Blog FeedNintendo’s Gambit
Nintendo.
Few words mean so many things to so many people like “Nintendo.” Whether you used to play video games, currently play video games, will play video games, know some one who plays video games, or hate video games, you know the word Nintendo. You probably also have an opinion about it…or them, depending what definition of the word you are using. Despite hemorrhaging market share since the advent of the Nintendo 64, “Nintendo” was always synonymous with “video games,” though in recent years “PlayStation” has been creeping in as the generic term for the hobby.
All that has changed through the one- two-punch Nintendo laid upon the industry. Of course I’m talking about the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii. Both systems were initially derided when they were announced and the former wasn’t even taken seriously in the face of Sony’s PlayStation Portable until the release of Nintendogs. However, now, six months after the launch of the Wii you still have to wait in line to get one and the last time I went shopping for a Nintendo DS Lite, I had to travel between sixteen stores in a densely populated area of America to get one. One might be tempted to ask the question: “why?” Why is it so difficult to get two under-powered game systems that are (arguably) lacking games for serious gamers? The answer is quite simple: My mom wants one of each.
I mean that literally. I spent three nights, sick, in the cold, soggy, days before Christmas scouring my little slice of the globe, with the enlisted help of several friends checking stores simultaneously, looking for a pink Nintendo DS Lite for my mother for Christmas, so she could do some simple math and play SuDoKu. For the record, I failed in my mission. On December 23rd I came across three DS Lites in a rather barren Target store. Two white, one black. Defeated, I bought the white one.
Leading up to the holiday season, I’d be shopping around with my mom and she’d be asking me about the Wii, what it could do, how much it would cost, the whole bit. I told her the more interesting points for the lay-person: you swing your arm like you’re bowling and you bowl; you can buy - at a relatively deep discount - older Nintendo games (I would have gone into how you could also buy Sega and TurboGrafx-16 games, but they are all Nintendo to her) to play on the system and do some stuff online. “Really?” she says. “You should get that.” I was nearly knocked on the floor when she said that. Never once in my life has my mom encouraged me to play or spend money on video games. Ever. Now she’s telling me how it would be a lot of fun and be great for when the family is over for the holidays.
That’s why you’ll still have to wait in line to get, at least, a Wii. Moms want them.
With that overly long preface out of the way, we can move on to the topic of this post: Nintendo’s Gambit.
At last count, Nintendo has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of a million Wii (would the plural be Wiis, Wii, or Wiii?) a month. In six months Nintendo has closed the install base of the Wii and the XBox360 by just around half. This is unprecedented, moreso when one considers the biggest draw of the graphically under-powered system is the ability to flail at the TV in some gross pantomime of real action. The DS Lite stands somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million units and has a comfortable, though not insurmountable lead, over the closest competitor, Sony’s PSP.
Are there any explanations for this phenomenon? Sure. Any interested party has one or two, and I’m of course going to share mine: Time and money. At this stage of my life I’m almost 26 years old. I’m educated to the post-graduate level, I work, and since the beginning of the year I’ve been an intern. I don’t have a lot of time. I could rewind that a bit more and say for the better part of a year I was also working, going to school, and working on a Master’s thesis, I didn’t have a lot of time then either. I was also nursing a mild WoW addiction…but I digress.
The point is I don’t have a lot of time these days. I love RPGs and I am very, very slowly making my way through Final Fantasy XII. However, I really only have maybe a half-hour, hour tops, to play videogames. What do I slide into that time? The pick-up-and-play games that Nintendo is largely offering through its unique, broad-appeal offerings, specifically on the Nintendo DS. I played Nintendogs. I loved Nintendogs. Even more inexplicable is that I have a real dog. The thing of it is, when I came home at 11 o’clock at night, eyes bloodshot from reading through seven volumes of Anti-Federalist literature, the only thing I wanted to do was lay in bed, take a virtual pooch for a walk around a spartan neighborhood and drift off to sleep.
Now, all I seem to have time for is matching a few colored “gems” to cause massive damage to a spider before drifting off to sleep. I’m short on time and Nintendo is offering games that cater to my schedule. I’d be willing to bet a lot of people feel the same way.
The second point is price and here I’m going to focus more on the Wii. The price of the next- now current- generation is astronomical. No, I don’t care about inflation over the last twenty years, and no, I don’t care if they come with hard-drives, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox360 are just too damned expensive. Sure, the PlayStation 3 is a cheap Blu-Ray player and the XBox360 is an inexpensive set-top hub for digital distribution of movies, TV shows, some of those pick-up-and-play games I was just talking about, oh and game machine. On balance, those two systems are deals. They are still incredibly expensive. Oh, and I also don’t care about what the vanilla versions of both systems cost, those aren’t viable options and the $499 PlayStation 3 has been discontinued. There is a psychological barrier to investing that much money in both systems and I can’t seem to break it yet. I currently have enough cash available to buy both systems and a relatively cheap HDTV and I still won’t be buying any of those things.
