Hello

I saw you complain about the amount of e-mail you received and though
I would add to your woes.

I notice you bring up people who have proven successful at creating
content that is enjoyed by millions. In your most recent set of posts,
you brought up Tom Clancy. I was basically wanting to point out
someone who might well be the ‘King’ of creating works that are
reflective of society, nature, and the zeitgeist while, most
importantly, still remaining entertaining.

I think that examining Stephen King and his work ethic reveals
something about the place where many of the ‘creative’ types lose
their footing – the moment of inspiration. Stephen King is -very-
willing to talk about his inspiration for stories. Pet Semetary, for
example: he had the idea when a truck killed his daughter’s cat and he
had to go bury it. The story? A truck kills a man’s son’s cat and he
has to go bury it, but his friend tells him of an Indian burial ground
that is so cursed that any animal buried there comes back from the
dead, and advises him to secretly bury the cat there before his son
knows. The story goes on to be more frightening, obviously, but the
whole core of the idea he claimed popped into his head between one
side of the street and the other as he crossed it with his daughter’s
dead cat.

Upon driving through a seemingly deserted town on a book tour, he
thought that the empty streets seemed terrifying, as though they were
hiding some dark secret. Maybe everyone in town was dead! He began
writing a story about just such an empty town, called ‘Desperation.’
(Both the town and the book). He didn’t think ‘Let me make up
something creative and creepy, using my superior powers of
awesomeness!’ He -recognized- the natural fear that this common
situation (quiet, empty desert town) made him feel, knew that others
would share the feeling, and set about trying to capture it in a form
that could be shared with others. Because of this, I can shudder in my
chair as I read at the thought of the empty town without having to see
it.

This is different from thinking ‘I bet I can think up the scariest
thing! Scariest thing ever! How about a…. box-like thing that’s
PURPLE, yeah that’s it PURPLE, cuz that’s weird! Yeah, I’m creative!’
This creature would then be in a Final Fantasy game or something, and
fail to frighten me.

He also points out that some of his best received books were not ones
that came naturally to him. About his first published book, “Carrie,”
he says he didn’t even like the main characters, didn’t identify with
them, and found it hard to write about things he didn’t know much
about (girl’s locker room, for example). Still, that book (his fifth,
though first to be accepted for publication) rocketed him to the fame
he has enjoyed for almost forty years. Miyamoto should think about
that the next time he is choosing between ‘having a blast’ making
Super Mario Galaxy 2393 and ‘putting his nose to the grindstone’ and
making SMB6.

I didn’t mention Stephen King since I am not as familiar with him.

When we hear stories of ‘Miyamoto as boy exploring a cave’, the journalists or whatever are writing it as a manner as if this is coming from Miyamoto instead of Miyamoto recognizing it is coming from Human Nature. When Miyamoto began weighing himself, he tapped into something of Human Nature of wanting to get into more fit. And this is why Wii Fit sells. There is no ‘creativity’ in it as traditionally defined.

I do use this example of Stephen King to explain what a wife really is. When King wrote Carrie, he wasn’t famous and had no money. He didn’t think the book was that good so he threw it into the trash. His wife picked it out and sent it to the publisher (where it got accepted and became a big hit). That is a wife.

Dear Malstrom,

After reading through your articles and looking at the market’s reaction to the Wii over the past few years I’ve realized, that the best years of the Wii are still to come.  (Perhaps this is all obvious to you, but it seems like a revelation to me.)  Looking at things from the perspective of the expanded market, I believe the Wii will parallel the success of the Atari and the NES put together, and the life span of it will be about 3-4 years longer than the NES.  Specifically I think the lifespan of the Wii will look like this.

Stage 1: Microcosm of Atari years (late 2006 through most of 2009)

Stage 2: Parallel of early NES years (late 2009 – 2011 or 2012)

Stage 3: Parallel of late NES years (2011/2012 - ??)

