Editorial: Nintendo Wii, Harbinger For The Death Of Gaming

[_xxx_]

You could control intensity via the analogue face buttons, direction via the analogue stick at the same time the button is pressed (hence the reason I said it could be re-mapped via the use of buttons or a combination thereof..)
Granted you'd end up with an experience which is much less intuitive but in the end the end result (a tennis game) is not only possible using the conventional controller but has been done a million times over with some very good results (Virtua Tennis for example..)

And the fun factor would be what? I think it's not really comparable.

I consider the controller a novelty because its something that one can immediately draw enjoyment from using since it's not something one maybe familiar with..

Ok, I understood "novelty" rather as something negative in this context.

It's unlikely then that you've played any of them for more than a few minutes (by your own logic..)

Oh, but I've had a PC with a gamepad since the dawn of time

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

This guy obviously has never heard of the dual-shock..

Isnt Natoma a girl?

anyway that doesnt really count as its basically the same controller only with rumble. It doesnt really matter if you play with or without the rumble controller games will just work exactly the same. You cant do that with something like a wiiremote because its a total different concept.

 

[_xxx_]

Isnt Natoma a girl?

Yes and no. No girl out there looks like Vin Diesel Check the "Show yourself" thread in general discussion.

 

[Deusp]

You're looking at PS4/NextBox before Sony and MS adopt full motion controls like the Wiimote. No peripheral or post-launch addon in the history of gaming has ever succeeded long term. Ever.

Both the Eyetoy and Guitar Hero beg to differ.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Yes and no. No girl out there looks like Vin Diesel Check the "Show yourself" thread in general discussion.

I cant find it

Though I dont know if I have to be so unhappy about that if its true what you are saying

 

[DeadlyNinja]

In particular, SNES saw fairly major releases all the way up through 1996, the last probably being Donkey Kong Country 3 and Street Fighter Alpha 2 in November '96, a good 2 years into the 32-bit generation.

Actually, the last major release for the SNES was in 1999 with Fire Emblem Thracia 776. The game was released in Japan originally on a flash cart type device for the SNES. People can pay the money and stick their cart into this machine and the game will be downloaded into the cart. Due to the success of the game (of course it's pretty tiny compared to the glory days of 16 bit), Nintendo went out and released an actual cart version of the game in Japan.

You're looking at PS4/NextBox before Sony and MS adopt full motion controls like the Wiimote. No peripheral or post-launch addon in the history of gaming has ever succeeded long term. Ever.

I personally consider the 4 MB RAM expansion quite a successful add-on. I don't have any real numbers to back it up though, so I could be dead wrong. The add-on did support quite a few heavy hitter games though.

 

[Natoma]

This guy obviously has never heard of the dual-shock..

Developers didn't really start supporting the analog controls (Dual analog) and rumble features (Dual Shock) until the PS2 came out. What changed? Dual Shock 2 was the standard controller from Day 1.

There is a short list of PS1 games that supported analog and/or rumble. The same problem existed with N64 games when they added the rumble pack to the controller later on vs built in rumble on the GC controller.

Not that any of that really matters considering that's a tiny step in control changes compared with the huge paradigm shift of motion sensing.

 

[Natoma]

Isnt Natoma a girl?

anyway that doesnt really count as its basically the same controller only with rumble. It doesnt really matter if you play with or without the rumble controller games will just work exactly the same. You cant do that with something like a wiiremote because its a total different concept.

Nope, I'm a guy.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=966035#post966035

 

[Natoma]

Both the Eyetoy and Guitar Hero beg to differ.

How many games support Guitar Hero's peripheral?

How many games support Eyetoy?

Both of those combined would be less than 1% of the market, easily. That's not a commercial success.

If you want to talk about game sales for the original peripheral attachment, then yea we should probably start bringing up light guns and Dance Dance Revolution pads and what not. However, that's not the basis of the discussion.

 

[Natoma]

I personally consider the 4 MB RAM expansion quite a successful add-on. I don't have any real numbers to back it up though, so I could be dead wrong. The add-on did support quite a few heavy hitter games though.

