Nintendo's New Controller

#41 Government regulation only creates monopolies, it does not destroy or abate them. You won't find the proof for this in your govenment-issued economics book though...

Try this book instead.

#42

Quote:
Just because something is innovative doesn't make it good. Virtual Boy anyone?

Problem is ... Virtual Boy wasn't innovative! It was a cheap rip-off of much better technology back when Virtual Reality was all the rage. Look at Nintendo DS ... there is innovation that people like and buy A LOT!

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As a gamer: That has got to be the dumbest "controller" I have ever seen! Waving a TV remote around like a fairy princess's magic wand. I feel moronic even just writing that.

As a developer: Agreed! How on earth am I supposed to develop something intuitive on that?!?

I am very disturbed by your viewpoint here. What's fun for you ... clicking buttons and moving analog sticks to control your body ... or just moving your body? Also ... this has got to be the most intuitive device ever for games ... even a dog knows how to point!

Quote:
I like to relax when I'm playing a video game. I have no energy left after working and going to school.

Like it takes any real umph to point a remote control at the TV ...

Sad day when something new and fun comes along which could break the stagnant nature of Microsoft and Sony ... and indie developers don't embrace the idea.

Quote:
Innovating is good, but not on the hardware level. Innovate with software, with game design and gameplay, don't force developers and gamers to change to fit your hardware, you make your hardware fit the user.

If you don't innovate on the hardware level then the software turns into the same refurbished junk we've been playing for the past 10 years. Ever since games went 3D the basic games have all been the same ... because new ideas come from the hardware ... it's an integral part of video games. If you want truly new gaming experiences then you've got to change the hardware.

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Can you imagine if Dell decided to stop selling mice and keyboards with their computers and only include a touch pad with a pen (and made it so that no third party mice and keyboards would work)? Sure, it'd be great for artists, but how would you do all the things you are used to doing? How would you type? You'd have to physically write everything. Some people might like this, some won't. The point is that removing choice is always bad, no matter how "unique" or "innovative" your new technology is, having only that is never a good thing.

That's for a productivity tool ... this is for a game system. If Dell did by some miracle come up with something better than the mouse (hmm like this controller) then yeah they should swithc so long as it gives you the same functionality. The functionality of a game system is fun ... I think they've got it covered.

Additionally, your views of one console blah blah blah are ridiculous. Competition keeps prices lower and companies on their toes. If one console ruled them all you'd start getting junkier games and there'd be a crash like the Atari days.

#43 It says you use it like a mouse not a light gun, just a mouse you hold in the air. I don't think it's going to work well as a point and shoot device. Plus the cable to the analogue controler is too short, so you will be restricted in how you weild the controler.

I don't much like the idea of a single hand operated device with the analogue thumbstick because you don't have a firm hold, and therefor the stability of a 2 hand controler, so less accuracy.

In 2-5 years time when there are VR headsets that are wireless something that does infact point and shoot accurately would be pretty cool, same with sword waving in MP games, but for general purpose single player use with the limitations suggested, it seems a bit of a gimmick where wielding the controler is the game, rather than the game itself. ...............Developers will have to develop the games with the controler at the forefront of the design much like they do with the DS, reducing things to somewhat gimmicky simple parlour style games I'm starting to get used to seeing on the DS these days.

#44 Why does everyone say wave it around like a mad man? I really doubt it requires a huge range of motion, its supposed to be really sensitive or did none of you get that far into the review? Hell, I only have to move a mouse 2 inches to travel across the whole screen, I dont see why this would be any different.

Sure its wierd, does that make it bad, no it doesn't. Frankly, last time I was at E3 (2 years ago), I was struck by how everything was the SAME DAMN THING. All the games are the same. Even Lore which is a game I helped develop is the same thing as everything else.

If this brings different games to the table that are enjoyable then all the better.

#45 A few things people might be overlooking. The buttons at the bottom of the controller are not meant for heavy use. Notice if you turn the controller to the side, so that the d-pad is to your left, it becomes an NES controller. With revolution's wi-fi access, it will be possible to download all the games from the NES/SNES days. Ta-da!

@Adam : About non-gamers. Non-gamers don't buy games, true. Many non-gamers have kids. So they might be tempted to buy a revolution for their kids. Now, think about this for a second, if someone who never played games has time to spare and walks by the tv set...And finds a ps2 controller lying there, chances are he will never touch it. 4 trigger buttons, 4 face buttons, 2 thumbsticks and a d-pad...intimidating to anyone who hasn't played games for years.

