Yahtzee, you're a great reviewer, and God, I love ya', but I really hope your constant disappointment with anything made by Nintendo is more about your intent to come off as a people-hater than to genuinely be dissuading people from looking into it.
I agree as much as you will that motion control is just a long-term experiment, much like 3D movies. The only reason it's got such a free ride is because it's different. It's a gimmick if there ever was one. But even if I personally don't like using it and will prefer plugging in the Gamecube controller whenever I (rarely) play a Wii game, I understand the necessity of it all.
Look, the Wii is definitely designed around the casual gamer, and for many but the most devoted of Nintendo fans, a lot of it won't seem made for them. A lot of it will seem really easy, almost insultingly so, but I think that's the truth of it all. A LOT of the Wii ISN'T for those of us seeking greater and greater challenges, not to say the first-party Mario titles ever disappoint even now. Nintendo realized there was a vacuum in the market for games and consoles priced and intended for gamers who were never gamers before. They realized that just as they had raised our generation of now-hardcores' back in the NES/SNES/64 days, so too did the newest generation need the same thing. Except nobody else in the gaming industry was prepared to do that.
Back in the golden age, we had Atari, Sega and Nintendo, all GAMING companies. Since then, the two new big guys have stepped in and made a name for themselves, and as a whole Playstation and XBox are distributing gaming to the masses adequately. But the problem is, Sony and Microsoft aren't GAMING companies, they're massive multinational corporate empires, and they're less concerned with the ultimate fate of the gaming industry than they are about appealing to what people seem to want here and now.
Back in the 80's, comic books went to a point when the geekier aspect made for kids was almost chucked entirely out the window when the "Grim and Gritty" fad took over, with comics like Watchemen and Spawn forming bandwagons that everyone else jumped on, since all the older hardcore comic book fans thought it was so badass. But then, early 90's, those fans grew up and stopped buying comics out of necessity, and there were no young comic book reading kids to spur on a new generation. No Mom wanted to buy their kid "Spawn", are you kidding? And so the market imploded, and to this day you can't get kids to buy comic books, not unless they actually happen to be Japanese manga.
This can happen to gaming, and it looks all too likely that it will. Nintendo has played their cards smart, they know they need to attract and makes games for new gamers. The WiiMote and all it's motion-sensor garbage was probably a fluke, but Nintendo is going to use it, because everyone wants it. They've got themselves a mascot, a timeless symbol of gaming named Mario for the new gamers to rally behind, whereas Playstation has "BluRay Logo Man", and XBox has Master Chief, a faceless lump of emotionless armor. Casual gaming is getting parents and grandparents little kids to join the cause. And if it keeps up, gaming may stop being such an insider thing and enter the mass media, securing itself as part of our culture, the same way that comics, film and television did in their day, when THEY were the new kids on the block.
And it's working, the Wii may make a lot of shovel-ware needlessly, but it's conquering sales, and Nintendo is unthinkably on top as if the world had rewound back to the good old days. Nintendo is a gaming company, and they're willing to step back and be the elementary teachers of the new generation instead of running with their graduates, willing to immortalize gaming and do what's necessary to strengthen its weak points and its place in the world. Playstation and XBox are doing their thing just fine, but what casual game exists for the Playstation? Ratchet and Clank? That's about it. But without all those new gamers, the market will implode. And the second it does, Sony and XBox can and WILL opt out. No more Playstation, no more XBox, and they'd take a ton of 3rd party devs with them, since Nintendo will still be going, but will see no reason to keep the 3rd parties on life support. Goodbye Konami, goodbye Capcom.
Yahtzee, I understand. I know you WANT to root for Nintendo as much as anyone, but you see so little for you that you can't see how you can do that. You loved No More Heroes, so I know you're not indiscriminate, but rather than insist that however little you like it, the Wii is designed around casual and beginner gamers, you merely call the console worthless as a whole, and since so many people listen to your opinions Yahtzee, that's done far more harm than good, it's helped widen an unhealthy rift between the casual gamers and the hardcores. I'm sure that's not your intention, but the fact remains, we as gamers, hardcore or casual, need to stand as a whole for the love of our medium, to beat down the unfair negative stigmas gaming has garnered, especially to fight off the bullshit violence debate. The casual gamers are non-gamers giving gaming a go. How much more solid ground will we have if our Moms and Grandmoms become gamers in the slightest sense, no longer seeing the console as this untrustworthy bad-habit machine. We need this to get bigger, we need them on our side.
Nintendo understood this. The Wii doesn't have everything for everyone, but it just about has everything for someone, and those someone's are the casual gamers. They are necessary, and I applaud Nintendo for being the only ones to really see it, even if it means less content an experienced gamer like myself is likely to enjoy.
