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

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

#81

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…

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…

Game quality is of course subjective, but if you think BOTW was average I have no idea what you think an above average game is... Maybe saying it wasn't to your taste (too easy or handholding or something) would have been more accurate.

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

#82

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…

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…

I think this is a bait, but, I'm curious: if BOTW is average, could you provide me with ~25 above average games? I would love to add them to my library and play them. Or even just 15?

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

#83
post #53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Nintendo's don't leave oil stains all over the garage.

You can tell which parking spots I use most frequently at my apartment complex based on the size of the oil puddle. Jaguars are an opsec liability

Haven't checked my F-Pace now that you've mentioned it. It's sitting a lot during this quarantine

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

#84
post #76

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…

Sony made several portable gaming devices (PSP, PS vita, PSN compatible phone). The market didn’t really care for them. Which makes sense. People already have a phone, they don’t want an additional thing to carry around. People want a flagship phone, not a worse phone that’s more expensive because it can play some exclusive games. The Nintendo switch was the right form factor, but only Nintendo has the IP to pull it…

> Sony made several portable gaming devices... The market didn’t really care for them.

Except for the PSP, which sold 81 million units.

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

#85

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…

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 I'm working in my office, he can bring the switch into the room with me and play while I work. Portable is nice.

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

#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 can get more people from various walks of life to learn how to code and appreciate technology, there is so much more we can do. Of course, that "if" has always been a huge challenge.

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

#87
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony made several portable gaming devices (PSP, PS vita, PSN compatible phone). The market didn’t really care for them. Which makes sense. People already have a phone, they don’t want an additional thing to carry around. People want a flagship phone, not a worse phone that’s more expensive because it can play some exclusive games. The Nintendo switch was the right form factor, but only Nintendo has the IP to pull it…

> Sony made several portable gaming devices... The market didn’t really care for them. Except for the PSP, which sold 81 million units.

Yes, you picked the one that did well, which also happens to be the one that sold before ubiquitous smartphones were a thing. I wonder if there’s a relationship.

Still have mine for LocoRoco and FF Tactics.

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

#88

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. More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998…

Their games cost the premium. They bait you with cheap hardware but charge 60$ forever.

pretty true. I was shopping on the e-store for some stuff to play with my wife and was surprised seeing all the games for full price. Fuckin narcs.

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

#89

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…

Are you me from the future? I could have posted this exact same comment and have it been true for my 10 and 4 year olds. And while I admit I may be suffering from nostalgia, but I have super great memories of playing SNES in my parents can on trips.

I do most of my non-kid time gaming on my pc, but I think the Switch is a great console.

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

#90
post #2

“ While you may think of virtual reality as the definition of a cutting-edge category, the Oculus Rift’s two most important components are a cheap smartphone screen and a pair of fifty cent lenses. These two withered parts allowed for mainstream pricing ($350) and freed the team to work on peripheral innovations like decreasing latency and refining positional tracking.” Interestingly, a lot of our tracking and latenc…

For me, the use of the Snapdragon 835 in the Oculus Quest seems like a really good example of this philosophy as well. Definitely 'withered' by the time the Oculus Quest was released. Yet it's doing things to a quality that I've never seen it do in any Snapdragon 835-based phone.

A lot of that has to do with being able to run at high sustained clock frequencies by designing in an adequate thermal solution. Phones just don’t have the space to allow for that, so games have to be designed around throttled performance.
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