Nintendo Admits They May 'Lose Some Purists'

njkid1 writes "GameDaily has up their full E3 interview with Nintendo of America's George Harrison, SVP of Marketing and Corporate Communications. Harrison talks about the move of the company's sales and marketing force, acknowledges that Nintendo may 'lose some purists' while attempting to broaden the audience, and he doesn't rule out a Wii revision: 'It's interesting, console hardware has always historically been on a sort of fixed, sequential pattern almost every five to six years and it takes you about five years to develop a new piece of console hardware. The handhelds and portables, like Game Boy and now DS, we've always been continuously innovating, and whenever we feel like it's time or have an upgrade, we'll do it, whether it's an improved screen for the handheld or slimmed down like the DS Lite - those types of things. So it's not out of the question on Wii, but we're not even to our second holiday yet, so it's kind of premature to talk about any revisions to the hardware itself.'"

Comments

What's a purist?

[meringuoid]

Videogames are still a new and rapidly evolving artform. So what's a purist? A traditionalist, perhaps... but then I remember being extremely unhappy when I heard that my two favourite 2D franchises (a popular side-scrolling platformer, and a popular top-down action/RPG series) were going to be made into 3D games.

Until I played them.

Now Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are considered all-time classics, even by 'purists', even by old hands like me. Should Mario have stayed true to his 2D roots to satisfy purists? Should Zelda have stayed top-down? Certainly not. Purism of that kind leads to stagnation; while the occasional throwback like New SMB is wonderful, games have to evolve or become stale.

Re:What's a purist?

[moogaloonie]

There are certainly 2D and 3D purists, who especially balk at seeing one mixed with the other. I think in Nintendo's case it's concerning a type of player. The purists are the gamers who've beaten insanely difficult games, find secrets and glitches, master 5-10 button combos (kombos?) and complain that a 40 hour game is too short. Nintendo, in trying to appeal to a larger market, are making easier, more immediately satisfying games which often don't even have endings in the traditional sense.

Re:What's a purist?

[Chris Burke]

But in terms of human civilization and culture, which have both been around for a lot less time than humans themselves and move much more rapidly than our species itself, literature is very old and does have a very well established tradition on which to base your notion of "purity". Recorded music is just a way of experiencing music, and music is even more ancient than writing, and again has established traditions and parameters and a codified way of talking about it. Painting is ancient. And while neither of these things are static and unchanging, any new development can be discussed in terms of the history.

Movies? Relative newcomer. Movies are still in their infancy as an art form -- compared to other human artforms, not just geologic time as it seems you were doing. Movies are starting to have a significant history that would inform anyone calling themselves a "purist", though I've never heard someone doing so.

Video games? Not even three decades of existence, and founded on technology known for doubling its operational parameters in only two years. This isn't even comparable to the other art forms as far as having an established history, a canon to which one can wish to remain true as a "purist". In the grand scheme of things we're at the "discovering that banging a stick on a hollow tree stump in a regular beat makes a pleasing noise" phase. Acting like their is an established way for banging ones stick against a hollow tree stump against which new stump-stick-beaters should be judged is foolish, because there is an ongoing explosion of people trying various beaters and various objects upon which to beat and nobody has found a "good" way to do it.

Call me in 50 years, when we can look back on this period of infancy in video games, assuming we are not yet even in it, and we can discuss what "purity" means. In the meantime, there's no point because there simply isn't enough history, and yes that's different than other art forms.

Re:What's a purist?

[Carrot007]

Where are these sort of purists?

Todays generation did not grow up with the old games so did not play them.

As someone who grew up with the older games I welcome the newer games because as an adult I can not afford to play games non stop for X hours.

Nintendo seems to know where things need to be if you ask me.

purists?

[joe 155]

As someone mentioned the other day, games never used to be hundreds of screens of options and thousands of button combinations to press in a specific order to win. They were on the whole pretty simple to play.

Don't get me wrong nethack is hard the first time you play on it (although it's such a good game). But as soon as you look at the controls and figure out that they use the vi commands for movement you can pick up and play - just add more detail into the game as and when you're ready... it goes with you more than the new games seem to.

Mario is an even better example, easy as you like at the start, gets harder... but very much "pick up and play".

The Wii follows from this "pick up and play" idea. That's where the purists should be, not playing these games that you get on the 360 (I went into gamestation and tried to play a game demo they'd got on - I couldn't even figure out how to do anything... there was about 800 context sensitive button combinations before you got to any kind of action... I'd already given up before that happened)

Re:Hardware revisions

[AKAImBatman]

Whilst new features in a console are nice, the biggest problem I have with new revisions is if you want to "upgrade" what do you do with your old kit?

Sell it at a lower price so that someone who has different priorities or is not as privileged as you can purchase it?

There's a HUGE market of people who want second-hand game consoles. As long as you keep your kit in operating condition, I wouldn't worry too much about what happens to the old stuff. Simply trade it in at the local GAME for credit toward a new unit and be happy.

Re:Hardware revisions

[meringuoid]

I just get the impression we're going to end up throwing yet more electronic hardware away if this becomes a common trend, particularly if the upgrade is such a big jump as the DS to the DS Lite was that it does make a large difference getting the new kit.

What was the jump from DS to DS Lite? Physically smaller, brighter screen, longer battery life. Great for a portable. Utterly irrelevant for a home console. Nintendo might come out with a smaller Wii, as Sony did with the PS2, but that won't exactly obsolete the old ones. A hardware upgrade is a poor idea; you end up with Wii1 and Wii2 in the market at the same time, and developers who use the capabilities of Wii2 cut themselves off from the already enormous installed base of Wii1.

The obvious Wii upgrade would have to be a software jump: specifically, multimedia. I'm on record from last November as saying that DVD playing doesn't matter to me, because everyone has a DVD player already. I've cooled on that. The Wii is on, it's connected right the hell now, I can't be bothered messing with switches, the damn thing's got a remote control, I want to play a DVD in it. And since the Wii's a device on my wireless network, I'd be awfully happy if it could play video files from my PC over the network. I've an awful lot of anime I'd love to watch on the big screen downstairs. If they'd just get the mplayerhq.hu guys to produce a version for Wii that they could put out for download, that would be just great ;-)

Re:Real 'Purists' aren't going anywhere

[meringuoid]

Zelda:TP felt more like a OoT mission disc then a new experience

Ironically, that's exactly what the purists wanted - indeed, what the purists insisted upon, very loudly. Remember the fuss, right here, when we first saw what Wind Waker was going to look like? Well, we got what we wished for. Twilight Princess: it's Ocarina but rather bigger and not quite as well lit.

Re:Hardware revisions?

[Mattintosh]

The DS is a three-year-old system. The first year was lackluster and easily skipped. The second year was when the first major swell of good games arrived. The third year was when it became a household name and stomped the competition soundly back into the hole from which they crawled.

The Wii will be only slightly different; it became a household name sooner. The first year is still going to be lackluster. The second year and beyond will be good. The competition may not be as fully stomped as the DS's competition, but there will be boot marks and other evidence of kicking.

Re:A Good Deal

[meringuoid]

St Paul originated it, but Lewis's version is more relevant here:

"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Now if you'll excuse me, I've neglected a certain long-running saga of magicians and so forth since around 2002, and have three rather large volumes to catch up on before some git spoils the ending for me ;)