Tag Archives | Nintendo

Game Boy Oddities

Posted by Benj Edwards on April 13, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Game Boy Oddities

When Nintendo released the original Game Boy twenty years ago next week, wheels of capitalism and creativity immediately started turning in noggins across the globe.  From artists mesmerized with the gaming gadget’s iconic status to inventors who saw it as a way to make the world a better place to folks who just wanted to cash in, the Game Boy has inspired weird accessories, variations, and tributes.  After seeing the items I rounded up for this extravaganza, you’ll probably agree that the public’s infatuation with this classic handheld has grown far beyond Nintendo’s wildest dreams.

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Happy 20th Birthday, Game Boy!

Posted by Jared Newman on April 3, 2009 at 1:02 pm

gameboyThis month marks 20 years since the Game Boy’s release in Japan. Though the handheld’s actual birthday is April 21, and the US release followed in August, now seems as good a time for reflection as any.

After all, the US launch of Nintendo’s DSi handheld on Sunday will mark the true demise of the Game Boy moniker; by eliminating “Slot B” from the new device, Game Boy Advance games will no longer be playable. How’s that for an arbitrary factoid?

Anyway, the Game Boy family — if you include the Pocket, Light and Color editions — is currently the second-best-selling video game device of all time, trailing only the Playstation 2. Further, 1UP’s Jeremy Parish points out that the Game Boy brand was Nintendo’s “backbone” during trying times; the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube may have failed commercially, but handhelds always kept the company afloat.

Parish writes that the Game Boy subscribed to Nintendo’s “good enough” policy. Better technologies were available back in 1989, but somehow the handheld with the pea green screen took off, even as more technically impressive competitors, such as Sega’s Game Gear and Atari’s Lynx, languished. When Nintendo strays from that policy, Parish argues, the company fails.

I think that idea is not as true as it used to be. For the Game Boy family, slight modifications through the years — a slimmer figure, a little color, a boost in graphics — were good enough to keep the handheld in demand. Meanwhile, the Virtual Boy tanked, and experiments with connecting to Nintendo’s bigger consoles never took off.

By comparison, Nintendo’s current success is due to a change in philosophy, Now, we’re looking at “different enough,” with two products that were initially questioned for breaking the mold. Dual Screens? Motion Control? The industry doubted those ideas until they started steamrolling the competition. The focus is now on calculated risk, which I guess you could say is “good enough” for Nintendo.

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Nintendo of America Prez Says No to Microtransactions

Posted by Jared Newman on April 1, 2009 at 5:28 pm

nintendo_ds_liteWe recently gave Sony the what-for over its views on the iPhone (not a PSP competitor, a marketing exec said), and thanks to Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, it’s Nintendo’s turn to squirm under similar questioning.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also shows no worries. In short, he says Nintendo’s network of 18,000 DS developers can make better products than the “home-brewed” offerings at the App Store (Um, but what about all the pro developers praising the iPhone?). As with Sony’s argument that it makes hardcore games for serious gamers, I don’t think brushing off the competition is the best strategy, but I’ve already said my piece about that.

Instead, here’s something new: Asked about the iPhone’s recent support for microtransactions — the little extra gaming items you can buy on top of an initial purchase — Fils-Aime said Nintendo is against them. The quote, in part:

“Having talked to a lot of consumers in our market, the consumer wants to pay just once for their overall experience. I’ve heard complaints when consumers buy maps or extra levels. From a Nintendo perspective, we believe selling a game that is fair to the consumer and charging them once instead of multiple times is the best business model.”

As one of the developers in the PocketGamer story cited above says, the pressure is on to keep iPhone games cheap, so naturally there will be lots of in-game content for sale as devleopers try to bring in more revenue. The DS and PSP aren’t shackled by those initially low price points, and with Nintendo’s apparent commitment not to nickle-and-dime the consumer, I’m curious to see which business model will prove more successful.

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5Words for March 20th, 2009

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 20, 2009 at 9:33 am

Lotsa iPhone-related news today:5words

Gmail gets undo send. Kinda.

SpiralFrog free music service folds.

Google removes Street View images.

“$500 Mac tax” helps Microsoft?

Nokia E71x hits AT&T stores

SanDisk player includes 1000 songs.

Palm: More WebOS phones someday.

Nintendo creating an app store?

iPhone Moviefone! (Moviefone’s still around?)

Magic tricks for your iPhone.

Now TomTom’s suing Microsoft back.

iPhone 3G speed lawsuit filed.

Apple’s intentionally stoking iPhone gossip?

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YouTube Comes to PlayStation 3, Wii

Posted by Jared Newman on January 16, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Here’s a statistic that’s bandied about by game industry cheerleaders: roughly 40 percent of U.S. homes own a video game console.

It’s also a figure that will likely be loathed by cable providers if more streaming video Web sites follow YouTube’s lead. Yesterday, Google’s video juggernaut launched a sleek interface for the PlayStation 3 and Wii. It was as good a reason as any to dust off Nintendo’s waggle box, so I checked it out. The service is basically what you would expect and hope for–a browsing and viewing experience that’s tailored to the size of your television screen. A similar channel is already available for TiVo owners.

Of course, YouTube is best for short bursts of random entertainment, and it only makes me yearn for support of a full-featured TV Web site, like Hulu or TV.com. See, I recently gave up cable to find out how much content I could replace with the Internet (and I’m not alone). As a cost-cutting measure, it’s great, but running an RGB cable between my computer and laptop isn’t ideal when I just want to lounge on the couch.

