WHY WILL NINTENDO ALWAYS BE BETTER THAN MICROSOFT AND SONY?
ANSWER: Because they are interested in what's fun and not hardware specs. (See Business Week)
The only bummer for me about the Wii is that I don't have children old enough to justify/rationalize the investment (yet).
(Editor's note: edited because url was too long and causing formatting problems in Firefox.)
Y'know, it's funny. I was going to make a post about just this very topic. Paul, you stole the words right out of my mouth.
ReplyDeleteI am seriously rooting for Nintendo in this round of the console wars. I'm not planning on buying any next-gen systems, but I really want to see the Wii do well, despite it's gosh-awful name (I'm amazed that they were able to pick a name that simultaneously can be interpreted to mean "urine" and "penis").
Where Microsoft and Sony are busily caught in the game of graphics and hardware one-up-manship (my console has a total computational power of 1 teraflop/sec! Oh yeah? My console has a computational power of 2 teraflops/sec! Oh yeah? My console has a 20GB hard drive! Oh yeah? My console has 40GB hard drive, and Blu-Ray support! Oh yeah? Well, I'm making an HD-DVD add-on for my console, guaranteeing that format wars that hearken back to the days of VHS and Betamax), Nintendo - after being the clear loser of last generation's console wars - decided to go in a different direction. "Hey," they said to themselves, "why don't we try something new and make a system where all the games are fun?"
Whereas Microsoft and Sony are busily caught in the war of who can make the console with the most state-of-the-art graphics processing power, and therefore, the most expensive, Nintendo said "forget that, we're going to make something affordable, yet innovative."
While Sony and Microsoft are locked in a pitched battle of who can drive their developer's costs the highest, forcing games like Halo 3 to have budgets of $30m and higher, and furthering the disease known as Hollywood Blockbuster Syndrome, where a publisher will only spend money on a sure thing, since games are too expensive to take risks on things such as "originality" and "innovation", and driving the prices of games up to $60 a pop, Nintendo is saying "nuts to that. What ever happened to good old fashioned FUN? You know, the kind that involves some kind of physical activity?"
The first time Microsoft showed the Xbox 360 at the Game Developer's Conference a few years back, many developers were genuinely scared about it. They knew that all that computational power meant the graphics of games would be the emphasis. This in turn means that developers have to expand their art teams from 20 people to 50 or even larger. This in turn drives up development costs and makes publishers have to take bigger risks. They don't want to risk $20m on something unproven, so what you get is more of the same-old, but with better graphics. That's why the biggest games are the ones with the "2" or "3" after their name: Call of Duty 3, Halo 3, Meal Gear Solid whatever-the-hell-they're-up-to-now, etc. There are a few visionaries, who are able to make innovative games still (kudos to Will Wright and Spore, who's somehow managed to make innovation with a reasonable budget), but they're a dying breed. This is also the reason the Adventure game is dead; they just couldn't survive the massive budgets needed to bring their graphics up to current standards.
Nintendo, however, is doing something totally different. By making a completely innovative system that is played in a different way, they are requiring their games to be innovative. They're forcing the publishers to take a chance on something that hasn't been done before because, well, that's what the Wii lends itself to in the first place.
Of course, innovation is nothing new to Nintendo. Just look at the Nintendo DS. Two screens and you play it with a stylus instead of mashing buttons. Compare that with the far less successful PSP, which is essentially just the hardware (and many of the games) of the original Play Station. Not much new there.
It's also interesting to note that the reception to the announcements of the Nintendo DS were very similar to the announcement of the Wii. The critics are always skeptical of the innovation. Back at the time of the DS, they were saying "why on earth would you need two screens?" For the Wii they were saying "a remote control for the controller? WTF?" But in both cases, Nintendo has managed to carry through and show that you can actually make games more fun by playing them differently.
And the other major point in Nintendo's favor is they don't seem to have the problems with Supply and Demand that Microsoft and Sony do.
How to Play the Wii.
ReplyDelete(Caution: Adult language advisory)
Another reason I didn't line up for the PS3. (Although I wish I had when I heard about one guy who was third in line, but gave up his position for $1500 in cash.)
That's... disturbing.
Go Atari!
ReplyDelete(actually I just wanted to beat Ileana to posting that.)
Video of playing the Wii, for the unintitiated
ReplyDeleteActuall as far as "group games" it seems fun and different, buch better than just a thumb war.
-The blue fox
who is the "blue fox"?
ReplyDeleteThe Aquamarine Elephant
Sigh...
ReplyDeleteNot "blue fox", "the blue fox"; which is somewhat funny, since I am not a fox at all, I am the blog troll.
~tbf
(nota bene: I once actually created a blogger profile for my name, but alas I never updated anything, forgot my password, moved to LA, drank too much caffine, spawned offspring, drank the milk from the back of the fridge, crossed the streams, ate only one, and dwell in the comments' pages of fu-news where the shadows lie.)
Paul,
ReplyDeleteYou can justify purchasing this console. You just have to get your wife involved in playing the games too. After watching the video that tbf posted, Mrs. P is even intrigued to play this console! I know I'm intrigued.
I don't know the specs for this console, so I don't know how far Nintendo will be able to stretch the graphic capabilities (which also provides a game's sense of immersion and enjoyment). I saw some video from an expo in which MS already began to show the rudimentary devolopments of this Wii remote technology. My fear is that MS (and maybe, somehow, Sony) will essentially rip-off this innovation and leave Nintendo in the dust again.
That would be a very unfortunate development for the gaming world. Nintendo seems to have tapped into something that was missing from the gaming world, as they occasionally do when others don't. I think it would be bad if an innovative company like Nintendo died off because their system doesn't have the "sexy" appeal that the more advanced PS3 and XBox 360 have. I don't know how succesful the Gamcube was, but you can only take so many defeats before you give up. Just look at Sega.
I hope Nintendo is successful with this venture.