Viewing Thread:
"8mm discs - what are nintendo doing?"

I was always taught you learn from your mistakes. You would think a major company and one of the only companies in japan to turn over a profit last year would have been taught that too. Guess not. After destroying their thrid party support with over-priced development costs given to developers caused by expensive cartridges for the N64 the big N have done it again. For those of you who don't know how the games developers aquire the cd's to put their carefully crafted games onto here is the process. basically each format (psx, psx2, dc, gc etc etc) have a certain cd/dvd to which developers publish games onto. When any games designer wish to create a game they must first aquire a license (bar Pc) from the company (sony, sega etc) and then they can purchase the cd's needed and create/publish the game. the thing is with the N64 using cartridges the costs for developers to buy a cartridge was higher than for buying a cd from sony hence the severe lack of support. Well now it appears Nintendo (this is confirmed) wish to use 8mm discs rather than Cd's. This means for each disc a publisher requires from Nintendo it will cost £10 compared to £7-8 for Sony and Sega and £6 for X-box. Not much you may think! Well when a publisher needs say 2,000,000 discs then that amounts to costs of £4,000,000 higher than developing the same game for Sony. A large amount. It eally appears Nintedo remain lost in arrogance. They still beleive that if the system is easy to develop for and is a slighty better system then devlopers and publishers will be falling over each other to sign for them. wrong boys. fact is say we took Squares FF8. 7 million sales worldwide. that would equal £14million extra costs for say a gamecube. What do you think would be more important? Wasting £14m or using slighty more difficult tools to create the game for Sony?? Nintendo Nintendo Nintendo...when will you learn?

You'd think that wouldnt you... However due to Nintendos new patentded Shrink'o'ray everyone who buys a GC will be forcably shrunk to less than 2 inches high, making the disks in comparison seem rather large... (Nintendos evil plans for world domination continue)

Just noticed that the title of this thread starts "8mm discs". If they were that small, wouldn't they get lost all of the time? Surely 8cm's would be a much more suitable size.

md

U-huh... would that the like the uncrackable RoboCop 3 that came this a (hardware) doobie, the game not working without it?... Only to have a hacked version of the game avlible before the offical version hit the shops? :)

-- What is another word for synonym?

Nope... the encoding is very hard to crack, which although gives hackers more incentive to do so, should keep them at bay for a long while.

Hypothetically.

Everybody knows encoding is a waste of time though huh? ... Even Nintendo know its just a five minute reprise form piracy? :)

-- Screw the planet, save yourself.

something we agree with Armatige i would love it if Nintendo stuck with carts, but hey at least the GBA still uses them i half expected nintendo to make them midi discs.

It's not the size that makes it good agaisnt piracy, it's the actual encoding of the disc.

FUN WITH YOUR COMPUTER!

In order to see how big the discs will be, open your CD drive. There should be an inner ridge in the holder. The Gamecube disc will fit perfectly in there, I believe.

Dringo Wrote :
"1. NO pirecy no loss of money there"
If mini-DVD's are to be used for other products... mini-DVD writers ar'nt going to be too far behind? Besides... Isnt there already a doobige that allows normal DVD's to be played on MiniDVD players?

Dringo Wrote :
"2. are you sure it's more expensive i heard it was cheaper"
Dunno... I'm guessing that due to the number of DVD's manufatured Vs the number of MiniDVDs manufactured that it would be cheaper to buy a DVD than a mini-DVD?

Dringo Wrote :
"3. Midi DVD's which the nintendo optimum discs are is set to be the next thing movies will be put on so are nintendo thinking ahead?"
Doubt that will happen for a while... A lot of money has been spent advertising and gettgin DVD machines into peoples homes... The markets not really ripe for another shake up... besides... how much film time could you fit onto a mini-DVD... I know theres a fair drop in max-data storage?

Dringo Wrote :
"4. They are easier to work on remmember one of the main reason the N64 not getting 3rd party developers early on was the fact carts are harder to work on."
Wouldnt that be a reason to get the third party support in earlier... remeber copying onto a cart is just as easy as copying onto as DVD... just more expensive. The longer it takes to develop a game... the sooner developers need kit.

Dringo Wrote :
"5. Developers are stupidly rich they arn't gonna complain if it does cost a little more and did you know it costs even more on the gameboy? we are still getting Tekken Advanced so it hasn't put of Namco."
Deelopers are usualy smaler companies... distributers are richer... and as Eidos prooved last year, a couple of no-profit titles is enough to knock them over...


Dringo Wrote :
"6. Do you know the size of the discs reflects the size of the Gamecube it's tiny i think the optimum discs are fine well done ninty"
I like the mini-discs... but then again I prefered the use of carts of CDROMs... however I doubt my buying power will sway the success or failure of the machine...


Siebert wrote :

"You need to get your facts straight. Unless nowone told you, Playstation 2 games do not cost a "little", more to develop. The average Playstation 2 game costs twice as much and takes months longer to program. And those numbers are in comparison to DREAMCAST. Imagine how much faster and cheaper it will be to make games for systems that are designed with developers in mind, such as Gamecube and Xbox."

I'd heard the PS2 was hard to code on (as was if I remember correctly) the Saturn) but if thats were the cash is thats were developers will go. Its one of the X-Boxs seling points that its architecture, being so similar to a PC's will provide the easiest development path.


-- YOU! OUT OF THE GENE POOL!

You need to get your facts straight. Unless nowone told you, Playstation 2 games do not cost a "little", more to develop. The average Playstation 2 game costs twice as much and takes months longer to program. And those numbers are in comparison to DREAMCAST. Imagine how much faster and cheaper it will be to make games for systems that are designed with developers in mind, such as Gamecube and Xbox.

This is why Nintendo are using the didi discs.

1. NO pirecy no loss of money there

2. are you sure it's more expensive i heard it was cheaper

3. Midi DVD's which the nintendo optimum discs are is set to be the next thing movies will be put on so are nintendo thinking ahead?

4. They are easier to work on remmember one of the main reason the N64 not getting 3rd party developers early on was the fact carts are harder to work on.

5. Developers are stupidly rich they arn't gonna complain if it does cost a little more and did you know it costs even more on the gameboy? we are still getting Tekken Advanced so it hasn't put of Namco.

6. Do you know the size of the discs reflects the size of the Gamecube it's tiny i think the optimum discs are fine well done ninty