And what percentage of PC bugs are driver and/or hardware problems, not software ones? In the end, it’s kind of irrelevant to the user, but a console doesn’t get a free pass if it has an overheating problem. That’s an issue for Microsoft, Sony, and maybe even Nintendo.
<sarcasm>
Yes, but the release of the S-controller wasn’t designed to replace the original Xbox controller – just as Microsoft! It’s an entirely different market. Small handed people were given the option to buy the S-controller as a gift from the magnanimous folks at Microsoft, which is really a cute, warm, fuzzy kind of corporation that only has the best interests of gamers at heart.
</sarcasm>
Honestly, this is just silly. The new GBA is quite clearly a replacement for the old GBA, much as the PS2 was a replacement for the PS1. Sure, you could hang on to your PS1, but look at all the cool features you’d miss out on!
This is like saying that the funky little colored Gameboys weren’t designed to replace the original Gameboy. Of course they were! Sales were slipping, so lets introduce a new form factor and bright colors and VOILA! new sales.
This is not to dismiss your point, Voltaic, but the Dave Long fan boy thing is really a little out of control! As someone who understands the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are all out to do one thing – make money – it seems silly to argue that virtually identical actions are good or evil depending on the company undertaking it.
ASJunk
Yes, the colored Game Boys were an attempt to reinvigorate the Game Boy market at that time. But they were identical in function and price to the Game Boy that came before it. The GBA SP is NOT identical in function or price to the one that’s out there now and is not intended to remove the current GBA from the shelves the day it ships. Nintendo will continue to produce the GBA as it exists right now for the foreseeable future. You realize that the price of the GBA and its games dropped not long after launch because Nintendo was able to reduce costs on both the system and the games, right? The thing was selling like crazy and they still reduced the price because their costs were reduced.
I’m not sure how many times I have to say the same thing. Read the news articles if you don’t believe me. They plan to sell the current GBA for a lower price than the GBA SP and to a different market. Given the flip-top design of the new device, I don’t think it’s nearly as child friendly as the original and since they all play the same games, I personally would get the older model for any child over the new design.
As for the S-Controller, it was a reaction to immediate consumer backlash against the original Xbox controller. The GBA has been around for almost three years now since its debut in Japan. Over a year and a half here in the States…closer to two when the GBA SP will ship.
–Dave
People complained about the Xbox controllers, but now people are complaining about not being able to find the bigger ones. My wife prefers the old style to the S controller and her hands are half the size of my meat hooks.
Yeah, my brother and his roommates are Xbox fiends… they’re always playing WWF/E wrestling or NFL Fever or Halo. They can’t stand the S controller. It cramps their hands, and the buttons are all in weird places. Like Start and Back are in this bizarre place where you have to reach under your hand with your left thumb to hit.
The crazy thing is that the sheer size of the original controller freaked people out; but they didn’t really understand the ergonomics of it. I’ve tried the S controller and it does cramp my hands up after prolonged play. And I wouldn’t say I have overly large hands… I’m probably about average for an American male in his 20’s.
A less starry-eyed way of looking at it is that Nintendo soaked us for as long as they could. Look, I don’t buy the argument that it would have been prohibitavely expensive to have some form of lighting in the original GBA. Show me numbers. I’ve never seen any I’ve believed. There are too many backlight, sidelit, or glowing small screen appliances underneath the $100 price point to believe it. I think Nintendo goofed, and lacking any real competition, they didn’t have to pay for their gaffe in sales.
The new GBA is both a reaction to a very real flaw in the original design (some games can’t be seen well even in perfect lighting conditions - don’t believe me? Look at Castlevania, or Sega GT, on an Afterburner) and as reaction to the Afterburner. Sales are up and Nintendo can’t like the amount of surgery going on. Every GBA owner I know looks at my Afterburner model and gets really angry at Nintendo… mainly because the Afterburner makes the Nintendo GBA screen look like it does on the box and on the TV commercial.
That is to say, bright and pleasing to the eye. Rather than dull, washed out, and reflective.
I think I’ve noticed that it is more how you hold them personally than how large your hands are. I have big hands and hate the old one, love the ‘s’.
I like the GC and ps2 controlelrs just fine as well, the gba cramps my hands after a few hours, but I only play that much on planes so no biggie. My GBC was comfy so I’m hoping GASP is comfy.