The N64 RAM pack only had the support of a few games in the N64 library. I believe they were Zelda: Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Donkey Kong. Maybe Starfox, I'm not sure.

Either way, its support was very limited.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

The N64 RAM pack only had the support of a few games in the N64 library. I believe they were Zelda: Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Donkey Kong. Maybe Starfox, I'm not sure.

Either way, its support was very limited.

Those are some very big name games and they sold well enough. Star Fox definitely doesn't support it. You forgot games like Quake 2, World is Not Enough, Turok 2 and 3, Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo, and maybe a few more. Most of them sold quite well, although I guess not all of them makes the RAM pack a must outside of MM and DK64.

 

[Natoma]

As far as I knew, those games only saw slight upticks in quality, but nothing that was earth shattering or game changing. The ones I listed, sans Starfox (ty for the correction), needed the ram pack to function, or unlock significant content like resolution upgrades and enhanced textures.

 

[Deusp]

How many games support Guitar Hero's peripheral?

How many games support Eyetoy?

Both of those combined would be less than 1% of the market, easily. That's not a commercial success.

Eyetoy is well above 3 million, and GH is over 1.5 million and rapidly growing. It should be noted that the GH guitar is about $90 too. A committed drive for motion control is easily possible.

If you want to talk about game sales for the original peripheral attachment, then yea we should probably start bringing up light guns and Dance Dance Revolution pads and what not. However, that's not the basis of the discussion.

Then what is? These things do sell well.

 

[Natoma]

Eyetoy is well above 3 million, and GH is over 1.5 million and rapidly growing. It should be noted that the GH guitar is about $90 too. A committed drive for motion control is easily possible.



Then what is? These things do sell well.

Breadth of software development designed for said peripheral

 

[Deusp]

Breadth of software development designed for said peripheral

There were certainly more than one game made for the Eyetoy. In that sense it's no different than the Wii where the base is percentage with Eyetoys instead of everybody. I believe that once it has been established that an add-on peripheral can sell big and support its own development, then it's only a matter of scale to make one that competes with the Wii altogether. Anyone who can make a wii-mote clone that sells 10 million will probably beat or greatly mitigate the Wii.

 

[Teasy]

As far as I knew, those games only saw slight upticks in quality, but nothing that was earth shattering or game changing. The ones I listed, sans Starfox (ty for the correction), needed the ram pack to function, or unlock significant content like resolution upgrades and enhanced textures.

Games Like Turok 2 and WWE No Mercy also used it for higher resolutions, not sure what Quake 2, World is not Enough or Battle for Naboo used it for but I'd assume it was something similarly significant.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Actually, the only game that didn't use the 4 MB RAM expansion for increase in Texture Resolution was Majora's Mask. All the other guys used it for better graphics.

Here's a list of all the games that I know that used the expansion pak.

Games that MUST use the expansion pak

*Donkey Kong 64

*The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

*Perfect Dark (some parts of the game work without the pak though)

*Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2

Games that uses the expansion pak.

*40 Winks

*All-star Baseball 2001

*Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.

*Battlezone: Rise Of The Black Dogs

*Castlevania Legacy of Darkness

*Command & Conquer

*Cruis'n World

*Daikatana

*Duke Nukem Zero Hour

*Extreme G2

*Excitebike 64

*F1 World Grand Prix 2

*Gauntlet Legends

*Hot Wheels

*Hybrid Heaven

*Hydro Thunder

*Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine

*International Track and Field 2000

*Jeremy McGrath's Supercross 2000

*Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest

*Madden NFL '99

*Madden NFL 2000

*NBA Courtside 2

*NBA Jam 2000

*New Tetris, The

*NFL Quarterback Club 99

*NFL Quarterback Club 2000

*Nuclear Strike 64

*Quake 2

*Rayman 2

*Re-volt

*Resident Evil 2

*Roadsters

*San Francisco Rush 2049

*Shadowman

*South Park

*South Park Rally

*Star Craft 64

*Star Wars Episode 1 Battle for Naboo

*Star Wars Episode 1 Racer

*Star Wars Rouge Squadron

*The World is not Enough

*Tony Hawk's Skateboarding

*Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3

*Top Gear Hyper-Bike

*Top Gear Overdrive

*Top Gear Rally 2

*Turok 2 Seeds of Evil

*Turok 3 Shadow of Oblivion

*Turok Rage Wars


Looks like a pretty darn good list of games to be consider a success if you ask me. It was also released mid-way of the N64's life cycle. Also, Conker actually doesn't support the 4 MB RAM expansion.

