killer kirby Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 He essentially thinks that all developers should develop all games for one platform only, the iPhone. He thinks the iPhone can deliver awesome games with awesome graphics and can easily beat out all competition. He does work at an Apple Re-Seller though so Yes, there are some games on the iPhone that are awesome, but it's severely limited. Take a racing game. Almost all racing games for iPhone/iPod/iPad use the motion for steering...but that's it. Some may have you tap the screen to brake but you lack control. This is why the iPhone and other apple devices aren't good for games that aren't just the little games you spend 5 mins playing then go back to living your life. For proper games, you need input options. This is the same reason why Kinect wont be as popular as MS hope and why so few developers have actually revealed proper games for it. Competition in hardware is needed. If it wasn't for that, the Wii would just have been a High Def Gamecube. The DS wouldn't have had touchscreen or a second screen. Competition allows for ideas and innovations to come. If you have everything on one platform, it stagnates and things just continue as slightly more advanced. Would love to see them try to put a PSP game of Monster Hunter onto the iPhone.
Dante Posted June 20, 2010 Author Posted June 20, 2010 (edited) GameBeat Interview - "Nintendo CEO reveals how company toiled for years on 3DS concept" Satoru Iwata, chief executive of Nintendo, proudly waved the Nintendo 3DS on stage this week as the company showed off a surprisingly well received handheld game player that can depict movies and games in 3D without the annoying 3D glasses. We caught up with Iwata at the end of the E3 video game convention to talk about how Nintendo created the handheld, which was the talk of the show. Here’s the transcript of the interview. VB: Tell us how Nintendo developed the 3DS. SI: 3D is nothing new for Nintendo. We’ve been working on the challenges for a number of years. As you know, about 15 years ago, we tried 3D with the Virtual Boy handheld. It didn’t work that well. About 10 years ago, when we were launching the Nintendo GameCube console, 3D technology was already available in the form of parallax barrier. We experimented to see what would happen if an LCD display could do 3D using the processing power of the GameCube. The GameCube had the ability to show images from the left eye and the right eye, shifted so that they could produce a 3D effect. The circuitry had been designed with the possibility of using a parallax barrier LCD. We experimented with Luigi’s Mansion, a launch title for the GameCube, to see if it would work. And the result was appealing. It showed depth in the view of the gaming world. But when we reviewed its marketability, we had to consider the problem of consumers having to purchase displays. Game hardware was already one purchase. And the TVs were not cheap at that time. So we thought it would not be practical. The next tryout was with the GameBoy Advance handheld. With that, we could just attach a 3D display to the GameBoy Advance. The prototype is still inside my chest drawer. When we saw 3D images on the GBA SP, we saw the high resolution wasn’t good and the parallax barrier display available was not functioning well. The graphical processing power of the GBA wasn’t good enough. So we had to give up on that idea because it wasn’t appealing enough to consumers. We started working on the Nintendo DS. During that development, we never thought of doing 3D. One of the reasons was our failed experiments. Since we introduced dual screens including one touchscreen, we thought we couldn’t afford to add anything more. As soon as the development of the DS was completed six years ago, we immediately started working on the successor, which is today called the Nintendo 3DS. But even then, we did not think of doing 3D at the outset. The first challenge was to beef up the capabilities of the DS. About two years ago, someone suggested to us that we should incorporate 3D into our design. But a lot of people opposed the idea. The sentiment was that we had failed so many times. We decided to give it a try. The opinion of the developers changed as soon as they saw the images. It was more attractive. We have seen improvements in three major areas. Before, we didn’t have high enough resolution for LCDs. We didn’t have sufficient functionality with the parallax barrier technology. And now there was more processing power that could power the photorealistic displays. The total combined image then was drastically improved. At that time, (Shigeru) Miyamoto (Nintendo’s top game designer) was thinking the same thing. The time had come for us to do the 3D video game system. What was great luck for us was that the movie Avatar became a big hit a year after we decided to work on the 3DS. The TV manufacturers also decided to make 3D a big part of their newest TVs, just as we were preparing to launch at E3. It was great luck because two years ago, when we made the decision, it was just impossible to predict these things. Looking back, all of our work paid off. You have trial and error. But we were able to track the progress and predict when the technology would be mature. VB: How confident are you that the technology is ready? Is it easy to make the 3.5-inch screens? Do you have good supplies? Could these be used in much larger TVs? SI: We have to carefully determine the supplies and adjust