Sunday, June 12, 2005

Living on the Trailing Edge of Technology.

I recently helped my neighbor install a Nintendo 64 for their grandson. They are decidely non technical and needed a small amount of help. After setting up the system, this got me thinking about living on the trailing edge of technology. The Nintendo64 is the predessor to the Game Cube. The next Nintendo console is going to be called Revolution. I played a few games which were mostly the puzzle sort and geared for kids. Nintendo's design philosophy has always been such that they focus on playable games. As a result their games have a longevity that you don't often see in other platforms. I was playing a puzzle based game and realized that well designed games like this would be enjoyable for decades. While the current FPS games such as Halo, Doom 3 etc won't retain much playability in the long term, a well designed game always retains it's playability.

So I went to www.ebay.com and picked up a Nintendo 64 and 20 or so games. As I wanted to stay away from game that wouldn't age well I stayed mostly in the puzzle area. One benefit of the trailing edge of technology, is that your dollar goes a lot further. The N64 was released in June 1996. Remarkably the games have aged well (or rather the technical had progressed far enough that further marginal improvements don't add much to the game experience). I believe as technology continues to improve, that living on the trailing edge will be enough for most people. Clearly, new products like the Sony Playstation Portable or PSP will continue to drive innovation. But with good game design there's still fun to be had at the trailing edge of technology.