Nintendo's Iwata Says Old Console Cycle Dead 245
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."
this could mean one of two things for us... (Score:3, Interesting)
*ahem*
Translation 1: New hardware should be more frequet, milk them for all they are worth by making them buy more systems and software.
Translation 2: New hardware should be less frequent - it's coming out too often now, and it's really making the customers turn away from consoles.
I wonder which translation he is using?
Re:Shown Already? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's hope the traditional console cycle is dead (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that the most important reason why the old console cycle needs to die is to let programmers/software catch up with the hardware. Sure, you put enough people on a project and you can crank out a PS3 game in enough time; however, if the game is a flop, it could be a disaster for the studio. On the other hand a developer could put out a game on a console that takes less time and money to develop for (such as the Wii and handhelds) and there's not as much risk involved with taking chances. In Nintendo case they're actually encouraging studios to start and take chances. Years down the road when the road has been paved for super high end graphic consoles and software has caught up to the point where it's affordable to actually make the jump.
After all, the real race over the years, weather people want to own up to it or not, has been a software race rather than a hardware race. It hasn't so much been about what the hardware so much as what developers can squeeze out of it.
Nintendo, imho, is basically telling developers "Look, you know all those development tools you spent years tweaking for the Gamecube? Well, here's your chance to actually use all of them. BTW, here's our tools while you're at it." It's feasible that the programming team could actually create the frame of the game while the actual details are still being developed. It's definitely a shift in the industry that we haven't seen since the days of 2d gaming. It's the reason why portable gaming has been so healthy over the years. I'm personally excited about the doors this might open for the industry and I definitely hope that Nintendo in fact does ignore the console cycle until consumers demand they need more power.
Re:Shown Already? (Score:4, Interesting)
An old PC is also very cheap (if not free), but you won't be able to play modern games on it, can still be fun for older games. There are still new games being made for the PS2 but they lack the graphical detail of PS3 titles.
Re:So in other words... (Score:2, Interesting)
Faster CPU? Drop in a 750 FX in place of the 750 CX (or some of those Freescale knockoffs). Better graphics? I'm sure a pin-compatible version of a better GPU can be made, or simply add a driver shim to the firmware and put in a completely different GPU. Needs more on-board flash memory? Add some. None of these are things that require a radical redesign of the entire system to accomodate. In fact, they've already done it once, going from Gamecube to Wii. The worst thing they'd have to deal with is a slight redrawing of the circuit board for a new GPU pinout or making space in the Wii form-factor for a larger heatsink. If they're careful, neither of those will be necessary.
The revised Wii will come in a box with a different color border (blue instead of white, for instance), will be marked with "Wii 2.0", will play all Wii (1.0) and Gamecube games as usual, and will be the new requirement for playing "Wii 2.0" games. Games will have the same color-coded borders as the minimum required Wii version needed to play them. Game devs will have to target the lowest hardware they can get away with using, but other than that, there will be few headaches. You don't need anything more powerful than a Wii 1.0 to play Bejeweled 12, but you'll need a Wii 3.0 to play Resident Evil 7.
Hey, it could happen.
Re:this could mean one of two things for us... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I say that as a person who bought a Wii for the gameplay and not the graphics, and I don't really have a problem with that. In a few years we'll get a deal similar with the Wii, updated graphics power for a lower cost than everyone else by using smaller and cheaper versions of yesterdays's technology. Something like a Wii2, which is a Wii with better graphics (but not amazing) and backwards compatibility for 250 dollars. I'd buy it.
I really think this has to be the case because as much money they are making with the DS, I don't think it would make sense to release a new portable and fragment that market.
Or.... Maybe take all of what I said about the Wii and apply it to the DS. Maybe a more powerful DS-like portable, but with backwards compatibility, which wouldn't fragment the DS market as much. I could see Nintendo eyeing that strategy now in preparation for the slowdown of the DS in the future.
Re:So in other words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why have a long development cycle followed by a high introductory price when you can have a reasonable price and a constant evolution?
The Wii is plenty powerful enough right now. Most people don't have 1080P HDTVs or even HDTVs. The games on Wii are fun and selling well. The Wii is selling well.
The Wii is 100% compatible with the GC so you can play all your GC games on the Wii.
So if in two or three years we have the WiiHD for $225 will I feel ripped off? Not really since it will still be cheaper then buying a PS3 right now.
Like the PS2 it will take a few years for developers to get a grip on the PS3's programming model.
So in two years when the WiiHD comes out odds are that will have more power then the PS3. Play all the Wii and GC games. And cost about the same as the PS3.
Nintendo will not need to recover massive development costs and can include an HDDVD or BlueRay drive "which will be cheap and we will know who if anyone won the format war", HDTVs will be super common, Moore's law will have kicked in for a generation or two, it will have full backwards compatibility, and will have a very familiar programing model. AKA a bigger and faster Wii. In other words just like the PC.
I think Nintendo thinks that a 7 year live cycle for a game console is dumb.
Re:this could mean one of two things for us... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that he is mostly talking about not updating the DS. The DS would be "due" for the introduction of its successor next year for a 2009 launch. I don't see that happening.
Re:This sounds reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
My PS2 on the other hand was a launch version and it won't play a LOT of DVD's that came out past, say, 2004 or 2005. It also has this tendancy to get disc read errors for no reason and so when I actually want to play a game I have to boot, and reboot, and reboot, and reboot, etc... Sometimes I go through like 10 cycles of this and just give and go play my 360. Then the next day, without touching anything or even removing the game disc, it works fine.
