Ambiguic Coherence

Nintendo Won the War! What War?

After a recent visit to one of my relatives house, I feel pretty comfortable in calling the Wii the winner of this console generation. I know what you’re thinking: that’s crazy, and clearly I’m smoking something. But go by the metrics that people have used to determine the previous winners: the Wii is #1 in many of them. It dominates sales, and makes an insane amount of cash. Game selection isn’t that bad, although average quality could stand to be somewhat higher. I’m not covering the other systems, because they are in their own battle, separate from Nintendo’s, which as I cover below, is a key reason Nintendo is doing so well.

For the past few generations, it was quite clear who won: if you sold the most, you won, and got the benefits of being #1: everyone wanted to make games for you, and anything that wasn’t made by the console maker themselves would likely end up on your system. You’d also benefit from the fact that lots of your customers would know people who had your system, and (hopefully) said good things about it, and thus they would be encouraged to buy the system for themselves. All of this clearly helped Sony who beat the N64 with the Playstation, and used the lead they built to totally dominate everyone with the PS2.

With the Gamecube, Nintendo gave one more try to match technology with its competitors. It lost, narrowly in sales (21 million to 24 million for the Xbox), but took a heavy beating in mindshare, and never really got out of 3rd place, even though market-share wise it might’ve been in 2nd in some places.

From this, they figured out where the next generation was going, and decided it wasn’t feasible to keep chasing new technology like their competitors. This and other factors led to a decision to do a graphically-simpler, but more complex control-wise system.

What Nintendo did next was a daring and bold move, and incredibly simple. They decided to forgo the main audience, and focus on a new, untapped market: casual gamers and people who had never played before. The system is built around this, and is designed to be incredibly easy to use.
In order to make this work, they built a wireless controller that is laid out simply, and has just enough buttons to be useful, but not so many that people get frustrated over not pressing the right button.

All this might have been for nothing if not for two things about the Wii: Mii’s and a pack-in sports game. Miis let you personalize your gaming experience, and in a game such as Wii Sports, gets you involved in the game, and more connected than you would be otherwise, because the character isn’t just a random person, it’s you.

Speaking of Wii Sports, this is an awesome tech demo, which is designed to be a perfect introduction to what the Wii can do. It covers a small number of sports, which incorporate very simple motion and button controls, and can use your Mii. This, and the explicitly laid out instructions on the screen, make it easy to play and give you a sense of actually playing the sport in question. If you pull it out at a party, Nintendo is thrilled- because if anyone buys it to get the Wii Sports game, they’ve just made $250 (a little over 300 if the person gets a 2nd Wiimote and nunchuk). If the person never buys another game, or only takes it out once in a while, it does hurt the market, but Nintendo isn’t terribly concerned- they’ve added a new customer who would’ve otherwise never played video games or bought a system for themselves.
What’s really crazy is that Nintendo KEEPS repeating this:
Sales of Wii Play (a very short & somewhat crappy mini game collection) are a lot higher than they would be otherwise because of the inclusion of a Wiimote. In essence, you pay $10 for a crappy game, and get a Wiimote as well. The shortage of Wiimotes early on in the console’s life definitely helped sales of Wii Play simply because you could buy the game to get a free Wiimote.
The Wii Fit balance board is another example of this- it’s a game+peripheral package that includes some workout games (including yoga) and some other fitness games- balance, strength, and a few others. The board is now usable for several other games, and those companies certainly hope you will buy their games to get more use out of the Balance Board. If you just bought the package because you thought you’d like to try it out and maybe use it as an exercise package, and never really got into it, Nintendo has just got another $89 from you.

To bring this to a point, the anecdote that inspired this. I went over one of my relatives house recently, and they had a Wii setup with some games including Call of Duty: World at War, Shaun White Snowboarding, and Wii Fit. I enjoyed Call of Duty mostly, but only about half the room actually paid attention to the game- mostly guys. The game then got switched to Shaun White snowboarding (which does use the Balance Board), and the reaction was more positive. A few more people tried it, and seemed to enjoy the virtual snowboarding. But the biggest reaction, and most liked was the Wii Fit game. The entire room watched, and almost everyone participated in several rounds of each game. We played the soccer heading one, the ski salom, and the ski jump one, which caused my cousin to want to get a Wii and the Balance Board to play (which is not cheap- $250 for the Wii and $89 for Wii Fit+balance board).
I was amazed that such a short play time (an hour or so) would get someone seriously thinking about spending $350 or so to buy a Wii with with Wii Fit.

If you’ve read this far, thanks. You’re probably wondering what it all means. That I am less clear about, because it depends a lot on how Nintendo and others manage the market, and how the market reacts. If Nintendo can successfully keep the casual market interested, efforts in that direction will stay at their current levels. If they can’t sustain the current levels of interest, they will probably just increase the manpower for new ideas and peripherals, and only fall back to the hardcore market if things become much tougher for them. The best case-scenario for the core folks is that the Wii becomes the PS2 of this generation (it’s not lost on me that the PS2 is still around and kicking) – the system that gets all the games, even though all the other systems are technically superior.
I think it’s important to realize that for Nintendo, the casual market will be #1, and the traditional hardcore gamer market will always be #2- which doesn’t have to be a bad thing, just a big change from the way things were.

