
- The controller, for the most part, works without a hitch, and better than I had been expecting. Its use in Wii Sports is almost like magic.
- Wii Sports is a better game than rumor had it and reviews have let on. Scores have been around the low-to-mid 7 range for it, they deserve to be higher. My roommates were almost fascinated with it when they saw it in action. The depth in the title is in perfecting your movements more than the strategy of the game itself, but the games are not bad. Bowling, in particular, with that controller in hand, is automatically the best console rendition of bowling of all time, because it is actually like bowling.
- Mii creation is a lot more fun than you might think. While the characters themselves are very simplistic, the creation options are not. They are even used in ingenious ways by Wii Sports, who will automatically fill out baseball teams with random Miis lounging around the console, potentially even those scavenged from friend's system's over the internet.
- Virtual Console games seem to work well. The two I've gotten so far, Solomon's Key and SimCity, are pretty much exactly like the originals, with one big difference in SimCity: saving took a while on the SNES, but here is instantaneous.
- If one goes back to the Wii menu before turning off a virtual console game, the next time the player plays it he'll find that his old "console" is exactly at the point where he left it. That is, the Wii actually saves the entire state of the virtual machine, in addition to supporting any built-in save function of the game.
- The unified, X-box 360-like menu system is cool. All games have a "Wii menu," even disk ones, and the player can end a game and return to the home page at any time, without a reboot.
- The video report of one website, which showed a video of the system taking over two minutes to copy the tiny NES game Donkey Kong to a SD card, turns out not to be the general case -- SNES SimCity takes maybe 10-20 seconds to copy to my own recently-purchased 512MB card. The age and speed of the card probably plays a role here.
- There are a number of of cool little things to discover while browsing through the options, like the message board that not only keeps records of how long you've played each game on a calendar-like screen, but even functions as a basic email client. I'm surprised that the big gaming blogs haven't made a big deal over the fact that you can actually send mail to any email address, provided the recipient replies to an initial confirmation message.
- The pointer hands on the menu screens rotate when you rotate the controller! So cool! There is also an entertaining little animation when a Virtual Console download is going.
- Zelda is, indeed, great.
Bad:
- However, Zelda is not as great as it could have been, and the problem is not the graphics. It is the storytelling. A lot of people have been raving about how the story of this one is darker than the others almost from the start. I do not regard this as a good thing; the high-spirited adventure of the other games (especially Wind Waker) was one of the best things about them. This is just one more way that Zelda is becoming like its copiers (that is to say, practically all other action-adventures).
- More on Zelda: these games have traditionally been actually rather light on story, leaving the player on his own to do all the things that need to be done. My first three hours of Zelda, on the other hand, were hand-held almost the whole way. Zelda games need to give the player space so he can explore! I've not seen any of that yet, although maybe once I hit Hyrule Field this'll change.
- Upon initial connection to the internet there are two major system updates, each of which taking quite a while to complete. This may be from Nintendo's servers being slammed, but they should take note, this isn't going to get better in the future. System updates are always a cause for trepidation since an interrupted update may result in a bricked system, and there have been stories of this happening.
- The email client is an unexpected nicety, true, but it is hampered by the fact that you have to type using the virtual keyboard. It's faster than control pad based solutions, and it has a cell phone-like quick keypad feature, but it's nowhere near as quick as using, say, a USB keyboard.
- By the way, USB keyboards do not work.
- I did have one bad moment with the remote. After one particular update, my remote suddenly ceased functioning. I checked my second remote and it wasn't working either! Whenever I pressed a button, the lights on the remote flashed several times then went dark. Turning off and on the console didn't work, there were no bright lights in the room and there was no obvious RF interference. Ultimately I restored their function by guessing that holding in the power button for a few seconds would do a "hard reset." Fortunately I was correct, and upon turning it back on again the controllers worked normally.
- The Shop Channel is in bad shape. Several times now I've tried accessing it, only to be stuck for several minutes at the "Connecting...." screen. There is no way to cancel the connection early without doing a hard (not a soft) reset in the manner described above. When it does work it is responsive, but one has to get that far first.
- As is typical for Nintendo, their features that interact with not-made-by-Nintendo data tend to be slapdash. A user can listen to MP3s while looking at photos but there is no standalone MP3 player! That oversight seems malicious enough to be intentional. The viewer channel can display JPEGs and MOVs, full stop. Some of these problems may essentially go away once Opera is released, but probably only in the little world of the browser.
- Internet features are a bit less developed at launch than I was expecting. No Turbografx games, only one N64 game and two SNES and Genesis titles, and a NES roster padded out by first-generation dreck (although it does have the awesome Solomon's Key). X-box Live Arcade is mostly original stuff with a few recreations so they aren't expected to have a huge number of downloads available, but the stuff in Virtual Console is all emulated! There is little reason that ALL of Nintendo's first party output for their systems isn't available now. The Internet Channel, the Forecast Channel AND the News Channel, basically most of the system's internet support, is MIA for launch as well.
