They really do have a death wish. From
IGN:
Quote:December 09, 2003 - News publication Time Magazine recently featured an article in which it dissected Nintendo's game plan, or seeming lack thereof. The magazine criticized Nintendo's short supply of pioneering software and indicated that the company "seems to be suffering from game-development gridlock."
It also dismissed Nintendo's Pac-Man vs., stating; "The fact that the program itself was an update of Pac-Man (which debuted in 1980), however, tended to undercut the message that this was a particularly thrilling innovation."
Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata reiterated the company's feeling that prettier, deeper, online-supported games are not the answer. Time wrote: "Online video games have been a false start so far, Iwata asserts, which is why he has no plans to lead Nintendo in that direction. The current path taken by game developers toward more cinematic graphics, richer story lines and complicated controls is a blind alley that, he says, will only worsen the current 'nothing's new' ennui felt by many consumers."
Iwata pointed once more to simplistic, intuitive software that anybody can play as the way to go.
Time Magazine, meanwhile, suggested that Nintendo's future may be as a third-party software company and not a hardware manufacturer.
Online games have been a "false start"??? Richer graphics and good stories are a
bad thing??
With this attitude I don't expect Nintendo to last in the hardware business for much longer. They're more stubborn than ever!
I wonder how Denis Dyack feels about all of this. All of the games he's worked on have had great storylines, with ED being one of the most story-intensive of them all.
*sigh*
You know, I agree with Nintendo that there's not a whole lot of innovation and "newness" any more, but they're certainly not changing that! Every single one of their 2003 GC titles were sequels, and sequels that were little more than graphical updates to their predecessors! The hypocrisy is simply
astounding.
Not surprising, this is what Nintendo has been repeating many times... but yes, I agree, it is the perfect way to grind your company away and lose your grip as a console developer. Sure, they are right that innovation is struggling... but as you say, they are one of the worst offenders! I desperately hope that they can see that and that in the future they do all this innovation they keep talking about, but the NGC has about as much innovation in its games as a toaster...
And I'd LOVE to hear how good stories, deep and complex controls, better looking graphics, and massive play-value increasers like online play (THAT one Nintendo should understand well, given how they spent the entire N64 generation talking about how great multiplayer was on their system!) are bad things. Oh, sure, in some games they aren't really needed, but in your entire library like how Nintendo does things? I don't see any of them that way... now, sure, not all games should be that way -- plenty of them work better without those things, or without them in the conventional way. However... that just isn't true in anywhere near all cases like Nintendo seems to think...
That complaint list there sounds far more like 'we hate the direction modern gaming is going and will fight it tooth and nail' than 'we think that the industry is lacking in innovation and we need to create some'. Far, far more. And it's sad that they can't see that...
If they can't see that modern gamers want those things in a lot of their games in increasing amounts as time passes, they will become increasingly irrelevant as a mainstream company and will be unable to maintain consoles. You cannot support a console on just things that small groups (or shrinking groups, like Nintendo's once-reliable fanbase) like... well, not unless you're SNK and your games cost $400 each. :D
However... what do you want, a Mario game with lots of FMV and a deep story? I don't. Nintendo may be wrong to hate those things, but (not for online, but for those other things) they have shaped their company so that in many cases those things just wouldn't work with Nintendo's games as they now make them. What do you want, Nintendo to slow down its devlopment cycles even more by moving into their areas with those teams? I'd rather not... and it would hurt the teams making the games they do best... add more teams? Nintendo's already pretty big...
Graphics they could improve, to a certain extent, and controls, and story... but you know, I don't want them turning into every other developer and going all the way down those routes. They need to stay unique and make a new path... the problem is that right now they are just repeating what has succeeded in the past, and that isn't good enough anymore. If they want to stand against story, complex controls, and good graphics they'll need real good reasons that (in future years, especially) those things aren't important... now, sure, in ten or twenty years graphics well might not be nearly as important since we'll be at a high level and they won't be as distinguishable. However, we aren't there yet. Nintendo needs to keep its unique look... but they also need to wake up and see that it's 2003 and not 1996. It's a tough problem for them, I'd say... they have pidgeonholed themselves against all those things and now they would have a hard time getting out if they tried.
