Nintendo's Iwata Says Old Console Cycle Dead

1up is reporting on comments from Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who has offered up the opinion that the four-year console cycle is a thing of the past. Instead, he says, companies should look to iterate on their hardware when an opportunity presents itself. "Launches should depend on when it can signify a major shift in entertainment, or when they have done everything possible with the current hardware. He also says that scheduling the successor to current hardware on a 4-year life cycle without paying attention to changes in the market 'appears to be too inflexible an approach to us.' This isn't to say that the company doesn't have eyes on the future. 'We need to forecast what the future will be like with the expected evolution of new technologies which are available at any given time, and try to identify the so-called 'sweet spot' of technology over the next few years,' he said."

Shown Already?

[AlphaDrake]

I believe this has been proven already.

Nintendo has had the habit of short console-lives if you start with the NES (Yes, consoles do predate it, but this is a simplified view.) It was released in 1983, overtaken by the Super Nintendo in 1990 (Lasting 7 years). Next was the N64 in 1996 (making the Super Nintendo last 6 years), next was the Gamecube in 2001 (N64 life span: 5 years). And finally the Wii in 2006 (Gcube life: 5 years).

However if you look at Sony, the original playstation was released in 1994, not overtaken by the PS2 untill 2000 (6 year life). And then by the PS3 in 2007 (7 year life).

Arguably, Sony has/had the majority market with the Playstation 2, I believe part of its popularity was the fact that it became so cheap, with no changes, that anybody could have one, and play games together. Something PC gaming lacks if you do not keep your pc up to date.

And you must also take into consideration, games can only get as realistic as real life. It's one thing to go from Super Mario Brothers on the NES to Crysis, but Crysis to real life won't be that big of a jump. And when graphics/physics/AI get as good as real life, there is no major drive for a new console for "next-gen" games, they won't be able to get any better (gameplay aside for this arguement). It is also taking us longer to increase realism, thus the life of consoles will be extended (if you can understand my ramblings).

This sounds reasonable

[CrazyJim1]

Personally, I didn't like any of the systems of this generation. PS3 was too expensive, and doesn't have a lot of games. Xbox360 dies on you. I'm not the type that would like the Wiimote controller.

Unless a MMOG or competitive game(besides Halo3, FPS were meant for the mouse) comes out on console, I'll just stick with PC gaming.

Another aspect is...

[Bullfish]

How many consoles does the average gamer now own? In the past when they had one or none, a new console would have been more attractive. Now, with saturation being what it is... you can keep on playing the older systems until there is something about the new system that compels you to buy it. If you have no high def TV for example, there isn't a lot to recommend either the PS3 or 360 over their predecessors. A killer exclusive might help (ala Halo 3), but that depends on the individual. It's all relative really, but I expect the adoption rates to get slower and slower.

Re:This sounds reasonable

[Prien715]

No offense, but your argument against this gen is crap.

PS3 was too expensive, and doesn't have a lot of games
PS2's launch library was crap initially too. The PS3's price is coming down.

Xbox360 dies on you
So did the PSX's laser, for those of us who remember. Later, the hardware got better.

I'm not the type that would like the Wiimote controller [my emphasis]
As in a human being?;) At least try it before you decide you don't like it. I didn't think I would like sashimi either, but it is yummy.

Now, if you'd wanted to MS's pay-for-multiplayer system or the lack of any coherent system on Wii/PS3, that's one thing. But you dislike two systems based on incidental qualities, won't even try the 3rd, and throw up your hands and say that's it?

what do these have in common?

[night_flyer]

DRAM Makers Suffer Due to Lackluster Vista Adoption [slashdot.org], The Dying PC Market [slashdot.org], and this story?

People arent adopting as fast as tech is pumping out. People dont like to change for change sake. As the popular saying goes, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Intelligence is still a Hard Problem(tm)

[tepples]

And when graphics/physics/AI get as good as real life

Citation needed that this will happen within the next four generations, especially the intelligence part. Specifically, will the NPCs in Animal Crossing IX be able to say more than about four weeks worth of scripted conversations? Or will they be able to understand the letters I send them more than simply scanning for the presence or absence of predefined keywords?

