The Shrine

Just look at the top ten in Japan for the week ending Oct 2:

http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

Notice #1 is Super Mario Bros.? Yes, the ORIGINAL SMB game re-released for the GBA. What makes it more incredible is this is actually a re-release of the GBA re-release to commemorate the 20th anniversary of SMB. It sold something like 600k units the first time it was released on the GBA last year and became the cornerstone of the Classic NES/Famicom Mini series on the GBA.

There's a HUGE market for these old games (mostly by non-gamers) and no one has a better old library than the Big N. Even the games they don't own play on their older systems, so they are the only ones that can emulate them. This is why they MUST include the controller shell, 'cause they'll be just as many people ankerin' for some SNES lovin', and you can't play that with that weird controller.

Wasn't Don Wang and Seeker just arguing about remakes in the previous thread?

SineSwiper wrote:Wasn't Don Wang and Seeker just arguing about remakes in the previous thread?

Yeah, it was a part of the conversation of the previous thread, but it wasn't the main point. I was just singling it out as a separate topic and giving some support for it.

A lot of the sales of these older games goes to ex-gamers, those who used to play back in the day but don't much anymore. It's the basis of Nintendo's new strategy. I'm not arguing whether or not it's going to work, I'm just giving concrete example of what they're talking about.

It's just interesting to see how a 20-year old game can sell so incredibly well in an unchanged form after being re-released twice within a one-year span when it's up against brand spankin' new, high-profile, large budgeted titles.

It really does seem that there is a potentially huge untapped market here. I mean, you're getting the great compilations being released on the systems (Capcom Classics Collection RULES and everyone should get it, same with the Midway Treasures, already up to #3; even the Tecmo Arcade Classics is great, but a little too expensive).

There's supposedly this huge direct distribution explosion around the corner. It's something like $400million now and supposed to more than double next year. We all saw it hit big with Valve and their Steam network, but that's apparently just the beginning. Wait until online is standard (upcoming generation) and cell phone start having GBA-level graphics (they almost do in Japan already), you'll see an enormous jump, especially if they're micro-transaction level costs ($5 or less for a game). The big thing is eventually being able to directly d'load PS3 or X360 games (which would be a HUGE boost to the developers and hit the publishers HARD), but you'll see an explosion next year in the older and smaller and cell phone games. Cell phone games are supposed to be this enormous market soon and with the increased power and screens, you can see why. Some of them are almost GBA-level already.

I say the next GB will have this as a central feature. Do you know how much more money Nintendo can make if they didn't have to worry about manufacturing and distributing their product? Especially if it includes emulation for the older games? Hell, they could have you share the d'load from your Revolution to your GBTitan, or whatever they call it.

Is this another one of those Nintendo makes a lot of money so it must be good for gaming? How does releasing stuff anyone can get on an emulator do anything for the advancement of gaming?

And what GBA title is a high profile high budget title? And shouldn't the fact that stuff like Pokemon have been around on the GB forever tell you that the market for GB wants different kind of games in the first place? That statement might have meaning if SMB sold 600K on say, the Playstation 2 or even the Gamecube.

Don Wang wrote:Is this another one of those Nintendo makes a lot of money so it must be good for gaming? How does releasing stuff anyone can get on an emulator do anything for the advancement of gaming?

And what GBA title is a high profile high budget title? And shouldn't the fact that stuff like Pokemon have been around on the GB forever tell you that the market for GB wants different kind of games in the first place? That statement might have meaning if SMB sold 600K on say, the Playstation 2 or even the Gamecube.

Don, give your anti-Nintendo stance a break for once. I was simply pointing out WHY Nintendo has decided to follow this path. Really, it's kinda of ridiculous that SMB is selling this damned well. Yes, it's a different market on the GBA, but if you look at how many retro compilations there are coming out (and have been for 7 or 8 years now), you'll see that there's lots of success even on the next-gen systems. These games are selling 200,000 copies and up which, by today's standards, isn't bad at all, especially when you have big-budget titles that aren't even reaching that.

More people bought SMB for the GBA than any other game for any other system for the last couple of weeks over there. That's what I meant by high-budget; it's outselling stuff on the PS2 consistently. It may be half the price, but its also a 20 year old game with, what is now considered, horrid graphics. On top of that, it sold an additional 400k LAST YEAR when it re-released the first time on the same system.

And Nintendo has only recently made any money off this retro thing. If anything, they're a follower, not a leader, here. Namco has been making good coin off of their Namco Museums since the early PSX days (1 and 3 became Greatest Hits on the PSX) and there have been numerous Atari and Intellevision collections. Hell, Nintendo actually gave away their retro games early on, with the two bonus Zelda discs and unlockables in Fight Night 2 (Super Punch Out) and Metroid Prime (Metroid). Like most things since the NES days, they were wrong to start and needed the success of others to wake them up.

