Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Haha, we get cheaper prices... But the whole world hates us. Yay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DimensionWarped Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Cheaper prices on everything that doesn't taste good anyway. I can't find cheap semmel-knodel in the states or fancy Belgian chocolates for under five dollars a pound either. Thats probably the one thing I'm going to miss about Germany eh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark the Echidna Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Semmel-knodel!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DimensionWarped Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 It's a dumpling type food made out of the semmel grain. It's a popular food in Germany and actually a good bit of Europe I'm pretty certain. Goes great with gravy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Sef: Wii's a different scenario Sef: And I'd suggest taking it Sef: Although Nintendo might decide to make the WiiLite 2 years down the road with HD support >_> Sef: That concerns me a bit Sef: Wii will look pretty outdated in a couple years Scatta: especially after what happened with my sis' DS Sef: Hell, it looks outdated NOW Scatta: she got it last christmas and like 5 days later Scatta: "now announcing DS Lite" SefirothDB: WiiWii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazeHedgehog Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Everything is going to look dated eventually, especially console games. You need to accept it and move on. The Wii looks good enough, visually. Nintendo DID mention that the successor to the Wii might feature HD - but I don't think that means a "Wii Lite" will be HD. HD isn't something you can just add like that if the game's don't already support it. Otherwise you just get an upscaled signal, which will generally look exactly like a regular signal. Think of it like re-sizing an image. HD = Rendering the image in high-resolution (say, 1024x768) Upscaling to HD = Resizing a small image (say, 640x480) to HD resolution (1024x768 - but it still looks like 640x480). It's this reason I doubt there would be a "Wii 2.0" with HD added. Still possible, mind you, (as games released after "Wii 2.0" could have HD options) but not likely. That's too drastic of a change, I think, especially after Nintendo's "HD isn't worth it yet!" speeches. The only way it would happen is if magically, HD becomes super popular in the next two years to justify it. And I mean, super ultra mega popular to the point where everybody has a HD-ready TV. Which very likely isn't going to happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DimensionWarped Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I'm much more interested in seeing them take involvement in the game even further forward than I am in whether they will have HDTV support in the next console . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark the Echidna Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I think I'll try to get it at the launch date... I technically have the money... And if it's going to be officially released here in Brazil (Which Nintendo has announced)... I should be able to buy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowgoten Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Do you guys seriously like skip posts?? I just posted: - Famitsu reported that Nintendo's senior management director Yoshihiro Mori has confirmed the price of Wii, the console will cost 25000 yen (US$222) in Japan. The price is about 1/3 of PS3 and less than half of Xbox 360. that's from magic-box, so like I said, 225 would be a better guestimate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wesker Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Did you guys just hear that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 DW & Blaze: I realize this, but Nintendo DOES have a nack for outdating your stuff FOR you, as if they're doing you some kind of service. I mean look at GBA -> GBA SP -> GBA Micro. DS -> DS Lite. I mean, granted those are portables, but gah.. you know what I mean. Mainly it was a joke, but it's something they always do. "That's too drastic of a change, I think, especially after Nintendo's "HD isn't worth it yet!" speeches." Oh really? Just like how cartridges weren't worth it yet? And as such you now have to repurchase all the N64 games you already owned for your Wii? Just like how internet wasn't worth it circa 2000, when it was like wildfire? And so instead we got GC/GBA (3 varieties!) rather than something that was actually useful. And yes, consoles always end up looking dated, but if even Nintendo is trying to make their first party games as pretty as possible, then why should 3rd party companies try? I mean just look at Metroid it looks just like it did on GC.. heck when I first looked at it I immediately though "Hunters" because it just wasn't what I was expecting. Those Red Steel screens in the magazine looked better than some of the stuff Nintendo is doing.. although the actual Red Steel videos don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowgoten Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Did you guys just hear that? XD I guess not.