How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

[The_vagabond7]

I can't understand why people fail to realize a smaller market isn't better for anyone other than themselves.

Up until the wii, the only way to get new gamers was to get somebody to have a baby and raise it playing videogames. A twenty five year old male who never had
any interest in videogames isn't going to pick up a PS3 and uncharted because of a commercial, and even if he did, he would play it for half an hour get frustrated and stop.

We grew up playing videogames, and because of that I think we fail to understand how complex of an operation it is. With 2 joysticks, 4 shoulder buttons, and 4 face buttons, each one assigned to a specific operation. For anyone who has never played a musical instrument, Try picking up a guitar with it's six strings and making it do what you want. After a while you could probably play a little diddy if somebody showed you how, but actually being comfortable with it would take alot of time and practice. To make a character run, jump, shoot, throw grenades, dodge, snap necks, roll, sneak, hide, switch through a plethora of weapons, ect ect with the utmost precision with split second timing is completely natural to us. Have you ever watched your hands when playing an intense and complex game? My sister commented on my brother and I playing Marvel Vs Capcom 2 with our fingers flying to attack, switch characters, block, so forth, and said it looked like we were playing a strange looking piano. But we've grown up doing that. If you didn't grow up doing that, it's very awkward, and hard to do, and with little pay off (if it's not entertaining you, what are you getting out of it?).

The wii's controller when used right by developers, destroys the barrier between those who manipulate twenty buttons with utmost deftness, and the person who has to look down every time to see which button is the X button. Swinging a racket is as easy swinging a racket, shooting a target is as easy as pointing at it and squeezing a trigger button, throwing a punch is as easy as swinging your fist. Call it broken, call it shallow, but call it accessible while you're at it.

Regardless of what the wii's controller is or is not, one thing is undeniable. It's capturing a market that no other console has ever touched. No middle aged soccer mom would see a b3lieve commercial and go get a PS3. No retirement villa is going to have 360s with Halo 3. But they are buying wii, and carnival games, and raving rabbids, and what have you. That is generating profit, which is hard to come by when development costs have tripled but the hardcore market has stayed the same. The wii is great for the industry. People misunderstand what being a billion dollar industry means. It doesn't mean it's incredibly successful and invincible, it means it's getting large. It can still contract, implode or just flat out collapse in a brief period of time.

No new market would be created, only born. Some of them born into it would stick with it, others wouldn't. While we are all 60 years old and playing Grand Theft Auto Iraq Stories 3 downloadable expansion packs, the industry would stagnate further and further as there are only the hardcore who played their NESs and the occasional kid who was born into playing the PS3 he got for christmas. But that will generate profit only for a small handful of genre king developers while the rest go bankrupt.

For those that say it endangers the hardcore market, how many developers have said that they are profiting on the wii and spending that money on the 360 and PS3? We had alot of topics about it a few months ago. How is galaxy less remarkable because of the wii's broad appeal? The gems will always be around, because there will always be artists amongst the business men. Just like with the movie industry. Sure alot of crap gets made, but that doesn't stop brilliant things from getting made does it?

I really don't understand how people can look at the current business model and think that it will continue to be successful and grow and prosper. Something has to change or it will stagnate, contract (possibly contract swiftly and brutally), and then possibly worst case scenario collapse.

Nintendo gets it, even if myriads of fanboys don't. Seriously, read the malstrom articles.