Noggel wrote: I don't think it's quite so black and white as the grandmother Wii crowd vs the hardcore XBL achievement whore type gamer though. Both of those crowds definitely exist, and it's pretty accurate to put them at two ends of the gamer spectrum, but there are a lot of people in between, too, I think. That's why I don't like "real gamers" vs the rest... I can see it when compared to the grandmother crowd, but it quickly blurs for others.
I agree and disagree on that. Obviously there's a blur, but I don't think it's a huge gray area. It's black and white enough that Nintendo invests its money to market it as such. That's the beauty of marketing, which is why I'm making it a career. You can blatantly use stereotypes without repercussion. For example, if you're going after the women crowd and you want to sell mops, dusters, and other cleaning supplies, you advertise on the channels where more women watch than men, such as HGTV. While that would be completely sexist to imply that women should be cleaning, you better believe those companies want their money going toward advertising that is directed at women when it comes to their cleaning products. You don't ever see cleaning supply ads during football games.
The same goes for the Nintendo Wii. "Wii want to play." That advertising campaign, though now over, was completely directed at the family, non-gamer crowd. It worked too. It was an extremely successful advertising campaign, backing a console that delivered on what they advertised. They knew if they put out their usual Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart, they'd get traditional gamers to buy the console out of curiosity.
Noggel wrote: In my case I think I'd be less pleased with the Wii if I bought more games off of the PC platform. I have something like 10 games for the Wii and they are not by any means predominantly grandmother type games. If I bought 30 games instead, I'd probably have trouble finding enough that I'd enjoy, but frankly I could say the same about the other consoles too. Going back a generation, there was 1 whole game I actually wanted to play on the original Xbox, for example.
The only problem with the Wii is that those 10 games are the only true quality, actual games worth playing if you're a hardcore gamer. That's not enough to hold up a system for a hardcore gamer to make it worth staying plugged in to the tv. You may be able to say the same for other consoles, but the majority of hardcore gamers find way more than 10 games on any console from the past 10+ years. If you can't find more than 10 games to play on the Xbox, maybe the Wii does suit you better.
Noggel wrote: We shall see where the RPGs go en masse. It feels weird to say that now, but the PS2 has really been chugging along well past its prime as the home for RPGs. I'll probably end up getting whatever console that may be, and truth be told both that console and the Wii will be a distant second to the PC for me. Regardless, the Wii will still be more than just party games to me.
The RPGs aren't going to go to the Wii, which is easy to understand why. It goes along with this entire point I'm getting at. The Wii is not a hardcore gaming console, no matter if a minescule fraction of the owners happen to feel it's sufficient at providing real games or not. They're in denial because even Nintendo has written the console off as being a casual, fun machine. I too play the PC more than my Wii by the way.
Noggel wrote: The only thing I'm particularly disappointed about for the Wii is 3rd party support, though I think it's largely the fault of the playerbase in general. When it was announced Nintendo was bundling a game with the Wii, I was disappointed. Now I realize and fully support why they did it: so people "get" what the Wii can do. Bowling in Wii Sports was, and still is, a pretty remarkable development in gaming. Wii controls got sweet use in the Metroid Prime game, and Mario Kart was a natural and quality development as well (though in this case, not a particularly innovative development in terms of game play, but it demonstrates more the flexibility of the control system I suppose). Nintendo introduced it with Wii Sports awhile back and wowed people, and have continued to show it can work well in a variety of settings, but I haven't seen much of any innovation or even quality use out of 3rd parties. I can understand why, when games like Gears of War and GTA 4763 sell so well. Extensive motion controls don't even fit in most games, and forcing it in just because is a bad thing, so at that point you may as well develop for the console with the flashier graphics that marketing loves. There's just a lot more promise there in the motion control system to be had, I believe. Perhaps now that Sony and Microsoft have both erm.. borrowed the idea, we'll see more use of it in the future. Not that I expect developers to be any more willing to get creative (and risky along with it) but it will at least break down some demographic (and possibly developer bias) barriers, and likely make it a lot more low key rather than a feature some developers seem forced to make use of somehow at gunpoint, even if their result is a bit silly.
