nintendo in trouble, cutting production and avoiding "complex" games

lord of the mark · August 12, 2003, 10:22

Nintendo is temporarily ceasing production of gamecube, to clear inventory. They also seem to be trying to refocus on "simpler" games, fearing that complex ones have cut into sales.

BBC on Nintendo

What does it all mean?

(hopefully that the PC remains and develops as THE platform for complex games, from my POV, but i realize theirs a big gap between this news and that noble goal)

Harry Seldon · August 12, 2003, 11:11

I feel bad for Nintendo, just like I felt bad for Atari, TurboGraphics, Sega, etc. It's just their time to go. Hopefully they won't make a mess of it like Atari (think Jaguar).

Jamski · August 12, 2003, 12:27

Ha! Die evil console companies! Hopefully Playstation will die next, and then X-Box! Then software developers will concentrate on making new PC games for me to play.

/me goes of singing with happiness *

-Jam

Urban Ranger · August 12, 2003, 12:38

Unfortunately, consoles will never die, unless PCs (without monitors) would be priced roughly in that range.

lord of the mark · August 12, 2003, 13:13

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Unfortunately, consoles will never die, unless PCs (without monitors) would be priced roughly in that range.

Im not really even close to the borderline myself, since scarcely any games im interested in come out on consoles at all. But i think one thing that would help PC's in the console vs pc wars, and in general would be improvements in the ability to a run a given game on different PC configurations. I realize it will never be possible to assure that for every odd hardwar and software configuration out there, but it would be nice if a game could at least be guaranteed to run on any machine made by the major PC manufacturers (which meet minimum specs) with original software configuration.

lord of the mark · August 12, 2003, 13:15

Originally posted by Jamski
Ha! Die evil console companies! Hopefully Playstation will die next, and then X-Box! Then software developers will concentrate on making new PC games for me to play.

* Jamski goes of singing with happiness *

-Jam

Not even clear to me that gamecube is quite dead yet.
And if it does die, probably sales go to Playstation and Xbox. But a nice side benefit would be a drop in shelf space devoted to Gamecube games, and some shift back to PC games.

Harry Seldon · August 12, 2003, 13:44

Xbox is outselling the Gamecube; if that's not a death toll I don't know what is.

lord of the mark · August 12, 2003, 13:52

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
Xbox is outselling the Gamecube; if that's not a death toll I don't know what is.

ISTR that Xbox is outselling gamecube in US, but GC is outselling xbox globally, due to higher GC sales in Asia.

Dis · August 12, 2003, 15:14

I never thought Nintendo would die

lord of the mark · August 12, 2003, 15:28

Originally posted by Dissident
I never thought Nintendo would die

nintendo's not dying, just Gamecube. Gameboy is still selling well.

Sandman · August 12, 2003, 15:33

Nintendo have been shielded for too long from the serious criticism that they richly deserve. A pity that they may never recover from this.

I doubt the PC as a games system will derive any benefit from this. It has too many other problems, particularly half-finished games.

mrmitchell · August 12, 2003, 16:12

Nintendo's in deep ****. But hopefully they'll get their act together and start SERIOUSLY competing in the console market.

DrSpike · August 12, 2003, 16:35

Wow, wasn't expecting this. I guess a name is not enough forever...........you must keep delivering and not fall back on past glories. Long live the market.

Nubclear · August 12, 2003, 17:08

This is sad, however not unexpected nor surprising.

lord of the mark · August 13, 2003, 09:13

dont be too sad (or happy

) guys. They're not discontinuing the GC. They are clearly well under their annual sales targets - stopping for an extended period was probably not something they wanted to do, and is not a good sign, but it hardly means they're exiting the market. Just raises questions about their general future.

So what do you think of their strategy of "simpler" games?

geeslaka · August 13, 2003, 09:57

Simpler games will probably do good in the weekend gamer market. Daily gamers prefer complex games.

DrSpike · August 13, 2003, 10:03

Originally posted by geeslaka
Simpler games will probably do good in the weekend gamer market. Daily gamers prefer complex games.

