Nintendo's GCNext Direction Outlined By Iwata 90
Thanks to GameSpy for its in-depth interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata regarding "what's gone wrong, what's gone right, and why Nintendo will end up on top." Iwata admits that "the competition is tougher than ever before; and in the short run, we have seen declining profitability", but makes it clear that the next-gen GameCube (which he calls "GCNext or GCN") isn't about raw processing power - rather, Nintendo are "discussing... what should be done to entertain people in a new way; and in order to achieve this, what functionality must be added to our current technology."
GameBoy Extended pic (Score:3, Informative)
I found a pic of it:
http://www.jeux-france.com/images0_4_2049.html
Yep, it's a hoax, but the artist did a darned good job.
Re:It's in the controller not the visuals (Score:2, Informative)
It's called Katamari Damashii. It's not that hard to remember. Especiallly when you have Google around.
Re:"What functionality needs to be added": (Score:2, Informative)
I think the GC controller is one of the best and most comfortable controllers I have used. I can literally play for hours without noticing any strain or discomfort. I have not met a single person who could honestly say the same about the Dual Shock.
Personally, I find the C-stick very usable for what it's mostly designed for: camera control. The D-pad is a bit small, but it's roughly the same size as the GBA D-pad, and nobody has had any problems with that particular D-pad. The buttons are laid out like they are for a reason. The big green A button is clearly the primary button, and it's also the most used button in all GC games. The B, X, and Y buttons are secondary buttons, and are meant to house functions that are not used as often. And due to the layout, they are very very easy to find by muscle memory, due to their unique positions and shapes. The Z button is in a somewhat awkward position, yes. But I'm guessing it's where it is, so the XYZ buttons could be arranged like XYZ coordinates in a 3D world. The shoulder buttons are just perfect, and much better than both the ones on the Xbox controller and on the Dual Shock.
The really mind-boggling thing to me is that people still think the Dual Shock is the ideal controller. People spout about how hard it is to simultaneously press the B and X buttons on a GC controller, but it's clearly just as hard or even harder to press X and Circle or Square and Triangle on a Dual Shock, even though they are right next to each other
Re:It's called the Internet. (Score:3, Informative)
They've been doing online services for their consoles since the Famicom (NES) system.
Re:Forget functionality (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you think that a system has to be "crippled" to have backwards compatibility? Removing the PSX backwards compatibility would have NO effect on the PS2, and the Panasonic Q demonstrates that DVD playback could be added to a next-gen Cube without sacrificing backwards compatibility.