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"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?

Somehow I suspect that games will stay the same price though huh?

Something *sounds* a bit fishy...

Ah... it's the post.

You see, the reason the things are so high, are LICENSING COSTS! And believe it or not, has nothing to do with the size of the disc.

Nintendo have already promised that the costs WILL be lower than those of the PS2, and will match the X-Box.

So happiness all round.

Hope this clears a few things up. Any more questions?

the gamecube with dvd playback ting will only be released in japan. But who knows maybe if the gamecube does well here we might see it.

Will it really cost developers 10 pounds & Sony & Sega 6pound for the disk and royalties!?!? Even though they are purchasing in bulk, and selling upward of a million units per game? Wow... After sticking on the price of developers, disributors fees and shop markup... no wonder games are so overpriced..


But your not wrong, the overpriced royalties, and unusal medai do seem to strike European doom for Nintendo...

As for piracy... I have heard that after the GC release thee will bea standard DVD & GC machine on the market (with mini-DVD and satndard DVD using the same drive (since a lot of people are buying the PS2 for the PS2 (& backward compatibility PS1) & DVD drive combo.. which if true, will mean priacy for all! )

They'll make that money back due to the impossibility (so Nintendo say) of Piracy!

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?