Well done for completely missing the point

[Chuck Chunder]

Firstly he's talking about the DS and more generally he's saying there's no point in rushing to the next generation until you've run out of ideas on the current generation. He's not talking about "power", rather capabilities, thereby suggesting that we should see new devices when they have something fundamentally new to offer, not just more power.

Re:In between generations

[plague3106]

Compete with the PS3? You mean the system that is overwhelmingly easy to find, and mostly sitting on shelves? Sorry, I think the PS3 is the one that needs to compete, and I'm not sure its ever going to go anywhere.

Certainly BR is a non-issue for most; I suspect many that would like HD movies are waiting until there's a clear winner. I really don't care if the PS3 can play BR if HD-DVD comes out on top.

The PS3 is just all around too iffy at the moment to even consider touching it.

Re:So in other words...

[Knuckles]

Iwata is admitting that the Wii isn't as powerful as it should be

There is no "admitting". He is just repeating what he has said all along: that it makes no sense to deck out a game console with HD and all kinds of gadgets when the end result costs $600. That, and that Nintendo cannot (and actually has no intention to) subsidize such a system in the way that Microsoft (and Sony to a smaller extent) can and is willing to do.

That is, Nintendo will release a next-generation system when the technological advances allow a significant jump in gameplay improvement at a ca. $249 price point. Makes sense to me.

Re:In between generations

[xarien]

In terms of Blu-Ray, we just couldn't have made Uncharted without it; with Uncharted we have almost filled it (91 percent). We're also using the hard drive to pre-cache data from the Blu-Ray disc. That allows us to stream up to 12 streams for sound, load level data super fast and more importantly to stream textures constantly to guarantee high-res quality on the screen.

Like it or not, HD sets are growing year after year and the Wii just isn't cut out to be HD entertainment.

Re:So in other words...

[rkanodia]

Game devs will have to target the lowest hardware they can get away with using

In other words, either the additional capability goes to waste, or the market is fragmented around those with the upgraded version and not. This is quite possibly the worst idea that Nintendo could possibly have. There is a reason that nobody does 'SegaCD' crap anymore.

Re:In between generations

[Turken]

Well, if Nintendo can put out a new console two years from now that is just as good as a PS3 is today and still sell it for only $250, I would think that they were making a pretty smart business move. Iwata was talking about how Nintendo aims to hit the technology "sweet spot" with each release. Currently, Sony has overshot the sweet spot by putting too much into the ps3 to create a console with lots of potential, because they can't sell it very well because people either don't want to drop $500 at once on a console, or don't yet have a high-def television to justify the graphical horsepower (or they can't afford both the PS3 and the TV to play it on). However, in two years HDTVs will most likely be cheap and plentiful. So...

option 1 = pay $250 now for interesting games my current TV, and $750 later ($500 for a good TV, $250 for a WiiWii) for interesting games in HD.
option 2 = pay $1500 now ($1000 for a good TV, and $500 for a good PS3) for a handful of HD games that look really nice, but just aren't that interesting (because shiny games are expensive to make, and thus to profit must cater to the lowest common denominator)

And, maybe once Nintendo gets around to releasing the WiiWii, the dust will have settled on the whole blu-ray/hd-dvd mess, and they can use whichever drive becomes the standard for other high-def media.

?Translation? Watch the HDTV Transition

[nweaver]

One possible translation: Watch the HDTV Transition...

Sony and Microsoft leaped ahead, probably ahead of the game, on the output resolution. Its too good (read "costs too much") for what is currently out there.

Nintendo did not. They went cheap and new UI, which has proven to be a win.

But I'd bet that Nintendo really is eyeing the HDTV transition for "Wii 2.0". They are probably taking a page from Apple and keeping it as stealthy as possible (why hurt sales on the Wii 1.0?), and waiting until 42" HDTVs become common (probably after this christmas) before releasing a performance and graphics bump designed to take advantage of the new output resolution.

