| couchmonkey said: I cannot quote on my iPad, but jumpin and rolstoppable covered most of the points. From the day of the revel you could see that Nintendo had rejected the exact premise of simplifying the controller and gaming in general that made the Wii a hit. How can you blame da casuals when the system wasn’t even made for them? One thing I would like to add is, Nintendo made a terrible misstep relying on third parties to launch the system. There were actually about thirty nine games between launch and Christmas, of which just two were from Nintendo. Then in the next six months or so all Nintendo had to show for itself was Luigi remake of nsmbu, a Wario mini game compilation, and eventually a very late pikmin 3. You cannot get away with a first year that looks like that. |
Nintendo always does well when it makes things simpler and more convenient for the gamer.
The dpad and 2 button controller for the NES was all that was required: even RPGs (which traditionally needed a keyboard) was playable on it. While the SNES controller did have more buttons, they were very conveniently located; the diamond face buttons and shoulder buttons were even better for action games than the traditional joystick + 6 big face buttons for arcade versions.
The N64 controller was a bit of a mixed bag, it both overcomplicated (triple-pronged, 6 face buttons) and simplified things (analog stick, trigger). It's not surprising to me in the slightest that the addition of split controllers with motion and IR capabilities was a massive success. Features were added, interface potential was expanded at the same time as simplifying it. I'm also a big fan of the dual joycons on the Switch and the portability element - so that too, was an unsurprising success to me.
That said, you are absolutely correct with the Wii U going in the opposite direction of the Wii, making things needlessly more complex. Not just adding in more interface which didn't really seem necessary, but also the fact that looking down and up between two sceens made things a lot more difficult. In a way, the Wii U was the antithesis of the Wii. They should have just called the console the "U."
I can't be the only one who noticed the Wii U rhymes with pee-ew!
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
