Time With The Revolution 86
IGN managed to get their hands on a Revolution Developer's Kit, and have put up a tantalizing hands-on impressions article. Folks who are very much looking forward to Nintendo's entrance into the next-gen war may find things of interest here. From the article: "One thing is crystal clear from the controller-based development kits, though: Revolution will definitely operate as an extension of the GameCube hardware. These preliminary kits include only a wired Revolution controller, a wired nunchuck attachment and a wired motion bar, which some studios have labeled the 'wand.' So the obvious question is, how can developers possibly hope to test any of this gear out? The answer is simple: the controller and its attachments plug into existing GameCube development hardware."
Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2, Insightful)
For the armchair developers out there, this is a good thing. The more similarity between the Gamecube and the Revolution in terms of architecture, the more quickly development studios can get the hang of it and start putting out some really interesting games.
Every time a new console with a different architecture comes out, the studios have to start back at square one, and learn the intricacies of the new hardware. After a couple years o
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2)
It's also not a finished controller. And at $2000 per dev kit + game licensing fees, they can afford to make a cross platform SDK.
Also, nobody at Nintendo has said that the Revolution will be an evolution of GCN hardware. It probably will be, but nobody kn
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:1)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2, Insightful)
MS needed to emulate intel on powerpc, which is a much harder proposition.
l4h
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:1)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:1)
Who said they were?
"Emulation of older and very different hardware is no big deal if you are even a slightly competent hardware manufacturer that:
1) Doesn't do something stupid like making all of your games tied to a large piece of expensive fixed price hardware like, say, a harddrive.
2) Doesn't do something stupid like bolting another company's desktop pc graphics card
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:1)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a bit of a nintendo fanboy and look forward to the Revolution coming out. The article may be jumping to conclusions, but they may not be that far off. Does it really matter if the Revolutions is just an updated GC? Other than the new controllers, Nintendo is just intergrating alot of existing technology.
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2, Insightful)
While I'm not saying Nintendo is all about the graphics, the fact that they don't support/require HD means the Revolution can output significantly more polygons per frame - it's not going to be spending all its power creating higher resolutions that won't even be used by most setups.
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2)
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:1)
It depends on the game. A GeForce 256 can run many games on HDTV resolutions without slowdown, you just have to take older games. If the devs on the XCircle are too stupid to lower the game's ressource usage enough to avoid framerate drops in HD that's not Microsoft's fault.
Re:Drawing specious conclusions... (Score:2)
The Revolution IS an evolution of the Gamecube (Score:2)
Game formats (Score:2, Insightful)
Now that I think of it, what format are Revolution games going to be in? Certainly they won't use the mini-discs again.
Re:Game formats (Score:2)
Re:Game formats (Score:5, Informative)
Nunchuck, Wand, and Controller (Score:3, Funny)
Dance Dance Revolution Ultima
Star Wars: Jedi Academy Training
any interactive FPS (especially if they shoot back and you have a blink target vest)
and Katamari: We Meant It, You Must Roll!
[game names all examples, yes I own Konami stock and they have plans to do fun things for the Revolution, it's called disclosure]
Skins for the Wand? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Skins for the Wand? (Score:1)
DDRR? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:DDRR? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:DDRR? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:DDRR? (Score:2)
Re:DDRR? (Score:1)
get it right (Score:5, Informative)
no...they go their hands on a Controller Kit, not a Developer's Kit. This kit was basically just to let developers know what kind of controller they'd be using when developing for the Revolution. That way they can start brainstorming now about possible titles that can utilize the controller while working with hardware they're already familiar with...
Re:get it right (Score:1, Insightful)
that's ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
"Oh, and it's also five times as powerful as the GameCube" is also important, but not necessarily something that studios need to experience firsthand at this particular stage of the game. That will come when the hardware is ready. At this point Nintendo is (quite sensibly) concentrating on getting the controller right, because if that doesn't fly, the whole concept is shot.
Re:that's ridiculous (Score:3, Funny)
Re:that's ridiculous (Score:4, Funny)
Git 'Er Done! (Score:2)
Re:that's ridiculous (Score:2)
So yea,twice as powerful. Still good though.
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Replace "XBox 360" with "Nintendo DS", "Revolution and PS3" with "PSP", and "pc" with "console", and you're getting pretty close to the general feelings of the DS when it launched.
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:2)
So, the 360 is going to eat them both for breakfast you mean?