They seem to have over time tried to avoid these problems by not changing Nintendo but by buying third parties that could do that, like Rare and now Silicon Knights. The problem is, they lost Rare, which was a BIG hit to their game diversity from internal studios... and SK is small and can only make a few games. They really need more variety from the internal Nintendo teams. I don't want them to compromise their quality, so saying 'make games faster' isn't a good idea.
And one thing else to consider -- they need to commit significant resources to the GBA too, more I bet than Sony will to the PSP or MS does to PC-only titles... that limits even further what they can do with internal teams.
What do you suggest they do, then? Make new internal studios that would try to begin to modernize Nintendo's approach? I don't know if that would work... might be worth a try, though. As you say Nintendo can't last forever as a relic.
Yeah, this is all very sad. It brings a tear to my eye and makes me angry as hell at the same time.
I added a long new section to my post there, read it. :)
One more comment... that article they quote (Time) is a bit over-critical.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/a...20,00.html
Quote: Christmas is supposed to be a happy—and wildly profitable—time, at least if you're Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo, one of the world's leading makers of video games. And during the '80s and '90s, it was a joyous holiday. For most of that time, the Kyoto-based game company could count on at least one of every two game consoles gift-wrapped under Christmas trees to have been manufactured by the firm. And each of those game boxes would generate revenue streams that trickled well into the new year, as customers became addicted to Nintendo-owned franchises such as Super Mario and Zelda and bought more titles. In the game business, as Nintendo proved so well for nearly two decades, software is the gift that keeps on giving.
But the company's latest console, the GameCube, has proved to be an unmitigated disaster, giving this holiday season the potential to become the Winter of Iwata's Discontent. Nintendo has suffered such a string of bad news over the past few months and posted such disappointing financial results over the past few quarters that many investors, analysts and industry watchers are wondering whether the onetime industry giant can hit restart—or at least pause—in an increasingly competitive video-game industry. Not only is Nintendo struggling to keep pace with its larger, better-funded rivals—Sony and Microsoft—in the console business, but its Game Boy division, Nintendo's previously unassailable monopoly in handheld games, is suddenly facing a host of formidable foes.
Due to an inventory clogged with millions of unwanted GameCubes, Nintendo had to suspend production on the boxes for the first nine months of this year. Such operations snafus contributed to the company's first half-yearly loss since going public in 1962. Breaking the firm's profitability streak became an embarrassing black eye for Iwata, who had the great misfortune of taking over the company from legendary CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi a year-and-a-half ago—just as the bottom was falling out. Coming off its worst year in history, the company desperately needs a successful Christmas season if it is to regain the confidence of investors, who have pushed its stock down 24% over the past 12 months.
But a rebound looks unlikely. Nintendo, which once commanded more than 70% of the console market, is now struggling just to stay in the game. As of June this year, Sony's PlayStation 2 had captured 74% of the market, leaving Nintendo's GameCube to split the scraps with console newcomer Microsoft and its Xbox at 13% apiece. The next generation of machines—which could allow Nintendo to erase perceptions that the two-year-old GameCube is inferior to the PlayStation and Xbox—is at least a year away. Rather than articulate a radical plan for the company to regain its competitiveness now, Iwata's most notable action since taking the helm has been a series of price cuts, slashing the cost of GameCube consoles by as much as 50% worldwide. While those reductions have boosted market share and promise to move more units during the crucial holiday weeks, they may well have an adverse effect on Nintendo's profits unless game-software sales rise dramatically too, as hardware is a low-margin (if not loss-making) business even in the best of times.
Sitting in a giant conference room in the company's white, castle-like headquarters, Iwata offers up a series of deeply held yet utterly contrarian beliefs about where this nearly $30 billion industry (which makes it larger than the movie business) is headed. Online video games have been a false start so far, Iwata asserts, which is why he has no plans to lead Nintendo in that direction. The current path taken by game developers toward more cinematic graphics, richer story lines and complicated controls is a blind alley that, he says, will only worsen the current "nothing's new" ennui felt by many consumers.
What people want, Iwata says, are simpler, more accessible games that are easier to play and solve—think thumb candy for dummies. Acknowledging that he cannot hope to win a technological arms race against deep-pocketed Sony and Microsoft, he says that his company's salvation is its in-house creative team and the firm's ability to launch groundbreaking games that spawn blockbuster franchises such as the hugely popular Mario Brothers and Zelda series. "Nintendo's basic strategy is to do things differently," he says. "The key lies in developing games that customers have never come across."
