finalark
SNORLAX
Link to original post: [drupal=1320]Casual Gaming, Nintendo, and the Wii[/drupal]
I remember when I bought my Wii. It was early 07, Halo 3 was being over hyped by everyone who owned an Xbox (and even some who didn't), Brawl was recently announced, and the economy was still stable. I remember being exited when I was walking out of Circuit City with my Wii under my arm. I thought that it was going to be just like having an arcade in my home. Too bad that the little white machine wasn't even close to what I hoped for. In addition to the motion controls only being good when limited to simply shaking the Wiimote, it also had a fairly crappy selection of games.
In the gaming industry for the PS3 and 360, for every fifteen hard-core game there was one casual game(that's 15:1). But it would appear that the Wii wasn't to keen on that, so it switched the ratio from 15:1 to 1:15. For every Twilight Princess released the Wii gets fifteen Pop 'Em Drop 'Ems. And it's not just the third party developers who are conning housewives and the elderly to buy not-so-good casual games, Nintendo is in on it too. I don't mind if a company releases a few casual games. After all, casual games are a good way for a company to make some quick cash to give their better, hard-core games a boost. But rather than using the money gained from their Wii Plays and Wii Musics to satisfy the Hard Core gamers by making a new Star Fox or a new F-Zero, the big N chooses to use that money to make more casual games. While this may not satisfy the gamer community, I can see why they've basically decided to screw the hard-core gamer community. Wii Fit has sold more copies than the best selling game of '07, Halo 3. And it's almost embarrassing to even look at the list of best selling Wii games. If you look at Wikipedia's list most of the titles are games like Wii Play or Link's Crossbow Training.
This all makes me wonder, how long is the casual gaming fad going to last? Or is it a fad at all? If Nintendo is making more money selling Bathroom Scales that come with an interactive Work-Out DvD than Mario Galaxy then what's the point of making hard-core games anymore? And before any freaky fanboys come around and start talking my ear off about how there are hard-core Wii games let me say this; I know. Yes, I know that we have games like Okami or Resident Evil 4 or Madworld on the Wii. Yes, I am informed of this. But what I'm saying is that there are far more crappy games like this on the Wii than there are epic games of baddassery like this. Now Back onto what I was saying. Game companies are making more money selling casual, half-***** games rather than fully realized hard-core games. Why is this? Perhaps it's because a casual gamer is more likely to be sold on a game just because it has nice box art (and that it's on the Wii) rather than a hard-core gamer whoeagerly gives into hype and buys a "hard-core" (in other words mainstream) game because everyone says that it's good even though most of them kind of suck checks out the reviews and makes sure that what he's getting is a good game before buying it.
You know, the general Wii community is crying out for hard-core games. But I wonder if what they really want are mainstream games. The Wii, if you just pretend that all of those crappy movie-tie ins and casual games don't exist, has a fairly hardcore library. We have Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, House of the Dead: Overkill, hell, we're even getting Dead Space. But I wonder if the Wii community doesn't want some epic adventure, but their very own FPS staring heavily-armed Space Marine number 445734980567347846306-billion going on a mass genocide of an alien race. Oh wait, we're getting one of those, too bad no one other than me and a few other people seem to know about it.
I remember when I bought my Wii. It was early 07, Halo 3 was being over hyped by everyone who owned an Xbox (and even some who didn't), Brawl was recently announced, and the economy was still stable. I remember being exited when I was walking out of Circuit City with my Wii under my arm. I thought that it was going to be just like having an arcade in my home. Too bad that the little white machine wasn't even close to what I hoped for. In addition to the motion controls only being good when limited to simply shaking the Wiimote, it also had a fairly crappy selection of games.
In the gaming industry for the PS3 and 360, for every fifteen hard-core game there was one casual game(that's 15:1). But it would appear that the Wii wasn't to keen on that, so it switched the ratio from 15:1 to 1:15. For every Twilight Princess released the Wii gets fifteen Pop 'Em Drop 'Ems. And it's not just the third party developers who are conning housewives and the elderly to buy not-so-good casual games, Nintendo is in on it too. I don't mind if a company releases a few casual games. After all, casual games are a good way for a company to make some quick cash to give their better, hard-core games a boost. But rather than using the money gained from their Wii Plays and Wii Musics to satisfy the Hard Core gamers by making a new Star Fox or a new F-Zero, the big N chooses to use that money to make more casual games. While this may not satisfy the gamer community, I can see why they've basically decided to screw the hard-core gamer community. Wii Fit has sold more copies than the best selling game of '07, Halo 3. And it's almost embarrassing to even look at the list of best selling Wii games. If you look at Wikipedia's list most of the titles are games like Wii Play or Link's Crossbow Training.
This all makes me wonder, how long is the casual gaming fad going to last? Or is it a fad at all? If Nintendo is making more money selling Bathroom Scales that come with an interactive Work-Out DvD than Mario Galaxy then what's the point of making hard-core games anymore? And before any freaky fanboys come around and start talking my ear off about how there are hard-core Wii games let me say this; I know. Yes, I know that we have games like Okami or Resident Evil 4 or Madworld on the Wii. Yes, I am informed of this. But what I'm saying is that there are far more crappy games like this on the Wii than there are epic games of baddassery like this. Now Back onto what I was saying. Game companies are making more money selling casual, half-***** games rather than fully realized hard-core games. Why is this? Perhaps it's because a casual gamer is more likely to be sold on a game just because it has nice box art (and that it's on the Wii) rather than a hard-core gamer who
You know, the general Wii community is crying out for hard-core games. But I wonder if what they really want are mainstream games. The Wii, if you just pretend that all of those crappy movie-tie ins and casual games don't exist, has a fairly hardcore library. We have Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, House of the Dead: Overkill, hell, we're even getting Dead Space. But I wonder if the Wii community doesn't want some epic adventure, but their very own FPS staring heavily-armed Space Marine number 445734980567347846306-billion going on a mass genocide of an alien race. Oh wait, we're getting one of those, too bad no one other than me and a few other people seem to know about it.