Anecdotal evidence isn't worth a lot because everyone's experience is different.
Re:This sounds reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know.. here's my take on his comments (Score:4, Interesting)
As you can see here [gamezero.com] I have been tracking the release cycles of all of the Nintendo platforms, and Nintendo has some pretty strong behavioral trends built up over the last 30 years.
Historically, a new console is release every 5 years and a new hand-held ever 10 years, with experimental platforms and incremental upgrades in-between (Virtual Boy, DS).
If the DS becomes the new "handheld" line as many expected but Nintendo has denied then it's in for a 10 year life cycle. Note that they still have not identified the DS as an upgrade/replacement for the GBA line which still commands some sales (GB Micro, etc...), so they're going to be careful not to cannibalize any remaining sales in that market.
Also, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft or Sony takes a direct attack on the Wii as literally being beefed up GameCube hardware in as a marketing attack since it has taken off so well. Unfortunately for them the Wii is strong with every other demographic of consumer, and if this does happen, I don't see it getting them far outside the gaming press.
You've got to step back and take a look at the big picture of what is said and the greater context of other statements and general behavior.
Granted Nintendo is slowly making changes structurally since Iwata took over as would be expected, but this is also a company that has been in business for over a hundred years, so they're internal culture and business strategies are clearly working for them to some degree.
Also, I think the Wii has yet to hit it's stride yet in development exploitation of it's features. Given that it's really lost a year of ground here, it could be that Nintendo is actively assessing the idea of letting the hardware dev cycle slip by a year or two with the Wii. Additionally, they're probably also trying to assess how to expand DS sales at the critical 6 year mark when normally they would be issuing a mid-level system improvement that doesn't effect platform compatibility (eg, GameBoy Color).
Oh well, I'm just rambling, it's all good.
Re:In between generations (Score:3, Interesting)
I love my new 360, but if anything, it's re-enforced my support for the Wii as a truely next-gen system. They don't really feel the night-and-day generation different, the way I thought I would. The PS2 is painful to play on now, I'll admit, but the Wii does what it does extremely well, if not better than what the other systems try to do.
Re:I don't know.. here's my take on his comments (Score:2, Interesting)
The Wii is going to be really hard to follow up. Yes, the next console from Nintendo will have better graphics and sound and so on, but what improvements can they make to the motion-sensing functionality? If it's just a Wii with more power, it probably will not see the sort of sales performance that the Wii currently has, since many folks will not want to upgrade.
Re:Shown Already? (Score:2, Interesting)
You wait; 14 years from now, you'll look back at Crysis and wonder how you ever thought it looked remotely realistic.
The first time I saw the Crysis DX10 ultra detail screenshot I thought it was a photo. It took a closer inspection and looking at the URL to realise what it was. If you honestly saw Doom and wondered how games could get more realistic, you have problems.Nintendo logic is less predictable (Score:3, Interesting)
E.g., back when the Playstation had more games coming out per year than the N64 had over its whole life, Yamauchi was giving interviews saying that it's Sony who will go bankrupt by releasing that many games.
E.g., back when people complained that whole genres, e.g., RPGs, had gone missing from the N64 for years, Yamauchi gave an insulting interview in which he called RPG players, "depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games."
E.g., when Nintendo had to justify why the GameCube has less horsepower than everyone else (without even having some gimmick like the wiimote to make up for it) _and_ lacks any kind of media playback capabilities, Nintendo just gave a flurry of interviews that somehow that's what will allow them to offer a better gaming experience. See, you'll have better games and a better experience with it _because_ it's underpowered and lacks a DVD player. Illogical as that may sound.
Etc.
Basically, historically the Nintendo way was to take whatever they felt like doing, or were able to do, and proclaim it some Holy Truth of the industry. It's not Nintendo who has a problem, it's everyone else, including the customers, who don't know what they're doing and what they want. They've been the worst example of someone who has no problem telling you a different lie than yesterday, if it better suits whatever they're justifying today.
Even Nintendo's ideas of milking a market have been... weird at times. E.g., in N64 times again, the whole freaking Europe market was used as an experiment in deliberately releasing only half the games, and trying to strong-arm the retailers into not importing the rest. Someone at Nintendo genuinely thought that having only a handful of games, and everyone buying the same games and seeing the same games on the shelves again and again, would make more money. (And while I'll admit that many EU releases were delayed by others too, read that paragraph again: it wasn't because of translation costs or whatever, it was a deliberate experiment in building brand-awareness for just a few games with a minimum of paying for shelf space.)
Now admittedly, Iwata isn't Yamauchi. I know. But, you know, Yamauchi picked Iwata as his successor. We're talking the same Yamauchi who got all his relatives fired from the company so noone could challenge his absolute rule. It makes me at least, skeptical than his chosen heir to the throne would think radically differently. I also notice that Iwata was the head of Nintendo's Corporate Planning Division during Yamauchi's hardline imperialist years, so I'm guessing he can't have had that radically different a vision.
At any rate, I'm betting that, in the tradition of Nintendo, there's no telling what he _really_ means. It could also mean
- "people are still buying the DS, so why bother designing the next one?" or
- "our engineers screwed up and the prototype of the next console doesn't work, so let's pretend that we actually like it that way" or
- "Wii sales are plummeting in Japan and soon even the 360 will overtake us, so we need the next console out _now_, cycles be damned" or
- "we'll pull the same stunt as in N64 times and make you buy a hardware upgrade for a console, instead of going with the cycle of releasing a new console"
Or probably something else that noone would have guessed.