Solutions are on the way, like media streamers and possibly HDTVs that can support Hulu, but that requires an extra purchase. If you’re among the 40 percent that already has a gaming console, chances are you’d want it to be the hub for streaming Internet television instead of something extra. There is a utility called PlayOn that lets you watch Hulu and other sites on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but it requires a computer as the middleman. This can get clumsy if your wireless Internet is on the spotty side.

There’s been some hinting at integration with streaming TV Web sites, at least for the Xbox 360. Here’s hoping it actually happens.

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Nintendo Dominates ’08 in Sales Figure Shocker

Posted by Jared Newman on January 15, 2009 at 8:09 pm

Super MarioI can be sarcastic in a headline, right? No matter, retail research firm NPD released last year’s video game sales data today, revealing–of course–that Nintendo’s Wii console and DS handheld were the big winners.

Perhaps there’s some surprise in knowing the DS was the most popular last-minute holiday item, selling 3.04 million units to the Wii’s 2.15 million units in December. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 came in second place, selling 1.44 million consoles last month. Sony’s PSP handheld sold 1.02 million units in December, besting the Playstation 3’s 726,000 units.

Overall, sales of video games, consoles and related products in 2008 rose 19 percent from the year before. I was going to break out the calculator, do some research, and compile a list of total 2008 console sales, but realized the kind folks at Video Game Sales Wiki already took care of that, so here are the numbers:

Wii: 10,151,000

Nintendo DS: 9,951,100

Xbox 360: 4,735,400

PSP: 3,829,600

Playstation 3: 3,544,900

With everything laid out like this, the 1.2 million unit difference between the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 isn’t so bad, especially when you consider how handily the Wii stomped both of them.

As for games, Wii Play and its bundled Wii Remote was the top seller of 2008 — you’d know this by standing in a GameStop and seeing the employees pitch it to everyone buying a console — with Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit taking silver and bronze respectively. Careful, though, because NPD’s counts the same game separately when released for more than one console. Add Grand Theft Auto IV’s PS3 and Xbox 360 sales together, and it’s actually in second place overall.

NPD Analyst Anita Frazier noted that most of the best-sellers were released long before the holiday season. “Get some high profile releases out in the first and second quarters,” she suggested. Some publishers are taking this advice to heart, with big name titles like Lord of the Rings: Conquest and Halo Wars being saved for the first quarter of 2009.

Frazier also noted that as the economy melted in the fourth quarter, people kept buying games. Add that to the list of unsurprising revelations of 2008.

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Wild Prediction: New Game Consoles in 2010, 2011

Posted by Jared Newman on January 13, 2009 at 1:46 pm

Nintendo Entertainment SystemAdmittedly I’m no Michael Pachter when it comes to foretelling the future of video games, but with Microsoft exec Robbie Bach saying that we won’t see a new Xbox 360 for a while, the temptation to speculate is too overwhelming. So join me as I wildly predict when the next round of consoles will come along.

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Is Wii Sports Better Than Super Mario Bros.?

Posted by Jared Newman on January 7, 2009 at 8:46 am

Super Mario Bros.In terms of units sold, the answer is “yes.” VGChartz, a Web site that gathers game sales data, says the Wii’s flagship title passed Mario’s first big adventure as of December 27, 2008.

But not everyone is happy about this. CNet columnist Don Reisinger says it’s an “insult” to compare Wii Sports to Super Mario Bros. and other classics. “It’s not that I dislike Wii Sports or haven’t enjoyed my time playing it,” he wrote. “I just don’t see how it can be held in the same high regard as Super Mario Bros.”

Respectfully, I disagree. To play Super Mario Bros. now is to experience a rudimentary platform game with slippery controls and repetitive play. In other words, it’s not very good, but it opened the door to a new world of gaming. Reisinger calls Wii Sports a “proof of concept,” but how could we view Super Mario Bros. any differently?

Better games for the Nintendo Entertainment System eventually came along, and I suspect the same thing will happen to Wii Sports, but both games — and the systems they came bundled with — arrived at time where the game industry was at a crossroads.

A year before the NES reached the U.S., the American game industry crashed. Consumers were tired of the same old shovelware, and the bubble of new consoles and games simply burst. Mario and his cohorts opened new creative doors, and suddenly video games were back in style.

Today’s game industry, though healthy, is also in a rut. The core gamers that support blockbusters like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are but a slice of the general population. When Ninendo’s “Revolution” project came along, with its motion controls instead of shinier graphics, the company was laughed at — until the Wii became the most sought-after console on the market. And it’s not because of the system as a whole. It’s because people want to play Wii Sports, a game that offers new possibilities, but remains simple and fun like gaming used to be.

Personally, that’s not what I look for in a video game, and if I were king, I wouldn’t dub either of these titles as the best of all time. But Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports both equally deserve their accolades, not insults.

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Technologizer’s Most of 2008

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 31, 2008 at 1:53 am

Technologizer's Most of 2008As I write this, there are slightly fewer than 22.5 hours left to go before 2008 is history. I promise I’ll stop looking back at the year momentarily–I already summed up its twelve biggest stories–but I’m in the mood to document a few more noteworthy items that made the year what it was. I’m calling this Technologizer’s Most of 2008, and it begins after the jump…

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