Nintendo May Start Selling 'Computer Software' (arstechnica.com) 74
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo's most recent fiscal-year disclosure made headlines for announcing a release window for the new "Nintendo NX" console and yet another Zelda game delay, but it also included news of serious corporate restructuring. The short version: Nintendo will soon involve a supervisory committee in making top-level executive decisions. A Tuesday announcement included the company's amended articles of incorporation, expected to be approved by shareholders this June, and it included three new entries in its "business engagement" list: restaurants, medical and health devices, and "computer software." The choice of adding "computer software" to that list, on the other hand, seems particularly curious -- especially since Nintendo's existing list of engaged businesses includes terms that sound very much like computer software, particularly the broad term of "contents such as games, images, and music." That list also revised an entry that used to say that the company would license the "use or reproduction of copyrighted works" and "trademarks." Now, Nintendo will license its "intellectual property rights." That shift to the term "intellectual property" includes copyrighted works and trademarks in an umbrella that also may include such Nintendo-owned concepts as patents.
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Yeah, because they sure wouldn't be around today had they been founded in one of the cities that was nuked over 50 years later. Nope. Definitely wouldn't have operations anywhere else after 50 years...
Re: Good (Score:1)
Well their CPUs throttle so bad what do you think a decent GPU would do? Complete meltdown? Spectacular fireball?
Re: Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny.
More expensive must be some slang term to you that just means whatever you need it to mean to make a point for you.
Meanwhile I've spent under $1200 to game on PC for over 15 years. Adding up the price of just the Xboxes that came out in that time is more. Same with Playstations. Consoles are a hassle, you upgrade by buying a whole new system and you lose your games when the old one breaks. If my computer breaks, I replace one part not the whole thing.
And, the games I play with a controller on PC suppo
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How about Windows 10? That's a pretty damn good and topical complaint. Also I highly doubt you've only spent $1200 on a gaming PC in 15 years, unless you're completely happy with 10fps. I'm in the position right now where games like Witcher 3 simply don't run on my GTX 570 (5 years old), and my i5 proc is getting a little long in the tooth with paying 1080 video while gaming. To upgrade both to mid-range specs would cost at least $600. So I bought a ps4 instead. In no small part due to a new program at ebgames that lets you try a game for 7 days and bring it back no questions asked. This only applies to console games.
So with the ever increasing cost of computer hardware, and the frequency with which AAA games suck, there's a lot of reason to buy a console.
Agreed. PC hardware isn't even that expensive for what you get, but you have to get something midrange - years ago, low end was faster than 5-year-old stuff and thus was an upgrade, even for games. Not so anymore. Then there is no non-gaming incentive whatsoever, your outdated PC is good enough for video editing.
My PC is crappier, but even then it's like we have what used to be unobtainable hardware such as a high end Silicon Graphics station (or a big multi-user Sun machine). You need enough RAM th
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How expensive is a PC that you would have anyway for any of the tasks you would like to do [...] How much more expensive is a PC that brings that up to console gaming parity? Certainly less than the cost of the console you are trying to reach parity with.
You had to have known this was a huge stretch when you were typing it, but figured maybe you could sneak the logic by. The fact is, in 99.9999% of cases you're wrong. A ps4 is $400. That's less than the cost of a GTX 970 already, not to mention the bigger power supply, more ram, bigger hard drive, better processor, larger case for air circulation, and full ATX form motherboard you'll need. Most people can solve their day to day computing needs with a $250 Chromebook.
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What can you get with $100 on the ps4?
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Several free games a month for two years.
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Your position with Steam isn't that much better. When it falls you will lose your games. At least with PSN you know it's a rental.
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Standardized hardware means *not* playing to the lowest common denominator.
Quite the opposite in fact. Buying a console locks you in to whatever hardware the game corporation decides is good enough for the mass market.
PC gaming *is* more expensive, it's tolerated because PC's have other uses (like bragging on-line and hentai).
Again, this is by choice. Instead of being locked in to whatever hardware the game corporation picks for the current generation, you can buy better parts. If you are on a budget, you can get used parts for cheaper than consoles and still be able to play modern games at console level quality.
And, finally, designing a game to use a controller is not the same as band-aiding a game to use a controller. There is a lot more to play out there than games with a gun bobbing around in your PoV.
Again, as a PC gamer you have a choice in which type of control you want to u
Do gamepad-friendly PC games support split screen? (Score:2)
Again, as a PC gamer you have a choice in which type of control you want to use rather than being locked to whichever designs have been licensed out by the game corporation.
But will a PC game that supports a USB gamepad and co-op multiplayer usually let you plug in two to four of them and split your (possibly 4K) screen? Or do they require a separate computer and a separate copy of the game for each player?
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Seen John Carmack's recent tweet [twitter.com]?
Ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
What will they release next, a family computer?