- Finally, and for me most dishearteningly, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz seems to be a shadow of the first two games. Who the hell's idea was it to drop Challenge Mode?!
--JohnH at 23:05
Comment
[ 13 ]
19 November 2006
Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP: Game and system pricing
I was more tempted to buy a PlayStation Portable game when browsing a local shop yesterday, not just because there are more interesting games out but several of them are more attractively priced. One advantage I'd felt the Nintendo DS had over the PSP was lower priced software, and that's just not as true as it used to be. In fact, several PSP games have launched recently at $30 or less: Capcom Collection Reloaded, Activision Hits Remixed, EA Replay, Sega Genesis Collection, Every Extend Extra, and Lumines II. Each one of those is starting at $19.99 or $29.99. If you are into retro games or flashy puzzle games, the PSP has to be your handheld system of choice, once you can swing the system price.
I did some browsing at EB Games (online) and put together some numbers for new games (not used games, which can fluctuate with inventory). The store currently lists more $10-$20 games for the PSP (30) than it does for the Nintendo DS (26). The average price for a new game is $32 for the PSP and $28 for the Nintendo DS, and the median game costs $30 for both systems. (Note: That's just games available; sales volume obviously isn't something I have access to.) Each system has a nearly equal number of games.
The PSP isn't so far behind the DS that it's lost the war, but Sony needs to do more than just stay close. If the PSP were priced at $150, my gut tells me it'd sell a lot more strongly. You've got a ton of best-selling software at the $20 level now, including Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and several more interesting games at the $30 level. With the software side of the business under control, I think, and a system price adjustment would help.
Addendum: The other thing about PSP game pricing is that it appears to be more flexible than Nintendo DS game pricing. There are PSP games launching at prices from $50 down to $20, which makes it possible for a game to portray itself as anything from a big-name release down to a chintzy piece of shovelware. Moreover, this gives games room to drop in price, so a publisher can squeeze top dollar out of the rich and then appeal to the masses later with a budget price. Nintendo's model, especially for its big-name games, has seemed much more rigid. The price for New Super Mario Bros. will probably still be $35 two years after its release, whereas the price of Liberty City Stories on the PSP has dropped from $50 to $20 in just over a year.
I did some browsing at EB Games (online) and put together some numbers for new games (not used games, which can fluctuate with inventory). The store currently lists more $10-$20 games for the PSP (30) than it does for the Nintendo DS (26). The average price for a new game is $32 for the PSP and $28 for the Nintendo DS, and the median game costs $30 for both systems. (Note: That's just games available; sales volume obviously isn't something I have access to.) Each system has a nearly equal number of games.
The PSP isn't so far behind the DS that it's lost the war, but Sony needs to do more than just stay close. If the PSP were priced at $150, my gut tells me it'd sell a lot more strongly. You've got a ton of best-selling software at the $20 level now, including Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and several more interesting games at the $30 level. With the software side of the business under control, I think, and a system price adjustment would help.
Addendum: The other thing about PSP game pricing is that it appears to be more flexible than Nintendo DS game pricing. There are PSP games launching at prices from $50 down to $20, which makes it possible for a game to portray itself as anything from a big-name release down to a chintzy piece of shovelware. Moreover, this gives games room to drop in price, so a publisher can squeeze top dollar out of the rich and then appeal to the masses later with a budget price. Nintendo's model, especially for its big-name games, has seemed much more rigid. The price for New Super Mario Bros. will probably still be $35 two years after its release, whereas the price of Liberty City Stories on the PSP has dropped from $50 to $20 in just over a year.
--jvm at 01:03
Comment
[ 6 ]
15 November 2006
Analyst analyzes analysts' analyses
Michael Pachter makes a good guest in this week's Next-gen.biz podcast. He comes across as "a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk" and goes on at length about various aspects of the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. In particular, I was intrigued by this bit:
I think that where most analysts are going to be not only proven wrong but are actually going to backtrack and change their opinions to the extreme is that the cost of the Wii at $249 is so dramatically much lower than the cost of the [Xbox] 360 or of a PS3 that many households are going to opt for a Wii first and wait for the others to come down in price before they buy a 360 or a PS3. [...]T
I think what's going to happen is analysts are going to see the Wii selling at a much more rapid pace mid-year next year than anybody expected and they're actually going to call Nintendo the winner of this cycle.
And in fact, what I think is going to happen is, over time, Nintendo's sales are going to slow -- over time as in 2009, 2010 -- and Sony's sales are going to pick up as the PS3 comes down in price.
So I think Sony's going to look like the clear loser this cycle, come summer. I think Nintendo's going to look like the clear winner this cycle this coming summer, and that's going to be wrong. And it will reverse in 2009, 2010 when there are 5000 Blu-Ray movies available to rent at Blockbuster and when all the households who already have a Wii get their HD monitors and PS3 sales will pick up.