Whoa, where'd THIS rumor come from?!
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Whoa, where'd THIS rumor come from?!
Man, of all the rumors buzzing around in the gaming industry, and in the technology/consumer electronic industry in genreal, this is by far one that hits in the spotlight and blinds the wazoo outta ya. Take a look at this article below, and tell me that I'm dreaming, and not really seeing this rumor:
Rumormongering - Apple Could Buy Nintendo?
Posted by Zonk on Friday June 09, @11:27AM
from the idle-friday-arguments dept.
An anonymous reader writes
"CNET wonders if 'Apple is about to frag the gaming community with a revelation that could shake Microsoft to its core: Apple will buy Nintendo. What could be more quintessentially left-field Apple behaviour than buying out the US's number three games console manufacturer?'. The article goes on to compare the companies, saying 'both have followings whose brand dedication verges on the religiously devout' and design styles that are so similar that 'the Nintendo DS Lite practically looks like Jonathan Ive built it'. The writer says an Apple and Nintendo merger will 'penetrate the mainstream consumer market with Macintosh computers'. The possible outcome of a merger would be a console based around the Mac Mini. As for whether Apple have the cash to pull it off: 'Cisco was rumoured to be looking at a purchase of Nintendo earlier in the year, so the idea of Nintendo being bought is not outlandish in itself. Apple's market cap is $51.7bn (Nintendo's is $23.1bn)'"
I never thought I'd see Steve Jobs finally target Bill Gates, Creative Labs, and everyone else for that matter all at the same time. This would really be a low blow to see Apple buy out a Japanese game manufacturer with that magnitude to the world. Nintendo's as tough as leather when it comes to stuff like this, they refused Microsoft's merger, and went it alone with the XBox and X360, now look at MS. Apple may not do any better, IMHO...
Thats at best a stupid joke :-)
Apple has other things to bother now than making their life harder.
Their "alltime seller" iPod is losing in quality with each new generation that appears, their macbooks are nice as well, at least if you need something to fry your eggs during lunch and the like ... And beside that they have to fight MS on other sectors like online music etc ...
Don't think they nearly have the needed ressources to keep their core sectors and further stuff up.
Beside that: Nintendo has some quite creative heads ... would be sad if they were controlled by people thinking that "all white, round and flashy" is a good thing ;-)
What rubbish.
Agree with JP, rubbish. Having seen how badly MS have done in the console games business, why would Apple want to follow suit? Apple buying Nintendo would signal the beginning of the end for both companies and - while they've both made their share of stupid decisions - neither of them is stupid enough to do that.
"Don't underestimate stupid people, they might surprise you one day!" - Me
Apple buy Nintendo?!
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth...
"Don't underestimate stupid people, they might surprise you one day!" - Me
There is much truth in this, and normally I'm the one accusing people of underestimating stupid people. So it's only fair to admit that there is a remote possibility I may be doing the same thing here.
I heard... apple bought... orange...
hahahahah!!
Hmmm... wonders off
haha quite funny. I doubt it's true.
I've got a folder full of emails for MicroCap Stox that i can forward to anyone who feels like buying shares on the strength of these types of rumours...
Wow people believe things they read on the internet :)
Apple cannot afford Nintendo, and even if they could, they wouldn't sell out to an American company, nor do they make a habbit of putting themselves in a position ripe for a hostile takeover (again).
I agree that it'll never happen but I like the products of both companies and in some ways I wish this bogus rumour was true.
I think Nintendo should defend their honour and ritualistically behead the originator of this rumour with an ancient sword, possibly Link's.
This wouldn't really be that bad. Both Apple and Nintendo do market in similar manners. I don't think Apple could afford Nintendo either. I'd rather they stay single ;)
Hmm i've read that Apple wants to introduce a iPOD gameplatform. A.o. they also hired a known person from the game industry from lucasarts for this (can't remember his name - oh i'm tired, my head...).
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24660295 Apple cannot afford Nintendo
Got any figures? you might be totally wrong there.
Anyone else think the mac mini is almost a console too?
No, the gfx-cards is just way too bad. Even worse in the new ones.
Ummm... you know how bad the graphics are in the Wii right? they aren't any better than the gamecube's...
Piss poor sums up the technology used in nintendo's hardware.
Yes, but the gfx power of the miniMac is really bad. Actually is there something worse around which sells in noticeable numbers? About 50% of the power of the lowest ati/nvidia solution, bad drivers (the last time i've checked), no vertex shader support, shared memory,...
No how bad do you need it? Just inform yourself...intel gma950
This chip is a nightmare if you wanted to rely on a certain minimal base for 3d work on the mac. I hope they don't sell this much miniMacs and powerBooks before they update this.
Ummm... you know how bad the graphics are in the Wii right? they aren't any better than the gamecube's...
Yeah but the gamecube has some really neat games (metroid, star wars, resi evil 4, viewtiful joe etc), so I'm not too worried about graphics. Maybe I'm in the minority.
Ummm... you know how bad the graphics are in the Wii right? they aren't any better than the gamecube's...
Piss poor sums up the technology used in nintendo's hardware.
