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Nintendo in Flux – and the GameCube Top Five

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No doubt this will seem controversial to many of you but I think Nintendo are in a state of flux. No longer the driving force behind video games, but instead an aging giant – and certainly not aging gracefully. After the defeat of all home consoles to the might of the Playstation Nintendo haven’t really seemed to recover. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the magic in the Nintendo DS (see my articles here) – as can many others – but in the arena of the home console they are lost.

To demonstrate this, just look at the GameCube. Not only am I not able to buy games for it in many stores now, but the third party support has been almost completely lacking from the system – which is a shame as the controller was ok and the GC did have a lot to offer. It had a lovely form factor to boot! Anyway, we’ve now seen most of the big releases that would have allowed it to end with a bang being cancelled – at least for the shores of UK. This is a mighty shame, as I had my GC long before I had my Xbox (I never did get a PS2).

Of course, we have the Wii coming very soon. Nintendo probably, and Quimby reckons it might well be this date. I hope they are right. Xbox 360 has a decent user base (and even more so then) and of course the PS3 will be making a big splash. Whilst it has a big price tag, I can’t imagine the behemoth that is Sony getting the formula too wrong. I like the Wii, and I like the innovation it demonstrates. However, I’m concerned that it’s moving a little too far away. Nonetheless, I wait rather excitedly for more developments.
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Regardless, to demonstrate my fondness of my black cube of Nintendo-loveliness I decided to give you all my top five GameCube games. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other gems out there – but don’t expect to be able to pick them up too cheap. I don’t know why but games (at least here in the UK) for the system are becoming increasingly rare. I guess I’ll have to go online for those I don’t yet have. Anyway, without further ado, please see my top five Nintendo GameCube games:

Animal Crossing

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Animal Crossing first appeared on the N64 many years ago. It was fun then, but the GC version takes it to a new level. Esentially the game is a bit of a life/community sim, with a collection element. You come to a new town (with animal neighbours), and you get to pay off your mortgage, sell and swap items, put stuff in your house and much more. It’s satisfying on a very basic level – and even offers Nintendo games to play! The greatest thing is that it has a universal appeal, and even if we in the UK waited for years and years to get it, it still hits the spot every time. 9/10. [Read more…]

No Price Cut for Xbox 360

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I look around, and there are still many people thinking that when the Sony PlayStation 3 comes out that there will be a price reduction from Microsoft on their Xbox 360 console, but that seems to be more and more unlikely.

Microsoft will not cut the price of its Xbox 360 games console before Christmas, the company’s head of European Xbox marketing, has revealed. Maybe not, but it looks like Microsoft will stress its machine’s price advantage when Sony ships the PlayStation 3.

Interviewed by UK games trade weekly MCV, Microsoft’s Head of Marketing, Xbox Europe, Richard Teversham, said the company will not reduce the 360’s price tag, but he did say Microsoft is planning “a number of surprises” for the fourth quarter.

I am not surprised, as increasing reports are that Microsoft will create a new and better bundle for people to buy at the same premium console price.

Source: RegHardware

Wii Release Date To Be VV II?

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In a recent press release, Nintendo hinted that the text of the release *may* encode for the Wii release date. So, I decided to pour over the release a few times, and the only thing that stuck out to me was the fact that Final Fantasy was the only game that was in all-caps.

As the weather cools down, the Nintendo portable game offerings heat up. FINAL FANTASY V ADVANCE makes its way to Game Boy Advance SP on Nov. 6. As series go, FINAL FANTASY is to video games what James Bond is to movies. FINAL FANTASY loyalists will enjoy an opportunity to debate which installment was best.

For a few seconds, I thought that maybe this was just some formality. Maybe the way Sony wanted Nintendo to refer to the Final Fantasy series.

But then, it occured to me that the Final Fantasy game title was the only one in the Nintendo press release with a NUMBER in the title. Well, NUMBERS make dates. Plus, to make things a little more crypto, the number was a V.

Ok. So there was one capitalized roman numeral in the V but what could this mean? Well, maybe it means that the system will be released on October or November 5th. Rule out October 5th because that’s a Thursday and no one releases a system on a Thursday. November 5th makes a little more sense since it matches up with a Sunday, the most likely day of the week for a system launch.

But I’m not happy with the 5th of November for a Wii release date. No, I want my Wii earlier. So, I happened over to Digg to see if anyone had figured this Nintendo Wii marketing bait out yet. I found just what I wanted.