Re:In between generations

[xarien]

After owning an HD set, it's very very difficult to watch SD anything on it. When I first heard my wife say, "why isn't this in HD," I knew the "what's the big deal about HD" crowd is going to die off pretty quickly. "Fun" being such an subjective word, can be defined in many ways. Who says better visuals and sound are not part of this equation? Yes, gameplay counts as a huge part of the overall equation, but to snuff visuals and sound as being unimportant is simply turning a blind eye.

Re:Shown Already?

[feepness]

Squeaky wheel gets the grease, and once hardware is able to render reality realistically, there's no need to improve it until some other facet of ultra-realism is discovered to implement. The problem is that we've moved from NTSC to 1080 HD the number of pixels has risen by several times. So it's not just displaying realistic stuff, it's displaying it on 6 or 7 times the screen area at 60 fps that is the challenge.

Re:Well done for completely missing the point

[Chuck Chunder]

So not only don't you read the article, you don't even read my second sentance?

Seriously dude, why are you commenting if all you have to tell us about is what you are imagining Iwata is thinking about when he said some stuff you haven't actually read?

Why not just shut the fuck up?

Re:this could mean one of two things for us...

[king-manic]

I read his statement as "we know that the Wii's graphics will look absolutely dated vs the 360's and PS3's in 2 years or so", and that they want to prepare everyone for releasing a new set of hardware earlier than everyone else, out of cycle.

In two years? It's already pretty dated. Compare any multi platform game. They just banked on enough people not caring or too new to video games to know better. Some of the graphics like RE4 or Zelda actually hurt my eyes on an HD set if I haven't slept enough. I hear Metroid does it better, but I'm still not certain if the Wii heralds the end to gaming as I enjoy it or will be the next mainstream platform.

So far the games are either retreats with "waggle" replacing "button mash", or "tedious mini games" collections. I enjoy the extra speed the Wii mote gives when aiming but despise the "waggle" that is mandatory to get a license.

This discussion needs reference to the 32X

[Kris_J]

You can't really talk about how good an idea this is, or not, without referencing the Sega 32X.

• 1988: Genesis/ Mega Drive
• 1992: Sega CD / Mega CD
• 1994: 32X

The Mega CD and 32X were a pair of incremental upgrades to the popular Mega Drive system. They allowed Sega to hook into the capacity of the CD storage, then into the upcoming 3D movement. They were, however, typically considered failures. Much like movie sequels, the market for each new product is a sub-set of the purchasers of the previous. Because of this, games developers were reluctant to invest in the production of titles that had diminishing markets and the library of games suffered.

Re:Shown Already?

[Anonymous Coward]

games can only get as realistic as real life.

You're assuming that "realism" is a hard line that can never be crossed. But if that's the case, why do movie directors constantly spend money on special effects, instead of just filming stuff happening in real life?

It's one thing to go from Super Mario Brothers on the NES to Crysis, but Crysis to real life won't be that big of a jump.

You think so? I don't. I remember thinking exactly the same thing about Doom - whoa man, this is real proper 3D and all, how can games ever get more realistic than this? And yet today it looks crazily primitive.

You wait; 14 years from now, you'll look back at Crysis and wonder how you ever thought it looked remotely realistic.

Re:Wii 2

[VGPowerlord]

Changing the CPU or graphics ability on a shipping console is a colosally bad idea. The entire idea of a console is that you have a fixed set of hardware that run games in roughly the same way. Oh, you may have HDMI here or have the game installed to disk there, but the processing power remains the same.

Re:Shown Already?

[bartoku]

Nintendo has had the habit of short console-lives....However if you look at Sony...

I will conjecture that the Nintendo's console release time frames were forced by competition.
The SNES release was fairly delayed (the NES was doing fine and SMB3 was hugely anticipated) and finally came out to trump the Genesis' success.
The N64 was late to the game, the PlayStation had a huge jump on it.
Again the Gamecube was late, being trumped by the PS2.
Finally the Wii was a year behind the 360 but finally matched Sony, in terms of release, for the first time in three console generations.
Nintendo would have loved to draw out the life of its existing consoles but could not afford not to compete with new tech.

