Games industry on Revolution

[fearsomepirate]

The same was said for the GC and look how that turned out, the GC died before it's time due to lack of support, the N64 also had a alck of support.

From 3rd-party publishers, not from Nintendo. Nintendo continued to frequently publish games for N64 right up until it died officially. They haven't really slacked off on Cube, either. In the last few months, they've published an AAA RPG (Fire Emblem), a creative new franchise (Chibi Robo), and another continuation of the Mario Sports stable (Mario Strikers). That's way more than MS is doing for Xbox right now.

I've repeated this so much it's getting boring: GC had plenty of 3rd-party support until after E3 2003 made it clear that Nintendo was going to pursue a blatant anti-consumer money-grabbing scheme known as "connectivity" rather than online or LAN play. It dried up because Nintendo was trying to force everyone to buy an extra $200 worth of equipment to enjoy Cube games, so people quit buying them and 3rd parties quit making them. It has nothing to do with a mythical "lack of support" from Nintendo.

Personally, even with the releases as slow as they are, I can't keep up with them. I still haven't played Big Red One, Chibi Robo, Fire Emblem, or Lego Star Wars.

And why assume publishers will just downgrade PS3 and X360 titles? People don't buy consoles for the cross-platform games (of which Cube had plenty); they buy for exclusives (of which Cube had only a few). It's not like Metal Gear Solid 3 was downgraded from the nonexistent Xbox version. I'm expecting to see a lot of new games, not broken ports of X360 games with worse controls (or better, if it's an FPS).

 

[poopypoo]

The PC necessary to outdo a console costs a lot more money than the console does! By the time the console tech is 'obselete' (PS2 was producing better cisuals 3 years into it's life than many a PC game) the machine that renders it obselete, the top-end PC, costs $stupid.

Economy is the worst argument you can levy against consoles!

Hmmm, I disagree. It seems silly to derail this thread for long, but I find the utility offered by PC parts so vastly outweighs consoles that the console is essentially worthless. You disagree, because I think you find graphics rather important, so you can only think of hardware-pushing title. I think of mods and of basically every other genre on the planet. That said, I do own a gamecube, so, clearly, I am willing to pay some money for high-quality games. But I can never say the GC is worth as much as a 240 GB hard drive. Basically, I just had the money to burn at the time.

 

[inefficient]

Nintendo does not want to go to war with Sony period. They know they are not in a position to be the leader in the home entertainment area. They know need need to play this smart if they want to go out like Sega. I wouldn't even be surprised to heard that they make some secret deal with Sony saying they would not try to directly compete with them.

Nintendo's assets:
Loyal fans
Very talented first party developers.
Very popular IPs (pokemon, mario, zelda)

Sony's assets:
A movie studio
A record label
A consumer AV equipment business (One of the top 10)
A consumer PC business
A microprocessor fabbing business (One of the top 10)
A primary partner in the BluRay agenda
The Playstation name brand
Strong developer connections

Microsofts assets:
The world leader in software development experience (Arguably)
A hell of a lot of money

 

[NANOTEC]

Nintendo has no debt and makes as much profit as the entire SONY corporation...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hmmm, I disagree. It seems silly to derail this thread for long, but I find the utility offered by PC parts so vastly outweighs consoles that the console is essentially worthless. You disagree, because I think you find graphics rather important, so you can only think of hardware-pushing title.

No, I'm talking straight economy of playing games. The PC spec needed to surpass what consoles achieve costs a lot more money than the consoles do. If you use that for other stuff, great, but for people who play games, which is the market Nintendo is aiming for, the PC doesn't not offer an economical solution.

 

[inefficient]

Nintendo has no debt and makes as much profit as the entire SONY corporation...

Not sure where you got that idea. Maybe you saw the earnings release for just 1 quarter where N did well and S did poorly. Here are the facts.

Nintendo 2005:
$4.3 billion in sales
$652 million profit

Sony 2005:
$63.2 billion in sales
$1.0 Billion profit

 

[NANOTEC]

Not sure where you got that idea. Maybe you saw the earnings release for just 1 quarter where N did well and S did poorly. Here are the facts.

Nintendo 2005:
$4.3 billion in sales
$652 million profit

Sony 2005:
$63.2 billion in sales
$1.0 Billion profit

That pretty much proves my point.

 

[OtakingGX]

That pretty much proves my point.

The Nintendo number is 15% profit, well over what you'd expect from a healthy business (8%) and Sony's is 1.5%, well under.

 

[Powderkeg]

The Nintendo number is 15% profit, well over what you'd expect from a healthy business (8%) and Sony's is 1.5%, well under.

