I'd like to ask Mr. Miyamoto, and Mr. Iwata, and everybody in the video gaming community--everyone from the Hardcore, to the Core, to the Expanded Market, and everybody in-between--a few questions.

First off, what business is the video games industry in? The answer is the entertainment business. Now, having answered that question, there's a few others I need to ask, to Mr. Miyamoto and gamers at large:

--If I tried to sell you a comic, with no illustrations inside of it, would you buy it?

--If I tried to sell you a novel without words, would you purchase it?

--If I tried to sell you a movie on a blank DVD, would you buy that?

So Mr. Miyamoto, what makes you think myself and the rest of the gaming community is gonna buy into Wii Music when we rejected it the first time?

Mr. Miyamoto, you and Nintendo and the rest of the game industry are in the entertainment business. That means you are in the content business. Wii music and other games like it, the so-called "User-Generated-Content" games, do not sell for the simple fact that they feature no content. Now let me ask another question to add on to the list I have just made:

--If I tried to sell you a game with no content, would you purchase that?

Mr. Miyamoto, when you pitch us Wii Music, you are asking us to pay you money to do your job for you. That's the same thing with all user-generated-content games. They don't sell because "gamers don't understand it," they don't sell because developers are asking us to do the most important part of making a game for them: Putting in content. You are asking us to pay you money, to do your job for you. I would just like to reiterate that, so that it would sink in and resonate.

Mr. Miyamoto, if myself and gamers at large wanted to do your job for you, we wouldn't be tinkering with Wii Music; we would be busy coding our own games. You are in the entertainment business, Mr. Miyamoto, and I only keep repeating this because it seems that you yourself and Nintendo don't seem to fully understand that notion. If I were in the entertainment business and tried to sell something to the masses that was completely devoid of entertainment value, I would go out of business, and rightfully so. So why is it so hard to accept that your game, which was devoid of entertainment value, flopped?

As for any gamers that are reading: This is why Nintendo's sales have slowed down, and why they had a price drop: Nintendo has been complacent, and instead of churning out games with content, they've been wasting their time with science experiments and pet projects, when they should have been putting out games with content to keep their console's momentum going. Their foray into UGC has taken the wind out of the console's momentum diminished their market value as a company in the entertainment business.

The most valid criticisms of Nintendo are that they have been slacking in game development (and I mean actual games, not UGC), and that they have been ceaselessly rehashing their old games to the point that they've lost their value to the gaming community at large. And instead of revisiting older franchises that have been neglected in recent years, or trying to create new IPs with actual content, they instead try to market unfinished games with no entertainment value as "the next big thing" for gaming. To quote my grandmother: "Bullshit!"

The facts tell us otherwise: Every attempt at user-generated-content in gaming has failed to sell in any significant manner, and always well below expectations. Don't cite sales of Wii Music in regards to the product's "success." Nintendo only gauges their software as a success if it helps sell their consoles. Wii Music did not sell consoles. And games like Smash Bros. Brawl that feature level editors don't count as UGC. Those games had actual content in them, with the UGC added in as an extra; it wasn't sold as the entire game. UGC games have always backfired, and cold hard reality routinely proves this to us: Spore, Little Big Planet, Wii Music, and many others asks the customer to bear the burden of content creation, whereas that is the developer's job--the developer's job to entertain.

If I tried to pitch a film in the movie industry with no script or storyboards, I'd get laughed out of every meeting I pitched. If I tried to publish a novel of blank text, nobody is gonna buy it. If I sold a comic full of blank pages, and told you to just imagine all the awesome stuff that could be happening on the pages, you'd throw the damn comic in my face and walk off--as you rightfully should.

What makes Mr. Miyamoto think he's somehow above the laws of supply and demand? What makes the entire game industry think that they are above the laws of supply and demand? There is no demand for games that are not finished, games without content. As horrible as Superman 64 and Mission Impossible were, those games still had content, which puts them well above Wii Sports and any other attempts at UGC, seeing as they are actual games and not unfinished pieces of software lacking any sort of redeeming entertainment value.

The reason I am posting this, is because Nintendo's business strategy stated that they were fighting against disinterest in gaming. That there was their entire motivation behind the DS and the Wii. So if their mission statement is to fight disinterest in gaming, why do they continue to dabble with UGC. Fighting disinterest in gaming means putting out games with content. Wii Fit, as much as people bash on it, is a game with content, that connects to the user in a meaningful way. It has a job to do and it fulfills the task that the customer asks of it. And it does a hell of a lot more than Wii Music.

Nintendo: You have no real competition right now thanks to your business strategy, but your success has made you complacent. With economic turmoil looming on the horizon, you do not have the luxury to indulge in science experiments and pet projects. Your mandate is entertainment, and entertainment means content. Mr. Iwata, reign in Mr. Miyamoto. He makes great games, but he's also human and like all humans, he makes mistakes. His obsession with UGC is a mistake that is going to bite your company in the ass just as surely as the high cost of entry of the 360 and PS3 have bit Microsoft and Sony in the ass. In fact, seeing as your console has recently seen a decline in market value, it already has. Start making games with content, start revisiting older IPs, and start investing in new IPs with content, not pet projects that serve only to entertain the developer's own fancy. And remember:

Film-goers do not go to the movies to stare at a blank screen.

Anyways, I've written this to spur discussion about UGC and Miyamoto's pigheadedness in regards to it. So send it to anyone that might be interested, discuss it, and maybe someone at Nintendo will get a clue, and remind Miyamoto that he is not in the entertainment business to entertain himself, but all of us.[/size][size=12]