I’m a bit confused about Zelda Wii as well… however, another possibility is
that they were working on Zelda w/ M+ by the time they announced M+ almost 2 years ago.  They needed to see, however, how many units they would ship before committing to it.  They did commit to it immediately after the sales numbers came through, though.

I would HOPE (which leads me to think this way, but of course it is emotional) that they are being honest and that they plan to refresh the series and that M+ work has been going on for a long time.

I’m with you on Spirit Tracks… I haven’t finished it, but after putting
several hours into it… “meh”.

I did like Twilight Princess though… but perhaps for reasons that have
nothing to do with Zelda.  Ocarina of Time was so great, for me, because they made an excellent transition to making puzzles in 3d.  It amazes me how much thought went into that.  Everything else is just icing on top.  :)

I really wonder what they can come up with in solving puzzles w/ M+ and of course the fighting… but to me the focus will always be the puzzles… they
just have to be good… note that I’m not saying HARD, but good.  :)

Anyway, I hope you’re wrong on the dumping part… because with Zelda coming out when Natal and Wand will be in their infancy, Nintendo could finally prove that Motion Control is no joke – and that they are the masters of it.

And BTW… with regards to the fact that the artistic elements were still
being decided – that seems to be how they often make the games.  They
will do the controls and gameplay first and then build the atmosphere
around that, I think.

Here’s hoping anyway.  :)  Nice site btw, keep it up!

We don’t have any information on Zelda Wii. We don’t know what the game will be. So there is not much to work with here.

But we do know what the last four or five Zeldas have been. Probability puts Zelda Wii being a Wii version of Spirit Tracks. Instead of a train, you’ll be flying from place to place. Expect something like a hot air balloon or human cannons to be the “overworld”.

Iwata seems like the type of person who does not suffer fools. When Gamecube wasn’t selling, Iwata went, “Fine,” and just shut off production haha. “I don’t want to make Mario 5,” said Miyamoto. “Well, you’re going to make it,” said Iwata.

Wii Music being discontinued fits in with this Iwata behavior. If Wii Music wasn’t doing its job, I can totally see Iwata saying, “Fine, let’s stop it,” and BAM, the game is discontinued. People in Iwata’s position do not suffer fools.

And Nintendo has to know that Spirit Tracks is not something that is exciting people. The core Zelda fans are buying the game. But is anyone else? Most people who have bought and played the game have very mixed feelings (mixed means they do not want to admit how bad it is. Give them a year or two and the ‘mixed’ views will turn into ‘THIS SUCKS!’).

Iwata saying that Zelda Wii will be released in 2010 has not been ‘corrected’ by Nintendo (only the DS comment has). This means it is coming.

I bet the Zelda Wii team thought the game was going to be put out in 2011 holiday season. Perhaps Iwata is scaring them. Nintendo execs have a habit of announcing things in the middle of interviews and then returning to their developers to tell them the bad new (if the developers didn’t read it in the paper). I think they do this because the developers cannot argue! Once Miyamoto announced Pikmin 3, they HAVE to make Pikmin 3. It was public already.

I guarantee Zelda Wii is more like Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and even Twilight Princess than Zelda Wii is to how we want it to be. Seeing the decline Zelda has been in, Iwata likely sees Zelda Wii as “old food” and needs to be put out as soon as possible.

This is all speculation on my part.

Nintendo has to know that as hardware sellers, games like Metroid: Other M and Galaxy 2 are not going to cut it. Neither is Zelda Wii. I do not believe putting them all out near one another is ‘overkill’. They are actually weak games.

I hope Metroid: Other M is made entirely to how Sakamoto desires. This is so when the game bombs, I can laugh at him and maybe he will stop screwing up the Metroid series by adding things like “more cutscenes”.

People who think Galaxy 2 will sell better due to NSMB Wii players do not understand the NSMB Wii player. I believe guys like Miyamoto are in absolute denial about what is going on. People are not buying NSMB Wii because the game is more ‘accessible’ than 3d Mario. They are buying NSMB Wii because they are rejecting 3d Mario as a Mario game. They simply don’t like 3d Mario. 3d Mario is the reason why N64 and Gamecube never sold near the level as the NES and SNES. People like me who bought the NES and SNES for Mario would not buy the N64 or Gamecube for 3d Mario.

With the decline in Wii’s momentum, I suspect there are many changes going on behind the scenes in Nintendo’s Magical Chocolate Factory.

I expect Iwata to be cracking down on the Zelda team. Zelda can only go into further decline with games more like Spirit Tracks. Something needs to change there.

The changes that Zelda requires to become a phenomenon again are going to have to be from the ground up. Zelda Wii was too far in development to do any of the changes we want.

With motion plus, you expect Zelda to be more about sword combat and shooting arrows. But what you will get instead are motion plus puzzles and a further removal of the overworld with an increase in “story” and “cutscenes”(which is not what we want). Just as people were irritated with Spirit Tracks using the microphone for ‘puzzles’, get ready to be irritated with motion plus to be used for ‘puzzles’ in a similar fashion.

