Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Nintendo Revolutiona-wha?
So the Big N has dropped their bomb as to what is going to make their new system "revolutionary". First of all, this is what it looks like:
Basically, it's a tiny box. I like this, since it's unobtrusive, and the smaller the form factor, the more interesting places you can put it. Just look at what happened to the Mac Mini.
The revolution, however, is apparantly in the ability to play old games.
Based on the reaction I've seen, a lot of people are going to be stoked about this, and I don't know why. This is not anything new--I was able to play SNES games on my Dreamcast for chrissake! While I think that Nintendo is definitely doing something great with this, I would hardly call the ability to play 20-year-old games "revolutionary", and I sincerely hope Nintendo has more up their sleeve, or they're going to be dead in the water when the next round of consoles and games show up.
So to recap, the Nintendo Revolution has:
It does not have:
Once again, Nintendo is falling back on the "Hey! We're Nintendo! Anything we make is super-awesome!" platform, which is only delaying the inevitable. Yes, they have history, and yes, they do make a good game every year or so. I have nothing against Nintendo that way, but unless they can come up with something truly revolutionary, I suspect they'll be walking the same path Sega walked before long.
¶ 6:36 p.m. 
So the Big N has dropped their bomb as to what is going to make their new system "revolutionary". First of all, this is what it looks like:
Basically, it's a tiny box. I like this, since it's unobtrusive, and the smaller the form factor, the more interesting places you can put it. Just look at what happened to the Mac Mini.
The revolution, however, is apparantly in the ability to play old games.
Eschewing the company's previous business ideas, the Revolution will be online-friendly and will support a broadband gaming service similar to that of Microsoft's Xbox Live. Its most significant contribution to online gaming will be the ability to download Nintendo's entire catalog of NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 console games. As for GameCube titles, they have the potential to be downloadable, though it's not clear whether the games will be saved to storage devices or memory cards.
Based on the reaction I've seen, a lot of people are going to be stoked about this, and I don't know why. This is not anything new--I was able to play SNES games on my Dreamcast for chrissake! While I think that Nintendo is definitely doing something great with this, I would hardly call the ability to play 20-year-old games "revolutionary", and I sincerely hope Nintendo has more up their sleeve, or they're going to be dead in the water when the next round of consoles and games show up.
So to recap, the Nintendo Revolution has:
- 20 years worth of games
- a nice, small package
- wireless controllers
- broadband support
It does not have:
- anything to make it more desirable than the competition, other than games you've already played
Once again, Nintendo is falling back on the "Hey! We're Nintendo! Anything we make is super-awesome!" platform, which is only delaying the inevitable. Yes, they have history, and yes, they do make a good game every year or so. I have nothing against Nintendo that way, but unless they can come up with something truly revolutionary, I suspect they'll be walking the same path Sega walked before long.
¶ 6:36 p.m.
