WEBVTT - The Nintendo Story: Part Four 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from half 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.840 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.040 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:21.520 I love all things tech, and it's time to revisit 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:26.639 an old favorite topic on tech Stuff. Two years ago, 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.800 back in twos sixteen, I updated a series I've been 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:35.000 doing about the company Nintendo. Now. In the first two parts, 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.640 I covered Nintendo from its origins up until about two 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.559 thousand and eleven, So two thousand eleven was when we 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:46.320 recorded those first two episodes. Chris Pallette, my original co host, 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.599 and I recorded those shows. Then in part three, I 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:53.600 covered two thousand eleven to early two thousand sixteen, but 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.000 at that stage, Nintendo had yet to come out with 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:59.720 its most recent console, which we now know, of course, 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.840 as the Nintendo Switch. Uh So today I thought it'd 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:06.720 be a good time to revisit the company yet again 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.240 and catch us up on what it's been doing over 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:11.400 the last couple of years. But first, I figure we 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.080 can do a really quick summary of where the company 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.920 came from in case you aren't eager to dig up 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.759 those old episodes and listen to them all over again. 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.840 So this is sort of the previously on tech stuff. 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:28.120 Back in the late nineteenth century, in the late eighteen hundreds, 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:33.160 and yes, that's how old Nintendo is, there was a 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:39.280 man named Fusahiro Yamauchi who founded a hanafuda cards company 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:44.000 and he called it Nintendo Copai. Hanafudo cards are used 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.520 for lots of different games in Japan. They're kind of 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.639 like Western playing cards, like poker cards in that way, 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.360 so we use those cards to play all sorts of 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.400 games like bridge or poker, or hearts or spades, and 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.960 tons of other games. Well back in the eighteen eighties, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.880 no one could possibly have foreseen the future of this 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.560 playing card company and what it would become in the 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:14.960 latter half of the twentieth century. For two generations, business 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:19.840 grew steadily, and by generations, I mean Yamauchi's son would 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:23.639 take over the business and then his grandson would take 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.960 over the business. It actually followed the family line. By 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:31.480 the nineteen fifties, Fusahiro's grandson and the third president of Nintendo, 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.639 Hiroshi Yamauchi, was heading a company that was the dominant 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:40.720 producer of plastic playing cards in Japan. But Hiroshi Yamachi 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.600 recognized that there was a need to diversify the business, 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.760 so he made a licensing deal with Disney to print 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:52.440 the famous company's cartoon characters on these playing cards. This 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.840 actually opened up a new market for Nintendo, because up 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.760 to that point the cards were largely the realm of gamblers, 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:04.040 but now with popular Disney characters on cards, there was 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:08.120 suddenly this huge appeal to a younger audience. Nintendo also 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.519 produced books that laid out rules for new card games 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.240 that were suitable for kids, so that kids just didn't 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:20.040 become hardened gamblers using classic Disney characters now. While this 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:25.880 continued on, the company began to launch different businesses and 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:29.080 lots of different industries in an attempt to diversify, because 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.480 at that point, Yamachi saw that the playing card business 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.320 was very niche oriented. He actually saw other playing card 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.680 factories while he toured the world and realized they were 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.240 all very small operations and that if he stuck with 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.800 that one business, it would limit Nintendo too much. Unfortunately, 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:51.480 most of these other ventures Nintendo entered into failed miserably 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.520 in the market, so the playing card business was drying up, 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.760 and their various attempts to diversify even going into things 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:04.360 like hotel els and uh and and vehicles. None of 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.080 that was working out. That's when an engineer named gun 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.800 Pay your KOI helped inject some life back into the business. 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.320 He created an extending arm. He was working in Nintendo 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.000 in a manufacturing plant, and he took various pieces and 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.960 he created essentially kind of a robotic arm or an extender, 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.240 like a grabber sort of thing. And people saw it 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:28.359 and thought, well, that's kind of neat, you know what, 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:31.040 I think kids would really like that. So the company 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.200 decided to make a consumer version as a toy, and 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:38.160 Nintendo entered into the toy making business in earnest and 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.240 really the company still considers itself to be a toy company. 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.560 By the late nineties seventies, Nintendo had returned to a 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.359 more stable place in the industry, as was one of 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.719 the few companies producing toys at that time in Japan. 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.279 As computers and video games started to emerge, Nintendo got 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.120 into those as well, and at first the company acted 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.680 as a distributor for other ducts like the Magna Vox Odyssey. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.200 Then the company began to produce arcade games like the 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:10.800 legendary Donkey Kong for actual video game arcades, not for 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:15.080 home use. Following the arcade game success, they began to 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.320 make video game cartridges for various home systems, like the 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.159 Atari twenty six hundred, and then company executives decided it 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.960 was time for Nintendo to make a console of its 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:30.680 very own instead of making games for other platforms. But 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:34.760 it was pretty bad timing all things considered, because Nintendo 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.840 was just getting into developing a console as the market 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.520 in the United States was headed toward a major collapse. 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:46.040 In the early nineteen eighties, the US market was oversaturated 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.479 with various consoles like you Had the A twenty six hundred, 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.799 the Atari fifty two hundred, the Intellivision, the Colliquo Vision, 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.840 and tons more. Plus there were home computers that were 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.280 coming out around this same time, like the t Lash 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.240 four A, the Commodore sixty four, and the Apple two. 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.320 Low quality controls and companies like Atari meant that there 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.679 was also a flood of substandard games that were rushed 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.200 to market in an effort to make a quick buck. 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.440 The consumer market couldn't sustain this pace, and by three 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:20.680 the whole thing was caving in on itself as consumers 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.280 got tired of feeling like they were being fleeced. Stores 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.760 were even beginning to refuse to carry games and systems 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.920 because of this bad impression. So this was not the 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.880 best time to debut a console, and yet Nintendo continued. 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.200 They persevered, and they introduced the Fama com which is 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.320 better known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System. 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.240 In the US, the company paired this video game console 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:51.120 with a robot of questionable utility. This was actually a 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.239 ploy to get toy stores to carry the Nintendo, since 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.760 they were awfully shy about getting back into the home 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.640 video game market after that crash in ninety eight three. 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.800 But the plan worked and Nintendo earned itself a spot 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.320 in video game history, creating some of the most beloved 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.080 franchises in the video game world in the process. You 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.640 can listen to the first two episodes of the Nintendo 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.760 Story UH to hear the full account of what I 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.640 just summarized, plus obviously I go into a lot more detail. However, 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.040 we are going to skip ahead a bit. We're just 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:28.200 gonna acknowledge that Nintendo produced several consoles. There was the 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:33.480 Super Nintendo, the Nintendo sixty four, the GameCube, the Wei, 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:37.760 and the Weiu, not to mention numerous handheld game systems 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.600 since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. At the 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.480 time of my last recording, the most recent system on 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:49.280 the market was the Weiu, which, while innovative, had failed 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.720 to make a real impact on gamers. In fact, we 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.400 Use sales hit somewhere around thirteen and a half million 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.360 towards the end of twenty seventeen. That actually puts it 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.440 at the bottom of Nintendo's consoles in terms of sales. 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:07.160 Contrasted with the Wei, the predecessor to the We You, 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:12.200 and that was the best selling home console Nintendo ever produced. 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:17.480 The we sold more than one hundred one million units. 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:21.000 The only Nintendo device to out sell the we was 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.920 the handheld Nintendo d S, which sold an astonishing one 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:28.880 fifty four million units, putting it right behind the PlayStation 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.800 two for best selling video game system of all time. 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:34.800 It's hard to see that we You as anything other 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.080 than a commercial failure. One other thing I should mention 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.480 that I covered in the third episode of the Nintendo 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.760 Story was the passing of sartorro I Watta. He had 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.080 served as Nintendo's fourth president, the first one not of 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:51.240 the Amachi line from two thousand twelve to two thousand fifteen. 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.000 A Wata gets a lot of credit for Nintendo's focus 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:58.320 on creating accessible and innovative methods of playing games rather 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:02.000 than on raw computing power or graphics, so contrast that 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:05.600 with like the Xbox or the PlayStation consoles. His death 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:09.600 and from complications due to bile duct cancer shocked the 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.959 video game industry. And what a successor and the fifth 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:18.040 president of Nintendo is Tatsumi Kimishima. Kimishima worked at san 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.560 Hua Bank of Japan for more than two decades before 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:24.960 he transitioned his career in a big way because in 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:29.120 two thousand he was elected the Chief financial Officer of 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:32.960 the Pokemon Company. So he went from working in a 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.679 financial institution for twenty seven years to becoming the CFO 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.079 centered around cartoon characters that are forced to fight one 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.679 another for our entertainment. It's quite the leap. In two 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:49.480 thousand two, the first president of Nintendo of America, Minoru Arakawa, 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:54.840 he retired, so Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that Kimishima was the 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.760 ideal candidate to head that part of Nintendo's business, and 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:02.920 Kimishima began the second president of Nintendo of America. In 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.880 two thousand and six, he became the CEO of Nintendo 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.400 