Hehe, you're learning.

Harry Seldon · August 13, 2003, 10:34

If a game takes less than a week to beat and has absolutely no replay value I get pretty upset. Simple games suck.

mrmitchell · August 13, 2003, 11:36

I was under the impression that Nintendo was, at least earlier, trying to slightly back away from their "kiddie console" image. How does moving to simpler games help this?

lord of the mark · August 13, 2003, 11:50

Originally posted by mrmitchell
I was under the impression that Nintendo was, at least earlier, trying to slightly back away from their "kiddie console" image. How does moving to simpler games help this?

maybe theyre giving up on the "hardcore" market?

Grumbold · August 13, 2003, 12:49

It does seem a bit odd. If developers are squeezing more ambitious games onto consoles and they're selling like hot cakes, how is making simpler games going to help?

Disgruntled customers with the sort of cash to buy a new game every month will instead jump ship to a console that gives them what they want. If I really wanted to play HALO or KOTOR, would I be happy with being offered Bubble Bobble 2003? No way!

DrSpike · August 13, 2003, 13:14

Well the guy quoted in the article thinks gamers are tired of complex games that take a long time to finish. With him in power no wonder Nintendo is screwed.

Harry Seldon · August 13, 2003, 13:44

Hah! They deserve to take a dive if that's truly what they think, otherwise we'd all have GameCubes.

ixnay · August 13, 2003, 13:50

I read somewhere that Nintendo is going to attempt to put out their next generation console by 2005, well ahead of any competitors. Of course, we all know what happened with Sega when they tried that with the Dreamcast...

Besides, Nintendo always has the portable market cornered. Every attempt to compete with them on that front has failed.

mrmitchell · August 13, 2003, 15:22

Nintendo needs to take its core competency, portables, and make that its major division.

Obviously their console division is full of a bunch of dumbasses right now. I'd give the whole lot a good thrashing.

Nikolai · August 13, 2003, 15:24

But now as Sony is planning a new portable...

However, I don't think they'll die.

Elok · August 13, 2003, 17:29

With the exceptions of Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, and other obscenely stupid multiplayer fun, Nintendo doesn't have much to offer really. But party games are one of my favorite game types after softcore RPGs(D&D-style character creation is too time-consuming for my tastes). And yes, I know that there are a lot of PC games that are "multiplayer" over the internet; however, multiplayer FPS or what-have-you lacks certain distinctive elements that a game of Smash Brothers can offer, namely:
-The element of punching your friend in the arm when he beats you.
-The element of actually shouting taunts instead of pausing to type them.
-The element of being able to have a shot/beer after every round without fear of spilling it on your CPU.
-The element of not having to worry about your connection speed, or keeping the phone line free.

Let's face it, in-person multiplayer is just too fun for consoles to ever die.

Urban Ranger · August 13, 2003, 22:48

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Im not really even close to the borderline myself, since scarcely any games im interested in come out on consoles at all. But i think one thing that would help PC's in the console vs pc wars, and in general would be improvements in the ability to a run a given game on different PC configurations. I realize it will never be possible to assure that for every odd hardwar and software configuration out there, but it would be nice if a game could at least be guaranteed to run on any machine made by the major PC manufacturers (which meet minimum specs) with original software configuration.

The one big problem with that is game developers have no idea what hardware configurations that the games will be run on. Now, of course, the operating system is supposed to provide an identical virtual machine for all other programs to run under, but that's just in theory. Windows has never been good at that, plus DirectX is like a gigantic hole in your virtual machine.

Sure, it speeds up the games by allowing direct access to hardware, but of course insulation from hardware is one of the main purposes of an operating system. Yay MS.

Mr. President · August 14, 2003, 00:04

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well the guy quoted in the article thinks gamers are tired of complex games that take a long time to finish. With him in power no wonder Nintendo is screwed.

It's not necessarily that people don't like complicated games in and of themselves. People don't like games that are too complicated to learn how to play correctly and too difficult to ever finish.