our launch date as necessary. I have heard that all of the pending issues have been fixed. VB: I like the way it looks. One concern I have is the sweet spot. You have to move the screen around to find the sweet spot and then you can’t move. (To be sure, the quality in the sweet spot is amazingly good). Is that a basic trade-off for not having 3D glasses? SI: From now until launch time, we won’t see a change in the screen technology. As for the size of the sweet spot, we have already completed experiments by playing the actual games on the 3DS. The size of the sweet spot is already within the acceptable range. VB: You decided to make a lot of other improvements. You added improved wireless, an accelerometer and gyro, three cameras for 3D photos, and faster graphics processing. It looks like this is a very good answer to the iPhone and the iPad. Did that cross your mind, that you had to do something better than the iPhone? SI: (Laughs). I personally am a user of iPhones and iPods. I think of what these mean to me as a competitor. But I never thought of them when we were designing the 3DS. If some people think that this might be the answer to the iPhone, then that should simply be the result. That is, it was not our goal to do that, but if people think that, it is the result. We never try to think in terms of any competitive product or company. If you do that, you just focus on a certain narrow area. Rather, we should think much more broadly. Anything that takes the time of a consumer might take away their interest in gaming, or their energies away from our products. Anything that does that should be our competition. We should not narrowly define our competition as Apple, Sony or Microsoft. We have to think of what kinds of experiences we can create that only Nintendo can create, and what no other companies can create. So the result is the Nintendo 3DS. If you say it is a solution against what Apple offers today, it is also a solution against all of the other competition. VB: Are you concerned about how much this will cost? There are so many new things in it, I wonder if you will price it above the normal range where you price your handhelds? Your prices are usually below Sony’s. SI: I have to refrain from talking specifically about the price point. What I can confirm is that, in terms of the production costs, it will cost more than the costs for the Nintendo DS today. Having said that, we believe we will produce enough value worthy of the production cost. We do not think we have to sell the products below cost. VB: Do you think this screen technology with no glasses can be used for big TVs? SI: With this parallax barrier technology, the LCD must be a certain distance away from the screen. It also needs a certain viewing angle. We think it is not a great match for the home TV set. As one of the engineers, I can anticipate that someone will invent a 3D TV that does not require you to wear 3D glasses. As far as today is concerned I do not think they can do it well. We need an invention to make it happen. If you ask me when, I have no idea. Hmm Luigi’s Mansion was the first to try out the 3D experiment. Edited June 20, 2010 by Dante Automerged Doublepost
Emasher Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 Aside from games, I would rather just have everything on my iPod. I'd rather not carry around a ton of devices. However, for games, iOS products just haven't delivered. There have probably been less than 10 games that are really worth playing like you would a proper game, and half of those are DS ports, which look better, but control much worse. Because of this, it makes sense to bring a separate gaming device with me when I'm going to want to play a game. The iPhone and iPod were never designed with games in mind. The games thing came latter. Because of this, it will never be a serious gaming platform, but just a platform that happens to play games.
Fused King Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 Competition in hardware is needed. If it wasn't for that, the Wii would just have been a High Def Gamecube. The DS wouldn't have had touchscreen or a second screen. Competition allows for ideas and innovations to come. If you have everything on one platform, it stagnates and things just continue as slightly more advanced. I thought you hated narrow-mindedness:blank:
Serebii Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 I thought you hated narrow-mindedness:blank: How is that narrow minded? It's a simple statement of human nature. Without competition, we're all fine with being content. Take my site for example, not to sound overly arrogant but for the last 7 years it has been the #1 site for Pokémon. In the first 4-5 years of that, competition was at a minimum so I didn't strive to improve anything, just continued to work on stuff. Then, 3 years ago, Bulbapedia and other sites became a bit more popular, not close to my site's level of popularity but enough to be noticed. This then was a metaphorical kick up the backside and caused me to start improving things everywhere on the site. I made new features like Pokéarth and the ItemDex, did graphical overhauls of things like the Pokédex and just did generally loads of new things to make sure people stuck to the site. If you don't have incentive, then why try something new and risk failure? Competition is human. It's natural. It's necessary. Thinking otherwise is the narrow minded viewpoint. Having a single device for all handheld games would cause this.