That’s an understatement. Your view isn’t really any less angry and skeptical than that of Vitriolguest.
I’ll rephrase the argument of Sarcasmguest. Why is this any different than Windows 95/98/XP. Why is it any different than Thief I/Thief II. Why is it different than Playstation/PS2?
It’s a view that sees entitlement as the a priori assumption. You and Vitriolguest seem to feel that you were entitled to a lighted GBA two years ago, and that Nintendo was just holding back so that they raid your wallet a second time.
As somebody who works in a corporate IT deparment, let me inform you that there are a WIDE variety of reasons why better products don’t get delivered earlier, and most of them don’t have anything to do with rooking the customer. Sometimes it makes sense to settle for releasing a product that’s potentially weak in a certain feature and then to follow it up with one that improves on the basic design. If I had ever taken any economics courses I’m sure I’d be able to tell you that this is something people learn about in economics.
I mean, the technology industry is basically founded on this concept! I’m not trying to say that Nintendo is just goodness and light or anything, just that this “they shoulda gived us the fancy one earlier” argument is incredibly lame and doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. (See PS1/PS2 argument above. QED.)
I’m all for hearing reasons why Nintendo is a bunch of crooks. That’s why we’re here…to discuss industry issues. But let’s try to confine our reasoning to the realm of logic and stay away from nonsense arguments.
I was going for the opposite of Dave Long actually. Spoofing his anti S-controller/MS rant.
I don’t really think Nintendo is evil or “soaking us” Spoofy (and I don’t believe that of MS either). I applauded the S-Controller and I applaud the GBA SP or whatever it’s called. The GBA is a fantastic machine when backlit… my Afterburner is fantastic.
However, I think the GBA was marketed in a misleading way. Look at your box. Look at the screen in the picture on the box. There isn’t even a disclaimer (screen simulated). The commercials featured people playing GBA games in a darkened church (it also featured, inexplicably, pro-wrestlers and snowboarders flying in slow motion over the pews).
I ask you, how can you call a product with such demanding lighting requirements… portable?
Why can’t I read this as an example of Microsoft’s flexibility and openness to consumer concerns about the controllers as well as an example of Nintendo’s nearly three years of arrogance in the face of (to use your term) immediate cosumer backlash?
I’m not saying this is true, only that I don’t think Nintendo deserves the benefit of the doubt while Microsoft does not.
I mean, the technology industry is basically founded on this concept! I’m not trying to say that Nintendo is just goodness and light or anything, just that this “they shoulda gived us the fancy one earlier” argument is incredibly lame and doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. (See PS1/PS2 argument above. QED.)
The GBA’s horrible lighting problem is a deep, fundamental flaw. It was far more universally reviled than the Xbox controller which was, at best, a preference. And at least with the Xbox controller YOU HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE.*
- That doesn’t involve $45, a y-wing screwdriver, soldering, and a dremel tool.
Hmmm…well…erm…ahhh…sorry about that then.
I think that all the invective from Vitriolguest (I’m assuming it’s the same guest that keeps posting all the super angry comments on various threads since they all sound the same) is making me cranky.
I tend to get more awards from Brian Koontz when I stick to “being funny” rather than “being serious” so maybe I’ll just go back to that then.
I take back everything I said about your Mom Andrew.
(some games can’t be seen well even in perfect lighting conditions - don’t believe me? Look at Castlevania, or Sega GT, on an Afterburner)
I’m playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon just fine with no lighting solution whatsoever. I’m more than halfway through the game and I haven’t had problems with the light. Different strokes for different folks and all that. Just because you went and got a third party lighting solution that uses more battery power and required you to have your GBA opened and changed around doesn’t mean that solution is NECESSARY for everyone to enjoy the system. Like I said above, most people probably don’t care too much. It’s only the hardcore gamer nuts/technophiles that were bitching. Nintendo gave them what they wanted, and now they’ve found something else to moan and groan about.
Why can’t I read this as an example of Microsoft’s flexibility and openness to consumer concerns about the controllers as well as an example of Nintendo’s nearly three years of arrogance in the face of (to use your term) immediate cosumer backlash?
