John Lucas

@PointlessPuppies (continued from Part 1)

[Part 2]
There's new tech being produced all the time but it's not always useful in a mass market sense. People are always inventing, refining & adapting technology. It's called the Cutting Edge & the Cutting Edge needs to exist.
But when it comes to selling products to mass market, a manufacturer has to weed out what is most important & least important to create a product that the masses can afford & enjoy.

The Pyramid of Life dictates that most people's incomes are modest at best. In other words, most people in the world are poor. You can divvy this up as "working class" "middle class" & all that. But I define it as one who works for their money is Poor, one whose money works for them is Rich. A rich person simply manages his/her funds. A poor person is absolutely reliant on a steady income to survive. I guess you can make distinctions based on that person's duration of sustaining when income runs out. Some can go a year without income, some can't go a week without it.

Bottom line is that in order to make a product for the widest market, you have to recognize that most people have modest means. But since they are the most people available, you will become rich selling to them. That's why Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the world. That's why Lamborghinis are customized for a few customers but Toyota & General Motors are the biggest car companies in the world.

All the tech hype in the world doesn't sustain a console. It's the games sold on those consoles—many which don't even use the full technological capabilities of the system—that sustain them. The experiences gained from the created games validate the tech that was hyped. Dreamcast was hyped too. Atari Jaguar was hyped too. Saturn was hyped. 3DO was SERIOUSLY hyped. PS3 was MAJORLY hyped.

All the carrying on about HD & the HD Twins don't hardly go above 720p themselves! Hahahaha. In fact they're many times BELOW 720p & have to upscale! A buncha hype that didn't work which is why they changed their entire strategy & started the "selling to the family" Wii-style campaign with Move & Kinect.

Wii had the answer & there are more things that can be done with this console idea-wise before they call it a wrap. Graphics once mattered because the visuals were abstract by default but that problem was taken care of in the 6th generation. Cartoons look like cartoons, realistic looks like realistic. I can tell one texture from another without confusion. I can tell one object from another without confusion. I can tell objects from the background, color from color, line from line. The 7th gen only refined what was done in the 6th.

Functionally the graphics race is over. Now you have a choice whether to create abstractly or as close to realism as possible. It's now totally about game design & game control. Where Nintendo seems to be going now is backwards. They had paradise & they are willing to walk away from the Garden of Eden. Now is not the time for a new console when we haven't even BEGUN to see what can be done on Wii.

I'll say this just as strongly as I said "Wii is the Future of Gaming" 5 years ago: Nintendo is making a big mistake by killing the Wii & launching a new console prematurely.
John Lucas

@PointlessPuppies OK. Here's a big counterpoint to your reply. I love these kinds of discussions!

[Part 1]
In the case of the Atari 2600 vs. Mattel Intellivision, Atari 2600 looked primitive compared to the Intellivision. Big fat blocky graphics vs. medium-sized blocky graphics. Hahaha. But even Atari 2600 Pac-Man outdid Intellivision Pac-Man even though Intellivision's version looked much more closer to the original arcade game (by a LONG shot! Hahaha).

Intellivision simply had the superior technology all around up & down but it didn't matter. People liked their Atari 2600s. It was good enough for what the buyers wanted at the time. Every should have flocked to the Intellivision & left the 2600 high & dry but that didn't happen.

George Plimpton pimped the Intellivision to death touting its superiority over the 2600 in those famous commercials. They showed on-screen comparisons right on TV which was telltale of the differences.
And there WAS a GIANT videogame market back then. More competitors then than there ever has been since. It's part of what caused the crash in the first place. Quaker Oats even tried to make some games for God's sake! That sounds crazy just thinking about it!

As for the NES, YES its hardware's ability allowed it to deliver an experience like Super Mario Bros. Upgrades in tech only matter when you can create a game that could not be experienced on the existing platforms. That's why consoles are separated by generation when the difference is notable enough to matter.

However, the home computers of the era could do all of that & more. The home computers were stronger than the NES but the NES won out. Gaming today would be on PC altogether if it WASN'T for the NES. After the crash, that's where gaming was headed in America. In fact, most of the world DOES play on PC. Consoles don't sell in China that much & not in Korea. Not in Russia. Not in large parts of Europe.

