Technologizer

It’s finally happening. This year, the most promising video games won’t be held for the holiday shopping season, as they have been for as long as I can remember. Instead, noteworthy game launches are scattered throughout the year, giving us things to play in the spring, summer and fall, and it’s wonderful.

This dawned on me today after hearing that Nintendo will launch two of its biggest releases in the next few months. Super Mario Galaxy 2 got a May 23 release date, and Metroid Other M will launch on June 27.

It’s not that blockbuster games are never released in the spring and summer; Grand Theft Auto IV came out in April 2008, as did Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Sports Resort launched last July. But as I look over release dates for 2010’s noteworthy games, the majority will arrive between now and the end of June. That’s not including all the games released already this year, such as Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain and Dante’s Inferno — several of those are merely the result of a 2009 holiday season abandoned by publishers.

Here’s a short list of games that will arrive before the end of June, not including Nintendo’s two sluggers: God of War III, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Super Street Fighter IV, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Lost Planet 2, Alan Wake, Max Payne 3, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Skate 3, Singularity and Alpha Protocol. Move out to September, and you’ve got Civilization V and Brink. It’s possible that Halo Reach, scheduled for a fall release, could arrive in September as well, seeing as Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST had September launches.

Some things won’t change. July and August are still dry, but there will be such a backlog from May and June that it won’t matter. And I doubt the 2010 holiday gaming season will be dead, with Microsoft and Sony releasing motion control devices. But perhaps publishers are realizing that games are a year-round hobby, not just a toy for the kids on Christmas morning. I hope the strategy works out financially, so the cycle holiday gaming overload is broken for good.

For a brief period last night, iPhone owners without jailbroken phones had access to a fully-functional Nintendo emulator. I’m kicking myself for not spotting 9 to 5 Mac’s story sooner, but it looks like the app got pulled very shortly, maybe a couple hours, after the news broke.

The app was called Nescaline, and its creator is Jonathan Zdziarski, who wrote iPhone Forensics. The $7 app included several homebrew games, but also allowed users to download more games by pointing the app to the URLs of ROM files. On his Web site, Zdziarski says an Apple rep told him the app was removed because it was an emulator. “Ironically, Apple currently has several emulators in the AppStore, so I am going with the belief that someone (likely Nintendo) probably pressured them about this particular application,” he wrote.

He’s right about the App Store having other emulators, but it’s more complicated than that. Currently, it’s possible to purchase C64, which lets you play classic Commodore 64 games, but it only found permanent footing on the iPhone after some drama involving the app’s BASIC interpreter and the ability to hack into it. More importantly, C64 maker Manomio has the rights to the games it sells. Nescaline, by contrast, opened the door to illegal game downloads.

It’s certainly possible that Apple’s trying to avoid legal hot water — Nokia attracted some unwanted attention by advertising that capability on the N900 — but I also think Apple is inclined to reject NES emulators in order to protect the App Store’s business model. When you have games that can make $1 million per month, why give people a bountiful source of free, classic games?

Given that Apple and Nintendo are now competing, I think an official NES iPhone app is unlikely. As for why Nescaline was approved in the first place, I’m thinking it was a simple blunder. I doubt Zdziarski was the first developer to submit a Nintendo emulator.

The first rule of classic console emulation is that you don’t talk about classic console emulation, but that’s exactly what Nokia did to promote its new N900 smartphone, and now the interest of Nintendo’s legal team is piqued.

According to The Independent, Nokia posted a video clip of the N900 running Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, among other classics, using emulators. The official video and accompanying Nokia Conversations blog post have since been removed, but I’ve found what appears to be the same video here, for now. It mentions how some emulators let you tweak the N900’s controls for the best set-up, while others even take advantage of the phone’s touch and tilt capabilities.

Continue reading this story…

Occasionally, I wonder how I’ll continue playing video games as I get older. My hands will probably slow down, and my vision could fade, but until now I never figured console makers would release hardware specifically to accommodate the aging gamer.

That’s what Nintendo appears to be doing with the DSi XL, a larger version of the Nintendo DSi that was released in April. Compared to the original DSi’s 3.25-inch displays, the XL will have 4.2-inch screens, plus a fatter stylus. Kotaku got word that the portable games machine, which will be called the DSi LL in Japan, will arrive in North America and Europe early next year.

Before Nintendo announced the DSi XL, rumors suggested that the device was a response to older gamers’ requests, though Nintendo isn’t stressing this outright — to a fault, as some writers are missing the point of what the DSi XL is about. Make no mistake, the DSi XL, whose screen resolution is the same as its predecessor, is intended for elderly gamers who need the boost, and are willing to sacrifice some portability to get it.

