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[ElectricBlue187]

Yamauchi is responsible for most of Nintendo's problems it's having today in trying to get back on top, he's their biggest mistake not the Wii or anything else they're doing today

 

[gamergirly]

Going with Sony would have quite possibly meant Sony having control over Nintendo.

That wouldnt have happened as long as it was called "Nintendostation"

Speaking of mistakes, one could argue that Wii's success was a "mistake". A very successful mistake

 

[Oblivion]

Second, listing the Wii as the first thing in your article pretty much guaranteed a shitstorm from the usual suspects. Did you notice all the people in this thread who have their panties in a bunch, but state that they didn't get past the first page because of your heresy against their beloved Wii? That kind of response is PERFECTLY predictable.

I agree, but really, do you think Sony fans would be angels about it if he made a top 7 mistakes by Sony article and listed PS3 as the first one?

 

[Dilbert]

In every way? Downloading PS1 games and shit through PS3 sounds nifty, at least.

The problem with connectivity is its features can never be good enough to make non-dual-owners feel screwed... So it winds up lame. Games like FSA (or concepts like PS1 downloads) that fully embrace the dual-owners and cater only to them come out great.

I'm no enemy of connectivity, but that seems a particularly poor use. Things can downloaded to PSP without a go-between.

JoshuaJSlone said what I was going to say. If you are trying to drive sales of the PSP by adding the feature of playing PS1 games...why in the world would you limit the potential market for that feature by requiring that the PSP owner ALSO have purchased an additional $600 piece of hardware? There is absolutely no technical reason that Sony could not make PS1 games directly downloadable to the PSP.

What if Nintendo were to come out with a DS channel for the Wii where a person could download DS demos straight from their Wii to their DS?

Again -- having to own a separate piece of hardware that is twice as expensive as the DS just to be able to download game demos is a terrible idea, if the goal is to expose as many people as possible to the demo to drive sales of the game. I mean, what's the attraction of "free" game demos if you have to drop a few hundred extra dollars to play them?

Connectivity is pretty much a broken use case:

1) As noted, the number of people who own both X and Y is likely to be smaller than the number who own X or Y separately. This limits the potential impact of any connectivity-based feature by limiting the size of the potential market for that feature.

2) Unless connectivity is implemented in a large percentage of games, it has to be considered a novelty, rather than an actual feature of the device.

3) Spending resources on developing features which do not add much value to the product in the mind of a potential purchaser is bad business.

 

[Dilbert]

I agree, but really, do you think Sony fans would be angels about it if he made a top 7 mistakes by Sony article and listed PS3 as the first one?

Oh, absolutely not! And I'd have the same objections -- it's way too early to tell, and it's blatantly sensationalistic for the purpose of yanking chains.

 

[Satter]

Again -- having to own a separate piece of hardware that is twice as expensive as the DS just to be able to download game demos is a terrible idea, if the goal is to expose as many people as possible to the demo to drive sales of the game. I mean, what's the attraction of "free" game demos if you have to drop a few hundred extra dollars to play them?

Connectivity is pretty much a broken use case:

1) As noted, the number of people who own both X and Y is likely to be smaller than the number who own X or Y separately. This limits the potential impact of any connectivity-based feature by limiting the size of the potential market for that feature.

2) Unless connectivity is implemented in a large percentage of games, it has to be considered a novelty, rather than an actual feature of the device.

3) Spending resources on developing features which do not add much value to the product in the mind of a potential purchaser is bad business.

The goal is to expose people to the game, AND to have an added incentive to purchase a Wii.

The technology is there already. And the Wii and the DS already have the technology to talk to each other. If Nintendo were to advertise that you could now download free demos of all the popular DS games you missed, and the upcoming games, I believe it would really have a chance. Especially now that the VC has become popular. Seeing as how there are hundreds of games for the DS, Nintendo could offer a new demo every week just like they offer a new game every week on the VC.

EDIT: I understand your arguement about "Why limit customers if require them to buy additional hardware." But, isn't one way of selling something is to make it as attractive as possible? This would be an added option. Just like the weather channel, news, VC, and everyone votes channel.