The fact of the matter is consoles are a mutant beast that really shouldn't exist right now. Nintendo in the mid-80s made the case for the continuance of this type of platform & its competitors underlined it. The NES was so big & so bad in the market that it wrecked PC game retail forever which is why more & more developers from the PC world develop for consoles today. EA, Trip Hawkins' Electronic Arts, was a home computer developer. Madden came from the PC first. All this from a console that couldn't technologically meet the stronger home computers.

I remember when the Sega Genesis couldn't outperform the NES in the market at first despite its CLEAR technological edge (& cheaper price!). Not until Sonic came out did the Genesis finally take off. Nintendo held down NEC's PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) AND Sega's Mega Drive (Genesis) for 3 years before making the 4th gen jump. Held 'em off for 3 years with a 3rd gen console despite the others' claims to technological superiority.

As before, it's the games that make the case. There was something a 16-bit console could do that an 8-bit console could not. There were game ideas that could be represented on the new platform that weren't possible on the old one. THAT'S when it's time to make the tech jump. When all possibilities on the old system are exhausted. Sega got the most out of that "blast processing" system & that's why they took it to console ruler Nintendo & their stronger superior SNES. SNES had Sony sound chips in it for goodness sake!

In the case of PS1 vs. N64...It's true that the cartridge medium held back the N64 but it was still technologically superior overall in the hardware. I know you heard about what was done in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. The N64 vs. PS1 comparison is not the simplest example thanks to the differential in physical media but the 64 could power leaps & bounds beyond the PS1. It didn't matter. Short load times & durable cartridges didn't matter over longer load times that delivered more music & video to mesmerize the players.

As for the PS2, yeah as what had become the rule in the videogaming industry the makers squawk about their power. Dreamcast went down because of Sega's business foolishness more than its actual system. But why didn't people flock to the XBox which was clearly more powerful PLUS had a humongous storage with the hard drive? Why did XBox lose billions when it was so much more technologically superior? It sold around Gamecube's numbers which was also superior in tech to the PS2. Why? Because people liked the backwards compatibility with PS1 & the inclusion of DVD playability. Plus they had all the game support. It wasn't power that ruled the day here.

Game Boy was black & white. More like pea soup green. It had no backlighting. Old dot matrix LCD tech. Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear with their backlit color screens should have eaten it alive. But its low tech approach was good enough.
It was STILL good enough when NEC made a portable TurboGrafx-16 & called it the TurboExpress. It was the actual home console games right in your hand! Uses the same cards & everything! Sega followed them with the Nomad which was a portable Genesis. Both 16-bit monsters still couldn't beat an old black & white, non-backlit, old dot matrix LCD Game Boy with Tetris & Super Mario Land.

DS couldn't hold a candle to PSP's tech. Touchscreen PDAs had been around for a good while by then. Nintendo used a simple microphone, two screens (one being touchable) & innovative game design to squash their much more tech-superior rival. By the way, dual screen handhelds were not new. Who made Game & Watch Donkey Kong which influenced not only the DS's design but the NES controller design as well? That was 1982.

Each example I show details an entity with superior tech not having the default positive outcome many people think it does. It was the games that sold the tech not the tech which sold the games. That's why I say this is an entertainment industry that uses technology not a technology industry that tries to entertain.
(continued in Part 2)
John Lucas

@houser I'm not even talking about franchises even though it annoys me that we may not see half of them even come to Wii. Which is a doggone shame. I'm talking the control & game possibilities STILL to be explored with Wii's controls.

Follow me on this:
Videogame controls in the beginning of the industry were on radio knobs like an Etch-A-Sketch. You turn 'em just like you do a radio dial. That's how PONG was played in the 1970s.

Then first through the Fairchild Channel F & popularized by Atari 2600 came the joystick/action button combo. You root the controller in your lap or on the floor & move the stick with one hand while tapping the button with the other. It fit in with the joysticks of the arcade since so many of those arcade hits were translated into console versions.

NES brought in a new standard in 1983 taking cues from their Game & Watch handhelds to give us the Control Pad (D-Pad) & two action buttons in a hand-fitting rectangular layout. NOW we play with controller rooted & resting in palms of the hand with left thumb on pad & right thumb above action buttons. This standard is still with us today throughout its evolutions.