That’s a big deal, because it means Nintendo views the aging video game enthusiast as a market worth catering to. This hobby started as a diversion for the young, but there’s starting to be a demographic that got hooked on arcades, but is now old enough to start needing bigger screens and finger-friendly peripherals. The rest of the games industry should be proud of what’s happening here and figuring out whether they ought to replicate it.

As for the young, I’m sure there are some who will covet the DSi XL. I’ve been using my iPhone for gaming a lot lately, and having revisited the DSi to play Scribblenauts, I was taken aback by how small the screens seem in comparison. But I’m not going to complain about how this console update is too soon after the original DSi. If anything, it didn’t come soon enough.

As with any hot gaming rumor, I’m compelled to write about the reports of an Nvidia Tegra chip in Nintendo’s next DS handheld. But deep down inside, I don’t really care.

Unless Nintendo is changing the way it approaches gaming consoles, the underlying technology doesn’t matter as much as the big picture. The Wii staked its reputation on motion controls, not current-generation graphics or processing power. Same goes for the Nintendo DS, which is all about combining a touch screen and traditional button-based gaming on a handheld device.

Besides, the current-generation DS already packs in respectable graphics, and some of the console’s greatest games wouldn’t have benefited from a boost. For instance, the Phoenix Wright series uses 2D animation, never getting in the way of your touch-based sleuthing. New Super Mario Bros. has 3D flourishes, but what really draws people in is the game’s old-school roots. And then there’s Brain Age, which is so simple that I fail to see how a beefer processor and better graphics would improve the experience.

My point is that it’s about the games, not the hardware, and from my experience the Nintendo DS hasn’t suffered from technological constraints.

In any case, I don’t expect Nintendo to move on from its current-generation DS and DSi anytime soon. They continue to sell phenomenally well, with 552,900 units moved in North America alone in August. That’s actually a 6 percent increase from same the period in 2008, and four times more sales than Sony’s PSP.

Continued sales mean that people are going to stay interested in the current-generation Nintendo DS, and all the games it supports, for years to come. If Nintendo does upgrade the DS to a better chip, I won’t be the only one who could care less.

As the iPhone and iPod Touch look more like portable gaming platforms, I haven’t tired of watching Sony and Nintendo flail. They’re like two incumbent political parties having identity crises in the face of a new competitor who’s hogging the spotlight.

The latest round of this partisan bickering comes from Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who in an interview with the Washington Post argued that the Nintendo DS does things the iPod Touch does not. As proof, he pointed to the DS’s two screens, Nintendo’s franchise titles such as Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros and innovative games like the recent Scribblenauts, which lets players type out virtually any PG-13 noun and have the object literally appear on the screen.

“All of these experiences are very unique and very different and what you cannot find on their App Store,” Fils-Aime said.

It’s a weak argument. Half the games Fils-Aime mentions use the DS’s second screen to provide superfluous information, and there’s nothing in Apple’s technology that precludes a title like Scribblenauts. But the major problem here is Fils-Aime’s “our console is different” mentality.

Guess what? Every console is unique in some way. Check out Dan Terdiman’s CNet article today on a new breed of iPhone games that integrate your phone and contacts. That’s unique. Or just visit the App Store and pick up a free chess app, a free tower defense game and the entirety of Wolfenstein 3D for $2. That user experience is unique.

The real question is whether one console’s unique experience is better than the competition’s. I’ll concede that Nintendo has powerful franchises in Mario and Zelda, et al, but that doesn’t make up for how Apple is capturing the casual gaming market that Nintendo covets. Nintendo needs to find a solution to that problem, and Fils-Aime needs better talking points.

Cloud-based services are changing everything about computing–and they’re having an impact in some pretty unexpected places. Such as the Nintendo Wii, where some clever folks are utilizing the console’s Opera browser to deliver nifty little free games that even take advantage of the Wii Remote and provide online play. Jared Newman has rounded up ten of his favorites–try ‘em all!

View Free Wii Browser Games slideshow.

Nintendo finally responded to the pressure from Sony and Microsoft, cutting the Wii’s price to $200, effective this Sunday. There were plenty of warning signs – store circulars, retailer’s internal e-mails, and plain old common sense — but now it’s official.

I’ve said my piece about the Wii’s holiday prospects, but I had to chuckle today at the indirect responses from Sony and Microsoft, who individually offered the same message. To paraphrase: “Hey, we’re making motion controllers too, you know!”

Exhibit A is Microsoft’s brag-laden press release about Project Natal, an upcoming 3D motion-sensing camera peripheral for the Xbox 360. Microsoft name-dropped a dozen publishers who are “actively working on games” for the motion controller, and spoke of a “high-powered panel” at Tokyo Game Show, in which a few top game designers will talk about how they love the new technology.

The message is that Microsoft loves third-party development, and wants to get publishers on board early on. That’s a not-so-subtle dig at Nintendo, which has a reputation for putting its in-house work on a pedestal. I’m still waiting to see whether the accuracy-boosting Wii Motion Plus will be adopted by more than a half dozen brave publishers.

