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Mario All Grown Up?
Reggie Fils-Aime, frequent spokesperson for Nintendo, has a piece extolling the way in which Nintendo will disrupt the videogaming market with the release of the Revolution. His editorial uses the movie industry as a comparison, and likens the systems of Sony and Microsoft to 'flops'. From the article: "Nintendo's counterpunch is disruption. We've determined that the videogame market is ripe for revival--and we're looking to make it happen by reaching out to the millions of players still on the sidelines, including those over the age of 35. Early moves have been promising. Nintendogs, a game that allows people to train virtual puppies, has doubled the typical percentage of female purchasers, selling 1.5 million copies in about four months. Not bad, given that Nintendo DS hardware is in 4 million hands." Yeah, it's just more advertising claptrap, but the levels of hyperbole they're reaching is sort of breathtaking to behold.
.. Mario's been at those mushrooms again.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
"Yeah, it's just more advertising claptrap"
In a time where you have other industry elites saying the video game market has topped out (EA), there's no room for growth in MMOG (Richard Garriott), many companies are just going belly up (Atari), Microsoft can't get is product to the street, the PSP is nothing more than a mini-DVD player and one of the major selling points of the PS3 is that it's a HI-DEF DVD player, Nintendo OPENED UP a new market and sold 1.5 million copies of a game to WOMEN in 4 months.
Claptrap? Nah... I think I'd listen to what the guy has to say.
If Nintendo tried to compete with Sony and Microsoft on the same level and with the same features, it would lose. Right now we can just expect familiar game licenses with new and inovative gameplay elements (IE the controller) and updated graphics.
Which is why Nintendogs is doing so well.
If game companies don't grok this, they'll be stuck with FPS that noone wants to play.
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Are we talking about prostitution or video games?
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
i can never seem to find a reliable answer to this, but i heard that NES was goign to push out an sdk for the revolution? is this true?
NINTENDO is trying to preach to the rest of the industry about how games need to change? That's just bizarre, Nintendo has been behind the times for years, and they're notorious for catering to the 11 year old demographic while the other console and game developers have been avidly going after the adult gamer market.
Nobody disputes that Nintendo owns the handheld. It has done so for a long time and at the moment the PSP seems to be a good second runner but not replacing the DS. If anything I think the PSP is increasing the market or perhaps people just have both it certainly is not distracting from the DS sales.
But so what? The gameboy always sold well. It was the 'main' consoles that Nintendo has been having troubles with. So this is like saying, Pokemon GB/GBA sold well so the Playstation 1/2 were a flop.
Oh and then comes the old sales pitch. Simple. Yes, we are going to reach that part of the market that is to dumb to figure out a lightswitch. Someone should really tell marketing people that there will always be people who claim X is to complex and they will buy X the moment it reaches their level of understanding. Problem is you can't. As long as their are people who are confused by revolving doors or even those who push when it says pull you will have people who can't figure out X.
Marketing to them is stupid. Why? Because you are insulting the intelligence of everyone else. Don't believe me? How many of you actually like using dumbed down products with zero options to confuse you? Oh don't get me wrong. They are nice at first, when you are still new and unsure of what to do. And then you move on and want more.
Part of the fun for me in playing a game is learning to play it. I think it is true with any type of game. The basics are simple but as you move on it becomes more and more complex. You can play chess just fine without knowing the more obscure rules like that move where you can switch the king and towers BUT the game will become deeper and more challenging as you learn more.
Same with other games. Say a FPS. A game with no stances is simpler as it saves 1-2 or even 3 buttons to learn BUT having the option makes the game deeper and more challenging.
Oh and as for nintendogz attracting females to play and that being the road to success. Sorry but if women were the road to success the PC would be the top console. The Sims and similar games are dominated by women.
I am not a woman but if I were I would be insulted by this piece. It is effectively saying that women find current games to complex. Taste or a hint they lack the mental capabilities to deal with 12 buttons and 2 joysticks?
The revolutions success and for that matter the success of all consoles will depend on wether it can reach that 'must buy' state. Usually because it is the console that has the 'must buy' game. Will it? So far Nintendo seems very reluctant to actually show games. Or at least I haven't seen any 'must buy' titles announced yet.
Simple is another way to say dumbed down. Sure there will be players who moan about the good old days when you had all you need was a joystick with 2 buttons but frankly if they were a real market we would have games that meet their needs. We don't. Or rather we do. Old games.
Serious Sam was a move to 'old fashioned' gameplay in the FPS genre. It sold well. Apparently not well enough however as it got only a sequell but no clones. Yes it was hailed as a grand return to the good old days, and then people returned to their complex soldier sims with a hundred buttons that are what we expect today.
