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It is mostly credited to Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy: "Yokoi articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology". [...] "Withered technology"

by GuiA 10y ago

It is mostly credited to Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy: "Yokoi articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology". [...] "Withered technology" in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. "Lateral thinking" refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview he suggested that expensive cutting edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_with_Withered_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_... Nintendo consoles have always been a bit behind technologically; but I think this became really accentuated with the Wii, which was by design not that far ahead of the Game Cube- when the rest of the industry went full steam ahead fighting on specs.

M_Grey 10y ago
I think there's a bit of a darker side as well. The Wii was so unbelievably successful, and profitable that it seems to have created a kind of corporate-level of addiction, and subsequent profit-seeking behavior. The Wii was underpowered, quirky, but just happened to hit all of the notes that a ton of people who hadn't played games before (and would later move on to playing on phones and tablets) were looking for. Most of all, they made a profit per unit sale of the Wii, when the standard at the time was (is?) to sell consoles at a loss and make it up on fees and sales of games. They made profit on the base Wii, then they profited from all of the other shit they made up to sell for it. When the time came to move on from that gold mine to something new, they predictably tried to strike gold a second time. They didn't. Now they're trying a third time, and I suspect it will end badly for them. They've increasingly lost sight of what made them great, blinded by the allure of unbelievably quick and vast quantities of hard cash.
- lotyrin 10y ago
  From what I understand, they can readily afford to make these bets though. If Switch turns out not to be another Wii, but rather a WiiU, that's no sweat to them and they can easily figure something else out.
  - pidg 10y ago
    "Nintendo have $10.5 billion in the bank – enough for it to take a $257 million loss every year until 2052." http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-not-doomed/ http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-not-doomed/
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      Them and Apple... two companies so swaddled in money that they can't even hear their consumers anymore.
      - glhaynes 10y ago
        Shareholders aren't impressed by "our quarterly losses only burned through a tiny portion of our stockpile", though. The pressure on Nintendo to deliver with the Switch is quite high.
- MAGZine 10y ago
  Nintendo has a history of doing quirky things, in an effort to differentiate themselves. They've always been innovative. - Directional Pad (NES) - Shoulder buttons on controller (SNES) - third handle on a controller and controllers with expansion slots (N64) - portable gaming systems (starting with gameboy, which didn't even have a backlit screen) - subsequent iterations that included: folding designs (SP), Touch screens for interactivity (DS), game sharing (DS), 3D (3DS, designed before 3D was "a thing") - RFID out-of-game experiences (Amiibos) - Innovative nunchuck design where moving the controller is an axis of control (Wii) - A second-screen experience (Wii U) - ... and these are just the recent/well known innovations. I'm sure I'm missing many (link cable, anyone?) So, basically, Nintendo has always tried to push the envelope with their consoles. Nintendo isn't interested in making a boring "not-a-pc-i-swear" console. Nintendo hasn't lost sight of what made them great. In fact, I'd argue that they're still very much on that path. The day we see uninteresting hardware is the day Nintendo has strayed from what made them great.
  - saltvedt 10y ago
    You forgot the quirkiest thing of all, the Nintendo Power Glove [0] released in 1989. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
    - bartc 10y ago
      And the NES robot, R.O.B. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B.
      - braveo 10y ago
        And Virtual Boy :)
        pdpi 10y ago
        And the Superscope.
    - 10y ago
agumonkey 10y ago
The SNES CPU was underpowered compared to the Genesis. But the overall system yielded better gaming experience. It's similar to Apple lesser RAM numbers compared to the market, yet iPhone are still smoother globally.
- OD_ 10y ago
  The SNES is not underpowered compared to the genesis if you compare them as a whole and not just spec for spec like comparing mhz on a CPU. Console hardware is made for running games and are not general computing devices. The snes hardware had many hardware supported graphical modes that allowed it to push the envelope without relying on a beefier CPU, the most famous of which is Mode 7 which allowed the pseudo 3d you see in games like F-Zero, the FF world maps, Mario Kart, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG and so on. And then there was this very common practice on SNES to embed coprocessors and DSP on the game cartridge, which is what allowed the graphical effects of Star Fox and Yoshi's Island notably. There was no such practice on the Genesis. > The list of Super NES enhancement chips demonstrates the overall design plan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, whereby the console's hardware designers had made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console. This standardized selection of chips was available to increase system performance and features for each game cartridge. As increasingly superior chips became available throughout the SNES's vintage market years, this strategy originally provided a cheaper and more versatile way of maintaining the system's market lifespan when compared to Nintendo's option of having included a much more expensive CPU or a more obsolete stock chipset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... As far as graphical capabilities were concerned, the SNES ecosystem was definitely more powerful. By the time Sega considered the idea of extending the Genesis with the 32X it was already too late into the console lifecycle to matter and flopped (very close to the release of the Sega Saturn and 1 to 2 years before the Nintendo 64, depending on your region [NA, EU, JP]). There was also the Sega CD but all it did is enable a library of not-games pseudo-interactive movies.
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    The SNES is not underpowered compared to the genesis if you compare them as a whole and not just spec for spec like comparing mhz on a CPU. This is literally what the parent said phrased differently.
Jweb_Guru 10y ago
The SNES, N64, and the GameCube were not really behind technologically (they were different from their competitors, but not behind). The Wii was the first Nintendo console that was clearly just flat out technically inferior to all of its competitors.
- Xixi 10y ago
  I think the GameCube was actually ahead of the PlayStation 2 and behind the XBox in terms of raw power. But it might have had other limitations that I'm unaware of.
  - myko 10y ago
    I think people mistakenly believe it was less powerful due to its small size and cutesy shape. Personally I love the GameCube shape but I recall people complaining about it looking like a child's toy.
  - Volt 10y ago
    It was very close to the Xbox in terms of its graphical capabilities. The major advantage the Xbox had was its hardware shaders.
swasheck 10y ago
I like this utilitarian perspective and believe it could strike a good content/profitability balance if done correctly. Constantly pushing new hardware specs is what has allowed the novelty of franchises to wear off into tired rehashes with better graphics. So we have to buy new hardware to push the new rendering engine that powers the new Call of Duty game that is ... the same as the previous 3 Call of Duty games, with more realistic 'splosions and faces. If a company could, and would, pour its resources into a novel concept that leveraged existing, known technology, then I could be pretty happy with that. I don't like having to buy/accumulate more "stuff" but that's what we're being sold. The closest I've seen Nintendo come to allowing this "Lateral Thinking ..." philosophy was with Xenoblade Chronicles X. Otherwise I've been wholly disappointed with the Wii U and the Wii before it (once the novelty wore off).