Yet, for a company whose executives claim a Disney-like imaginative edge as its most important asset, the place seems to be suffering from game-development gridlock. Not even Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's legendary creative director and gaming deity—Miyamoto created Mario and Zelda—has been able to break the slump. Miyamoto's latest attempt to launch a revolutionary franchise was a bizarre entry called Pikmin, in which users play an astronaut stranded on a remote planet who must enlist the aid of the local aliens (who look like ambulatory onion sprouts) to rebuild his ship—all set to a country-and-western music soundtrack. Pikmin failed to take off, forcing Nintendo to rely heavily on recycled fare such as Donkey Kong, Zelda, and Pikachu and all his Pokémon friends. When asked about original games and concepts—and potential new growth drivers—that are in the works, Iwata hesitates. "Verbalizing a concept that is entirely new is very difficult," he says. "We hope to rediscover what has been lost between the introduction of video games and now." Earlier in the day, the company had demonstrated one such initiative: a game that connects Game Boy handhelds to the GameCube console, allowing for multi-player action without annoying split screens. The fact that the program itself was an update of Pac-Man (which debuted in 1980), however, tended to undercut the message that this was a particularly thrilling innovation.
Nintendo's slide can be traced back to 1990, when plans for a game-platform joint venture with Sony broke down and the consumer-electronics giant decided to build its own machine. At that time, Nintendo made the Cadillac of consoles—but in coming years a challenge was fielded by the Sega Genesis, which for a time became the No. 1 machine on the market. (Sega abandoned the hardware business in 2001.) Failing to strike an agreement with Sony proved to be fateful, because as that company's PlayStation become more popular, Nintendo made a series of what analysts say were strategic mistakes. Sony, for example, opted to allow its game software to be written on standard storage devices like CDs and, later, DVDs; Nintendo insisted on using its own cartridges for the Nintendo 64, which increased development costs for independent gamemakers (the company belatedly switched to mini-DVDs when it brought out the GameCube in 2001). Because Nintendo depends far more on its own games for profits than other console makers do (it produces about 60% of its own games, compared with Sony's 20%), the company has historically treated outside game companies more like competitors than partners, requiring them to accept unfavorable licensing deals and demanding a greater editorial say in game content. Alienated by Nintendo's heavy-handed ways, coders took their products to Sony, making the PlayStation the machine of choice for most consumers in part because that's where the hit games were.
Perhaps more devastating was Nintendo's initial reluctance to market itself to older teenagers and adults, sticking too long to the low-growth market for kids under 14. Sony identified adult gamers as one of its key markets early on and encouraged game developers to produce titles with sophisticated themes (read: crime and violence, including titles such as Grand Theft Auto 3). While Nintendo still emphasizes the family-friendly nature of its products, it's since brought out more mature games but it is struggling to convince consumers it is anything but a toymaker. At this fall's giant Tokyo Game Show, Konami, one of the largest game producers, introduced 23 PlayStation games—but only three for GameCube. "Our target is high school students and older, not Nintendo's grade school demographics," says Minako Gotoh, an executive at FromSoftware, which currently makes 15 titles for the PlayStation 2 but just two for the GameCube.
At least Iwata can still count on his steady handheld business, right? After all, Nintendo's Game Boy has become practically synonymous with portable gaming—and the bleeping scourge of every family road trip. But all those gaming boys and girls are growing up; Sony hopes to repeat its console success in handhelds by focusing on adult customers. The stakes for Nintendo are high, because Game Boy hardware and software now account for about 60% of the company's annual sales and a similar share of its profits. Sony recently announced plans to enter the handheld market next year with the PlayStation Portable. Meanwhile, other companies, especially mobile-phone makers, are hoping to beat Sony to the punch by converting millions of cell-phone users into game addicts via their handsets. Nokia just debuted its N-Gage phone-plus-games gadget, while many 3G mobile phones available in Japan already rival Game Boy in graphics and playability.
Despite its troubles, no one is seriously suggesting that Nintendo is going to be squeezed out of the hardware business almost overnight, as Sega was. Nintendo is sitting on $6 billion in cash and carries no debt, which could provide a war chest with which to outsource a competitive next-generation hardware system. The threats to its Game Boy monopoly are, at this point, hypothetical; and it does have a core excellence in producing seductive software, which makes it (still) one of the largest game publishers in the world.
