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The Future... Can Wait?
According
to David Gosen, Nintendo's new European head of sales and marketing, there's
a good chance that the launch of the Game Boy Advance may be delayed because
of the current success of the Game Boy Color. I submit it to you that
this is the stupidest idea since Atari thought they'd better play it safe
and manufacture a few more E.T. cartridges. As seems to be the norm with Nintendo nowadays, they seem content only to wallow in past glories, and this move seems to suggest a singular lack of confidence in both their future hardware and software. No doubt being based in Japan, where the N64 has fared the worse, is coloring their view of things, but a decision like this smacks of bottom-of-the-barrel desperation. Perhaps they're thinking of going back to making playing cards just to rake in a few more yen? Nintendo also seems to have been blinded, perhaps understandably, by the success of Pokémon. Although it's nice to see a game released that actually justifies the hype around it, the big N don't seem to have understood the underlying reasons for the game's success and its implications for the future. The Game Boy has always been the most mass market of consoles, played as much by OAPs and teeny boopers as by the usual, tedious, young male market. The real reason for this has nothing to do with how cute Pikachu is - it is the unique melding of portable gaming and a title which positively demands social interaction. No other console can offer this, and those that potentially could, such as the Neo Geo Pocket, just don't have the games to back it up.
Just think what a change to the industry could be brought about by a portable console with more pixel power than a SNES and the genius of Nintendo, and their other regular cohorts, behind it. Gaming could become what it always promised it could be: the true mass market entertainment format of the next millennium. And what do Nintendo want to do? Delay the machine until the Pokémon franchise is milked dry and Neo Geo, or whoever, release a similarly spec'd system with no decent games - thereby turning the general public completely off the idea and back to Ridge Racer XVII. Nintendo need to take the bull by the horns and starting doing what they always used to do: produce the best games and hardware in the world. Sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that fly-by night fads will see them through is not the way to go about things. Here they have a genuine chance to fundamentally change the course of videogames history. If they fail to do so they deserve everything they get. Germany Invades Sega's Dream With competition like Nintendo and Sega, it's no wonder Sony don't even have to try any more. Latest evidence that the Dreamcast seems to be heading the way of the Saturn and Jaguar comes from Germany, where leading retailers have slashed the price of the console. The Karstadt chain have cut the price from Dm499 ($252) to Dm399 ($201) while the oh-so-ironically named Saturn chain dropped the price by an even lower Dm349 ($176), with some smaller retailers in the south of the country going as low as Dm299 ($151). Sega's European boss JF Cecillon was reputably livid when he found out, although Karstadt at least are happy: their Dreamcast sales immediately increased by 800% once the new prices were instigated. The ELSPA Witch Project While Europe has been having a good old laugh about the fact that it is now much easier to buy a fully automatic assault rifle in America than a Dreamcast branded light gun, it seems that the specter of violent videogames is far from dispelled anywhere in the world. The UK's Channel 4 will shortly be showing an episode of the award-winning documentary show "Dispatches" which focuses on violent games and the effect they have on children. ELSPA boss Roger Bennett has warned the industry to beware of a subsequent media "witch hunt." To that end, he's written a letter to Channel 4 in which he asks them to ensure that the issue "be considered in the full light of all the facts rather than supposition." The show airs on March 2nd and release schedules of violent titles are hastily being rearranged around it. There's No Longer a Gremlin in the Works
Although the fact seems to have garnered scant mention in the specialist press, it appears that Gremlin Interactive (nee Gremlin Graphics) founder Ian Stewart has taken his leave of Infogrames after selling them his company last March for £23m ($36.8m). Stewart oversaw Gremlin's shift to a studio-only resource but now seems to have taken his fill of the French super publisher (in terms of size anyway), and is now off to launch his own Internet company called Zoo Media Corporation. This all seems a bit of shame, really, because Gremlin -- and Stewart -- have been around since the early 8-bit days when they were busy publishing Miner's Strike-supporting Monty Mole on the Spectrum. Nowadays it seems as if the Gremlin brand is all but gone, which when combined with Ocean, makes that two UK eighties giants that Infogrames have swallowed up. Which makes it even more of an achievement that they have still not managed to have any consistent success outside mainland Europe. No Sex Please, We're British Although I can exclusively reveal it not to be the case, we Brits get a lot of stick for being rather less amorous than our European neighbours. According to a report by ORC International, though, the state of Britain's collective sex life is even worse than previously assumed. Apparently, 27% of UK PC users would rather spend time on their beloved computers than have sex, compared to only 11% in Sweden and 9% in Germany. Just to keep the racial stereotypes intact, British PC users are also the most hypocritical -- with only 2% admitting to kissing their machines (?!), compared to a rather more disturbing 6% in Germany. |
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News
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