Evolutions like the SNES triggers & color-coded diamond-shaped action button layout. The N64's analog stick & rumble feedback made more equilateral & combined by Sony's DualShock. Gamecube's wireless Wavebird which in theme was followed by the XBox 360 & DualShock 3 controllers. But pretty much we've been playing the same way for nearly 30 years. Controller resting in hands with left thumb over directional pad & right thumb over action buttons.

But with the Wii we got a whole new method of controller input & design. One that retains the old method in many ways (turn to side, you got the old NES; use the Nunchuk & you have a "Broken Plank" style of the old design). But one that allows for so many more theoretical possibilities in game development.

And even though I say we've been interacting with controllers pretty much the same way since the mid-80s, Controller Mapping has been pretty much the same way since the 1970s! Whether pad or joystick, controls were still mapped Up, Down, Left, Right, Action Button, Action Button, Action Button. With Wii there are a whole new range of control possibilities & therefore a whole new range of new game ideas.

It's to me like un-pioneered territory. People are used to what they know & are scared to experiment. With Move & Kinect, there will be more exploration of this uncharted territory. That's why it's foolish for Nintendo to step away from Wii now. It's sort of like what DS opened up in the world of handhelds.

Inputs deliver a particular interaction & experience with the game on screen. Controllers are the player's portal into the virtual world of lighted images on the TV screen. That's why they are so important. There's Wii infrared pointer, its gyroscopes & accelerometers, it's bluetooth link, its freeform Wiimote/Nunchuk layout, even its speaker.
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves gave me a taste of what's possible. Wii Sports Resort showed me more.

A simple observation is why isn't Billards a new genre on Wii? Not just straight-up billiards but billiards mechanics in seemingly unrelated gameplay. A village of little rotund creatures & the object is to poolshot them around to tear up a neighboring village & protect your own. In-room multiplayer along with online multiplayer. Like hundreds of these rotund creatures on screen & you manage to shoot them into different building for powerups & health. It won't even look like pool but you play it like pool to play this strategy/adventure.

Yuji Naka from Prope (formerly from Sega) showed me what could be possible with his game Let's Tap. You don't even hold the controller. You tap the surface around it to make things happen. That's forward thinking & is just a taste of the possibilities Wii's controls can deliver.

Plus they have the perfect audience captive to make these ideas a success. Without DS & Wii, the Trauma Center series would have never existed. Performing like a doctor. The doctor genre. That should be an entire genre on Wii. How about a game on sewing, knitting, quilting?

The Wii should have never been pigeonholed as the "casual" party game console. It was way more than that & if Nintendo was willing they could make it more than that again. But they just gave up & that bothers me when there's so much new ground to uncover with this control mechanism. People dismiss it as waggle. No, it's the Future of Gaming just like I said on these comment boards 5 to 6 years ago.
John Lucas

@PointlessPuppies The history of videogaming shows me that it's NOT tech driven. Each time a competitor tries to grab the Tech Holy Grail they fail.

Atari 2600 ate the technologically superior Mattel Intellivision's butt in the early 1980s.

NES absolutely dominated the technologically superior Sega Master System AND the superior home computers in the mid-to-late 1980s (why do you think all those PC devs fled to the consoles).

Sega Genesis beat & held down the technologically superior SNES many times in the early 1990s. (Sega did themselves in which is why Nintendo won in the end)

Sony PlayStation ruled the technologically superior Nintendo 64 throughout the mid-late 1990s. By FAR. (ruled it so bad that Nintendo made their next system run on discs!)

Sony PlayStation 2 was overlord & emperor to the technologically superior Gamecube & XBox through the early-to-mid 2000s. And BEYOND. It's still selling even now! STILL getting a few new games even today (WWE All-Stars).

Game Boy destroyed every technologically superior competitor they faced—Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, NEC TurboExpress, Sega Nomad—throughout the 1990s. Destroyed them so bad that they could hold off on adding color to the handheld for 9 years! And they did that just because! There was no competition forcing their hand.

DS stomped the technologically superior PSP all over the mid-to-late 2000s (stomped it so bad that Sony is now adding touchscreens & game cards to their next handheld, the NGP).

It's simply not true. It's the Gunpei Yokoi principle. Using old tech in new ways. THAT'S how a console should be produced. Motion control is old tech but it was Nintendo who found a new use out of it. It's in the application of the tech not the tech itself. Those who try to follow the Cutting Edge find themselves facing the precipice as they monetarily subsidize their consoles to stay in business.

