Louie on 21 February 2009
| Demotruk said: Hehe, this debate is starting to sound like a religious one with all the arguing over the meaning of words used by a particular person... But I'll join it nonetheless. I think upstreaming means simply this: having higher demands on the product. The users of Wii Sports, or to take things away from gaming, an early Blackberry, did not have alot of demands on the product apart from needing to deliver on the values you're looking for: pick up and play gameplay, intuitive controls, social fun for Wii Sports, and e-mailing from anywhere with a good interface for the blackberry. The blackberry went upmarket as it added more features(without ever taking away from the most important one) and generally improved the product. It's users went upstream as this happened, and now would not buy the basic blackberry of yesteryear. Mario Kart Wii is upmarket from Wii Sports, and provides all the same values, but has more content and is a deeper experience. They will eventually want games that are deeper and more content full than Mario Kart, but they will have to generally retain the values that Mario Kart Wii and Wii Sports bring to the table. |
Well, that should happen eventually but there is a certain point where you can't move upstream anymore. Basically I think Malstrom meant moving upstreams = getting more "hardcore" as he listed different genres. And I doubt that will happen. My girlfriend will never be interested in more competitive games for example so moving upstream won't cause people to buy "hardcore games". But if I remember correctly that's exactly what malstrom said: "You'll see a flood of hardcore games on the Wii!" We will, yes. But not because of "social gamers" - we'll see it because the Wii has a reasonable number of "core" gamers on board.