of America. Then he changed over to become the managing 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.760 director of Nintendo. When I Wada passed away suddenly in 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.880 two thousand fifteen, he was selected to become the company's 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:18.240 fifth president. It was Kimmishima who would introduced the next 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.480 Nintendo console to the world. When I recorded part three 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.840 of the series back in we knew there was a 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.280 new Nintendo console on the way, but we didn't really 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.960 have any details other than a code name. In March, 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.960 Nintendo called the new console the n X, that being 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:41.079 its code name, and earnings call in April sixteen revealed 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:43.960 that the company planned to have a worldwide rollout of 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.040 this new console by March of seventeen, but there was 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.840 still no mention of a name. This would hold true 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.760 all the way through E three. That's the big Video 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.840 Game trade show that takes place in Los Angeles, California 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:01.640 each year. Nintendo's booth included a section themed after the 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.880 upcoming legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. Now, 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.440 while Breath of the Wild would become a flagship title, 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.440 a launch title for the Nintendo Switch, the new hardware 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:15.280 was nowhere to be found on the show floor, at 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.400 least not for the average attendee. Breath of the Wild 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.120 would also get a release on the previous generation of hardware, 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.079 that being the Wii You That was the version that 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.280 attendees got to try out while they were on the 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.080 show floor. This led some in the video game journalism 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.880 world to question Nintendo's strategy. You have a new console 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.160 on the way, so some analysts are saying, why are 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.880 you releasing a game that would be a killer title 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:47.120 for this new console on your older hardware, which presumably 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.840 would strain the capabilities of this older hardware to the 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.480 limit in order to create a comparable experience to the 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.959 one gamers would have on a brand new system. Now, 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.200 to be fair, Breath of the Wild started out as 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.520 a we U title that was the beginning of the project. 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.240 It was only when Nintendo was starting to develop the 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.280 Switch that they said, let's also develop a version of 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.920 this title for our next generation console. So it wasn't 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.920 like Nintendo set out from the beginning to create a 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.200 splintered experience, but there were a lot of theories that 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.319 were going on around that time. Some people said, well, 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.959 the we use sales numbers are so low that Nintendo's 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:28.800 just not worried about cannibalizing its own sales because there 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:31.400 aren't enough we U units out there for it to 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.640 make a huge impact. Other people said, well, maybe this 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.439 was an attempt to sell a few more we U 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:43.679 consoles before Nintendo stopped producing them entirely. Uh. Either way, 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.319 Breath of the Wild came out both for the we 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:48.960 U and the Nintendo Switch at the same time, that 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:53.600 being March of Seen. Effectively, it was the first Nintendo 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.280 game for the Switch and the final Nintendo game for 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.200 the we U. And by Nintendo game, I mean game 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:04.520 actually developed by the company Nintendo, not through a third 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:08.120 party that that then published on Nintendo. But I'll chat 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.800 more about Breath of the Wild when we get to Seen. 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:15.400 Back to E three now. Traditionally, companies take the opportunity 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.040 at E three to host enormous press events and announced 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.280 upcoming hardware and game titles. Nintendo has done this in 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:26.800 the past, but more recently Nintendo has started to distance 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.520 itself from the media circus that is Press day at 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.680 E three, opting instead to broadcast some live streamed announcements 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.600 over the Internet. This included a lengthy demo of Breath 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:39.800 of the Wild, in which the company showed off the 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:44.560 open world style of gameplay, as well as new elements 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.800 never before seen in Zelda games, and the company also 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.200 announced that a new mobile game was on the way 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:54.280 to Android and iOS phones that summer. That game would 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.120 be Pokemon Go. Now I've done a full episode about 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.280 Pokemon Go, but for those who somehow missed out on 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.200 this game, it encouraged players to venture out into the 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:08.600 real world to hunt virtual Pokemon monsters. You'd use poke 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.600 balls to attempt to capture these monsters and add them 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.440 to your Poka decks. I'm told these words make sense. 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.480 The game featured several other items and gameplay elements, many 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.240 of which were designed to encourage players to purchase virtual 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.880 tools that they could then use within the game, and 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.080 it linked real world areas of interest, such as public 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:33.360 art installations, with important in game sites like gyms, where 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.360 the three factions within the game could battle it out 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:39.960 over which team ran the facility. Pokemon Go would become 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.800 a big hit for about a month, encouraging people to 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.760 wander blindly around while flicking at their screens in an 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.720 effort to capture rare Pokemon critters. I remember being somewhat 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.760 irritated as I tried to walk to or from work 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.320 and having the maneuver around groups of people standing in 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.400 the middle of the sidewalk trying to catch yet another 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.320 Piggy or Boba sor or whatever the heck they were called. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:03.400 But all right, this is where I have to admit 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.400 I also played it. I had I had the game too. 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.520 I was one of those jerks. The game still is 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.400 going to this day, and there are a lot of 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.760 people who still play it. Later generations of Pokemon monsters 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.200 have been added to the game over time. I think 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.480 the overall popularity of the game has been in a 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.280 slight decline, but it's left a hardcore group of enthusiasts 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.080 who continue to try and catch them all. Still, this 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:30.640 game brought a lot of attention to mobile gaming and 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.200 also to augmented reality. I think you could argue that 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.480 the augmented reality aspect of the game was pretty basic 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.000 in its implementation, but it's still required people to merge 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:45.360 real world experiences within game experiences, so I think it's 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.600 still counts. Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Go were 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.360 the two big announcements at E three, but the world 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.080 was still waiting to find out what the next Nintendo 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:59.640 console would be called, and Nintendo had another classic trick 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.080 but sleeve to reveal a little later that same summer. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.360 I'll tell you more about that in just a second, 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.480 but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.720 In July, Nintendo announced it would offer up a limited 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:24.280 run of a special console, the nes Mini. It looked 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.640 like a manager version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.880 here in America. In other markets that more closely resembled 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.120 the original colors and formed factor of the Famicom system. 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.520 The emulator had thirty games coded onto it and could 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.720 hold saves for those games, which already put it ahead 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.120 of the original system it was copying. The cost of 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.920 the nes Mini was sixty dollars here in America, making 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.040 it about two dollars a game, and those games included 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.760 a lot of classic bestsellers in Nintendo's history, such as 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:59.479 Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, the fiendishly Difficult 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:03.320 Ghost in Goblins, Donkey Kong, which was the game that 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:05.760 really gave Nintendo its start in video games in the 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.000 first place, and punch Out, my personal favorite of the 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.560 games from that era. The console shipped with a single 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:18.040 in NES Classic controller with a notoriously short chord. People 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.679 really complained about how short that controller's chord was. It 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:24.760 was designed to copy the old rectangular controllers of the 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.000 original in E s. It's also compatible with the WE 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.040 Classic Controller Pro, so if you have one of those, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.600 you could hook that up to the NES Classic Mini. 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.480 The announcement revealed that the consoles would become available in November. 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:43.800 A month before that, various retailers began to offer pre 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.960 sale reservations for the system. They sold out practically as 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.680 soon as they became available. The ne NES Classic Mini 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:54.359 became a sought after item. Now. I was able to 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.000 get one, but only because I happened to get a 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.600 message from the Amazon Treasure truck, which stopped here in 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.560 Atlanta with a few reserved systems at a regular retail price. 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.320 But other people were not so lucky and either had 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.800 to go without or cough up ridiculous amounts of money 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:15.359 on sites like eBay. Nintendo had only produced about two 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:19.520 point three million units. That sounds like a lot, but 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.840 it didn't come close to meeting demand. The original nes 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.640 sold more than sixty million units when it was still 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.320 in production. To make matters worse, the company announced on 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.640 well right around April seen that it had discontinued the 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.879 ne NES Classic, which made fans go bonkers because there 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:43.960 were so many who wanted to get one and didn't 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:47.040 have the chance. It also drove up the price for 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:52.160 the remaining units considerably on those resale sites like eBay. Later, 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.640 Nintendo would say that by mid eighteen it would begin 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.399 to produce more in NES Classic editions. This was likely 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.040 in response not just to the fans who felt left 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.560 out because they never had a chance to buy one 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.119 of them, but also to combat the rising market of 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:12.320 third party clones that were springing up. These cloned systems 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.760 often used emulators that were not optimized to run Nintendo games, 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.760 so they would create an unsatisfactory gaming experience for anyone 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.719 who bought them. As of the recording of this podcast, 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.080 Nintendo has yet to make more of these available, but 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.840 a visit to the product's website says they're coming in 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:33.920 the summer of One other thing that happened with the 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.240 NES Classic was that hackers learned how to access the 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:41.120 system's memory and add in new games. There have been 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.199 several hacks that allow a NES Classic Mini owners the 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:49.360 chance to add their consoles library and increase it dramatically, 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.640 including using titles that were not on the original in Nes. 