If Sony & Microsoft weren't such behemoths, they would be out of business long ago with how they operate their console production. The original XBox's financial failure would destroy any normal company. Nintendo's the last of the real gamemakers & that's why they USUALLY recognize the folly in playing this cutting edge game.

It's not just the Wii, it's the entire history of videogaming that shows this fact.
John Lucas

@verymetal Yeah that old tried & true 5-year console cycle tradition.
Guess what? I think that tradition SUCKS. It should have never been normal.

The only reason it existed was because new incoming competitors kept raising the stakes forcing the old incumbents to respond and/or play catchup to reclaim lost ground. There hasn't been a new competitor on the home console front in 10 years. So there's no need to keep cycling up so quickly.

Nintendo had the Famicom/NES run for 7 years before they moved on to the Super Famicom/SNES. That's 1983 to 1990. And NEC's PC Engine followed by Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis was the reason why they moved. Even then they held those guys off with the FC/NES for 3 years between 1987 & 1990. Held 'em off with an 8-bit console. It wasn't until Sonic came along that Genesis REALLY started to take off.

And as soon as they finally entered the 4th gen, the 5th gen was calling. More new incoming competitors. Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn & especially Sony's original PlayStation. They were forced to move again but this time they didn't hold their ground with the Nintendo 64. So now they were forced to move on to the 6th gen to reclaim lost territory resulting in the Gamecube.

The Gamecube lost even more ground so they made that Hail Mary with Wii & finally reclaimed their lost ground. Now that they have it, they should hold onto it like they did with the NES. And since there are no new consoles out here to compete with, they should endure for the duration.

Makes so much sense in economic times like these. You think Japan is gonna be thinking about new consoles after the tragedy they just had? You think Americans will be ready to spend MORE money after gas reaches $5.00 a gallon on average & more jobs fall by the wayside? It makes more sense to stay low on pricing so more people will be willing to purchase this low-cost luxury called videogaming.

Everybody's lost in these tech dreams but I'm looking at the real picture. Old technology is in ALL of the consoles. None of them are cutting edge. They were old when they launched yet people are buying the 5-year old 360 like never before. It's not about tech. It's not about tech. It's not about tech. How many times do I have to say it? It's about the experience, verymetal. It's about the ideas. It's about the games. Tech is a servant to these things, not the master.

I'm telling ya, it's a mistake. Too early. Too soon. But the world & Nintendo will find this out very shortly.
John Lucas

@Johnnynumber5 is powered by cell I'm glad somebody else on this thread is thinking about the bigger picture. Nintendo will NEVER have the 3rd party establishment's back no matter WHAT they do. And that goes back to their control of the 3rd parties in the 1980s.

That control saved the industry back then but it also created resentment from 3rd party developers who weren't allowed to control their own destiny. When Sony came along with the PS1, the "kids" finally had a way out of "Dad's" house. And they're not going back. They may visit from time to time but they won't live there anymore.

It has nothing to do with tech or Nintendo's direction. It's politics. The only reason the 3rd party even deals with Nintendo today is because there hadn't been a decent handheld competitor to Nintendo (& handhelds are king in Japan over home consoles). Sony coulda been the one but Sony didn't seem to want the PSP to focus on games. As soon as they get an proper out on the handheld front, they'll flee from Nintendo again. They don't want to lose their influence & control in the industry by putting themselves absolutely under Nintendo's thumb.

The 3rd party has options on the home console front & Nintendo showed in the past how making a high tech device didn't pull in the 3rd party support. That's why Nintendo went the direction they did with Wii & succeeded. They have a console with Wii that can sell big without the backing of the 3rd party establishment.

Developers will STILL leave Project Café starved for support just like Wii, Gamecube, Nintendo 64. Wii killed the power argument so more graphics is not the key. And getting a little stronger than the PS3/360 isn't much of an accomplishment when they can easily outdo that. The 3rd party will then follow the platforms where the 3rd party rules the day. Neither Sony nor (especially) Microsoft have 1st party development that can compare to Nintendo's, the best developer in the world. So they rely on the independents to supply & sell their console.

You made an understatement when you said this:
"I'll need to hear thier strategy but cafe could have some serious issues competing with Wii as well as adoption from PS360 owners as a next gen successor when it has the same games."

