Exactly
Rob Fahey 09:00 12/02/2004
The media fracas earlier this week regarding Nintendo's future hardware plans reveals more about the gaming media than about the Kyoto-based giant's plans - and it's time for the wild speculation to end, argues Rob Fahey
"Right now, Nintendo must be scratching its head and wondering what on earth went wrong. A few simple words from company president Satoru Iwata, designed to assure the industry and consumers alike that the company remains absolutely committed to the GameCube platform, fuelled a storm of speculation, conjecture and misinterpretation which forced hurried clarifications and reassurances from Nintendo PR people around the world, but not before it had contributed to a drop in the Kyoto-based company's share price.
What Iwata actually said was that Nintendo plans to continue developing software and peripherals for the GameCube for the next two to three years, and won't be releasing a next-generation console in that timescale - which brings us up to late 2006, the current best-guess estimate for console launches from all three manufacturers.
What the media read from this, often failing to apply basic mental arithmetic to the dates in question, never mind checking the facts with Nintendo, was that development on the company's next generation console (which we dubbed "N5" last year) was postponed or cancelled, and that Nintendo planned to continue using GameCube as its main platform rather than launching anything new to compete with Xbox 2 and PS3.
For once, it wasn't just the usual unscrupulous online sources that ran with this nonsense, but some publications who should really have known better helped to perpetuate it as well. In fact, the ball was kicked off by generally reliable Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, which Nintendo accuses of taking Iwata's comments out of context.
The question which Nintendo must be asking, and which the industry at large should probably also ask, is why this happened - why, in effect, the first conclusion that many commentators jumped to was that Nintendo is leaving the hardware business.
The answer is that this is a strongly held belief of many industry watchers - that in accordance with the "conventional wisdom" which states that the industry can't support more than two platforms at once, Nintendo must inevitably bow out of the home console business. It's a blinkered and uninformed view - one which fails to take into account the profitability of Nintendo's business and the nature of its business models, never mind the fact that the GameCube has a larger global installed base than the rival Xbox - but you don't have to walk very far on the show floor at any industry event to hear it stated.
Many journalists have pet theories about what Nintendo's future, and most of them focus on the company pulling out of hardware - ranging from the popular idea that the company will "do a Sega" and produce software for other platforms, to the more bonkers concepts of it selling re-branded Microsoft Xbox 2 hardware or even teaming up entirely with Microsoft to take on Sony. None of these theories have any particular foundation in fact, and they should not have influenced coverage of Iwata's comments - but influence it they did, as writers dived headlong at the story in the belief that it confirmed their own favourite Nintendo conspiracy theory.
This is hardly the proudest hour for online game media, and it illustrates the need for journalists - even some of those working for large professional sites - to more effectively divide fact from speculation and opinion in their reporting. The upshot of this particular storm in a teacup, however, is that Nintendo has now affirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that it plans to launch a new console in two to three years time, and has even stated categorically that it will show this new hardware, the "N5", at E3 in 2005. Whether this will silence the uninformed and increasingly vocal media speculation over the company's future, however, is another question entirely.
Holy crizzap!
I thought I'd like to share this.
I'd also like to take a moment and say
Sorry, but the Princess is in another castle..
That was just plain AWESOME! Using Warp Pipe, I was able to play a game of Mario Kart: Double Dash! against some unknown person from who knows where? MKDD is a LAN game. Warp Pipe is software that finds packets sent by the GC, looking for other GCs on the LAN, and reroutes them to another computer, where they are then sent to the other GC, on a different network. I was playing this one guy for maybe an hour straight, swapping with David every now and then, before his friend came over. After his friend came over, him and his friend played coop against me and David. Coop mode is where one person is the driver in the kart and the other person is the "gunner." We played that for maybe another half-hour before the guy had to go. It was VERY fun! Though there was a slight decrease in frame rate (which made normal gameplay seem extremely fast when Brian and I played offline coop).
Nintendo's current LAN enabled games include Mario Kart: Double Dash!, Kirby Air Ride, and 1080 Avalanche. With the next Star Fox game (coming out who knows when) also supporting LAN play.
If you have any of the above games, a broadband adapter, and want to play people other than your friends/family, check out Warp Pipe. You won't be sorry. Just make sure, however, that you have your network set up properly.
TS2 URGN Map site (sorta)
I've added a new download section to the main URGN site. It's only got three maps right now, but I plan on adding more as I make more and people submit more. I would really like to see URGN become an active community once again, so, please, spread the word! I will also host PS2 maps as soon as I get a few. There's a poll on the site asking your opinion, and there's a news story that explains it all.
TimeSplitters 2 Maps
Hm... There seems to be a lack of TS2 map sites out there on the web... The ones I do find are either sites that host images of the maps (so you can make it on your own in the game), or if they do offer downloadable maps, it's for the PS2. I've got nothing against the PS2, except that I don't have a PS2. So those maps don't do me any good... So, I was thinking, maybe I could start a GC TS2 Map site, with downloadable maps for the GC. I think it'd be very cool. I might even, from the start, have PS2 TS2 maps also. But, first, I need to talk to SniperX0 about getting more webspace (I had to delete a lot of stuff just to get MovableType up here), hopefully in a new folder (like urgn.com/ts2), and setting up php-nuke, it needs me to add stuff to an SQL database. SniperX0's currently got php-nuke running on the main urgn site. But it doesn't get much traffic... You can see my maps in the memory card files section of this site. Hopefully, if I do get php-nuke and the extra webspace, I can make the site work. Well, of course it'll work, but I mean, hopefully I can get a large enough audience to visit it so that it becomes a decently well known site. Especially with the alarmingly low number of TS2 map sites out there...
Oh yea, Matrix: Revolutions kicks ass. Saw it two days ago, one day before it came out =P