Nintendo is also full of shit.

No.

If people discover games via digital distribution they'll stick to it. Your other point I agree with.

I'm still against it very much though. Just sounds like it's just begging for corporeal abuse.

They aren't talking about taking a wiiware project and then going commercial with it, because thats rediculous, you might as well get it on wiiware. they are talking about small developers being able to make small games for on low budgets and get sales on that, it allows small new developers to get a foot in if you will, until they are in a position to make larger retail games.

The Watchmen games are better as retail too, you save more money that way. The price of Arcade titles dropping in price are pretty rare, especially ones of those sizes. So them hitting retail makes them much more worth purchasing.

I'm sorry but Nintendo is completely out of touch with the market. COMPLETELY. Everything they do and everything they make nowadays is reliant on two things: getting new consumers into the medium, and keeping old fans happy. THAT IS IT. Even then, they completely flub up their business (at least here in the states) They are COMPLETELY out of touch with the average gamer. COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY.

OUT.
OF.
TOUCH.

Interesting. They've been saying that the purpose of WiiWare from the very beginning was to discover new forms of gameplay, because Tetris could not have been invented in the current industry cycle, and without an influx of new, risky, and cheap content there would be significant problems.

What I find the most intersting about wiiware is how badly it's being abused; no one is using wiiware to make and test new genres that would otherwise never be made. I think there are several reasons for this.

1. developers are trying to make a profit with mostly "safe" games on wiiware (a huge mistake in my opinion, as that is neither the function of wiiware, nor is the wiiware system a good system for seeking profit).

2. Most developers lack the creativity to make new genres and gameplay elements.

3. The developers sent out to make wiiware projects aren't very good, while the good developers are used on bigger, safer projects.

WiiWare sucks because it's being used for profit while it was designed for field testing games that would otherwise be too risky for full retail.

@ CocoJambo

Well, whether or not something sucks is relative, but as a point of reference Megaman 9 most likely had the same budget as Megaman 1. Therefore, Megaman 9 should be at least as good as Megaman 1, or else the guys at Capcom are doing it wrong.

@ Orionsaint

Actually, I can't say I agree with your logic. I still miss those cartredges with their internal memory and lack of need for a disk box. In fact, I myself would still have and prefer cartredges even now had Nintendo not discontinued the format (I believe it had something to do with third party support); they were easier and faster than disks to swap and never had any load times. And I still feel HD isn't a significant upgrade in spite of own an HD TV. Heck, I don't even know what HDD stands for, but if it's uber-high-def, then there's no way I'll ever need that either. While I do agree on your point about online, it should be pointed out that I am also fairly socially awkward, which makes my opinion on the matter not a mainstream one.

"Of course it also hints that DSiWare and WiiWare is full of crappy "practice projects" for early developers."

I wouldn't say that those downloadable services have anymore crap than XBLA has. Every gaming service will have some crap on it, but just look at all the good WiiWare games coming out for the rest of the year and beyond. LostWinds 2, And Yet It Moves, Max & the Magic Marker, Castlevania Rebirth, Cave Story, Night Sky, Bit.Trip Void, Tower of Shadows, and Super Meat Boy just to name a few.

So to say that WiiWare is just full of crappy "practice projects" for early developers, is a bit of a over-exaggeration, don't you think? Sure there's some bad games on there, but there's a lot of good games on WiiWare as well and there's many more on the way. Plus any service that has World of Goo on it, doesn't suck. A little known fact, but its true!

@ Qraze

I hope you don't think the future of gaming is really digital distribution, even after the PSP Go fiasco, the market leader's (Nintendo's) incompatibility with such a system (they need retail channels to sell the peripherals and to explain games to the new gamers), AND the fact that so far digital distribution stands for less content at a higher price then retail (sometimes the DD release date is even after the retail release date). Not to mention retail sells something like ten times as many copies of a given title than the DD platform (I have no hard numbers because the numbers aren't released, but the approximates I've heard put the best sellers as almost universally less than a million copies. I only say almost because I heard that SMB3 hit a million).

Please at least wait until digital distribution has the semblance of being in your advantage before you tout it as a positive. And if that doesn't happen, then stop supportingg things that are disadvantageous to yourself.

@ PEICanada7

None of those games compare to Super Mario Bros. 3 of Donkey Kong Country 2. Now back then the triple A title budget is about the same as a current Wiiware budget. Not only that, but since those titles were released, video game developers have supposedly been improving their talents and skills, meaning that a 2D platformer today should be much more polished than one of those old platformers due to the lessons of history and availability of old code for reference.