The key question among analysts is whether Nintendo—a company that is almost proudly antitechnology—can compete against Microsoft and Sony at a time when the industry is poised for a major transformation. Digital devices of all shapes and sizes—such as entertainment-enabled personal computers that can link up with a TV and stereo; and Web-surfing, TiVo-style video recorders—will over the next several years invade the living room. Microsoft and Sony are already selling game machines capable of connecting to the Internet, anticipating the shift to multipurpose entertainment devices. And Nintendo? Iwata recently declared that the company is already working on a revolutionary new hardware unit, but says he won't divulge any details until next spring.
According to many experts, Nintendo's most likely route is to eventually follow Sega's lead: get out of the brutally competitive console business and focus on software. By doing this Nintendo's growth might become limited, but the company could become a profitable boutique video-game brand that caters to children, newcomers and enthusiasts. In fact, game analyst Hisakazu Hirabayashi insists that scenario has already happened. "Since around 2000, Nintendo was no longer a member of the video-game industry. Its philosophy and method are fundamentally different from the other console and software companies. It's not a loser only because it's taken itself out of the race." Every kid who's booted up Super Mario for the first time knows what happens when you run out of lives and can't secure enough gold coins: game over.
-The Gamecube isn't an "unmitigated disaster"
-This article must have been written before a few weeks ago, because it's unrelentingly negative about the current Cube outlook while Nintendo has enjoyed a recent streak of great news... true, they have struggled badly over the first nine months, with the low sales, first time ever posting a loss, etc, etc... but for the time being at least that's turning around...
(this comes after the paragraph about what Iwata finds wrong with modern games)
Quote:What people want, Iwata says, are simpler, more accessible games that are easier to play and solve—think thumb candy for dummies. Acknowledging that he cannot hope to win a technological arms race against deep-pocketed Sony and Microsoft, he says that his company's salvation is its in-house creative team and the firm's ability to launch groundbreaking games that spawn blockbuster franchises such as the hugely popular Mario Brothers and Zelda series. "Nintendo's basic strategy is to do things differently," he says. "The key lies in developing games that customers have never come across."
Okay... given, Nintendo can't match MS and Sony's dollars so they must be more creative. But as you say... follow that route and the most obvious conclusion I can see is Nintendo exiting the hardware business... but I see no way for them to really keep up, either... very tough question. I just don't know what they should do here... take risks to modernize? But that would push them away from the only thing they have ever been successful at and might just be too risky... they need to change, but can't match Sony or MS...
If they can do things differently and make games customers never came across that'd be great and they could continue to survive making hardware as long as they make SOME efforts to modernize and realize that some of their current positions are idiotic. But as you say, they haven't done that in several years now...
Just read the whole article. They say more than IGN did. It paints a very bleak picture, one I'd call more of a worst-case scenario, but it's all too possible... I really hope Nintendo can get out of it, but it seems like a tough bind they're in, with the only ways that might get them out also ways to potentially ruin their company.
The only thing I remotely agreed with Iwata about was about the complicated controls. While we gamers don't care how complicated controls are, I know a lot of casual gamers who have been put off by how complicated videogames have gotten. A lot of the friends I grew up with playing videogames have stopped playing them because there aren't too many pick-up-and-play games anymore. However, that doesn't mean Nintendo should make every one of their games drop-dead simple. Nintendo's fans want some depth to their games and don't want our hands held the entire time.
As for online gaming, we still don't know how it is doing. Yes, Xbox Live is nice, but Microsoft hasn't released numbers for it in some time, and all of those free year subscriptions should be up now. I am really interested in hearing how many people renewed. The thing is when MS does release numbers they will probably just say how many Xbox Live users there are total which will include all of the free 2-month subscriptions that new Xbox owners are getting. That doesn't mean I don't wish Nintendo would get online, but I understand why they see no profit in it.
