Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
[Nintendo] The best January the Wii U has ever had
Posts
Gaming on a control pad may be second nature to someone who has been playing for 25 years, just like (to play off of Atomic Ross' analogy) we don't have to think about how to eat with a fork or spoon as adults. However, that knowledge is no more natural than knowing how to eat with chopsticks - which plenty of adults can't do very well either - with one of the main reasons why being that not only does it require learning something new, but that many people don't want to learn new things in the first place. Usually, this is because they either don't see the point because they're not actually interested in whatever lies beyond the barrier to entry, or because it can sometimes be embarrassing for an adult to look like they don't know what they are doing and they'd rather just avoid it.
Nintendo's goal with the Wii was to broaden their market, since they felt they had hit the wall competing on hardware specs, and to that end they needed to make gaming on their platform accessible and lower those aforementioned barriers. For at least some portion of the Wii's life, I'd say they succeeded, but perhaps they hit upon another problem - people with casual interests in things typically can't be relied upon to consistently pursue them. In the short window of interest you're given, you either have to convert them to something more dedicated, or be prepared to never see them again (and have someone new waiting to come and take their place).
Pretty much this, and children really don't really have these problems. When they find something they are excited about, they will just DO it again and again, until they master it, while adult goes "I don't get it, man".
Perhaps my biggest gripe with PSX controller is how unergonomic it is. It was quite disapointing when original Dual Analog actually had much longer horns that made pad more comfortable to hold, only to be removed in Dual Shock revision to save few bucks.
For sure. When I picked up my PS3, the first...month or so, I ended up pinching my fingers under the shoulder triggers like every time I used them. Not. Fun.
Everything works that way though. Like, seriously, our brains are FUCKING AMAZING at remapping output to unconscious input.
Game Controllers are as intuitive as driving or using scissors or the like. They involve exactly the same brain functions doing exactly the same shit.
Like anything, it just takes some time and practice. Games need to be better at easing players into this shit. Even veteran gamers need to be taught by the game to map the new functions to the same old buttons they've always used.
Gamepads have been around in roughly similar shapes for ages because they are a very efficient and responsive, and increasingly ergonomic, way of directly mapping what the player wants to do directly to his avatar. This isn't a crazy idea, it's incredibly natural. Ours brains are great at this shit.
Like hell they do. The Dualshock is a terrible design because the most commonly used setup (thumbstick left, buttons right) isn't natural.
Holding that sort of controller, your thumbs naturally rest on the area where Sony put the d-pad and the 4 buttons. The xbox controller is a way better design. The playstation controller is obviously an old school, SNES-esque controller with the thumbsticks randomly shoved where there was room with no thought for what input would be most used.
And the button thing is awful. Fucking shapes are terrible.
Huh. Well, chalk one up to human hand variation, I guess.
The 360 does have a simply superb shell design that's fun to hold. But I hate the raised buttons and the asymmetrical thumbstick layout. Joypad's nice, though.
I'm a size 14 ring. The average American male is a 9.
40% more data capacity is not a "slight technical edge ". HD-DVD was just a bolt on to the existing DVD standard, which while providing ease and stability, also made the format a technological cul de sac. It was a good thing that it died.
Naaahhhh... Nintendo was right on in determining that most non-gamers, or even those who gamed as kids but gave it up, were primarily put off from gaming due to the complexity of the evolution of controllers. Almost every non-gamer I talk to, or even my wife, who was a die-hard NES gamer back in the day, say that the main reason they don't play latest console games is because they are scared to death of the 16-button controller with two sticks and a control pad. All those people saw the Wiimote and said, "yes, Nintendo gets me!"
But like I said before, those people quickly got turned off, either because they remembered that they quit being gamers for a reason, or because of how crappy all the Wii games were, and regardless, even if they're still playing their Wii, they probably aren't looking to buy the next one.
Years later, game developers still program games specifically to fit on a regular DVD, and there's no way in hell you'd be able to tell the difference in quality in a feature-length HD movie compressed to fit on a HD-DVD vs. a Blu-ray disc. So yeah, it was a meaningless technical difference. That storage never made a bit of difference. Who cares? Cul-de-sac? It will all be download and streaming soon enough, right? But until then, the significance of Blu-ray's totally not useful extra storage was massively overshadowed by the fact that the fucking discs wouldn't even play in the fucking players! I had to ditch my first Blu-ray player because it took months for firmware updates to get released and more and more often the latest releases just wouldn't play. My HD-DVD player worked without a hitch up until the standard was squashed in Sony's massive payout. And the extra storage never mattered a damn bit in any of that, and I don't expect it ever will.
