Project Cafe

Remember sitting at the arcade many years ago sinking quarters into replaying the same level of Donky Kong over and over and over until you finally completed the game. Do you remember exactly how much money you spent on that game? Did you spend your weeks work paycheck covering the costs? Then perhaps you're much older than I thought you are.

Maybe you remember sitting down and playing the first Super Mario Bros game on a gaming unit that could actually be stored on or just under your television. In order to ready your television, you had to get up and turn the dial on your TV to channel 3. Maybe you remember popping a racing game into the unit and playing it using the Power Glove. Or maybe you remember blast processing with three Motorola Processors and 16-Bit graphics and the blue blur, Streets of Rage and Comix Zone. They were never on your Nintendo. In fact, the console wars seemed to have begun then as far as I can remember. You were either Nintendo, or your weren't.

Maybe you remember The Legend of Zelda, Starfox and Metroid competing on a 16-Bit console called 'Super Nintendo.' Or you remember the first time Mario appeared in a 3D platform game. Perhaps you remember the Game Boy, Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance or heaven forbid the Virtual Boy. The Gamecube or (Dolphin)? Or maybe even perhaps the release of the Wii that was impossible to get your hands on for the longest time. You'd either sit in line and wait, go to a store that was selling them and having to sit a few hours waiting until they would draw your number and watching the family doctor walk by with a console he was giving his kids for Christmas and you sat there watching him walk by with it? Maybe you sat out in the cold and waited hours to get one or maybe you were in store and one just so happened to be sitting on a shelf. You asked the associate if it was a display box and he told "No, there's a console inside there." You knew it was your chance to nab it, so you did, got home and plugged it in to experience total motion control gaming for the first time and then realized most of the software just wasn't you?

Well, Nintendo has been around for many years. They're in the gaming industry and the business of hardware and software in video games. But, to the best of my knowledge, that's all they're into. They're not a company like Microsoft that makes an operating system that powers the worlds computers and even some video game consoles. They're not into making MP3 players that rhyme with prune or fod. They're not into making televisions, DVD players, digital camera's, discmans or blu-ray players. Nintendo makes gaming consoles and gaming software much like Sega used to do. Nintendo have had their moments of innovation and moments of robbing the competition of idea's to add strength and power to their own and this generation of gaming consoles, they've marketed their console to an audience you would never have thought anyone would market to.

As a little kid, your mother would tell you to quit spending so much time in front of the television. That video games were rotting your mind and weren't of any benefit to you. Your sisters would say the same. So, how exactly do you get a game console into a home to a teenage boy with paychecks of money to spend on video games to benefit your company? You sell the console to his mother first. That's what Nintendo did. They geared their console to your mother, to your grandmother and to your sister first and then they brought along Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, MadWorld and Dead Space. Today, many American homes and homes throughout the world have Wii's. Retirement homes have them and the casual gaming market has expanded with Wii's and DS alike. It was once, "Oh, you're playing Nintendo," even if you were playing a Genesis to "Oh, you're playing PlayStation," when you were really playing Gamecube and today its "Oh, you're playing...." wait a minute, "Xbox?" What happened to "Oh, you're playing WII?"

Nintendo may be in the market, but its all they're in the market to do, remember? When watching the charts, its abundantly clear that Nintendo's sales are dropping rather quickly. The console is still selling and has even seen a price drop and will likely see another, but those whom have bought a Wii today "finally up with the times" are finding they're really still not up with the times. The rumored Wii 2 has finally been confirmed as in development and Nintendo has chosen to play the Microsoft this time around and will be releasing the first Nex-Gen console. No word from Microsoft has surfaced other than a job posting of a Xbox 360 Hardware Creator and Sony hasn't said a thing nor have rumors even been muttered as they continue their practice of the ten year life cycle.

They're (Nintendo) calling it Project Cafe and will be revealing their hardware this year at their E3 Press Conference and some details have surfaced about the console. What we know, we're sharing with you.

- Full 1080p Graphics (Wii is only 480p)
- House an IBM Chipset similar to Xbox 360's with clock speeds to beat out the three 64-bit, 3.2-Ghz, this will compete with Xbox 360.
- Will feature powered up AMD R700
- Will only have 512MB RAM, for a Nex-Gen Console? Ok...
- It is believed that it will support blu-ray technology as well
- Should be in direct comparison with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in terms of graphics.

Its online capabilities have not yet been mentioned or confirmed, but gamers know darn well that if Nintendo chooses to compete with the Xbox 360 on that level, they're going to need something pretty dang impressive.

Nintendo have stated that they are aiming to try and bring back some of the hardcore gaming market and are building their console in order to do so. I've even seen it rumored that Nintendo plans to launch Grand Theft Auto V with their new console which if is true should give a good idea on when Nintendo's new console will launch. We have also learned that Project Cafe will be backward compatible with Wii and Gamecube games much like the older PS3's supported PS2 and PS1 backward compatibility.

The console is rumored to run consumers about $349.99 to $449.99, nearly the price of the PlayStation 3, which consumers complained was just too expensive and they didn't have the money. Even said so of the PlayStation 3 after its price drop and then when the new Xbox 360 Slimmer was released at a hefty sum, fifteen year-old boys suddenly had the money to upgrade to that. Hm?

Project Cafe has been rumored to be about the size of the Xbox 360 and is believed to be just as easy to develop for so cost for development could be comparative and Nintendo believes it is going to rely just as heavily on third-party support for Project Cafe as with the Wii. Nintendo firmly believes that solid third-party support is vital their consoles success, which they have right so long as their first-party isn't terrible. Its a lesson they learned with the Gamecube. All being said, Project Cafe is believed to be graphically comparable to the PlayStation 3, which we're still waiting to see at its peak apparently as Uncharted 2 didn't max out the hardware as we thought it did.

Project Cafe is believed to have a controller with a touch screen most likely similar to the DS touch screen which is going to add some really cost to the controller unless the controller is a handheld in and of itself for portable gaming of some kind.  Perhaps is the one attribute of the new console that has us wondering the most as the motion controller for the Wii none of us really saw coming and was the prime factor for the Wii last generation. It was all about gameplay and graphics took a back seat. Seems hardcore gamers weren't into that sort of thing, but still having impressive graphics alone won't save your console. The games have to be fun or it simply isn't going to win over. The bulk of the Wii games weren't really fun, they tried to utilize the technology, but it was the same recycled experience over and over again.

Nex-Gen Mario?

At the end of the day, we can speculate over Project Cafe, but we're bound to hear more about it coming at us sooner than later. Rumors of Project Cafe were true and with those rumors came that would hear of it before E3. Has Nintendo confirming the rumors been that prophecy fulfilled or will we still hear more before E3?

Nintendo has not yet confirmed a date for its 2011 Nintendo Press Conference. For the past two years, Nintendo have aired their Press Conference the morning before Sony's Press Conference, Microsoft being first to set foot on stage. Things are a little different this year as Sony have opted for a arena rather than  the shrine auditorium we've used to. Guess they're expecting a bigger turn out from the Press this year and no dount Steven Spielberg will be there as well. But when we have a date for the show, you can bet we'll have it right here!

For all things Project Cafe, for all things Nintendo, for all things E3 and all things gaming, check back with us as we keep you in the XZone with all things gaming, right here at ThumbDrive.