However, what Iwata said about graphics and storylines is mind-boggling. Yes, Final Fantasy has gotten too story-oriented in my opinion, but there are games like Eternal Darkness that have an incredible story, but don't overdo it and have incredible gameplay at the same time. The graphics thing is ridiculous too. Yes, Wind Waker was an incredible-looking game, but cinematic graphics are great too. I'm not saying Wind Waker should have looked realistic, but if Nintendo wants to attract more casual gamers they need to stop making every one of their games look like a cartoon.
I'm all for more efficient controls, but games like Kirby's Airride are a no-no. That's just being simple for the sake of being simple and taking away a lot of fun from it. I like Miyamoto's idea of a game that uses only one button and anyone could just pick up and play it, but so far the only games Nintendo has made that do that well are the Mario Parties.
Online console gaming isn't going to do insane numbers in its first year of existence (I don't count the DC since only five people had one). It's going to take time for it to become a perfectly normal thing that everyone participates in, but that time will come. It can only go up from here, and Nintendo is going to miss that boat yet again.
Starcraft is five and a half years old. Its Brood War expansion is five years old. Right now, 38,000 people are online playing Brood Wars, and 150,000 people are on Battle.Net.
If not for online, of course, no one would be playing any of these games.
How many people are on Live at any one time? I know consoles have a sales advantage over PC games, but PC games have a huge lead in online gaming... I mean, releasing a PC FPS or strategy game without online would be something that would have gotten you harshly critisized even several years ago!
The only question is, when will consoles catch up to PCs on this market... they clearly aren't anywhere near there yet. I think it'll require all the consoles having built in enabled multiplay, not these add-ons you must buy. Add-ons just don't sell anywhere near well enough, and many people just won't buy Live or a broadband adaptor if it's not in the system... for the next generation of consoles they must ship it, enabled, with the system. That is the only way to really start console online as a mass-market thing like it is in the PC world (where your computer comes with a modem ready for the internet...).
Seriously, I think that PC online gaming in 1997 was in far better shape than console online gaming in 2003.
I like complex controls. I think they often add depth to games. I can see how casuals wouldn't, but Nintendo can't rely just on casual gamers, as they don't buy anywhere near as many games as hardcore gamers! Same with children... that market is static and not growing. The growth in the industry is in adult gamers, and Nintendo will be in serious trouble if they don't wake up and finally realize that. That doesn't mean ignoring the kids, it means diversifying...
The thing with Battle.net is it's free. The only two games I've ever played online are Warcraft II (before Battle.net) and Bungie's Myth. Most PC games are free to play online unless they are a MMORPG. I know hardcore gamers love playing online, but I think it will be very hard to convince casual gamers to pay to play games online. I know Xbox Live is only the cost of a game, but for a casual gamer who only buys two or three games a year that could make a difference.
Softcore gamers play games online all the time! Free ones. If you've ever played SC or WC3 (or any popular FPS) you'd know quite, quite well how many of those people are definitely not hardcore gamers... in the PC world online gaming is definitely not just for the hardcore. In consoles it still is, but on PCs? Not even close.
Quote:Originally posted by A Black Falcon
Softcore gamers play games online all the time! Free ones. If you've ever played SC or WC3 (or any popular FPS) you'd know quite, quite well how many of those people are definitely not hardcore gamers... in the PC world online gaming is definitely not just for the hardcore. In consoles it still is, but on PCs? Not even close.
Which is why I said I don't think casual gamers will
pay to play games online. Sure, anyone would be up for playing games online for free. You can play as little or as much as you want and not worry about an annual/monthly bill. I just don't think joe gamer is really interested in spending $50 a year to play multiplayer games when the casual gamer doesn't play games all that often.
I think you underestimate the playing time of the average casual gamer. Good multiplayer games always sell well, and online play enhances the longevity of multiplayer games by tenfold. While I think that $50 is great for the headset and the excellent online gaming service that MS provides, I suppose it might be too early to tell just how successful it's going to be in the long run. However, there's no way that online console gaming is going to fail. It can only go up from here, and Nintendo's stuborness is going to keep them way behind Sony and MS.
Well, I'm just going by how often my friends play. All of my friends who own systems own maybe 10 games tops, and don't seem to play them all that often from what I can tell.
That's because they're busy college kids, am I right?
