Lulz! Still love the irony that one of the most cinematic and probably famed film directors of all time made a Wii game with extremely average visuals and almost no story.

And made it AWESOME.

There is that...

Nintendo's development model is actually one that's user-focused instead of product-focused. They have been known to make drastic changes in a game simply based on what their test focus groups have done (for example, Mario Kart Wii's motorbike controls were entirely revamped when they noticed that people kept trying to use the Wii Wheel like it was a set of handlebars).

This user focus means they put out products which will please the vast majority of potential customers, and is why they have no problem selling untold millions of copies. The only thing one could refer to as a "downside" to this process is that it tends to alienate those users who are ready to move upstream to more complex titles. And even there, they've got studios making upstream games. About the only crowd lost to them is the extreme upstream gamers who prefer games that are more work than game.

nintendo should stop trying to please people so much and make some radical changes- granted the wii mote is a step in the right direction.. but they need some new franchises..and something that excites.. like the DC titles did. You got motion control thats awesome..now figure out a way to make it enhance your games.

maybe they need to adapt the Renault philosophy.. where the car designers tell the people what is cool instead of all these study groups and surveys to tell the car designers what to design.

I'd respect them a little more if they did.

"Product-focused" and "User-focused" are buzzwords so let's not be silly.  Instead let's use some real phrases like "Experience Design" and "User Experience (UX) Design," the latter of which most accurately reflects what Nintendo seems to be working on in many of its games and services.  

Just for your reference...

"Experience design is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design." ~ Wikipedia

Let's not make up words when we already have perfectly good ones to use.

You see, you could have ended your post with the above half.  Commenting on Nintendo's attempt to make games more user-friendly and accessible is good however you transition from a solid point to trolling taking shots at "extreme upstream gamers."

In fact, you're insulting everyone here.  First you're assuming that a game with mass appeal must be simple and that gamers are "moving upstream to more complex titles."  Somewhere along the way you made the mental leap that accessible and user-friendly equals less complex when it's pretty clear that some of the games with the widest appeal also happen to be quite complex in nature (i.e. puzzle games).  Second, you can't walk away without taking a shot at "extreme upstream gamers" by saying that games are more work than game.  Well done, not only have you instantly defined what you consider "work" and "game" but you've also insulted everyone in this imaginary group of "extreme upstream gamers" by telling them that their games are more work than game.

It's amazing how quickly a constructive post turns into stealth trolling.

DC titles? And I'd say the Wii franchise has people pretty excited, in every way.

You really wanted to see my post as trolling, didn't you, WoW? That's kind of disappointing, really, as it was not my intent at all. Pretty much everything you inferred that I meant from it is not only not the case, but pretty much opposite of what I was saying.

I never explicitly said that downmarket games are inherently simple; truth be told, they very rarely are simple. I suspect your misunderstanding came from a misinterpretation of what I meant when I said that upmarket games are "more complex". Downmarket games are rarely surface-level complex, whereas upmarket games are rarely surface-level simple. That was all I was saying.

And there is such a thing as an extreme for all things, even gamers. There are extreme downmarket games as well as extreme upmarket gamers, and very few of either; most fall somewhere between those extremes. Trying to deny that extremes exist is, well, pointless. As for my statement of "more work than game", that's just how it seems to me personally. I am not at that extreme, and thus in my perspective, certain games do seem like work instead of a game. And many of the games I like seem like work instead of a game to others: I don't know many individuals who see RPGs as "fun", to be honest, yet I love them. Why did you take this so personally?

I guess the short of it is, you seem to want to pick a fight when I wasn't trying to pick a fight at all. I was just making a simple statement and expressing my opinion. I never asked you to assume my statement had more depth than surface-level meaning, nor did I ask you to accept my opinion as fact.

not to go HD on the wii. Imagin how nuts the system would be.

You've abandoned the hardcore with your downmarket post!