Strategies
I think that what Nintendo is doing with their next generation is really smart on their part. I mean not revealing hardly anything about it is just gonna make people wanna keep reading about it which takes the consumers mind off of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 and also makes the consumer not be able to wait to buy it. I know that that is true it has happened to me!
Matt responds: I think Nintendo's "strategy" here is perhaps smart in the short term, but may prove problematic in the long term. This, by the way, is a complaint I have leveled against the company's philosophies and business structure as a whole. Right now, we're all psyched about what the Revolution could be. Speculation is out of control. Just look around you. Theories about why the machine is so revolutionary are all over the Internet. Hell, some seriously overzealous IGN message board readers spent hours last night and hours more this morning dissecting a screen grab of my computer desktop because they thought I was hinting at Revolution secrets. Point is, the lack of information makes people go nuts and it also drives unwarranted speculation. It creates buzz in the short term, sure, but when everything is said and done, there is no chance that Revolution can live up to the hype that fans have generated for it. The controller is likely to be cool, but is it going to levitate in the air and emit a laser force field around your house? Anything short of that will probably be disappointing to fans, which is very real drawback to Nintendo's notorious secrecy. If you recall, Nintendo told the world that the mechanics in Super Mario Sunshine were so fantastic that they could not be shown to the public. When they finally were, and it was just Mario with a water pack, loads of gamers felt let down.
There's another very dangerous drawback to Nintendo's strategy. The Revolution has virtually no support from third party developers because publishers don't know what it is and they also really don't seem to care. They'd rather put their time and money into consoles with announced tech specs and available development kits. As a result, libraries of third party games are underway for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and in contrast very few for Revolution.
Finally, I don't think that a general lack of information on Revolution is distracting the majority of gamers from the impending arrival of Xbox 360 or the marketing machine that is Sony and PlayStation 3.
Nintendo is revealing more and more about the Revolution, and there should be some interesting announcements very soon. But it can't continue to take its sweet time about these things. Nobody believes that Nintendo is the savior of the industry, as it seems to want. People will buy an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 if they see some games they like on these systems. So unless the Big N really is going to retreat into its own corner of the industry and cater exclusively to 90-year-olds and teenage girls, it needs to stop speaking vaguely about this new machine and start showing it, controller included.