This is total rubbish. Conservative estimates place the wii at 2-3x the power of the GC. From what I've heard it's going to be a LOT more powerful than that. Nintendo have been going out of their way to make a point about graphics not being the most important factor for the next gen - for that reason they haven't been making a big deal about what the Wii can do. I believe most of the Wii stuff at E3 was actually GC hardware.
Nintendo hardware has always been superbly designed. The GC was the most elegant design of the last gen. It comfortably outperformed the PS2 and easily kept up with the XBOX (usually with better framerates) yet the hardware was simpler and cheaper to manufacture.
Nintendo know what they are doing.
Nintendo hardware has always been superbly designed. The GC was the most elegant design of the last gen. It comfortably outperformed the PS2 and easily kept up with the XBOX (usually with better framerates) yet the hardware was simpler and cheaper to manufacture.
If you exclude the first generation of GBAs due to their poor display i would agree.
Also the electric cable/power supply wasn't desgined very well...too short, too heavy...
The GBA's display wasn't poor as such, it was just the lack of a back/front light made it extremely frustrating to use. I actually fitted a front light to mine myself - there was some guy on the internet selling kits. I bet he made a killing. :)
Isn't the back lightning part of the display?! :O) I remember how annoying it was to test stuff on it...
Well I was speaking more from a developing point of view, but yes the screen on GBA was hard to see. But even then there was a good reason. Nintendo have fairly high standards where it comes to battery life. For years people have said their handhelds were 'worse' than the current rival (Lynx, GameGear, PSP etc.). But Nintendo have always understood that battery life is extremely important. And that's one of the main reasons why they've lead the field in handhelds. Every rival has been more or less crippled by poor battery life. It's not like Nintendo don't know how to make a machine with PSP level graphics - it's just that they know the power consumption is too great to be practical for the intended use. It would have been easy for them to make a handheld GC - (develop a low-power version of a great chipset which already exists, the disks are the perfect size) but it isn't yet practical.
Yeah, battery life is of the utmost importance. It/they are supposed to be portable devices, after all.
I have a handheld PC Engine that takes 6 AA batteries which only last a few hours and make the device weigh about as much as a house brick! :/
Oh, and the quality of the display is terrible, compared to modern screens.
Then they should have stayed with a monochrome display till they were able to provide a proper working colour display solution as it was only annoying always trying to be in the right light angle. And this was also annoying for developing. Such a bad display is worse than a short battery life in my opinion.
I enjoyed the lynx much more than my GBA. Chips Challenge, Gates of Zendocon, Klax were wonderful games on the lynx...much more my taste than the GBA stuff.
Well that's debatable. A lot of people got a lot of pleasure from their first gen GBA. The original GB was even worse for visibility but it was massive hit.
You might have preferred the Lynx but the public preferred weaker, monochrome graphics with superb battery life.
I can still remember developing a game on the original GB. A set of 4 duracells lasted me a whole 40hour week. The Lynx could barely manage a couple of hours on 6 batteries.
The point being, battery life WAS a deciding factor in the handheld market. Nintendo made the right decision.
Well, obviously they did something better. Otherwise things would look different. I never played a handheld when i was travelling. I only played when i was lying in my bed or visiting a friend for a linked game or so. So the battery life was never an issue for me.
As for GBA games i swapped to play them (like Driller2) on an emulator instead.
Maybe Nintendo should do a wind up handheld, like that radio invented by Trevor Balis. :P
I think many of us only ever play close to a power point. But the biggest market is kids who do take their handhelds wherever they go and often play outside (hence the market not being too sensitive to the lack of a backlight). The cost of batteries was a big factor back in the day. Rechargables had poor life and normal batteries were too expensive for most kids - it was quite common when I was a kid to have toys but no batteries beyond Boxing Day.
Nowadys with built-in high performance rechargable batteries it's probably far less of an issue.
Maybe Nintendo should do a wind up handheld, like that radio invented by Trevor Balis. :P
Yes! Yes yes yes. I've always wondered why more electronic
devices don't run off of
kinetic energy or a
wind up dial.Seriously, shaking or winding your remote control or GBA for a
few seconds every couple of days is much less hassle than
messing around with batteries.
Don't you all agree?
Yeah, the only company that's REALLY worthy of buying out Nintendo would probably be Sega, yes, that's right, Nintendo's former rival. Ever since the Dreamcast bombed, Sega's not been in the console business. With this, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. would all come from the same company that way. Sega seems to have the same creative minds that Miyamoto and Iwata seem to share. This probably could be a perfect match, IMHO.
Yeah, also wireless controllers could be power by movement too!
Right, using the Faraday principle would rule. I mean, they have Faraday Flashlights, why not Faraday Wiimotes and DS Lites? Hehe...
Yeah, the only company that's REALLY worthy of buying out Nintendo would probably be Sega, yes, that's right, Nintendo's former rival.
Are you serious? Sega went bust for a good reason. That'd be like David buying out Goliath PLC. :P Nintendo know how to make money out of this game, and they're very good at it. Respect!
I was kind of joking about the wind up handheld, but, thinking about it, why isn't this possible? Maybe I've had too much to drink?! :)