| Erik Aston said: Nintendo has been recycling Mario, Zelda and Metroid for 20 years. They didn't risk a holiday season on a UGC game until 2008. So while Nintendo has a problem in that they have not created new character-centric games on the level of Mario or Zelda in a long, long time, and possibly have an additional problem that they are now about 2 years out from creating a successful new mega-franchise (like Brain Age, Nintendogs, Wii Sports or Wii Fit, which launched in Japan for Xmas 07), the idea that Nintendo is continuing on the path laid out by Wii Music and Animal Crossing Wii doesn't have much support, as far as I can see. The big Nintendo games showing their strategy now are Sports Resort, Fit Plus, NSMBW, Galaxy 2, Zelda Wii, Vitality Sensor, Zelda Spirit Tracks, Pokemon HG/SS, Mario and Sonic 2, etc. Side projects and experiments are Flipnote Studio, Mario and DK, and Art Style series. |
I may be reading too much into his posts, but I believe Malstrom's concern is that the experiments may end up becoming the main attraction in the future. The support for this would be that 1) Nintendo's shown an interest in pursuing UGC as their flagship efffort (Holiday 2008), 2) Nintendo's continuing several experiments with UGC even after that debacle (Flipnote Studio, Mario vs. DK, Wii Music 2 (The Artstyle games aren't UGC, as far as I can tell)), 3) You rarely conduct experiments unless you're interested in expanding those concepts in the future (see Gamecube and GBA peripherals), and 4) Nintendo, and Miyamoto in particular, are still openly talking about embracing UGC, inspite of Holiday 2008 (see this interview, for starters).
While I don't completely buy into Malstrom's alarmism at this point, I do have to note that nearly every title you've identified as being key to Nintendo's current efforts are sequels (Fit Plus, Resort, Galaxy 2, Zelda Wii, etc. The Vitality Sensor is a clear exception and, while NSMB was only four years ago, I consider a console 2D Mario to be fresh enough to not call it a sequel). Alarmingly, most of the Wii titles you've listed already have a game on the Wii. To me, this implies a stall tactic: Nintendo's not sure where to go next, so they're throwing the familiar out there to buy some time. I thought, until this interview, that this meant they were abandoning their UGC approach, hence the need for filler titles, but this interview kind of makes it sound like they're willing to stick with the strategy while only mixing up the tactics.