It is my belief that Nintendo developers are not any different from any other developer. The moods and desires we have seen of most game developers (“Got to add MORE cutscenes in my game!” “Must make my game into a movie!” “Let us focus on the story of the game.” “Let us explore the game’s protagonist and her personal story”) are with Nintendo developers as well. The difference is that Nintendo has very smart business people at the top forcing the Nintendo developers to make the correct games.

Remember, most people at Nintendo were against the Wii. They wanted to go “Next Generation”. I am sure as soon as Wii’s sales began to decline, they said, “We need to make a Wii HD!”

Every now and then, we get flashes of how Nintendo developers REALLY think. They end up trying to cram a story into Mario Galaxy. With NSMB DS and Wii, they wanted to put a story in there but Miyamoto wisely said “No.” And look at Metroid: Other M which seems like the ultimate incarnation of those developer desires: tons of cutscenes, “story”, exploration of the protagonist, is both 2d and 3d (!), and so on.

I believe Nintendo developers see the Core Market games as games they are really passionate about making. Games like Pokemon or Wii Sports are games they feel they HAVE to make. But their treat is the Core games.

Nintendo’s Expanded Market direction is fine. The problem is with their Core Games (excluding Mario Kart Wii). With the Wii success, the leash got slack on them. They are not going to like being unable to make whatever they want on the Core side. Even though the market CLEARLY REJECTED the art style in Wind Waker, Nintendo developers kept shoving it back in on the handheld games.

Hell, the market CLEARLY REJECTS 3d Mario. (“How can you say 3d Mario sells bad?” It is because I am comparing it to 2d Mario. That is why 3d Mario’s sales are bad. And they are not selling hardware in places like Japan.) Yet, Nintendo developers keep ramming more and more 3d Mario at us!

Nintendo had no desire to make Motion Plus games. To Nintendo developers, Wii is just another DS. With DS, the microphone and touchscreen were only used for Expanded Market games. For Core Games, it was used only for Zelda.

Note that the same exact thing is occurring with the Wii.

But the Wii is not the DS. Nintendo is in a very dangerous situation if they do not put out Motion Plus games that something other than sports and Zelda. It is a dangerous situation because the Wii sold entirely on the potential of motion games. Disappointed consumers will refuse to buy the next new Nintendo console. The Wii is already over three years old and the only Nintendo motion games is sports and WarioWare. That is pathetic.

If I was a third party company, I would say, “Why should I make motion control games when Nintendo doesn’t even make any?” And what can Nintendo say to that?

The arrogance of Nintendo developers is very high. They feel they don’t need to “explore the medium” of something like motion controls because they will dump all their “ideas” into Zelda Wii. And that is it.

Remember the “Game Industry” being all aroused over User Generated Content and how LittleBigPlanet would ‘transform all gaming’? Well, LittleBigPlanet came out and gaming did not get transformed. You had the INSANE HYPE for Will Wright’s Spore. Will Wright was a big evangelical for User Generated Content in that it would ‘change everything’.

And, to the utter shock of myself, Nintendo decided to sail entirely into the ‘User Generated Content’ direction. How did this happen? We can only speculate.

Since every other game developer was so hot and bothered by ‘User Generated Content’, we can assume that Nintendo developers were too. We can’t get Nintendo to make a non-sports, non-Zelda motion control game, but boy did all these ‘User Generated Content’ games begin to come from nowhere!

Miyamoto even said, on the eve of NSMB Wii’s release, that perhaps the next 2d Mario game would have ‘User Generated Content’. My reaction was: “Is this man stupid!?” Nintendo has a good thing going with this 2d Mario. Does he wish to destroy it? Everything User Generated Content touches turns to crap.

If left to their own devices, Nintendo developers would be putting stories and cutscenes into all Mario games, they would be putting User Generated Content in all games, would put various vehicles in Zelda with absolutely no overworld but “tons of puzzles” and even go so far as to remove the sword from Link himself, and to put cell shaded cutesy art style into every game like Wind Waker. Nintendo would destroy itself (which they have been on the habit of doing since the N64)

What this goes to show is what seems LOGICAL for a game to have from the game developer’s standpoint is completely DIFFERENT than the mass consumers’ standpoint.

We’re going to have to wait until E3 2010 to see what Nintendo’s direction is. Games like Mario 5 and Wii Fit Plus were games to rapidly make since the User Generated Content thing blew up. The big problem for Nintendo now is that while they were wasting time in their User Generated Content adventure, their competitors were making strides towards their own motion controls. There is currently a window where if Sony and Microsoft release the correct software, they will be wearing crown of motion control innovation. However, this is a big ‘if’.

Nintendo is fortunate to have those two as their competitors. Christensen, himself, even called Nintendo’s competitors as ‘tepid’.