Take the obvious interest in these older games, often by traditional non-gamers or ex-gamers, and combine it with the VAST library on the NES and SNES and you can easily see why it's a central feature of the new system, especially if these ROMs are micro-transactions. Those who don't know how or want to fiddle with emulators on a PC (at least 98% of the potential gamers out there) and even a lot of those who do will be willing to pay for a copy of Zelda or Super Mario World and skip one coffee at Starbucks for the pleasure.

That's where digital distribution is going.

I think you answered yourself on the question of old game's competitiveness when you say it's half the price not to mention it's on a totally different platform with different standards. I think PSX has something called the Simple XYZ since forever which as I understand is a bunch of dirt cheap games with minimal budget, and obviously it's profitable enough for people to keep cranking out new titles so obviously there is a profitable model that exists without requiring you to be big.

I don't think the argument was ever "if this was good for gaming", but rather why they do it.

I think the better question would be why they wouldn't do it because it's not exactly a risky move.

OPINION

I think it's a good idea. I fall into the category of people who like retro games and is willing to pay for them; especially for handheld systems. I
also like ideas such as Namco museum, and that series has sold millions.


STATS

This topic is somewhat different than the other, the other deals with remakes. The remake of Super Mario Brothers on GBC sold 3 million copies in North America alone. The Anniversary series are not remakes, they are ports. I will use Square's FF Anthology series on PSX for example, they sold hundreds of thousands of copies in North America; and they are actually inferior to the original games due to load times (and on a very high frequency, much higher than other PSX FF titles).


THEORY

Still when it comes to Nintendo's download service of older titles, I have a very strong feeling that they are going to incorporate it into sales programs; and encourage other companies to do so as well. For example, buying Donkey Kong Revolution will give you access to DKC 1, 2, and 3 for SNES. Or purchasing World of Mana will give you access to secret of Mana. Or if the Sega deal goes through, Sonic Adventure 4 for Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, blast, and knuckles. Nintendo has already experimented with this sort of strategy which included release of Zelda Ocarina of Time free with a pre-order purchase of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (ironically, I played Master Quest much more than I did Wind Waker). Either way, anything I just wrote is not set in stone for certain, we can only really wait to see what Nintendo's hardware/marketing division plans to do with this feature.


RANT

On retro gaming though, I am quite looking forward to it. I have found, personally, that the quality of games for this generation has dropped significantly since the last one. There were some jewels like Metroid Prime, Katarami, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and Shadow Hearts. Generally though I felt that for every jewel on this generation between Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 that there were ten times as many between Dreamcast, N64, and PSX; Two games I really enjoyed were Animal Crossing and Skies of Arcadia Legends, but the two of them are actually updated ports from the last generation. Square really fell on its ass this generation, I didn't like any of their games as much as I did Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, or Final Fantasy 8; Final Fantasy 10 was good, but not the jewel that I consider the other four from the last generation. Now this is just me, but generally I have found more joy in playing handheld games and older games/remakes/ports in the past 4 years than games developed in this generation.

Don Wang wrote:I think the better question would be why they wouldn't do it because it's not exactly a risky move.

From a businessmans standpoint, there is a demand for those titles, so release them. It is no better or worse than developing new games since they get developed and released for the same reason, because of the demand. All large companies: Konami, Nintendo, Namco, Rockstar, SquareEnix, Ubisoft, Capcom, EA, Sega, etc... do remakes and anniversary editions of their older games.

The Seeker wrote:

Don Wang wrote:I think the better question would be why they wouldn't do it because it's not exactly a risky move.

From a businessmans standpoint, there is a demand for those titles, so release them. It is no better or worse than developing new games since they get developed and released for the same reason, because of the demand. All large companies: Konami, Nintendo, Namco, Rockstar, SquareEnix, Ubisoft, Capcom, EA, Sega, etc... do remakes and anniversary editions of their older games.

Yeah, like I said, there's obviously someone who wants these games and it costs next to nothing to sell stuff you have already made. If there's a question it should really be why it took so long in the first place.

Don Wang wrote: Yeah, like I said, there's obviously someone who wants these games and it costs next to nothing to sell stuff you have already made. If there's a question it should really be why it took so long in the first place.

Well, that's due to two factors IMO:

1) Culture

Retro has only really become cool in the last 5-7 years. Before that, it was what's the next best thing

2) Hardware

As the hardware was getting better and better, it was just like movies: let's put CG (and in game's cases, FMV) in EVERYTHING. The graphics took a HUGE jump from the SNES to the PSX/N64 and then again to the PS2/Xbox/GC. But, like with movies, people realized, after a while, that prettier does not equal better.