The Wii on the other hand is $250, and while some of the more cantankerous among you will point out that the XBox360 is only fifty dollars more for the Dumb Version, the Wii comes with a collection of sports games, inventively titled Wii Sports, and that tickles the necessary cost/benefit portions of my brain to say “there’s a good deal.” Judging by the sales numbers, a lot of people agree with me.
A look at the NPD numbers for the month of April confirms as much.
To say Nintendo is top of the charts is something of an understatement. The DS has blown everything out of the water with almost half a million in sales. Pokemon DS has obliterated the competition (which incidentally was Nintendo who also had the number 3 and 4 spots on the software list) with 1.7 million copies sold. The Wii sold about double the individual offerings from its competitors. Good job all around on their part.
Now, it can’t all be peaches and cream or else it wouldn’t be much of a gambit. So, in order to wrap up these incoherent ramblings, let me close with a few words on how this can all blow up: I want an XBox360 and a PS3.
Sure, the Nintendo Wii seems to have a lot going for it and for all its detractors, I’m not overly concerned about graphically fidelity. However, there is a lot more you can do with the increased processing power than make shiny graphics, and I’m talking about AI and physics. Better AI means a better gaming experience, pretty much no matter how you slice it. Better physics? Well, those are just damn fun.
On top of the added horsepower, there is one more element that I’m much more interested in on the competitors devices over the Nintendo Wii: the personal network. I’m sure there is another name for it, but I’m really interested in having my own personal network of gamer friends to enjoy a lot of these new titles with. I already have several friends and family who have, at least, a 360 and it would be great to be able to play with them, bridging the (often) long distances both in terms of miles and time, that we get to see one another. Sure, the Wii can go online, but it has nothing nearly robust as Live! and I’m sure Sony will be getting its ass in gear on that front soon.
Finally, the Wii Remote simply isn’t unique enough to be competition proof. If the only defining aspect of the system is a motion-sensitive remote, it can’t possibly be that hard for one of the other two guys to throw it into their respective systems, hell, we saw Sony do it at E3 2006.
Nintendo is betting that a relatively cheap system with accessible games coupled with offerings for the core gamer and a unique control scheme will reinvigorate the market and Nintendo’s sales. To date they are doing very well for themselves. However, they are only a few price cuts and two redesigned controllers away from being an underpowered innovator that was subsumed by its more powerful and adaptive rivals.
Will two systems with unique play experiences that appeal to the price conscious among us win out over two systems that offer amazing graphics and multimedia functionality? I don’t know. That’s Nintendo’s Gambit. While I probably wouldn’t have taken the chance, it sure is an exciting time in this industry.
25th May | Reply
I’m such a nerd when you commented on a Spartan neighborhood I first thought of a neighborhood filled with the Master Chief and his buddies.
I mean with Wii versus it’s competition it’s still who has what games and there really isn’t a significant advantage for wii there. I mean it’s got A LOT of ports and a small lineup of first party stuff. And with Mario, Smashbrothers, Super Paper Mario Metroid and Zelda all coming out within about twelve months–can we really expect a big 2008 in terms of games? It’s like 4 big games, some PS2/PSP ports and that’s it.
Conversely on the PS3 and 360 they’re really opening up with a big salvo. Both Microsoft and Sony are bringing some amazing first-party games to bear this holiday. I don’t subscribe to the notion that Nintendo has bar none the best first party anymore, Sony has more diversity and the most important single game in first party world is Halo 3 and my favorite developer is working first party with Microsoft on the Mass effect trilogy–but even if we could Thirdd parties like Ubisoft, Konami, Squeenix, Take Two and more are bringing their AAA franchises not to the wii but mainly to the 360, PS3 or both. Even Ubisoft who is supporting the wii more than most publishers is giving the Wii a last-gen version of BiA, Red Steel and Rayman whereas Assasin’s Creed, the full on sequel to BiA, Splinter Cell, Haze and Endwar are on the table for PS3/360 et al. We’re still back at a scneario where a lot of games are coming to two platforms and exclusively not the nintendo one.
25th May | Reply
I’m with Head on this one - the PS3 and 360 can both take a long walk off a short cliff due to their insane prices. There is no chance that I am going to pay the money that either of these 2 game systems are requiring just to play warmed-over versions of games that I already played on the likes of the PS2. Nintendo in this respect gets my vote since at least its trying to be fun and accessible whereas Sony and Microsoft still seem to think that a controller covered in more sticks and buttons than the flight deck of a 747 is “a good thing”. I don’t care about the graphics or the processing power of the console since, and I’m not kidding here, I had more fun with Super Bomberman on the old SNES that I have had with any other game since on any system, even if the AI wasn’t great and the bombs didn’t bounce realistically.