Nintendo Revolution may be trying to pull a Apple 1 mouse button move. Even Apple nowadays sells a power mouse with an insane amount of buttons. Simple is good, until you learned it and want more. Fisher Price makes a bright and easy cassette player but I don't see it in to many hifi setups.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Every time I enconter the phrase "polarizing (group1) and (group2)" I think that people really need to play with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid
The article says "Not bad, given that Nintendo DS hardware is in 4 million hands."
Maybe they're talking about just one market (seems unusual though, considering the DS and its games are regionless), but many I've sources claim a DS sales figure of at least 13 million units. Which means it's in around 26 million hands.
Didja ever consider that Nintendogs might be good practice before getting the real thing? (Y'know, before the adopter decides the dog is too much of a hassle and drops it off at the shelter but not before letting it run loose so it makes another litter of 20 puppies?)
We've determined that the videogame market is ripe for revival
How can the market be ripe for revival when it's not even dead? Unless if that was meant to read Nintendo's console market. I have seen no signs of Sony's and Microsoft's consoles suffering from lack of sales.
We (gamers) are being sequeled to death...
;)
we all know this... Usually we blow it off by casting the shame towards the genre we don't like as much...or point to the fewer and fewer glimmers of originality.
But this does not stop the truth we all well know.
Something needs to change.
Maybe its the publishers, maybe its the develoupment model/cycle.
Nintendo is trying to change its machine to be able to do something more than push out one polygon/sprite/bit more than its competitors.
Last time they were our saviors (NES)...maybe..just maybe...they are trying to save us again before the industry REALLY needs it.
*NOTE: trying to save us does mean they can still fall on their asses trying, not to mention how much money they made last time they *were* right
I was explaining to someone (who does not play games) the other day what computer games are about, and since I like FPSs so much, I was explaining FPSs to her. But I felt kind of embarrased because I don't approve of or particularly like shooting things. Shooting things = tired gameplay mechanic. Violence = tired gameplay mechanic.
Compare two different concepts for Nintendogs: 1. raise and train cute puppies, 2. shoot lots of cute puppies. I rest my case, QFD.
Julian
Prolog rules
in these days of gaming that are just re-hashed vesions of previous generation games, we need a bit more innovation. there are a lot of innovative games out there, but they dont seem to be getting the prominence that they deserve. However, most companies seem content to pump out unnecessary-sequel 5, without regards to innovation. it seems even the companies normally renound for innovation are falling under this spell.
even nintendo itself. they have a lot of great titles, but seem to be increasingly padding it out with rehashes of previous stuff. Im a massive fan of mario, but do i really need another version of super mario bros? a game that was amazing on the nes, but why should i buy it on the DS? or the GBA? sure if they do anything new (like they did with mario kart ds) then ill consider it.
i would love to play an completely new mario game on the DS, not one that looks like its just a level redesign (from the few leaked shots ive seen so far). maybe im becoming jaded and looking at the gaming past through rose tinted glasses, but to me it seems that the games industry needs a good swift kick up the behind and get its ideas in shape (and give those designers who actually have loads of good ideas a chance).
Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
The hell with Mario, I want her!
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
because gameplay is weak and games are intimidating and hard to use? It's true in my case. More to the point, previously "hardcore" gamers are, I think, being pushed into the "non-hardcore" camp.
Games are what brought me to the PC from Unix platforms in the late '80s and early '90s (well, games and Linux). I am the ideal market: male, 20s-30s, very technical, able and willing to assemble my own systems and very, shall we say, "intrigued" by ever-faster and sexier hardware.
For a long time before I started with PC games, I was a rabid text-based adventure and Nethack fan. But the graphics and variety of PC platform games were just too sexy to me and by the mid-to-late'90s, I was what I would consider to be a hardcore gamer: SMP, relentless video card upgrades, lots of RAM, RAID for faster level loads, CD changers to play multi-disc games more smoothly, 21" monitor, etc., moving into console platforms, buying just about every game that came out...
But it all tapered off somehow. Games would feel less engrossing, or the keyboard learning curve would be so high that I wouldn't play it after I'd bought it. At first, it was just one or two games that I wasn't bothering to complete, but by the time I had the latest 10 or 15 titles in my hands and a system that could play them all, yet I hadn't finished any of them and found myself preferring to do other things instead, I realized that this gaming thing was becoming a worse investment since I didn't seem to be enjoying it as much... and my game buying tapered off.
In retrospect, though I played a bunch of FPS games all the way through, the games that I find most memorable (and that I still own long after most of my game library has gone the eBay way) are the games that today's "hardcore" gamers ruthlessly mock. I still own Myst, Riven, Zork Nemesis, the Ultima series (including Ultima IX: Ascension), the King's Quest series (including Mask of Eternity), and so on. In short, they're primarily adventure-driven games whose interfaces and schemas are not so complex that one must spend two weeks in "learning curve" mode before actually having any fun.
