8th June 2005, 3:33 PM
Actually, in the past Nintendo announced that the Revolution, for it's Gamecube compatibility, actually has 4 gamecube controller slots and two gamecube memory card slots. There are pictures of that too. The idea is simply that you don't NEED to worry about how well the new controller does it, because the Gamecube controller will be responsible for ALL backwards compatibility, as well as playing the emulated classics. That's why all those peripherals will be usable too.
Nintendo has stated they won't include a hard drive because of worries that kids will break it. Um... okay... Don't get me wrong, kids break things, but hard drives are MORE durable than optical disk drives. The kid would have to do more than enough damage to break the system ANYWAY in order to damage an installed hard disk. If the concern is them hurting it when it's out of the system, again, the game disks on optical media are far more fragile. Their argument has been utterly shattered. So, what is the REAL reason? Well, 512MB of flash ram is probably a LOT cheaper than any decently sized hard disk. BUT, 50 GIGs of flash ram would be a lot more EXPENSIVE. That's the thing. To compete, they'll really need to either up the size or just toss in a hard drive after all. Otherwise, they are always just playing catchup.
Anyway, so as it turns out you CAN download Revolution games, at least demos of them. I suppose this means that Gamecube games could also be downloaded, so the limit doesn't end with N64 games, maybe. If you have enough storage space on an SD card, what's to stop them from eventually selling the full versions of Gamecube and Revolution games as downloads? Well, the length of time they would take I guess... but aside from that, nothing really. And, if they want an MMORPG on their system, and these days having ONE of those is becoming a rather odd advertising device, they'll need massive rewritable storage simply because those games are constantly being patched. The whole thing would have to be on the storage, runnable from there even without the disk. It's how the PS2 (and likely the XBox 360) are currently playing FFXI anyway...
Well, as it stands that's Nintendo's weak spot. If the other companies start really pushing their rewritable advantage with like, a lot of exclusive games with massive editable content and such, Nintendo won't be sitting well... I know you can buy a massive SD card seperatly and all, but really Nintendo, those things are EXPENSIVE. Including one would just make Nintendo foot the bill, but they MAY be in a position where they have to do SOMETHING about that. Pretending the size limitations aren't an issue won't fool us any more. They did that for two generations already.
But anyway, we'll see... Now ALL my old systems work flawlessly, though that may be due to the occasional upkeep I do on them where I take the system apart and give it a good cleaning (recently the reset button stopped working on my SNES, but after taking it apart and cleaning some stuff up, it works just fine now). What this means is I'm not motivated to buy old games I already have because the inconvenience of hooking up the other system to my TV isn't worth 5 bucks :D. But, I look forward to this because, and I really hope Nintendo does this, I may just be able to get all those Japan only games we've been denied for too long. Heck, even if they don't translate them, I hope they at least give us Americans access to the same download servers the Japanese get. It would be annoying, but if it was the only way, I'd play Mother 1 or the early Fire Emblems in Japanese (without having to go through the trouble of importing). It would certainly motivate me to learn the language anyway.
Oh yes, that brings me to another topic. Will the DS see a similar feature? That is, can I stick a special memory card into the cartridge slot on the DS and download old Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance games? You know, for the first two they would need special emulation software and all, but still, that would be nice wouldn't it?
Nintendo has stated they won't include a hard drive because of worries that kids will break it. Um... okay... Don't get me wrong, kids break things, but hard drives are MORE durable than optical disk drives. The kid would have to do more than enough damage to break the system ANYWAY in order to damage an installed hard disk. If the concern is them hurting it when it's out of the system, again, the game disks on optical media are far more fragile. Their argument has been utterly shattered. So, what is the REAL reason? Well, 512MB of flash ram is probably a LOT cheaper than any decently sized hard disk. BUT, 50 GIGs of flash ram would be a lot more EXPENSIVE. That's the thing. To compete, they'll really need to either up the size or just toss in a hard drive after all. Otherwise, they are always just playing catchup.
Anyway, so as it turns out you CAN download Revolution games, at least demos of them. I suppose this means that Gamecube games could also be downloaded, so the limit doesn't end with N64 games, maybe. If you have enough storage space on an SD card, what's to stop them from eventually selling the full versions of Gamecube and Revolution games as downloads? Well, the length of time they would take I guess... but aside from that, nothing really. And, if they want an MMORPG on their system, and these days having ONE of those is becoming a rather odd advertising device, they'll need massive rewritable storage simply because those games are constantly being patched. The whole thing would have to be on the storage, runnable from there even without the disk. It's how the PS2 (and likely the XBox 360) are currently playing FFXI anyway...
Well, as it stands that's Nintendo's weak spot. If the other companies start really pushing their rewritable advantage with like, a lot of exclusive games with massive editable content and such, Nintendo won't be sitting well... I know you can buy a massive SD card seperatly and all, but really Nintendo, those things are EXPENSIVE. Including one would just make Nintendo foot the bill, but they MAY be in a position where they have to do SOMETHING about that. Pretending the size limitations aren't an issue won't fool us any more. They did that for two generations already.
But anyway, we'll see... Now ALL my old systems work flawlessly, though that may be due to the occasional upkeep I do on them where I take the system apart and give it a good cleaning (recently the reset button stopped working on my SNES, but after taking it apart and cleaning some stuff up, it works just fine now). What this means is I'm not motivated to buy old games I already have because the inconvenience of hooking up the other system to my TV isn't worth 5 bucks :D. But, I look forward to this because, and I really hope Nintendo does this, I may just be able to get all those Japan only games we've been denied for too long. Heck, even if they don't translate them, I hope they at least give us Americans access to the same download servers the Japanese get. It would be annoying, but if it was the only way, I'd play Mother 1 or the early Fire Emblems in Japanese (without having to go through the trouble of importing). It would certainly motivate me to learn the language anyway.
Oh yes, that brings me to another topic. Will the DS see a similar feature? That is, can I stick a special memory card into the cartridge slot on the DS and download old Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance games? You know, for the first two they would need special emulation software and all, but still, that would be nice wouldn't it?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)