Nintendo - "Everyone is a Gamer"

There's nothing that excites gamers like statistics; pie charts and graphs dominated the opening of Nintendo's E3 conference. Fortunately, the event had more than just business to discuss. They unveiled a 'Wii Zapper' housing that allows the Wiimote and Nunchuck to combine into a light gun, which will retail for about twenty bucks. They showed off a number of third party titles to prove the outside-the-company commitment, such as a Soul Calbur and Medal of Honor (which will be playable online) designed specifically for the console. Hardcore gamers were the focus of the early portion of the conference: Smash Brothers Brawl has a launch date of December 3rd in the US. They heavily hyped online play, with several EA titles and a Pokemon-like Dragon Quest title. Mario Kart for Wii will be launching early next year, will be playable online, and will have a Wiimote driving wheel housing packaged with the game. With the hardcore discussed, the attention shifted to mass market games. A new channel, 'Check Mii Out' will allow for a HotorNot-style voting mechanism and contests to make the most realistic celebrity Mii. There was much discussion of the Nintendo approach to expanding audience; Super Mario Galaxy was brought up as bridging that gap, as a second player can 'assist' the primary player in various ways. Galaxy will be launching on November 12th. Targetted more directly at this 'outside the norm' group was WiiFit, which uses a dedicated device called the Wii Balance Board. It allows for a daily exercise routine, can track data over time (and compare it to other family members) and includes some simple minigames like a soccer heading game. The press conference ended with Reggie Fils-Aimee revealing Nintendo's goal to make videogaming one of the pre-eminent forms of entertainment, across all age groups.

Comments

Two years ago

[yanos]

I remember when the big 3 was announcing their forthcoming console. The Xbox 360 press event made it to slashdot's front page. So did the PS3, while the Wii was tucked away in the game section. Forward two years from then, and it's Nintendo press conference that made it to the front page, while Sony and Microsoft are nowhere to be found. How things changes...

Re:Two years ago

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Yes, in just 2 years the PS3 will no longer have bugs. Perhaps it will be playable?

In my circle one of the reasons to even get a wii was SSBB and MarioKart. The wii is just about to hit it's stride.

the reasons to have the systems:
wii - cool controls, generally social atmosphere. Warioware/Mario Party, SSBB, and Wii play/sports.
PS3 - probably going to have the best RPGs (Assassin's Creed will likely jump start sales)
Xbox 360 - lock self in room and frag things online (Halo, Metal Gear Solid, it came out strong)
Computer - adaptable interface, the best graphics, Spore

Re:Two years ago

[LWATCDR]

I hate to say it but that really sounds like wishful thinking.
1. The PS3 may not really be more powerful than the 360. You can have a very fast system but if it is too hard to program for you will loose to less powerful systems in the long run. Just as Intel about that. They have learned that lesson a few times. The 360 is much easier to program for and has a much larger installed user base currently. Game producers have to look at the number of games they can expect to sell and the cost i.e. "difficulty" of producing them. The PS3 has the smallest customer base and the highest development costs. The only market that the PS3 outsells the 360 is Japan and as far as I can tell the Wii outsells it in every market. Also the Wii has the lowest development costs.
2. Nintendo a one trick pony? Well as the DS has proven a good innovative UI can beat shear horsepower. Sorry but that pony has shown many tricks over the years.
3. Nintendo is currently making money hand over fist with the Wii. The PS3s sales went up after the price cut but what will that do to Sony's profits? I still predict that Nintendo will offer the Wii HD in about two or three years. It will play all the old wii and GC games but will offer higher resolution graphics and a faster processor speed. No one will really care about there "investment" in the orginal Wii being usless since they didn't pay nearly as much for there Wii as the PS3 or 360.
4. It's the games. The Wii has more fun games than the PS3. It will keep selling for a good long time.
5. Nintendo can cut the price tomorrow if it wants to and still make money. So it will be a popular "why not" console.
6. I get the feeling that even Sony isn't all that thrilled with the PS3 as a platform. Why are they still making and selling the PS2? Nintendo killed the GC and Microsoft killed the XBox. Also why did God of War II come out for the PS2 and not the PS3?

