You might remember one particular article written by Chris Kohler, more or less countering Steve Kent's swan-song opinion about the, relatively young at the time, Nintendo Wii. His final career prediction pretty much stated that the Wii's bubble would soon burst, perhaps even giving birth to the whole "Wii is a fad" wave which became so popular among online communities. Steven Kent however, is a man who can stand up and bravely acknowledge when he's been wrong. His latest blog report apologizes to Kohler, admitting that the Wii was obviously not a passing fad after all. Hit the jump for the all important quoting -- and some of my personal comments on the subject -- but before you do that, I'll sum up the mood and quality of his report in a single line.
I was wrong, but Nintendo still sucks and you're all naive Wii Music lovers if you like the system.
It's not exactly what you expect from the report's title, is it? Now, do hit the jump.
About 18 months ago, I made one final prediction as a games journalist. I was at a Nintendo event, and I told a reporter from USA Today that I thought "the Wii bubble was about to burst."
The next day, Wired's Chris Kohler took me to task in an online editorial. He talked about the rise of casual gaming and the differences between the Wii audience and the audiences for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Well, clearly Kohler was right. The Nintendo Wii not only survived the rest of 2007, it was the clear winner in 2008.
That's all well, good and rather polite so far. Let's carry on.
What can I say? Even after nearly two decades as a games journalist and 30+ years as a video game addict, I misunderstood the market. I did not envision so much of the market choosing a console that had nothing better than Wii Music and a really solid port of the GameCube/DS game Animal Crossing for Christmas. Chris, you nailed it.
To those of you who had a merry Christmas pretending to play the tuba on your Wii, I wish you a wonderful 2009.
This is starting to sound a bit like a forum's flame war, but I won't argue with it too much, after all, it's true that the Wii's holiday season wasn't its best in regards to software releases. But really, how can one make a prediction about a system's future, or an evaluation of it as a whole, based only on the holiday releases? Let's not forget that the Wii keeps selling out, which means that a back catalogue of excellent games is readily available to many thousands of new users each month.
Back to apologizing for my mis-prediction... Since that comment may well have been the swansong of my journalistic career, I wanted to take a moment to explain why I made such a glaring mistake. As I said before, I met the reporter at an event in Seattle. Nintendo had just revealed its summer and fall lineup for Wii which included three highlights: Carnival Games; Big Brain Academy; and Pokemon Battle Revolution. As I recall, they did not let us play Metroid, but we knew it was coming. I took that as a bad sign.
This was mid-June, 2007, and Wii had been out for 18 months. Now in my experience, the 18 month mark was when you started seeing a generation of competent games for new systems, but Nintendo showed us nothing even remotely competent at this event. Well, there was Boogie, from Electronic Arts. That must have tickled some gamers' fancies.
Upon closer inspection, when the original statement was made, the Wii was only about 8 months old, not anywhere near close the 18 mentioned here. The Xbox 360 had reached that point of the software cycle Kent believes in, but Wii was far from that at the time.
This isn't a very compelling argument then, is it?
Anyway, after 18 months on the market, Wii inventory was still nowhere near meeting demand; but the only things people were playing on their Wiis were tennis, bowling, and boxing. In other words, they were still playing Wii Sports.
At that time, I began calling the Wii the "Wii Sports Delivery System." The name was not entirely original. I was paraphrasing something an Electronic Arts executive once told me about the original Xbox. When Xbox first came out, the only thing people seemed to play on it was Halo. He took to calling the Microsoft console, "the Halo Delivery System."
But I stand corrected. I no longer think of the Wii as the WSDS, I now call it the WiiP--which rhymes with Bleep--which is what the censors would have done to my language had I woken up to a WiiP and a copy of Wii Music on Christmas morning. WiiP also sounds like weep which is what I think most real gamers are doing when they realize that Nintendo has abandoned them.
We return to the 18 month argument, but it's still as false as the last time I mentioned it. It is also very narrow of someone to only mention the games they can make compelling arguments against, and act as if those are the only games available for the Wii, when reality presents additional first-party gems like Mario Kart, Metroid Prime 3 and Super Smash Bros Brawl -- which, again, are brand-new for millions of new Wii buyers -- and third-party titles of the No More Heroes, World of Goo and De Blob caliber. Granted, perhaps they're much less than other systems' offerings, but still there's more than enough for people genuinely looking for such games, unlike the casual majority which, I have to agree, seems content with Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, and little else.