Scenario 2, the same person walks by his tv set and sees what looks like a Tv remote. HMmmmmmmmmmmm...chances are he'll be tempted to try it out.

And, while I'm at it, it is so unfair to say that hardcore gamers don't play nintendo games. I have an Xbox, a gamecube, a Dreamcast, a saturn, I have a room full of consoles. Okay I have no social life, so what!! :) And after coding for 12 hours straight, these days I go and play the latest Zelda. Why? Because its design is simply brilliant. I still play Xbox games, but more often than not I'm wondering, oh how much better it could have been if it were designed by nintendo. Sure, the kiddie-theme turned me off at first, but you get used to it. I have many friends who work for ubi-soft, EA, and various cell phone games companies, and most of them have a gamecube And an Xbox. I finished Ninja gaiden on very hard, so there..I'm hardcore but I love nintendo games.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Grand theft auto for instance, which is so bug-ridden...I still played through it, but I had to overlook several instances where mission design felt like it had been rushed or simple bugs made my last 30 minutes of play completely obsolete. The world they have rendered is so huge, it's easily forgiveable. But you will never find anything like that in a nintendo game, they would simply call it unfinished.

Also, everytime I had friends over for dinner or drinking, we played a bit of soul calibur, a bit of halo, but most of the night was spent on mario party, Donkey conga, stuff like that. And I can't even count the number of times girls I dated asked me if I had mario kart somewhere.

I also read somewhere that nintendo would facilitate development on their next machine specifically for indies. This is a great opportunity...And I know people want the easy way out and make 1 game, hit export and have it built for every platform imaginable. But I think Nintendo will bring much-needed diversity to the field and allow for new ways for people to enjoy our great medium.

A good design should be easy to pick up, hard to master. Simple as that.
Ok I'm done now.

edit : the controller is not final, by the way. So the cord to the nunchaku controller might be longer.

#46 I like TV remotes for game controllers...
cause it doesn't remind me of anything...

#47 I'm looking at that controller and I'd *love* to be able to use it with most *every* game I've ever played. How much more intuitive can you get than something that detects those subconsious moves and twitches that every one of us has. Not only that, but I've got to agree with what Peter Robinson said about playing something like Zelda or Soul Calibur where you control your weapon by moving the controller, and move using the analog controller. (Maybe an extension cord option is needed for more 'energetic' games, but come on that's just cool.)

#48 LOL @ Bryan.

Good one. =)

#49 I'm still reserving judgement on this controller til I see something more tangible utilizing it for gamplay. But i do respect the "crazy" decision they're making with it. I can't honestly tell you the difference between the new xbox and ps on surface level, hardware wise is another story but they are meant to do the same thing, the same thing they did last generation...but "better". This revolution is the anomaly so if I had to be excited about one it would be that one.

#50 I'd imagine Nintendo could have brought out room-size holographic projectors and people would complain that they wouldn't be able to see the paint on their walls. Look at the lineups for the PS3 and 360, prettier versions of games already made. Gears of War is about the only new concept that'll be done anytime soon, and that's looking to be a fairly standard console FPS, played the same way as nearly every console FPS before it. Nintendo have said all along the Rev will be mindblowingly different to everything else - what were you expecting, really?

It has the backing of EA, Ubisoft, Activision and THQ even at this point, not to mention Nintendo themselves. That's a decent enough lineup and the launch isn't for months. I'd imagine that for every developer who's bemoaning the amount of work it'd take to actually do something new instead of adding a half-arsed feature to a shooter and call it innovation, there's ten that are genuinely excited about how the controller can help them realise their ideas better.

#51 It's too hard to really tell until the games start coming out, but everyone's talking about all of the things you can do with it, and not mentioning what you can't. It does sound awesome to be able to actually swing a sword by swinging the controller. Or even better, play a baseball game with an actual bat.

But, take a look at the last couple of Zelda games. If all I could do in those was swing around a sword, I would be bored pretty fast. I only see three buttons that can be comfortably used. One of them has to be z-targeting. One of them has to be the action button. You need one for the shield. Each weapon would have to be controlled by the motion sensing thing, so you would need a way to switch weapons.