DMiller, I agree -- it is not proven yet as to whether Joe Gamer will pay for online play. So far casuals haven't done that in anything approaching significant numbers... not even close. On PC? MMORPGs are a large market, but I would say that they are more a hardcore market... or they make people who play them hardcore with the time requirements. :D
So in 2003 Nintendo is absolutely right that there is no proof that pay-to-play works on a mass scale or that casual gamers will pay for online gaming. I just think that in the future those will either become more accepted or the business model will change to accomodate more casual gamers, and Nintendo can't get in too late or they'll be left behind.
Oh, and OB1... online multiplay only increases it tenfold? For the best it can be a LOT more than that... :)
Quote:Originally posted by OB1
That's because they're busy college kids, am I right?
True I guess. But you have less and less free time as you get older, so I could only imagine that their situations in regards to gaming won't change too much.
Nintendo = Dinosaurs.
Online gaming = Nintendo extinction as their failure to adapt lead to their own down fall.
The reason online gaming is failing on the gamecube system is because their not backing it, not because it is a failed genre.
Cinematics are key in story telling and having amazing cinematics are nice little easter eggs for many games.But they are right that focusing to much on that area is a head ache.
Online gaming is new and still has alot of bridges and bumps to get through but they are starting to move into the realm of modern gaming. I think Nintendo needs a more younger fresher leader if they hope to evolve.
While I'm not necessarily for or against online games, since I don't think they're that great in the first place, Nintendo's strategy or non-innovation is nothing short of ridiculous.
I think the Black Friday sales jump has given them a little too big of an ego. Nintendo's ego was already too big to begin with.
We need to start a petition for the six of us regular TC members to take over Nintendo. We'd get them back to number one within a month and keep them there forever. Hell, not even us. ANYONE BESIDES IWATA!
I think Online gaming is starting to break out of its infancy , WOW would be I hope the first step to a good successful online game.
Alot of the companies that make online games dont have vision or their just penny pinchers. I really wish nintendo would make a good online mario game, Mario kart double dash would be amazing if it was online wouldnt you think?
I think if it waisnt for failures like starwars galaxy and such people wouldnt doubt online games potential.
But most flaws as I have stated come from penny penchers that dont care about making a good game.
ASM, the 400,000 people who have EverQuest accounts, or the million plus (mostly in Korea) who have Lineage accounts will be delighted to hear you say that MMORPGs are still "in their infancy"... that is just totally absurd. They were in their infancy in 1996, not in 2003...
And look again -- SWG is, as far as I know, about as from a failure as I can think of... sales-wise anyway. Features-wise? It's not the best MMORPG out there but it's a solid one, and will (like all of them) improve with time. I don't get you here at all... either you don't follow the genre or you have some strange criteria I don't understand.
But yes, Mario Kart Online would definitely be amazing, and Nintendo's stupid people in charge who think that losing money on something is the worst thing ever should be blamed for why it's not there. ... but OB1 and I have explained our position on that subject about five hundred times each. :)
EM... Nintendo's strategy isn't non-innovation, it's calling non-innovation or tiny amounts of innovation great innovation while belittling all the innovation that everyone else in the industry is doing. That's worse than just not innovating.
I know someone that actually made his own online RPG he is gonna use it on his resume to get a job.
I didnt say it was in its infancy , I said it was coming out of it.
It seems pretty odd at this point to say that they are still in their infancy...
Have there been any examples of non-MMORPGs being successful online games as pay-to-play?
X-Box Live, so far. The first year was pretty successful for MS, even though the best game during the first eight months or so was Mech Assault. Now there are dozens of really fantastic Live games available so I'd be surprised if it doesn't do even better.
I still haven't been convinced Live has been successful. As I said before all of MS's early Xbox Live numbers included all of those free subscriptions. They haven't said anything about Xbox Live's numbers since all those subscriptions ran out.
There were no free subscribtions, unless you're talking about the very recent free two months thing. Last year it costed $50 to get X-Box Live for a year, and it's still $50 for another year's subscribtion. The only difference is that you got a free headset last year.
Hmm... there were some early pay-to-play PC networks, but they all failed eventually... enough games were free that the pay ones couldn't make it. Some did last several years, though, so they had some success...
Uh, there's a MM sci-fi RTS that's pay-to-play and whose name escapes me, I think that's somewhat successful (not mass-market, but enough to stay in operation...)... but on PC at this point pretty much just MM games are pay-to-play. There are just so many that are free that companies can't justify making you pay for others...
