I have been saying this for some time, and it has been misinterpreted over and over again. I've been called an elitist, biased, a hater, whatever....
Nintendo is hurting gaming.
Frankly, what Nintendo is doing right now is appealing to a market that's not us - the longtime gamer - but a market that is *them* - people who don't like videogames - people who play things like DDR, Guitar Hero, and Jane Fonda workout tapes. They shoved us aside with the Wii - in fact, look at Reggies' comments for the past two years - they *are no longer interested* in catering to us.
At their press conference, Nintendo kept telling us "you're wrong". Over and over, in fact. They told us what to think. They told us "oh, you're wrong, this is gaming for everyone" - they essentially acted like "hehehe you're stupid, you don't get it." The reality is, they know this isn't gaming for us, they know we don't enjoy these games - but they figure, "hey, if we can tell some Nintendo diehards that we're making gaming *better*, maybe we can drag them along".
Everything they're doing right now is about catering to sales from a lucrative market - a market we've been calling "casuals" - but in retrospect we should have kept calling "non-gamers". Casuals *used to be* a market that pumped their chests for Madden and Halo - what we have here is a new beast entirely.
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For a minute, just concede that Nintendo doesn't care. Why are they harming gaming? Because they control so many nostalgic series. I had to give this up *a long time ago*. As an early Sega fan, I had to accept that my favorite games - such as Sonic the Hedgehog - were no longer the same. I had to come to terms with the parent company Sega losing their minds - Sonic 3D Blast helped a great deal to drive that reality home, and by the time I played Sonic Shuffle and Sonic Adventure 2, it became easier to accept that Sega was going downhill.
Nintendo isn't dying, they were though, they were dying, losing marketshare, and they found this huge new market with the Wii... and unfortunately, much like Sega, they hold our old favorites hostage. So what do we get? Our best games come with concessions - Metroid Prime 3 will be built around "the zapper", goes back to stacked beams, and features basically a "turbo charged" mode -why? All in the interest of making the bastion of Nintendo's "hardcore" catalog still sell to some of the same people who will buy Wii Fitness.
They are trying to blend the ****c franchises into the Wii Sports / Play / Fitness market
Twilight Princess was one of the easiest Zelda games I've ever played, Super Paper Mario was time-consuming, but not exactly *challenging*, and Super Smash Brawl might not feature online gameplay.
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And that was, by far, one of the worst parts of the show - "made you didn't notice that we already have online gameplay?" ... maybe Nintendo didn't notice that PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 have services that are lightyears ahead of what I do on a DS or Wii? I don't feel like I have "the world" in the palm of my hand when I play Mario Kart online on my DS - I feel like I might as well be playing against the AI - I can't identify if I'm really playing the same people again, there's no ranking, I can't talk to my opponents, I can't see my opponents - where is the online social interaction?
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I feel that Nintendo has realized that online doesn't matter to increase DS / Wii sales, so they're not doing it - that simply they said "building a service like PSN costs too much money, and look at the people buying a Wii, they don't care." I do care, however, it's important for me. I have friends and family all over the world - being able to see their face and hear their voice while I play is vital - it makes it so I'm playing a racing game with my little brother, even though he's in another city - it makes it so I can talk to the other gamers in my Halo clan, even though they're in Denmark. Nintendo's issue isn't that they "don't get it" - it's that their current salesbase says "I can go to YouTube and MySpace on my Wii - Wii does it all!"
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Nintendo is in a situation where, quite frankly, we, the longtime gamers, are supporting them out of nostalgia. If the actual *games* Nintendo is releasing - Metroid, Mario, Smash, et cetera - were the same games, but with new characters and titles, would we be buying them. Honestly, look in your heart and tell me you'd buy MP3 without the "M". This doesn't just apply to Nintendo - Halo 3 *looks awful* by comparisson to other FPS titles coming out this year - it hasn't *evolved* enough - the FPS genre moves and improve so quickly - yet Halo 3 looks archaic. Yet MP3 looks *even more* archaic, and we support it, why? Because it's Metroid. I'm as guilty as the next guy of doing this.
I'm sorry, this all might not be the level of logic or cohesiveness I usually have - I have no intention of becoming a fanboy or a hater or anything else, but I'm done with Nintendo - I am washing my hands of them. For me it's about more than the games, it's also about the vision behind those games, about what you're trying to do with them. Yesterday's showcase was a disgusting display of chest-pounding arrogance and a clear showing that Nintendo does not view games as art.
"Games are for everyone" doesn't mean you should stop making games for me. I always thought, as a kid when I played Gameboy, that Nintendo would grow up with me, and they haven't. Sega and Nintendo, hand-in-hand walked me down a brightly coloured path to living gaming - and now both of them are gone. Nintendo... Sega... gone. I thought they were gone last year, and I gave them one last chance here, I tried to be open-minded, but I can't do it anymore.
I cannot accept Nintendo's vision for gaming. I do not support the idea that titles such as Wii Fitness should be showcased as videogames.
I'm done Nintendo. You do what you want to do, you will never get another dollar from me. Say good-bye to the tens of thousands I've spent on your products over the years. Frankly, it's my finest wish that every other longtime Nintendo fan do the same. Hardcore gamers represent a great deal of software sales - as long as we continue to support their "blended" market - where they make *just enough* of a hardcore spin on ****c franchises to tempt us, they will be able to keep being insanely profitable.
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I'm done. I'm sick and tired of having to hold my breath and pray - Sony this year "got it" - they were humble, they showed games, and they said "thanks for being here guys." Nintendo doesn't care. Sonic and Mario standing together in the same game should be enough of a warning sign to longtime gamers - hegehogs and plumbers running down a track together (at the same height, might I add, though Sega keeps changing how tall Sonic is every game, it's getting annoying) is, I believe, one of the signs of the apocalypse.
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Nintendo's world has ended, and I'm done with it. Bye, see ya. Time to get a second or third job, because the future of gaming as I enjoy it does not lie in your competively priced "plug-n-play" remote controlled gaming box.
subrosian
(Stands up and claps)....Can't believe I just read this today. Best post I have ever read on SW. Well said, my friend.
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