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With the success of things like Hearthstone it's more likely you'll see a cross-platform pokemon CCG or something along those lines. Think outside of Mario/Zelda/Pokemon for merchandise and collectibles as well, look how successful Skylanders was (so much so it shocked it's own creators) by simply making the collectable experience more interactive for kids.
Nintendo wants to stay relevant. They're facing increased console competition, outside competition (console and console game sales continue to decline) a
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No. A SUPER DUPER DX Family Computer. I can't wait for Super Duper DX Metroid to come out.
Re:Ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
You laugh, but I have five words for you: Pokemon MMO Game. You think Warcraft had an inbuilt fanbase? A decent Pokemon MMO would blow WoW's opening year out of the water, and a GOOD Pokemon MMO would dethrone WoW as the most successful MMO of all time, easily. And of the many many games out there, the Pokemon universe and game play translates the very best to an MMO.
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however, they have not to my memory screwed over people so royally with delaying a zelda game over the entire lifespan of a console!
Can't tell if this is supposed to be a overly vague failed attempt at sarcasm, or if you weren't actually aware that Twilight Princess was supposed to come out on the GameCube.
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...Twilight Princess was supposed to come out on the GameCube.
It did. [amazon.com]
They did a simultaneous release on the GameCube and the Wii at the Wii's launch in 2006. I have both versions. Also, the GameCube already had a Zelda [wikipedia.org] title. The Wii also has its exclusive title [wikipedia.org] The Wii-U, however, has yet to publish a single original Zelda game; although it has HD remakes of the 2 GameCube titles with a few gameplay enhancements added (extra hard mode, amiibo features that work with the Zelda characters from the Smash Bros. line, new exclusive dungeons, etc). This makes it the
The joke is that was the NES's name (Score:2)
In Japan it was the Famicom, short for Family Computer.
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the Pokemon universe and game play translates the very best to an MMO.
And as you know, they wanna be the very best, like no one ever was.
Pokemon Rising (Score:1)
It even has a moving backstory with leftist values, where the pokemon slaves rise up against their human masters.
FREEEEDDDOOOOMMMM!!! *pika*
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They should call it the Super-Duper Famicom.
They've been doing this for a while (Score:2)
Mario is Missing, Mario's Print Shop, etc... Nintendo's done this off and on in the past for spinoffs, never their core games. Same with mobile right now.
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Does anyone know if Nintendo finally lets you move Nintendo accounts to new consoles so you can keep your existing game library if you have to buy a new one?
This has always been a service they provided, however due to the DRM implementation on the Wii, you have to ship them your old one to get the purchased games moved to a replacement.
Homeowner's/renter's insurance (Score:2)
You should have insured your Wii console for the cost of the console plus the cost of the licenses of the games node-locked to that console.
Nintendo's business plan: kill cash cows w/ Wii U (Score:3)
Great, let's remake the exact same story for the Wii U so it's boring but now we'll incorporate the touchscreen to make it nearly impossible to play and kill off the franchise!
>> People love Zelda
Ain't nobody got time for that. Let's skip a generation and see if people will forget about Link!
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For the record, I would happily spend more money on Zelda and Mario, except that the guys at Nintendo are a bunch of dicks.
I understand that Nintendo is worried about piracy, and rightly so, but their stance is one that I just cannot stand any more. Ever since the original Wii, they have tied downloadable content to a particular MACHINE instead of a particular account. If my machine gets lost or destroyed (which actually happened to me), all that DLC is gone forever. Sorry, but I can do better than that.
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Game loss sucks but tying games to the hardware has its advantages. It's how game or media ownership worked before Steam DRM and Apple/Google store etc. : games were in a shoe box or on a shelf, and thus not tied to a physical person with debit card, account, email, password and so on.
With a family game collection, why should it belong to only one person? Why your brother should be able to steal the whole collection and leave you with an empty console, what if there's a divorce and one of the parents assert
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Eh, Star Fox 64 sucked because it was all too easy. Beating the game in one sitting on the first try, without really dying even once and it took way less than an hour.. WTF ???
The Game Cube game was better, though combats were unchallenging. It was also not a Star Fox game at all, since you played a guy on the ground armed with a staff. Different game with Star Fox characters stuck in it after it was developed. I miss it : the Game Cube was killed quite early, most successful consoles have a lifespan a bit
Been saying this since the wii. (Score:2)
You'll have to pull out the software (Score:1)
Blow on it and then reinsert it to get it to work, occasionally
Computer software eh? (Score:3)
"Nintendo announces today the release of Nintendo Office"
Fictional Character Teaches Typing (Score:2)
Nintendo did license Mario to Interplay [mariowiki.com] so that it could compete in the "Fictional Character Teaches Typing" genre with with Brøderbund's Mavis Beacon games [wikipedia.org].
Pokemon on Steam? (Score:1)