It should hardly come as a surprise, but Nintendo does not view Sony and Microsoft as competition anymore, focusing instead on the consumer and not the kind of pissing contest that its "rivals" are currently engaged in.
"People often ask such questions, and we say our competitor is neither [of] those companies, but consumers indifferent to games," claims Nintendo Korea CEO Mineo Koda. "As there were many violent games, many parents had negative images of games. We face a major challenge of changing those negative images.
"We believe that the Korean market has growth potential as there are many people who are not interested in online games and who used to play online games, but do not play them anymore."
This shouldn't really shock anybody, since Nintendo just inhabits a whole new world now, which is often outside of the traditional game industry. Stuff like Wii Fit and Wii Music aren't even games, something which Nintendo happily admits. That's fine by me. My budget is not so expansive that I don't welcome another publisher whose releases I can happily ignore.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
9:00 AM on 01.14.2009
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What's sad for me is hearing about videogame fans that have the same narrow view of the meaning of "videogame" that videogame haters often have.
For years I've tried to convince friends who say they hate videogames that they are actually videogame fans, as they spend hours a day playing computer Solitare or Tetris. These people often claim to me that they "don't like videogames, they only like computer games" as though calrifying that somehow makes them less nerdy.
Ok, what was my point again? Oh yeah, it's stupid when people dismiss other genres of videogame just because they don't think their cool enough for them. It's stupid when computer Solitare fans do it, it's stupid when FPS fans do it, and it's stupid when I do it.
Just saying.
I spent at least an hour last night trying to beat the last level in Wii Fit's the mini-Marble Madness type game, and then another half hour trying to perfect my ski jump.
So, yeah, that's my argument. Video game collections are not video games themselves. You can probably shoot this one full of holes, but it's something I like to think about.
9:30 in the morning is too early for me to contemplate your argument. Good stuff.
It's strange to me that so many people these days that people think that videogames need to have narritive qualities (story, beginning/middle/end structure, good guys/bad guys, etc) in order to be videogames. To me, the more narritive a videogame gets the less like a videogame it becomes, and the more it starts to just be an interactive movie.
@ Lightthrower- Mario Galaxy is shovelware?
And as Highlar said, Wii Fit does have several balance games included with it, including slalom, ski jumping, and snowboarding. Ubisoft's Fitness Trainer, or whatever the hell it's called ... no, I don't put that in the "game" category, but Wii Fit certainly does belong. You can play the balance games all you want without ever touching the yoga and strength training areas.
I guess that No More Heroes, Okami, Zack and Wiki, MadWorld, and The Conduit are shovelware as well.
Whodathunkit?
Oh, I'm not arguing with you here. I'm presenting this argument to those who think that these bite-sized minigame collections are not real video games because of some arbitrary criteria that they fail to meet. It simply follows that if those kinds of software are not games, video game collections can't be games either.
Then again, at what point is the line drawn? If something like Wii Sports is not a video game because there is no goal for mastering each of the five subgames, would it become one if we wrapped the game in simple narrative about, say, a boy who wishes to become a sports legend by improving his skills in each event and taking home the title of Grandmaster by the game's end? The only difference between Professor Layton and software containing a number of brain teasers is this setup that you and a young boy are out to solve the mystery of a small European town. I can guarantee that few people would call the latter a game, but you are performing the same actions in both.
So exactly when does a collection of events become a "game"? I don't hold this position, but I present it to those who do.
I also think that anything intended to evoke a thought or an emotion in others can be considered art, and that anything with two peices of bread and a filling is a sandwich. It may not be a sandwich I want to eat, but it's still a sandwich.
If that's the case, though, is there any real problem? The Xbox 360 and the PS3 should provide more than enough entertainment for you. Is there any reason that you'd need a third console to be on the same level as those two?
It's already too late. Everyday, the PS3 and the 360 get more like the Wii. Losing their hard drives, having manditory avatars, promoting games like "Buzz!" and "Kung Fu Panda" over Resistance 2 and Gears, the list goes on.
From here on out, everythings going to be a lot more Wii-flavored.
I had to practice at Burger Time a lot before I ever felt comfortable running away from angry hot dogs in real life. I'm glad it was there.
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general comment
Look, if wii sports isn't a video game then pong isn't a video game, and I don't think you'll find anyone who excludes pong from being a video game.
I mean, just because go fish exists doesn't mean people don't make things like Axis and Allies. Your way is not the only way.
Agree to disagree. For me, it is only a video game in the strictest definition, but because it only does exactly what a pack of cards in front of me would do it's a shallow simulation and nothing more. By the same logic I wouldn't say Monopoly is a videogame, it's a board game thats been converted into videogame format.
Perhaps it is indeed just a natural bias towards some sort of alleviated status attributed to the title 'videogames', but I don't think simply copying something else makes it a videogame.
"From here on out, everythings going to be a lot more Wii-flavored."
Exactly why i hate the Wii. If everyone starts spewing more and more casual crap, another crash will happen exactly like the one with the Atari 2600. Too much crap and consumers will one day realize that it's not worth their money, it's just crap.
And I don't know how you can celebrate that.
The context of the original poster was negative. Here are the main facets of the "Wii Flavored" market.
1)Less functionality (read: getting less for what you pay for)
2)Companies are promoting unoriginal titles that are based off of movies licenses (ie:shovelware), and since it makes them more money, they couldn't give two shits about gamers.
Am I bashing the Wii? No; it has great games, and revolutionized the game industry (at first). Is it Nintendo, or even the Wii console it self's fault for 'ruining the industry" as many Wii haters say? No, it's not.
The fact is developers have found an economic goldmine, and there are no signs of letting up. 1 month game developers say "Why stop at the Wii when we could make this shovelware game on all 3 major platforms?!" In my opinion, Nintendo needs to:
A)Stop saying that they are only targeting casual gamers so much. Don't alienate the fan-base that has been with you for years; target both demographics
B)Stop licensing thousands of shovel-ware titles a year. Over-saturation is bad business for everyone
C)Have less "waggle-only" support for games. Make a classic controller scheme for most of your games. Is it that hard? No. It's a simple option that people can use to eliminate the redundancy of waving a wand 1 thousand times just to punch or kick through one level.
If the Wii only had Wii-Fit, Wii-Play, and Wii-Sports, think about how highly viewed the system would be. People would say "gimmicky, yes, but it's not like there's too much of it".
Also no one has commented on this statement -
"As there were many violent games, many parents had negative images of games. We face a major challenge of changing those negative images.
Its very contradictory. Nintendo specifically backed up Mad World saying the Wii "needed more violence".
And to all the people who say "Nintendo has always been on top". Remember how terrible the Gamecube was? Sony was the clear winner of that generation.
The most popular system is always going to have the most shovelware titles.
The Wii has plenty of great games with plenty more to come. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either a retarded fanboy or is completely ignorant of the Wii's library.
Also from your blog, in the Great Games Worthy To Buy New section, you mention games like:
- Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
- Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
- Victorious Boxers: Revolution
- Worms: A Space Oddity
aaaand
- Wii Play! Seriously? Wii play? I really think you're biased... also known as a Nintendo fanboy.
Oh i'm also sorry for you, because you obviously missed the hundreds of good games the PS2 had over it's 8 years span, such a shame.
At the moment you're just new flame bait
Sure its the console I'm playing on the least of all 3, but except for the 'core-gamers' the rest of the world has a whole other idea about it :-)
sure they might be 'ignorant' and 'casual' but the numbers don't lie... It's all about sales in business and in that part Nintendo is running laps around M$ and $ony :-)