How ironic that the idea of “good enough”—which had been so lucrative for Nintendo with the DS and Wii—will ultimately be the company’s undoing. At least in the portable market.
Good enough
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Category Archives: Deep Like the Ocean
Slow burn
Sony and Microsoft: Right the whole time about this slow and steady wins the race thing they started way back in 2006, when Nintendo was kicking their butt?
Old friends
Name jokes. Questions about specs. “Appeasing the hardcore.”
Did Nintendo reveal new hardware or something?
Playing “Nintendo”
Rumor is Nintendo’s new console will be called “Nintendo.” Which immediately brought back memories of going upstairs “to play Nintendo” as a kid. It’s what people called the NES at the time and it pretty much defined a generation. Can Nintendo do it again with this touchscreen-enabled, HD machine at E3 2011?
Lacking foresight
Silly people. Love him or hate him (hate him), Mark Rein isn’t talking about portable gaming replacing consoles when he talks about convergence between the two in the near future—he’s talking about what overall gaming will look like.
Think about it: Obviously games look better on a 50-inch HDTV with a controller as the primary input device. But if you look at the trends, in the future everyone will have an iPhone-sized supercomputer in their pocket capable of effortlessly wireless docking with an input device and driving a huge display.
Hell, who’s to say you even have to remove the device from your pocket or interact with its tiny touchscreen at all?
It starts with the 3DS, Nintendo’s next true console.
Serious question
Is the 3DS, a portable, actually Nintendo’s next console? No, not as in the next Wii will have 3D. As in, this is where they will be putting the lion’s share of their marketing and development budgets for the next 5 years?
History repeats
So the 3DS may launch earlier that expected. Which means we can anticipate that the usual enthusiast press Nintendo reporting cycle will arrive earlier that expected too.
You know the drill right?
1. Mild hype mixed with cautious “seems like a gimmick” backhanded compliments.
2. Official reveal crticisim about specs and graphical chops (will happen at E3)
3. Long period of doubt and smack talk as cutting edge hardware receives poor third party support
4. Complete and utter flip flop when Microsoft and Sony reveal copycat devices with larger processors.
Prove me wrong, you hardcore asshats. Please, prove me wrong.
The Blue Ocean is deep
Destructoid details the cornucopia of titles headed to the Wii in 2010. The Xbox 360 and PS3 libraries, ironically, look incredibly anemic by comparison.
Mona Lisa smile
Shigeru Miyamoto Has Never Called Video Games “Art”
I am utterly humbled that, on this issue at least, I share the same exact opinion as a video game master.
Blood, they smell it
Indie shops smell blood in the water.
“I think big elements of the games industry are in a rut right now, with so many games being produced that are me-too,” offered Wiggins in an interview published today. “How many gritty first person shooters or Gears of War clones does the world need? We’re just not interested in replicating those sorts of experiences.” - Matthew Wiggins, co-founder of Wonderland Software
Indeed. I hope these smaller shops begin to feed sooner than later.