Today is the first time I have seen this. How surreal! I have gotten email from third party developers concerning Birdman before, but I have never seen it in a presentation like that.

Makes me wish I would lose my snarky tone on this blog and be more serious. If you’re wondering, I think the snarkiness keeps rising because of my constant frustration at no one reporting on what Nintendo is doing. I mean, this was excusable back in 2006 and 2007 when Nintendo was still thought of as the Gamecube. But now, it is absurd that there seems to be no reporting on Nintendo. I always thought that after doing the initial articles that I would just sit back and read other people digging into Nintendo’s strategy. I thought it was a given since people would want to know how Nintendo was successful. Instead, I have been seeing the opposite. The reporting is almost completely the opposite of what is going on. For example, in 2009 the bad reporting was about how Nintendo, for no apparent reason, was on the verge of releasing a high definition Wii (all based on what one lone analyst believed). The other bad reporting in 2009 was the failure to report about Nintendo’s User Generated Content move (resulting in the Wii decline of 2009).

As time goes on, the bad reporting keeps continuing. It has come to the point that no one can keep ignoring what is going on unless it was intentional. And if people are intentionally fudging the facts, they deserve all the mockery in the world.

I forget that there are people out there who are serious about this (such as third party developers who have millions of dollars riding on a Wii game). Being snarky about the junk on the Internet isn’t helping these guys out.

I’ll put some thoughts together on what many Expanded Market type users are expecting in a game. The greatest myth is that the Expanded Market doesn’t care about quality, they will just buy any ‘casual’ game. They very much are sensitive about quality. It is just a different type of quality.

Most games on the Xbox 360 and PS3 define quality on the same way the PC games define quality. But the Expanded Market define quality as more arcade quality. This is why a game like Wii Sports can be seen as ‘horrible’ from a PC game value lens (“It has no story.” “No characters.” “Too simple.” “Ugh, I have to stand up and move around to play? Yuck!”) and why a game like Bioshock is seen as ‘horrible’ from the arcade value lens (“Why is there so much story?” “Why am I wandering around in dark environments all the time?”).

Arcade games are very easy to pick up, very exciting to play, game play tends to be in short bursts, often have unique interfaces, often are played with other people, are fun to watch other people play, very addictive, and very difficult. The Wii’s biggest games all share those values from Wii Sports to Wii Fit to Mario Kart Wii to Mario 5 to Wii Play. Most of the third party Wii software tend to follow those arcade game values.

I am noticing that Nintendo seems to be struggling with this as well, believe it or not. Mario 5 totally overshot their expectations. They knew the game would be big. But I think they had to have been surprised at how much hardware that one game moved. Nintendo ran out of their Wii stockpile! Clearly, the game scratched an itch people were not noticing.

Zelda is another example of this. As a series, Zelda is becoming more irrelevant and more gimmicky with each iteration. Gamers are now beginning to say, “Who cares?” But the very first Legend of Zelda was marketed and designed as a Arcade/RPG hybrid which explains why Zelda II went the direction it did and why Link to the Past became what it was. I am getting the sense that Nintendo realizes something is off on Zelda and are looking at the earlier ones to figure out what. Should Zelda return to addictive arcade-like roots, I expect that Zelda game to ‘be huge’ in the market. Not Mario 5 huge but still huge.

Video game consoles used to be defined as arcade machines for the home. Today, video game consoles are now defined as PC games in the living room. This isn’t bad in itself. But it does reveal that game companies left behind the arcade gamers. It is why 3d Mario doesn’t sell like 2d Mario. Why Zelda games cannot match the social phenomenons the 8-bit/16-bit and Ocarina games did. It also explains to me why a game like Wii Sports erupted.

I’ll put together some thoughts on some small things third party developers can do that would go a HUGE way to making their games more successful.