Yeah they're gonna have a TREMENDOUSLY hard time living up to Wii. They're not gonna have the 3rd party support they think they will & THEN they won't have that audience they picked up with Wii on top of that. Wii was more than a console. It was a cultural phenomenon. And Nintendo's making a giant mistake cutting this phenomenon's life short. A lot of the people they earned with Wii won't see the need to trade up consoles. That's a foreign concept to them. They won't follow Nintendo to Project Café. Just like many didn't follow Nintendo from the NES to the SNES. That's why NES sold 61 million & SNES sold 49 million.

All Wii needed was more & better games. The 3rd parties by & large weren't going to supply it so Nintendo should have stepped in. But they don't believe in the good thing they created & will waste it chasing tech dreams.
John Lucas

@MRL3G3ND You say: "Sony and ms both should know that whoever is first to the market is the one who is most successful."

That's not true at all. Simply not true at all.

•Microsoft was first this generation & Nintendo was last. Who was the most successful?
•Sega (Dreamcast) was first in the 6th generation & Sony (PS2) was second out of four. Who the most successful?
•3DO was first in the 5th generation & Sony (PS1) was fourth out of five. Who was the most successful? (Sega [Saturn] was third by the way)
•PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 was first in the 4th generation & Nintendo (SNES) was last out of four. Who was the most successful? (Sega [Genesis] was second by the way)

The only time you see this happening is in the 3rd generation started by Nintendo & the Famicom/NES. And that's in the aftermath of a market collapse.

Just like in "romantic" situations, it doesn't matter who's first...
...It matters who's best.
John Lucas

@The Scout While I disagree with you about Nintendo's games (will always love them), I TOTALLY agree with you about the timing of this console. It's too soon & they're gonna be caught in the middle.

The others will get a better tech a few years from now that puts Wii's successor in the very same boat Wii is in right now. They will have accomplished nothing in the long run & would probably be always forced to move to another generation of systems just to keep up.

Nintendo always went last anyway. It was smart to do that. If not dead last than definitely not first. And they always released contemporarily with the competitors so to not be caught in the middle.

I smell Dreamcast. I smell 1990s Sega. Nintendo is making some big mistakes lately. And that pains this Nintendo fan to see it.
John Lucas

@Mazrael The whole point of Wii was simplicity. You can't have "Wii HD" or "Wii 2" or "Super Wii" for that very reason.

Wii was just Wii. A pun, a pronoun, a philosophy, an easy-to-remember brand name, a name that can be pronounced easily in every language around the world, a console name that needs no abbreviation, a console name promoting humbleness instead of the overdrawn & technological console names we had been used to.

The whole approach behind this console was what made this system so successful. It made the videogaming industry successful & saved it from another market crash. It took videogaming out of this clubhouse it had been stuck in & opened it up to the wide world outside. Changed how you play, changed how you thought about gaming. Changed the scope of what gaming could be.

You can't duplicate this again. You can't get that audience again. Small, clean, affordable, non-intrusive, low power consumption, lower production budgets, focus on game-craft over graphical flair.
There IS no better Wii. Wii is the best.
John Lucas

@GrayHero Nintendo has largely let the Wii languish since 2009. This past Christmas with only a red paint job, a simple pack-in, & a little taste of a decent library, it bested the XBox 360 which has been on an absolute ROLL since its redesign last June.

It outsold the 360 for December & the entire year of 2010 based on little more than Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary packaging. When Nintendo puts effort into the Wii, it shines easily. The Wii has NEVER enjoyed significant quality 3rd party support. Still it broke virtually every record known in the videogame world & became a cultural phenomenon.

Wii didn't really NEED the 3rd party. Much of it sold purely on its homegrown library. It was New Super Mario Bros. Wii that pushed Wii to the best-selling monthly console sales of all-time in 2009 with 3,810,000. One game, one game in a red box did all of that.

3rd party's lack of support only kept it from fully enjoying a universal console feel. Where it got the audience the 360 & PS3 enjoy as WELL as the new audiences they acquired. But they have proven they can do this mostly if not totally by themselves.

This is why this Project Café thing is disappointing. Wii has so much potential yet to unlock & they're just dumping it. It's not technology. It's imagination. There are so many ideas untried on this console & it's sad. They will not retain the Wii audience with this new console.
I just can't understand why they would drop a platform with so much more to offer.
John Lucas