Not to be outdone, Sony revealed some concrete information on its remote-like motion controller. Resident Evil 5, which was released earlier this year, will get a “Directors Cut” with motion controls, and 13 other titles are in development now. Some are existing games, like Flower and EyePet, while others are mysterious working titles, such as “Champions of Time” and “Eccentric Slider.”

I’d say Sony has been far more open about its technology than Microsoft, which makes sense because the Playstation 3 motion controller isn’t that revolutionary. It’s merely a ticket for the motion control bandwagon, and Sony’s trying to get on board by next spring.

Will the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360 beat Nintendo at its own game? We’ve barely seen either in action, so it’s hard to tell on quality alone. But the Wii’s price cut, combined with undying interest in franchises such as Mario, will ensure Nintendo’s success for a long time.

It’s been rumored lately that Nintendo will cut the Wii’s price from $250 to $200 some time this month. That wouldn’t be a surprising maneuver, as Sony and Microsoft have recently tinkered with their own home console pricing.

But at first, I laughed off the news. Nintendo doesn’t even have a killer app for the holidays, I thought to myself, wondering whether a measly $50 price cut would really help juice the lead between the Wii and its competitors.

Then again, I initially forgot about Mario.

Confession: I’ve had enough of Mario ever since 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy — hailed by critics as nothing short of perfection. In my eyes, Mario 64 was the last game to bring with it a sense of magic, so either I simply grew out of Mario, or Nintendo dropped the ball. Either way, after 20-plus years of playing video games, I approached Galaxy with a “been there, done that” mindset, and the game didn’t sway me.

But I’m in the minority, and sometimes I lose sight of Mario’s enduring popularity. That’s why, when I looked at NPD’s August sales figures, I was shocked to see New Super Mario Bros., a Nintendo DS game that is 3 years old, hanging in 12th place for software sales. And that doesn’t count the number of people who bought a used copy of the game. The Nintendo DS was the top-selling console last month, at 552,900 units, and I’m sure many of those consumers chose New Super Mario Bros. as one of their first purchases.

Here’s the kicker: New Super Mario Bros. Wii is coming out in November. It’s essentially the same side-scrolling, 2D Mario game you’ve been playing for decades, but with up to four players at a time. The idea couldn’t bore me any more, but I know people will lap it up. Pair that with a Wii price cut, and Nintendo’s golden again.

I know, I said 2009 is the Year of the Playstation 3, and I still believe it, in that Sony will hit a major turning point this year. But Nintendo, which has reigned since the Wii debuted in 2006, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

More on Trim’s (possible) future.

Labels’ new format for albums.

Gizmodo: Don’t preorder Windows 7.

Microsoft won’t kill IE 6.

Will Sony Ericsson make netbooks?

Nintendo patent: ridable, inflatable horses!

Windows 7 on ancient PCs.

Meet “Caffeine,” Google’s new engine.

We need a Verizon iPhone.

Zune HD prices leaked. Cheap!

Video game systems may be toys of a sort, but they’re also complicated machines. They require precision engineering, specialized hardware design, and careful industrial design to successfully achieve what seems like a simple goal: to play games on a television set. Throughout the history of home game consoles, each generation of machines has brought new opportunities to innovate. Along the way, companies have often slipped up and made mistakes that came back to haunt them later–some of which were so serious that they helped to destroy platforms and even entire corporations.

This list is by no means exhaustive, nor are all of these consoles bad overall (see The Worst Video Game Systems of All Time for that list). And though some of these problems keep popping up in one form or another–like the bad call of feeding power to the console via the RF switch shared by RCA’s Studio II and Atari’s 5200–other errors in judgments were unique to one console. Thank heavens for that.

Continue reading this story…

Okay, so it’s becoming clear that Nintendo doesn’t know exactly what to do with the Wii Vitality Sensor. The gadget, which supposedly measures pulse and other vitals from a player’s finger, was briefly introduced at E3 to a curious, if not bewildered press. Two months later, Nintendo brainchild Shigeru Miyamoto still won’t say how, exactly, the peripheral will be used.

“Ideally we would have been able to talk about this in terms of the software implementation rather than just the sensor itself,” Miyamoto told Mercury News. “I don’t have any indication for you (of what we have in the works) other than to say that we have lots of very creative ideas.”

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera calls the sensor’s unveiling a misstep, because Nintendo failed to furnish any software that makes the hardware seem irresistible. I’ll take this a step further and say the Wii Vitality Sensor is headed towards Nintendo’s small but historically significant pile of video gaming vaporware.