And what's worse, studio execs at the time basically acknowledged this, but were like, "look at what Sony's cash did to our quarterly statement! My bonus will be ridiculous!"
Skylanders-esque NFC tech built into Wii U's WiiPad
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/27/skylanders-esque-nfc-tech-built-into-wii-us-wiipad/
In Nintendo's words, the tech will serve to "read and write data via noncontact NFC and to expand the new play format in the video game world." Owners can reportedly create their own cards and figurines for use with the WiiPad's NFC functionality.
Confusing as that may be, Iwata means that the Wii U's WiiPad will come equipped with similar tech to that used in Skylanders alter its gameplay via real world objects (Skylanders uses RFID tech, which isn't exactly the same, but a similar concept). The tech could conceivably be used to make credit card payments as well, which Iwata specifically mentions in the last paragraph.
I'm gonna predict that underlined part will prove to be unfounded. I'd love, love, love to build my own Inception-like totems for interaction, but...what would these things do, exactly? Nintendo's been pretty stringent on what sort of user-generated content can occur on their systems. Generally speaking with good reason, as Nintendo cares quite a lot about not getting their name associated with headlines about anonymous dickpics and the like. I can understand that. We can all understand that. But it also means a pretty anemic system of online functionality.
Would be interesting to see Nintendo sell toys that contain a code within them-think DLC you buy at a store that's also a physical collectible. People might hate that, or people might really, really like that a lot.
Not exactly the innovation I'm looking for in a company already notorious for finding new ways to make customers pay for the same old things over and again.
Very true. This is the company responsible for the GBA E-Reader.
Man, this is the company that came up with a lot of cynical horseshit.
Like the GameBoy camera.
But my parents don't ask me about the next Wii or other games -- they ask me about the iPad. The casual gaming market is more likely to be enticed by a $0.99 game that's easy to play compared to a $40 game that's easy to play. If there were no iPad, the Wii-U would be very disruptive as it would follow in a long line of touchscreen gaming from Nintendo. But thanks to Apple and Android tablets, people talk more about Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and these other very cheap games, rather than give much of a shit about Nintendo's gadgets.
I think that's why there's much more skepticism about the Wii-U and Nintendo's hardware plans compared to 6 years ago when the Wii was coming out.
This is one of the reasons I'm skeptical about Wii-U. I don't think their touchpad is going to be utilitarian enough to justify itself, and I'm still having hard time thinking up ways that its going to even be all that useful. If people are using it, as Nintendo suggests they might, as a short-range portable gaming device, where does that compete against iPods, iPads, and Nintendo's own GameBoys?
It still seems very much like Nintendo is spending a lot of time and resources in developing things their products CAN do, but not putting a lot of thought into WHY or HOW those things would be used.
Well, keep in mind that Nintendo hasn't announced any games for the system yet, which puts us in the exact same position the Wii was before E3. Then they revealed tons of games for it that showed what the Wii could do. I'm sure E3 will do the same. In other words: it's a little too early to make that call.
And I wouldn't write NFC off completely. Have you heard of Skylanders? It's an Activision game that uses NFC to transfer game data to and from collectable plastic figurines... and it's a gigantic success. Toy stores are having trouble keeping those things on the shelves.
Definitely a fair question. We'll just have to see what kind of answer Nintendo comes up with.
Right. I think we can agree that's not anything remote approaching a tenably long-term business model. And not at all anything that traditional gamers are looking for.
We can? And it's not?
To be honest I have my doubts, but then again I thought Skylanders would bomb. Boy, I was wrong there.
And while traditional gamers might not be looking for it (thought that's arguable, as there's a pretty active Skylanders thread in G&T) more casual gamers might be... you know, that crowd that helped make the Wii a success? And believe it or not, there's already special plastic crap that you can buy to play with iPhone/iPad games, and they seem to be selling well.
NEVER
If the rumor of the RFID tech being built into the comes to fruition, I can easily see Nintendo making their own Skylanders clone.
I mean, Pokemon, anyone?
I think there's a few issues here:
1) There's a question of whether the business model is sustainable long term or replicable. Like, just because one company did it doesn't mean consumers are gonna be willing to do this for every game. Or whether, long term, they will do it for this game either. How many collectable games are people willing to pay for? How many figurines are parents willing to buy their kids for one game or another?