I know in your articles that you compare the Wii to both the NES and the Atari, but if you look at the games that really propelled the Wii early on, they resemble early Atari games more than early NES games.  Wii tennis is definitely like Pong, and bowling and tanks both resemble early Atari games.  Also the Atari had a lot of crappy software put out by third party companies, much like the Wii did.  Lastly the market for Atari games collapsed in 1983, and the Wii had a (lessened) parallel of this during it’s dry spell of late 2008 through most of 2009.

In 1985 console gaming was revived by the NES and specificially Super Mario Bros.  In late 2009 the Wii console was revived by New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  In 1986 the NES got another jolt to its momentum from The Legend of Zelda.  Right now it looks like the Wii is going to have a Zelda game released in late 2010.  More imporantly this Zelda game will have motion plus which means it will have expanded market values.  It is primed to parallel the success of the original Zelda.  Nintendo can keep its momentum going with expanded market sequels to Mario and Zelda much like the NES years.

The late NES years had a lot of great third party software, but I don’t think we’ll see this phase on the Wii until late 2011 or 2012.  The need to see Move and Natal fail, before they realize that the Wii is the viable place to make quality console games.  By 2012 I think there will be several third party developers that will give Wii a serious try.  From 2012 on the Wii will see its best years as several third party developers put out some quality innovative games for the Wii.

What do you think?

I don’t think the future of Wii will resemble the past.

The 7th Generation began with Nintendo giving a prophecy: gaming will collapse unless it is expanded. Everyone laughed at this prophecy. The Old School Gamers have been saying this for quite some time due to the deterioration of quality games.

The gaming market has certainly not collapsed in markets like North America yet. The Wii performed extremely strongly. There was enough strength in the market to somewhat support $600-$400 game consoles. People looked at the strength of the DS and Wii and wrote it off as ‘casual gamers’.

But everyone has forgotten about the prophecy. Even Nintendo has forgotten about it. It takes games around two years to fully gestate and hatch from their eggs. After the success of the Wii became clear, Nintendo developers were greenlighted to work on their own pet projects such as a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy or Metroid: Other M or the radical experiment of Wii Music. If market conditions were different, these games would most certainly not have been made. They were being made because Nintendo felt comfortable.

The Nintendo prophecy is going to come true and the ugly reality will devour the markets like a sea monster devouring a boat. The bottom is going to fall out. You have already gotten a taste of it in the last NPD. But it is going to get much, much worse.

Longtime readers will note how I said back in 2007 about the upcoming depression. I even went so far to say that I was looking to get out of the country by 2012. (But where would I go? I cannot think of a more economically stable area than where I am currently located.) People thought the Lehman Brothers collapse was what I was referring to as the upcoming depression. To the contrary, that will be remembered as the ‘good times’.

Taxes are going up in 2011 and corporate profits are trying to jam in as much as they can in 2010. 2011 will be a very different story. The economic conditions will suffer much, much more. There will be less games made in the following years.

What I refer to as a ‘depression’ will be your realization that you will live economically worse off than your parents. The ‘depression’ will be older people realizing that their life savings have gone up in smoke and that they will never be able to retire. They will have to work until the day they die.

I’ve been attacking how Nintendo is making ‘sequel to 3d Mario’ to ‘maternal instincts’ Metroid and other ‘pet projects’ not so much because I have something against those pet projects but because time is running out. Nintendo should be exploring new content possibilities and new forms of games NOW when the macro conditions are good. But they wasted the prime years of the Wii on self-indulgence. The market conditions are going to get much, much worse than they are today. The focus of Nintendo will shift from ‘expanding’ to merely ‘looking to survive’. We are going to lose many, many game companies.

Let me put it this way. If the Wii came out in 2010 instead of 2006, it would not have sold out but would have sold ‘well’. Before, Nintendo bringing their A game resulted in social phenomena and extreme excitement. Now, Nintendo bringing their A game results in merely ‘good sales’. A year or two from now, when Nintendo brings their A game, they may even have mediocre sales. This is because the macro conditions will be so slanted uphill.