The PS3 may pull out of it's current problems and do well. The odds of becoming the number one selling console I see as being slim to none.

Re:Two years ago

[LKM]

While I am absolutely sure that Sony isn't thrilled with the PS3, I see no problem with them continuing to sell the PS2. It's making them a shitload of money, and it's a console sale that doesn't go to the Wii.

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[cayenne8]

"It has gotten to the point where I feel like I am forcing myself to turn it on once a month or so. It does get the occasional use when someone comes by and they haven't seen the system yet, but the number of people who haven't heard about the Wii is pretty small now. And it seems like most people are extremely interested at first and then their interest rapidly diminishes to zero."

I think it also depends on your age group. If not for /. I'd probably not know what a Wii was. Most people I know my age are too busy to mess with gaming much. And in their free time, they like to spend it out..dining out, seeing a movie...clubs, bars...festivals, etc.

When I want to veg out at home...I like to just veg, which means listening to the stereo, or watching something on the projector (movie, tv show)...veggin' to me is a passive thing.

When I want action...I go out.

I used to like computer games, and I think I might still play the occasional one if I thought of it. But, back when I used to play them alot, while I had more free time, I also had less income to go out and do things. Now I can afford to go out and do things, which eats up more of my limited time I have these days.

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[GweeDo]

I still play WiiSports with my nieces all the time. I still play Mario Party 8 with my wife often. Resident Evil 4 is even more fun then when I played it on my cube and I just got a few new VC games with some gift cards from a few friends.

So in short: yes.

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[shoptroll]

As someone who grew up with the NES and SNES, Nintendo has always been "gadget-happy" and looking for alternate interfaces. I know back home I have the following:

NES: Zapper, Power Pad, Advantage (Arcade joystick styled controller), Max ("Analog" style controller.. also has wings like a PlayStation controller)
SNES: Mouse, Super Scope

More Nintendo peripherals isn't anything new.

Mii Hot or Not?

[LoverOfJoy]

Maybe this sounds racist but I think most Miis look pretty much the same. I don't own a wii so maybe it's been updated since the last time I've played with it but the options seem pretty limited. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it for what it is and I made one with a beard that looked halfway like mine but if they are going to make a contest on creating the most "realistic" celebrity I think we're going to see a whole lot of nearly identical miis that don't look all THAT much like any particular celebrity.

It's a very rough caricature. How realistic can people make them? Someone will make Madonna and when it's pointed out I might even agree that it kind of looks like her but if I would never have looked at the mii and immediately thought MADONNA!

My nephews own a wii and they created a mii for everyone in our extended family. They did as good a job as anyone could do but I couldn't pick out who people were because the options would have to be a lot more detailed to distinguish between my nose and my brother's nose, for instance. So how are people going to vote on celebrity miis? This one's head is a LITTLE bit bigger. That one has a slightly darker skin color. How do you decide which is better when they are all nearly identical?

Re:Mii Hot or Not?

[porcupine8]

It certainly seems like it should be. Heck, they could even start selling upgrade packs on the VC - $1 here for ten new noses, $1 there for ten new hair styles...

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[El Gigante de Justic]

