Reggie on Dev-kits

[DCK]

Good news

 

This means that a lot of games are in full development (as in final graphics too) which makes a 2006 release a 100% definite.

[guarana]

tittles misleading

[Nintendork]

tittles misleading

I don't think a developper's kit could hold his weight..

[Domstercool]

Let's just hope that the small price of the SDK doesn't mean cheapo arse crappy games from unknown devs, that would be bad.

[Nintendork]

Not at all domster, just look at Geometry wars for the 360, 2D shooter and it charts in the top 10 games on xbox live as most played/downloaded.

 

The Revolution wont suffer from having a cheap developper's kit, it will benefit because indie developpers like Darwina creator will turn to Revolution instead of being relogated to cramming their creations onto the small screen of the PSP or the DS.

[DCK]

Of course a cheap devkit is overrated a bit here. If a developer can't afford the extra $18000 of extra investment cost for a more expensive devkit I doubt they have the budget to make a real game. Still, all credit to Nintendo for the price. It makes the Revolution somewhat more attractive.

[Nintendork]

Sometimes it takes a real working product however basic to really sell something to a publisher, Look at Raid over River, they developped on Power PC IBM processors and then RevolutionReport gave them the exposure of the screenshots.

 

Hey presto they got a publisher and no doubt they picked up the bill of the more expensive developper kit.

 

And like someone said big publishers probably have better contacts for getting dev kits earlier on.

 

It just gives a developper a tool to show their ideas off paper I think.

[guarana]

I don't think a developper's kit could hold his weight..

..genius

: peace:

[Flaight]

Jamba got it spot on. Iwata talked about that at length in the keynote speech, exactly those words - "Big ideas win, not big budet".

 

Anyway.. you know, the way I see it, seeing the cost difference, Xbox360 and PS3 better look superior compared to Revo. Afterall those 2 are selling their systems on the monolithic principle of more realistic graphics. THAT is the name of the game. So obviously the games on them ought to look better.

 

That's the flip side of all this.

[Hellfire]

Let's just hope that the small price of the SDK doesn't mean cheapo arse crappy games from unknown devs, that would be bad.

I disagree, the more games the better. I won't buy them, but shelfspace has a lot of importance to a console's image. It also gives a chance to many indie developers that can give us great games and ideas.

[Shino]

I disagree, the more games the better. I won't buy them, but shelfspace has a lot of importance to a console's image. It also gives a chance to many indie developers that can give us great games and ideas.

 

Unfortunally neither quantity or quality of the games as anything to do with shelf place, I've been in a shop (Worten) and what used to be Gamecube and Xbox space was now only for the PSP wich had repeated games and were very spaced out between them. Now theres an entire front for PS2 games, half that for PSP and a little space for Gamecube, Xbox, GBA, DS and even N-Gage games.

I just don't get why (I doubt Sony pays for every single store in the world).

[Nintendork]

Shelf space will represent console sales and nothing more, well maybe a bit of symmetry in design of the shop too.

 

If there is more of X console out there than Y console, you will find more X games on the shelves.. because statistically there will also be more profit to be made from customers.

 

For example, despite many Nintendo fanboys comments the PSP and DS have been doing about equally in Europe, DS has an edge but it's not monolithic.. in my store there is roughly equal DS/PSP allocation of floor space.

 

I think another factor that has to be taken into consideration is how the shop profits.. half the PSP section is devoted to UMD films because lets face it the games aren't rocking the socks of the PSP owners are they?

The shop profits from the movies considerably.. they stock more.

 

Less GameCubes? Less shelf space is what we saw.. and the few places that stock the games have a high price margin to make up for the loss in sales. £40 for Mario Sunshine/Double Dash in some places.

[Flaight]

Back in 2002 worldcup I went to one of the game shops in Akihabara district. You should've seen my face when I went into the PS1 department. Shelf after shelf of never-heard-of games over 3 floors. It struck me so hard then how sony gained so much ground in PS1 era; they had loose licensing regulations and relatively cheap dev kit, allowing multitude of backstreet devs to make million games. Well that didn't do them any harm, did it.

 

EDIT:

 

The shop profits from the movies considerably.. they stock more.

 

Apparently not, according to recent news that Sony is to decrease quantity pushed on UMD side. In short, the article read that we haven't been buying enough UMD movies to meet supply so Sony and their partners are going into damage limitation execise for this period.

 

I think the more obvious explanation regarding the above-mentioned shelving ratio is the general expectation the shop had in demand ratio. Afterall that's the only thing you got when there is a new hardware. If there is a precedence and the shop expects big sales from a new product, I guess the shop pushes it forward more.

[Nintendork]

I played a few of the European indie games made in NET YAROZE and YABASIC, they were all pretty piss poor, someone made a cool game called gravitas or gravitation I think.

 

That was pretty rad.

 

 

edit.

 

Yeah I was reading about that recently, it's Sony's theory that their absolutely great movie quality on UMD has been inhibitting game sales.. while they acknowledge that they need to catch up in this area they are limiting UMD sales to hopefully boost game sales.

 

They're shooting themselves in the foot if you ask me, they just need to get the good games out ASAP then people will buy them over movies.

 

The new DVD UMD box sets wont help them either.. because they're super cheap I hear.

[SpinesN]

I see small downloadable games being a big hit with smaller devs.

[Nintendork]

That's another thing I was curious about the other day.. whether people without internet access would be able to buy 'virtual console' games in retail shops, perhaps on CD (they're pretty cheap).. and then upload it to the console that way.. then the DRM technology would handle the rest of it on the virtual console.

 

Nintendo said they want to protect their games with DRM really thoroughly so it may be the case that they rule out people who don't have wifi, and go down the lines of a subscription service where if Revolution doesn't talk to Nintendo wifi within 30 days for example you get locked out of your games.. to ensure you're not hacking or misusing content illegally.

