Nintendo: The Wii Was Never Meant to Be "Casual"

[Baresark]

I hate this apology shit. I like Nintendo. I always have since I had an NES. But there are a few issues with this article.

1. You can't make things that people don't want to buy and blame the consumers for not buying them based on them not understanding something. It's not the consumers fault because of poor communication on your part.

2. The mere integration of some form of social networking is not going to fix your problems. Though, your harder than necessary form of online gaming is just plain bad.

3. All gamers think they are "core players". It doesn't matter how you define the word yourself. It only matters what your consumers think.

I have stood up for Nintendo a lot. I respect them. I played every good game on the Wii, and some were definitely aimed toward the "core player" base. But c'mon. I'm not going to say you should quit making hardware like some other comments. But not everything can be a gimmick. There was way too much attention payed to motion controls when it should never have meant that a game suffers from it's use. Nintendo titles are the only ones that had decent motion controls. And I played enough of them to know that the PS Move sucks hard because they were incapable of learning from what Nintendo did. Just, put out a modern system, get your fuckin' third party support, and stop making excuses. I'm gonna buy the WiiU on launch provided you don't have a shitty and weak launch lineup like the 3DS did. I was kinda hoping you would have pushed Skyward Sword onto the system. I think it was a mistake not to.

 

[RaikuFA]

By allowing gamers to communicate and share ideas, perhaps Nintendo would be better able to cater to the community at large. Iwata feels that Nintendo could meet that goal by "improving the coordination between video game systems and social media."

3 Words.

OPERATION !@#$ING RAINFALL!!!!!!!

We HAVE been communicating and sharing ideas! You CAN easily cater to the community at large! There is a HUGE base of people who want these games. You want an opportunity to acknowledge the gamer community? THIS IS IT. I don't care if reggie doesn't like it, go over his head and MAKE him release those games!


So yeah, go do that, and THEN we can talk about you guys not being purely defined by casual games, Nintendo.

THIS!!! And if it turns out its becsause of Reggie that we're not getting these games, fire his ass.

 

[MaximumCrux]

That's why I prefer single-player. When you mess-up the only one giving you a hard time about it is you (and your little brother who watched all the let's play's). It's one of the things I didn't like about Team Fortress 2, no time to get used to the controls and weapons before being thrown to the lions.

TF2 has an offline mode & a training mode, no?

 

[Sabrestar]

I am reminded of the last days of Atari Corp, when CEO Tramiel and his sons company executives were feebly ranting on about the lack of respect Atari systems were given, and building and marketing in what appeared to be a parallel universe where everything they thought should be true about the market, really was.

Naturally, reality did not bend to the Tramiels' gargantuan will, just because they really wanted it. Atari Corp was reverse-merged with a hard drive manufacturer and bit the dust in silent, unattended agony.

There's a lesson in this, Nintendo. A little less "telling the market what they want" and a little more "making what the market wants" could help you. I know how badly you want to be Apple. You're not Apple. You can't wave a magic wand and direct millions of customers to whatever you want them to love, just because you say so. I know you could in the 80s. That was then. This is now. If you can't learn to be a modern company, you're in for a world of hurt.

 

[Sougo]

Funny nintendo didn't care to mention that when the Wii was still printing money for them.

Maybe if most of the games didn't look like interactive cartoons going on a picnic...

 

[VoidWanderer]

...

Well if it wasn't meant to be casual... Why did they market it to families?

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Will you stop making excuses Nintendo? It's getting rather old and it's getting to the point where I can't take you seriously every time you say something.

The DS has awesome support and I play it all the time, so why can't you do the same thing to the Wii?

Also, Operation Rainfall, dammit! Why can't you do us a solid and actually release those fucking games already?! It's not that difficult to understand.

 

[RandV80]

I have no problems with what Iwata is saying, and if anyone's been paying attention it's consistent to what he's been saying all along. However, there seems to be a serious disconnect going on between Nintendo and Nintendo of America.

 

[RichardThompson]

Good one.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Nintendo has always made simple games that are easy to pick up and play. They are fun and easy and drag people in because of this. Where as games on the 360/PS3 has tons of buttons and can put people off playing them. So, for me, Wii was always for casual gamers, they never made any games that had substance and the control itself limits itself on the kind of games that are made for it. Fact is you have less control with motion controllers than you do with a joypad. So you have to make allowances in game because of this.

Nothing good will ever be made with motion control. Stuff with Kinect and forza 4 was interesting, but not worth the prize of the controller. Maybe if the console came pre packaged with the motion controller will make it better for developers. But still, most wouldnt use it as alot of gamers game in their bedrooms and dont have the room to prance about waving a wand or using kinect.

But in the future....who knows.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

...So what I'm getting from this article here is that Nintendo will give lip service to whoever is giving them the most money, and will act almost bewildered or hornswaggled the moment they stop providing.

You know what Nintendo, that's the price you pay for staying on the fence, you run the risk of pissing off both crowds. Hell, had you sticked with trying to ONLY do casual games or shovelware, we could at least see that you were only interested in that one market, your product wasn't meant for us, but when you go back and forth between casual party gaming/sim stuff and first-party titles, it just seems like you trust neither party will stick with you.