I've used mine just about every night in the last 3 weeks, mostly for Wii Sports (yes, it still hasn't lost its appeal even after 6 months), since I can just turn it on, play a few games and then turn it off again. I have plenty of games for PS2 and X-Box I could work on finishing, but I love being able to just turn it on, play for 20 minutes and turn it off. Sure there have a been a couple of stretches where I didn't use it much for a while, usually because I had a new PS2 game or something, but I always come back to it later. I can't think of any reason for any Wii to be getting dusty, especially since RE4 was just released, unless of course you're a student or unemployed so you have more than 2-3 hours of free time a day. Sure Wii has had a lot of mini-game type stuff released for it, but that's because its fits the casual gamer target audience. You could just as easily argue that the XBox360 has too many FPS games on it and are there really more worthy titles out for the PS3 at this point as compared to the Wii? Smash Bros and Mario Galaxy alone should be worth hanging onto your Wii for. 3rd party support is definately coming - it's just taking a while since a lot of developers anticipated the sales of PS3 and Wii to be switched and they have to figure out what to do with the new controllers. I think a lot of hardcore gamers and PS3/XBox fanboys fail to realize that part of the reason the Wii is selling so well compared to those is because a Wii is cheaper than both systems, works on a standard TV, and just about anyone can pick up the games and play. Would I like a PS3 eventually? Maybe, but it would cost me about $1500 to make it worthwhile even after the price drop because I, like most households in the US, don't have an HDTV yet, and other expenses have to take priority. No point in paying for a system with all those fancy graphics if I can only view them at 480i. Just an aside to anyone whining about the presentation this year being about business - that's what E3 is now. If you're looking for a presentation aimed at hardcore gamers, wait until TGS.

Re:I find myself less and less interested in Ninte

[porcupine8]

I don't understand how a "long-time moderate gamer" who has owned every Nintendo console (a description that nearly fits me) could say that a company that's releasing Twilight Princess; Mario Galaxy, Party, Paper, and Kart; Super Smash Brothers; and Wii Sports (have you actually played it?) is "ignoring you." What exactly do you WANT?

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[KDR_11k]

I think the mat will definitely have applications for skate or snowboard games.

Across all age groups my ass....

[cjjjer]

The press conference ended with Reggie Fils-Aimee revealing Nintendo's goal to make videogaming one of the pre-eminent forms of entertainment, across all age groups
I call bull-shit on this remark. If they actually mean across all age groups then why can't I as an over thirty gamer play Manhunt2 in it's original form. What a crock of shit.

Played The Godfather?

[Chuck Chunder]

I see a lot of new experiences for non-gamers, but for all its promise the Wiimote has yet to really add anything compelling to traditional gaming (waggle doesn't really count). I didn't see anything in that conference to convince me otherwise.

Have you played The Godfather? For me that's the best use of the Wii's controls in a "traditional" game so far and it is very compelling (and by a third party developer). It helps that it's a very "hands on" game (by which I mean the protagonist does a lot with his hands) making coherent Wii control movements reasonably obvious and "true to life". I defy anyone not to grin manically the first time they physically "throw" someone off a roof or through a window.

Other games may not have functions that are so clearly mappable to hand movements and therefore any movements they have might not be so obviously compelling. However I think that motion controls will (assuming they are usable, obviously bad controls of any sort can ruin a game) provide a more enjoyable experience over-all, if for no other reason that physical activity helps good things happen in the brain.

Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore?

[BakaHoushi]

Personally, I'm a solo gamer (I live in a small, middle-of-nowhere town where vidya games and them thar compooterizing things are new fangled gizmos), and I haven't really played mine in a while. I mean, I've used it to finish up some old Gamecube games I didn't complete...

But I'm still happy with my Wii. I don't expect a new Must-Have game every month. I enjoyed the hell out of Zelda, Trauma Center, DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, and Super Paper Mario. It also gave me a chance to relive some classics from my youth, like Streets of Rage 2, Super Mario World, and Zelda: Link to the Past.

And coming soon, I get another Smash Bros., I'll try to pick up Wario Ware, and I'm awaiting a few more titles for the Virtual Console (namely Mario RPG).

Really, considering it's not even been a year, I think that's a good deal. I may be what I consider a "hardcore gamer" but I don't expect my entire free-time to revolve around one system. Plus, the little multiplayer time I've had has been a blast. If Nintendo can get some decent online matching up, it'll be worth the wait.

Besides, if you're a "real" gamer, I'm sure you've got a backlog of games for other systems. I know I do. DS, PS2, PC, GCN...