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazeHedgehog Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 The GBA and everything was legitimate upgrades, though. Nintendo makes hardware that's within their budget, you know? Sony and Microsoft have never made a single dime off of any of their hardware. Do you know why the PS2 rarely has a price drop? Why it still costs $120? Because it's never been cheap to manufacture, and it still hasn't visibly made Sony an actual profit. There's word going around that Microsoft lost $200+ on every Xbox they sold, and as much as $500 on every Xbox 360 they've sold. And yet hardware like the Gamecube can get it's price lowered to $99 - hell, maybe even $75, if the rumors about the upcoming GC price cut are to be believed - and according to Nintendo, they're still not selling it at a loss. The upgrades you speak of were built from two ideals: A) It's a feature the users really wanted It was cheap enough to do the upgrade from a manufacturing standpoint For the GBA, everybody complained: No back light! So, we get the GBASP, which is front-lit. Well, that's fine and all, but the screen still washes out colors and looks kind of junky, so they gave us not only the GBA Micro, but upgraded the original GBASP to the Micro's new fully back-lit screen. The same thing goes for the DS: Not a lot of people liked the design of the original DS, especially next to the PSP. Many people said the original DS design was clunky, bloated, and felt more like a fisher price toy than it did anything to play games on. So, what did Nintendo do? The DS Lite. Smaller, sleeker, and boasting the same improved screen as the GBA Micro. With HD support, Nintendo is anticipating that not a whole lot of people are going to care - and with good reason. Not a whole lot of people out there actually have HD ready TVs. I only know one person with an HD ready TV: My Uncle, whom I never see. HDTVs are expensive and aren't really terribly worth it unless you've already spent $8000 on the rest of the home-theater set-up. When people complain that $600 is too much for a PS3, how many people are going to have a $5000 HDTV set-up to be able to tell the difference between HD and Non-HD content? Not a whole lot! Thus, the Wii isn't HD, because it doesn't need to be: The average joe doesn't have HD yet. When the average joe has HD, Nintendo will move to HD. But until then, why spend money on a feature that will only be used by 25% of your users? That's not cost-effective. To be fair, Nintendo was on to something with cartridges: There are still a lot of things you can do with a cartridge that you can't do with discs, because cartridges provide you with nearly zero loading times. While finally, disc-drives are getting up to a speed where loading times in console games are being minimized, and streaming technology is employed, those sorts of things are only impressive because it's a disc drive. Streaming content from a cartridge is really quite easy. In that sense, technologically speaking, cartridges ARE better - but discs are cheaper. Back then, for the price of a 512mbit cartridge, you could just use a single CD for less than 1/8th the cost. Not only that, but can you blame Nintendo for avoiding CDs, after the likes of the Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, and the other CD add-ons? As for Online, Nintendo had a good reason to stay out of the Online Sector. Little known is the story that, between the end of the NES era and the beginning of the SNES era, Nintendo actually proposed and market-tested an online adapter for the NES, that would allow you to play games over a phone connection, check and trade stocks, and more. They wanted to turn the NES into sort of a cheap family computer. It was slated for a 1990 release - but market testing was so poor in Japan that Nintendo scrapped the idea altogether before even giving it a chance in America. Nintendo stood to lose a LOT of money on the "NES Network" concept, so they decided against it, and swept the entire concept under the carpet. That's exactly the reason why they wanted to make absolutely sure that services like Xbox Live were worth the investment before officially trying Online again. As for visuals - who cares? Visuals are good enough nowadays that, while blocky, most GC games are definitely good enough for me to enjoy their gameplay. And really, when we're talking a good game, do graphics really matter? Look at Katamari Damacy. A very simplistic visual style, with flat colors, simple objects, etc. Yes, it's nice to have something pretty to look at, but graphics ARE reaching the sort of era where it's all starting to blur together. Sure, a game like Gears of War seems to be prettier than, say, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but that doesn't mean Twilight Princess looks terrible, either. Twilight Princess still looks really, really awesome, and is going to be a blast to play - regardless of what Gears of War looks like. And that's what's most important. Do you guys seriously like skip posts?? I just posted:that's from magic-box, so like I said, 225 would be a better guestimate. On the same page, reported a day later: Japanese retailers have begin to accept reservation of the Nintendo Wii console, while an official price hasn't been announced, some Japanese retailers are expecting the price of Wii to be 18,000 yen (US$160). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 "The GBA and everything was legitimate upgrades, though." You're telling me they couldn't have backlit the screen for the original GBA? that was the only real upgrade outside of the laptop-style design. Oh and they took out headphone ports. Smart. And the Micro? It's smaller. Woo-woo, hop aboard the upgrade express! And umm.. no. People wanted backlight from the get go. Nintendo's the one who refused and then later made the GBA SP, probably because of things like the Afterburner. The same way people wanted internet capabilities but were given that GBA/GC BS, and oh look.. Wii has it. Nintendo is very good about not doing what we want until it's convenient for them. The whole lighting problem was something that plagued GameBoys since the original, and the friggin Game Gear had it. It's not like it's anything new, Nintendo just refused to use it. Do you honestly believe that the original GBA couldn't have been a tad smaller and have a backlit screen? The fact that the GBA Micro even exists just PROVES that they could've done all that crap from the get go but CHOSE not to. It has nothing to do with legitimate upgrades. This is the equivalent of a computer company going "What do you mean you need a USB port? No one uses those! What do you mean you need a DVD drive? Those aren't popular!" And then turning around 2 months down the line and going "Oh okay here's your USB port and DVD drive, that'll cost you the same amount as the thing you JUST purchased, only you can't actually watch movies yet." Then turning around 6 months later and selling a new computer with both USB ports, and a DVD drive that actually lets you watch movies. It's incredibly stupid. Oh and upgrading the GBASP.. wow. You're telling me when they were designing the thing they never turned it on and went "hey.. the colors are washed out.. we should fix that"? And yay.. and upgrade after the Micro is released. I'm so totally going out and get me one of those, especially since most of the games are going to the DS anyway. Yay! I'm sorry, but those aren't legitimate upgrades, those are business moves to purposely screw customers over by implementing features that should've been there in the first place. It's clever, and quite different from Sony's approach of loading features that you don't need into the system and making it cost more than it should've with needed features. That's even more clever! I totally agree about the HD thing. Again, the HD thing was mainly a joke. "cartridges ARE better - but discs are cheaper. Back then, for the price of a 512mbit cartridge, you could just use a single CD for less than 1/8th the cost. Not only that, but can you blame Nintendo for avoiding CDs, after the likes of the Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, and the other CD add-ons?" They key word there being umm.. I dunno.. "add-ons." The N64 was never an add-on. Addons are generally a bad idea anyway. It doesn't take a genius to realize that. And umm... considering Nintendo was going to use CDs for their own NES CD addon I'm sure it had nothing to do with that. Nintendo used cartridges because they wanted the benefits of producing them. Let's not forget that the reason Sony left the project in the first place was because Nintendo wouldn't let them have any of the benefits of publishing (or something to that effect). They were onto something alright. Onto getting the most money out of their customers by being idiots. And what good are loading times when you produce a system that makes one of your most prized devs leave? And yes I'm talking about Square Enix. They're part of the reason former partner Sony got so much freaking edge off them. Loading times really were worth it I suppose. And yes I think I heard about the online thing at some point before. But I'm not talking about a centralized thing like Xbox Live. I'm talking about online in general. Playstation 2 doesn't have something centralized (that I know of) but it's still there. Sure GC's is there as well but it's got what? 3 Games? And I think they are all PSO and it costs like 100 to actually play it last time I checked ($50 for PSO I&II, monthly payments, and an adapter). I was going to buy it until I looked around and realized there were no other games out there but that, and that buying an adapter for one game would be incredibly stupid. No gfx aren't everything, I make that point all the time. But as you said Zelda: Twilight Princess looks awesome. Now take a look at the next Metroid game for Wii. Which looks better. For some odd reason it seems to be the GC game Zelda:TP. Which is kind of odd because you'd think the newer Metroid would look better being on a console that's 3x more powerful and all. I'm not saying I want a Gears of War or anything, but I was kind of expecting gfx not to get better and not go back a generation. And Zelda:TP vs Metroid Wii (both first party games) is a perfect example of this sort of.. lackluster showing. I mean come one, put forth some effort. Gameplay means more, but for heaven's sake move forward and not back. I mean.. when you soup up your PC do you expect it to start running slower (granted that you do it right and whatnot)? I'm sorry, but some of the first party games should look better than they currently do. I'm not saying I want "uberomgftwxxx" crap, but I want the new games to look.. new considering I'm going to be paying 250 or so for the new system. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazeHedgehog Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 No, they couldn't have backlit the original GBA. Not if they wanted to keep the battery life they had and the price they had. You see, that's the thing about technology, Scatta - the more time passes, the cheaper older technology gets. When the GBA Launched, Nintendo officially stated the reason there was no backlight is because it would be too costly on battery life. When the GBASP first launched, nearly two years later mind you, power-saving technology had been developed to help light the GBASP while still giving you a long-lasting battery life, and, if I'm not mistaken, the GBASP even gave you an option to turn the backlight off if you so chose. You mention the Game Gear - which, might I add, was nearly three times the size of a GBA, required six AA batteries for four hours of gametime. The GBA in comparison, takes two AA batteries for roughly 8 hours. Nintendo is very good about not doing what we want until it's convenient for them. And? Nintendo is a business, out to make money. It's not so much "until it's convenient" as it is "until we know we can make a profit on it". In 50 years, Nintendo has only ever reported a loss of profit once, something they blame on international currency exchanges and them waiting too long to drop the GC's price to $99. The newer a technology is, and the smaller you want it, the more expensive it is to produce and maintain. While this means Nintendo isn't always on the cutting edge of some technologies, it does mean that they're going to make a hell of a lot more money than Sony or Microsoft. And that's the bottom line: Money. Profit. In the end, did it mean anything that the GBA didn't have a backlight? Hell no. The GBA is still one of the most fastest-selling, widely-used pieces of gaming tech on the planet. As of March 2006, over 75.13 million Gameboy Advances had been sold world-wide. I think you're over-blowing this whole thing as if Nintendo has some kind of personal vendetta against you. As if they want to piss their customers off on purpose. Because, you know, pissing your customers off is really good for business, right? They key word there being umm.. I dunno.. "add-ons." The N64 was never an add-on. Addons are generally a bad idea anyway. It doesn't take a genius to realize that. And umm... considering Nintendo was going to use CDs for their own NES CD addon I'm sure it had nothing to do with that. Nintendo used cartridges because they wanted the benefits of producing them. Let's not forget that the reason Sony left the project in the first place was because Nintendo wouldn't let them have any of the benefits of publishing (or something to that effect). Hind-sight is always 20/20 - that means, your mistakes are always obviously mistakes once you've made them. Cartridges back then were the standard gaming storage medium and other attempts to shift the market to CD as a storage medium had failed. You cannot blame Nintendo for sticking with what worked, could you? Obviously, CD as a storage medium was an experiment they wanted to try, but never enough to actually produce physical hardware. And what good are loading times when you produce a system that makes one of your most prized devs leave? And yes I'm talking about Square Enix. They're part of the reason former partner Sony got so much freaking edge off them. Loading times really were worth it I suppose. It's been said before, but pretty much all of Final Fantasy VII would've probably fit on a standard N64 cartridge if you removed all that bloated FMV. It's a know fact that all three discs of FF7 contain the entire game on each disc (dialogue and all) - the only difference between each of the three discs is what FMV is contained on it. Now take a look at the next Metroid game for Wii. Which looks better. For some odd reason it seems to be the GC game Zelda:TP. Actually, I don't think Metroid Prime 3 looks all that bad. Yeah, it still looks kind of like a Gamecube Game, but that's also probably because it was originally a Gamecube Game ported up to the Wii; most people seem to figure that a few of these Wii games will look better by launch, as early Wii devkits were simply Gamecubes with Wii controllers (which were even seen at E3). We'll see what it looks like come November. I don't know where you get "3x more powerful", because Nintendo refuses to release any stats on the Wii itself. All we've had is speculation and vague comments from a couple of developers ("souped-up Xbox", etc). You want new-looking games? Spend $400-$600 on an Xbox 360 or a PS3. You want a great value and an experiment in game control and design? Spend $200 on a Wii. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I see what you're saying about the backlight/battery life thing. "Obviously, CD as a storage medium was an experiment they wanted to try, but never enough to actually produce physical hardware." They never actually produced physical hardware because the deal fell through- twice. And why did it fall through twice? Because Nintendo kept trying to get the upperhand on the people who they were supposed to be working with. Had they not done so, then things may have ended up alot different, perhaps with Sony not swooping in and kicking everyone's arse to hell and back. And you're still missing the point, I don't want uber shiny gfx. I just find it odd that a company who is coming out of the gate last, after lagging behind last generation is putting out sub-par looking games. The first thing a player see is well.. gfx.. because that's what you see. And no, Metroid Prime 3 doesn't look that bad, I've said that before, but it also doesn't even look like you'd expect a first party GameCube game to look. Sure it's decent, but look at Zelda:TP (also a GC game) and then look at Metroid 3 (Wii). And yes, gfx will improve and I know about the GC with Wiimote devkit. But again: a GC, with a Wiimote devkit, and Zelda:TP is a GC/Wii game--- so.. why again can't Metroid 3 look like Zelda:TP where it's not overly fancy, but it still looks nice? They're both using GC stats. And I've said it like 3 times, my point is not that I want uberftw games like those of X360 and PS3 where all these cars are reflecting off of each other, and the water, and people's watches when they look at the time. My point is that I want at least GC gfx. Are you saying that's too much to ask? At least last generations gfx. Nothing incredibly sexy, or Hi-Def or over-the-top. >.