 

Also does the dev kit support the older consoles.. I'm curious whether Nintendo will leave Nintendo's back catalog clean crisp and preserved as Reggie expressed his wishes for. He said he wanted to play his classic games how they used to play.. and no tweaking.

 

Which brings me on to my main point whether there will be new mini games, new releases for SNES and N64 for the smaller developpers as SpinesN pointed out.

[DCK]

It would be a great strategy to make cheap devkits for really small developers to make small games that can be distributed by the WFC network. It would give them more attention and they wouldn't have to worry about distribution.

 

If that happens though, Nintendo will have to expand the Rev's memory (1 GB please?)

[Nintendork]

That's what I'm curious about... I have a suspicion that Nintendo will only offer the back catalog, and Revolution support.. there wont be any 'Nintendo wifi arcarde' that offers new small downloads.

[Jay]

It would be a great strategy to make cheap devkits for really small developers to make small games that can be distributed by the WFC network. It would give them more attention and they wouldn't have to worry about distribution.

 

If that happens though, Nintendo will have to expand the Rev's memory (1 GB please?)

 

I wouldn't rule out the idea of them having expanded it, it's the main thing thats received criticsm other than the graphics and it wouldn't add much to the cost to double it but doubling it would make a pretty big difference to gamers.

 

Hopefully they will make it so that small developers can develop simple titles for it (I'm thinking like Geometry Wars on Xbox Live) - Cheap extra's that need to be no more complex than a lot of free web based games could be made available for free or at small costs and it would be fantastic for new developers to make some money and make a name for themselves as well giving gamers even more titles to play.

 

In an ideal world the virtual console would comprise retro sega/nintendo games for download and play via emulators, arcade games ported for download and minigames made by small developers to be available. It would expand the life of the console so much.

[Flaight]

Interesting thoughts there lads.

 

Nintendork asked "does the dev kit support the older consoles". Not sure if I understand the intended meaning, but I think it's possible that Nintendo may include a very robust SDK for 2D games. Or not. I don't know.

 

If it's just a question of playing old game codes (nes/snes), it's more a question of emulation than dev kit. It's already possible for any devs to develop SNES looking games using 3D SDK in GameCube. I can't see why it should be any different in Revo.

 

As for WiFi being necessary for Revo to keep a game alive... I doubt that somehow. I just can't get my head around the idea that Nintendo would assume Revo users to be connected to WiFi. I should think Nintendo would view that as a steep requirement. Or, did you mean that just for WiFi downloadable games?

 

Sorry if I'm mistaken something here. It's a fairly confusing thread.

 

P.S. I think DS is already doing a good job providing legacy support. GBA and DS are fast becoming the holygrail of new 2D style games. I wonder if Nintendo would feel it's necessary to duplicate that in Revo.

[SpinesN]

...Which brings me on to my main point whether there will be new mini games, new releases for SNES and N64 for the smaller developpers as SpinesN pointed out.

 

Why would the make them for old consoles and run them in emulation? The revo can do 2d, might as well run everything native as it will save the programmers time and improve the feel of the game.

[DCK]

That's what I'm curious about... I have a suspicion that Nintendo will only offer the back catalog, and Revolution support.. there wont be any 'Nintendo wifi arcarde' that offers new small downloads.

It would be a shame if they left it out. There are a lot of ideas for the Revolution controller that simply don't need a big disc (and probably aren't worth the 50 euros).

 

Also, I hope Nintendo will support downloadable extras. Like instead of having Mario Party 8-13 on Revolution, release one Mario Party and have new features downloadable for it every year (costing €10-15).

[Nintendork]

Yeah, thinking about it.. my point about classic consoles having a directive on the dev kit is quite crazy.. as we saw on the four swords they can manage it, I just thought it would be good to kinda.. get that classic feel for a game.

 

But honestly, even if they did bring out a new classic style Mario.. i'd still be inundated with so many classic games that I missed out on.

It would also decrease potential sales of new Revolution games.

 

My theory is bullshit.

[Flaight]

I think the idea itself is perfectly valid and useful, though, about dev kit. I have the feeling it could have a robust 2d library, much like the quad support in Directx graphics (as mimickin 2D using 3D maths). In fact I wonder whether NGC dev kit already includes one such lib within the sdk. If it is, its certainly not getting used much.

[Pestneb]

That's another thing I was curious about the other day.. whether people without internet access would be able to buy 'virtual console' games in retail shops, perhaps on CD (they're pretty cheap).. and then upload it to the console that way.. then the DRM technology would handle the rest of it on the virtual console.

 

Nintendo said they want to protect their games with DRM really thoroughly so it may be the case that they rule out people who don't have wifi, and go down the lines of a subscription service where if Revolution doesn't talk to Nintendo wifi within 30 days for example you get locked out of your games.. to ensure you're not hacking or misusing content illegally.

 

Also does the dev kit support the older consoles.. I'm curious whether Nintendo will leave Nintendo's back catalog clean crisp and preserved as Reggie expressed his wishes for. He said he wanted to play his classic games how they used to play.. and no tweaking.

 

Which brings me on to my main point whether there will be new mini games, new releases for SNES and N64 for the smaller developpers as SpinesN pointed out.

 

I doubt they'd use it that way. It could cause huge problems, it would be like probation, people would resent it, and it would cost nintendo.

afaik, each revo has a unique number, when you download a game it is tied to your revo, meaning it will only run on that machine.

a possible solution would involve downloading games (from booths in game stores perhaps) onto SD cards, the games are in an unplayable and uncopyable format, when popped into a revo they are tied to that machine, and then can only be played on that machine.