All this said, my wife won’t let me buy a Wii so this is all a bit moot in my case.
26th May | Reply
Wait a second Kelmon you talk of warmed over games. But what are Nintendo’s big games this fall…metroid, Mario and Super Smash brothers. Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are rolling out big new IPs from proven developers. Drake’s Fortune, Lair, and Mass Effect off the top of my head. And where are 3rd parties debuting interesting new IPs like assasin’s Creed or bioshock…well not on Nintendo hardware.
And really the price is far more likely to change than the fact that Nintendo doesn’t have any strong working relationships with just about any premiere 3rd parties in the West.
31st May | Reply
In Reply to #3:
I don’t think you’re being fair here.
Whether or not the Nintendo systems appeal to you is almost irrelevant, hence the fact that they are making a rather risky Gambit. The fact that Kelmon is very interested in the Wii and you aren’t merely supports the idea that Nintendo does not have universal support and this whole venture could very well spell financial disaster.
I also take some umbrage as to you calling Nintendo’s games warmed over. To start with, there was something like a seven year difference between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. Sure, they’re finishing up a trilogy of games, but the gameplay was masterfully transitioned from a 2D environment to a 3D environment without any noticeable dip in quality.
Proper Mario platform games are few and far between. There were several years between Super Mario Land, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Sunshine. Were there huge gameplay leaps in between all those games? Not necessarily, but Nintendo is very sparing with releasing sequels one after the other, Mario Party games notwithstanding.
Super Smash Brothers…probably won’t even be an evolutionary step forward, but if I can Smash my buddies over the internet, it’ll be well worth it.
That isn’t to say there is absolutely no repetition in some of Nintendo’s franchises or in any other franchise. I didn’t see any difference in gameplay between Halo and Halo 2, but that’s just me. The issue, as far as games are concerned, is largely that of taste.
As for your last point: I think that the fact there are no Western third-party developers making games for Nintendo is because they all dismissed the potential of the Wii and DS. I’d have to look around a bit, but I’m fairly certain I saw that BioWare is developing a game for either the DS, the Wii or both. Not sure on that though.
In any event, I get what you are saying, but ultimately feel your points underscore my thesis about how precarious a situation Nintendo is in.
1st June | Reply
My point wasn’t to say that Nintendo’s franchises were bad but if you don’t fancy visiting the Mushroom Kingdom for the umpteenth time then where you going to go? Conversely on Xbox I can go to a dystopic underwater society with giant robotic defenders protecting eerily human looking little girl creatures that hold the source of life for me. Or i can visit an original space-opera type setting and unravel plots on the tip of the spear for humanity in space with a brand new conversational system which gets away from dialogue trees. How on earth does that stuff equate to warmed over and the mushroom kingdom + waggle is somehow the great savior of freshness and novelty.
Not to mention that Zelda was the exact same game that it was in Ocinara of Time whereas many of the higher profile sequels on the 360/PS3 are in fact seeing huge changes be they in setting or mechanics.
2nd June | Reply
Even though this wasn’t supposed to be about the games per se, I’ll bite.
You haven’t played Bioshock or Mass Effect. Sure, the pedigree of the developers is great but all we know right now is that they, largely, look good.
Aside from that, how many space operas have you played? Yeah, I’ve played a lot of them too. Sure, the setting of Bioshock is conceptually unique, but being isolated in an underwater dystopia using genomes to upgrade yourself isn’t light years from being isolated in space ship using nanotechnology or whatever the hell it was to upgrade your abilities.
We are becoming saturated with the same genre archetypes over and over and over again. The Wii may not do anything to change that, and it may do nothing more than create a novel, if gimmicky way to play the same games, but at least they are trying something genuinely new.
Looking at Evil Avatar’s second-half of 2007 line-up, how many WWII games and first- or third- person shooters were featured? Or how many Tolkien-inspired fantasy worlds?
Having a new method of input won’t necessarily drastically change that either, but to imply that Nintendo’s franchises are “warmed over” seems to be casting a blind eye to the reality of the industry right now as a whole.
3rd June | Reply
In Reply to #3:
Sorry about the delay. Unfortunately you started mentioning things like Assassins Creed and Bioshock so I slipped into a comma with excitement. How can I put this - pretty graphics does not make a new game. All of these games are basically rehashes of stuff that’s come before and they’re coupled with irritatingly complex gamepads. Seriously, bollocks to the lot of it. Waving around a controller might get old but it’s all new as far as I am concerned whereas fiddling around with a PS2-style controller (i.e. various joysticks and buttons) has been done for many years.
One of things I desperately want to see the end of is the dratted mouse+keyboard combination. I hate this control method for FPS games because its so unnatural (although better than a joypad). The Wii finally delivers a new control method that will make games more interesting again even if it simplifies them.
