Nintendo Next to Release New Game Console
Nintendo’s making a ton of money right now, and the truth is, they won’t stop any time soon. Still, I think they screwed up royally. Let me explain…
Some time ago, before Nintendo released the Wii, we all had these fantasies about 1:1 motion control. That is, we dreamed of a device we could hold in our hand that would be mimicked perfectly on screen. Of course, once we finally got the chance to try it out for ourselves, we realized that the 1:1 fantasy was, in fact, just a fantasy. I went searching back through hyping news reports to convince myself that I hadn’t just made it up. Try as I might, I never did find any statements that the Wii Remote was supposed to accurately represent your movement. For some reason, we had all just decided it would work that way. The thing is, it doesn’t.
Wii MotionPlus to the rescue!
The Wii MotionPlus makes the Wii Remote way better than it used to be. Unfortunately, building a better mousetrap isn’t the build-it-and-they-will-come scenario its cracked up to be. Just ask the Betamax guy. Now, Nintendo has learned a lot in the past 25 years, and those hard-earned street smarts are what put the Wii on top. However, the strange truth is that they were short-sighted. Somehow, in the time it took them to design and market the Wii, they forgot the key lesson that made it so successful.
A little history lesson for the uninitiated…
Years ago, Sega thought the Sega CD was going to be a big hit. People would add it to their Sega Genesis systems and games would be made by boatload. Well, it turned out that the hardware still sucked, and they were shoving way too much data at the thing, so the experience wasn’t really improved (unless you really loved grainy FMV sequences breaking up actual gameplay). Next, they tried making more powerful hardware with the 32X add-on. This further segmented the market, and although it certainly made the Genesis more powerful, it was still considered an add-on for the Genesis. Part of this is a question of marketing/branding, part of it is timing, part of it is economics, and a huge part is psychology.
You see, with these add-ons, you’re still using the original console. To move forward in this industry, you need to forget about the past. If a new device is to succeed, people need to abandon the old and accept the new. If you need more proof of failed peripherals, just think of any add-on peripheral, any at all, and you’ll see that it failed to spawn more than a few games. Nintendo’s R.O.B. the Robot, their light Zapper, the PowerPad, Sega Activator, SuperScope, Balance Board, and on, and on. And to defend against your uninteresting claims that plastic guitars and drumsets have been “successful peripherals”, realize that those are accessories for a game, not a platform. We haven’t seen a great expansion of game design since the dawn of Guitar Hero. There’s only been a few, very genre-specific games whose most crowning achievement has been an increase in real-life guitar lessons for the tone-deaf masses filling every apartment building from here to Waco.
The GameCube is home to the only successful accessory in history.
That accessory is the Wii Remote. At the dawn of the next generation, Nintendo had a good idea for a new interface, but the public needed something shiny and new. The other guys were coming out with fancy new machines, and an add-on for the dusty old GameCube would never take off. Instead, they slimmed it down, slapped on a white case, and gave it a crazy name that made us all forget the GameCube ever existed. The reality is that this branding makeover was all they needed to introduce the real star of the show, the Wii Remote.
So, didn’t Nintendo do everything right?
No. Pay attention, fool. This is why you did so poorly in Junior High. Remember, just a few paragraphs ago, when we were learning about the Wii MotionPlus? Even if it’s not perfect, it IS a fantastic little accessory. It brings a lot more to the designer’s bag of tricks. However, it’s still just an accessory, and with it, Nintendo has segmented the market. We’ve all heard people complain that the Wii MotionPlus should have been part of the original design of the Wii, but they’re just whining because they don’t want to spend the extra $20-$80 to upgrade what they’ve got. Nintendo should be worrying about the people who aren’t complaining. The people who don’t even know what it is are the ones who will guarantee its failure in the marketplace.
If Nintendo wants to extend the life of the Wii, they need to make sure we all have the Wii MotionPlus. First, they need to market the shit out of it. Then, they need to give it away with wild abandon. Multiple units need to be free and easy to obtain, kind of like the replacement Wii Remote wrist straps and Wii Remote Jackets that go to anyone who asks for them. This would be the only way they would even stand a chance at getting the market saturation and developer support needed to make the Wii MotionPlus more than a developer’s afterthought. You know just as well as I do, though, that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that ever happening. So, segmented the market will be.
What happens from here?
Nintendo’s not dumb. They had a great idea, but, sadly, they have very tiny balls. They knew the Wii Remote wasn’t good enough to do anything more than trick players into thinking it was a smart piece of equipment. Honestly, we’re years into its lifecycle, and the masses have yet to figure it out, so there isn’t even a problem for them unless they have some nostalgic urge to keep you and I (ie, the “hardcore”) interested, which they probably don’t. Even if they did, the gold lining the halls of Nintendo is a shiny distraction from the nuisance of a conscience.
One real prediction I have for you is that Nintendo won’t be late to the next next generation of consoles. Both Microsoft and Sony have already said they want their current consoles to live on forever (or ten years, whichever comes first). Although I’m sure Nintendo, in retrospect, wishes the MotionPlus technology was native to the system, they played it safe and missed that boat. In the meantime, Microsoft* and Sony are ready to rock the boat with their own doomed accessories aimed at capturing some of the Wii’s casual players. Even though neither will make a dent in Nintendo’s marketshare, player apathy will. It’s only a matter of time before even the dumbest of the bunch realizes that the Wii stopped being fun once Wii Sports lost its appeal. For that reason alone, you can bet that Nintendo’s next effort will be just as easy to pick up and play, but it will also have the strength behind it to impress all of us, and it won’t take them ten years to do it.
