Late Night Consoling

anyone have a theory on why Xbox is so popular in Australia?

Criteron's Black is now BC! Man... that's pretty big news.

As for the Revo specs..

It all depends on the "wand" imo. If the wand is a gimmick and theres only a handful of games that use it, this system will bomb in terms of the general public buying it. I love Nintendo and will be buying one even if its only more franchise sequels, but the average joe is all "PS3 fuck everything else". The general public sees a flashy commerical showing off graphics (that most of the time aren't even real time).

I REALLY want the wand to be awesome and spur a whole new genre of games, but if theres only a handful of in house games coming from Nintendo that are for fishing and ping pong, this system is going to tank with those specs. There's really no reason to get it other then the wand, and the ability to play older titles. I know theres lots of love for older titles here, but for me personally I'll load up SMB3, play it once, and then go back to something like Oblviion on the 360.

That being said, why not just have used the Gamecube like someone else already said if its not about the graphics, and theres no HD support?


Revolution's ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU clocks in at 243MHz. By comparison, GameCube's GPU ran at 162MHz, while the GPU on the original Xbox was clocked at 233MHz. Sources we spoke with suggest that it is unlikely the GPU will feature any added shader features, as has been speculated.

My 2 cents.

Personally gaming isnt quite the hardcore persuit it once was for me. I've been playing games religiously since my amiga 500, but not these days. I'm busy with lots of other things so its not a focus anymore, plus i do honestly beleive games are getting ever so slightly less fun. That doesnt mean i dont miss it, but whenever i decide to waste what little money i have in an attempt to get back in to it i lose interest and dont touch any of my consoles again for months. The only exception to this has been my DS, the reason being, its convienant, cheap, simple and intuitive, i dont feel i need to put in a shitload of hours to get the fun.
Seeing these nintendo specs actually cheers me up. I know i can afford this system now. Theres no way i'll be able to afford a PS3 or 360 until a couple of years down the line (when i see certain things i will be interested in like ico 2 or a trully next gen GTA..) I'm excited about the controller, i know there is a lot of misgivings about it, but i'm hopeful. I remember the exact same comments about the unveiling of the n64 controller. Then the DS controller. Everyone was proved wrong, i trust nintendo to not fuck this one up.

On the subject of 3rd party titles. I havent been interested in any of them in years. I dont like sports games, GTA is probably the only cross platform game i've ever purchased but even that was before it arrived on the xbox & pc.

So to sum up, if this news means nintendo are releasing an afforable, inovative easy to pick up system that will at the very least really good 1st party and 2nd party support then i'm more than happy with that.

Thats all i'm after tbh.

Does no one remember the days of the N64? Game prices are at 60's, and one was even 80 dollars for the longest time (Killer Instinct Gold). Given, these were due to costs to make the cart...

But still, I feel this is almost hypocritical of Iwata. I remember specifically buying Zelda: Ocarina of Time for 59.99. Game prices will go up, as inflation increases. They've been 50 bucks for a long, long time...

I sorta saw it as inevitable that they'd increase to 60 dollars...

My thoughts on the Revo specs

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11886498

Is it just me or is that HM-Fusion Twilight Princess interview link borked? I went to the main page of the site itself and could not find any mention of the interview.

/me wants his zelda info

If the Revolution is 2-3 times more powerful than the Gamecube, then holy moly! Can you imagine how awesome the games would be?!

Hey for all the peeps stating Rev games can be fun regardless of the specs I have two thoughts:

1) If that's true, Nintendo should have just released a new controller for the GameCube. I'm sure that would have been a shitload cheaper than a whole new unit.

2) This could be a blessing or a curse, depending on who you ask but don't expect many multiplatform games coming to the Revolution. People might scoff at this - but publishers and developers are more likely to produce a game they can sell on multiple platforms than concentrate on a project they can't turn over and sell again. Example - it's cheaper for a studio to add the Revolution to a multiplatform project than start a sole division.

3)I do think Nintendo's price (it's obvious this thing is going to be cheap) strategy could put them in a good spot because like they stated, they don't want to compete with Xbox 360 & PS3. This way I could easily see the Rev becoming popular as a second console for budget conscience consumer.

it's a little too dangerous to say anything negative about the revolution around these parts, eh?

i remember the same thing happening during the gamecubes buildup.

Lack of third party support? Well that's kinda sad I guess, but Nintendo's games are so good that I rarely find myself buying others anyway.
I just have to look at my shelves to see that even on my SuperNES 75% of the games I've had were first party..
I'm not rich by any mean and I can't get as much games as I want so when I buy on it has to be damn good, and it just so happens that all the best games on Nintendo platforms are usually made by Nintendo themselves.
In the end it all boils down to the "what do you think are the right prices for a game and a platform?" question, but hell I bought a N64 and ONLY have N games on it. (yeah I never bought Goldeneye, sue me) And guess what I'm still happy with my buying it.
Honnestly Nintendo could announce they drop 3rd party support altogether I wouldn't really care that much.

Predictions:

Idiots will continue to say that the soon to recieve a real name Revolution is going to suck because of the hardware, or be "disappointed" in something they have not yet played or seen a single image of in action.

