Zod95, to further explain my stance (warning, risk of being highly uninteresting and not very relevant to the topic, but then again; the OP's posts are filled with philosophy and musing and I have been largely on point up to now) here's my answer.
“And that's why I would like to ask you: knowing what you know, don't you feel happy seeing Wii U losing for the PS4 and XOne?”
Hmm, that’s not as simple as it sounds to answer.
On the one hand, I do believe that poor strategy and planning should not be rewarded but at the same time, I don’t see the One and PS4 as overall positive entities in gaming either.
They both represent an era of design philosophy and development focus that just doesn’t speak to me much at all.
That is a highly personal stance though, and doesn’t really mean anything besides offering my subjective measure on things and this post is largely uninteresting to most and has little to do with the debate at hand so feel free to skip it (anyone besides Zod95 anyway).
Anyways, here goes:
Now, the early, mid-and late 90’s and early 2000's were a magical time for me as a gamer, it saw the amazing golden era of PC gaming where I started puzzling with more advanced mechanics and concepts, it saw the continued rise and evolution of the deep-set RPG, it was a birthing and honing period for the FPS, strategy was coming into its own, racing games started taking the depth approach as well and you had the amazing N64, Playstation and Playstation 2.
This was a truly happy time for someone who loves gaming and the development of the above factors (among other things) enabled me to tinker with games on a previously unseen level through a mesh of visual fidelity, sound, narrative, deeper mechanics and some fairly unheard of concepts being rendered and conveyed.
Technology allowed for weather effects in games such as Baldur’s Gate, lending another dimension to the atmosphere along with lighting, Gran Turismo moved into uncharted territory by offering a vast array of cars and a bunch of customization options that were directly translated from the real automotive industry.
Half-Life evolved the FPS genre beyond recognition, Crash, Spyro, Gex, Superfrog and Jazz Jackrabbit, along with the amazing Lost Vikings showed as that platformers could be more than guiding an Italian plumber around, busting turtles and entering narrow pipelines.
Civilization, Warcraft, Starcraft, The Settlers and others really bathed you in perfectly honed and balanced strategy and laid the foundation for almost all modern games in the same genre(s), Dune and Command & Conquer were also a part of this amazing constellation of catalysts for evolution.
So many new and groundbreaking things. The PS1 and PS2 made the JRPG accessible and wildly popular in the West through final fantasy (don’t tell me that the SNES had anywhere near the impact in this regard) and showed a software breadth that was unheard of on any console in history.
The PS2, for me, was the greatest console ever made, it had all sorts of games imaginable, it played DVD’s, it looked different and more poised and it had some games with amazing tech on display.
I truly loved the PS2 and the breadth it offered me through its glory days, it continued upon and perfected the philosophy and direction of the PS1.
Somewhere along the road, I got it into my head that Sony were the best thing to happen to console gaming, or perhaps even gaming in general, in modern times, with their Playstation 2.
I hardly played the PC for a few years and was deeply and fully immersed in the PS2 library at the time.
News of the PS3 started surfacing and I was excited, especially the notorious Killzone 2 trailer made me pumped, in my folly, I imagined this was somehow the torch bearer from the 90’s; games that would expand upon concepts and introduce new positive game changers just like Half-Life, Deus Ex, Doom and Duke Nuke ‘Em did back in the day, and all this wrapped in technology that allowed physics to become an integral part of the gameplay through fully interactive environments that could be manipulated besides picking up ammo and health packs.
Boy was I wrong.
The PS3 released and I saw that quite a few of my most beloved franchises from the PS2 made the jump, Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, Ratchet & Clank etc were making an appearance in a new and hopeful environment that could elevate them even further.
I did scoff at the price of the thing though, it truly was ridiculously expensive and still sold at a massive loss, but I was still forgiving and still imagined that Sony deserved to win the 7th gen simply on the merits of the amazing predecessor of the PS3.
The sixaxis was one tip-off, one of the hints at what lay in store ahead, the trophies and online focus were another.
Time went by and my favorite franchises made their appearance one by one and turned out to be massive letdowns one by one.
Final Fantasy chose to take advantage of the amazing potential of the hardware by giving me amazing visuals and nothing else, the game itself was stripped of depth and meaning and the writing was horrible (FFXII had decent writing).
Gran Turismo 5 finally showed up and presented me with a really poor physics model, horrible sound design and less customization than the previous installment and removed some of the greatest tracks. Oh, and it started focusing a lot more on online as well, yay!
Ratchet & Clank basically did nothing to improve upon the recipe, despite the innate ability of the PS3 to really lift the experience several notches, it was more glitter and glam and mostly the same otherwise. Need for Speed took a turn for the worse and even attempted at one point to be a racing sim, a piss poor one at that (Need for Speed “Pro” is a hilariously inappropriate name).
In short; the PS3 didn’t continue to improve upon the PS2 heritage, unless one counts turning the sixaxis to arm a mine in Killzone 2 a vast and immersive improvement (as an example), it started catering more and more to fans of online gaming and trophy hunters and it wanted to pawn non-gaming services on me by the score that I could easily access with my PC at a lower premium (or none at all) and of a vastly superior quality.
It followed the trends instead of setting them and I simply outgrew the concept as a whole, the Playstation became both a bleak PC alternative and a shadow of the PS2’s greatness and I realized it wasn’t worth my attention and loyalty, the image of a company being deserving of anything based on past merits fled my thoughts in an instant and I saw it for what it was; no longer for me.