Yet, this is the same situation we have had with the Nintendo DS. It too was accused as the short-term casual crowd pleaser thanks to pseudo-educational software like Brain Age and even non-games like Nintendogs. In the coming years however, it's also become a home for serious 2D games (think Castlevania & Metroid), a treasury of JRPG titles, and even a haven for genres I can't help but describe as hardcore, such as the dungeon crawlers Etrian Odyssey and Shiren the Wanderer. The DS really offers something for everyone, from your grandmother to your obsessed nerdy video gamer friend, and that's probably both the secret and the result of its success. Developers go where the money is after all, and just as Sony stole the crowds from Nintendo and SEGA in the past, Nintendo, by applying the same strategy for the Wii, seem to have returned the favor in spectacular fashion, just when people least expected it to.
On October 6, 2006, I made some other predictions that raised the ire of Nintendo-ites everywhere. I said, and I quote:
In my mind, Nintendo is like a wonderful old friend who has a drinking problem. You like the friend, you like to spend time with the friend, but every so often bad behaviors come up and remind you that this friend has problems.
Like the old friend with the drinking problem, Nintendo is quick to fess up to old faults. "Yes, we really screwed up using cartridge format on N64. Yes, we did not support GameCube the way we said we would. Yes, we have been hard on third-party publishers in the past. Virtual Boy... oh, what were we thinking?"
And, like the old friend with the drinking problem, Nintendo bows its head after making these confessions and says, "We've learned our lesson."
Chris Kohler, you were right. Call them casual games, or as I like to say, "tragic," apparently Carnival Games and Pokemon Battle Revolution were what the masses really wanted to play. Judging by the sales of Wii Fit, people really wanted to exercise with there game console, not play games with it.
If the latest batch of WiiP games are any indication, Nintendo still acts like that old friend with a drinking problem. Nintendo has now sold nearly 50 million WiiP consoles worldwide. Compared to Microsoft's paltry 30 million Xbox 360s and Sony's 20 million PlayStation 3s, Nintendo now rules the world.
As far as I can tell, Nintendo still has the same drinking problems that worried me back in 2006, but apparently the latest generation of gamers likes dealing with a company that dances on tables and wears a lampshade over its head.
These are the final paragraphs of Kent's thoughts on the subject, but I still can't see a real argument. This type of comments would better fit some Sony big-wig back when the console wars were going full-speed, not an experienced heavy-duty journalist and gamer. Flame baits are crowd pleasers, but I expect and need more from people who are -- or were -- out to educate, inform and apparently discuss about this industry with other like-minded -- or not so much -- people.
Kent mentions the "latest batch" of Wii games to show he's up to date, but he also fails to make a note of the shift we have seen in development from many major development and publishing houses. Sure, mini games and bad ports are still created, but we also have the likes of Square-Enix announcing Dragon Quest X and the continuing development of Crystal Bearers, CAPCOM working on Monster Hunter 3, a "stolen" PlayStation 3 exclusive, and Tatsunoko Vs. CAPCOM, Namco Bandai is bringing us Fragile and a brand-new Tales of "mothership" title, SEGA is publishing The Conduit, Mad World, and House of the Dead: Overkill, imageepoch has Arc Rise Fantasia, Electronic Arts is bringing Cursed Mountain, THQ's Deadly Creatures is still going strong and Neverland's Rune Factory Frontier looks great. There also are many perhaps less known games, like Little King's Story, Swords & Soldiers, Oboro Muramasa Youtouden, Last Flight, and Cave Story.
We also recently experienced the Nintendo Media Summit, where Nintendo pretty much made amends for the horrible E3 showing, including grand announcements with sequels for Sin & Punishment, Punch-Out!! and Endless Ocean among others, as well as new exclusives such as Cosmic Walker and some of the games in the previous paragraph.
To me, it merely seems that the Wii simply took a little longer to see its "second generation" of titles, and 2009 is the year this finally happens. Companies were content with doing Wii Sports clones, casual games, and bad PlayStation 2 ports, but the trend has been shifting and new exclusive titles seem to pop up all the time, coupled with megaton announcements like Dragon Quest X and Monster Hunter 3, which pretty much seal the console's future as both a casual pleaser and a hardcore haven, much like Nintendo's other often accused and abused system, the DS.
Kent has somewhat continued this discussion on his blog, responding to certain fan comments, so check it out and see if you agree, disagree, or simply not care enough to waste precious time you could spend gaming instead. If you notice, that is something Kent clearly hasn't done enough to judge a system by, considering many of his responses dismiss the users' lists of worthy games with a simple "I haven't played them" comment. Game on.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
well he should apologize. It is such a nice console.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:48 am
If only it was sincere, eh?