You can read it that way, Jim. I don’t see it that way. If Nintendo could’ve produced the GBA SP for the same amount of money way back when it launched, they would have. Microsoft clearly made a mistake with the original controller. I don’t think Nintendo has ever backed away from making a strong platform for their games and GBA in its initial configuration is just that. N64 was the most technologically advanced system when it launched. SNES was far and away more “powerful” than the Genesis with its processor speed the only exception. Gamecube is easily on par with Xbox and PS2 in almost every way technically and stronger against piracy/cutting down loading to almost nil with the small discs.
When it launched, the GBA was inexpensive enough for both kids and adults to buy it. It still provides most of its owners with a ton of fun and they may have bought a light for darkened car rides, etc. If the consumer is unhappy with the current device and wants to buy a new unit that has more features, they’ll be able to do that. They didn’t have to buy a GBA in the first place if they felt the lighting wasn’t good enough. There are plenty of demo units all over the place and have been since the system launched. You could easily determine for yourself if you appreciated the GBA in its original form by trying one of those.
–Dave
From my previous post:
Second, previous handhelds had lighting solutions that seemed to work and some of those were out in the early 90’s. I think Nintendo went with the lowest cost screen they could get. Don’t blame them for wanting to make a profit, but it’s kept people like me from buying.
The problem is that your typical in-store lighting conditions when trying out a demo unit tend to obscure the problem. When I bought mine, it didn’t look so bad without a light, but I bought one anyway. I was surprised when I discovered that I couldn’t play it at all without the light. We’re talking about fully-lit rooms here.
The GASP is clearly meant to supercede the GBA. And speaking as someone who just bought a GBA for Christmas, I’m pretty pissed off at the timing of this new product. :evil:
Second, previous handhelds had lighting solutions that seemed to work and some of those were out in the early 90’s. I think Nintendo went with the lowest cost screen they could get. Don’t blame them for wanting to make a profit, but it’s kept people like me from buying.
Yeah, and clearly you’re not reading the threads about the Game Boy Advance SP because at least myself and a few others pointed out how overpriced the units themselves were and that they ate batteries so fast as to make them mostly impractical. They also didn’t look all that great. The Game Gear always took a ton of heat for “blurring” in fast movement games. I own one and have seen that first hand, it’s nowhere near as good as the GBA…how bout you? But don’t let history and facts stand in your way when posting the same thing twice.
–Dave
And speaking as someone who just bought a GBA for Christmas, I’m pretty pissed off at the timing of this new product.
I sympathise, but isn’t that always the case? Whenever a product gets a new improved version, there’s always some poor devil who bought one the day before the announcement. :(
Dave, you must eat a lot of carrots, or live in an airplane, because I was never able to my GBA without a lighting solution outside of an airplane. Anywhere else, even daylight, I’d get a headache from the reflection any overhead light made on the screen.
The only reason the non-hardcore aren’t bitching about this Dave, is that most don’t know any better. I bought the excuse beforehand, I didn’t get angry at Nintendo until I got an Afterburner and saw what I was missing. The Afterburner was totally worth the price for me, because it made my GBA into something I actually use, regularly, rather than something I wish I could use. Heck, Nintendo might even see a sales bump in games bought after the SP comes out … and people can actually see what they’re playing.
Really, this isn’t hyperbole.
I played a lot of the old handhelds and I enjoyed them. What I am saying and the point that you always skip around is, is that I find it hard to believe that there was no good lighting solution for the GBA at the time it was developed. Myself and I am sure a few others think it was simply a profit move. Please don’t try to tell me that everyone on the design team at Nintendo looked at the GBA and said, “Wow, that’s a really great screen!”. I don’t think even you are naive enough to believe that.
Andrew is a case in point of a person that wants to play the games, but can’t stand the screen. If the screen was fine why does everyone I know own a light to go with the GBA? In the whole time we owned a GBC not once did I consider buying a light for it.
Guess what? When the NES came out it was fairly expensive because it came with two games, two controllers, the light gun, and R.O.B. Then they released a cheaper package that gave you one cart (with two games), no R.O.B. and a gay looking gun. They did this several times. Basically the same system, but guess what? There were people who preferred one over the other. Some people still went after the more expensive set because it was the bad mamma-jamma. But some people went the cheap route, they didn’t care since it played the same games.
And yes, the PS2 was obviously a replacement for the PS1 because they were completely different systems in almost every way, so get a better example next time :)