Bare Knuckles: Financially successful, but hardly cutting-edge
Nintendo's technology is centered on fairly simple game play rather than breakthrough developments.
Nintendo is weathering the economic downturn a bit better than most companies selling video games and systems. Like many other companies, Nintendo took a bath in the second quarter, April to July this year, with profits declining 60 percent on revenues that were down 40 percent.
Contact Bare Knuckles at knuckles@phillynews.com.
Yet, it still pocketed $442 million.
What?! That is crazy!
So crazy, in fact, that BusinessWeek magazine put the company at the top of its best of the best list, calling Nintendo the world's best company in 2009. Google and Apple came in second and third.
When will this Mario machine stop, if at all?
There is just one concern about the continued domination of Nintendo. I hope Microsoft and Sony try not to imitate Nintendo's plan of success when the next round of consoles is produced. There still need to be cutting-edge technology, robust online services, and a wide variety of games for people to play on whatever Sony and MS do next.
Nintendo doesn't really have any of that. The Big N's philosophy is centered on fairly simple game play with an improved, but not necessarily new, way to play video games.
I shudder just thinking about a future where all three console-makers tried to do that.
Spore me a bit more, please
The Hollywood trade mag Variety has dropped a couple of nuggets regarding a possible movie based on Spore. It seems that single cell of an idea is starting to become a more complex organism. 20th Century Fox has apparently been backing the production of the film by Blue Sky Studio, maker of the Ice Age flicks.Besides the idea of this Electronic Arts-produced game's being made into a film, other EA titles are supposedly under way in some form or another at Fox: The Sims (yawn), Army of Two (blah), Dead Space (hmmmm), and Mass Effect (woohoo!).
You, too, eh?
I am going to file this under the "You-thought-you-were-so-big-and-untouchable-but-now-your-pockets-are-feeling-light-so-best-to-jump-on-the-bandwagon-before-you-get-left-behind" category.It started with the Beatles, whose surviving members just didn't see the advantage (or proper $$$$$ signs, more likely) of putting their catalog into a music game. Heck, last time I heard, Paul still hasn't played the Rock Band game. Not even the bass part. What is up with that?
Now, U2, whose music sales have collapsed just like everyone else's, is considering entering the video-game business in some manner.
In an interview in USA Today, U2 bassist Adam Clayton shared his thoughts on trying to make it happen.
"I love the idea that that's where people are getting music, and we'd love to be in that world," Clayton said. "What the Beatles have done, where the animation is much more representative of them, is what we're interested in, rather than the one-size-fits-all animation. We didn't want to be caricatured."
U2 is great and all. The Unforgettable Fire was the first tape for my first Walkman. But you are not the Beatles. A U2-only game will not break banks. Sorry, it just won't. Besides, how hard can those guitar riffs possibly be to play in a game? Another thing, I don't want to hear anyone try to sing like Bono during a Rock Band session. In fact, sometimes I don't like Bono singing like Bono!
Uh-oh
Not much news right now, but there are rumors that the Xbox 360's motion-sensor controller, Project Natal, might be expensive, very expensive. All that hype . . . for nothing if this turns out to be true.
Contact Bare Knuckles at knuckles@phillynews.com.
