What do you want out of Nintendo's NEXT console?

[foxtail]

NoirSon said:

justinian said:
Three consoles with more or less the same power has been done and guess what. Nintendo lost. GameCube, Xbox and PS2.

If wii u was as powerful as the xb1 many third part developers will still see it as a kiddy console whose owners don't like (I use this phrase with discretion) grown up games. Nintendos "problem" is not one of power, it's one of image.

For me I want nintendo to employ more in house developers to deliver more games of varied genres and move beyond cartoons with the next console.

Technically, the GC had more power then the PS2 (and even the N64 was better then the PS1) but even with that, Nintendo screwed themselves by having the game media be smaller so that meant companies had to either cut out FMV, music or audio from games that they could do on other systems despite the GC being capable of matching all but the best the Xbox had to offer. The GC didn't fail because it was trying to go head to head with the money of the Sony or Microsoft brand, it failed because Nintendo made a bad critical hardware choice (never mind the GC controller or the initial push of the primary color being purple) in not switching to DVD based media to either save money or protect themselves better against pirates and in the end it screwed enough developers that they didn't bother with the system and damaged the Nintendo brand due to the shifting market shares.

edited to expand my thoughts

I'm not saying DVD wouldn't of helped, but most games of that era could be done on the Gamecube using multiple discs if needed with the exception of some titles (ie open world games).  That's not to say some developers didn't choose to use a single disc and end up using compressed video and audio assets.

Here are some 3rd party multi-platform games that were multiple-disc on the Gamecube:

Enter The Matrix

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent

 

There were also some other multi-disc 3rd party games like Killer7, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Tales of Symphonia and Resident Evil 4, though all those were initially developed as Gamecube exclusives.  

If 3rd parties really wanted to they could have gotten the majority of their games running on the Gamecube.  But it wasn't that easy, there was a lot deals going on in the background and cheques being writen.  MS was basically handing out money to anybody who would accept it.  On top of that Sony had some exclusive contracts that dated back to the original playstaion generation.   One example of this is Square having to create a shell company just to have a FF game on the Gamecube. - http://www.giantbomb.com/the-game-designers-studio-inc/3010-5482/

Nintendo was also mending relations with companies such as Namco at the time.  They even had some bigger games like Tekken Tag Tournament running on the Gamecube though the port would never see fruition due to contracts.  They did end up getting Soul Calibur II instead.

The point is the Gamecube missed some big and small name games and not soley because of disc size (even looking at the XBOX 360 a generation later you still see a lot of multiple-disc games.)  

Nintendo even build the Gamecube SDK with CodeWarrior software to entice 3rd parties (article below) but it still wasn't enough. 

In the end it was the money and politics of the time that Nintendo couldn't compete with, even with hardware superior to the PS2.  

Metrowerks provides CodeWarrior for the GameCube - source by Shahed Ahmed on January 24, 2001

Metrowerks has announced that it has reached an agreement with Nintendo to provide its CodeWarrior tools, including a compiler, debugger, and integrated development environment, to licensed GameCube developers. The company has been working with Nintendo essentially since the inception of the GameCube project, and the console's operating system, the SDK, and all of the libraries have been designed and written using CodeWarrior from an engineering standpoint. In terms of new development, the CodeWarrior toolset lets developers, particularly third parties interested in multiplatform development, write and compile the same code for multiple platforms within the same development environment.

"When it came time to develop the operating system for the Nintendo GameCube, Metrowerks' CodeWarrior was our tool of choice," said Ramin Ravanpey, director of the software tools support group at Nintendo of America. "What that means for the GameCube developers is a set of tools providing unmatched integration with our operating system, enabling them to create high quality games and get them to market quickly."

In addition to the CodeWarrior development toolset for the GameCube, the company will also make the CodeWarrior Analysis tool available to GameCube developers. "We have a product that is called the CodeWarrior Analysis tool suite, and we will be releasing this for the GameCube product as well," Brian Gildon, director of core technology and game platforms at Metrowerks, told GameSpot. "There is a framework of core technology that it is based on, and very soon we will be making an announcement that, for all of our game console products, we will allow developers to access the core technology that a lot of our things are written on. This enables them to write a whole series of tools and anything they want based on a framework. Really, it will be the first product of its type anywhere in this space."

Gildon spoke further regarding Metrowerks' relationship with Nintendo and the ease of cross-platform development provided by the CodeWarrior development toolset. Our entire Q&A with Brian Gildon follows: - continued below

GameSpot: Is the CodeWarrior toolset for the GameCube already available to developers?

Brian Gildon: We have the first development toolset for the GameCube. Nintendo has been primarily using it to develop the Dolphin operating system, which is the operating system that runs the machine. All of the internal parties within Nintendo, and the developers that are currently signed up with Nintendo, are using our tools as the development tools suite of choice right now. So, all of the initial titles from all of the vendors--you can kind of guess what those titles might be--are all being built using CodeWarrior.

GS: Does that include third-party titles?

BG: Yes, that is inclusive of first, second, and third parties from Nintendo's perspective. I will go as far as to say that some third parties that are already licensed by Nintendo are working on ports of games that they have written for other consoles or game titles that they have had sitting in the wings. They are using our tools now in some cases to port to the GameCube and get things moving.
The great thing about this--although not directly related to Nintendo's interests per se--is that we have the capability of installing all of our other console tools with our GameCube tools. So developers, particularly third-party companies such as Electronic Arts and companies like that, can retarget any applications they have built for other consoles such as the PlayStation 2 toward development for the GameCube and vice versa. They can do this without having to change toolsets--they don' t even have to change applications. They can just tell it to build it for a different machine and it will do it. It is the only type of development software in the world that does this right now.
 

GS: This must expedite ports from other consoles.
 

BG: Absolutely. There are a couple of inherent advantages to doing this. One is that you eliminate the learning curve for developers, which cuts out the first initial development time. The second thing is that as long as they are writing standard C or C++ for most of the code, then all of that code is immediately portable. You don't run into any problems where you say, "Well, this compiler works different from this one, so things don't really compile right."
We can allow games to be retargeted on multiple platforms, with all of our tools working together simultaneously. The goal is, particularly for third-party developers, a large advantage in customer penetration. It used to be that when you had a PC, or when only a couple of consoles were on the market, game developers and publishers knew how to reach their audience. They could write an application and people bought it because they had the same platforms to run it on. Now, you have what amounts to four consoles in the space, including the Dreamcast, the Xbox, the PlayStation 2, and the GameCube. You also have the PC platform, and you have a variety of handheld devices. The real issue now with developers and publishers is how do they reach all of the same people they used to before. The only way to do that is release their games on as many different consoles and products as they possibly can. So, that is the big advantage that we're trying to bring in with our toolset, a perspective that no one else has approached. We're going to try to enable simple cross-platform development the best we can, and that is strategically the point where we are heading with our product.
 

GS: Thanks for your time, Brian.

Metrowerks' familiarity with the Power PC environment has been essential in the company's ability to provide a highly functional compiler to GameCube developers. "This is an IBM processor that is primarily being used in the GameCube, but it is still a Power PC, and the core architecture is the same," Gildon explained. "Because we've been working with Nintendo since day one, we've been taking advantage of the specific optimizations for this particular processor, the Gecko. We have been supporting that for a very long time, so any developer with a generic Power PC compiler out there is not going to get that level of optimization." The CodeWarrior for the GameCube version 1.0 is available now at a suggested price of $3500. Six-day evaluation copies are also available to GameCube developers. 

- http://www.gamespot.com/articles/metrowerks-provides-codewarrior-for-the-gamecube/1100-2678095/