by GuiA 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

I think there's a bit of a darker side as well. The Wii was so unbelievably successful, and profitable that it seems to have created a kind of corporate-level of addiction, and subsequent profit-seeking behavior. The Wii was underpowered, quirky, but just happened to hit all of the notes that a ton of people who hadn't played games before (and would later move on to playing on phones and tablets) were looking for. Most of all, they made a profit per unit sale of the Wii, when the standard at the time was (is?) to sell consoles at a loss and make it up on fees and sales of games. They made profit on the base Wii, then they profited from all of the other shit they made up to sell for it. When the time came to move on from that gold mine to something new, they predictably tried to strike gold a second time. They didn't. Now they're trying a third time, and I suspect it will end badly for them. They've increasingly lost sight of what made them great, blinded by the allure of unbelievably quick and vast quantities of hard cash.

lotyrin 10y ago
From what I understand, they can readily afford to make these bets though. If Switch turns out not to be another Wii, but rather a WiiU, that's no sweat to them and they can easily figure something else out.
- pidg 10y ago
  "Nintendo have $10.5 billion in the bank – enough for it to take a $257 million loss every year until 2052." http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-not-doomed/ http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-not-doomed/
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Them and Apple... two companies so swaddled in money that they can't even hear their consumers anymore.
    - glhaynes 10y ago
      Shareholders aren't impressed by "our quarterly losses only burned through a tiny portion of our stockpile", though. The pressure on Nintendo to deliver with the Switch is quite high.
MAGZine 10y ago
Nintendo has a history of doing quirky things, in an effort to differentiate themselves. They've always been innovative. - Directional Pad (NES) - Shoulder buttons on controller (SNES) - third handle on a controller and controllers with expansion slots (N64) - portable gaming systems (starting with gameboy, which didn't even have a backlit screen) - subsequent iterations that included: folding designs (SP), Touch screens for interactivity (DS), game sharing (DS), 3D (3DS, designed before 3D was "a thing") - RFID out-of-game experiences (Amiibos) - Innovative nunchuck design where moving the controller is an axis of control (Wii) - A second-screen experience (Wii U) - ... and these are just the recent/well known innovations. I'm sure I'm missing many (link cable, anyone?) So, basically, Nintendo has always tried to push the envelope with their consoles. Nintendo isn't interested in making a boring "not-a-pc-i-swear" console. Nintendo hasn't lost sight of what made them great. In fact, I'd argue that they're still very much on that path. The day we see uninteresting hardware is the day Nintendo has strayed from what made them great.
- saltvedt 10y ago
  You forgot the quirkiest thing of all, the Nintendo Power Glove [0] released in 1989. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
  - bartc 10y ago
    And the NES robot, R.O.B. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B.
    - braveo 10y ago
      And Virtual Boy :)
      - pdpi 10y ago
        And the Superscope.
  - 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