The wierd part is its not like you just don't know where your market is, since you also have the DS, which yes only gained momentum after casual games started to be released, that was selling well and had a decent third-party catalogue for non-casual gamers. Yet look at the 3DS, the biggest games for it are indeed more core games, but those too are so rare when you have other casual or shovelware that's a dime a dozen for the ystem (which for a system with an already low catalogue of games is pretty pathetic)

Even with claims that the WiiU will be more core-oriented and that Nintendo will spend more time talking to it's fanbase to get a better idea of what they want, it still seems disengenuous. For one thing the way the WiiU is marketed and with the extra features they wish to add it just seems like the Wii all over again, except this time the hardware is made in such a way that it can't really provide for the casual crowd it wishes to seek (based on the way it's marketed), so it just seems like another fence-sitter. Further, in terms of the social media aspect, your fans tried to do that with you, they initiated it with Rainfall, and what happens, of course they are spurned and told it was all in vain, which brings to question why they should believe that you want to foster communication through social media when their attempts to do so are left in the wind?

Also, on too the thing about "no one starts out as a core gamer", while I can appreciate that sentiment in the sense that it would be insane to ask someone who rarely, if at all, plays games to sit down, like and beat something like Dark Souls, isn't it interesting that gamers today who were gamers of the past didn't have casual games to start off with? Am I saying you can only really get into gaming by only starting with core games, of course not, even casual gamers can evantually get into the core, but rather what I am saying is that clearly casual is not the pre-requesite to core, and seeing how the casual market has treated you it isn't faster or easier to get into the core through casual.

 

[masticina]

HAHAHAHAHAAHAA!

Bwhahahaaa!

Oh that was good that was good.. never meant to be Casual, seriously wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah? Don't get me wrong yes I know about Zelda and Mario and some of those games are indeed challenging. But .. seriously cute puppies you can adopt in games. HAHAHAHAHA!

More then 70% of the games on the Wii pretty much is for little children. Hey it did print you money for sure but.. true is true it was kiddy stuff. While the PS3 and the Xbox 360 did keep getting the big titles. Not just shooters also the other big titles!

I mean hey business wise You had it easy in a time when Sony and Microsoft had to adapt. You got lazy.. look at the 3ds and how you are working with that. The Wii is a kiddy console with a few grown up games.

Oh it has Monster Hunter Tri! .. so what! That is one of the few grown up titles.

If I want grown up entertainment in games I go to Sony and Microsoft! There is no way around it you printed money in the casual you we're even worse then the PS2 when it came to utter shovelware! And you profited!

In all those years that the kiddy games did make you rich did you listen to complaints of the NinCore? No you didn't... you had once a year a big NinCore game release that is it. As long as it printed money you didn't care about the NinCore!

And Online, Ha you knew better right who needed online! Oh okay this Mario Kart game will get it BUT double friends code else it might seem unfit for families. Better exchange beforehand okay!

This is an undoing of your own making Nintendo! I can only hope you have a much better online and game strategy planned for the WiiU, It looks.. odd! It might work might not but if you asshat it like your current online stance and game strategy then it will fail!

 

[lovest harding]

I for one hope they do well with whatever they want, because Iwata san is spot on. There is definitely a gap in the market for 'kiddies first console' shit, back in the day it was ONLY kid consoles. I don't have any want or need for their products, but we need more kids to have a love of gaming and not just a love of multiplayer, because that right there ladies and gentlemen, is the next batch of game designers, and things aren't looking good.

My nephew didn't need a kid console to like games. My sister got a PS2 and the first real game he ever played (outside of those cheap one game handhelds that McDonald's give out for free) was GTA: San Andreas. He loved running and driving around town. And now (at 8) he and I play Borderlands together and he's quite good at it.
I really don't think Children need to be catered to by a console (other than in terms of difficulty). Sure, my nephew now plays a wide variety of family friendly games (Pokemon, Lego Star Wars) but he didn't need something like that to get into games.
The future game designers will like games no matter what's in front of them (as long as it's fun). The people that casual and family games (which I have no problem with and play myself) draw in are people who don't already game.
Keep in mind, that's not to say I don't want family games or casual games or even games specifically catered to children. Just that we don't need a kid console as a community to keep the community alive for the future.

 

[gigastar]

Methinks this is another case of Nintendo sniffing its own mushrooms a bit much again. Even if i think to myself "They cant possibly get more deluded than that", This news post turned up.

And overall i think i could count the total number of games that an actual "core" gamer would actively go for on the Wii on your fingers and toes. Personally i havent made it to my left hand yet.

 

[marioruggerio]

My old teacher said it best "It's not how you say it, but how people interpret it" Nintendo could be top dog again if they just get a much needed swift kick in the pants!

 

[Craazhy]

Mr. Iwata, I don't have a misconception about my own tastes in entertainment. Don't act like the industry is the only entity that can identify what a gamer truly desires from of a company. I DECIDE THAT. I CONSUME YOUR INDUSTRY'S PRODUCT and at my own discretion based upon evidence extrapolated from my own observations will I chose not to consume yours.

I am not confused about whether or not the majority of your American titles are geared to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. If you feel I am, then stop making it worse by developing and releasing as many of these things as possible.

And this is not to say I am inherently against sunshine and flowers, and that all I can be stimulated by is being buried under all the brown environments and highly realistic battlefields that a stereotypical FPS can contain. The issue is not the concepts, it is your lack of passion for creating deep, visceral and above all, challenging, experiences.

 

[ryo02]

I already own a wii, but i only own like 3 wii games and a bunch of game cube games

I only own 3 wii games as well klonoa , sonic colours and xenoblade. what do these have in common? the classic controller pro.