People are saying things like well, you could just point and click on a door to open it, or a treasure chest to open it. I want to know how the game knows you are trying to do these things instead of swing your sword. You need a button to toggle the state. Or you could have an on screen interface where you point at the weapon you want to use, thus eradicating any immersion in the game world.

Of course, I'm being close minded. The point is to make a zelda game unlike any of the others. But I like the old Zelda games. I want to play more of those but with new stories and new innovative ideas.

I'm not writing the console off yet, I've been a Nintendo fan for a long time, but I am still skeptical.

#52 Some of you are accusing people of not being able to think of any new game ideas with this controller. What? You can't not think of new ideas with this controller. I'm going to instead accuse you of not being able to innovate with regular controllers. The industries lack of innovation is not a lack of ability to come up with innovative ideas, it's the risk involved with building them. If an idea was all it took to make a game, I'd make several hundred a day.

I do admire Nintendo for the risk, but I don't think it will end well for them. Playing Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is the most fun I've had in a long time. But nobody bought the game. Of course, I was one of the DS's naysayers. I still don't like it (and I've played it before - too gimmicky) but it seems other people do.

Edit: Wow, reading back over this I'm sounding kind of hypocritical. Other companies won't innovate because of the risk, so Nintendo is forcing them to. That's pretty cool. That doesn't change the fact that I don't like the direction of innovation, though.

#53 Looks neat to me, won't knock it till I try it

#54 Hmmmm..... OMFG!! wow..... I really don't know what to say, I mean this is far different from most of the common speculations, it's pretty weird, but it opens so MANY doors to different games, i can't wait to see what developers come up with. This also changes their stance towards Sony and Microsoft, if this picks up.... Sony and Microsoft will fight an uphill battle in the generation afterward (they do have howitzers cannons and tanks, but it's still a tough fight), if it doesn't pick up that much at least Nintendo has it's own market that Sony and Microsoft simply can't be in(not YET) it will (like Ajari said) apparently cater best to those who swing and turn their controller to help their char move, if their targeted market doesn't open up..... they're screwed.

We can only make half decent judgements once all the consoles are released. Even then, we can't say our judgements are correct, for example this generation, the GC wasn't nearly as succesful as it could have been, and it was all because developers and gamers didn't beleive in it. So, quit thinking of what you CAN'T do and think of what you CAN do!! STOP THINKING OF GAMES AS "KIDDIE GAMES" OR "MATURE GAMES"!! just think about wether they're GOOD OR BAD!! Don't concentrate so much on making a game as REALISTIC as possible so much as making it as AMAZING as possible.

That said, let's remember, there were a LOT of doubts about the DS.... now it's huge, i personally haven't seen ANYONE playing a psp at the mall, or at comic-con, etc... but i HAVE seen people playing DS, a LOT. Nintendo has the weirdest position... I mean think about it... they said they wanted to make their console open to indie developers, that's a BIG resource, and if they cater to it they'll have most Indeis working on their console seeing as how i haven't heard any plans from Sony or Microsoft to better allow indies to develop for their consoles. Who here DOESN'T want to develop for a console, and if the revolution is a more open choice....or the only one, well i doubt PS3 and XB360 are going to see many(if any) indie games on THEIR systems, it's also becoming more expensive, most of the devs for the other consoles will likely be mostly studios owned by large publishers EA, Rockstar,VU,Take2,THQ, and Midway are all defineately going to be there, but what about the little guys? They'll pretty much only have Nintendo as their option. Of course, this is taking a large step in assuming Nintendo really IS going to make it so easy for developers to make content for their console. So, i guess we'll just have to wait until it's release to see what happens.

#55 Qoute from article:

Quote:Nintendo also mentioned that the controller stick could be slipped inside other, more conventional controller shells, dance mats, bongos, or other peripherals.

Sounds to me like you have a number of inputs you could program for ... or not program for.

#56 Well atleast left handers like me can fight fair with the rev!

#57 Well, seems that the Rev controllers offers a nice out-of-the-box support for FPS, RTS, lightgun and racing games.

Yes, racing games. Turn the controller sideways, and steer it left and right to steer the car. Tilting it back and forth could work for accelerating, and press a buttom for braking.

