Nintendo announces new hybrid portable game console

boing
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Eh. I think “most people” arguments are too dependent on waves of what’s fashionable as opposed to what’s identifiably essential to games.

Understandable, give their product line since 1899. They see themselves as a games company first. Technology not directly pertinent to that is simply not broadly relevant. And that’s a fine position to take, given the success they’ve enjoyed with every console but the Wii U.

Yeah, not all of us really want to troubleshoot our games (that’s not why I play games, anyway; if I want that “sense of competence,” I may as well just be at work). This is probably part of why Nintendo was able to ship over 100 million Wiis.

I still think this is a strange position. If you’re not a programmer, it’s not hard to find a GameCube or GC games. (Or a Wii, since, you know, it can run GC games.) So why bother messing with an emulator? If it’s the intellectual challenge, then Nintendo’s technological decisions are part of the whole package of difficulty. It means reaching for more than a mere screwdriver, but why wouldn’t you rejoice in this? Nintendo made you a really hard game to beat. Enjoy it.

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Ah, thanks for mentioning this. I’d not known that was a thing. Makes a bit more sense now.

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And I could keep going. Notice anything missing? Nintendo products and releases on Nintendo Platforms. Its culture “what’s fashionable” is the some total of the subject. I’m not saying their games and systems aren’t good. Just they don’t interest me. And increasingly they don’t interest large chunks of the population. Even the low selling, influential, conversation starting games are coming out of Nintendo these days. They aren’t driving pop culture anymore. The Skyrims, Witchers, Codblops, no Man’s Skies and what have increasingly live in cross platform land. The closest thing they have to franchise that get memeified and obsessed over that way are Pokemon and to a lesser extent Smash Bros. And the most successful version of Pokemon, financially and in terms of driving the culture is a mobile game developed by some one else.

Playstation and Xbox were nipping at its heals though.

And there are, always, far more gaming capable (even if not gaming specific) PC’s in the world. The more important question is how many games they sold for those systems. And probably better for our discussion is the percentage of the market. PC alone is larger, in terms of sale. Then console as a whole and mobile as a whole. Which is why it makes a hell of a lot of sense for developers to develop for more than one platform. If Nintendo takes steps to prevent that (which they do) or blocks cross platform releases. Well then any developer loses most of the market developing for Nintendo. And Nintendo misses out on pushing its good to most of the market, or attracting anyone who might be interested in those titles you can get on any of their competitors.

And don’t forget that at several points over the last 10 years. Even as the DS and Wii were doing pretty well there was serious speculation about Nintendo failing. There’s a reason for that. And that reason is down to low volume of game sales. How many off those 100m Wii’s sold were people who just bought the system and the bundled games. Maybe one or two more? That was so common its actually a running joke.

Noone is. Current PC releases are pretty solid. My point was that these sorts of issues aren’t a result of the emulation used to run them. They ran like that back in the day too. Modern re-releases often solve those issues too. PC’s basically have backwards compatibility with thirty or more years of content.

Who says emulators require knowledge of programming. They don’t. They’re just not very effective, polished, or stable for recently released systems.

In terms of “just picking up a game cube” I don’t much like the idea of having to go out and re-buy a system to play games I already own. The GC had a critical flaw in its disk drive. For a big chunk of its production time. Not only did it cause systems to fail prematurely, it was also known for burning game disks in a way that left them unplayable. Mine failed after just 2 years. If I wish to re-play my GC games (all like four of them) its much safer for me to run them through emulators. And to continually re-buy used Game Cubes as they burn themselves out isn’t pratical, nor does it anyway address my central issue. Which is that I don’t find it sensible to buy Nintendo Systems to play those one or two Zelda releases per system I actually care about.

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It’s my understanding this uses Unity or at least is capible of using Unity. That would theoretically make it super easy to port some types of titles to the NX which honestly is something Nintendo needs, more non-first party material because the Wii-U showed they cant’ go it alone for everything and remain relevant.

That said I look forward to Spla2n.

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[quote=“Ryuthrowsstuff, post:65, topic:87830”]
Who says emulators require knowledge of programming. They don’t. They’re just not very effective, polished, or stable for recently released systems. [/quote]

I believe you misunderstand (apparently, a great deal) of what I’ve said here. What gamers are interested fluxuates with time. If there are a bunch that don’t care about Nintendo, I doubt this news is for them to begin with.

It seems natural to me that anyone complaining about emulation might want to do something about it. If you want to get into improving emulation, you’re going to want to be a programmer of some sort in order to solve those problems. Or you could just complain about it, I guess.

But most people will probably just buy a replacement GC or a Wii.

Welcome to computers and computer-based systems. Have you purchased, perhaps, more than one system of any sort in your lifetime? If not, just wait. You will. Again and again. Computers are complicated and infuriating that way. (Even, no, especially PCs.)

Video games aren’t like books, or even other electronic media like movies. Or tabletop. Most systems aren’t honestly much good beyond 5. (And I say this as someone who maintains a number of working systems long beyond their sell-by date. You can’t just buy a system and expect it to work for 30 years, say.) Granted, two years is short, but I doubt that experience is typical. Mine has lasted for far longer than that.

There’s tons of Wiis out there. They work really well, even with a Wavebird. It’s not like your money is even going to Nintendo, if you’re really that bitter over it. Or fuss with imperfect emulation if you’re so inclined. I think emulation is neat, but I regard it as a toy with more technical issues than even the most problematic shipping GameCube, so I rarely bother.

I prefer nicely designed hardware anyway. It’s one of the reasons I really regret trading my N64. I like my GC, but the N64 is the best console ever, really.

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I just emulate them nowadays.

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