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E3 Businesses Nintendo

Revolution to Allow For Home Development? 59

Posted by Zonk from the hundreds-of-new-development-shops dept.
Via the Guardian GamesBlog, a BoingBoing post with an interesting posit. Will the Revolution allow owners to run their own code on the machine? From the article: "...the world of consoles that only ran signed code was a nice racket while it lasted, but at the end of the day, needing to get permission to run software on your own device sucks and devices that let anyone write software for them get more valuable as more people write more code for them." A nice idea, but not too likely in my opinion.
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Revolution to Allow For Home Development? More

Revolution to Allow For Home Development?

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  • Would-be writers write new games, or even mods for existing games, a savvy corporation can increase their codebase for the cost of a contest with a few cash prizes for the most popular works - what's not to love with this?
    • This is great, and could result in more fun games, BUT...

      The current business model for consoles is to sell HW at a loss, and cash in on royalties. The royalties come from the development licenses you MUST buy in order to develop software for the console.

      Eliminating that requires console vendors to make money on the hardware and ignore the more lucrative software market. The hardware on next gen boxes is expensive and not built for upgrades. Why have a console then when you could have a PC? You can alrea
      • And yet...
        This is definately a cool feature that might drive geeks (like me) to buy one. And more console sales = larger target audience.

        The assumption being that "hobby" games won't eat into commercial sales. I believe that to be a likely proposition. A hobby game will likely not have a budget of a million or two to blow. Hobby games might be good for an hour or two. But what do you do after that? Grand Theft Auto XXVI!
    • what's not to love with this?

      Nothing. That is a great idea. That would add so much replay value to games that would normally be pawned back to vendors (which, interestingly enough, negatively impacts revenue streams for developers / distributors).

      You have to understand though, there are individuals who have the capacity to make project decisions who do not possess any knowledge that is ACTUALLY USEFUL. Unfortunately for us, they need to prove their worth to the company so they can collect their pa

  • The only connection... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Thursday May 19, 2005 @04:02PM (#12582025)
    ...between the press release and the posit seems to be wishful thinking.

    Even "indie games" have a far larger license budget than an interested coder would be prepared to lay down just to play about with some ideas.
    • That's funny...I'm working on a game currently with a $0 budget, so license fees are important to me.
    • While it would certainly be fun to play around with, I think allowing any old code to run could hurt Nintendo's reputation. One of the biggest advantages of console gaming over PC's is everything working without a hassle. This requires stringent testing of games, and a lot of hard work. The saying goes that the last 10% of the project takes 90% of the work, and that's reflected in a majority of open source software. It's hard to buckle down and put in that extra layer of polish when you're not getting paid.

  • Mis-evaluating the marketspeak (Score:5, Informative)

    by frikazoyd ( 845667 ) on Thursday May 19, 2005 @04:03PM (#12582049)
    The rest of the paragraph they got this "information" from is this:

    Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea. "Our next console proves small in size but big on ideas," says Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales & marketing. "We're throwing open the doors of gaming to wider audiences, from casual players to hard-core gamers who live for the thrill of defeating an endless army of wireless opponents."

    Now, if you ask me, all this blathering from Nintendo's own is their way of saying "we made an accessible SDK that small teams can work with just as easily as large teams". That doesn't mean they won't charge to release the SDK, and that doesn't mean they won't make you sign certain rights over in order to develop for their console. It's a flimsy line, and it shows that Nintendo may finally be trying to woo third party support. That much is good. But I think the blog is reading wayyyy too much into this simple statement.

  • Actually... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by sehryan ( 412731 )
    Running home-brewed code is one thing that might not seem that amazing. But what it does is let smaller development shops enter the market fairly easily. This has some seriously huge implications, and from interviews with Nintendo execs, it seems like enticing the small fish as well as the big is exactly what they want to do.
  • reading something as radical as allowing home developement into nintendo's statements is a little stretch. I personally would love it and could see why they would allow it (homebrew is huge on thier portables) - but it seems to "revolutionary" an idea for console companies at this point, especially one that I think has historically been known as the most closed.

    Of course maybe this is the revolution they keep touting.
    • I agree it is unlikely, but not completely impossible. They want to get money from licensed developers, so naturally, there will be some degree of closure.

      But, what if the when the console boots, if it detects it is trying to boot unsigned code, it declares:

      Warning : You are trying to run code not approved by Nintendo. Doing so will void your warranty, and may damage the system. For best experiences, only run software with the Nintendo seal of approval!

      Anybody trying to actually sell software would wa
  • I have a horrible feeling we're getting too excited over here.

    Isn't it going to be like the old Sony 'Yaroze' (or however it was spelt) system where you could develop for the Playstation, but with crappy limited libraries? I'm sure they'll still digitally sign stuff, so we won't be able to compile straight to it. It's a nice gesture though.
  • This [gizmodo.com] think put it best I believe.

    ...it was clear from the talk that Nintendo--the company so afraid of piracy that they shut down emulator sites and made their game discs in the Gamecube spin backwards--has no intention of letting fledgling developers copy their own content to the Revolution and play it.

  • See Mods for a PC example (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theclam159 ( 833616 ) on Thursday May 19, 2005 @04:45PM (#12582560)
    Nintendo would be doing a very good thing if they released their SDK for free. Look at the modding community for an example of what free SDKs can do. Half-Life was released in 1998. 7 years later, people are still playing it, thanks to the dozens of mods that keep it going. As I write this, there are 87,348 people playing Counter-Strike. How many tens of thousands of copies of Half-Life did Valve sell because of third party mods?

