News Nintendo 'fears for games industry'

From the Beeb:

The president of games giant Nintendo has said he fears for the future of the industry and has warned that it must innovate or die.

Satoru Iwata told BBC News Online that the industry had become obsessed with faster processors and better graphics.

He said unless things changed people "would get tired of games".

Mr Iwata was speaking after the launch of its new handheld console, the Nintendo DS.

The new machine, unusually, features two screens and games can be controlled by using a touch screen and voice recognition, as well as the conventional method of pressing buttons.

Full story here

Is there any chance of the population at large tiring of games? I don't know, but he could have a point - better / more realistic graphics don't make for a good game. If games manufacturers keep churning out the same type of games, people will get bored.

 

It would be a fair point, if there hadn't been 70+ games based on the Mario franchise, 20+ on Zelda etc...

 

the point is fair, whether nintendo fail miserably in providing said inovation or not.

Ive been saying this for years. The games industry is becoming stagnant and will die as soon as the button-bashers get bored.

For years its been my belief that until games become more like films and less like "visual novelties", the games industry is set on its way to a slow and agonising death.

 

Even though you say that Mario and Zelda are some of the most playable games, you have to admit. Each Zelda has been different, different gameplay, different style, different goals i for one love the zelda series. The mario series is also playable but some of the things they have done with it are crazy but someone must like them and want more of it as new ones have been released. I go back to games like that all the time, i still enjoy playing Zelda or Mario on the snes and many others such as Super Metroid, Super Aleste etc....

Games are getting more about graphics than gameplay and that is starting to make them boring. But there are a few that are bringing out new stuff such as Postal (have u played that game? its sick in a good way ) and Street Legal Racing: Redline (huge car modifying game, build cars from the ground up including the full engine ), these dont have the best of graphics but are great for gameplay, ok so you can't refer to Streel Legal as having good graphics it looks appauling on my comp (Radeon 7000 64MB), could be better on others tho. You just have to look out for those select few unique games

Death

 

tbh ive seen this coming

the only farely modern games i play (on the dreamcast) are driving sims

the bulk of my game playing is back on the nes, snes and mster system as the games had to be inovative back then (look at worms or tetris 2 of the most addictive games as you keep going back to them time and time agian)

 

cant forget the best game ever, pacman, i cant get enough of that game. imo games should get more like battlefield, its a mix of at least 3 genres, dice definatly came up with a winner there. If that happened to a more wide spread degree ther would be some really good games

 

I'm all about this. I got sick of FPS games after quake 3.... and that's all I've seen coming out since....

Whatever sells, I guess....

 

Theres loads of innovative games out there, but most of the same genre. Quite a few interesting flash games around (yeti sports etc...) and the gaming market does tend to move in "fads" motor, sim, fps etc. TBH theres plenty of variety to suit all people available, but the chase for higher speed graphics and processing is never going to stop while is more that 1 manufacturer.....

 

it's definitely under risk of becoming boring. but so are movies, tv shows, music, etc. for the most part everything is basicly the same, and then once in a while something really good comes out.

only just recently(december) picked up an xbox, and the best game i have for it is ninja gaiden, i love that game, it's wicked hard, but in the way that makes it really fun to play. that said no game keeps my attention for more than 45 min to an hour at a time.

 

I'm with you, ninja gaiden is the shizzit.

 

I have postal2 I thought it was good, very short, but it was sick in all ways.

 

Yeah i had Postal 2: Share The Pain, its well funny when u complete it, it unlocks all the cheats and u can turn everyone in to Osama and kill em all

Death

 

is Street Legal Racing still avalible anywhere?

 

The head of Nintendo also said the games of today are too hard, too complicated and take too long to complete - is this just saying the kids of today are too thick? dont enjoy a challenge? arent committed and have an attention span of 30 seconds?

Im all for games that take their time to complete - take farcry for example; it took at least 10-20 hours to do (i wasnt measuring) which is great, whereas max payne 2 took all of 3 hours!?

As for challenging games - lets not get silly here, i like a challenge but i agree if something gets impossible todo it puts you off completely. Having a realtime hardness setting would be good.

 

Whilst I think there is a need for more innovation in the long run, at the moment newer and better graphics are still enhancing the gaming experience. I know gameplay is far more important etc, but I can guarantee that if UT2004 had the graphics of Half-Life it wouldn't be nearly as popular or enjoyable.

However, in the future this will be somewhat less of an issue. For instance, think about sound hardware. A decade years back, sound hardware was getting better quality all the time and as such made the games get more enjoyable because of it. However now we've hit a point where the resolution of the audio is greater than that of our hearing; a huge majority of people can't tell the difference between a CD and a 192Kbps MP3 file. And with 7.1 surround we've pretty much reached the limit of how many speakers we can have without it getting ridiculous.

Getting back to the subject, my point is that the same will happen with graphics. Admittedly we have a fair way to go yet both in terms of the graphics processing power and monitors, but eventually we will reach a point where a higher resolution or colour depth makes no difference. In fact we've already hit the colour depth barrier; not everyone can tell apart 16- and 24(32 if you want)-bit colour, and any higher would be daft. Once we hit reach this point then there will be a real need for innovation.

 

anyone know where i can get a copy of Street Legal Racing: Redline

 

umm i dl the game a few months ago

man was that a POS

ill stick with NFSU

as for game innovation. Yes a game has to be innovative, BUT it must look good at the same time. Who wants to look at horribly animated sprites, even if its the best game in the world

 

i watched a vid of the game 2 days ago and it didn't look half bad.

 

IRC

Carmaggedon 1 is the best game ever, the graphics suck but its amazing

'doc

 

ah Carmaggedon . those were the good days. times when games lasted for ages since you never got bored playing them. when games were actually funny.