At around the same time, the systems became powerful enough to properly emulate through software rather than hardware, for the older stuff. So, someone put one and one together (Atari and Namco, I'd say) and released a classics compilation with software emulation. Only after some seriously solid sales in the last few years (retro bandwagon is getting bigger) did we see everyone jump on board (such as Nintendo).

In various Asian places they always have these '1000 Nintendo games in 1 cart' games and those aren't exactly the big sellers. So I don't think there's this sudden urge for retro that wasn't satisfied before.

Of course like I said since it costs like nothing to rerelease old stuff it can't be a bad idea to support them.

As for the comment on prettier not being better, I strongly disagree with that. Prettier is better. The problem is that more polygons doesn't always mean it's prettier, which is why you see a lot of RPG with the throwback to 2D stuff via cel-shading or even just straight 2D like the Disgaea line. Of course retro isn't necessarily prettier either. Actually, I'd say most games, at least RPG, are all looking pretty ugly right now as we're currently in this stage where 3D models are detailed enough to tell that they suck. Only Square has the muscle power to produce 3D models that don't suck in a RPG while others either have inferior 3D graphics or try to weasel their way through.

When I was a kid, there were some Japanese girls who lived across thestreet from me. I remember they had those 100 in one cartridges. The thing is that those games were mainly just compilations of ripoffs of generic 70's titles, and almost every original game on there had at least one double that just had some minor stuff changed on it. In all, there may have been one single game that was good on it.

Zeus wrote:Just look at the top ten in Japan for the week ending Oct 2:

http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

Notice #1 is Super Mario Bros.? Yes, the ORIGINAL SMB game re-released for the GBA. What makes it more incredible is this is actually a re-release of the GBA re-release to commemorate the 20th anniversary of SMB. It sold something like 600k units the first time it was released on the GBA last year and became the cornerstone of the Classic NES/Famicom Mini series on the GBA.

There's a HUGE market for these old games (mostly by non-gamers) and no one has a better old library than the Big N. Even the games they don't own play on their older systems, so they are the only ones that can emulate them. This is why they MUST include the controller shell, 'cause they'll be just as many people ankerin' for some SNES lovin', and you can't play that with that weird controller.

Interesting....now explain to me the decision to go Wi-Fi.

kali o. wrote:

Zeus wrote:Just look at the top ten in Japan for the week ending Oct 2:

http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

Notice #1 is Super Mario Bros.? Yes, the ORIGINAL SMB game re-released for the GBA. What makes it more incredible is this is actually a re-release of the GBA re-release to commemorate the 20th anniversary of SMB. It sold something like 600k units the first time it was released on the GBA last year and became the cornerstone of the Classic NES/Famicom Mini series on the GBA.

There's a HUGE market for these old games (mostly by non-gamers) and no one has a better old library than the Big N. Even the games they don't own play on their older systems, so they are the only ones that can emulate them. This is why they MUST include the controller shell, 'cause they'll be just as many people ankerin' for some SNES lovin', and you can't play that with that weird controller.

Interesting....now explain to me the decision to go Wi-Fi.

WiFi? Can't really figure that one out other than it's quickly becoming the standard and likely will be in a couple of years, allows for easy connectivity with the handhelds, and is probably cheaper to implement into the hardware than a standard ethernet port, which is bulky and probably on the way out anyways. I mean, you can't ignore online anymore since it's actually gotten to the point where it's easy AND has real profit possibilities, particularly in the aforementioned digital distribution. It's also rather easy to use once set up and I think with plug-and-play and their own router, they'll take most of the work right out of it. Remember, a young child's mother can't figure a computer out to save her life, but most people with a pulse can figure out a simple "plug this into here and turn on" aspect. That goes along with that little USB key-like WiFi adaptor they've released. Goes right with their audience

Don Wang wrote:In various Asian places they always have these '1000 Nintendo games in 1 cart' games and those aren't exactly the big sellers. So I don't think there's this sudden urge for retro that wasn't satisfied before.

It's just gotten much, much bigger, that's all. It was an untapped market in the past now there's been trickling retro games for half a decade and people are more and more into the idea.

Don Wang wrote:As for the comment on prettier not being better, I strongly disagree with that. Prettier is better. The problem is that more polygons doesn't always mean it's prettier, which is why you see a lot of RPG with the throwback to 2D stuff via cel-shading or even just straight 2D like the Disgaea line. Of course retro isn't necessarily prettier either. Actually, I'd say most games, at least RPG, are all looking pretty ugly right now as we're currently in this stage where 3D models are detailed enough to tell that they suck. Only Square has the muscle power to produce 3D models that don't suck in a RPG while others either have inferior 3D graphics or try to weasel their way through.