Fused King Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 This is a myth put forward by the estabilished order. Lots of people who contributed noticably to society did so because they were interested and curious about certain problems, not because they had to compete with others. Define your meaning of this so called 'human nature'.
Serebii Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 Ah, but a lot of technological enhancements were caused through war which in itself is the ultimate competition...a competition of survival. I'm not saying all are, I'm saying most are, especially in the area of business in which the gaming industry dwells.
grantjames Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 I laughed so much when a friend of mine text me saying Nintendo were bringing out a DS with a 3D screen. When I found out it was true, I came.
yesteryeargames Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3180000 hope this is true
Dante Posted June 20, 2010 Author Posted June 20, 2010 http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3180000 hope this is true It called Classic games tech demo.
dazzybee Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 What's the betting it will get bundled with the 3DS, a level from each game or something to show it off?!
Emasher Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 I think its more likely that they'll implement a full virtual console service, with some of the games being upgraded to have 3D effects. Although, I don't see any reason for them not to have downloadable demos at this point.
Grazza Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 I'm very excited about this machine. Graphics are good, game line-up is excellent and the design is OK considering it has to be backwards compatible. However, the one thing that disappoints me is the resolution: 400x240 (effectively) versus 256x192 for the DS Lite. The PSP is 480x272, the iPhone 3GS 480x320 and the iPhone 4 a staggering 960x640. The reason I say this is because the original DS just didn't seem high-enough resolution to me and a vertical resolution of 240 pixels isn't a great deal higher. Hopefully it'll be just enough, but it is well below other devices with the same size screen nowadays. On the plus side, I don't think I've ever wanted more of the upcoming games for any system. When I have a system I'm not too keen on, I generally only want to play the cream of the crop. However, with a portable GameCube, I can imagine I'd want to play almost everything! I hope there are a lot more remakes like Ocarina of Time, as I generally find them much more worthwhile to play than the actual originals.
mcj metroid Posted June 20, 2010 Posted June 20, 2010 The "official" Nintendo 3DS fanpage has declared war against me. Go Team Nathan!. Josue McLamb: His name should be called Nathan Whinecup OH no the myspace/bebo users have invaded facebook
Debug Mode Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 The "official" Nintendo 3DS fanpage has declared war against me. Go Team Nathan! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nintendo-3DS/122301124448595 Hahaha, official my bloody arse. "We are official but we're hearing our product might be as powerful as a Wii, please speculate with us"
arnold Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 3DS is looking all types of win and amzingness, i'm just glad the 3D isn't needed for all the games and can be turned off, I'll try it the first time but after that my slider will be turned off, I don't see the appeal with 3D, was one thing I hated with hearing E3 news all 3D stuff, the fad just needs to die, but if Nintendo can do it without any form of glasses needed as I say I'll give it a try, but i'm not expecting much of an impact of me playing it or not I'll play the hell out of the games just no 3D, plus achievements are always a nice thing. But props to Nintendo for keeping the portable's still playable, (If the news on the front page is true with the 3D Wii2 not going to be buying a new home console from Nintendo if they go with the wiimote again) I can't even hold the damned Wii controller, bought it and couldn't even play it (well only for about 20 minutes anyway until my hand got tired).
