The ScooterBlog

Nintendo has two companies to look at to know why their Virtual Console is going to succeed: Microsoft and Apple, and here’s why:

• Both companies are beginning to show the way that digital distribution is the wave of the future, both for what is there now and what is already existing. Microsoft’s Live Arcade has proven to be one of the great successes of the 360 so far, and the success of the iTunes Music Store (and even limited growth of music subscription services) shows that the ability to get what you want right then, even if it’s nothing more then a digital file, is very accepted.
• IF it’s priced right, they will come. I personally would pay $2.99 per game or $9.99 a month for a subscription, but you can’t be nieve enough to think Nintendo isn’t going to add something to the equation over and above just some retro games. I would have to think that online multiplayer, maybe (just maybe) even the ability to download games to the DS, would be something that become part of the package, and would make such a price downright reasonable. People are already paying upwards of $10 to $15 for Live Arcade games, Nintendo is going to come out looking affordable no matter how you slice it.

Those are really just the business side reasons of why I think it’s going to work. Nintendo’s Revolution isn’t going to be the #1 console of this next generation, nor does it need or desire to be. As long as it has a dedicated and sizable user base (which it will), we’re going to see great things out of this product and its online capabilities.

P.S. - I didn’t get a 360 at launch, prolly will not get a PS3 at launch. I am getting a Revolution at launch!!

5 weekends in Columbus, and exactly one of them spent entirely in town … this one! Not that it wasn’t without lots of stuff for me to do.

• I’m still fussing with my computers. Turns out one of the two isn’t capable of holding a drive larger then 300 GB, and my main PC seems to either have a PCI bus that’s having issues or is simply unable to keep USB drives stable, thus I’m dropping my want to have a ton of external USB drives. The bad part of that? In order for me to hook the two 300 GB drives I have to a single computer, the only open spot is on the RAID slot, and it wants to stripe them together! That’s fine, except I have to clear two nearly full hard drives off. TONS OF BURNING! I’ve begun, and it will get done, but it’ll be hell getting there.
• Watched a couple of movies with Danielle too and spend some time with our friends Cindy and Scott up here playing Euchre. Me and Scott have extremely similar competitive and loony personalities, which means along with beating Danielle and Cindy at euchre, we prolly drove them to the brink of insanity too!

Maybe more later, I may post why I think the Nintendo Virtual Console (as the XBox Live Arcade has been) will be a massive success.