You need more speculation in your hard facts :)

Really, for all we know they might have spent this time trying to come up with something interesting with the balance board and/or the vitality sensor, and might have canned those works and come empty-handed at E3 when it comes to its software.

But hypoteses on what they might possibly have done behind closed doors don't lend credit to calling 2008-2009 "Nintendo's UGC era" as if that was their explicit focus. As far as I know this obsession of Malstrom's relies on 1) WiiMusic (?) 2) Animal Crossing (???) and 3) Miyamoto saying that he's interested in UGC in an interview.

You might as well call this the era of sequels, remakes and remasters, as we've seen more of them (Animal Crossing, WiiFit+, WSR, Metroid Prime collection, Punch Out).

Or simply call it with its name: a slight creative slump, out of which they'll climb soon. It's only more evident in the Wii case because so much of the burden of software development falls directly on Nintendo's shoulders and the third party production did not manage to step up.

I could be wrong but I suspect that from the middle of 2007 through 2008 Nintendo didn't put too much emphasis on attracting third party support or starting development of "core" games within Nintendo because they assumed the sales of the Wii would encourage third party support; and the line-up would generate itself. You can't (really) blame them because countless publishers have said for generations that they would give Nintendo's systems (Gamecube or N64) much heavier support if only they had the userbase; and having a system that is on track to break 100 Million units sold should justify very heavy support. For many (often foolish) reasons, third party publishers did not see value in producing games for the Wii and continued to make excuses, and the line-up that should have arrived in 2009 never materialized.

If I'm correct, Nintendo would have been fairly aware of this quite awhile back (6 to 12 months ago) and could have started taking steps to correct the problem with a greater focus on attracting quality third party support in 2010 (and beyond) as well as producing quality titles internally. If they realized early on that this was a problem, and were moderately successful in their efforts, 2010 could be a much better year for games than 2009 was ... If they realized later or were less successful with their efforts 2010 may not be particularly great either.

Now, one would hope that regardless of the immediate actions Nintendo has taken that they would realize the importance of agressively attracting third party development. In an environment where Microsoft and Sony are both heavily supporting publishers to get minor exclusive content, Nintendo can't assume that publishers will choose to favour the Wii simply because it has a large install-base and inexpensive development costs.

Unless Maelstrom is guessing or has inside knowledge, I never knew what great grating wave of "user generated content" he saw.

Admittedly, Wii Music was an experiment that garnered the negative reactions he described and Animal Crossing was too little new for most gamers.

Of course, Nintendo has unprecedented sales and games selling 2.5-3M and is considered a "failure" externally -- and internally.

Mike from Morgantown

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: march of the Minis, Warioware: DIY, Flipnote Studio, heck, the DSi was built around UGC. The theory is that a lot of games were canned or retooled that use it. Also, Iwata has said to investors that they were trying to capture the fun of the internet (which is UGC).

Also, he hardly talked about UGC this post. That was a paragraph or two.

Malstrom slowly falling into fanboy incoherency. I would so prefer he just stayed with his BOS articles. He seems almost giddy to to target UGC as the fault rather than use what BOS talks about supportive initiative for new directions.

Otherwise this post of blogging of his was pretty much a wasted read. It's not amusing, insightful or well interesting. At least his vehemence of his earlier posts were more interesting to read.

I love how he tries to say that nintendo games have low production, and that people who own HD systems don't care too much for low production.
Nintendo games are very well made and the quality they carry would easily sell on an HD console. It's a similar idea to the Mickey game coming out. Nintendo backers have charged that the game isn't good looking enough to survive on HD platforms...
But there are a lot of counter arguments here folks:
the simpsons game
lego franchise
sega superstars tennis
viva pinata
castle crashers
shadow complex
guitar hero
splosion man
N+


on ps3
ff7
fat princess
little big planet
ratchet and clank
naruto
hot shots golf
dbz
singstar
rock band
the last guy
pixeljunk games
echochrome
bomberman
(critter crunch hopefully)


these games do not have huge production, they look nice because of the art style, and could be toned down a lot while maintaining their luster.

The thing is Nintendo did say they were focusing on that a while ago, and when Wii Music and Little Big Planet did not turn into system sellers (2 million is nothing to sneeze at, but that was not their goals), that showed the wrong focus. Iwata even said they made miscalculations about the kind of games to make.

So he's not just pulling UGC out of nowhere.

I missed such an explicit statement. Link?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/user-generated-content-future-of-videogames-says-fils-aime

He is some random blogger who posts articles well liked by VGC wii fans who probably generate majority of hits for his website.

Think Nintendo version of Bruceongames/ SDF.