Sony on the other hand was able to draw out the PS1 and PS2 lifespans because their was no competition.
The Saturn was beat from the drawing board. The N64s lack of optical drive gimped it, and the PS1 was too established.
The Dreamcast got beat by DVD-ROM drive. The Gamecube and xbox were to little to late, again the PS2 was too established.
Without the 360 or HD-DVD we probably would not have seen the PS3 until this X-Mas.

It is cheaper to sell old tech and never develop new stuff as long as it is selling. Especially when the money is being made in software and lost on hardware.

Nintendo has changed that, they are now making a profit off the hardware. They were smart enough to own their last chip architecture and make the second generation easily backwards compatible. Now they can have the best of both worlds: an established existing library and a perpetual hardware base. While Sony put all their R&D into the the new cell and blu-ray tech today hoping for a 10 year payout, Nintendo can slowly and cheaply up their hardware over time. In two years or so Nintendo can turn around and put out a new console, just as or more powerful than the PS3 but with the full library support of the Gamecube and Wii. The programmers will not have to learn a new and difficult architecture like with the PS2 and PS3, the development tools will just be given a small upgrade. Microsoft realized this as well, that is why the 360 is not an Intel processor. Of course Nintendo could not compete as Microsoft could in R&D, they are slipping in with the novelty of the wiiMote, first party games, and easy development.

The big question is will the console community accept incremental upgrades the way the PC market does?
I think they will, they will bitch and moan, but the sheeple will buy it.

If Nintendo is smart about it they will release the Wiii but have developers make their games for both the Wii and the Wiii. You stick the disc in your Wii and you get 480p, you stick it in the Wiii and you get 720p or 1080p. Same game. They could even have games out for the Wii with the Wiii on the way and say buy it now and play it in HD later! Of course better graphics are not the only aspect, better AI and physics needs some horse power, but even better, play your Wii game tomorrow in the Wiii with better AI and better physics. It would take a little more programming on the developers part but less than supporting different PC hardware. Adds a little more replay value to the game (not exactly a money maker) but it eliminates this console generation chicken (system) before the egg (software) problem. The PS3 promised this a little with upscaling your PS2 games, but Sony did not play it well they screwed it up and it cost them to much because they needed to support two hardware architectures.

And you must also take into consideration, games can only get as realistic as real life. It's one thing to go from Super Mario Brothers on the NES to Crysis, but Crysis to real life won't be that big of a jump. And when graphics/physics/AI get as good as real life, there is no major drive for a new console for "next-gen" games, they won't be able to get any better (gameplay aside for this arguement). It is also taking us longer to increase realism, th

Re:So in other words...

[644bd346996]

You seem to have missed my major point: it isn't hard to make a game engine run at different resolutions. It doesn't make memory requirements exorbitant. Hell, even DOOM can render to a dozen different screen sizes. With a console like the Wii using OpenGL, it is pretty much trivial for the game developers to enable higher resolutions when running on the more powerful device. It certainly doesn't approach double the effort. After all, it isn't like the resolution is hard-coded with assembly language. Even N64 games were written in C. And practically every 3d engine already includes a level-of-detail scaling system to use for rendering distant objects. It's been well established that 3d graphics is one of the most trivially scalable computing tasks, and you have yet to offer any reason why that can't apply to consoles.

And while is may not be such a good idea for Nintendo right now, the situation will probably be very different two years from now. Certainly when the HD-DVD/Blu-ray thing gets settled, Nintendo will have incentive to release a compatible, HD-capable Wii. But even now, Nintendo is preparing to release a new revision of the Wii that supports DVD playback. Would anybody be surprised if it included a faster GPU with better decoding features? Or if they added 802.11n support next year?

The days are long gone where games magically break if the clock speed of the CPU is too fast or too slow. Nobody in their right mind complains that their quad-core gaming rig is wasted on Half-life 2 just because the engine also runs on the original Xbox.

Re:Shown Already?

[dintech]

The reason games will come out for the PS2 for some time is the global installed base. It's huge. Old PC hardware is dropped for various reasons outside of gaming so there is no point supporting it. The original xbox was not as successful as the ps2 so that explains some of that...