It may not be true, but it WAS what I wanted;-)

You see, Nintendo capped Final Fantasy to get us thinking about Roman Numerals, specifically the Roman Numberal V. The next step is to realize that you can make a W with two V’s. Two V’s added up make ten (the month of October). Two i’s make up the number two, (the day of the week).

So, maybe, just maybe, the Wii (or VV – II) will be released on Monday October 2nd. That would be awesome and another huge step towards cutting the jugular of Sony’s PS3.

What to do? What to do? A developer’s conundrum.

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There’s a couple of articles from earlier this week that make related points about the current situation in the game industry. The first is a report in financial site The Street about the possible fallout if Nintendo strikes gold when they release the Wii sometime this fall, as seems increasingly likely since their big splash at E3. Apparently, if Nintendo does well, it will be bad, or at least not good, for most 3rd party developers, who, up until E3, had written off Nintendo and were putting all their eggs in the Microsoft and Sony baskets. From the report:

“No one’s going to make money on the software except Ubisoft,” whose Red Steel title Nintendo showcased at E3, says one hedge fund manager, who is short shares of THQ (THQI – commentary – Cramer’s Take) and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO – commentary – Cramer’s Take). “Everyone got caught flat-footed.”

[Read more…]

The Benefit of Wii: An Explosion of Innovation

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We’re Nintendo fanboys. We admit it. (But damn Nintendo we’ve sure missed the core Final Fantasy series over the last decade). Just ignore our fanboyness for a second and take an objective look at EA’s comments on the upcoming Wii.

Once we started to experiment with Madden on Wii, there was an explosion of innovation. Everyone in the studio is energized by the creative opportunity afforded by both the hardware and controller.

– John Schappert, Senior VP and General Manager, EA.

In an IGN report on the state of 3rd party development for the Nintendo Wii, we see evidence of the positive effects of Nintendo’s upcoming system: a rejuvinated EA development team. In the above quote, Schappert doesn’t mince words:

– explosion of innovation
– energized by the creative opportunity

What we see here is the trickle down effect of console innovation. Nintendo introduces a radically novel way to play games, and the developers who make games get excited to make their games. Now consider what it would be like if we left the game industry to Microsoft and Sony: a bunch of bored EA developers. Same old grind. Same old game mechanics.

With the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo has injected a creative steroid into the gaming industry which should result in an explosion of innovation that doesn’t stop at the hardware level. It’ll trickle down into the games. And because of this we should be thankful to Nintendo for their relentless pursuit of innovation – an innovation that goes much deeper than many of us ever realize.

[tags]nintendo,nintendo wii,video game innovation,EA,Electronic Arts[/tags]

PS3 Plagued with Manufacturing Problems

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It looks like Sony went a little too far in their upcomming gaming console, and are now having problems making flawless working units.

The IMDB is reporting that a Chinese newspaper has claimed the Blu-ray players could derail the November release date for Sony’s console. The story says that the plant that makes the diodes for the Blu-ray’s blue laser “have been plagued by production problems” and have not been able to meet the demand.

Then there is Gizmodo talking about an article from Electronic News stating that the Cell processor is also causing them to slip up with only 10 or 20 percent of the CPU’s being PS3 ready. That means they have to create almost five Cell processors to get one that is good enough for the PlayStation 3. That takes production time, and money from Sony, making the November release look even shakier.

What do you think, will they make their November release or will gamers be left out in the cold?

Comics Craze

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Autobot.jpgWe’re seeing a resurgence of blog features about comic books and other animated and heroic adventures lately. For instance, ForeverGeek bloggers have recently been active in writing about comic book series, comic book characters, animated films, and live-action films based on comic book storylines and heroes. These range from works that are considered classics or even very recent releases.

Now isn’t this a welcome break from the gadget craze. Let’s talk about what the little kid in all of us has always been excited about.

Haven’t you noticed that most of the summer blockbuster movies we’ve had for the past half decade were based on comic-book heroes. Take Spiderman, for instance. The first installation was excellent enough to redefine the Spiderman franchise as a live-action feature. The sequel was even better. And now, the cinematic previews to the upcoming Spiderman 3 promise to far exceed the first two movies. Then there were the X-Men films, which breathed life into our favorite mutants with three movies to date (and hints of more coming up).

[Read more…]

Tech In Review – 6/14/06

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In an earlier post, Jack gave us a glimpse of real technological advance in mobile energy. The dream (…er, nightmare) of limitless energy is fast becoming a reality. The main problem, of course, with “quick charge” technology is the need for a power source. But what if you don’t have a power source? What we need are self-charging systems that constantly pull in energy from the environment around them to avoid the need for dedicated charging times. Turns out, that a new cell phone technology aims to do just that…using solar.

