graeme.blog

Category: toreview

  • Nintendo woes

    Thoughts that came to mind having read the following articles about the Gamecube:
    GAME refusing to stock Modem and Broadband Adaptors
    Dixons clearing out Gamecube

    Question – Are Microsoft responsible for GAME’s attitude towards the Gamecube?

    Microsoft do have a great deal to do with it, but I suspect not directly. They will give GAME and dixons the best terms they can, the best point of sale possible, and negotiate shelf space because they have the market share in overall terms (i.e. all software they supply as well as xbox hardware) to do that. Nintendo just doesn’t have the same leverage, cold hard fact.

    Question – Are Nintendo to blame for GAME’s attitude towards the Gamecube?

    Nintendo Europe’s attitude to their European user base is frankly shocking. Great games are being held back, like Animal Crossing. Nintendo should have had a AAA game out at Christmas. They released Mario in October, and then the next equivalent game, Metriod Prime, is out in a couple of weeks. Their timing is shocking. Christmas is all important, certainly from the point of view of the big electrical retailers. This is where nearly 50% of sales for a year are done. It is that skewed. If you have a must-have title in the shops timed to hit for that period, you can substantially increase your hardware and software sales if you get things right. Everyone in the industry knows it, so you can’t guarantee it will work. BUT IF YOU DON’T DO ANYTHING THEN IT DEFINITELY WON’T, AND YOU WILL MISS OUT. Both GAME and the Dixon’s Group complained of poor console sales over Christmas 2002.

    Animal Crossing is a localisation problem, in that in order to be profitable, they feel that every game must be released in all of Europe. Now animal crossing is heavily text based, so lots of localisation costs for multiple languages. The thing they are missing out on is that, shit, just release it in English, sell plenty, be happy.

    GAME are being thick about the Gamecube adaptors, claiming that they will not stock it until they have seen for definite that it works. This doesn’t stop them stocking the majority of PC games, which often are sold with a mulitude of bugs, which the developers fix at a later date. Also they are advertising Xbox live kits (more about that later). I think there is a battle of wills going on, I got the impression that GAME was angry with Nintendo over the lack of info and promotion from ninty on several counts. I actually mailed GAME about the gc broadband adaptor last week, to ask them what was going on, and they said then that their buying department had had no information from Nintendo about it at all. This was about 4 days before release. I actually believe them on this, so it does make you wonder what is going on.

    Question – are Dixons being short sighted in ditching the Gamecube?

    More importantly, do I care if it means I can get some cheap games and accessories? I can understand Dixons logic here, having been in their line of business at one time. Carrying large ranges of software for several diff platforms is expensive, you end up with a lot of unsold software knocking around. Dixons like to reduce wastage as much as possible, they are more of a pile em high sell em (relatively) cheap (but don’t forget your 5 year warranty) merchant than most people who sell consoles, so at the first signs of problems with a product line they are more likely to get the hell out than most. Its more a philosophical approach to stock than being dismissive of Nintendo, even if it does make my heart heavy.

    Question – What positives can be taken from all this for fans of the Nintedo Gamecube?

    Well for one, dixon’s and GAME’s market shares are falling at the moment, as mentioned earlier. But that market share was 45% in 2001, so it will have a long way to fall yet.

    For another, Xbox Live has a few fatal flaws. There are fantastic reports about it, and by all accounts it is well put together. But:

    • Voice communications takes up shitloads of bandwidth, and with the broadband providers like NTL imposing download limits of max of a gig a day, it could cause problems getting it off the ground
    • You can’t use a USB modem with it. Almost all new installs of NTL and Telewest broadband use a USB modem, on the basis it is easier to install (which is just and right for PC’s). If you have a USB modem you will have to pass the connection through a PC. Which is pointless.
    • Word is that it is an arse to integrate into a game. I’ve heard tell that in some cases it could add an extra year to the development time of games. A whole year. In other words, no way in hell are all developers going to use Xbox live.

    If online console gaming takes off with a must-have game, like say, Pokemon Online, it could turn the tables substantially. I personally think that this might be our last hope for GC. Pokemon Online. There is a GC pokemon game announced, with bugger all detail known about it so far (thank you Nintendo). It will sell amazingly no matter what (in Japan Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby have sold 4 million copies). No one knows for definite if it will be online, but that is the knowledgeable rumour, and it makes good sense. It could well be the equivalent of Pokemon Stadium for ruby and sapphire, but with online fights too. We’ll see.

    But if its not, and if Nintendo don’t pull their finger out soon, it will go the way of the Dreamcast, much loved, well designed, let down by poor marketing and decision-making.

  • bad night’s sleep

    Somewhere in the region of three hours, so very tired and zombiefied today. Hard day basically. Still, able to come home, and play my lovely PSO. The BB adaptor is in the post to me. On the downside though, it does look like the GC is going belly-up, which is a crying shame

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  • P day +2

    Have owned PSO for 2 days now. got it on day of release. Was not able to buy a broadband adaptor to play it online, due to Oxford as a whole not stocking it. Have resorted to the far more sensible option of buying it online, and should have it soon. Truely great game. Deceptively simple.

