21st February 2006, 10:43 PM
Nintendo's biggest mistake (and Reggie's): his repeated defences of Nintendo's moronic internet strategy. He actually pretends that it's a GOOD thing that Nintendo Online only lets you either play random games with people you cannot contact, talk to, or have any interaction with in any way or to play game-specific (that is, with no unified "who's online" list) multiplayer with people you know outside of the context of the game only! He defends it in interviews, and based on that makes it REALLY sound like that's how the Revolution will work to... it's so horrible, and so broken, that... well, this is like Nintendo saying "connectivity is our online" or "online gaming is a fad" or "we can do just as well without a CD drive this generation" with the N64, etc... incredibly, incredibly stupid and horribly restrictive. It doesn't exactly make me overly eager to play Nintendo's games online... despite the fact that it would be fun, how fun is it with no way to interact the other players? Yeah, really not different from single player. Sad. Microsoft is doing great things with online consoles, and Sony looks like it's going to follow them and do something like that, and again Nintendo doesn't get the message... hmm, I wonder why they've dropped users every generation...
I mean, I love their games, but they really do seem to like to make things hard on themselves!
Oh yeah, and the Zelda delay risks minimizing its impact (like Majora's Mask's) relative to what it could have done... this cannot be helped, but consoles are not PCs where you can simply spec up -- it's based on a specific platform, and each one has a timespan. The GC's is clearly mostly done... does this mean that Zelda will have Revolution hooks? It means it's likely...
Of course, the game will be great. Clearly. That's not the question, its impact and sales are... will it do as well as a late 2006 Gamecube game? Would some small Revolution hook really help? I don't know... I know that they should delay it if it's not done, but that's the problem with working on a console late in its life... even good games get relatively ignored (like most of the late 2000 and all the 2001 GC games).
Oh, as for HDTV, that won't matter for a few years. It might hurt Nintendo in 2008 or something, but not this year...
I mean, I love their games, but they really do seem to like to make things hard on themselves!
Oh yeah, and the Zelda delay risks minimizing its impact (like Majora's Mask's) relative to what it could have done... this cannot be helped, but consoles are not PCs where you can simply spec up -- it's based on a specific platform, and each one has a timespan. The GC's is clearly mostly done... does this mean that Zelda will have Revolution hooks? It means it's likely...
Of course, the game will be great. Clearly. That's not the question, its impact and sales are... will it do as well as a late 2006 Gamecube game? Would some small Revolution hook really help? I don't know... I know that they should delay it if it's not done, but that's the problem with working on a console late in its life... even good games get relatively ignored (like most of the late 2000 and all the 2001 GC games).
Oh, as for HDTV, that won't matter for a few years. It might hurt Nintendo in 2008 or something, but not this year...