Featured Discussion: Does Nintendo Care?

Featured Discussion: Does Nintendo Care?

A week ago I got a message on Facebook the other day from my cousin Nick.  He wanted to know if we could hook up our Wiis to play some online games.  I don't know too many people who play online games on the Wii, so I thought it was a great idea.  Since then it has been an absolute mess to try and connect our Wiis online.  I had to find my console's friend code number thing, and send it to Nick over email.  He had to do the same for me, and after we had both punched our Wii numbers in we wanted to get down to some game playing.  Trouble is, he has several games but none are online enabled.  I have a few games, but only one, Mario Kart, is online enabled.  Even if he did have Mario Kart, we would have to exchange another series of friend codes, and then we would be able to play but not chat or interact in any way except if we both called each other on the phone while we played.  In short, Nintendo's online strategy is a disaster from top to bottom.

But I'm not here to complain about Nintendo's online strategy, as that has been covered for years in the gaming press.  Rather, I am using it as an example that speaks to a larger problem.  In the current issue of Game Informer, the "Good/Bad/Ugly" section has some information from Ubisoft that, once upon a time, would have had me worried.  From the article:

"Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot says the company is steering its ship away from the Wii and concentrating on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  Guillemot called those two consoles the ones that are 'expected to experience sustained sales growth in games for gamers in calendar 2010.'"

In short, Ubisoft is ditching Nintendo in favor of systems that are not only more financially viable, but better for gamers.  During my Nintendo apologist days I would have cried foul, pointing to the possibilities of the Wii, the huge installed user base, and the unique motion-control possibilities of the system.  But in the years since I purchased my Wii, and especially in the months since I have owned an Xbox 360, I see moments like this as beautiful schadenfreude.  Nintendo is a victim of not only their own success, but their own staunch lack of innovation.  In short, the Wii's lack of appeal for Ubisoft and other developers, middling sales numbers in Japan, and lackluster appeal among "gamers" is Nintendo's own fault, and I'm actually kind of glad it's all happening.

Nintendo has made some frustratingly boneheaded decisions about the Wii ever since its inception:  a poorly-implemented "channel" system that does not scale very well, a controller that is severely lacking in buttons, motion control that should have been as good as Wii Motion Plus, ridiculous online support, the absence of DVD playback, the lack of High Definition a/v output, a paltry, abysmal, teeny tiny half gigabyte of internal storage, no built-in ethernet port…the list goes on.  In short, Nintendo built a system that was decent for its time but short sighted and the very opposite of future-proof.

But these wrongs aren't necessarily worthy of condemnation on their own.  It's Nintendo's response to these issues over the years that has consistently shown me they just don't care, and are content to let their system with its mountains of shovelware stand on its own.  Consider Reggie's statement at the 2007 E3 press conference with regard to online gaming: "Will Nintendo ever get serious about online gaming?"  Reggie's answer:  "What if they already did, and we just didn't notice?"  In essence, Nintendo had the gall to claim that their own paltry online experience consisting of labyrinthine friend codes, no persistent gamertags, no community, no chat, no parties, and virtually no fun at all was on par with Xbox Live and PSN.

Sorry Nintendo, I'm just not buying it.  And when I see sales numbers slipping I think back to moments like this that show me Nintendo continues to try to justify their console's existence rather than seek to improve the Wii.  While Sony and Microsoft are scrambling to provide cutting-edge, high-definition, next-generation entertainment experiences, Nintendo is content to give us the Wii Zapper, Wii Motion Plus, a "Vitality Sensor", and still no updates or expansions to the channel system, Mii creation options, or online.  It's not that Nintendo is incapable of righting some of these wrongs through firmware updates or console expansions--it's that they refuse to acknowledge that their broken system even needs fixing.


-Simon