GBOmega

Platformer/shooter.  Next.

The secondary screen concept is great, but if it's just a glorified minimap / inventory screen it's a complete waste.

The winner of the next generation won't need specs to differentiate.  They'll need to produce titles that are more than just assets bolted onto an off-the-shelf engine with no depth.

Nintendo is in a good position to do this, but if they think getting repetitive blockbuster franchises and their endless stream of sequels will help, they have a rude awakening coming.

There's so much Nintendo needs to do with this title to actually make it a success, but they're clearly not willing to put in the effort.

Looks like the same old with nothing to deepen the experience in any new ways. Still waiting to see if it's worth getting the 3DS to play this.

No amount of enthusiasm or preference for Nintendo can change the fact that iOS devices are making it into peoples' hands more often than Sony or Nintendo ones. This is just the bare physical reality of the situation.

It doesn't matter which is a dedicated device or not - that's not even the question.

It's that if you made a pile of any Nintendo or Sony portable sold and all the i-crap sold and put them side by side, the i-crap pile is just that much bigger. Larger installed base, equivalent if not more horsepower, more frequent releases (how many iPhones and Androids have come out over the course of the DS?), stronger developer focus, more frequent updates to the OS that contain consumer-facing improvements...Sony and Nintendo need to learn a lot from Apple and Google if they wanna survive.

Tablets and phones are without a doubt eating into Nintendo's profits and console makers need to stop pretending like racing to the bottom is going to help them survive.

@phish09 said:

I think they all want gamers that are going to buy a lot of games and spend a lot of time playing those games on their respective systems. I don't think any of them give a shit what games you are playing so long as you are buying/playing a lot of them.

I just define a hardcore gamer by how many games a person plays and how much time they spend gaming. If you spend 80 hours a week playing Mario Kart and Just Dance you are more hardcore than a person who spends 20 hours a week playing Starcraft and Counterstrike. So yeah, they all want the same "hardcore gamers", those being the ones that game the most.

Probably a good insight into what they're looking for, yeah. A question of who is likely to buy the most, but if this ends up being true, the Wii U is not going to do so well because the quality of the games is going to suck. I think companies need to let go of the raw numbers and focus more on their products instead. The profits will flow better from a good product rather than one that tries to market or trick it's way into peoples' homes.

I'm curious about the Wii U, but after the Wii and multiple re-releases of the DS, I'm skeptical of their brand and it's potential to deliver anything of depth. So this who-buys-the-most approach isn't necessarily a guaranteed success.

Great reads, and I think this in some ways validates my own feelings. We're still left with a lot in the air about just who exactly Nintendo is pitching the Wii U at - beyond their entrenched young audience that is.

I have to agree that any self or otherwise labelled "hardcore" gamer isn't one with much of a history with gaming. They tend to be people who only like shooters with lots of machismo - they finished that genre back in Unreal Tournament 1 days.

I've been playing Animal Crossing on my DS again, which while being a fairly strong b-level Nintendo franchise is one I feel like they've never put a complete effort into. I think this series would make a great case study on how close Nintendo gets to blowing the doors off, but for some reason decide to arbitrarily cut everything short. Fire Emblem: RD as well. I play some of these games and I feel like they just stopped developing mid-project one morning and sent it to get pressed. Good games at their core, some more than others, but always falling short of their potential. Especially when it comes to online... I remember writing a blog post years ago when I got my first DS about how Nintendo WFC was a complete disaster. Some who read it got indignant and incredulous saying I had no idea what I was talking about. But fast forward to today and most of the points I made are now universally accepted. Nintendo's online offerings may as well not exist.

Anyway, some of this isn't restricted to Nintendo, but I'm simply highlighting titles & concepts where they had the makings of something they're probably gonna wanna actually pull right the way through on for the Wii U. No half-assery or else it's the Dreamcast pile for them!

@Gamer_152 said:

This post is altogether very vague and I'm not sure what you mean about Nintendo trying to build a system with complex algorithms...

Not necessarily. I only meant in terms of the games on the system, not the system itself. There's little variety amongst the majority of the titles for current consoles. They aim to accomplish a visual without putting much behind it in terms of character development or the rules system behind it. I've lost count of the number of 3rd person action-"rpg" games I've tried on my PS3 where there is absolutely zero chance to differentiate my experience from someone else. Majority of games out today - that aren't sequels - are all re-skinned clones of each other.

I have found the occasional title that impresses despite the repetition, but it seems far less often than back during SNES or PSX days when developers and publishes were more willing to experiment.