Dante Posted June 21, 2010 Author Posted June 21, 2010 (edited) New details: Digital Media, Inc. (Nasdaq: Musashino City, Tokyo, President and CEO Yamamoto Tatsuo, following DMP) is Nintendo's new handheld Nintendo 3DS 3D graphics IP core to the DMP "PICA200" that was adopted announced. DMP PICA200 is a proprietary 3D graphics extension "MAESTRO technology" is installed. This is by implementing complex shaders in hardware capabilities, high-quality graphics representation of high-end products used in conventional technology in mobile products can be achieved and other handheld that require low power consumption It is. President and CEO commented DMP Tatsuo Yamamoto: "We have high goals that Orimashita achieve low power consumption remains high quality graphics representation, such as game consoles and stationary Autostereoscopic. DMP has developed the technology over the years contributed MAESTRO I am very glad to have been. " # # # Digital Media, Inc. (DMP) for Founded in July 2002, DMP is a leading technology companies from Japan, mainly suitable for the embedded market has continued to develop 2D and 3D graphics technology. Covering a wide range of embedded hardware products, including software 3D graphics solutions, we aim to provide new user experience. Khronos OpenGL ES and other group members play a leading role in developing the specification of OpenGL ES is the only Japanese training program. You can get information about DMP http://www.dmprof.com/. © 2010 Digital Media Inc. DMP, DMP logo, PICA is a registered trademark of Digital Media Corporation. Nintendo 3DS is a trademark of Nintendo. Other company names are mentioned product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The PICA200 scales with up to four pipelines and processes from up to four programmable vertex units. The 3D core, using their proprietary graphics technology named MAESTRO-2G, the second generation of the Maestro design, implements custom graphics algorithms as hardware for enabling a set of shading features that include per-vertex sub-surface scattering, bidirectional reflectance distribution function, cook-torrance, polygon subdivision, and soft shadowing. Their image post-processing module, the PICA-FBM frame buffer management, can polish the image with anti-aliasing and a set of other 2D functions and can actually be licensed independently as a core for 2D-only devices. In either case, the PICA-FBM can be extended with a PICA-VG vector graphics module. "PICA200 is an OpenGL ES1.1 chip featuring a set of proprietary extensions that enable a variety of features that one might normally implement via ES2.0 shaders through a fixed hardware pipeline." Edited June 21, 2010 by Dante Automerged Doublepost
killer kirby Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 Now that I have taken some time to soak all the awesomness of the 3DS, I must say, that I hope that the games that are being remade are the first and last. As much as I like seeing older games being remade, I want to see some new and awesome games being made for the 3DS...only ones that look new that I want is Paper Mario and Kid Icarus.
Retro_Link Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 ...only ones that look new that I want is Paper Mario and Kid Icarus.Not Mario Kart, Pilotwings, Resident Evil, Professor Layton?...
killer kirby Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 Not Mario Kart, Pilotwings, Resident Evil, Professor Layton?... I forgot Mario Kart, but I might get away with what I said if they still add 4 nostalgia cups with the new ones (Like half right ) Truth be told, I have never played Pilotwings, I should one day, but that game went right past me :heh" and Layton...still gotta get the 2nd one before I think of getting that one
Cube Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 I have never played Pilotwings, I should one day, but that game went right past me :heh" Pilotwings flew right over my head.
Dante Posted June 21, 2010 Author Posted June 21, 2010 More info: The decision to use DMP’s PICA200 design was made over a year ago and testing and development have been going on for some time; it’s not as easy as it may seem to license a core and integrate it into an SoC and get the costs (die size), power consumption (has to run forever on small batteries), and performance (clocks and memory management) balance. So as you learn more about this device if you wonder why it took them so long, keep all that in mind. DMP first told me about the PICA architecture in early 2005 which was their first IP core based on Ultray architecture. The president and CEO of DMP, Tatsuo Yamamoto, told me then the Ultray allows real-time photo realistic rendering with physically correct lighting and shadowing such as soft shadow casting and position dependent environmental mapping. Ultray is unique in that it uses hardware parametric engines for certain graphics features rather than shaders. With this approach, clouds, smoke, gas and other fuzzy objects can be shaded and rendered at an interactive rate. At Siggraph 2005 (LA) DMP revealed in more detail some of their techniques for hair, skin, and gaseous shapes. Yamamoto said then that the Ultray could boast lower power consumption due to hardware pipelines, and smaller number of polygons to achieve high-quality graphics based on pixel-level shading (Phong, BRDF, etc.) vs. vertex-level and polygon subdivision. So the bottom line is that amazing high-end graphics functions in a low-cost handheld device with stereovision is not only possible, it has arrived. The 3DS graphics has a lot of head room to be further exploited and we’re expecting to be really thrilled to see and play with what Nintendo and its partners have at launch.
Diageo Posted June 21, 2010 Posted June 21, 2010 Holy steaming purple alien turd, look at that last picture
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