 

[Bartman3010]

For the third parties thing, okay, I understand about the development costs being ridiculously high, but limit 5 games per year is a bad point? Nintendo making money of each sold cartridge is...supposed to be bad?

Really, the only deal about producing 5 games per year being the limit was after the Atari systems, which had games come out almost all the time ranging from okay to shit. As for forcing third party developers to raise prices for their games while Nintendo held the monopolistic front, I cant say much there.

I still say its a good thing that lisence pricing is slightly higher than of what, say, Sony's allowing for developers to get a lisence to make games for their system, although they still need to find a way to help support the developers so they can perform better on developing games for the Wii. Theres still hardly any 3rd party titles I'm really looking foward to mostly due to the fact that they still cant quite get the wind down on the remote functionality. Controls either dont work the way they should or arent as interesting as what Nintendo puts out. I mean, bowling in Rayman Raving Rabids is nowhere near as cool (Or accurate) as Wii Sports Bowling.

 

[A Black Falcon]

For the third parties thing, okay, I understand about the development costs being ridiculously high, but limit 5 games per year is a bad point? Nintendo making money of each sold cartridge is...supposed to be bad?

Really, the only deal about producing 5 games per year being the limit was after the Atari systems, which had games come out almost all the time ranging from okay to shit. As for forcing third party developers to raise prices for their games while Nintendo held the monopolistic front, I cant say much there.

I still say its a good thing that lisence pricing is slightly higher than of what, say, Sony's allowing for developers to get a lisence to make games for their system, although they still need to find a way to help support the developers so they can perform better on developing games for the Wii. Theres still hardly any 3rd party titles I'm really looking foward to mostly due to the fact that they still cant quite get the wind down on the remote functionality. Controls either dont work the way they should or arent as interesting as what Nintendo puts out. I mean, bowling in Rayman Raving Rabids is nowhere near as cool (Or accurate) as Wii Sports Bowling.

Nintendo making money off of each cartridge is good. The problem was that Sony undercut them, and the third parties, which had already taken a lot of punishment from Nintendo over the years from their various policies, had good reason to abandon Nintendo. To keep up they would have had to drop licensing fees quite a bit, which they didn't do; for one thing, they had to make the cartridges, which are of course more expensive than CDs.

Anyway, if Nintendo had higher fees but made up for it with caring for their third parties and having platforms on which the third parties would be successful (which is harder on a platform where the hardware manufacturer makes so many great games; one thing Sony does is not make that much themself, leaving more of the market for third parties... but darn Nintendo actually wants to make its own games, and they are good... ), yes, it could work. And ideally, maybe your idea of higher fees and game-release restrictions making third parties care more about the games they were making are good points... but I just don't think that either of those things would really happen. Third parties are too cheap.

 

[Joe Molotov]

Yamauchi is responsible for most of Nintendo's problems it's having today in trying to get back on top, he's their biggest mistake not the Wii or anything else they're doing today

Um yeah, he's also responsible for all their success too. They were still making trading cards when he took over.

 

[linsivvi]

Considering DS can't go online without buying a separate browser, and once running the browser couldn't be made to reset into the "download play" mode to try out such a demo, there really isn't a way for DS to do it alone.

Huh? All Nintendo needs to do is to develop a PC app that connects the DS with the PC, essentially making your PC the download station that Nintendo has used in some stores and events.

This is just like what the existing Wifi software is doing, except in this case you start your DS in download play mode.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Huh? All Nintendo needs to do is to develop a PC app that connects the DS with the PC, essentially making your PC the download station that Nintendo has used in some stores and events.

This is just like what the existing Wifi software is doing, except in this case you start your DS in download play mode.

Soooo yes, instead of DS<-->Wii connectivity they could work on DS<-->PC connectivity, but why would they do that?

 

[cartman414]

That wouldnt have happened as long as it was called "Nintendostation"

Lol. What I was referring to was Sony's acquisition of software publishing rights and royalties.