After the Nintendo Press Conference at E3 2005, everyone seemed to leave the room with a certain sorrow that such a small amount of details had been released about the Revolution. Several months later, when Nintendo revealed more details about the Revolution, many people gained interest. I, however, lost hope. While it is true that graphics are not the only factor in the future of gaming, there are a number of other areas which Nintendo has catastrophically failed to address with the Revolution. These areas can be broken in to two main categories, the needs of developers and the needs of gamers.
On the developer's side, keeping costs low and keeping sales high is crucial to success in the ever more expensive gaming industry. With the complexity of games growing, it becomes increasingly difficult to port games to other systems, particularly when one of several systems chooses to take a radically different, radically under-powered design. In general, developers will choose to ignore a platform if it falls too far from center and doesn't have a large enough market to justify the added expense of porting.
We have seen this before with Nintendo's short sightedness with the GameCube disk. At the time the platform was released, the average size of a game was 300 to 800 MB and Nintendo figured that a 1.7 GB disk would be big enough. As we now know, the average size of a modern game is anywhere from 3 GB on up to 8 GB or more. While it would be possible to port games down to a smaller size, so much would be lost and so little market would be gained that the majority of publishers simply choose to ignore Nintendo on many major releases. The lack of HD support is yet another example of this short-sightedness. The console generation is getting to the age where they will be starting to buy their own first TVs and those TVs will more than likely be HD. Also, all US broadcasts are going to be required to go digital before the next generation of consoles is released, which will lead to much greater availability of HD content.
Further, the limitations of the Revolution are not just limited to that of graphics. While it is true that we are approaching the long-sought pinnacle of photo-real graphics, there are still far more areas which require vast processing power which must be improved. With their multi-core, multi-threaded architectures, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will be capable of having several cores dedicated to physics and AI calculations. Modern games such as F.E.A.R. for the PC utilize stunning, cutting edge AI and Physics which radically alter the course of gameplay and greatly enhance the game.
Since the Revolution lacks the processing power to perform advanced AI and physics calculations, it will be impossible to port many of these core enhancements to the Revolution. It will be necessary to drop large sets of game features, not only graphics, to make a game compatible. At this large of a loss in quality, not to mention the time still needed to convert a game to the Revolution's hardware, it is unlikely that it will be worthwhile for many quality games to be released on the revolution.
It has also been said that the Revolution will be easier to code for than the other platforms because of the need to write for multiple cores on the other systems. This statement however is at best misleading and at worse false. Each thread allows the system to process a separate command simultaneously. The key to programming them is how the threads are used. The processor of the Revolution itself is still rumored to have four threads, so it won't be any easier than any other multi-threaded system. The difference however is that the Xbox 360 with it's 6 threads and the PS3 with its 8+ threads will allow more individual threads to be dedicated to individual tasks, which the Revolution will have to attempt to do on only four threads. Imagine having an entire processor available for each enemy character's AI. Now imagine having another entire processor to handle just the physics. Then add in a processor to help with the graphics and another to handle the normal gameplay mechanics. Each of these can be programmed with the same simplicity as having a multiplayer feature.
All of that aside however, the key is still profit. If there is profit to be had, then developers will produce a product. The rest of the key therefore is left to the consumer. There are also, however, several key reasons why the Revolution is poorly conceived for consumers. First, the "revolutionary" controller is in fact anything but revolutionary. In fact, Microsoft released a product much like the Revolution controller a number of years ago called the Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro. It was a gamepad which was sensitive to how you moved it and games would respond accordingly. The product flopped, despite the wild success of the Sidewinder line in general.
Part of the reason for this can be attributed to the high cost of producing such a controller at that time. However, having used one myself, as well as several other similar devices for various VR applications, I can personally attest that they cause fatigue. They are great when you are trying to realistically perform some basic actions, but when you try to hunker down with your new 12 hour long RPG, you arms are going to be dead in an hour from having to move the thing around.
Enter the shell controller, much has been hypothesized about this device, but little has been supported. The image many people have seen was generated by IGN and then widely misconstrued as an actual image. The fact is the shell may be nothing more than a handle, or it could be an entirely separate controller with additional buttons which the main controller fits into. If the latter is the case, then this could be one of the few saving graces of the Revolution, however, if it is in fact simply a shell, it will confound yet another issue of the Revolution.
Any large game with any degree of complexity requires a number of different types of action. Take for example your average first person shooter. You need to be able to walk, aim, change weapons, fire primary, fire secondary, use items, jump, crouch, melee, throw grenades and any of a number of other options. The Revolution however, even with the add-on to the main controller only has an analog stick, the directional control of the controller, two buttons on the main control and two additional buttons on the precision add-on. This leaves far too simplistic of an interface to be able to perform any complex tasks needed for an in-depth game.
There is also the question of backwards compatibility. The PS3 will be backwards compatible, and while it is true that the Xbox 360 requires downloads to make games backwards compatible, those downloads are available freely. The Revolution however only really has backwards compatibility with the GameCube. The other games are simply downloadable emulations which must be PURCHASED from Nintendo. So in order to play "your" old games, you have to buy them again.
Finally, there is the subject of game availability. Certainly there will be the all star lineup of Nintendo published games, but what of third party developers? I think it is wise to let history be our guide here. Look a year back to the launch of the Nintendo DS. The DS was heralded as a highly innovative product and Nintendo argued that it would beat the PSP because of innovation, but while it is true that Nintendo had several great launch titles, what followed? In the past year, how many truly innovative games have come out for the Nintendo DS?
Rather than try to be creative and come up with solid, innovative gameplay, the majority of developers choose rather to make GBA ports with simple, gimmicky touch screen based interaction, if they even used the touch screen at all. While several other good games have come out since launch, the majority of DS games remain simple gimmicks. The DS still won out, but only because the PSP was too expense, suffered an even worse lack of content and was plagued by technical difficulties.
So what does this history lesson mean for the next generation of consoles? It means that while using moderately innovative controls, the Revolution remains an under-powered, under-capable, under thought-out platform which will receive many simple gimmicky games put out by developers to make a quick buck on the "cool" factor of the controller, however in the end, the console is far too limited for developers to make major projects for and the movement based interface is far too laborious to continue to play for any prolonged period of time. After the initial craze fades, there will be nothing left to run on except some sports games, Mario Party and whatever third party gimmicks developers choose to throw our way, while the in-depth games will come out for the systems designed to handle the power needed to further develop a complex game.
AJ Henderson