I have some friends who still game all the latest titles, but I've tried them and they're just not that entertaining. There's nothing for the imagination there. You simply mindlessly flail about on your keyboard with ultra-complex controls while trying to blast things. Rather than being revealed to you through experience, evidence, and events (as was strongly the case with, for example, Myst or Riven), stories are simply told to you in annoying pages-long sessions of reading or long monologues by animated characters that I don't care about and that punctuate the otherwise mindless action.
In short, most games aren't fun anymore. The past is full of great games in dead genres. Text- or command-based adventure (i.e. Infocom games, early Sierra games), text-based RPG (Nethack, Rogue, et. al.), graphical adventure (Myst, Riven, Sanitarium, Obsidian, Grim Fandango, a million other amazing titles), action-adventure (Ultima IX: Ascention, Mask of Eternity, Nocturne), action platform/scroller (NOX, Gauntlet, Flashback), strategy (Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Alpha Centauri).
I can't really think of any FPS, pure role-playing, racing, or sports computer games that are at the top of my list... Yet that's all that's on the market today. Compare to 1997, when the shelves were full of imaginative games in many genres. It's as though the improvement in graphics has pushed the "reality" paradigm to the forefront, leaving no room in the marketplace for "fantasy," which is really the only reason I ever played games to begin with. I want to go to other worlds that don't bear too big a resemblance to mine, and to enjoy myself while I'm there (i.e. it shouldn't feel like work).
Instead, today's games have a very high learning curve (trying to learn to play one of them feels like being in school, you can't just pick up as you go, and the controls demand full attention, not leisurely
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
well, you're probably only counting US titles.
A lot of people play Mah Jong and Karate games on DS handhelds in Japan, for example, or sports games which are very popular worldwide - with networked DS fantasy sports teams.
When reading analyses of markets, always ask yourself - which market? US? World? Euro? Japan?
I normally presume we're talking world market.
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Nintendogz did well therefore the PS3 is a flop.
... Problem is you can't.
The PS3 is not mentioned in that article. In fact, no Sony system is.
Maybe you should read the article and realize what the word "flop" was actually being used by the Nintendo rep to describe, instead of just reading the slashdot summary and jumping to conclusions.
In either case, you misunderstand the point being made in the article, which was: Nintendogs is doing well. That's all. The PS3 and PSP don't need to sell well or badly for the fact that Nintendogs is doing well to be important from Nintendo's perspective.
Oh and then comes the old sales pitch. Simple. Yes, we are going to reach that part of the market that is to dumb to figure out a lightswitch.
Well then it sure is odd that all those Game Boy Advances and iPods are selling so well. I wonder who is buying them.
I don't think it's that women find games too complex, I think it's that they find currently offered games:
1. too boring (FPS bang bang bleed bleed no challenge after first time);
2. too involved (takes 30 minutes before it really kicks in, hard to pause, save takes forever);
3. not group-oriented (sure, you can battle faceless opponents worldwide via wifi, but can you play with your neighbors or coworkers at lunch?);
4. too action-oriented not cooperative.
Many studies have shown that most games fail on those counts for women and girls. And last time I checked, they had lots of disposable income to spend on that, instead of on the latest Beach Volleyball game.
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Probably true. The only problem with this is that if dogs are their thing, those 1.5 million people could have adopted real puppies instead and saved them from being put to sleep.
Yeah, but you're assuming they want to:
a. have to clean up after the dog.
b. want the dog to grow up.
c. want to keep the same dog.
d. want to have to drive to the dog park in the pouring rain or snow or the dog gets unruly when they're having to do the laundry and pick up the kids.
Virtual dogs have none of these problems, plus when you have to do something, you just put them on pause. Plus, if you get bored with your German Shepherd puppy, you can buy the Chihuahua version and you've got four new puppies to play with!
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Just listen to the way he talks and is very obvious that he has not grown up.
He may look like an adult, but he is still a teenager at heart.
No, nintendogz is a nice game and it may have sold to women but frankly if Nintendo is betting their future on this then they are doomed.
I think you missed both the point of my post AND the original post. It seems to claim that selling 1.5 million games on a handheld is going to doom the PS3 and 360. I claim bullshit. You lap it up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
I don't think people realize what kind of games the revolution is going to offer.
:) I want to see what this cooking game idea looks like. :)
I mean it hinted at a lot of things to come...