You've got an extremely weak position if you are reduced to "Nintendo has a higher percentage profit ratio, but earns less profit" as your arguement.

 

[pc999]

You've got an extremely weak position if you are reduced to "Nintendo has a higher percentage profit ratio, but earns less profit" as your arguement.

Anyway it make us think that if GC as more sucessefull it would be a beast in profit, the same can be said for Rev.

 

[poopypoo]

No, I'm talking straight economy of playing games. The PC spec needed to surpass what consoles achieve costs a lot more money than the consoles do. If you use that for other stuff, great, but for people who play games, which is the market Nintendo is aiming for, the PC doesn't not offer an economical solution.

Oh, if we're talking only about what other people find economical, then sure, I agree. I just think basically... heh, I essentially am saying the console market frustrates me, due to other people. ^^;;;

 

[Fox5]

Nintendo has no debt and makes as much profit as the entire SONY corporation...

I'm not sure if the Sony corporation even makes a profit year after year, but their revenue is absurdly higher, which means they are producing other assets, whereas Nintendo just has money.

BTW, played an Xbox 360 recently on someone's EDTV...480P is still somewhat acceptable as a console resolution for single player games, but split screen multiplayer needs much higher res to be acceptable. Well, it could just be a downgrade in graphics due to going split screen, all I know is that split screen 360 games don't look any better than split screen xbox games. I hope Nintendo is planning on making its multiplayer games ala mario party, mario sports, and smash bros (ala, one screen gaming for multiple players with no split) rather than going split screen if they're sticking to 480p.

 

[Urian]

I believe that the Revolution idea is the same of the GBA idea, the rule of 3 cheaps:

1. Cheap Console
2. Cheap Development
3. Cheap Games

It cannot be more simple, Revolution isn´t a next gen console is a new gen console that is different.

 

[pc999]

It cannot be more simple, Revolution isn´t a next gen console is a new gen console that is different.

How can you have a new gen without being next gen too .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How can you have a new gen without being next gen too .

Yes, that's quite a silly statement. Obviously Urian is taking next-gen to relate only to power. One could look at something like evolution of a small fish into both a large fish and an amphibian. Both are the next-generation of species, but one is big and the same, and the other is branching in a different direction. Next-generation literally means 'the generation following this one' without alluding to changes that have or have not occured. What ever Nintendo's next console is, as long as it's not a remake of an old console, it's the next-gen in their product line.

 

[Ty]

I believe that the Revolution idea is the same of the GBA idea, the rule of 3 cheaps:

1. Cheap Console
2. Cheap Development
3. Cheap Games

It cannot be more simple, Revolution isn´t a next gen console is a new gen console that is different.

I think that's spot on and pretty much what some of us have been arguing from the get-go. Nintendo is not focused on keeping up technology-wise with MS and Sony.

How can you have a new gen without being next gen too .

He refers to the difference in "power" from one generation to another. Therefore a 2-3x GCN isn't necessarily considered next gen in this context.

 

[OtakingGX]

You've got an extremely weak position if you are reduced to "Nintendo has a higher percentage profit ratio, but earns less profit" as your arguement.

It's not my argument, I was just pointing out that good businesses strive to turn 8% of their revenue into profit. Look at Nissan's Revival Plan: 180. One-million more cars sold, 8% operating margin, and 0 debt. This strategy turned Japan's 3rd largest auto maker into Japan's 2nd largest.

From an investor's standpoint where do you want your money? In a company that grosses huge amounts of money, but shows little profitability on it, or a smaller company, that grosses far less, but has healthy operating margins?

 

[pc999]

He refers to the difference in "power" from one generation to another. Therefore a 2-3x GCN isn't necessarily considered next gen in this context.

That may not be so linear, after all next gen GPUs never (or almost never) get 3x the performance, so that may not be completely true, personally I think that if it is not a remake it is a next gen (like Shifty Geezer).

 

[fearsomepirate]

That may not be so linear, after all next gen GPUs never (or almost never) get 3x the performance, so that may not be completely true, personally I think that if it is not a remake it is a next gen (like Shifty Geezer).

I think if it's truly new technology, it's next-gen. That doesn't mean pure power necessarily, after all, the budget versions of next-gen graphics cards for PCs are still considered "next-gen." The Geforce 6600 is definitely at least a whole generation above the Geforce4 Ti 4600 despite having raw specs that are nowhere near 10x as much as the older card.

In other words, a 4x-clocked Flipper with extra pipelines and cache for 720p would not be "next-gen" to me, but a truly SM3.0 part with a modest clockspeed and fillrate targeted at 480p would be.

 

[pc999]

Well it will have a DX9 like feature set, as showed in the 2x...(ERP) thread.