    Frankly, if Nintendo does this, everyone wins. Nintendo gets cash from extra Revolution sales and the extra game sales that extra Revolution sales would bring. Modders and Indie developers get easy access to the largest gaming market (consoles), get experience working with that market (something that is difficult to do when you aren't part of a large corporation), get their names out there, and make money. Gamers get a large number of new games, mods, maps, and other extras, some of them even for free.

  • No Way. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J_Meller ( 667240 ) on Thursday May 19, 2005 @04:50PM (#12582609)
    Never going to happen, Nintendo is all about quality control, most 3rd party developers dropped the various Nintendo systems because of Nintendo's aggressive nature when it comes to content and distribution control. Because most Nintendo systems are marketed to be idiot proof, they will never allow code to be compiled and distributed without thorough in house testing, the possibility for disaster is too great especially if people start developing and privately distributing games with copyright and trademark infringements
    • So why would they mention indie developers in their press release or emphasize easy development at their E3 presentation? I think Nintendo learned a lesson from the weak 3rd party support for the Gamecube.

      • I think the press release means "indie" as in "at least one profitable published title for the Microsoft Windows platform".

    • if the console had two modes one being the super fast unrestricted access mode that signed binaries would run at, and another where user data was protected from damage homebrew games could still go up to the quality in graphics as the GCN without the risk of people losing their stored data.
  • You would need to build security into the system if you did. How easy would it be to write a simple program masquerading as a game that would erase all your flash memory?
  • What would really be amazing is all the little homebrew application that could be built using the hardware. Mediaplayer is about the only thing i can think of but there must be others.
  • 1. Someone said that Nintendo makes a profit on their consoles. I don't think this is always the case, I'm not sure the N64 or Gamecube were like that when released. They probably cost Nintendo less than the PS2 or X-box hardware upon release, however. By now, with the advancement of technology and economies of scale fully in force, and with game systems not dropping in price as rapidly as they usually do by this time in a hardware generation, it's possible that all three manufacturers are making profits

    • Sony only gets money from DVD sales if those DVDs are made by Sony.

      But now that Sony owns both Columbia Tristar and MGM, it becomes even more likely that a given person will buy Sony's DVD Video titles.

      Eventually, a combination of manufacturer insight and economic circumstance will intersect, a system with true, official homebrew capability will be made

      It's already here, and it's called a Mac Mini (520 USD with TV output option).

  • Nintendo has already broken many molds in the Revolution that they were very set to keep. Backwards compatibility is a first for Nintendo. They were very set against it. Also Internet usage. They specifically said that Nintendo will not use the Internet in the Revolution. And here they are using it. So I think its possible that they might relax their content control too and allow home development.

    • Backwards compatibility is a first for Nintendo.

      Not exactly: GBC plays GB games. GBA plays GBC and GB games. Nintendo DS plays GBA games. And with adapters, Super NES plays GB games, and GameCube plays GBA games.

  • Maybe what they could do is tier the licensing so that people can use the sdk free but only burn to CD-Rs and RWs, then charge more for DVD/R/RW/RAM and regular pricing for the Blu-Ray or whatever they plan on using.

    • Maybe what they could do is tier the licensing so that people can use the sdk free but only burn to CD-Rs and RWs, then charge more for DVD/R/RW/RAM and regular pricing for the Blu-Ray or whatever they plan on using.

      If you're suggesting limiting homebrews to 700 MB, then it wouldn't be hard for publishers to circumvent that. GBA games are no larger than 32 MB, and a lot of current GameCube and even PS2 and Xbox games use far less than 700 MB if you strip out the FMVs.

  • If they do, I can see the single-core 3.2GHz PPC in the thing being great for things like MAME and other emulators.

  • Download service (Score:2, Informative)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    At the Xbox 360 conference, there was talk about users designing and selling game content for a profit.. New levels, player models, clothing, etc.

    With the Internet and the online community thing being central to Nintendo's strategy this time around, perhaps they'll allow limited independent minigame development. Indie developers would submit the final source code to Nintendo for approval and QA, and, if approved, the encrypted executable would appear in the minigame download section of Revolution's downlo

    • Revolution prototype box at E3 has two USB ports on the back next to the video and power ports, which marks the first time an industry-standard port has appeared on a Nintendo console.

      Not the first time. The GameCube broadband adapter has a standard RJ jack for a cat5e Ethernet cable.


  • Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all have ways of getting you to develop for their
    console - all of which include some kind of "developer console". The black
    original Playstation, Microsoft's big XNA kit, Nintendo's "Dolphin" boxes etc.
    with Codewarrior, DivX, Musyx with Dolby licenses and so on. and all this stuff
    costs hundreds of thousands of dollars BEFORE you start coding the game on it.

    Maybe Nintendo are going to drop the price of entry into the console market? Given
    the easier production of their new media (
  • I sincerely doubt an open development licensing model is gonna hurt Nintendo. They learned A LOT with the GC and the DS. Until now, AFAIK, nobody did succesfully copy any game from these systems for piracy purposes. Also, lets remember that: 1 - Revolution comes with a SD card expansion slot; 2 - Revolution will be able to read standard 12 cm discs (CD, DVD?) So, as I see it, they will actually let you develop your applications such that they will be stored and played in a CD, DVD, or SD card. Piracy? I
  • Yeah- this strikes me as "we wish it would be true" territory.

    First off- Nintendo are notoriously tight on letting other wares running on their systems (come on, the disc spins backwards on the GC if I remember rightly!).

    Secondly, whilst the games industry really needs this revolution to occur, the revolution isn't going to be the one to make it happen.

    I have looked into my dark crystal ball, and I have seen what I believe to be the future- this generation of consoles will suck the blood (money) from the

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