The SNES CPU was underpowered compared to the Genesis. But the overall system yielded better gaming experience. It's similar to Apple lesser RAM numbers compared to the market, yet iPhone are still smoother globally.

OD_ 10y ago
The SNES is not underpowered compared to the genesis if you compare them as a whole and not just spec for spec like comparing mhz on a CPU. Console hardware is made for running games and are not general computing devices. The snes hardware had many hardware supported graphical modes that allowed it to push the envelope without relying on a beefier CPU, the most famous of which is Mode 7 which allowed the pseudo 3d you see in games like F-Zero, the FF world maps, Mario Kart, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG and so on. And then there was this very common practice on SNES to embed coprocessors and DSP on the game cartridge, which is what allowed the graphical effects of Star Fox and Yoshi's Island notably. There was no such practice on the Genesis. > The list of Super NES enhancement chips demonstrates the overall design plan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, whereby the console's hardware designers had made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console. This standardized selection of chips was available to increase system performance and features for each game cartridge. As increasingly superior chips became available throughout the SNES's vintage market years, this strategy originally provided a cheaper and more versatile way of maintaining the system's market lifespan when compared to Nintendo's option of having included a much more expensive CPU or a more obsolete stock chipset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... As far as graphical capabilities were concerned, the SNES ecosystem was definitely more powerful. By the time Sega considered the idea of extending the Genesis with the 32X it was already too late into the console lifecycle to matter and flopped (very close to the release of the Sega Saturn and 1 to 2 years before the Nintendo 64, depending on your region [NA, EU, JP]). There was also the Sega CD but all it did is enable a library of not-games pseudo-interactive movies.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  The SNES is not underpowered compared to the genesis if you compare them as a whole and not just spec for spec like comparing mhz on a CPU. This is literally what the parent said phrased differently.

Jweb_Guru 10y ago

The SNES, N64, and the GameCube were not really behind technologically (they were different from their competitors, but not behind). The Wii was the first Nintendo console that was clearly just flat out technically inferior to all of its competitors.

Xixi 10y ago
I think the GameCube was actually ahead of the PlayStation 2 and behind the XBox in terms of raw power. But it might have had other limitations that I'm unaware of.
- myko 10y ago
  I think people mistakenly believe it was less powerful due to its small size and cutesy shape. Personally I love the GameCube shape but I recall people complaining about it looking like a child's toy.
- Volt 10y ago
  It was very close to the Xbox in terms of its graphical capabilities. The major advantage the Xbox had was its hardware shaders.

swasheck 10y ago

I like this utilitarian perspective and believe it could strike a good content/profitability balance if done correctly. Constantly pushing new hardware specs is what has allowed the novelty of franchises to wear off into tired rehashes with better graphics. So we have to buy new hardware to push the new rendering engine that powers the new Call of Duty game that is ... the same as the previous 3 Call of Duty games, with more realistic 'splosions and faces. If a company could, and would, pour its resources into a novel concept that leveraged existing, known technology, then I could be pretty happy with that. I don't like having to buy/accumulate more "stuff" but that's what we're being sold. The closest I've seen Nintendo come to allowing this "Lateral Thinking ..." philosophy was with Xenoblade Chronicles X. Otherwise I've been wholly disappointed with the Wii U and the Wii before it (once the novelty wore off).