WiiWare is bad because a bunch of no talent developers place their pet projects on the service, making the mediocre content look good by comparison. But a quick look at Virtual Console shows that these developers have actually decreased in quality throughout the last fifteen years, and really don't have much buisness in the industry because they lack the ability to compete with 15 year old titles. If a developer cannot make a Donkey Kong Country quality platformer with the budget of donkey kong country and the game immediately available to him for reference, then he is not a particularly good developer, as developers with far inferior technology and no point of reference from 15 years ago simply trounced anything the modern developer could do with his modern resources.

So yes, WiiWare and all the other DD platforms are bad because they aren't even close to as good as virtual console shows us they can be.

@HCapt:As much as I agree with you in a lot of points(specially the similarity of pricing beetween both retail and DD), the PSPGo is a, at least, weird example of digital distribution gaming console. It offers the exact same thing at retail FOR ANOTHER CONSOLE, with discounts for the age of the game.

As a developer, I also would be worried about putting a game, good or bad, on digital distribution alone. It's still somewhat uncharted grounds and those people are relying too much on it.

Besides, I'm quite sure Nintendo will do something very DD-related with their next handheld. As much as the DS is sitting atop the handheld world comfortably, the iPod Touch's been surprising me a lot(in a bad way) with its apps sales.

And about DD on itself, it does reduce costs, which could lead to bigger profit margins and more funds for development, which would, at a long term, result in better games. Or at least more expensive ones =D Problem is, they have to deal with the moaning of retailers, which makes them have to appease them, for they are responsible for the huge majority of their sales. And this is why PSPGo failed bad.

But I still do like my good old fashioned boxes.

@ Springsteen -

I know generational evolution of technology doesn't equal talent. In fact, I'm bitter because I recognize that in spite of technology, wiiware is proof of a huge lack of talent in the industry. I figure that the lack of talent on wiiware is merely an extension of a lack of talent at full retail, a lack that is being masked by high production values. And as the testing ground for new ideas, I don't think that games will start showing more creativity for at least a year and a half after those creative ideas are tested at a smaller scale (through wiiware), due to the long production times of games.

I completely disagree with you on the issue of Nintendo and DD. Especially because I really can't believe customers want to go an all-digital route. In fact, I tend to view the people who actually believe DD is the future as being a bit brainwashed by the industry into thinking something that is bad is good. All digital has shown no evidence of success even close to retail, and the supposed god of DD, the ipod touch, is too flooded with shovelware to navigate and is stuffed with cheap, shoddy games the best of which can't compare to the DS's finest. Even if the ipod touch is what microsoft and sony claim to want, there is no way they want iphone-like prices of triple-A games, and no one buys a game for over $10 on the iphone. Digital Distribution is stubbornly refusing to prove itself as a viable platform for the industry, and it can't be the future unless DD actually works well enough to make money. For a game like GTA, making money in an all digital format is simply impossible.

@HCapt: I don't support Digital Distribution, as I, for one, love the physical ownership and don't think it could ever be replaced. Opening a brand new, shiny box is priceless. But I see where it could benefit developers. Manufacturing costs and retail profit play a huge role on pricing. If we could buy directly from the company it would have, obviously, a bigger share of what you're paying. Not to mention the ever-growing pollution issues that surround any mass production(mind you, I'm not an environmental fatalist, I'm just trying to point towards the possible benefits of DD).

However, I entirely agree with your point about DD making money. Tossing 50 bucks on something you can't even touch and is prone to absolute loss in case your hardware fails is asking a little too much from the consumer. It works on iPod because you're buying crappy 10 bucks(at most) gameS, that may be fun, but lack polish and whose dissemination can turn out to be a shitty outcome for the industry.

Back to Nintendo, they are a conservative company in many aspects. But they have already shown that they can "upend the tea table", as Miyamoto would say, even if it means taking a somewhat predictable evolution and taking it on a VERY different route. Take motion and touch controls, for example. There's been works on both technologies for a long, long time, but Nintendo came around, made it economically viable, attention-grabbing and, shit, made it just WORK. A company that once stood as the pinnacle of graphical evolution now has the weakest consoles of the market. What I am saying is that Nintendo can change its ways as long as it can offer functional, viable solutions in this post-Yamauchi era. And I would not be surprised if they did the same with digital distribution.

By the way, it's becoming interesting to have those arguments with you. Good points, mate.

"By the way, it's becoming interesting to have those arguments with you. Good points, mate."

Thanks