4th June | Reply
In Reply to #7:
Even though we’re on the same side of this debate, the Wii Remote has yet to prove itself as an effective method for controlling FPS movement.
I think the only example so far released in America has been Red Steel and it didn’t get incredibly high marks…on pretty much any aspect of its presentation, control, etc. The real test will come August 20th with the release of yet another warmed-over Nintendo rehash: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. If the controls come together and work well, then maybe we can say the Wii is onto something with FPS’s. Until then, the jury is still out.
However, a couple of editor’s at the Nintendo branch of Famitsu gave the Resident Evil 4: Rehash Edition (or RE4:RE (I’m so clever)) perfect 10s saying the controls really reinvent the game and make it worthwhile for new and old players alike.
So, we’ll see.
4th June | Reply
In Reply to #7:
I never mentioned the game’s graphics you did. In fact if I were to make a list of the most exciting things about next generation the two at the very bottom would be Waggle and graphics. What is exciting about next-gen gaming as we head towards the second christmas is new implementation of wrinkles both into exsisiting franchises and new amalgamations to form new brands like Assasin’s Creed. And lastly, possibly most important to me brand new universes to see as opposed to oh gosh the Mushroom kingdom…again oh gosh Hyrule I’ve only been to these places 133837 times each. Can you guys even name one original IP from a premiere developer with a premium track record on Wii?
And in all honesty what’s wrong with the gamepad and mouse and keyboard . I mean I’ve played Red Steel and Call of Duty 3 on Wii and frankly it’s not an impressive layout it certainly isn’t as smooth as say Halo even after a lot of practice and it’s not even in the same stratosphere as something like Quake 3 or Counter-Strike which are as natural as breathing.
14th June | Reply
In Reply to #9:
The problem is that we’ve already played these games. I honestly believe that the PS3 and 360 will deliver absolutely nothing that has not already been seen or done in some form already and that all we’re getting is rehashes. I entirely take your point that new universes are needed and that, yes, Nintendos franchises, like all franchises (yes, GTA, I’m looking at you) have become stale. My point is that since the Wii delivers an entirely new mode of control we might stand a chance of playing something new or different, whereas the 360 and PS3 will continue with the usual moronic games that send me to sleep.
With respect to the FPS control method, I’m not saying that the Wiimote is a better way to control such games but rather that at least it is different. A gamepad and mouse/keyboard combination blows, as far as I am concerned because it bares little resemblance to how you’d expect to interact with such games. Heck, light guns have been in arcades since the days of Operation Wolf in the 80’s and they were great. The Wiimote looks like being a much more interesting and, most importantly, natural way of interacting with these games rather than the, frankly, damned complicated norms today. I still remember a housemate trying to get to grips with Quake 2 with a mouse and keyboard combo and it was just awful for him - a Wiimote should be simple enough for anyone.
So I’m betting on the Wii since at least it offers the potential of something new and fun.
20th June | Reply
I mentioned Resident Evil 4 previously, and while staking my FPS control claim on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, this seems like a decent harbinger:
Wii - Five Stars - Editor’s Choice
Wii - 9.1 - Editor’s Choice
Wii - 9.0 - Editor’s Choice
I’ll give you the reader’s digest version: Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is the definitive version of the game. Why? The controls make the game better. Period.
Will this work for every game? No. However, if the developers put the time into their games, this shouldn’t be a rare occurrence either.
Anyway, it is certainly an exciting phenomenon to be watching.
28th June | Reply
So far, I’m siding with the Wii on this issue. It’s not to say that I don’t want a PS3 or a 360. It’s just that so far none of the consoles has given me a title that I really need to have. Being a PC gamer for so long, I still love my FPS with the good ol’ WASD and mouse. I will take HL on PC any day over HALO. So no, until Bioware and SK come out with their games, I’d be using my 360 or PS3 to exploit it’s backward compatibility.
Wii on the other hand, might be giving me warmed over games, or even 2-year old Ports, but it’s giving them a twist to make them interesting. I hated the aiming system on RE4, but I’m looking forward to playing it on the Wii.
We can’t deny what Head said: “Moms want it”. The wii is simply fun and not necessarily betting on capturing the interest of the Vermouths of the world. But on those who still feel overwhelmed by the amounts of buttons of a 360 controller or a SIXAXIS; those that jerk the controler sideways on driving games; and those who don’t play videogames.
I think developers might end up seeing the possibilities here, some are starting. And while for now the’ve taken the easy side of things, porting or adapting, it’s only been a short time out.
29th June | Reply
In Reply to #12:
On the subject of leaning when playing driving games, I still remember banking my body around when I first played StarFox on the old Super NES. Great days…
29th June | Reply
That’s nothing. I’d be flailing my elbows and legs all over the place while playing Street Fighter 2 on my old SNES. Bugged the hell out of everyone.
29th June | Reply
In Reply to #14:
…freak…