    Found a nice paragraph in an old book the other day: Doomed to walk the earth alone like Kane from Kung-Fu, I live my life like a slothful Michael Knight, show up, help a few people, then bugger off

    And another: I got into wrestling for the same reason the “intelligensia” got into football in the post “fever-pitch” era. Nostalgic memories of childhood, mixed with the discovery that it actually had got a lot better in the interim.

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  • P Day

    Phantasy Star Online is now on sale. I hope my nearest emporium stocks it day one. Otherwise I might have to wait a whole day longer. But in wishing to strike a balance in my life, I also intend to cycle more, and do more diabolo.

  • F.A.B.

    The key to the creative production of a mass of items is to let the flow of the creation be guided by a chaotic principle the world that is then filled with these items is more likely to be of artistic interest than one which is uniform or limited to a finite number of shapes. Imagine a beautiful english landscape. Now picture that landscape if it consisted solely of the shapes from the game Tetris, laid out to resemble that landscape.

    Now I can’t wait for fabbers to be in general circulation. Fabbers are devices that can create things from a set of instructions. It is the future of western commericial society. You have a fabber unit at home. You download a set of instuctions to create an object. It gives you a shopping list of raw materials. You feed them into the fabber, it then creates the object.

    At first, these objects will be very simple, like tetris blocks. I would imagine that, for instance, to create a fairly flat plastic fork would not take too vast a set of instructions. But for more complex items, it could take a lot longer before we get to that stage.

    Also feeding into this are the problems of Intellectual Property. Is it moral to claim IP rights on the design of a plastic fork? Whilst people will claim rights, there will also be a whole structure and language there to allow people to create, for themselves, a massive variety of objects. I’d like to make a wind up radio with fork patterns all over it, coloured to just the right tone to fit in with my living room. Whom should I pay for coming up with that idea? Why should I pay for coming up with that idea?

    In times gone past, if enough people wanted my wind-up radio with fork prints the colour of my living room, it would have gone into mass-production. In the 50-60’s, this item might have been made in a factory in my country by relatively poor people. Whilst making my faddish radio may not have been the realisation of all their life dreams, the nationwide desire for my radio may have helped to feed and clothe them. In the present day, the radio may well be made in an impoverished third-world country. In this country the people may have no desire to even listen to my twisted creation, but again, the meagre pennies they get for constructing it may be a difference between life and starvation for them.

    Now, if I make this item in the comfort of my nicely co-ordinated living room, what happens to the person who in years gone past would have made it? they can’t afford a fabber themselves. Hmmmmmm.

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  • I’ve got the same sized hands as Marilyn Monroe

    I’ve felt like Rez this week. if you haven’t played Rez, the better you do, the more solid you are, the worse you do, the less solid you are. I’ve just been doing well and not, in equal measure. It’s just been heavy going at work. Evenings are fine, very chilled. But work is just, a lot of work.

    More importantly, now only two days to the release of phantasy star online. Mmmmmmmm in a homer drool sense

    had a very enjoyable visit to see my friends t n b last weekend. Our gaming time mainly involved playing Burnout 2, which is pure evil gaming genius. Ultra-violent and destructive in an exceedingly pleasant way.

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  • curb your enthusiasm

    1.012 episodes in, and I have to admit that it rules. He is part Jerry and part George, and sounds like George Steinbrenner.
    Suspiciously like him. There is just a tone to it, that I love.

    Away and back again, second episode just as good 🙂 Did get everything fine from tescos, it was like I had dreamt I had been shopping, woken up to find it was a dream, but all the food was there. Well, quite like that but with a fivers delivery charge.

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  • Gran Tourismo Online?

    have been reading Penny Arcade today, which is a superior gaming site. Give’s fanboys a good name. Tycho was discussing the potential for online racing games. Got me thinking about what you could do with this. Massively multiplayer Online racing is my answer. Big fat wide tracks. A hundred or a couple of hundred of racers. Even better, have teams, for instance four different coloured teams of 25 each. The aim is for your team to score the most points. 100 for first place, down to 1 for last. So every person’s position, from first to last is important. That would have to be the dream sort of game for me. Failing that, Gran Tourismo 4 – Online Edition would have to be the next best thing.

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  • have crossed the line into online sustinance

    placed my first online tesco order today. They are threatening to deliver in under 24 hours, and betwen 7 and 9pm tomorrow. It would be very handy if they did. Intrigued to try this out, as if it all works out well, it could make our food shop a hell of a lot easier than present, which involves walks and taxis.

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  • Less than two weeks to PSO

    I am not paid by Nintendo to go on and on about their games. Quite the opposite in fact. I am waiting for it to get warmer and lighter. I want to start cycling again, in earnest. I need to be doing something to burn off a few more pounds, vain as I am. I think a bit of cycling on an evening would do the trick. In fact, what I think I would like would be a cheap digital camera, or failing that some film for the ordinary one I have, going off cycling and taking some pictures of Oxford

    And I think in all honesty I should finish off the Harry Hill book, as I was enjoying it so much.