Speaking of energy, researchers at Tufts seem to have overcome a major hurdle for Fuel Cell technology. In fact, they think that high powered fuel cells may be powering whole cities in the not so distant future. While everyone has been predicting that the 21st century will be the biotech century, I’ve thought for a long time that it will be the century of energy revolution. It will be a revolution with great benefits (limitless supplies and unrestrained mobility) and great dangers (imagine what terrorists could do with no energy limitations). Watch the energy revolution happen, right here at Gadzooki.

But if the US is going to be part of that revolution, it’s going to need some bright young techies to lead the charge. Unfortunately, our school systems just aren’t training students for the tech economy. Our schools still emphasize how to analyze War & Peace or a Shakespearean play over how to analyze a piece of code or an engineering problem. Spelling doesn’t matter anymore. Just look at all the bloggers;-) Let’s update the curriculum already!

Bet you didn’t know that one of your neighbors isn’t really a neighbor. Huh? Did that make sense? Well, an electrical company in Toronto has been building electrical substations disguised as houses. Who knows how widespread this type of thing is? So, for all we know (now how many of us actually know our neighbors?) one of your neighbors might be a secret Microsoft Vista development team or maybe even a Google cluster;-)

In the world gaming, Nintendo’s latest handheld (is it their ninth or their tenth?) the DS Lite managed to outsell the PSP by 10 times in its first week of sales in Japan. Remember, the DS Lite is just a slicker, slightly better, repackaged DS. Nothing radically new. But the flocks came.

Speaking of the big N, looks like the Wii might be launcing late October. The word is that Nintendo wants to beat Sony to the release of its PS3. 3rd party release dates seem to confirm this speculation. Does this lend credence to the idea that Sony will come in 3rd place after two generations of dominance?

Looking for future tech? Check out this video of a guy’s Ph.D. project developing multi modal table top control. Don’t know what multi modal table top control is? Well, I suspect you’ll know about it soon enough. Not only can you control things by gesture and voice command, but you can integrate the two to acheive new control mechanics previously unavailable. Plus, whereas with a mouse you can only use one cursor at a time, with the table tob you can effectively use two cursors for spreading techniques, etc. Very, very nice.

PS3 has a PS2 Inside

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One of the reasons that the PlayStation 3 is so large is not because there is a George Forman Grill inside, but instead a PS2. Currently, Sony is struggling with its emulation software, and the initial barrage of PS3’s will most likely include a whole PS2 chipset inside in order to ensure full backwards compatibility. Nothing ensures backwards compatibility like putting what amounts to the full previous console inside.

Obviously, Sony will be working to replace it with software emulation as soon as possible, as including the chipset will only mean more losses for them per unit sold, but fanboys have been saying that even with the emulation software, they’d almost rather the full chipset, as actual hardware is usually more reliable than emulation of hardware.

Also of note is that it has been said that the PS3 will run from included flash memory which means that more than likely, very little of the included hard drive space will be reserved for the PS3 software, unlike the seven gigs taken by the Xbox 360.

Source: Engadget

Weekend Tech In Review

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Do you do Moto? Motorola, that is. Enjoying that Slvr L6 lately? Getting your daily dose of radiation? Erh? What?

Moto Slvr L6Well, CNet is reporting that of all the cellphones in the United States, the top eight phones, as far as radiation goes, are Motorola phones. So go ahead kids, start bragging to your friends. Maybe you’ll be one of those X-Men mutants in need of a cure;-)

Just as you need to protect yourself from cell phone radiation, you may also need to protect your crotch from a motorcycle accident. Yamaha has unleashed an airbag for your crotch. Protect the family jewels at all costs.

Good news for those of you who follow developments in future energy technologies. For the first time ever, US farmers expect to sell as much corn for domestic ethanol production as they will sell overseas. Hey, I’m all for putting American money into American agriculture and technology instead of whacked out freaks in the Middle East. Let’s keep it going.

Speaking of energy. You want your home to become completely energy indpendent? Why not build your own wind turbine. I guess that’s not an option for most of us on the East Coast.

On the gaming front, make sure to check out this excellent article in the NY Times on Nintendo’s plan to make games simple and expand the gaming market. Sony, in the meantime continues to take the defensive posture and making completely absurd statements.

To finish things off, Gadzooki is a gadget blog, and as such we couldn’t overlook TechWeb’s Ultimate Summer Gadget Guide which included, among other things, a DLP projector for showing your own drive in movies outdoors! Now that kicks some major gadget ass.