That's the difference with us, I really don't care about graphics. I mean, I love the great look of MGS3 or RE4, but they're nothing without the gameplay. And now that great graphics are a minimum requirement rather than a selling or differentiating point, you're getting more and more people who are focusing more and more on gameplay over graphics. Just like the whole indie-becoming-mainstream thing with movies we've seen in the last half decade or so after nearly a decade (post T2) of effects-are-everything mentality. Games are following a similar path as movies.

And I agree on it's how you use it not how big it is mentality :-)

If gameplay are really what's important you'd see stuff like Super Mario Brothers on PS2 outselling everything else on the same system. Obviously this is not observed, so graphics do matter. If they don't matter to you then why are you buying new games? Do the new games have better gameplay than the old stuff that you already own?

It's obvious to see that gameplay hasn't gone anywhere in the last 5 or even 10 years, even for Nintendo. So why do you buy new games if gameplay is what matters?

Don Wang wrote:If gameplay are really what's important you'd see stuff like Super Mario Brothers on PS2 outselling everything else on the same system. Obviously this is not observed, so graphics do matter. If they don't matter to you then why are you buying new games? Do the new games have better gameplay than the old stuff that you already own?

It's obvious to see that gameplay hasn't gone anywhere in the last 5 or even 10 years, even for Nintendo. So why do you buy new games if gameplay is what matters?

Well, I usually buy cheaper old games now =)

I agree, this generation of console hasn't been very fruitful. It's probably why I have turned my attention towards handheld systems in recent years; there seems to be more unique ideas. Katarami is the only really good idea I can think of this year for console.

Don Wang wrote:If gameplay are really what's important you'd see stuff like Super Mario Brothers on PS2 outselling everything else on the same system.

How does that make any sense in your head??? The SMB, while lots of fun on occasion, is dated. I personally don't want to continually play games that use the same run-and-jump style. That's a gameplay decision, plain and simple.

Don Wang wrote:Obviously this is not observed, so graphics do matter. If they don't matter to you then why are you buying new games?

I think this should be obvious from my above comment.

Don Wang wrote:Do the new games have better gameplay than the old stuff that you already own?

Yes. San Andreas has better gameplay than GTA3. Are the graphics all that much better? Not really. It's all of the changes they've made to how the game plays that are the biggest improvement. This depends on what you call an "improvement" in gameplay. I consider anything that changes to improve the playing experience as gameplay improvements whether it's a completely new style or an enhancement.

Don Wang wrote:It's obvious to see that gameplay hasn't gone anywhere in the last 5 or even 10 years, even for Nintendo. So why do you buy new games if gameplay is what matters?

I don't think you can back that statement up. Explain to me how gameplay hasn't gone anywhere in the last 5 to 10 years.


The way I look at it is this: gameplay and graphics are strongly linked. If I had to make a choice to gain in one and lose in another, I'd pick better gameplay over better graphics. Better graphics should be a factor of production for better gameplay. Obviously you couldn't do all of things in GTA as well if the graphics didn't support it.

So what has fundamentally changed between a 3D platformer now and 5 years ago? A RPG of now to 10 years ago? Action? Sports? Puzzle? I don't buy Nintendo's mantra of innovation being the only way to survive but they're definitely right in that no one has come up with anything new for a long time. Actually, when I look at a title like say, Shining Tears where I hit the X button 500 times to clear a stage, it seems like we have even less gameplay than we had 10 years ago.

GTA is more like a computer game title brought to the console world since open-ended world in computer games isn't very uncommon but very rare in console games. Even then, I don't see how GTA is fundamentally different from say, Daggerfall if there was no ending and you just get to roam around forever in the world when you've done all the story tasks. The goals of GTA may be totally different from a normal game but the underlying mechanism is still the same.

The GTA3+ series actually raises a fairly good point. The graphics in that series have, been relatively quite below average; yet the gameplay, setting, and extra features seem to be exceedingly diverse, and large in volume. This is also the top game series by far for this generation on Console, and the graphics are almost a half a generation behind standards. A lot of Dreamcast games are prettier.

Don Wang wrote:If gameplay are really what's important you'd see stuff like Super Mario Brothers on PS2 outselling everything else on the same system. Obviously this is not observed, so graphics do matter. If they don't matter to you then why are you buying new games? Do the new games have better gameplay than the old stuff that you already own?

It's obvious to see that gameplay hasn't gone anywhere in the last 5 or even 10 years, even for Nintendo. So why do you buy new games if gameplay is what matters?

Graphics are not become a sellling point like they used to be, thus, they're becoming less and less important. But they're still a minimum requirement, as I mentioned, they just can't be the only thing.

Because there's tons of new gameplay in new games and greater refinement of older gameplay, that's why

Namco Museum sells millions still, and its graphics are over 20 years out of date.