The most notable of these half-baked failures is the Nintendo 64DD. This hardware expansion had considerable clout among my neighborhood friends, promising what seemed like infinite gaming muscle and endless possibilities. We read about it in Nintendo Power, waiting for a North American release that never came. Long after we had forgotten it, the Nintendo 64DD was released mainly as a subscription service in Japan, where it flopped.

There are other examples, like the Sony-developed SNES CD that ultimately evolved into the Playstation, along with “Project Atlantis,” a powerful successor to the Game Boy that was never officially confirmed, though it surfaced from obscurity this year. Though not exactly vaporware, there was also an unnamed, unexplained Nintendo handheld that was completed a few years ago and then scrapped.

It’s said that when Nintendo shelves an idea, the company tends to recycle it into future projects. This happened with a touch screen peripheral for the Game Boy Advance that eventually became the Nintendo DS, and I can see it happening again with the Wii Vitality Sensor. It’s not a flat-out bad idea, but it’ll have a tough time standing on its own. If we ever start hearing about the sensor in any significant detail, I’m guessing it will have already morphed into a different product altogether.

Nintendo is getting closer to a streaming Wii video service that would translate well to Western audiences.

In Japan, where the Wii’s video channel launched in April, Hollywood films will be available through the same service that powers Blockbuster’s on demand offerings. Sonic Solutions, with its Roxio CinemaNow service, will partner with Fujisoft, which handles Nintendo’s “Minna no Theater Wii” (“Everyone’s Theater Wii”) channel.

It’s no stretch of the imagination to see this video service coming to the US and Europe. In addition to Blockbuster, CinemaNow is already available in the West through LG Blu-ray players, Dell PCs and Archos portable media players.

Paramount Pictures will be the first to offer content on Japanese Wiis, with new releases and catalog titles. Presumably, other studios will follow, and if I had to venture a guess, I’d say Nintendo will line up more content before considering a western migration.

In its current form, the Japanese video service is vastly different from those of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It’s more like Second Life, with Mii avatars socializing in a virtual living room. There are also coupons to download onto Nintendo DS handhelds and celebrities who drop in to peddle their own content. Before the CinemaNow partnership, videos were created specifically for the Wii.

I’m not sure whether that format would work outside of Japan, but with the addition of Hollywood films, a Wii video channel seems readier for export than ever.

Wandering the backwaters at E3 can yield some surprising finds, like the Hyperkin booth. The company, which sells accessories for most current and older-generation console systems, was showing off its month-old FC Mobile II, a portable game system that accepts original, 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges. The $60 package includes a light gun and two wireless controllers, and can be connected to a television or played portably using the built-in 2-inch LCD screen.
But 16-bit gamers don’t have to lament–starting this summer they’ll be able to play their favorite Sega Genesis or Master System cartridges on a unit Hyperkin plans to sell. The Sega model will also connect to a television or be playable on a tiny LCD, includes two built-in classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, and can play any other Genesis cartridges you find in dust-covered boxes in your closet or scrounge up at a garage sale.

Nintendo didn’t look like a trendsetter at its E3 press event today. Instead, we got an earful of cockiness.

The Wii and the Nintendo DS have the broad appeal that Sony and Microsoft can’t capture, and Nintendo knows it. Today, the theme was “everyone,” with the slogan “everyone’s game” repeated several times throughout the presentation.

But with all the innovation out of the way, appealing to everyone just isn’t that exciting. Most of the topics discussed were already known about, and even the breaking news wasn’t surprising.

There was a feeling before the show that Nintendo would unveil new Zelda and Mario games, but only the latter came to fruition. Mario will star in two Wii games this year and beyond: New Super Mario Bros., due this holiday, is a classic two-dimensional platformer with four players at a time (this is not revolutionary, despite Nintendo’s insistence) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a straightforward sequel to the 2007 hit.

Nintendo’s confidence continued with the announcement of Wii Fit Plus, a sequel to the Balance Board game that has dominated sales charts since its US release last spring. The expanded collection of exercise games is sure to keep those sales alive when it arrives this fall.

I hoped to see some clever use of the Wii MotionPlus — an accuracy-boosting Wii Remote extension due this month — but instead Nintendo merely demonstrated Wii Sports Resort, a collection of minigames that’s been known about since last year. Nintendo didn’t discuss any MotionPlus games from other publishers besides those we already know about, including Red Steel 2 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

And then there’s the Nintendo DS. I won’t dwell on the facile attempts to draw in female audiences with games like Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion and Style Savvy, but the audience was chuckling.

It wasn’t all bad. The announcement of Metroid Other M — a return to third-person shooting for the classic franchise — tickled this long-time fan’s heart. And at the end of the show, I spent a few minutes fencing in Wii Sports resort, and I had fun as expected. But the lack of any bombshells at Nintendo’s press event was a letdown.

I imagine that all the talk of broad appeal is exciting to analysts and investors, but for a journalist that came to see some cool stuff, well, it was just dull.