I must agree with you, as much as I like them, they can be pretty darn stupid. With how much they starve fans for info it's a surprise there are still nintendo fans out there.

The big problem is the Japanese are the most close minded people you can fine when it comes to gaming. They love games made in Japan, hate Wester game. In the west however, we praise games for merits, regardless where they are made. We see games based on actuall quality, while the Japanese like them based on, well, if they are Japanese. Which is a real shame. What about fun games liek Rayman Raving Rabbids. They hate gore and violence but they play metal gear? I assum Nintendo does this too. Cancelling good games just becuase they can't see the merit. Nintendo may want to get some Americans and Europeans in there to take off their rose colered glasses.

The thing is Wii Play does not have major flaws for it's intended audience. I'm not even part of the intended audience and I still found it fun. Could it be better from where I stand? Sure. Could it be more fun playing it with my girlfriend, her sister and nephews? No. Could it be more of a steal getting it for $10 with a remote I needed anyway? Hell no.

I imagine Mario Party is pretty much the same. Specially if you haven't played the 7 games before it, and are tired to death of the concept. Which I'm sure reviewers have, but I haven't - actually I've never played a single one.

Still not going to buy it, 'cause it's too expensive much and I'd rather buy Mario Strikers (once it's available here) or Paper Mario (when it launches) or spend my money on the VC. But I can sure understand the appeal. Also the girlfriend had never really been a gamer, and she's now addicted to Mario World, and I think I can get her to play Zelda. So there you have it, anecdotal but I think representative.

I haven't played Wii Play so I'm mainly going by it's reviews. But I'll comment on Wii Sports, I love the game, and I'll ignore how shallow it is and the fact that it lacks depth and gives single players little reason to keep coming back for more. It's great for parties and such, but my real complaint is the gameplay, particularly the boxing controls are aweful. They don't pick up very well. and the baseball controls should have a little more depth especially to the picthing. the standards of the tennis and bowling are way higher and in my opinion and they are the less popular video game sports. it's easy to give the game a free pass being that it's the first of it's kind, but if you translated these sloppy gameplay mechanics to the latest zelda game people would lose it.

I didn't mention it earlier because I know the game was free with the system so I don't want to complain about something free. My point is nintendo's standard's are clearly higher for second party western developed titles, then they are for party/casual games. And again I'm not refering to depth, I realize very clearly that the casual market actually doesn't want depth, but they do want simple intuitive gameplay with responsive controls. 

Well, we mostly play tennis and and bowling at parties, and a little golf on our own, so I guess it doesn't bother me that much. But I do agree though that boxing controls suck, and baseball has almost nothing to it. It's just that those sports aren't even our thing to begin with. Actually we've had more of a gripe with some golf shots - putting on a very small distance can get unintuitively hard.

It's not that this games are flawless, it's that the intended audience is not nearly as demanding. Take those Brain games on the DS. For some reason, one of them don't know which, simply doesn't understand a couple of my digits. I gripe about it, and am totally pissed. What does a casual do? They change the way they write their numbers and still manage to think it's a smart game, and a lot of fun. Specially since I'm supposed to be the maths guy, and am totally creamed by them. This is from people who know about PDA's with way better text input than those games.

 I think your totally wrong about this. Casual gamers are even more demanding. Gamers know what glitches are we understand problems in software code, or perhaps why something doesn't work right. Not that it makes us happy. But I found when my nongaming friends punched in boxing they didn't understand why the guy didn't punch the same way. It annoyed them, while me as a gamer knew I had to match a preset motion to one in the database and hence adjusted accordingly. In Nintendogs, my wife a total nongamer was ready to throw the game out when she had to call the dog like 40 times before it learned it's name. I was more patient realizing how sketchy voice software can be. I think since they don't know how these things work and don't know what par for the course is in these games/software they assume everything will work perfect, and when it doesn't they feel like it's a waste. Maybe I'm wrong to some extent I really can't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming the casual people they don't play games are going to be tougher judges because they need a reason to bother, while we don't, we are here because we love games, we're going to give everything a chance. My wife is not a game person so the slightest annoyance in playing and she asks herself why am I bothering with this? Because she already sees it as a waste of time. While I don't hesitate to take time and learn the controls despite some annoyance.

Well, we just have diferent experiences, then. One thing I've learned is that casuals love the randomness of being able to beat us in "our" thing, even if it's due to shoddy controls. They don't even notice the problem and argue we're just bad losers. I get that from my girlfriend a lot - she just loves to tease me every time I'm losing.

But maybe there's a gamer in there, somewhere - she is addicted to Mario World now!

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KruzeS said: Well, we just have diferent experiences, then. One thing I've learned is that casuals love the randomness of being able to beat us in "our" thing, even if it's due to shoddy controls. They don't even notice the problem and argue we're just bad losers. I get that from my girlfriend a lot - she just loves to tease me every time I'm losing. But maybe there's a gamer in there, somewhere - she is addicted to Mario World now!

 They do like that. My wife beats me in Singstar all the time. Not that that has anything to do with skilled gaming. It was a whole lot worse when my sister in law took out me, and two friends and my brother all at Soul Calibur 2 for the Dreamcast, she never plays anything and I had already beat the game, and it was sad, really.  And she still likes to bring it up. she'll be like, "Hey remember  that game I beat all you guys in? What's it called?" I'm like if your going to brag you should at least remember the name of the game.

 Anyway I find casual gamers/nongamers also like a shallow gameplay experience. My wife loves that in Sing star every song is unlocked upfront and there is no earning money to buy new stuff and lockable content, of course i'm like, "What?" That my whole reason for playing games, to unlock crap!!! I played Tekken Dark Ressurection for a billion hours to unlock everyone's extra clothes. Same with Hot shots golf, I don't know how you don't like that. But I think it's a commitment thing, the game screams commitment where they just want something simple they can jump in and out of.

Don't cancel Sadness, Don't cancel Bob Ross Painting, Don't cancel Day of Disaster, and Don't cancel Project HAMMER.

These were games I was looking very forward to. They would make the Wii rich in play variety.

You hear me? Don't ya Dare cancel 'em. Or the consequences will be severe. *shaking fist in air like old man*

John Lucas