Please note, this does not mean I didn't wish there weren't more immediate goodies, but... Jesus, patience, people.

Casual gamers are the REAL gamers

[Rosebud128]

The purest gamer are these new casual players who are only looking for fun. They don't make top ten lists. They don't put photos of Japanese vending machines on a blog. They don't try to analyze the industry. They don't try to imagine games as a type of 'high art' like literature.

They are much more picky with their time. It is easier to make a game for a hardcore player than a casual player. As you said, most people in the games industry are hardcore players. So all they have to do is make a game for themselves. But that is the route to failure.

Movies began to suck when Hollywood began making movies for *themselves* rather than the mass population.

Most books suck because the writer will write for himself/herself instead of for a mass population.

Games began to suck when programmers and all began making games for themselves. Iwata's first speech as president was the "Heart of the Gamer" where he asks, "Are we just making games for ourselves?" One of the Oliver twins echoed the same thing telling todays game designers that they must make games outside their own narrow interests.

And Miyamoto is not a hardcore gamer. He is probably a bored gamer. If people are tired of playing the same games with fancier graphics, don't you think guys like Miyamoto are tired of making them? For all we know, part of the reason why Wii was made was because Nintendo got bored.

Console gaming is supposed to cater to the casuals. Atari 2600 appealed to everyone. The NES was a family console. Only as time went on, the consoles catered more and more to the hardcore. They were the fools with no lives spending fortunes on getting every system, every hot game, buying new home theaters and tvs just for their game console, and even willing to pay half a grand for a game console. Sony and Microsoft view hardcore gamers as 'useful idiots' where they can trojan in all their REAL non-gaming crap from Blu-Ray to downloadable movies.

Nintendo is the true gaming hardware company right now. It is Sony and Microsoft pursuing the non-game route. Hell, they don't even call their systems "game consoles". To them, they call it 'computer entertainment systems'.

It was the casual games that defined this industry. Casual Pong made this industry, not hardcore Computer Space. Pac-Man was huge. Beserk was not. Super Mario Brothers was huge. The 'epic games' on the computers then were not. Tetris was huge while other games, with far superior graphics, were not. Wii Sports is huge while Gears of War was nothing but a fad. And don't get started on computer gaming with huge hits like The Sims or Myst.

Casual gamers are the true axis in which this industry revolves around. Hardcore are not in the center but on the far edges.

Re:Casual gamers are the REAL gamers

[ben there...]

Movies began to suck when Hollywood began making movies for *themselves* rather than the mass population.

Most books suck because the writer will write for himself/herself instead of for a mass population.

It's funny, because after my rather vitriolic diatribe, I started thinking about why I was so angry about someone saying that casual gaming was going to supplant hardcore gaming. And it came down to this: when casual music listening (pop/easy listening) became mainstream, look what it did to our radio stations. Look what it did to music in general. Creating artistic works for the lowest common denominator is almost always a Very Bad Thing.

Console gaming is supposed to cater to the casuals. Atari 2600 appealed to everyone. The NES was a family console. Only as time went on, the consoles catered more and more to the hardcore. They were the fools with no lives spending fortunes on getting every system, every hot game, buying new home theaters and tvs just for their game console, and even willing to pay half a grand for a game console.

Most hardcore gamers that are my age had an NES, an SNES, and an N64. Some of the few who were lucky enough to have parents that were into family gaming at the time also had an Atari. Not to mention Sega Genesis and the other systems. They were hardcore gamers at the time when those were the only systems and genres of games you could buy. The games you mention as hardcore gaming are all fairly recent. Most hardcore gamers remember those old school games fondly.

It was the casual games that defined this industry. Casual Pong made this industry, not hardcore Computer Space. Pac-Man was huge. Beserk was not. Super Mario Brothers was huge. The 'epic games' on the computers then were not. Tetris was huge while other games, with far superior graphics, were not. Wii Sports is huge while Gears of War was nothing but a fad. And don't get started on computer gaming with huge hits like The Sims or Myst.