What if the Euro is destroyed? It is not improbable. You can kiss an entire main continent goodbye. Nintendo’s best performing market, North America, is going to be hard hit in the upcoming years due to skyrocketing taxes and lack of investing.  Japan is already in decline. I expect the decline to strengthen.

As history has shown, periods of economic decline breed wars. Think of the economically devastated Germany before Hitler came to seen. Look at the unrest of Greece today with the fire bombings and mass riots. Violence is going to increase within the next few years, not decrease. It is not inconceivable that North Korea and South Korea could go to war (right on the eve of Starcraft 2 being released).

I think Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony will be fighting to survive in the upcoming years, not fighting a ‘console war’.

The Eighth Generation of Video Games will be a generation of austerity and decline. Despite how good Nintendo’s expansion methods are, they will be fighting a mad current of water against them. These expansionary moves will cancel out the current so Nintendo, at best, will be sitting at ‘status quo’. Microsoft and Sony, who are trapped in their shrinking box, may be swept away by the current like a large animal swept off its feet by the flash flood.

Around 2014 or after, the economy will truly rebound. Nintendo and the surviving game companies will be very different then. They will incorporate their expansionary tactics as part of the company DNA. Much of the bad habits of the past, of the habit of making games as part of self-indulgence, will be a thing of the past (because no game company will be able to afford them during the Eighth Generation). It is because of this that when the Ninth Generation rolls around, gaming, as a medium, could explode into popularity as the economy rebounds. Hollywood and other mediums may not survive or be very crippled. Gaming could become poised to be the dominant entertainment medium at that point.

Decline. Decline. Decline. That is the future of gaming in the near future. Blue Ocean expansion will no longer mean ‘market domination’ and ‘sold out systems’; it will mean ‘head above water’ because the economic currents below are going to suck in most of the market.

Hi Sean,
I think Super Mario 64 isn’t the 3D version of Super Mario Bros, it’s the 3D version of Donkey Kong ’94, the Game Boy game.
DK’94 is very far from the arcade roots of the original Donkey Kong. It goes heavy on the puzzle elements, just like Mario 64. Instead of defeating enemies by jumping on them you throw things at them, similar to Mario 2 (USA). Instead of reaching a flagpole you try to get a key to a door. Mario doesn’t just have a regular jump, he also has the backflip and handstand jump (which can be used as a triple jump for extra height, just like in Mario 64). There are no permanent powerups, only the hammers which time out after a while. While the regular hammers are really just bonuses the super hammers are puzzle-solving tools like the powerups in Mario 64 and when they are part of the solution they are necessary. Mario is also vulnerable to falling damage, something he is in the 3D games but not the Super Mario Bros games. Bosses are defeated by throwing their projectiles back at them. Also there are no warp zones or other ways to skip ahead.

There is an important difference though. Nintendo knew enough to stop making Donkey Kong ’94 after Donkey Kong Country sales totally smashed it. But with Faux Mario, Nintendo is defiant that the mass market is choosing 2d Mario and keeps skipping out on Faux Mario. Nintendo will keep making Faux Mario games after Faux Mario games in a desperate attempt to make them sell like 2d Mario.

Hello Sean,

I was just reading one of your older articles via the wayback machine(can’t acces the older news site sadly).

Reading the post about why you want Microsoft to counterattack, I saw that you were most interested in Nintendo’s response to the whole ordeal.

Now we have Motionplus of course, but is that all that we can expect from the asymetric war that’s going to occur later in the year? I mean, couldn’t Blue Ocean also figure as way of responding to moves made by Microsoft and Sony?