Anyway. I totally agree with Ubersmake, I think Nintendo has to focus harder on developers with their next offering than Sony or Microsoft will end up having to. I'm not sure how they'll do that. Whether it's by leveraging their licensing which could turn developers away, or by trying to set standards by example with their in-house brands. They'll need to work extra hard to get lazy game companies to do more than just make inventory and map interfaces on the second screen.

I've been reading up on Wii U a fair bit lately and part of Nintendo's stated goal comes off to me as wanting to win back customers they started losing from N64 right through to Wii.

This seems like a pretty lofty goal, but I'm wondering if Nintendo's definition of a "hard core" gamer is less about shooters and more about some of the qualities of gaming that have been lost through the years. Less focused on action-oriented blockbuster production styles and more focused on complex algorithms for the games' rules systems.

I ask not just for my own sake as I really have no taste for the similarity between games on all platforms lately - but also because if they do release it this year, both Sony and Microsoft are guaranteed to crush the Wii U with their next systems the same way the PS2 swallowed Dreamcast. It makes me want to take a harder look at just what exactly they mean with what they've said and what they're ultimately making.

It's part wishful thinking, but maybe the fact that the Wii U is holding my attention might be a sign of who they're going after? Looking for those long-lost gamers who are only annoyed by all the remakes and re-releases...

I'm consistently disappointed in reviews for placating what has sadly become a boring and mainstream-driven industry.

I don't worry so much about scoring schemes as the only way you can properly consume a review is to read it. I'm definitely in favour of eliminating the scores as this attempt to offer a review in pill-form will only further such mediocrity. But beyond that, in reading reviews, I'm disappointed by the lack of recognition for the decline of complexity in games...

I'm not naive to the realities of business - although I think it's equally asinine to think that games weren't profitable before their development became so mass-produced. In fact, it was the willingness to experiment and devise complex systems that built the industry in the first place.

Because reviewers never blew the horn on the decline of innovation and novel concepts in games, we now live in an era of gaming where the balance of production has shifted to more easy-to-manage factors. Off the shelf engines, mixed with inexpensive asset production. From a technical standpoint, while it still involves programming talent, games development today is more a process of integration than actual production of new data models and concepts.

I'd like to see reviewers penalize game makers more often when their titles are simply a re-skinning of a concept that already exists. Maybe it's worthwhile to split reviews into two categories. The first being it's story and production qualities and the second being technical and implementation specific.

The value judgement for me with games nowadays is that if the depth and experience of the game barely exceeds that of watching a movie, I'd rather spare myself the redundancy and just watch movies instead...

It's obviously too late to change things and I may still be interested in the console. But it seems like +Nintendo has chosen to miss several opportunities with the way they've chosen to implement their Wii U controller.

My suspicion is that they decided to stream to the remote tablet because it's easier to produce an API developers are likely to use. Although this doesn't absolve their approach of it's absurdity. Both in cost and in technical implementation.

The limitations of the Wii U controller would have been easily avoided if Nintendo realized that with a bit of effort, they could have produced an appealing API and a proper implementation for less.

They are after all pretty flush with cash and lessons from the shovelware-prone Wii! So, instead... Let me suggest the approach that would guarantee success: Bundle a 3DS instead!

Rationale?

Well, it goes without saying that the tablet and smartphone market are officially eating away at console and handheld sales. More open platforms with easier developer access has nurtured a natural competitor to consoles. These devices come from such a foreign place and speak such a foreign language than what console maker executives are used to, they are helpless to react.

So that's one thing. There is one more however.

As pressure mounts from Sony's Vita, maybe we'll see a revision of the 3DS that attempts to bump the price back up, possibly adding a few features. But not nearly enough intrinsic value to warrant the jump we'll see.

Sadly, this will only go against the platform which many today are considering a bit of a dud.

Which isn't necessarily my own view 100%, but we have to admit Nintendo has already lowered the price of the 3DS once to try and jog sales. With limited success I might add.

All that said, even at the price it's currently sitting at, the 3DS can still make Nintendo money. With the production already in place, throwing a 3DS in with every Wii U and instead producing an air-tight coupling between the two devices through some good software development seems not only cost-effective but also pure genius.

The synergy that most people are dying for from their mobiles and consoles would go from being "improbable" to "implicit". Nintendo would be installing two platforms at the perceived cost of one. Their entire ecosystem deployed in one pass featuring - hopefully - cloud, social graph and multiplayer living room gaming.

Next time I write on this, I might bring up my idea of how an Animal Crossing Wii U could function under this model. It's pretty neat stuff and again - all done by nurturing software development for once - not starving it for a proprietary hardware & marketing budget!