Nintendo Talks Revolution, Game Boy Micro and More

[A Black Falcon]

As usual, they say very, very little... nothing new that I can see.

Oh, and I think it's bizarre that they're saying that wireless-only online for a home console will actually manage to get a bigger market than current-gen online multiplayer... but that's just the start of the problems with this paragraph.

BIZ: For the last few years, Nintendo has essentially ignored the online market. However, now with the Wi-Fi Connection for DS and Revolution Nintendo seems to be embracing online gaming. Why the change of heart?

BL: Well, it's something that we've always recognized, that online gaming was a direction that we would go in. It just didn't make sense for GameCube, and I think a lot of people would agree with that. You know there wasn't a lot of money to be made, if any. The majority was still playing offline vs. online. It just sounded cool and everybody liked the idea of [online games], but I think now in this next generation we're certainly at a point where it is making more sense, especially with the idea of Wi-Fi and particularly on the handheld side. It's the perfect next step on the handheld side, so for Nintendo DS introducing our first Wi-Fi enabled games later this year is very exciting... and then what we do on DS, how we structure it, from that standpoint will kind of carry over into what we do with Revolution.

Ack. I guess they're referring to 'it wasn't free... but I just see so many things wrong with this paragraph... I don't know where to start. "it sounded cool and people liked the idea but it wasn't practical"? Um... what world are you living in, Nintendo? Not this one, for sure... you can say "it was not a potential moneymaker", but "it's not popular" or something... that's a lie, plain and simple.

I mean, sure, most softcore gamers aren't playing online. And Nintendo is trying its best to attract softcore gamers. But hardcore gamers are at least half of the market, and they're on the whole quite interested in online... at least, once they try it... and coming from a PC gaming perspective, where some form of long-range (direct IP (modem), online, LAN/with a spoofer, etc...) has been required in all multiplayer games released since about 1996 (you could argue for 1995, even...)... it's just insane.

As for the wireless thing... this is a static console. It attaches to a television. There is no advantage to it being wireless-only. That only alienates a big chunk of the market... oh, doesn't that also make it broadband-only? Also a bad idea, in the US... I know X-Box Live has gone that route, but Nintendo criticized them for that and most PC games at least allow modem connections, if not good speed while using them.

BIZ: Can you talk about why Nintendo decided to go with the DVD format for the Revolution and not a proprietary Nintendo format like you did with GameCube?

BL: Actually, it's a 12-cm optical disc so there will be some proprietary element to that... piracy is a big issue in our industry... so it's similar to what we did on GameCube. But also recognize that the bigger format is important and we also built the system to be backwards compatible so it will accept both the 8-cm GameCube discs and the larger discs for Revolution.

I expected so, Nintendo wants to combat piracy...