Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 182 posts

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#121

Post by Jonnax »

jayd16 wrote: post #118
saturdaysaint wrote: post #69

It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king. I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables. If you ask me, given my experience owning a Switch and watching my PS4 and gaming PC gather dust, the most compelling…

I don't really see how the Switch is a good case of this lateral thinking, nor withered technology. They just got nVidia to make them a powerful gaming tablet, something nVidia was push hard to sell at the time. In this way they were able to continue to dominate the mobile market and hedge their console strategy.

The SoC (Tegra X1) was released in 2013.

The Switch came out in 2017.

So it's not really that new.

Also Nvidia has failed to sell it to the tablet/mobile market.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#122

Post by mattl »

karatestomp wrote: post #73
saturdaysaint wrote: post #69

It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king. I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables. If you ask me, given my experience owning a Switch and watching my PS4 and gaming PC gather dust, the most compelling…

I don't care for portable gaming, but Nintendo's portables since the Gameboy Advance have had libraries in many respects better than any contemporary console. Some portion of their success is surely because of the library, and despite their portability (though, yes, many value the portability, I'm sure). I don't know how the controls would work but I'd love something like the Playstation TV (a stripped-down Vita that…

There are people working on it for the GBA.

https://www.retrorgb.com/gba-consolizer-an-hdmi-720p-gba-kit...

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#123

Post by mwcampbell »

uncletaco wrote: post #68
bottled_poe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is a case of rose-coloured glassed. It helps that FLOPS per core has essentially flatlined since 2006. I’m sure Nintendo realise that’s the main reason for the hardware choices. https://www.quora.com/What-makes-CPU-models-increasingly-fas...

They've followed this philosophy since at lea st the first Gameboy though. How do FLOPS essentially flatlining since 2006 account for that?

I wonder if the use of the 65C816 processor in the SNES (released in 1991, at least in America) also qualifies.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#124

Post by mercer »

izacus wrote: post #102
Chazprime wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand. I'm not sure quality is the issue, all of my old Nintendo consoles still work years later (SNES, GBA SP, Gamecube), they simply seem to eschew cutting-edge (and often less reliable) technology. I've owned four Xbox 360s, three PS1s, two PS2s…

> I'm not sure quality is the issue, all of my old Nintendo consoles still work years later (SNES, GBA SP, Gamecube), they simply seem to eschew cutting-edge (and often less reliable) technology. There is a very well known issue with Switches analog sticks failing en masse, with people having to replace them after short period of time, less than a year. And since Nintendo uses Apple approach to pricing, the replaceme…

It's noteworthy precisely because it's relatively unusual for Nintendo.

I mean, I'm one of the ones complaining about stuff like this, but I also have a NES, SNES, GC, and their peripherals working like a charm. Meanwhile my Xbox 360 just randomly stopped working and my original Xbox died a long time ago.

I can't speak for the quality of ps4 or Xbone controllers (seems fine?), but as far as intensely-used technology goes Nintendo does vastly better than most hardware.

(I also still have a working Gameboy, which puts it alongside only a Nokia phone I have as far as durability goes. That piece of tech has SEEN things).

EDIT: I will say the joy-cons definitely aren't the best Nintendo has put out, but the problems there pale in comparison to the D-Pad issues we've had GC-on.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#126

Post by danbolt »

jayd16 wrote: post #118
saturdaysaint wrote: post #69

It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king. I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables. If you ask me, given my experience owning a Switch and watching my PS4 and gaming PC gather dust, the most compelling…

I don't really see how the Switch is a good case of this lateral thinking, nor withered technology. They just got nVidia to make them a powerful gaming tablet, something nVidia was push hard to sell at the time. In this way they were able to continue to dominate the mobile market and hedge their console strategy.

I think it’s more that the commodity smartphone technologies were used “laterally” to make a game console that can be played portability. Or, smartphones have been iterating on graphics chipsets since the 3DS was released, so it seems sensible to capitalize on them in a way that a smartphone wasn’t going to.