1. Conduct your own orchastra/symphony.
2. Cook food. Chop up food quickly... ect.
3. Cool sword fights.
4. More natural type of baseball bat swing.
A real revolution? Yup.
Beat Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Then you can come back and tell me that Nintendo's interface designs are for retards, if you really want to. In fact, I defy you to even beat Pac-Pix.
I agree, most people lose sight of that :-)
There are lots of casual or semi-casual gamers out there that only have time for a short game, or want a fun, not-so-complex game.
While I love RPGs and complex strategy games, I find myself playing shorter games or distractions - like a sports game for example - most of the time.
And the GameCube is wonderful for multiplayer. A friend of mine owns all 3 major consoles, but when we gather, if we do play a console, it's a game of Mario Kart / Mario Tennis / Mario Party , or a sports game ( Winning Eleven is all the rage here, and the only non-GameCube game in the list ).
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
About 4 millions sold in the US (Reggie works at NOA) and each DS in only one hand as the other holds the stylus to pet the Nintendog.
From TFA: "Despite dramatic gains in graphical realism in four generations of console platforms"
Gen 1: Arari
Gen 2: Master System / NES
Gen 3: Genesis / SNES
Gen 4: Playstation / Dreamcast
Gen 4.5: N64 - You KNOW it!
Gen 5: PS2 / Xbox / Gamecube
Gen 6: Xbox 360 (its out now... aint it?)
should it be 6 (or perhaps 7 if you count the graphical increases within the N64) generations of console platforms????
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
The url/comic really speaks for itself.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Personally, i would go for the shooting of puppies
Nintendo hopes to gain the 35+ market, their spokesperson says so. ( I think its more they need to capture the 20+ market).
Then he goes on about Nintendogs, a game squarely marketed for juvenile girls.
I am all up for the new Revolution, hoping Nintendo will put their money where their mouth is, but I have no doubts that the new Revolution will cater to children with derivative Mario Party titles that will make novel use of the new motion based controller system. Nintendo has not yet focused on adult gaming, and one can only hope that Nintendo is finally realizing that adult gamers are making up a larger market with disposable income.
To say Sony and Microsoft failed suggest that Nintendo is trying to downplay the fact they have been underdogs in an industry that almost passed them buy. Without catering to an adult market, Nintendo allowed their once near 90% marketshare to slip to less then 20%.
We will see what Nintendo's goal is with the new Revolution. But I am sure that the first 6 Nintendo titles will be based on a Mario, Luigi, Wario, Kirby, Zelda, Metroid, or Nintendogs franchise. Probably throw in a Resident Evil just to say they are not entirely a G rated company. The rest of the release titles by 3rd party companies will be party based novelty games that make generous use of the remote controller. But, NONE of the games will cater to the adult market.
The only thing Nintendo has going for them in the Revolution is support for their entire backlibrary (hopefully this feature won't be dropped). Adult players will probably pick up the Revolution for nostalgic reasons, playing old favourites once again.
Only time will tell if Nintendo has any real plans to cater to the adult marketplace, but I doubt it.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
You're right. Animal Crossing sucked.
Actually, I love Animal Crossing. There's just something about being able to talk in Animalese and the parodies of human society are immensely funny.
Now, I haven't checked out the sequel, I admit.
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Do you live in Ontario? By law, a lease is not allowed to prohibit you from owning pets except under the following conditions:
1. The pet causes undue damage to the property
2. The pet can reasonably be considered dangerous
3. Other residents of the property are allergic to the pet
Know your rights, and stand up for them. We had a property management company try to tell us that we couldn't have a dishwasher, and that we're not allowed to store flammable substances in our apartment. What a joke.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Ocarina of Time was one of the best games ever made. It had enjoyable mechanics, many places to explore, good puzzles, and an epic storyline. I bought the game "for my son" when he was three years old. My son and I played that game after school/work for hours on end. He loved it intensely and I enjoyed it as well.
The "eyeball monster" scared the crap out of him, so he handed the controller off to me when he got there, but for the most part, he played the game himself...
It was Ocarina of Time that got my son interested in reading. He was always asking me to tell him what the words were on the screen, but since I was not always available, it gave him an impetus to learn to read himself. That game is directly responsible for my son being the top reader in his class now.
The puzzles stimulated his problem skills. He is always the first one in his class with the answer to any problem posed.
Hm... now I do not remember why I went off on this tangent. I am sure there was a reason, but I do not recall now. Sorry.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
re:"Stupid knows no political thought."
I've been prone to generalizing the granola set because of my proximity to Berkely. I'll admit it. However - I've yet to see a GOP member tie themselves to a tree or participate in an animal liberation exercise, so for the sake of splitting hairs I'll defend my choice of sterotype in this literary-fart of an instance.