The machine is going to kick ass, make pretty looking games, demonstrate great gameplay together with that interesting gyro-controller.

Xbox360 is going to take third place in Japan and stay there. Sorry Microsoft but it seems that American consoles in Japan are doomed

Nintendo is going to continue their silent domination in the sales charts, look at the GBA, GBA SP, NDS, NDS Lite, GameCube sales in Japan right now.

Do Microsoft count all the "free" xboxes they gave away in Australia on mobile phone deals and the like?

I just found a way to get my router working with Nintendo Wifi Connect!

Adding a lot of you suckers from the shackmap in metroid and tetris.

In reply because its damn long (again).

Yet I'll probably pick up a revolution before either a PS3 or 360...

Jesus Nintendo, I sure hope thase specs aren't true. If they are then the thing should cost $100at launch. Glad to hear of the 512mb flash memory though, but it should be more. Here are my ideal Revolution specs

1gig flash memory for save games / virtual console.
128mb DDR system ram
128mb Video Ram x1300xt
2ghz IBM cpu.

This will allow for both beaing far cheaper than the $400 360 triple core proccessors and x1800xt, 512mb of GDDR3. and 20 gig hard drive while still delivering good graphics.

Huh, file this under "possibly neat" and "random":

Entering names or messages or other text. It's never really been quick on consoles due to the way you have to move a cursor to the next letter on a grid (which is often different for every game). You also do it for setting up Xbox Live. Well, imagine doing it with Nintendo's little wand, moving it in the direction you want the letter-selection cursor to go. Vertical movement moving it up/down, horizontal movement moving it left/right, hitting the trigger to select the character. Hell, navigating any menu interface this way could be cool.

It's just little stuff like this that makes me hopeful about the controller in general.

1st part Nintendo titles in canada have always been priced at $60 US -> $70 CDN. Mario Kart was still that price until very recently.

30,000 Xbox 360's? WOW that's a lot less than we expected.

I knew we were a small market but that really hits home - I expected 100k or more.

wow wow - terrible, no wonder no one supports us.

Well hell, the DS looks a whole lot worse than the PSP but I still have no good reason to get a PSP...

"The system has 88MB of system RAM plus a 3MB texture buffer on the GPU; "

LOL

What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that with the Revolution not doing HD support they can put what processing and graphics power they do have to getting ultra-high quality visuals in SD since they aren't going to have to worry about creating extremely high-res textures like they would for HD. I cannot freakin wait for this system.

Why SNK, why? :(

"With big-name studios already taking notice, Revolution may actually pull off what GameCube never could: widespread third party support"

The problem with Nintendo's third party support has little to do with developer support, but more likely PUBLISHER support.

I'm pretty sure alot of publisher aren't that excited when they see pretty much every title on the Gamecube and DS top 10 be a Nintendo title.

Nintendo's problem with third party is that Nintendo is too good at making games and their systems turn into Nintendo-made games only.

Sure, there have been some third parties to do a game or two well (RE4 would've sold so much more if it were on PS2 first), but for the most part, the Gamecube has been Nintendo-published territory.

WRT Revolution specs, keep in mind, we don't actually know specifics about the architecture..

It might just be an uprated gamecube, or it might be a 729Mhz PowerPC 970MP plugged into a downclocked 48-shader X1900 part.. without more information it's a bit premature to make any conclusions.


although I fucking hope it's the latter, not the former

The upside to the lower specs on the Revolution is the fact that developers will be forced to have their games stand on something more than its graphical merit. A standard racing/fps/sports game on the Revolution will be KILLED by a standard racing/fps/sports game on the 360/PS3, so developers are going to have to do something new and most likely utilize the controller in a way that gives those sorts of games or any game for that matter an edge over the competition in a purely gameplay oriented manner.

I've always viewed the Revolution as a sort of full sized DS. In the same way that the DS has managed to trump the PSP by offering more robust gameplay than robust visuals, I have a feeling that as long as the developers realize Nintendo's vision then there's no reason why it shouldn't be a success.

BioWare & Pandemic Studios Hype the Revolution

http://revolution.ign.com/articles/699/699037p1.html

ok after playing bfMC for 360 i can say a couple things...

-it looks much better than the pc version
-for some reason i felt it played better as well, everything was more smooth and moving around felt more fluid.
-lack of medic makes me cry
-control scheme was decent but they better have the ability to configure controls with retail

other than that (and im gonna get flak for this) i liked it a little better than the pc one... dont hate me

"Last week Iwata announced that Virtual Console will offer games from Sega Genesis and Hudson/NEC's TurboGrafx, but also suggested there might be more announcements in that vein."

Bring on the Neo Geo support! :D

Revolution specs are kind of disappointing, but if the games are fun which they probably will be and it doesn't cost more than $200 then it'll be a pretty decent deal.

Pics for KOF 2006 if anyone is interested: http://www.snk-capcom.com/snkgallery/album10

Hey Chris, if I process an order now, do you have an idea when the DS might come in ? anyone has experience in that area ? Lik-sang says backorder... any idea ?