Konami reveals Elebits for Revolution

Refocusing your development to emphasize casual gamers is akin to child abandonment.

Guess who birthed and/or reared the vast majority of today's hardcore gamers: Nintendo. Now, they're "just going out for orange cigarettes" and never coming back to the ones they taught to love gaming, leaving us on Sony's lap or at Microsoft's doorstep.

#1 ... says who? I cut my teeth on a Collecovision and have been playing games ever since. Guess what, there are a lot of crappy, boring games out there right now. I highly encourage this kind of activity. Every genre of gaming we know today started out with simple concepts that grew more complex over time. Hell, look at the Final Fantasy series. Bit of a difference in gameplay between I and XII, eh? And who said that appealing to casual gamers means it won't be liked by hardcord gamers as well?

A clairification to my previous post : I encourage publishers trying something different. I don't encourage the development of crappy, boring games.

While Nintendo might have reared today's hardcore gaming population, it's a relatively small population of the gamers out there today.

If Nintendo perceives a lucrative market in casual gamers, and Konami likewise shares that incentive - they have every right to pursue that.

That doesn't mean that my gaming tastes are more adept to a megaconsole like Sony's or Microsoft's if I label myself of the hardcore variety. The lauded software and complexity that Nintendo's new interface will offer will still exist.

The original gaming generation for the most part is growing up, and for many tech-savvy gamers, 'hardcore' is synonymous with tech-specs and the faceted entertainment capabilities that fill the feature sheets of Sony's and MSoft's next gen titles. I think this is a misconception.

I suppose the truly hardcore welcome innovation from each console, and experience such as to meet their demands in gaming - be they games directed at a mainstream audience or not. A hardcore gamer is one that appreciates the entire sphere of gaming.

Don Jose,

That's among the dumbest things I've ever seen someone post, articulately. Creating a different type of game for someone outside the traditional gaming market is exactly what is needed. Don't worry, this game won't ruin the traditional games. Let's look at the DS which follows the same philosophy. Nintendogs and Brain Age are both games that serve a different market primarily. The fact that traditional gamers tended to enjoy them also doesn't change the fact that the games are totally different. But the flood of great games for the DS hasn't been hampered at all. Just yesterday in a Joystick article several people were posting about how the DS may be one of the greatest platforms ever made.

Did you all miss this or what? "The sensation of actually touching the game world (inside of the screen"...Holy crap!

I don't understand it, but I think I want to buy it!

here's to a hopefully charming E3 showing, little Elebits. win my heart!

In regards to comment six that could either be a descriptive term involved with how you use the revolution controller or giving a hint to another controller rumour.

This other controller rumour is that the controller can give a tactile feedback so when you touch an object it gives you the sensation of it. There is a computer periperphal out that does this but the thing is quite expensive and huge.

I could see nintendo keeping it a secret but I wouldn't want the tactile sensation that every game would bring. I wouldn't want to get the sensation of a flame across my hand or a large knife cut.

Hey guys, cool out! I'm still curious about the Rev, albeit a grumblingly, hair-pullingly frustrated sort of curious. I just need to vent some steam. I'm hardcore; Nintendo made me hardcore; and I love being hardcore. It's just my personal opinion that the casual stuff belongs more on pc's and handhelds, which are more accessible to the non-console-buying casual-type gamers. Please forgive, but I'll probably HAVE to spout more vitriol along these lines until I see some concrete shots of the shell controller. i don't own a pc, so my two-fistin' roots run rather deep!

ps- Hey, Joystiq, what's up with the -1 stars? how does the system work? What have I done to merit this dishonor?

This sounds good. Just for the game's focal concepts. Infact, those concepts sound amazing, feeling the world? oooh!

I'll politely protrude 2 fingers up to dual analogue controllers at this point.

#9 (Don Jose):

PC has a lot of casual gaming, such as web-based games, but "PC gaming" is for the most part more hardcore than console gaming. That's not a quality judgment, as I'm much more of a console gamer than a PC gamer these days, but it seems odd to say "Keep casual on the PC, consoles are for the hardcore." PCs are the home of genres like first person shooters (yes, there are plenty on consoles, and I love games like Halo, but no matter how you look at it they are compromised control-wise), realtime strategy, MMOs (most of which are not casual). In fact one of the things I LIKE about console gaming is that it's less hardcore, requires less effort and maintenance, and is simply easier.

"With Elebits, Konami looks to be targeting casual gamers. Indeed, the game is said to include some stages that can be completed in less than 10 minutes."

This is embarrassing and ridiculous. Any game that isn't ludicrously complicated or require five hands to play and a 30-hour-per-week committment is "targeting casual gamers," it seems. If that's the case, then ¡Viva la gamer casual! How many Lemmings levels can be beaten in 10 minutes or less, once you figure out the puzzle? How about that old canard Super Mario Bros? Does it take Joystiq writers half an hour to get through 1-1? Or was that, too, targeted to "casual gamers," a perfectly classical example of the "abandonment" commenter #1 was talking about? If the game is fun, and this one sounds interesting if nothing else, who gives a rat's ass how long the stages are?

"If the game is fun, and this one sounds interesting if nothing else, who gives a rat's ass how long the stages are?"

That's an interesting topic. But I believe that they are only saying that as a way to lure in more people who look at a game and say "that looks hard and would take forever to beat, I don't think I have time for it"

Then you tell them it take only ten mins to beat it, and you get them to at lease try it...and after that, you they'll try even more longer stages and then can get even more levels by downloading extensions(via Virtual Console) for about 5-10 bucks...


It's the blue ocean in action....

I love games like this (or at least how I picture it). I don't need photo-realistic graphics... as a matter of fact almost all the games I like the best do not have photo-realistic graphics. Pikmin is a great game..very creative, lots of fun..

I think they put emphasis on the 10 min stage thing because some people don't have time to put hours into games. I am a college student, and although I do have a lot of free times, there are occasions where I only have 15-20 minutes to play. Personally, I'd rather have a game with 60 stages that take 10 minutes each than 10 stages that take 60 minutes each. Nothing kills me more than making it 3/4 through stage and dying, and have to play the last 45 minutes over.

That's one thing I thoroughly enjoy about the Metroid series, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Vexx, Mario Kart, Baten Kaitos, and many other games... I dictate how long I want to play, not vice versa...

And the way I look at it, even if companies make crappy games for the revolution, many positive things happen...First of all, I don't have to buy it if I don't want to. Secondly, it might be a good concept that is just poorly executed... This'll allow another company to 'borrow' the concept and improve on it. Besides, if Nintendo wants to succeed, they need a huge library... You think that the PS2 was the biggest because all of it's games were good? Not at all, it's because out of the hundreds of attempts at writing good games by third party developers, a few of them shined.

And besides, even the crap-tastic games have their niche to fill... Finding Nemo? Not for me...but a lot of kids would love it.