22nd September 2003, 12:14 PM
Quote:So you finally admit that Nintendo's target audience for the GBA isn't adults. And that last line of yours doesn't make even a tiny bit of sense. "Trying to attract a market that isn't particularly drawn to an established console"... uh, that's kind of the point of the word "attract". You get people who aren't already playing the games to come to the system, since attracting people who already have Gameboys is kind of a stupid thing to do. You want to get the people who don't already have a Gameboy to buy one.
I don't really know, that's why it sounds confused...
'finally admit'? Huh? Of course the GBA's target market isn't adults! When did I say differently? There is a side market of specific older gamers, but not most mainstream ones... I do think I've said that before... only older Nintendo fans and people who like 2d games would really like GBA games, I'd think.
Quote:And that's why I expect to see Nintendo repeat similar mistakes with their next handheld as they did with the N64/GC.
Unfortunately, they well might. :(
Quote:That's because it wasn't until Mortal Kombat 2 came out that Nintendo started to allow real violence in their games, so everything before that was kid-friendly. There were a whole bunch of violent games available for the 2600 (like like Custer game where you rape Indians... seriously), so technology isn't what kept Nintendo from releasing violent games on the Gameboys.
True. But GBA seems to be aiming slightly older than previous GB's...not enough to make a big difference, though.
Quote:Are you kidding me? Why do you think that when the PS2 first came out most people bought DVDs instead of games? While it was bad for Sony at first since they lost money per PS2 shipped, it gave the system an enourmous userbase so when the good games started rolling in they sold extremely well. The whole DVD player debate was very popular during the X-Box and GC launch, in case you forgot. I can't even remember how many people I saw in Babbages and Best Buy ask "which system can play DVD movies?" and bought them because of that.
Yeah, yeah... but I still think it was a good decision. It kept piracy off the Cube (there still is very nearly no GC piracy as far as I know), since going through the DVD was a major exploitation... and it also kept the price down. The biggest problems with the Cube, I'd say, were innefective and not enough marketing and the system design...
Quote:You're missing the point. The GBA technology will be far more inferior to the PSP than the SNES was to the PSX, so that evens things out. At the end of the SNES' lifespan Nintendo was king of the market. And remember that Sony didn't become insanely popular until around the time FFVII came out, so the Sony that fought against the SNES was not popular at the time. I'd also like to remind you that the first generation of PSX games looked like crap, so it wasn't that big of a leap over the previous CD systems that came out.
I would not say that Nintendo was king of the market. Were they #1? Yes. But it wasn't totally dominant, as there were lots of other platforms out that had fanbases... a very different story from handhelds where the Game Boy has controlled the entire industry since 1989...
True, the PSP will definitely be a bigger step up than the PSX was from the SNES. And yes, Sony wasn't insanely popular until they got FF...which should be a point for my side! Unless the PSP gets major publishers to move over exclusively and drop the next Nintendo console as well as the GBA, they'll have a pretty hard time taking over...
Quote:It sounds similar because it is, you dolt! And do you know what else is different? Nintendo isn't half as popular today as they were ten years ago. Also, the generation gap between the GBA and PSP will be over twice as large as the gap between the SNES and the PSX, no doubt about it.
True, but the GB name is as dominant as ever... maybe more so, with the release of the GBA-SP...
Quote:That's Japan, and that was back when Nintendo was the most popular gaming company in the world. They're not the most popular anymore. It's not just time that Nintendo has to worry about, it's also the capabilities of their next handheld. Sony is clearly going to target an older, mainstream audience and because of that Sony can make their handheld more expensive than the GBA. I really don't know if Nintendo is going to do that. It's probably going to end up much like the PSX/N64 war where Sony got ahead by attracting adults and non-gamers while Nintendo just stuck to kids and hardcore gamers.
Their only chance is if they get some huge exclusive games, keep manufacturers off the next GB, and use their huge marketing machine to gain share... but even then it won't be easy. Nintendo is hardly going to give up its prize posession (handheld control) without a fight...