*Note* I did not write the list above, and I've notice it contains some errors!

 

[Natoma]

There were certainly more than one game made for the Eyetoy. In that sense it's no different than the Wii where the base is percentage with Eyetoys instead of everybody. I believe that once it has been established that an add-on peripheral can sell big and support its own development, then it's only a matter of scale to make one that competes with the Wii altogether. Anyone who can make a wii-mote clone that sells 10 million will probably beat or greatly mitigate the Wii.

In comparison to the thousands of games made for the PS2? I bet you can only come up with 5 titles that were created with the eyetoy in mind. With 1,000 titles as baseline, that'd be 0.5% support.

Not exactly encouraging when comparing with the Wiimote, which is the default control scheme for the console.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There were certainly more than one game made for the Eyetoy. In that sense it's no different than the Wii where the base is percentage with Eyetoys instead of everybody. I believe that once it has been established that an add-on peripheral can sell big and support its own development, then it's only a matter of scale to make one that competes with the Wii altogether. Anyone who can make a wii-mote clone that sells 10 million will probably beat or greatly mitigate the Wii.

Though the Eyetoy has been very successful as a peripheral, it hasn't attracted developers to take it up, and that's the issue here. Few developers have concerned themselves to create EyeToy games, and it's mostly slipped by the wayside as a concept, losing the momentum it had at launch.

Of course things would be very different if the device was included as standard. If EyeToy was packed in with every PS2 since launch, there'd be something like 40 million more out there, and you can be sure developers would be targetting that somewhere along the line!

Another consideration is how much of Wiimote's unique abilities are actually being used, making Wii software unique to the platform. There's certainly some Wii titles that wouldn't suffer in a port. eg. Paper Mario can be done on XB360 and PS3. Excite Truck can be done on PS3. If you take away the simple party games, how many titles are truly built around the Wiimote? And can that experience be transported to the other consoles with only minimal impact? In the case of rumble packs, losing the rumble didn't affect the gameplay any great deal. In the case of Wii, how many titles will be like Zelda, with Wii control additions that aren't intrinsic to the game experience?

A couple of interesting points to add. One is the Norwegian software posted elsewhere on this forum, showing how PS2's Buzz, EyeToy and Singstar peripheral games top the charts, and Wii doesn't feature. There's certainly markets that can be won over with peripherals and I think aggressive peripheral pursuit, something companies shy away from, could create a solid user foundation.

The second point is this interview with THQ. It states they're not doing titles for XB360 & PS3 & Wii, but targetting Wii separately.
"In the past a lot of publishers - including us - would say, 'Okay, let's make a game and get it across every system.' That's not our strategy going forward; there are going to be different gamers for the different systems. So our strategy is different types of content, segmented on who the users of the systems are."
According to Farrell, Xbox 360 and PS3 "very powerful machines" which are "more targeted at the core gamer", while the Wii offers unique opportunities to exploit the licences THQ has picked up from Pixar, Nickelodeon and WWE.
"When you look at the core gamer properties, these are the big bets - the high cost, very targeted games," he said, citing examples such as Saints Row and the forthcoming Frontlines: Fuel of War. "You've got to compete at the highest level of quality. There are fewer of those bets, but they'll probably be very large in terms of sales numbers."

 

[fearsomepirate]

How many people do you know that enjoy playing PS2 after 5 years (regardless of the game) just because they enjoy waggling the analogue sticks..?

How many people who have been enjoying PS2 games for 5 years enjoy going back to 3D games that can only be played with a D-Pad? Although a new paradigm eventually is taken for granted, it does continue to make the old ones feel obsolete. I can go back to playing an N64 game (assuming the framerate was OK to begin with), but I can't stand PS1 games for precisely that reason. Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, which seemed so awesome at the time, now just feel broken.