Nintendo, as a company, is seemingly arrogant in the confidence it has in its products. And why shouldn't it? As of late, it's rarely missed. Example: When it announced a scale that could be used as a controller for a fitness game, Wii Fit, some laughed. A year later its a huge hit, and its follow-up, Wii Fit Plus, will likely follow suit.
But when I got the chance to ask Nintendo's legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto a question at a roundtable discussion in New York City, I had to ask: Was there any one product or game where the response -- positive or negative -- caught him by surprise?
After some thinking, he said he couldn't remember a particular instance. He then admitted that he felt "there may still be some possibility with" Wii Music, Nintendo's peripheral-less music title that was met with a so-so reception.
"I think that the development team members and directors of Wii Music were maybe a little shocked by the reaction," he said, "and thought that it would get a better response than it did."
But there's always hope for future iterations of the title, he continued.
"I think if we were to do anything, it would be a matter of getting back together with them and trying to understand what their expectations were, and where the gap was between their expectations and what the result of the product was."
But don't think that means you'll be seeing Wii Music 2 or Wii Music Plus anytime soon.
"We have talked about it," he admits, "but it isn't anything that's concrete at this point or that we're working on or can talk about."
Contest:
9:30 PM on 10.15.2009
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Honestly, the dude could finance any number of pet projects he wanted: no matter how hard they tank.
(Wii Vitality Sensor, anyone?)
If they did that, and the creation aspect was easy to use, I would buy it without a second thought.
I think if they loaded it up with video game music stuff specifically and gave it a point and then allowed for a community too for everyone's own take. Basically I visualize a very Frequency/Amplitude type concept.
Probably not, but I had to face palm at this. That game was an utter embarrassment...I'm serious when I say it was around that point I decided to start putting money together for a next console.
Even the "casual" gamers who like Wii Fit and games like that feel like douches holding a remote to their mouth and pretending it's a saxophone. And the people who care enough about music to not feel like a douche doing that probably already know how to play a real saxophone. Obviously I'm not the only one that feels this way because it did sell sell...but they need to make serious, serious, serious changes if they expect it to sell better than it did.
I think Wii Music, as a thing, has great potential. I only rented it, but they direction they were headed with it was really dynamic. Here's some music, we'll make your rhythem/melody ramblings fit into the tonal structure of the piece. Go to town, and we''ll show you what you did at the other end.
I wouldn't want to put a boss battle in it... but I think expanding the title with a good mix of network based social gaming and deeper music learning attributes could bring a few more people onboard with what it was trying to do.
If he want's to fix Wii Music, perhaps he should start by putting the packaged in selection of Rock Band and Guitar Hero to shame. I think it is important to make Wii Music seem like a much better deal than Rock Band; 10 hours of music in wii music for every hour in Rock band should be enough. And the Super Smash Bros. Brawl soundtrack is an excellent place to start, alongside the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack and maybe the Legend of Zelda and Kirby soundtracks; because all that music is free to Nintendo anyway.
I also think a quick scan of youtube proves Mario paint is a good music game design and would make a good fundamental for the creation and editting aspect of Wii Music. But before we can edit, we need an immense library for inspiration, for editting purposes, and for pure entertainment. Also, the music can NEVER be subpar in a music game, so the soundtrack must be the best soundtrack ever created by Nintendo to really be more worthwhile than just listening to the smash bros. brawl soundtrack.
DON'T GIVE ME FALSE HOPE
I'm afraid it's become obvious: Now that Nintendo has no real competition this generation, they've become complacent. Instead of ramping up the content production with their games, they've slacked off greatly. That's why they've had a price drop. They lost momentum because of Wii Music and their attempts at UGC exploding in their face. You'd have thought they would have learned and ramped up the content production, but aside from NSMB, they're continuing to slack off. They need to get a fresh infusion of blood and ideas into the company. Either revisit their older franchises they've neglected or get some new IPs out there, because otherwise their continual rehashes and content-less games are gonna crush Nintendo just as surely as the high production values and cost of entry has crushed Sony and Microsoft this gen.
The title was fail from the get go. The only gap that was there was the one left from not bringing an actual damn game or two to the forefront, rather than this trash. (Yes, I have played it, and yes, I obviously hated it. I wanted to try it to see if hating it was worthwhile. Good ole common sense was right).
They must have either really struggled to fit extra content on the disc, or they phoned it in and just didn't end the development cycle on a strong note.
I'm leaning toward the latter, with Nintendo's long history of ruining their potential with lame follow-through (Sunshine's blue coins, Wind Waker's triforce hunt, Galaxy's comets).
Still, they had to please a wide range of people. They tried to have a handful of simple songs for everyone. What they seemingly forget to calculate was that it meant that everyone only had a small set of simple songs to play. The rest were too... Japanese or German??
I mean, my kids had 4 songs they even considered playing. If you can't even keep children interested in your game's depth, you need to hit the drawing board again. It was like Dora and the Purple Planet. My toddler couldn't play through it a second time without being bored out of his skull! Same with Wii Music.
Maybe if they marketed versions like "Little Kid", "Big Kid", "Teen", "Country", "Rock", "Timeless Classics", etc, there would be enough to keep people interested in playing it again.
Aside from the track selection, videos were fun-ish to make, but it needed 3 times the number of sets and 10 times the number of album design options.
Even if Nintendo completely stole the "Rock Hero" format of track selections spanning multiple titles, it would probably have been "above average" and stole a bit of their markets with a "Have Fun Jamming" philosophy to counter their "Pretend You're Playing" niche.
But, that's Nintendo for you. Idiot Savant. They take chances and push the envelope, while still sticking to certain tired standards. They push out certain flagship games on a rigid schedule (when they could have used another 3 months in development), while taking a decade to put out Pikmin 3 and don't even seem to have anyone working on Pokemon Snap Wii (both of which would print money). Nintendo would single-handedly own every market except for fading fan-boy niches if they could shake out a few cobwebs in their development department.