> Edit: I'm wrong on the FFVII thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SefirothDB Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 Sure, a game like Gears of War seems to be prettier than, say, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but that doesn't mean Twilight Princess looks terrible, either. Twilight Princess still looks really, really awesome, and is going to be a blast to play - regardless of what Gears of War looks like. And that's what's most important. Quoted for truth. Gears of War is technically amazing, but in the end (to me, at least) it's just another "bald space marines shoot aliens" game. Take a look at Shadow of the Colossus, too: it's on the oldest hardware out of the three, yet it stands as one of the most beautiful games of the generation. You don't need to have the most powerful system to make a stunning game. However, hardware limitations can affect the experience, case in point this same SotC - a few framerate issues -. You need art, but you also need to be able to put that art into use =P And while I was joking about that HD comment, it's true that the Wii can look pretty much outdated because of the hardware. Because we're not just talking about fancy polygon numbers and bump mapping/specularity in every friggin' object. It's about power in general. The Wii can't use the Unreal Engine 3, the most popular next gen middleware so far. Can it do games like Oblivion? Nope. Seen Lucasarts' new Euphoria system? Not on the Wii. "F.E.A.R."'s AI? Nope. Maybe, maybe later down the line we'll see something like that... but by that time, PS3/360 will be leagues ahead (compare a 1st gen game with a 2nd gen game on the 360 and you'll see what I mean). And it's not like it got a impressive start either, most of the E3 demos weren't exactly stunning (and some of them got strangely a downgrade from what was shown on E3 2005 *coughMetroidcough*). And yes, I'm aware the whole point of the Wii is the innovative Wii-mote... but if all they're going to put out is a pimped GC, price better get adjusted accordingly. But what you pay is what you get: a cheap system with the new controller. A new way to play games. And it will serve Nintendo's premise of "short, intuitive, easy games". Not that I concur with that line of thought, but it's there. Still, we've got TGS left. I'd suggest reserving any more judgements about the Wii's capabilities until we see the final hardware with final versions of the games in action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 But arguing over crap is fun. =/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamerdude Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I'm not all that surprised...and I would have bought one even if it was $300. I really think Nintendo's franchises are the most fun to play...they always have been (aside from Sonic, of course =P). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asuma Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I don't see how you guys can type that much. Anyways, Wii will be a good system. It has nothing out for my taste. I'm just wating for Sonic Wildfire, and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
null1024 Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I'm buying it just because of the Virtual Console system & SSmB:B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DimensionWarped Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I don't see how you guys can type that much.Anyways, Wii will be a good system. It has nothing out for my taste. I'm just wating for Sonic Wildfire, and Super Smash Bros Brawl. I for one can type faster than I can speak... and in many cases... faster than I can think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asuma Posted May 31, 2006 Report Share Posted May 31, 2006 I can do that. However, that leads to making mistakes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eraysor Posted June 1, 2006 Report Share Posted June 1, 2006 I type at the same speed I think and talk, and yet I still screw it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron C-T Posted June 1, 2006 Report Share Posted June 1, 2006 Is it just me or has like.. very little time actually gone in Super Smash Bros. This was the kind of thing I'm talking about. You can look at it and pick out what games the models they're using came from. Pickachu and Kirby are obviously the same models from SSMB, Zelda from TP, Solid Snake from MGS2. And Zero Suit Samus just looks.. odd. The Wii is still going to be an awesome system though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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