2) This ties into a question of whether the traditional gamer market will buy into this business model beyond just Skylanders. And how reliable the casual market is on stuff like this too.
3) Do you WANT the Skylander business model to be successful? Like, is this really a direction you want to see games going? Even if we can't do anything about it, I don't gotta be happy about this kind of collectable DLC bullshit making so much money.
1. Granted, but who's saying NFD will just be confined to figurines? Like I said, it's a little early in the game to make long-term conclusions based on the nuts and bolts of how the tech works just yet.
2. Oh, of course. We'll just have to see.
3. I've discovered that the secret to having a serious, honest discussion about all facets of the video game industry without exploding with rage or automatically assuming the platforms you personally don't care for are going to fail is to realize that your interests =/=
the industry. Personally? I'm a little wary. From a business perspective? I'm guessing it won't really do any lasting harm to the biz, and might even bring in some new gamers. There's precious little for kids on the 360/PS3, after all.
How well is "well?"
It's not like the iPhone depends on its game sales to drive its market. The iProducts are like Swiss Army chainsaws of utility.
I don't have any hard data, but based on anecdotal stuff like seeing a reasonable amount of stuff on store shelves (i.e., they're not stocked to the gills yet there's a decent breadth of them) and not seeing massive fire sales for them across the board I'm guessing they're doing fine.
And while the iPhone doesn't depend on game sales, games have become a huge part of the device -- every time I look at the top 25 selling and top 25 grossing apps, they're nearly all games.
I'm not seeing why it matter what will be sold. The main idea behind it (to my eyes anyway) is to capture that sweet sweet Skylander market. It's getting people to go to the store and buy real shit to supplement their game purchases. It's DLC without the D. And companies fucking LOVE DLC and the lack of "downloading" only makes it better because people (especially parents) are alot more willing to part with money for real rather then virtual goods.
Sure there's other shit that can be done with it, but I'm still seeing the main focus being some kind of extra purchases for the existing product (ie - the video game)
And I could easily see that being a thing that consumers will only take so far for so long before they just say "That's it, I can only keep up with 1 of these games"/"fuck it, I'm done with these games".
Well, yeah, but games on that platform rarely run over $5. Less for iPhone/iPod.
I don't know if that's a strategy Nintendo is going to pursue as a primary sales method outside of their existing WiiWare/Virtual Console model. I wonder how much market potential is left in that overlap that isn't already being covered by iOS and Android products and that Nintendo fans aren't already getting their fix with via the 3DS/DS.
I think it largely depends on the cost and the market for those products.
I could see myself buying a Mass Effect Shepard figure for $10-15 if A) it didn't look like ass, and B) the NFC unit contained suit upgrades or new missions or weapons or whatever.
But yes, I think the potential is extremely limited.
Again -- who's saying NFD will be only used for stuff that's sold? We really don't know how it'll be used yet.
While I doubt it'll ever become a primary sales method, Nintendo's been surprisingly aggressive with downloadable games on the 3DS. Just in the past two months, they've created and published three big, new games for the service that have gotten a lot of attention -- Pushmo, Sakura Samurai, and Dillon's Rolling Western. And they're all new IPs! It could be a sign that the company is actually serious about their Nintendo Network thing.
Only? No.
But I think you are kidding yourself if you believe that's not a primary motivator for this kind of thing.
Or at the very least, something it will be extensively used for.
Sure, I'd be shocked if we don't see some sort of Skylanders-esque Pokemon thing.
But Nintendo's full of surprises, and the company doesn't try to directly squeeze every last cent out of every one of its features -- there's the free crap from Club Nintendo, the Nintendo Zone service for the 3DS, the ambassador games, etc. etc. So I'd be surprised if Nintendo doesn't at least try to come up with interesting uses for NFD that aren't tied to buying more stuff.
...
Interesting, actually. People would totally hold onto the statues even if they sell their console. In addition to giving access to special stuff, the statues could also work as backups for saves and game progress, along with whatever other special crap they have. The NFC functionality could be transferred over into future systems, allowing your Mario Statue to have this seperate, potential life beyond the current games and current console it was built for.
...
I bet they're looking into this. They should totally look into this.
What?
I think $900 is a totally reasonable amount of money to spend on non-vital DLC.