Project Cafe Will Have No HDD

So Nintendo wants to enter the ring to play with the Big Boys. Nintendo has stated basically that they wanted to take some of the hardcore gaming audience and put them back on their gaming console and Project Cafe is 'designed' to do that boasting powerful graphics comparable to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. What seems to be the case so far, is that Nintendo is following Microsoft's example as far as product marketing for their machine. It seems that so far, Nintendo's nex-gen console is going to have double the internal memory of the Xbox 360 Arcade model. That's right. Nintendo's new console isn't going to even have an internal HDD but rather only 8GB of internal flash memory.

Project Cafe Will Lack One of These

An alarm is sounding here but, before we start hyperventilating, we have to keep in mind that Project Cafe is still at least a year away, a year and a half at most and this isn't set in stone. Nintendo could get wise and change their mind, or maybe this is just the startup model and Nintendo have have a Premium version.

This raises a flag of concern simply because both Microsoft and Sony have learned the importance of game installing. It certainly helps with the performance of the game and if Nintendo is in fact planning to use blu-ray disc, well then we're hoping that blu-ray technology has changed a little over the years and advanced.

The Xbox 360 may be a developers friend, as Project Cafe claims to be but, when third-party and first-party developers are asked about the development of the PlayStation 3, responses now aren't what they were as many years ago. Ask Itagaki Tomonobu, creator of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, and he'll tell you certainly not.

"One more thing I would add is that I don't think that developing for the PS3 isn't hard at all. It was much harder developing for the Famicom. It's true. I mean, give someone who's developing for the PS3 a Famicom and see if they can make a game for it. They won't be able to."

"... There are two types of people out there who like to make controversial, splashy comments. There are those who are truly outspoken, and there are those who are just trying to cover up for their weaknesses. We have a saying here in Japan, 'the weaker dog barks more."

I bring that up mostly because times have definitely changed and developers have realized what the PlayStation 3 is capable and for the sake of the fact Nintendo intends to use Sony's hardware. Developers of the PlayStation 3 have stated that having blu-ray and having a HDD in every console makes a world of difference to consoles, its very convenient and is one less thing to worry about when developing for the PlayStation 3 versus developing for the Xbox 360.

The truth of the matter is simply this. The PlayStation 3 right now is the only console that permits storage space beyond 9GB. Its true, you can have multiple discs, but with games such as Final Fantasy XIII and Mass Effect 2, disc swapping is getting old. The PlayStation 3 is the minority. Games are developed and compressed to be stored on low storage capacity discs because its those discs that are the minority. If blu-ray were the majority then games would be different. Less compression and possibly longer singleplayer campaigns or more robust multiplayer modes.

It seems to me personally that Nintendo is getting off on the wrong foot. They want to get up there and pull some of their install base back, but they're Sega; in the sense that they may not have the best idea on how best to hardness and control that power especially if Sony is using blu-ray that's their technology and they're finding it necessary to install on many occasions, not all, but first-party games install to better their performance.

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