Re:Microsoft Odd Console Out? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony & Nintendo have games that would be alittle hard to play with a keyboard and mouse, Microsoft has to many games that could easily be played with a keyboard and mouse (and in some cases play BETTER with a keyboard
Xbox is cannibalizing DirectX (Score:1)
what Microsoft needs to do is try and get games to be truely exclusive to the system, no more PC releases of a game
Which would help kill the market for Microsoft Windows, as once all big-budget games move to the consoles[1], people would start buying more Macintosh computers and building more Linux or FreeBSD machines to use as home workstations because they don't have to worry about Windows-exclusive games anymore.
[1] Don't object about poor FPS/RTS control. The Nintendo DS has a touch screen, the R
Re:Xbox is cannibalizing DirectX (Score:1)
Sensor bar? (Score:4, Interesting)
Where are our pictures? All we have is a promotional side-by-side and an 'artists rendition'. If they went hands on, why not snap a few pictures, even if the tools aren't the final versions? I suppose they could have gotten some developer's janitor to let them in late at night to play with these (and didn't want to blow his cover), but the article is kind of worthless without pictures. "We got some prototypes. They don't plug into the actual hardware, we couldn't do anything with them, and we have no pictures." The only useful piece of information, IMO, was the size in relation to the GCN controller. (And even then, didn't they get a chance to go hands on with it back at E3 '05? Unless major changes happened, they should already know the relative sizes then, right?)
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:2)
I'm skilled enough at wasting time w/o this trash (Score:3, Insightful)
"Uh, we agreed not to take pictues, but, like, it's 'surprisingly' smaller than we expected. So, you know, in case you didn't see all those pictures at E3 showing it being held by hands, this article might be worth a shit".
But since it's about the Revo and they use the term "hands-on", every gaming blog in the Universe has to link to it and give IGN undeserved ad revenue.
Re:I'm skilled enough at wasting time w/o this tra (Score:2)
But the IGN Revolution site is so low on news and content I think they are grabbing at straws.
One thing about the hands though; anyone who remembers the original Xbox controllers will know that the size of hands varies quite a bit! Comparing it to the Gamecube controller is maybe the only solid bit of useful information..
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:1)
If it's using a Sensor bar? (Score:2)
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:1)
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:1)
Re:Sensor bar? (Score:3, Interesting)
Accelerometers drift. They are not perfect devices. They produce integration error, and that would become very large over the course of a gaming session. The controllers would become unusable after an hour or so and need to be re-calibrated. You can buy some amazingly accurate accelerometers, but they're expensive, very finicky and you have to do your design 100% perfectly, and you can't tolerate a single error. It is a serious PITA to design a system to do
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:1)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:1)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:2, Funny)
I take that back, the PSP is not a PDA, it's just an emulator for the SNES that happens to have PDA functionality. There are so few games for the PSP it's not even funny...and given the sales data from http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=6110 [gamesarefun.com]... it's not doing too well against two of the same machine. (In Japan)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:1)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:1)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:1)
The determination of how many games is enough games varies from person to person. As a person who currently owns 20 games for the DS, the PSP has too few games for me. However, for most normal people, the number of games in the PSP's game library is more than sufficient. Most people complain about the quality of the games, not the number.
Personally, I think the quality of PSP titles available are just fine, and I don't think anyone would comment on it,
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:2)
People have been saying "Nintendo will die!" in various forms for years now, and it still hasn't happened. Perhaps you could actually explain why you think it's going to happen now?
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:2)
Re:Nintendo wont be around next gen! (Score:2, Funny)
Considering how expensive the XBOX 360 is, I suppose in a weird Harry Potter'esque way I could see people running out of money before they could buy any Nintendo products.
I don't care... (Score:3, Interesting)
And you don't pay attention (Score:3, Interesting)
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html
Old (Score:5, Informative)
1) A GameCube console with a wired Revolution controller attached
2) Similar to the above, but with a few minor tweaks, and boosted CPU power
3) Wireless controllers, more complete hardware
A fourth dev kit is expected soon that will be 90-95% of the finished product. So whatever they saw, if it had wired controllers, it's already out of date.
Re:Old (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently, the biggest dev houses likely have the most comple
Whats wrong with the hardware? (Score:2)
Bring back the '80's (Score:4, Funny)
Thats shows how old I am - I saw that headline and immediately thought that Morris Day [wikipedia.org] was getting back together with Prince [wikipedia.org]!.
Re:Bring back the '80's (Score:2)
Hands on? (Score:1)
How exactly is this a hands on? If you just look at something, its a hands-on? If I sit in a car and get out of it without turning on the engine, did I take it for a test drive? Way to increase traffic IGN!