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.719 This is the point in the podcast where I mentioned 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.840 that while you certainly can hack your in NES Classic 0:19:59.880 --> 0:20:03.040 to do these things, there's always a risk involved with 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.320 such activities. If you break your system, you may find 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.840 that you've got a sixty dollar paper weight and very 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.000 little chance of turning it back into any sort of 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.080 useful piece of hardware. So just be careful and know 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.840 what you're getting into before you start messing about. In October, 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.680 Nintendo finally announced that the n X console would officially 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:28.720 bear the name Nintendo Switch. The Switch is a hybrid console, 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.840 meaning it can be both a docked console that uses 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.960 a television as the display, or you can undock it 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.560 and use the device as a handheld gaming system. The 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:41.639 handheld version of the console looks like a video screen 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:46.160 flanked by two detachable game controllers called joy Con controllers. 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:50.960 Each controller has a thumbstick and buttons. Nintendo announced that 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.000 the system would also support a more traditional game controller 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:59.119 similar to Xbox controllers, called a Nintendo Switch Pro controller. 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:03.080 While Sintendo didn't initially announced the tech specs for the switch, 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:08.080 those details did later become public. With the joy cons attached, 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:13.119 the switch measures four inches or ten centimeters tall, nine 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:17.119 point four inches wide, or about twenty four cimeters and 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.639 half an inch thick or one point to seven centimeters. 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.639 That doesn't take into consideration the height of the thumbstick, however, 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:28.200 so if you take those into account, the thickness increases 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.600 to one point one two inches or two point eight centimeters. 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:35.640 It weighs about point eighty eight pounds, so not even 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.600 a full pound. It's about point four kilograms with the 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:42.600 joy cons attached. The Nintendo Switch has an in Video 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.720 tegra X one s o C as the brains of 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.639 the machine. S o C stands for system on a chip. 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.359 This is an integration of several different pieces you would 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.000 find in your typical computer device, such as a central 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.560 processing unit more on that in a second, a graphics 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:04.159 processing unit, a memory controller, and some other components, but 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:07.120 they would all be put on a single chip. This 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.760 saves space and it's great for things like portable devices. 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:15.440 The CPU powering the Nintendo Switch is an arm cortex, 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.560 a fifty seven with four processing cores, meaning it's a 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.840 quad core processor. And just to remind you guys, that 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:26.080 means the CPU can break up certain types of computational 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.320 problems into smaller problems that each core can tackle individually. 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.840 Not all computational problems work this way, but many that 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:37.360 are related to video games fall into that category. One 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:39.840 day I'll have to do a full episode on ARM 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:42.880 processors and the company behind them, but as a quick 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.000 and dirty explanation, I'll simplify it to say that ARM 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.920 processors are typically less complex than the type you find 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.399 in desktop computers, such as those that use Intel's X 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:57.360 eight six architecture. They consume less power and they generate 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:01.040 less heat than those more complicated CP use, which makes 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:05.120 them ideal for mobile devices. The graphics processing unit has 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.960 two hundred fifty six cores. It's also KUDA enabled or 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:11.879 c U D A KUDA as an acronym that stands 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:16.440 for a Compute Unified Device Architecture, and it's an Application 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.639 Programming interface or a p I from Nvidia. The purpose 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.879 of KUDA is to give developers access to a hardware's 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:28.639 capabilities so that the software the developers design runs smoothly 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:32.479 on that hardware. When docked, the switches GPU runs at 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.560 a max clock speed of seven sixty eight mega hurts. 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:39.119 In handheld mode, it down shifts to three hundred seven 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:42.080 point to mega hurts. The switch is also home to 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.959 several sensors, such as an accelerometer and a brightness sensor 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:49.159 that allows not just for dynamic adjustments, but also the 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.639 potential for gameplay mechanics further on, so you might have 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:55.399 a game that relies on you turning the switch this 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:58.959 way or that in handheld mode, or going outside into 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:02.720 bright sunlight in some cases. The display on the handheld 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:05.800 switch device is six point two inches on the diagonal 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.200 and has a resolution of twelve eighty by seven twenty pixels. 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:11.840 It also has multi touch support for up to ten 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:14.960 points of contact. When you dock the switch, it sends 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:18.400 video out at ten a DP resolution and sixty frames 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.600 a second natively, though many games run at a frame 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:24.600 rate much lower than sixty. The system has a pair 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.159