Nintendo's Press Conference

[A Black Falcon]

The similarities are so striking that I can't believe that you don't see them.

1. Nintendo was king of the market before the PlayStation started to become successful. Now they are way, way behind in third place. Right now Nintendo is king of the handheld gaming market, but they have no competition.

2. When it was starting to look like the PSX could become more popular than Nintendo's system, every fanboy in the world scoffed at that. Then Sony dominated the entire industry. Right now Sony is planning on releasing a powerful handheld to compete with the Gameboy, and every fanboy in the world is scoffing at it.

3. Third-parties flocked to the PSX because Sony offered cheaper software costs and cheaper licensing fees than Nintendo. Right now Nintendo charges third-parties a lot of money for making GBA games, and it's a safe bet that Sony will be the cheaper alternative.

1. When the PSX came out Nintendo had just above 50% of the worldwide market, not 90-95% like the GB has.

2. True.

3. Yeah, liscencing on the PSP well might be lower... and that probably will attract third parties.

But you just keep ignoring that the portable market cannot be directly compared to the main market, or the GB would have never lasted through the Turbografx-portable, Lynx, and Game Gear times of its launch... because all three of those were more powerful, color systems, while GB was weak, with a pathetic speaker, and black and white... yet it CRUSHED them. Why? Battery life and better games. And the GB has crushed all the competitors since.

As for the PSP it probably does have the best chance since the Game Gear. But I highly doubt it'll win.

First... $200 IS what I bet it will cost. And by then the SP will be under $100, and a classic GBA will be very cheap.

Second... there is only so much they can do with batteries. With that media and power, 15 hours seems to me to be far out of their reach. No question. And that will be a critical issue.

Oh... and one more thing.

The SP has been out for a few years. It has amassed a HUGE library of great games. It also can draw on the MASSIVE backlist of great GB and GBC games. That is a huge, huge inventory of very good games.

The SP will be starting from scratch.

That is a KEY difference between the GBA-PSP and N64-PSX that I am amazed that you have ignored!

I bet.

I was feeling kinda bad that I was arguing without having played much B-K on a N64... so I quit the arguement. That's the truth.

You've played them, but you haven't played them enough to notice the major differences between them, it seems.

Absolutely not true. There are major differences between games from different companies.

But between Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64? I just don't see any huge thematic differences. I know you say you've said all this before, but when I look back I see you almost always talking about B-K, NOT B-T like I have been...

So, how ARE there dramatic differences in gameplay style between B-T and DK64?

What do I see? I see B-T being a bit faster in pace because you don't have to do as much switching... but you still have to switch (to Mumbo to hit those pads, to the creature that Wumba turns you into to do level-specific tasks, to seperate Banjo and Kazooie...) some, and because you do it for specific tasks and not for major gameplay parts (IE you just switch, do some suff, then go back to normal) I actually found it more annoying than the switching in DK64... at least in that one you could stay as one character for some time as they had real major tasks to do in each level...

But as for stuff like jump height, walking speed, etc. I don't see big differences.