I think it worked really well for Nintendo too, as they’re very much still a toy company compared to Sony or Microsoft. The budgets for handheld games were likely going to be bigger compared to the DS and 3DS for the next decade, so it makes sense to start to look at them as the same as console game development.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#127

Post by deepakhj »

elpatoisthebest wrote: post #85
oneVoiceOnHN wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your gaming PC is gathering dust but you play the switch, you probably are falling for the marketing. PC has nearly every game switch has, and more. Nintendo is a big marketing company, advertising when you were a child and unaware. Now people nostalgia and automatically but their products. My best example of this is BOTW which is an average game, but the fans have claimed it's the greatest game of all time. (Whic…

So, I have an 8 year old. The switch is probably the most fun couch gaming we can do together. We also have an xbox and a pc for games, and we usually ignore them both in favor of Nintendo exclusives. Pokemon, BOTW, Smash Bros. It's honestly a really good co-op couch experience. And when we go on road trips, it's better than the days when we would load up a fat crt tv in my parent's van and plug in the SNES. Also, if…

Sure for kids the switch can’t be beat. But the best games are all on Sony (some on PC too) Witcher 3, horizon zero down, god of war, uncharted 4, the last of us, persona 5, nier automata, assassins creed oddysey, red dead redemption 2, Spider-Man, etc.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#128

Post by mercer »

nikofeyn wrote: post #72
huffmsa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pure laziness in game development Ah you're one of those "how do they keep getting away with making more Mario games?" people. The secret is that they don't release mainline games very often. You don't get a new one every year. You get one every 3-4 (or Metroid 6-10) years. And when you do get a new installment it's just as fun and joyful as the previous ones. They do need to get their shit in gear with the online…

> Ah you're one of those "how do they keep getting away with making more Mario games?" people. no, i'm not. that's not what i'm talking about at all. what i'm talking about are poor features within their games, which are typically centered around the online and multiplayer aspects but also others as well. for example, the new animal crossing: new horizons is chock-full of these types of things. their games are indeed…

It's easy to dismiss fandom as just for the sake of it. I've heard it about Apple and Nintendo and in both cases it just seems like a lazy way to dismiss other people valuing things differently. Mostly, anyways.

I'm a huge Nintendo fan because, despite glaring problems, the kind that warrant a special Nintendo-specific eye-roll, their games and consoles also offer stuff others don't. The highs make the lows tolerable.

I absolutely hate so much about New Horizons, and most of it is 'typical' Nintendo. Bad online/multiplayer, endless repetitive dialogue gating core functionality, and weird hardware limitations (two people on one Switch? enjoy a single shared island!).

And yet here I am playing it about as much as I played Stardew Valley back when that was 'hot'.

Do you really think that I and so many others are spending hours playing a game with so many flaws just because it's Nintendo?

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#129

Post by mercer »

Kaiyou wrote: post #42
huffmsa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pure laziness in game development Ah you're one of those "how do they keep getting away with making more Mario games?" people. The secret is that they don't release mainline games very often. You don't get a new one every year. You get one every 3-4 (or Metroid 6-10) years. And when you do get a new installment it's just as fun and joyful as the previous ones. They do need to get their shit in gear with the online…

When was the last Metroid game that is "just as fun and joyful as the previous ones"? Metroid has had a tough 20 years or so. Last I checked Nintendo released a poorer version of a remake some fan released a year earlier.

I didn't realize Zero Mission was already 16 years old, but I'd say that was a pretty good, albeit short Metroid game.

Re: Nintendo’s Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015)

#130

Post by zyang »

schnevets wrote: post #86

Love it. Tech has been so obsessed with "the next Facebook" for the last 15 years that there have been thousands of useful concepts lying on the table. While everyone jumped from mobile to wearables to AR to machine intelligence, there are billion-dollar companies that amount to little more than a CRUD framework, a few innovations, and intelligent marketing/strategy/advisory. It gives me hope for the future - if we c…

Ironically Facebook uses PHP, which definitely falls into the "withered" tech category.
Post reply on HN