Wyrdness said:
It's revisionist on the part of those who overlook the flaws GCN had huge droughts every year that alone kills appeal, the design they gave it was also an odd look in regards to grabbing consumer attention it had some nice games but many were released far apart from each other. DS was aimed at the blue ocean, it was targeted towards more casual players hence why it's flagship title was Nintendogs which highlights they knew what to do with the added screen and where they wanted to go with the platform. This even shows in how DS is the device that inspired Apple to embrace the use of touch screens as a result (first with iPod then iPhone) due to it's resonance with people and the ideas that the software was executing. GCN would have still ended up in the same position it's like you're ignoring the fact that it had these constant large droughts, it doesn't matter when it released the problems weren't due to launch software it was a fundamental problem that even the N64 had. Goldeneye, PD, OOT etc... didn't remove the kiddie title so why do you think MM would? Fact is it would have made little difference. |
The GameCube didn't have that many droughts, unless you are one of those people who are in the "well I will only buy Nintendo games on a Nintendo system and never touch 3rd party games". It had a library of about 652 games I think, which is not that terrible, the N64 was the one that was really crippled by software droughts. N64 should have been Nintendo's greatest system overtaking the SNES, they had it right there for the taking and sadly shot the poor machine in the foot before it was even on storeshelves to gift Playstation market dominance in the traditional console market.
Nintendo's internal development is actually a lot more choatic and random than people think it is too. Like people think they designed the DS with this grand vision, but really it wasn't like that at all.
The designer of the Game Boy was working on a slider Game Boy Advance successor, like the popular slide out phones that preceded smartphones that were popular circa 2003 or so (the ones Paris Hilton would carry around). The screen would slide out to reveval controls underneath. That guy simply liked a touchscreen, they had been experimenting with touchscreens since forever so that was part of the design already.
Then Sony announced the PSP at E3 2003 and Yamauchi in a panic basically canned work on that GBA successor and said if the PSP has one screen well ... he wants two screens for a new portable because two is better than one and that had to be ready within like a year, lol.
And even Iwata thought the idea was stupid as did most of Nintendo's designers, but Iwata wanting to be diplomatic to Yamauchi said they should at least explore the idea, and so the touchscreen concept was just merged from the GBA successor project that was supposed to just be more of a standard game portable really.
The other thing is touchscreens while quite novel for the Western market, weren't quite as exotic in Japan, resistive touch screen PDAs were a common staple device for Japanese businessmen/women in the early 2000s.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 01 December 2022