The PS4 is continuing on the same path; it’s becoming more PC like in most things and is throwing bones all over the place for the twitter and facebook generation, in addition to the trophy hunters and those who have never read a single line of good writing in their (presumably) short lives.
The One is simply maintaining the same tradition as the PS4 and appealing to much the same crowd, with an added bonus chance to sell more to people who speak American English sprinkled on top.
These console have even become cumbersome in the one department where they’ve had the upper hand; simplicity. “Just pop in the disc and play” is no longer an option and I could make a terrific case for why Steam is actually more streamlined today, especially since all updates and other “scary” things are now automatic.
If a person can enter an app store on their phone, adjust settings on said phone, install things and actually use them, they more than likely possess the mental capacity to use Steam’s services.
On top of all this; consoles still offer a technically inferior gaming experience for all their hype and dedicated fanbase drooling at trailers and teasers.
Put simply; there is no reason, in my opinion, to own a console any longer.
Now, as for Nintendo, am I glad the Wii U is failing? I’d be lying if I said no, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
Nintendo and Sony/MS are all guilty of the same crime, only from sort of different positions in the gaming biotope; where MS and Sony have taken the easy way out and gone for the simplified and broad appeal paired with twitter/facebook proposals for modern youth, Nintendo have opted to waste their talent on boiling new soup on old bones through their responsibility as a developer and publisher.
They have also gotten themselves in a state where they really need a humbling, just like Sony with their PS3, Nintendo simply sat back and watched the money roll in and became foolishly decadent in the Wii era, and they were caught with their pants down when the Wii trademark lost its momentum nearly over night.
This resulted in a poorly constructed and hastily and poorly planned console chasing after the One/PS4 crowd on one hand by offering non-gaming features, increased (poor) online focus and a tablet look-a-like to appeal to the facebook/twitter crowd currently wasting their days on phones/tablets on the subway, in cafes and in school, all the while never deviating from the recipe they have resorted to since around the time I was born.
Like I’ve been saying; all three have been moving in a direction that doesn’t attract me in the least and have become meaningless, despite every odd break out title that catches my eye.
For me, it’s simply a case of lesser evil but I still don’t know what to think.
In the end though, I don’t propose to end other tastes and directions (like John Lucas and Malstrom seemingly want), I realize that my personal taste should never allow me neither dictate others nor control my perception of the market.
In my utopia (akin to the one John Lucas and a few others have) every developer would make use of the budgets and technology to promote gameplay and AI, employ better writers, still keep on producing 200 hour++ isometric RPG’s, Dungeon Crawler/Open World hybrids and keep on evolving genres such as strategy and shooters instead of throwing in more and more hand-holding mechanics and stealing depth from the concepts in favor of bloom and HDR lighting.
Big budgets don’t bother me, but technology as a tool to drive only one part of the total machinery that is a game production, does.
So, like I’ve said; for me personally, the problem is not developer budgets; it’s developer ambition.
I think this is one of those magical, unheard of segments of the debate where I am in full agreement with John Lucas in that I feel that tech is being wasted for superficial purposes.
Unlike him though, I don’t see Nintendo as a worthy alternative, they are guilty of an ongoing creative cop-out, only in a slightly different way and they are too glued to tradition to move out of their comfort zone.
Nintendo directing their immense talent and experience towards something truly unseen and never played and that isn’t aimed at your grandmother or made for 20 minute bouts (what’s to stop them from making a new fantastic RPG franchise, a shooter franchise, a more sprawling platformer with new characters or even racing games without karts and Mario?) and 3rd parties employing technology as a tool to promote the whole experience rather than as a blanket to cover the lack of evolving core mechanics (no, regenerating health is not good for gaming as a whole) and ambition to produce a total package that delivers on all points, now that’s gaming!!!
I may scorn Nintendo for their current direction, gross inability to read markets and aim their product but that doesn’t mean I want to commend Sony and Microsoft for being detrimental to gaming as a whole, in my very honest opinion. Credit where credit is due; Nintendo are probably the overall most talented game developers in the world but I still feel that desperately need to try something new.
And Sony and MS might have the market pegged and I commend them for chasing the market constant to remain relevant, I reserve the right to not dote on their products and still maintain that they are also taking the easy way out though.
The way it stands, I feel that all three are causing damage to the global creative environment, but from different seats in the market and different directions. However, this thread is about Nintendo and their supposed “UNITY” plan (which is mere nonsense, there is a very specific and transparent lack of a plan here), which is why I’m being overly aggressive towards them in here.
But, all that said and as mentioned; my personal vestment or lack thereof, in the market, doesn’t stop me from seeing events unfold before me, be they good or bad in my view. And also, again as mentioned, even if someone agrees with my post or certain points in them, that doesn’t mean that I agree with them, at least in certain things.
I don’t see eye to eye with your overall view on modern gaming, Zod95, but that doesn’t mean we can’t agree on some things at least.
In conclusion and to answer your question directly; yes and no. I’m glad to see poor and uninspired tactics get foiled but I’m not glad to see the measures with which it is beaten. If that makes any kind of sense.
Edit; TLDR: Like John Lucas, I'm always overcome with nostalgia when thinking about games and gaming. Unlike John Lucas, I realize that it is a subjective, unfair and irrelevant measure when reading and predicting the market. In essence.
