Malstrom: Why Wii Music is Genius

[yushire]

bdbdbd said:
@Yushire: Your question is hard to answer, if you don't tell what the "casual" is. So far, it's been anything that the self-proclaimed "hardcore" doesn't like.

The "mainstream" implies to something, that is not "niche" or "specialized" market. So, are you talking about the mainstream as the mainstream in games market, or mainstream as the mainstream outside the games market? The mainstream in the games market, is the "hardcore", you see talked a lot, because it's the largest group and it uses its size to define itself as "elite". Now gaming in general is for kids, because the mainstream outside games is the biggest group and it is using its size to define games as "something that kids do".

During the Sony days, most of the audience expansion came from Europe/others and population increase.
Now there were games like Buzz and Singstar, which catered beyond the existing audience, but there's one fundamental difference between Sonys strategy and Nintendos strategy; Sony never tried to get the Singstar audience to play the core audience games. Sony made a dozen Singstar games to cater the Singstar audience, instead of making one Singstar game and one game that would introduce the Singstar audience to play something like Max Payne for example. Nintendo made one Wii Sports and is using Mario Kart to get this audience to play Super Mario Galaxy. Of course , this audience is still open to games like Wii Sports, so you are able to make similar games for the audience.

So, the new audience Sony got along, are propably interested in Wii Music/Sports/Play.

 

This is what Im pointing about, why the new audience catering? OK, away with my point about Ninty making console gaming same as TV and other entertainment system and making it like have same function. Home entertainment like karaoke and Ipods...

If SONY was succesful on just catering only to core gamers and not pursuing to cater to the new audience a.k.a. "kids and parents" what more for Nintendo? In E3 2006 what we (core gamers) expect of Ninty isnt what we expected now, minigame collections, party games, party sport games, ports and spin offs like Resident Evil umbrella Chronicles. The sad part was these are the games that sells the most, just look at my list of games all of them are Wii games, only few of them are minigames and party games. I didnt even bought Mario and Sonic and carnival games. What we expect are core games that implementing the controls of the wii remote and the nunchuck like a solid FPS not a port that implementing the Wii pointer controls. What we get sadly was only one game and it will not be released till next year(The Conduit)... see what I mean?

I dont mind about Ninty catering to kids and parents as your term the "mainstream" but I think Ninty catering to "mainstream" audiences are going TOO FAR. Just look at the charts what Wii game is selling the most Wii Fit. Where are the other core games that should be selling too on the Wii like No More Heroes and Zack and Wiki? It didnt even barely reach 500,000 units. What Ninty would get if theyre developing Wii games? Are they really making the lower tier becoming upper tier? Wii Music? Wii Resort? What else? Wii gardening? OK... Wii Music was actually good I KNOW but the more Ninty doing this catering to mainstream the more they alienated with the core audience. I mean, what else the mainstream could ever buy instead of MK Wii and Wii Fit?

Thats why Im more convinced that our era in gaming was over, I think Im the only member here that accept this. Who knows, maybe next year there are games thats actually "core game" defining like what Super Mario Bros., Megaman, Contra and SMB3 did with the NES. But remember, when we are a kid, we cant even jump across on the first Goomba or the first pit of World 1-1 on Super Mario and we're too new with the controls that when mario move our arms move along with it, and when Mario jumps we jump along with it. Dont deny that this isnt true either, thats why we're still playing battle city, galaga, galaxian, warpman, bomberman, etc... just to get along with the controls. Its always that way till 1991 when SMB3 hits and SNES came along and we graduated from playing Pac man and Donkey Kong Jr. on the NES and playing Castlevania 3 on the NES.