And in one of your posts earlier in the year, you said that Sony and Microsoft had an oppurtunity to escape their shrinking core box, but the way you implied it made it look like as if they only needed to bind Motion control to hardcore games. I thought there was more to the values of New Generation than just Motion control. I can’t see neither Sony nor Microsoft adapting to those values(heck, even Nintendo has trouble doing it as Galaxy 2 and Other M show) so how the hell can they even escape their core box in that case? I’ve seen some footage of Sony with Socom 4 using Move but surely there is more to escaping than simply combining motion controls with a shooter like Socom?

And back to the Asymetric War. It’s really going to begin at E3 2010 right? Nintendo revealing more motionplus games, Microsoft coming out with Natal games, Halo Reach and other stuff and of course Sony with Move. I’d just like to know how I need to envision such a war. You’ve noted that it would be far more intense then Sega versus Nintendo. But in what way exactly? To be more precise, how fast will such a war be, or rather: how fast do you envision it to be?

Speaking of which: I was kind off surprised you didn’t say anything about Nintendo’s stealth introduction of MotionPlus into the basic Wii pack.

And…that’s all I wanted to ask for now. Have a nice day Sean!

I didn’t say anything about E3 2008 because I was in Galveston on the beach. In 2008, I wrote all the Disruption Chronicles articles with the last two just days before E3 2008. I was burnt out, but I also wanted to see if anyone in the ‘Game Industry’ could put 2 2 together. At the time, many people were beginning to copy what I would say and put it on their websites. So I didn’t want to help them. Instantly, I noticed Motion Plus as an aggressive Nintendo response to Microsoft and Sony making motion controls. Wii Sports Resort was going to come out in 2008. However, Microsoft and Sony are dumb as rocks and had no response. Their tepid response would come at 2009. So I wanted to see who was smart in the ‘Game Industry’ and who wasn’t. Let them come to their own damn conclusions. A few people (like Casamassina) thought out loud that Nintendo unveiling Motion Plus (and doing so right before the Microsoft Conference) was extremely aggressive. But then he dismissed that because that went against the context of Nintendo as a ‘Blue Ocean’ company, right? The ideas of disruption hadn’t sunk in yet. At the time, I thought E3 2008 was fine for Nintendo because there was no counterattack to the Wii. I did not know that Nintendo had embraced ‘User Generated Content’ until I played Wii Music. I remember in early 2009 writing about UGC was bad news for Nintendo and I heard about it from some emailers. Nintendo had nothing but success so far and here I was badmouthing them. Wii stopped being sold out which other people interpreted as ‘fine’, but I thought that was a major red flag. Momentum was not being maintained. At the end of 2009, Nintendo desperately cut the price on the Wii. So you know something drastically bad happened since 2008 to 2009.

As for the Asymmetric War, it is pretty much over. It will end very suddenly. Sony and Microsoft will lose… dramatically. Natal and Move will flop. Analysts will be stunned. But if you read your Christensen, you would know that his exact words was that during an Asymmetric War, the disruptor is always favored to win if Nintendo has the Sword and Shield of asymmetric properties (which they did) and that it is “a sudden end to a great firm”. Once Move and Natal fail, it will be very difficult for any analyst to talk about Microsoft and Sony being “strong” in the video game market or “about to come back.”

The reason why I said Microsoft and Sony had an opportunity to escape their shrinking box via motion controls and core games because Nintendo was not there yet. Nintendo had not integrated motion controls with their core games. They had them in their Expanded Audience titles but not the core games. This left a gaping hole where Microsoft or Sony could fly through. For example, a PS3 and Xbox 360 FPS game with pointing and motion controls could have done wonders as there was no such high quality game of that type on the Wii. But Microsoft and Sony waited way too long. Also, the recession is closing the box faster than ever.

Natal and Move’s failure will be very sudden. Everyone except those who read disruption will be shocked. I think it will paralyze both Microsoft and Sony. NOW what do they do? While they try to figure it out, Nintendo will eventually come out with a new console and Microsoft and Sony will just be following in Nintendo’s wake.