Again, lowest common denominator. Also, to even play games then was hardcore enough. We didn't really need a separate designation. Huge games now include WoW, Counterstrike, Halo. Even Civilization and most of the similar strategy games are primarily hardcore gamers, just in a different genre.

Casual gamers are the true axis in which this industry revolves around. Hardcore are not in the center but on the far edges.

I don't appreciate your trivialization of hardcore gamers, who were hardcore gamers when they played the first game that defined each genre of the many genres of games we have now. I think as games become mainstream, many of these casual gamers will try to convince everyone that their style of gaming is the center of the universe, regardless of the rich history of gaming. And I don't want to see the industry dumbed-down and watered-down like that. Like pop music.

Re:Casual gamers are the REAL gamers

[buffer-overflowed]

It's funny, because after my rather vitriolic diatribe, I started thinking about why I was so angry about someone saying that casual gaming was going to supplant hardcore gaming. And it came down to this: when casual music listening (pop/easy listening) became mainstream, look what it did to our radio stations. Look what it did to music in general. Creating artistic works for the lowest common denominator is almost always a Very Bad Thing.

Well, radio(radio predates TV[which supplanted it] for going mainstream, and only really film predates it of the modern media) has more to do with media consolidation than anything else, and you can still get a ton of variety on things like NPR and college radio in terms of music(no radio plays anymore though really, outside NPR). No, it's not always a very bad thing. It's almost always a good thing. When a medium goes mainstream it begins to fufill every niche(except where restricted by law). I guarantee you someone puts out at least one movie a year that you like. It may not be hollywood, it may not have a huge budget, it may be filmed on Super 8 in someone's basement with a moneys dredged up by relatives and staring friends, but someone probably puts one out. Someone puts out a novel you'd like every year. Some DJ sneaks a song that you like onto the corporate approved playlists every year. The exception might be TV, but gaming is and never will be TV.

That isn't the case with gaming right now... there are certain genres and certain types that are catered to, and well, that's about it. If you solely follow the hardcore enthuisiast media, you won't even hear about the few things that might cater to your niche. Adventure games, for example, were all but dead, with the exception of the odd year where we'd see a few(and none in the style of the old LucasArts games until the DS and episodic content on the PC).

Most hardcore gamers that are my age had an NES, an SNES, and an N64. Some of the few who were lucky enough to have parents that were into family gaming at the time also had an Atari. Not to mention Sega Genesis and the other systems. They were hardcore gamers at the time when those were the only systems and genres of games you could buy. The games you mention as hardcore gaming are all fairly recent. Most hardcore gamers remember those old school games fondly.

Yes, something had to get you started. Were you really a "hardcore" gamer in the days of your first console? Or did it gradually grow on you? The same will probably hold true for a section of the casual and new gamers entering the market.

Again, lowest common denominator. Also, to even play games then was hardcore enough. We didn't really need a separate designation. Huge games now include WoW, Counterstrike, Halo. Even Civilization and most of the similar strategy games are primarily hardcore gamers, just in a different genre.

There wasn't a seperate distinction because there weren't a ton of people running around in full blown panic mode about it. You either played games or you didn't. Now people feel the need to draw this distinction out of I guess... elitism? Leftovers of feeling grown up because you don't play Mario?

I personally blame the gaming media, which not only sucks, but is composed of neckbeard enthuisiasts. Those guys are going to be out of jobs soon enough though. I don't care about what IGN(you can't spell ignorant without it!) has to think about Drake or Galaxy, I can view gameplay footage and video and evaluate it for myself.

I don't appreciate your trivialization of hardcore gamers, who were hardcore gamers when they played the first game that defined each genre of the many genres of games we have now. I think as games become mainstream, many of these casual gamers will try to convince everyone that their style of gaming is the center of the universe, regardless of the rich history of gaming. And I don't want to see the industry dumbed-down and watered-down like that. Like pop music.

You weren't a