Thank you!

The Littlest Megan

I have played both the PS3 version and the PC version and gotten to about the same level.

The Good: The graphics are spectacular; it looks like a real-life scene. The game has the same quests as the PC game, so it’s not like you are missing out on any of the quests. The different factions are fun to join, and the Arena is a great way to make money and level up. Most people tend to not use the Arena, but it’s a great source of money, and you receive free enchanted armor, what more could you ask for? The game has so many options and quests, not including the main quest that you can lose hours with this game. The amount of time you can put into the game lets you make your money back tenfold.

The Bad: The controls are not the easiest to get used to, but soon become second nature. While I love the game on PS3, the game play is a little better on the PC.

Rating: 4.5/5

Final Thoughts: I love this game! It has sucked in so many hours of my life and I love every minute of it.

The Littlest Megan

Rating: 4/5

Final Thoughts: I would recommend this game for anyone with a Wii. The game is long and has many different aspects that makes it playable for hours.

The Good: This game is simply amazing, both in the graphics and the gameplay. We’ll start with the graphics, the lighting, shadow effects, the rendering of the water, plants, badguys, good guys, anything and everything in this game is graphcially amazing in every detail. Now sure it may be nice that the game looks good BUT does it play well? YES! The story plot is quite interesting and the cut scenes are amazing. Along with that the game is filled with a series of new challenges that never leave you bored.

The Bad: The only thing the game was lacking was a true “boss” battle. This could have occured when the when the Golden Idol opened or even a tougher battle at the end. It just seemed like a mini boss battle at the end. However to its credit it did finish off the story nicely.

Rating: 4.5/5

Final Thoughts: I would definetly recommend this to anyone with a PS3. It offers continued playability through all difficulty levels and has long list of rewards to unlock.

First, I realize that there isn’t much to be said about this game that hasn’t already been put out. Especially when one considers that there is already an expansion (Shivering Isles) and a collection downloads with new quests (Knights of Nine). However, with an upcoming posting on the PS3 version I figured I would throw my two cents in on the PC version.

The Good: Seriously, there are so many things that are great about this game that I couldn’t even begin to name them all, but I’ll try, haha. The overall graphics, the detail in the gaming environment, the customization of characters, the amount of quests and side quests, the many different factions (especially the Dark Brotherhood), and having played the PS3 version the game play is much better on the PC. Though, my favorite feature is the extremely long gaming time you get from the game, hundreds of hours can be invested in this game making it worth your hard earned cash.

The Bad: At times the quest can seem like you’re playing Simon Says. Simon says walk here and do this, then Simon says walk there and do that, and you end up doing this over and over again until you run out of quests.

Overall: The game is amazing, you can grab hundreds of hours out of without blinking. Also, once you have completed all of the factions and quests in the game you can begin again with a completely different type of character.

Rating: 5/5

Final Words: Overall one of the best games I’ve ever played.

The Good:

The addition of an adventure mode and the ability to build your own levels brings this classic game to a whole new level. Same great game play, with additional characters, items, and vastly improved ‘maps’.

The Bad:

The only real bad I’ve seen in that you must buy some classic controllers to play the game. You can play using the Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuck, Wii Classic Controller, or a Gamecube Controller, but I would highly recommend investing in some classic controllers as they a thousand times better for game play.

General Description:

Super Smash Bro’s Brawl is one of the greatest games out on the Wii today. Not only are you able to battle your friends like you’ve done in previous games (with new characters in Brawl of course) but the graphics are much smoother, you can build your own levels, and use a all new items to wreak havoc on your friends. Along with this, when you get tired from all of the battling the game offers you a brand new mode, Subspace Emissary. This is adventure mode, you go through over 30 levels collecting trophies, characters, and other unlockables, playing as a wide range of the characters found in the game. This brings a whole new dimension to Smash Bro’s as you can now battle your friends, take the classic route up the chain of enemies, or play through an adventure by yourself or with a friend.

Score (out of 10):  9.5/10

Final Comment: No game is perfect but the majority of gamers and review sites agree that Smash Bro’s Brawl truly raises the bar to that near perfect game level.

The Good:

Excellent game for family and friends to sit around and compete over many different olympic games. Offers fun competition as you try to win gold in every event to continue unlocking all the events found on the game.

The Bad:

Complicated gameplay at times as some of the events do not offer smooth motions for completition with the Wii Remote. Nothing over the top as far as gameplay as you are continuing on the theme of the mini-game genre are flooded with titles for the Wii.

General Description:

This is not a monumental mind blowing game on the Wii as it follows along with the many other mini-game style releases such as Wii Sports (packaged with the Wii), Wario Ware, Rayman, Mario Party, and Wii Play, along with others. However, this game does offer an escape from those titles by offering a different type of game play. Instead of purely feeling like a set of mini-games this Mario and Sonic smashup offers a quality series of games based on Olympic events, making it feel as though you are competing in the Olympic games. The game play can be quite tough at times, as the motions for Wii Remote can get a bit tough when trying to play out the different events; however, with some practice this can be a fun game for family and friends.

Score (out of 10): 7/10

Final Comment: Excellent game for the first few months as you learn to play and battle with your friends but in the end its just another set of mini-games for the Wii.