X-Box Live is in the tradition of things like Kali, MPlayer, Heat.net, etc -- those old pay online services I mentioned. Those all lasted a while but were killed by the free ones, or had to go free... we'll see if that model succeeds this time around on consoles where the person controlling the online system can control whether games use it or not a lot more. :)
Quote:Originally posted by OB1
There were no free subscribtions, unless you're talking about the very recent free two months thing. Last year it costed $50 to get X-Box Live for a year, and it's still $50 for another year's subscribtion. The only difference is that you got a free headset last year.
Hmm, my bad. I was under the impression there were a bunch of free subscriptions at the time they released the last Xbox Live numbers. Still, the fact that they haven't announced numbers for Live in a long time is pretty suspicious to me.
They released numbers four months ago. That's pretty recent.
And what kind of numbers were they? Good?
Iwata has some strange ideas, and ones that could be damaging to the company. However, I don't think he's speaking for Nintendo as whole, as in only the internal teams and not the second parties or Retro.
He has the right idea about what's wrong with games these days, he just doesn't have the right solutions...
A reason subcribing fees wont die is because of moronic pest abusers and hackers who piss all over the fun of playing online.
Battle.net is probaily the best free service but hell still just about everyone who has played has encounterd a hacker or offensive terms violator.Its enough somtimes to chase people away from online experience, But thankfully more companies are letting you play with your freinds and not strangers.
Yes, Iwata is just speaking for the internal teams. However, because all the other teams and second parties have a lot of oversight from the main teams (like how Miyamoto oversees all the games...), what they think carries great weight among everything the company publishes... he does have some good ideas about what is wrong, to some extent, but his "solutions" are part of the problem.
And ASM... yes, b.net is full of hackers, as are all online networks. It's part of human nature to be mean and nasty when we think we can get away with it, and the anonimity of online is part of that... Blizz tries its best to limit it, by checking for map hacks, banning hundreds of thousands of accounts that hacked, making some CD Keys unable to get on BNet if they hack multiple times... but people keep doing it... idiots... but oh well, Blizz is doing everything it possibly can, which is more than most companies do.
It really is a terrible thing with all the online hackers. Can't they just stick to some local network of their own creation for their hacks and leave the company's network alone? Oh no, I forgot, they have some sort of "justification".
I've seen some interviews with virus programmers. They actually feel JUSTIFIED! One of them claimed she was doing this as a serviec, A SERVICE! She claimed it was to force MS to upgrade their product. Yeesh, the only reason they'd NEED to upgrade is BECAUSE of people like her who go through the effort of making these viruses! Well, this is treading an old rant it seems, about that being akin to blaming the victim of a house burglery for not having tight enough security (which is stupid). Oh well.
Well... if one hacker doesn't make it, another will... they are right they are making MS plug holes, but if they WERE honorable hackers what they would do is find the exploit and then contact MS and tell them about it, not release a virus that exploits it... maybe release the virus if after a long time MS does nothing, but just releasing viruses isn't right.
What would be nice is private hosted channels were the owner or guild leader can enforce and detain loser jerks. I cant remeber how many times ive been told to "suck my dick" because I didnt protect their newbie bases since they refuse to build armies.
I find that blizzard is overly critized by alot of people, I think that alot of people seem to think that a patch per say will magically make them better players.
anyway if you could run your own channel I would have it that you would be bannished for so much as saying "niggah or some other racial slore", Anyone who post in caps is also bannished for sure.(spammers love caps for some reason)
Uh, it's extremely easy to go to your own channel, just go to one and if it's empty it creates it... and you can squelch anyone so that you can't hear what they're saying, blocking those stupid bots and stuff... and if you do custom games (with people you know) the game creator can kick people out (before it starts only of course), or just not allow someone to play with you anymore... but that requires a group, or clan, or something. If you play random games you get what you know you will -- lots of idiots. It's still fun to play because of how amazing the games are, but yeah, the quantity of idiots does get tiring...
Quote:Originally posted by OB1
They released numbers four months ago. That's pretty recent.
OB1, do you have a link to those numbers somewhere? The most recent numbers I could find were from E3.
I'm still looking for it. I forgot which site reported on it. I do know that X-Box Live saw a 17% leap in sales in August, but from what number I do not know.
I might just pull out my mech assault game.