Thanks God Nintendo is offering something different, instead of the conservative "let's add a new button, make it rumble and add more horsepower" approach. They're working into not making their console redundant. If you have several consoles with similar feature sets, and with similar games, some of them will fade into obscurity unless they have something that provide unique experiences that can't be found elsewhere.

I never owned a Nintendo console before (but played plenty of them, of course), and I'm now a proud DS owner. WarioWare and Kirby, as example, allowed me to have gaming experiences that are both fresh and fun.

After playing Kirby for some time, I can clearly tell that the game feels more interactive than any previous platform game I ever played. The layer between me and the game feels thinner than in a traditional game, maybe because I can interact with the game directly, instead of using an abstract arbritary interface.

Recently I was outtraged by the "invert right analog camera control stick axis" in the X360 BIOS. Do Microsoft assumes ALL games use the "left stick moves character" "right stick move camera" scheme? What if I make a game where the left stick moves the character, and the right stick perform attacks? Or Namco releases Katamari Damacy on X360? The controls will be screwed.

I don't like this "convergence" at all, where it seems in the end all games will use the same controls, the same physics and the same graphics, only with different levels, weapons and characters. The worse is that some people seem to yearn for such thing to happen.

#58 @Manoel : "The layer between me and the game feels thinner than in a traditional game, maybe because I can interact with the game directly, instead of using an abstract arbritary interface."

That describes really well how I feel about controllers. Thank you for inventing that sentence :)

Your actual physical actions have a direct effect on the game. Think of playing a racing game with a wheel or with a standard controller...definitely more immersive and fun to play with the wheel.

#59

Quote:The problem with consoles is that they always lose money on the hardware, it's just a question of how much.

Not true. Sony and Microsoft lose money on consoles. Nintendo does not. (Unfortunately the original bloomberg article here seems to have gone away, but it discusses the fact that Nintendo uses less bleeding-edge hardware, and as a result sees profit both from consoles and game sales. Nintendo has not posted an unprofitable quarter, ever, since the release of the NES. While MS and Sony both lose money the quarter after console releases.)

Nintendo also controls one of the top two consoles (the GBA, which is on par with PS2 for unit sales).

I personally think that it is fantastic that Nintendo is able to try something like this. It is a level of innovation that one doesn't expect from the industry. I hope that it works fantastically. Sony and Microsoft continue to fight over a small portion of the market - hardcore gamers - while Nintendo pushes to create things that are both innovative and universally appealing.

When I reflect on the last few years of my own game playing, there are only two systems that I regularly play - PC and GameCube. PC because it has the best games of genres such and RTS and RPG titles, to which I am always attracted. GameCube because the games are fun and I can play them with friends who are not "hardcore".

As Manoel says, the new controller (assuming it works well) will make the barrier to entry to games even easier - the kind of motion that one would expect to control characters will control them. How can anyone argue that that is a bad thing? I sincerely doubt that any hardcore gamer will have any difficulty adjusting to this new control style, and it will allow people who would be confused by a traditional controller to play allongside you intuitively.

As I mentioned with the awesome coop mode of Mario Kart Double Dash - I think nintendo's goal has shifted to making software (and now hardware) that will convince hardcore geeks' girlfriends to play games with them. And really, is that such a bad thing?

Then again, all this speculation relies on the interface actually being good and intuitive - Nintendo has been know for a few big mistakes in the past. I do have some degree of confidence in their ability to pull it off, based on the fact that they are betting their entire console on it, and the level of quality that was poured into the DS's innovative control scheme (remember when everyone was saying Nintendo was crazy for trying that? Now look which handheld is doing better... and which has better games.)

#60 I already chimed in once, but my girlfriend watched the Revolution controller "trailer" afterwards. She actually thinks its a neat idea.

Some background knowledge here. If I tell her that I'm going to play a game, I get a sigh, roll of the eyes, and generally a dirty look meant to make me feel guilty about not spending time with her. She also feels that every single console game I own looks the same. (And I've got 30+ gamecube games) Hell, while she supports my efforts in Game Dev, she absolutely HATES Dark Horizons:Lore.

The only game I successfully got her interested in... Animal Crossing. Though she wants to try Donkey Konga, but really wants the GC DDR Game also.

So to recap. Girlfriend who hates nearly ALL video games, is interested in the Revolution. This means my purchase of said system could potentially be grief free. YAY NINTENDO!