farlaff said:
That is a nice and complex post of yours. When I talked about the controllers' sizes, I intended to mean it as a reason for an initial lack of acceptance, not the motive of the failure altogether. You are right about the N64 droughts and they come from the fact that, for the first time, Nintendo had to deal with the lack of 3rd party support (heck, back in the time I was much more of a Konami fan than a Nintendo one - I preferred the Contras and Castlevanias of life over Mario when the consoles arrived here in Brazil). We all know the story of the cartridge media = 3rd parties departure to Sony's house but I would like to add a different perspective to the bolded part of your text. I agree with most of what you said. The thing is, though, Nintendo is - or was - usually (I said usually, not always) right as to dictate the trends of what you NEED instead of the things you WOULD LIKE. In the N64 case, I bought it, but only because my best friend had already bought a PSx and we decided to have different machines so we could try more games. If it was not for that deal, I would have got the Sony one and probably not looked back (boy, was I envy when Symphony of the Night came about). Why was that? Because I, like many, was expecting to play Killer Instinct EXACTLY the way it was on the Arcade. Nintendo had us believe we would. But then the console came and WHERE WERE THE WONDERFUL CGs? They were there, in Sony's new console. Many people in Brazil were impressed by the CDs capabilities and dropped the 64 because of that. But Nintendo WAS RIGHT, the technology was not good enough at the time for full CD adoption (and I wanted to throw up in disgust every time those looooooong loading times came along at my friend's house). So Nintendo did not bring the graphics of the original Killer Instinct. Instead, they brought Mario 64 and showed everybody how gaming would be from there. They had done it already with the SNes six button controller (something that is still around) and did it again in two fronts, the analog controller and the full 3D games. Now CGIs are not very common nowadays since cutscenes with regular game graphics are much cooler. The problem was, the 3rds were long gone. But Nintendo proved, to me at least, that they were right. N64 is a machine that left much more memories than the PSx did and its games stood the test of time way better. The only thing is, I started liking PCs because of the 64 3d experiences. When Gamecube came about, I was almost certain that, had Nintendo used a regular DVD player, it would have put a better competition on Sony. But the loading times almost did not exist with their smaller CDs. They paid the price for trying to bring better gaming experiences (I skipped the GC and went full PC back in the beginning of the 2000s so I might be wrong. If not, it would have been my console of choice if only for that reason). Wii brought me back because it was fresh. If I want good graphics I can always stick to PC. But Wii brought back the joy of playing with friends and family. And they again were placing a trend I really believed would become standard (especially since the Move ripoff appeared and MS released Kinect). I myself thought that they would go the extra mile and make motion controlling the future (or at least a good part of it), but it seems Kinect took that role. Also, companies brought few ideas to the table (some great ones like Excitebots, No More Heroes, Zack and Wiky and others not so good - I am looking at you, Lucas Arts) but up to this day I feel that motion controls could have been so much better and more intense. I play for the experiences and Wii U has not shown me nothing new, so I am waiting. So in my case, and to add to your proposition, it was not their decision of abandoning simplicity , but the lack of ideas that got me pessimistic. In tech terms, I am much more impressed by the Kinect 2 and its possibilities, but then again it is a hard guess to believe that companies will come up with good ideas for it. The world of gaming is kinda stale and my expectations are very low. I want to like the Wii U and I care for the company since the GC is the only Nintendo console that I've never had, but I don't know if the U is the answer. Hope they can prove me wrong as they did during the N64 age. I wrote this very fast so I don't know if it makes any sense lol (I should be studying godammit). |
Nintendo has not abandoned motion controls. Infact they're better than ever in PIkmin 3. Honestly the Kinect 2.0 is just a Wii Remoter + lacking one very important feature. IR pointing. I know this from personal hands on with it. Its nothing new, the wii remote still beats it out with its prcision, the IR and the gyroscope functionality.
As for the Gamepad, well 2014 will be the year Nintendo shows what they're truly about. What we see this year is what they need to get fans of longtime Nintendo franchises on board. They really dont have them yet. You saw what Pokemon just did for the 3DS in America eh?