This is the biggest problem for Nintendo, I agree. It all stems from their own player-base, which again goes back to how they marketed the console to begin with. While the Wii controls have tremendous promise, they've discovered that most hardcore gamers don't want to use Wii controls for blockbuster games. Even in games like Zelda, it was just a hacked on addition. The numbers can tell you this. Look at the sales for any game that sells well on other platforms but doesn't for some reason on the Wii. The people who do want that game already bought it on a different console because for $10 more, they get a much higher quality game. Not only that, even when the game is high quality, it doesn't sell nearly as well.
Compare the sales of Call of Duty: World at War for the 360/PS3 vs the Wii: 360/PS3 sold almost 10m units exactly. Wii sold 1.4m. The critic scores were very similar, and the Wii controls were actually well-implemented. I wonder why it didn't sell as well. OH, that's because people would prefer to play these type of games on a higher quality console if they have to already spend $50 for it on the Wii. You'll notice Activision didn't feel there were even enough hardcore gamers to support Modern Warfare 2 on the Wii to make it worth producing, so they didn't. That's why third party developers completely blow off the Wii. It's hard to argue sales. They just don't sell on the Wii unless they focus on innovation and controls. While there's tons of potential, it doesn't matter if there's no 3rd party development outside of Party Babies and Pet Vet-type games. It's just like the apps on the iphone. Developers are just trying to make a quick buck off the new player-base that has shown they enjoy workout and party games. The sad thing is that even most of these games absolutely suck, even when going for the party/workout crowd. Across the board, development for the Wii from 3rd party developers has been an epic fail. The Wii is very similar to the DS in a lot of ways when it comes to having a flooded excess of pathetic kiddy games. The only difference is that the DS actually has 3rd party support that creates quality games. You can't consider the DS a fail by any means, as that's just the market they're going for. Again, the Wii is definitely not a fail neither. I'm just pointing out the major difference between the types of gamers and games.
Nintendo and Capcom are the two that produce games for the Wii, pretty much. It's hard to find any other company that makes games that actually sell on the console. The most telling numbers for determining the difference between Wii and 360/PS3 is the game to console attachment rate. The 360 sets somewhere in the 10-12 games per console range. The Wii is back at 5 or 6. These numbers have changed, and are now estimations based on changes in the last two years. The 360 was at 8.6 or so in 2008 and the Wii was at 5. For the most part, the Wii's game to console attachment rate has gone unchanged after release. Casual gamers are dragging this down significantly. It goes to show that there are a lot of people buying the Wii just for Wii Sports and the novelty factor. I have a friend who works in game sales who always tells me how he'll see people come in to buy a Wii without even really knowing why they want one. Surely those people aren't researching reviews and checking into buying new games. A major chunk of that 5 attachment rate are coming from new owners, leaving the number even lower if you only factor in sales for owners who've owned it more than one year. I'd wager that the number would be around 2 or less if you factored the "with one year of ownership" filter. Conversely, 360/PS3 game sales don't stagger after one year of ownership like the Wii. They're quite continuous. People who drop money on a 360 or PS3 intend to buy quality games in the future. People who drop money on a Wii most often do it for the novelty, the top Nintendo titles, and that's about it. Nintendo themselves are to blame for lack of 3rd party support.
Then again, I will admit that it's hard to find data to substantiate a lot of this. It's just how it is. There's nothing wrong with what Nintendo has going on. I personally like having the Wii as a 3rd console to enjoy whenever they do get around to developing quality games. It's nice to have something different and fun. It's also nice to have something my girlfriend can enjoy with me. It serves its purpose. I know it probably looks like I'm a huge anti-Nintendo guy from reading all this, but it really comes down to differentiating between the demographics and nothing more. I love having my Wii, I just don't play it much.
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